Sophomores

by Sean Desmond

“It’s a way of saying: all that for what?”

  “Yes, but what’s the bigger point?”

  Dan raised his hand. “That no one can understand the old man’s suffering or why.”

  “Okay. And so?”

  “And so, even after being told the story of the old man, we don’t know the real story. We know he endures, that he suffers, but no one really knows why this all happened. We still don’t get it. Even the old man doesn’t get it.”

  “That’s correct. Sophomores, as Hemingway says, this story is all about what a man can do and what a man endures. And what does it mean to endure?” Oglesby flipped to a dog-eared page. “‘The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now the old man was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.’ Every time it’s a new telling, and every time, Hemingway realized, doesn’t quite tell it completely, or come close to explaining why we must suffer and endure. Very good. All right, gentlemen, time to turn in your journals.”

  Dan winced. Sticky turned around for him to pass his journal forward. Dan shook his head, then, seized with regret, reached into his backpack. He had his journal with him; he just couldn’t bring himself to turn it in.

  This predicament had started the night his father made Uncle Jack storm out on dinner. Miserable and overheated, Dan holed up in his room, turned on “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” and just wrote. The journal assignment was “1001 Things to Do with a White Elephant” and Dan let a furious, sad, and absurd part of his brain take over. After preambling about all the things he thought were possible white elephants—the Spruce Goose, Superman’s Fortress of Solitude—he actually began writing out one thousand things to do.

  #154 Tear Saran wrap with only one hand.

  #155 Speak pig Latin to a Latin pig.

  #156 Shut the doors to the palace of wisdom behind us.

  And as Dan sat propped up on bed pillows, he kept writing every thought that came into his head. As Dylan jangled on about Captain Arab, with visions of desolate rows and sad-eyed ladies, and forgetting about today until tomorrow, something took over, and what he was writing wasn’t coming in drips of thought but was flowing, and flowing fast.

  #467 Steal Philoctetes’s bow and leave him some Lotrimin foot spray.

  #468 Go from catatonic to paranoid.

  #469 Quit licking wounds and feed the dogs of Asclepius Alpo.

  Dan started scribbling in his journal faster and faster. His hand cramped somewhere in the six hundreds but he kept going, the flow flowing, the Dylan tape popping at the end of each side, which Dan stretched across the mattress to flip. Around eleven p.m., he heard the footsteps of his father and his mother going to bed in separate rooms.

  #832 Tell the truth when things are not fine.

  #833 Leave this harbor of bad feelings.

  #834 Accept when your father’s sick and your mother’s depressed.

  #835 Don’t despair. Don’t suffer.

  His hand throbbing, Dan stopped there. Don’t suffer. Wiping away the tears, he went to bed.

  Back in class, Sticky stopped chewing on his pen and popped Dan in the shoulder. “Dude, turn in the journal.”

  Dan pulled his hand from his bag. “I can’t. I didn’t finish.”

  Oglesby collected the notebooks but did not count them, and Dan was unsure if he noticed that his journal was missing. The bell rang, and Oglesby raised his hand to hold the sophomores in their seats for one last admonition.

  “Gentlemen, Norwegian rat season is upon us. The first election is going to be soon, and before you know it, we will also be preparing for the Game. Prove to me that you are not just enduring, you are excelling. To paraphrase Papa Hemingway, rule twenty-two: keep your head clear and suffer like a rat. If you understand this lesson, you will be prepared for this class, the strategies the Game requires, and whatever challenge comes next.”

  Panicked and nearly in tears, Dan packed up quick and rushed from Oglesby’s classroom, convinced he was now definitely and finally salao.

  * * *

  When school finally let out, Dan went home with Rick, who lived in a far northern kingdom known as Plano. Spanish for “really fucking flat,” Plano was Dallas with even less of a strategy. In 1987, back before Plano was fully turnpiked and terraformed, half the land was still undeveloped, but the grid was filling in, and one hundred thousand people had arrived. To find Rick’s house, imagine a beige brick, brown-shingled housing development, in the middle of empty prairie, curbs cut within sight of the pastures of Southfork Ranch. Welcome to the Colonnade of the Bowling Green Meadow Estates, a.k.a. the Colon Bowl.

  Rick and Dan hitched a ride with Chad Gilchrist, another Plano kid, and discovered Master of Puppets to be a very wearying album for driving to the end of civilization. Eventually Chad dropped them off on Castlemere Drive. Rick Sr. was standing in his empty three-car garage smoking a cigar.

  “Son, welcome home. Who is this you brought with you? A new recruit to our cult? Perfect. Take him back to the tabernacle and prepare for the sacrifice.”

  A trip to the cigar store punched the ticket for Richard Lee Dowlearn Sr. to be in a good mood. Rick Sr. was a true born Texan who grew up in all parts of the Dallas hinterlands, from Denton to Duncanville. He went to SMU until drinking got him kicked out. He then hunted and hoboed, jockeyed rigs in the Gulf, made a couple of runs to the border, and lived like an outlaw until it was time to make amends. He had been sober for a good long while, until of course he wasn’t, but that was not a concern of late—the cigar store was part of his AA routine.

  Rick and Dan went in through the garage. The house was as big as any in Preston Hollow, a long scalene run of ranch that triangled back on itself to accommodate a white dye pool and an untrampled green lawn guarded by willows and cottonwoods that divided the property from the sixteenth green of a golf course. The house smelled like paint and drywall and felt to Dan like part of an elaborate movie set put up moments ago to convince him Plano really existed.

  As the boys walked through the laundry room, they were greeted by a clattering of nails and dog tags. Ruby and Ozzie, sister and brother wire fox terriers, ran toward Rick growling and gurgling with happiness. They then spotted Dan and circled him while barking in piercing pizzicato squeaks.

  “Shut the fuck up, Ruby. Get down, Ozzie.”

  “Ozzie” was short for “Oswald.” Ruby and Oswald. Dan froze as Ozzie snuffled him for wolf scents. Clear.

  “Boy howdy. The men of Jesuit return. Hi, Danny, what do you say?”

  Standing at the kitchen island was Rick’s mother, Margaret, who waited for a peck on the cheek from her son. With wizened Scotch-Irish features, she looked a little like Loretta Lynn.

  “You guys hungry? I’ve got chips and dip.”

  Sitting at the far counter, grazing on her own separate stockpile of chips and dip, was Melissa, Rick’s sister, dressed in the yellow oxford and green tartan skirt for St. Paul the Apostle. The Dowlearns were easygoing Methodists who you might have thought had outkicked the coverage of good public schools this far up in Plano, but the truth was you couldn’t matriculate with more than a week of unexcused absences in the Plano ISD, and Rick was going to miss much more than that with his fledgling acting career. When he got cast as Spalding Gray’s son, Larry Culver, in True Stories, Rick enrolled in parochial school. He took the role, which amounted to a surreal dinner scene where he played tic-tac-toe with zucchini slices and Triscuits as Spalding Gray gave David Byrne a lecture on the coming disintegration of the modern workplace while punctuating his point with a cooked lobster. To this day, no one is sure what the hell is going on in that scene, but Rick got a closing credit, and St. Paul’s gave the Dowlearns a good sibling discount on tuition, so Missy went too.

  “Missy girl, come help me with the laundry. And if you give me that face we can add ironing to it. Al
so, we have to sweep that garage.”

  “Mooooommmm . . .” Missy was a world-class whiner.

  “There’s enough leaves in there that if Daddy flicks one hot ash from those foul cigars, he will send this house up quicker than Farrah Fawcett.” Mrs. Dowlearn pulled the bag of tortilla chips away from her. “Come on, darling. Dan, can you believe these lazy children I have to live with?”

  There was a productivity to the Dowlearns that was tireless—equal parts Protestant work ethic and an AA component of keeping busy for Rick Sr.’s sake. Dan, whose mother waited on him hand and foot, realized he was lazy. Home life for the Dowlearn children was a never-ending punch list of chores—Rick had to walk the dogs, skim the pool, take out the trash, everything short of building a barn and prime-coating it. Embarrassed not to be doing anything, Dan went around the back of the house and held the ladder while Rick cleared leaves from the roof gutters.

  “Sorry, almost done with all this shit.”

  “No worries.”

  “Son . . .”

  Rick Sr. peeked around the corner from the garage.

  “Last thing tonight and then you and your compadre can hightail it. The pump on the Jacuzzi is throttling.”

  “In or out?”

  “I think when it’s sucking in, it’s not catching a full drink.”

  “Okay.” Rick dropped a giant wad of leaves below him.

  “I think that valve is stuck again. Here, Dan, my lad, carry this toolbox for him.”

  Rick came down off the ladder and headed around to the hot tub. Dan lugged the big Black and Decker metal chest of tools and followed him across the patio to a greenhouse that looked out over the pool. Through glass doors was a hot tub covered with a white float like a giant marshmallow on top of cocoa. Rick pulled the side panel back and studied the pump. Dan crouched behind him, pretending to understand what he was looking at. As a summertime lifeguard at Glen Cove Swim Club, he was familiar with pool equipment, but this was a different level of mechanical understanding—one the previous Malone generation, who spent their lives hectoring undermotivated supers in the Bronx and at the mercies of various scamming repairmen, had not attained. Rick Sr. had taught his son to be handy, to tinker, and Dan—who could break a dipstick checking the oil on a car—admired that.

  Rick popped the intake valve back into place. “Okay, go through that door into my dad’s office, and when I tell you, throw the bottom breaker on the left.”

  Dan went into the small study and found the circuit box.

  “Now,” Rick yelled.

  Dan hit it, and the hot tub roiled to life. Dan glanced around Rick Sr.’s office, which was a boring bunch of carpet books and paperwork. Then he turned and found the gun cabinet.

  “Whoa.”

  It was a SWAT team’s locker of firepower—rifles, pistols, shotguns, you name it. And a nice wooden cabinet too, like the kind his mother put all the Waterford in. On the wall adjacent there was a poster billowing with an angelic grouping of clouds.

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the firepower to change the things I can, and the wisdom to bury the bodies.

  Rick came into the office, his freckled forehead sweating from the decathlon of chores. Dan stared at the cabinet.

  “What do you hunt? The German army?”

  “Deer and quail, depending where we go.”

  “Have the animals ever shot back?”

  “If guns kill people, cars make them drive drunk. God-given rights, Malone.” Rick was smart enough to spout his father’s wisdom with only a half-serious measure. The pump on the hot tub made a labored gargle, and they both moved back into the greenhouse.

  “Well, I’m coming to your house when the Russians attack. What are the dogs doing?”

  Across the hallway in the dining room, Ruby and Ozzie were pacing in circles under the chairs.

  “Yeah, they do that. I guess they like how it rubs their backs.”

  Dan watched them for a few loops. It was like a prison yard routine. Stressed out, goddamn dogs, Dan thought. Then just as their patrol couldn’t get any more comical, Ruby ran into a chair leg and backed up traffic. This didn’t sit right with Ozzie, who nipped at Ruby’s dogleg left, and soon the two were wrestling and fighting.

  “Knock it off, idiots.” Rick went back into the waterworks. Dan watched the two terriers wrestle. Rick ran the pump in reverse, which created a high-pitched squeal, in turn setting off Ozzie and Ruby. In a split second, wrestling had escalated into a fight to the death.

  “Uh, Rick . . .”

  “What?” He couldn’t hear anything over the pump, so Dan tapped his shoulder.

  “Your dogs are trying to kill each other.”

  Ozzie and Ruby had each other by the throat. Rick turned off the hot tub.

  “Ozzie, Ruby, no!”

  But it was too late; they were locked in, and Ruby had scratched Ozzie, and the smell of blood drove them mad. Rick tried to put his hand in to grab a collar and almost lost it as the two terriers became one vicious ball of fight. Dan had horrified flashes of the Jack London he had read in junior high.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Ruby whined as Ozzie got ahold of her by the neck and clamped down. Tufts of dog hair went flying. The two dogs pulled each other into the hallway.

  “Dad!”

  Rick Sr. appeared, followed by his wife and daughter.

  “Good Lord.”

  “The noise from the pump made them go apeshit.”

  Dan stepped back as the dogs continued to murder each other. Rick Sr. had a copy of Texas Monthly in his hand. He rolled it up.

  “Son, get a collar.”

  “They almost took a finger when I tried that.”

  “Well, Ruby is going to lose if we don’t separate them. Missy, go get the travel kennel. I’m going to throw one of these dogs in there.”

  And then Rick Jr. and Rick Sr. each took a dog by its collar. But it was no use. Ozzie was clenched on Ruby, and despite how they pulled he wouldn’t let go. The Dowlearn men yanked and even raised the two terriers up off the ground. Ozzie’s snarls grew more deranged, Ruby whimpered and rattled. Rick Sr. raised up the Texas Monthly and started whaling on Ozzie’s snout. Nothing. Missy screamed as the dogs left a trail of blood along the hallway carpet. Rick’s mom was yelling ten different things to do at both Ricks. After a dozen gigantic blows with the magazine, Rick Sr. gave up.

  Dan thought of the gun cabinet in Rick Sr.’s office. Are these people crazy enough . . .

  Just then Ozzie let go for the briefest of seconds, and Rick Jr. pulled Ruby away and ran off with her to the garage. Rick Sr. dunked Ozzie into the kennel as the dog went ballistic, scratching and snapping at his hands.

  Rick Sr. kneeled down next to the kennel, exhausted. “Well, hell’s bells. Goddamn dogs. So goddamn high-strung.” He studied the cover photo of Henry Cisneros on his Texas Monthly, now spattered with blood. He started to chuckle and smiled with a touch of pride.

  “Did you see that grip Ozzie had? Dan here looked like he was ready to shoot them both, I tell you what.”

  And as they began to clean up this Plano crime scene, the Dowlearns all started laughing.

  The color returned to Dan’s face. Huh, Mom is right. These native Texans are certifiable.

  All he could think to do was laugh with them.

  * * *

  Dinner with the Dowlearns included more chips and dip and takeout from Herrera’s, which was the normal tia’s special of tortilla soup and greasy enchiladas. Then around eight p.m., Beppe Ravioli, a classmate and fellow Planoite, picked up Rick and Dan in his mom’s Tercel. In spite of his delicious-Stouffer’s-frozen-dinner name, Beppe was a fairly cool dude with a joker face and a butt cut, who always had soft-pack smokes he stole from his dad. All three boys lit up as they got on the tollway heading south. The plan was t
o meet the rest of the gang at Josh Barlow’s house in Highland Park. Mama and Papa Bear Barlow were out of town, and Josh had invited over half of North Dallas.

  As sophomores, the boys were low on the social totem pole—better to be neither seen nor heard by upperclassmen while sneaking turns at the keg. Rick, mindful of living in his father’s house, would not dare drink but was amused by Dan’s attempts to lush it up when they went out. Instead Rick chased girls. And he even caught a couple, which brought with it a new set of problems.

  The boys pulled up on Versailles Avenue. (All the streets in the Park Cities bespoke the hoity-toity—Bordeaux Avenue, Harvard Avenue, Beverly Drive, Not Your Country Club Court, and so on.) They could hear the party from five doors down, and as they walked up the Barlows’ driveway to the thumping music, Rick looked unsure.

  “Only a matter of time before the cops come.”

  He was right—the party was borderline bonkers, and way too loud for uptight Highland Park. From the front door they went through a living room obscured in a fat cloud of pot smoke and headed toward a sunken den with long green leather sectionals. That was where Rick ran into girl number one, Jane.

  “Hey, baby, que pasa?” Rick smiled, unsurprised, playing it cool as a Cusack. Jane Osbaldeston was a dark-redhead with a smooth porcelain face that reminded Dan of the Oil of Olay lady on the box that sat by his mother’s sink. Jane was all A’s and honor roll but hated going to Ursuline and always dragged Rick downtown to meet up with her bummed-out Arts Magnet friends to enjoy collective melancholy. She also worked the lotions counter at Marshall Field’s in the Galleria, another symbol of her worldliness, and was so over everything about high school, except Rick Dowlearn, who had her pretty twisted.

  Barely able to shout over the blare of Whitesnake, Jane frowned and reported: “Welcome to moron central. Maura ditched me to go upstairs with the heavy drug addicts.” She down-talked in a reverse Valley Girl accent.

  “Did you work tonight with Maura? You poor thing.” Rick was a natural at teasing and flirting. He had Jane half draped over him with just one line.