Sophomores

by Sean Desmond

  As he rounded past High Meadow, he saw that a live oak had split to its trunk and hurled a thick arm of branches across the intersection. Pat swerved and braked. As he stopped short, the pain in his side returned. This shit feels like I’ve been stabbed. Could it be my appendix about to burst? Pat took a shallow breath and let the pain pass, then turned onto Marsh Lane.

  Clouds moving east; if I head south I can duck past it. The air-raid siren wound up again, and Pat raced down the street, making a futile effort to outrun the storm. As he reached Royal Lane, he drove straight into more hail and sheets of rain. He gripped the steering wheel, feeling flushed and exhausted, the pain slicing through the right side of his gut. Christ Almighty, what did I do to deserve this? The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up, and Pat had no choice but to pull over. By the time he made it to the intersection at Walnut Hill he knew exactly where to do it.

  You weren’t looking for Dan. You knew where you were going the whole time.

  Pat jerked the wheel into a hard left and skidded into the parking lot for the Hasty Liquor Store.

  * * *

  Tumbling out of the driver’s seat, Pat was completely soaked after two steps in the downpour. Lightning flashed and forked, and a crashing thunder rumbled near. He shouldered into the front door, surprised to find it open, the power still on. He stepped into the cool, white fluorescence and endless rows of booze.

  The clerk, a bent-over old-timer with a name tag reading sweeney, ignored the tempest and recognized Pat as the frequent customer he was.

  “Hey there, I was just about to lock her up . . .”

  “I needed to get off the road.” Pat grinned like a loon, forgetful now, past the pale of his plight. “One hell of a storm.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sweeney gave Pat a stoic squint. And just then the air-raid siren started up again. The blue-black skies drained out, and an eerie quiet gathered. Barely tethered to his wits, Pat pretended all was fine and began to shop. He picked up a bottle of vodka. This is it, the last one, to celebrate a shitty job offer. Yes, the last one until the next.

  The pain erupted again in his side, sending both Pat and the bottle crashing to the floor. Pat fell hard and was paralyzed by the shock of it. All he could do was look up and down the aisle. Rows and columns of liquor bottles. The calm within the storm was replaced now with the groan of the wind churning, squalling against the windows. Sweeney, the store clerk, moved slowly to the end of the aisle and squinted at him. The power, the lights, went out, and the wind began to holler. Pat lay in the glass shards and puddle of vodka. This is it. Here it comes. About fucking time. The bottles of liquor started to shiver on their shelves. Unable to move or get up, Pat lay there in a heap and closed his eyes. All he could hear was the rattle and clink of the bottles, their horrible, dreadful chime.

  * * *

  Pat awoke slowly and sat up in the hospital bed. His appendix felt like it could burst at any moment, and he tried not to move his side, which was near impossible. So he lay back down, burning, immobile, in the emergency room at Medical City. He had a terrible hangover, felt bleary, dehydrated, his legs alternating between numbness and shooting pain. The pain in his side was so bad he almost vomited, and he started shivering like he had the flu. The clerk at the liquor store had called an ambulance. Another shot of agony rifled through him as Pat tried to recall what happened. Did I black out? Looks like it. His side still tender, his skin rashed and itchy, Pat couldn’t get comfortable in the hospital bed. He was shaking with pain one minute and then it would subside. He told one nurse he was in total misery and another nurse he was fine.

  After a half hour more of waiting, another patient was wheeled into the room. A guy in his thirties maybe. He smelled awful and lay there unconscious. The nurses were hooking him up to all sorts of machinery. A middle-aged doctor with a crew cut came rushing in, glanced at his chart, and then checked him with his stethoscope. The nurse whispered something to the doctor, and together they fished through the guy’s pockets like he was already dead. Turning him over, the nurse found a pint of Old Crow in his back pocket. The doctor opened one of his eyelids and shined a penlight there, and that seemed to jolt him into semiconsciousness. The doctor stepped back and gauged the vital signs now beeping off the machines. The nurse left and returned with the man’s mother, who was a sad gray flake of a woman. The doctor interrogated her: How long had he been drinking? All weekend probably. How long has he had diabetes? Several years. The doctor nodded and said something about hepatitis. And Pat realized, yes, his skin was a blotchy yellow, like the filter on a used cigarette. The nurse reported the patient’s blood sugar, and the doctor looked put out and said something to the mother about a diabetic coma in a tone that this was all one giant pain in the ass.

  Just then a nurse snuck up on Pat, asked how he felt without listening to the answer, and quickly drew some blood. The doctor turned to Pat’s bedside.

  “Sorry to take so long. That storm made us awfully busy.”

  Pat could read his name tag now: dr. roth. He examined Pat’s side and prodded until he found a scarlet surge of pain that made Pat jerk back in the bed.

  “Yup, that might be the appendix.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the MS?”

  “Not likely. We should X-ray.”

  Pat tried to reassure himself that he had extended the health insurance from American for just this sort of scenario, and he was covered. And then he accidentally shifted and, fuck, the pain in his side was intolerable. His skin was crawling, and he couldn’t sit still but he had to sit still, and Christ, this was pure hell.

  Later that hour, they wheeled Pat down the hall to be X-rayed. The technician didn’t acknowledge his presence, and Pat just lay there like a slab of meat as the guy positioned the machine around his midsection, then stepped out of the room.

  Pat was trapped.

  He wanted to scream.

  Quit crying. Shut the fuck up. You brought this on yourself.

  But then it was over and they wheeled him back. The diabetic in the bed next to him was awake now and reading a magazine, his mother resting in a chair alongside. The drug counselor for the hospital came by and murmured through a survey. Pat could only make out every third word, but this guy had taken a whole pharmacy of drugs Pat had never heard of. The counselor talked about the hazardous cocktail effect of drinking and pills on diabetes, and the guy feigned forbearance, but no one believed that, especially the mother, who stared down at the floor and couldn’t face her own child. Pat realized this was just the start of a new cycle for this guy. The hospital would dry him out, and then he’d pick up again, and the mother knew that whole big wheel of shit was coming and it would turn him up either back here or at Sparkman Hillcrest cemetery, and she wasn’t sure which was worse.

  Another doctor, a younger guy, whisked into the room. He didn’t interrupt the drug counselor but came over directly to Pat. His name tag read: dr. hoo. Pat almost found that funny. Dr. Hoo grinned, calm and dispassionate, and then looked over Pat’s chart, his X-rays and blood work.

  “Mr. Malone, how are we feeling?”

  “I’m okay, I guess. Just this pain in my side, really.”

  “Yes, we thought it might be the appendix, right?”

  “That’s what the other doctor said, yes.”

  “Well according to this, I’m not sure it’s your appendix. Let me see something here.” Dr. Hoo reached down along Pat’s white belly. His fingers were cool and soft as he poked around. “Any pain here?”

  His side felt tight and catchy, like a hernia, but Pat shook his head no.

  “Okay. Mr. Malone, looking at this blood work, the liver functions are . . . well . . . they are quite elevated, and that’s not good. I think your liver is swollen, and that’s the tenderness you’re feeling.”

  He was so matter-of-fact about it. Pat appreciated that.

  “Mr. Malone, do you drink
?” Dr. Hoo asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you drink a lot?”

  “Yes. Too much.”

  “Okay. Every day, including today?”

  “Yes.”

  “You appear to be in withdrawal right now, do you realize that?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And you have to stop.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Especially with the early onset of multiple sclerosis.”

  Dr. Hoo left it at that. Pat lay back in the bed as the doctor scribbled on his chart, then went about his rounds. Called out for what it really was, the pain in his side disappeared and was replaced with a dull, shameful loathing. Pat studied his lot with sad astonishment—he had put himself here. And he was taking a hospital bed away from someone who was seriously hurt. He cringed at his own pathetic behavior. He got out of the bed and started to put on his clothes. No one bothered with him as he walked out of the room, down the hall, and found a pay phone to call the house and ask Anne to come get him.

  * * *

  The storm passed, quick as it came. Nothing touched down on the Malone house or Hasty Liquor Store, but it came close—a twister had pinballed down the six lanes of the LBJ trench as hundreds in traffic ran to the underpasses for cover. Pat had been spared, the heat wave sundered, but major issues remained.

  As Pat stepped slow and unsure to the car, he told Anne his appendix was fine and that he had pulled something. Hernia, sorry for the false alarm. Anne didn’t believe him. His own doctor, Landis, was affiliated with Medical City and would see the results, and the truth would come out. But Pat was wading through deeper shit than that. He was still shaking, his head throbbing. You are an alcoholic like your father. You put yourself in the hospital. Even with the air-conditioning on, he was sweating. You lay down next to a man literally dying from it. He hadn’t eaten all day. Thirsty too. An exhausted wreck. You have MS. He took off his hospital bracelet and stuffed it in his pocket. You’ll probably end up with cirrhosis too. You have enough problems. Stop adding to them. You have a wife and child to support.

  For the first half of the drive home, Pat said nothing to Anne, who was seething quietly. You have to get your shit together. Christ, please. You have to quit. They drove down Forest Lane until the light stopped them at Midway. Anne turned to him and shook her head like there were no words for her despair. And then uttered feebly: “I just don’t know what’s going on.”

  They stopped to pick up the Zephyr at the liquor store on Walnut Hill and drove the rest of the way separately. When they got home, the pain in Pat’s side came back and he was short of breath. He needed to lie down and made his way to the back of the house. Dan was there, at the door to his room.

  “Hey, Danny boy. Crazy storm, huh?” Pat offered.

  “Yeah.” Dan smiled with worry as his father hobbled past him in the hallway. He didn’t recognize him, or realized he had no memory of what his father was like before he got sick.

  “I’m sorry, Dan.”

  Pat couldn’t summon what he really wanted to say.

  “I’m just sorry it’s never clean.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Monday, Pat told Anne about the job in Miami. On Tuesday, Pat scheduled an appointment with Dr. Landis. On Wednesday afternoon, he dialed the hotline for Alcoholics Anonymous. On Thursday morning, he took the job offer. Late Friday, the machinists’ union walked away from the table, and the board of Eastern Airlines accepted the resignation of Chief Executive Officer Frank Borman.

  [ JUNE 3 ]

  “‘Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’”

  Oglesby lowered The Oxford Book of English Verse and swung his teaching stick, an ancient driver made of persimmon wood nicknamed Carraway, across the blue carpet like a practice cut before addressing the class on his fairway. He was turned toward the windows, stained in a blazing early-summer light, the courtyard fused with green thoughts and clumsy cicadas and june bugs rising on the heat. It was the final day of school and time for one last drive on Gatsby before heading into the clubhouse.

  “Gentlemen, what happens when the hero returns? When the war is over and our story ends? Remember back to the beginning of the year: Our hero is on a quest. And a hero, despite his flaws, must be polytropos and champion his fate. Consider Mr. Jay Gatsby: Like Odysseus, he has returned home from war. And like the long-lost king of Ithaca, he has endless parties going on in his house. Are there other similarities?”

  Oglesby cocked an eyebrow and shifted his weight onto the one-wood. Rob McGhee raised his hand and spoke: “They are both kind of restless and unsatisfied.”

  “Good, that’s right. There are accounts of Odysseus, like this Tennyson poem, where the story doesn’t stop and that take our hero back out on adventure. What does Tiresias tell him he must do in order to please Poseidon? Mr. Gilchrist?”

  “That he must plant an oar where no man recognizes it from the sea . . .”

  “Correct.” Oglesby recited two more lines from Tennyson without prompt from the book: “‘How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!’”

  He then gave the sophomores the sly smirk that they had grown to know well: Who is clever enough to figure this out with me?

  “Did Odysseus know his wife and son? Wouldn’t they be estranged all these years later? Why would he perpetuate so much violence on his return and kill all the suitors? Gatsby also doesn’t fit back into society. His name, his status in West Egg, is suspect. In pursuing Daisy, he enrages Tom. Like Odysseus, his fortunes are based on deception, he overreacts and mishandles key situations, and he is driven by this unrequited longing.”

  For a final time, Oglesby moved to poke a snoring Jay Blaylock in the ribs with the driver, but then shook his head and left him among the lotus-eaters.

  “Gentlemen, the hero at rest is a flawed, sad figure. This is the great irony that Homer and Fitzgerald both realized: when the hero comes home, he still finds himself in exile.”

  Oglesby threw back his shoulder and snuck a quick peek at the classroom clock.

  “All right, how dull it is to pause there, but we have fifteen minutes before final prayer service.” Oglesby pulled notebooks from his army bag. “I’m passing back your journals, and we have one last bloodletting ceremony before I pronounce you upperclassmen.”

  Oglesby whisked around the classroom, dropping journals, muttering cryptic insults as he went.

  “The marginal Mr. McGhee, who never stayed within the lines . . .

  “Basho Deangelis, the master of the hundred-word haiku. Not a syllable more or less . . .

  “To Carthage burning, Mr. Coleman. Using your journal for rolling papers does not impress me.

  “Master of the useless arts Malone . . .”

  Without further comment, Oglesby flung a yellow spiral notebook to the back row. Dan caught it on a backhand and struggled to read his teacher’s rush as any indicator. So he scanned his last journal entries, looking for red pen. Dan had pulled out all the stops: he wrote a wistful, dramatic monologue from the point of view of Telemachus, drew a cartoon about a misunderstood paramecium that saves the universe, and composed a Dylan rip-off ballad (like questions floating on the breeze) about everybody being hypocrites, run through a tundish of Gerard Manley Hopkins (the thorny tendril vined and tangled with my thoughts). Dan found a check-plus for a C. S. Lewis–inspired essay titled “The Snake Crawled West”: “Man brought the snake out of Eden, and discovered what he thought to be the whole world, and once he conquered it, he only then realized that he had been conquered by the snake itself.” He also wrote obliquely about his mother and father—in an entry called “Lost
in the Supermarket”—with some pain and worry there. Dan flipped to the final page and Oglesby’s note: “Well done. Let’s talk about what’s next.”

  Dan looked up from his desk as Oglesby pulled out his grade book.

  “As last time, the top three semester averages are eligible for Rattus norvegicus induction. The first candidate, with a grade point of ninety-seven point one, is Mr. Boudreaux.”

  Despite the chorus of groans, this came as no surprise. Ethan Tsao and his 98 average had transferred to St. Mark’s during the spring. The freckle-jowled Teddy Boudreaux leapt out of his seat, beaming at his first-place status.

  “With a ninety-six point five, we have Mr. O’Donnell. Please step up.”

  This was a bit of a shock. Sticky was a stealth ace when it came to tests and papers, and he had won the Game by poisoning himself with Blaireric. The call of his name was met with impressed and envious chimp faces from the sophomores.

  “Let’s see here . . .” Oglesby stuck Carraway under his armpit and ruled his finger across the grade book. “Mr. Gilchrist has a ninety-five point seven average; come up to the front.”

  Dan stared down at the remarks in his journal. It was Oglesby’s way of telling him he hadn’t made the cut.

  “Now, Mr. Gilchrist has the third-highest average, but he was also out with mono for four weeks. It also looks like I haven’t added all the extra credit in correctly. Mr. Malone . . .”

  Dan’s heart started to hammer in his chest. Why are you torturing me? Oglesby scrutinized him with pale, loveless eyes.

  “You have no absences and the best journal marks in the class. You’re at ninety-five point four plus extra credit for writing out one thousand and one things to do with a white elephant. So I’m adding you as a fourth candidate for the rites of the rat. Step up here.”

  Dan waded past the rows of desks as Oglesby read out the rest of the averages, ranking the class from first to hypnagogic Jay Blaylock, dead last. Dan couldn’t believe he was in the running—The trial to get to the trial was a trial. Oglesby pulled his copy of Ficciones and three brown rubber rats from his backpack, aligning them on the teacher’s desk like they were ready to assume their places on an Olympic medal podium. Dan was so short of breath he was practically panting. Pull it together, idiot.