A Plague Year

by Edward Bloor

  Saturday, November 10, 2001

  I went in to work with Dad at 7:00 a.m. and stocked shelves for five hours.

  Arthur picked me up in the parking lot a little after noon. The first thing he said was, “You ready to go up there and kick some ass, Tom?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Uh, yeah? What kind of answer is that? You ready or not?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

  “Not exactly. I’ll figure that out when I get there.”

  Arthur sounded doubtful. “Okay. So, we are gonna go to the campus and look for a yellow Corvette.”

  “Right. Wendy told me the guy lives in a frat house across the street from her, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “We just have to find the right frat boy and let the mayhem begin. Let the wrath of God befall him.”

  I gulped. “Yeah.” Then I asked him, “Do you think we’ll get in trouble?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. This is a matter of honor, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then you got to do it. End of story.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  We retraced the route we’d taken on Halloween—up the main road leading to Blackwater University, around the big quadrangle, then onto Wendy’s street. This time, in the light of day, I could see that many of the brick houses were frats. They had banners with big Greek letters hanging over their front doors.

  We passed the Lyles’ house, with its three-sided porch, its white railing, and the dirt below it. I wondered if they’d cleaned up that candy corn.

  Up on the left, just as Wendy had implied, was a frat house with a yellow Corvette in the driveway. Arthur pulled the Geo Metro in behind it and turned off the engine. He looked at me expectantly.

  I said, “What do we do now?”

  He laughed out loud. “Well, I’d say we go inside.”

  “We can do that?”

  “No, but we’re gonna do that. Right?”

  “Right.”

  Arthur leaned in front of me. “You sure you’re up to this?”

  “Yeah.”

  His gray eyes bored into mine. “First, tell me something: What’s this really about?”

  “It’s about … personal honor.”

  “Okay. Righteous. Now, do you remember what he did to dishonor you?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Okay. You think about that, right now, in detail. And you keep that thought in your head when we go inside.”

  “What if somebody stops us?”

  “You let me worry about that. Tell me: Do we know the dishonorer’s name?”

  “Yeah. It’s Joel.”

  “Okay. So we walk in there like we own the place. We are here to see Joel. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Arthur exited the car and set off on a determined march, his shaved head held erect, his black boots pounding on the sidewalk. I scrambled out and followed him.

  We climbed the stairs, passed under a Greek banner, and stopped before a tall wooden door. Arthur grasped the glass door handle, turned it, and pushed.

  The door opened.

  Arthur and I stepped into a wood-paneled foyer. We didn’t see anybody. We didn’t hear anybody. He pointed silently to a staircase on the right. As we climbed the steps, I did start to hear sounds—a TV set, a stereo.

  At the top, Arthur pointed again and smiled. There were several doors around the landing, and each had a nameplate telling who lived behind it. The first two had pairs of names. But the third had only one, and that name was JOEL.

  The door was slightly ajar. I stepped in front of Arthur and leaned forward to hear. A faint rhythmic sound was coming from inside, a clicking sound, like typing.

  I put my hand on the knob and paused, remembering the Halloween party, and Wendy, and my humiliation. I relived that moment, and then I opened the door all the way.

  A curly-haired guy was sitting at a desk. It was Joel, all right, working at a laptop. A messy bed was behind him, and a row of gadgets—a TV, a stereo, an exercise bike—stretched from the right side of the room to the left. I stepped inside and said, “Hi, Joel. Do you remember me?” He cocked his head. I added, “The little townie?”

  Arthur stepped in behind me and closed the door with a click.

  Joel shook his head. He answered, “No. No, I don’t. What are you doing here?”

  I spoke slowly, haltingly. “I came here … to talk to you about … that night.” I groped for something else to say. I was losing it. I came up with “And about a website that you put up. A website that … slandered the good name of a friend of mine.”

  I think Joel did remember me, and that night, because he replied, “Do you mean Wendy Lyle?”

  “Yes.”

  “We talked about that. The website is gone. We’re good.”

  “Yeah? Well, you and I are not good.”

  Joel closed the laptop and pushed back his seat. He looked warily at Arthur as he stood up. “You need to get out of here, both of you. Right now.”

  Arthur sniffed the air. “Have you been smoking in here, Joe?”

  “Do you know how old Wendy Lyle is?” I asked.

  Joel’s eyes darted to Arthur and then back to me. “Yeah. She’s sixteen.”

  “No. She’s not. She’s fifteen.”

  “Hey, what’s the big deal here? I’m just messing around with my laptop.”

  “By talking about underage girls in dirty and disgusting ways?”

  Joel pointed at the laptop and shrugged. “It’s the Wild West out there. People can do whatever they want.”

  I informed him, “No. No, they can’t.” But then I had no clue what to do or say next. I turned to Arthur and pleaded with him silently to step in.

  And he did.

  He crossed over to the desk, scrutinizing the laptop like he had never seen one before. He muttered, “What is this here contraption for?”

  Joel snapped at him, “Don’t touch that!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t know the first thing about it.”

  Arthur pointed back at me. “Tom came all the way up here to talk to you, Joe.”

  “It’s Joel. And you need to leave that alone and get out of here.”

  “We’ll be leaving shortly, right after you apologize to Tom for calling him a townie. We don’t like that word.”

  Joel’s jaw dropped open. Then he spat out the words “Screw you!” But he didn’t sound like he meant them.

  Arthur picked up the laptop with his left hand and ripped it away from its power cord. With his right hand, he gave Joel a shove, driving him back toward the wall. He held the laptop up to me. “How do you open this thing?”

  I located the button and popped it open. Arthur tossed the laptop down onto the floor and kicked it toward the corner. He said, “Block the door.” Then he turned away from us.

  I placed my left shoulder against the door and leveled a mad-dog stare at Joel. He tried to stare back, but he could not.

  He caved.

  He smiled goofily and said, “Okay. Okay, I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that. Let’s forget this.”

  Then we both heard an unmistakable sound. Joel looked over toward Arthur in the corner. So did I.

  Arthur had his back to us. The laptop was on the floor in front of him, and he was urinating on it.

  Joel sputtered, “Are you … are you insane? You can’t do that!”

  Arthur, still urinating, asked innocently, “What?”

  Joel looked like he might cry. Or faint. He pointed to his laptop and squeaked, “That!”

  Arthur zipped up and replied. “Well, why not? It’s the Wild West. I can do whatever I want.”

  “You ruined my computer!”

  Arthur pretended to slap himself on the head. “Computer? Is that what it is? I thought it was a portable urinal. You know? For busy college guys who can’t take the time to walk down to the bathroom?” He reached out and drie
d his hands on Joel’s shirt, admitting, “I guess you were right. I didn’t know the first thing about it.”

  Joel stammered, “You … you’re going to pay for this!”

  “No. I don’t think so.” Arthur walked to the door, opened it, and left.

  Joel was just staring at the puddle on his floor.

  I hurried out after Arthur. I whispered to him, “Come on! We gotta get out of here before he calls the cops.”

  Arthur shook his head calmly. “Nah. That guy won’t call the cops.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t you smell the weed in there? It reeked of it. He’s got too much to hide.”

  Arthur walked coolly across the landing, with me directly behind. As he descended the stairs, though, he picked up speed, and so did I. We were both practically running when we hit the front door—bursting outside and vaulting off the porch onto the ground. We ran to the car and dove in. Arthur gunned the engine, threw it into reverse, and peeled out.

  As we raced past the Lyles’ house, I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I let out a loud whoop! Arthur laughed and held up his hand for me to slap. I did, and I started laughing hysterically.

  Arthur took a hard left at the end of the street. He had circled the quadrangle and was back on the main road before I could finally speak. Babble is more like it: “Hey, well, you know, Arthur … you might have overreacted in there. Just a little bit!”

  Arthur snorted. “Overreacted?”

  “Yes, maybe. Maybe just a tad.”

  “You mean by pissing on his computer?”

  “Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I mean.”

  “No. No, cuz. Overreacting would be, like, if I had pissed on his head.”

  “Oh, well. Okay. Yeah. Since you put it that way.”

  I sat back and let the incredible feeling flow over me.

  I had done it. Or Arthur had done it, but I had been there, too.

  We had now joined Warren and Jimmy, and Ralph, and the Cowley brothers, and every other townie who had ever been disrespected by frat boys and had come up here and had taken care of business.

  And I absolutely loved that feeling.

  Monday, November 12, 2001

  Wendy did not act like she had heard about a townie raid on the frat house across the street, resulting in a score being settled, and her honor being defended, and some personal property being destroyed. I was a little disappointed in that, but only a little. The Wendy thing was over.

  There was a change in Wendy’s routine, however. She did not show up for the counseling group after school. Her seat remained empty across the table. Our small group now consisted of Arthur, Lilly, and me—all family, all Blackwater, all townie.

  Catherine Lyle ran the group as usual, though. Today’s topic was role models. She began by telling us, “If you have good role models, you’ll do well in life.” Her manicured hand pointed out the window. “So let’s talk about people here in the community, people you know, who serve as good role models.”

  We just stared at her, so she said, “Okay. What jobs in the community automatically get your respect?”

  We started to get the idea. Kids called out suggestions.

  “Police officers.”

  “Firefighters.”

  “Doctors and nurses.”

  “Teachers.”

  Chris Collier added, “Student Council presidents.” (I think he was kidding, but maybe not.)

  Catherine Lyle nodded. “Good. Good. These are the jobs, and the people, we respect. These are our good role models.”

  A high school stoner asked, apparently out of nowhere, “Are all teachers role models?”

  Catherine looked at us for an answer. When no one spoke up, she replied, “Well, they should be. They sign up to be role models. That’s part of the job description.”

  The stoner nodded. He asked, “If a teacher smokes weed, then, what should happen to him?”

  Catherine Lyle opened her notebook and picked up her pen. She replied, “I would say he should be fired. If a teacher says one thing and does another—”

  Arthur muttered, “Talks the talk but don’t walk the walk.”

  “That teacher should certainly not be around children. It’s one thing if you are teaching adults, but not children.”

  Ben said, “Anybody who takes one of those jobs, one of those role-model jobs, should have to live up to it. If they don’t, they should get kicked out.”

  “Kicked out ain’t enough,” Arthur snarled. “They should get punished. They’re putting themselves up as better than other people, but they’re not.”

  Other kids agreed. They started talking about people in their lives, people they looked up to, who had let them down. The conversation went on like that, very seriously, for ten more minutes.

  Then, as usual, Catherine Lyle changed topics.

  She delivered some news in a perky voice, like Wendy on the morning announcements. “Next Monday, Dr. Richard Lyle will come speak to our group about new trends in substance-abuse treatment. Dr. Lyle—forgive me for bragging—is kind of a big deal. He gets paid thousands of dollars, plus travel expenses, to speak to groups all over the country. He is coming here for free, so let’s really make the most of it.”

  Catherine then smiled her perfect smile, clicked her silver pen, and closed her leather notebook. She turned, out of habit, toward Wendy’s seat, and she seemed disappointed to see that it was empty.

  Monday, November 19, 2001

  I had both Dad and Mom with me at breakfast, so I tried to work in the Christmas-tree idea. I started off conversationally, like I was talking about something else. I told them, “Arthur’s last football game was Friday afternoon.”

  Mom replied, “Oh? That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, I saw Aunt Robin at the school. She came to watch the game.” I added, “She seems like a nice lady.”

  Mom didn’t say anything, but Dad replied, “Sure. She is.”

  I heard Lilly coming down the back stairs. I waited until she had entered, selected an apple from a bowl, and started washing it before I continued. “I don’t really remember Uncle Robby. What was he like?”

  Dad said, “He was a nice guy.”

  Mom added, “He was. But he should never have gotten married so young. And never to Robin.”

  Dad turned away, concentrating on his shredded wheat, but he did murmur, “Well, he didn’t have much choice.”

  Lilly picked up on that before I did. “What? Aunt Robin was pregnant? With Arthur?”

  Mom nodded tightly. “Yes, that’s right. And that was the beginning of the end for Robby. There he was, married to this child bride, who had the same bad habits that he had.”

  Mom started to get angry. “Robin didn’t finish high school. She never got her GED. So after Robby died, what did she have? She had no job, no money, and a child to raise.”

  Lilly asked, “So how did she do? Was she a good mother?”

  Mom backed off. “She tried, I guess. She would take Arthur to football; she would take him to church to hear those Holy Roller preachers.”

  “Really? What church was that?”

  Mom looked at Dad, so he explained. “Some church in Caldera, in a double-wide. It got condemned along with everything else, so they had to move it. They put the whole thing on a flatbed truck and hauled it away.”

  Mom grumbled, “Who would go to church in a place like that? It was unhealthy.”

  Lilly winked at me. “Maybe Hungarians,” she suggested. “Or Puerto Ricans. I’ll have to ask John.” She looked at me for a laugh, or at least a smile, but I was way too stressed to react.

  Dad said, “It was an evangelical church. It attracted all kinds of people. I think that’s where Robin met Jimmy.”

  I responded as evenly as I could, “Jimmy Giles?”

  “Right.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “A little. He’s not a bad guy. He had a drug problem, I guess. And some legal problems.”

  “Do you know his br
other?”

  “Warren? Yeah. Real smart guy. He was a pharmacy tech at Kroger.”

  “No!”

  “Yeah. During college.”

  “He went to college?”

  “He did, up at Bloomsburg, but I don’t think he finished. He had some problem at Kroger—stealing pills, or underreporting pills, or misreporting. I’m not sure what.”

  Dad finally gave me my opening when he asked, “What are those guys doing now?”

  “Oh, different stuff. They move college kids in and out of the Blackwater dorms.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And they do some government work, hauling pine trees.”

  “For turpentine?”

  “I guess so, yeah. And they sell Christmas trees down in Florida.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. They’ve been doing it for a few years now. They make good money. And, uh, they asked me to work for them this year.”

  Dad froze in mid-spoonful.

  Lilly bulged her eyes out at me and whistled softly.

  I added quickly, “Just for five days, and they’ll pay me three hundred dollars. That’s sixty dollars a day. And really, two days are travel days, so that’s a hundred dollars per working day.”

  Mom spoke up immediately. “No. You can’t miss school.”

  “But that’s the beauty of it. I won’t! It’s just Thanksgiving and the weekend. I’ll be back in time for school.”

  I smiled and looked pathetically from Mom to Dad.

  But Dad just shook his head. “I can’t spare you at work, Tom. Not at Thanksgiving. It’s one of the busiest times of the year; you know that.”

  Mom piled it on. “And you’d be on the road with those”—she struggled to find the right term—“drug guys.”

  I thought about Warren and that box of Ziploc bags. Were they to store food, or weed? Both, probably. Still, I tried to sound offended, like that was an outrageous lie. “Drug guys?”

  “Yes! You heard what your father just said. They’ve both had drug problems.”

  “That was years ago! Didn’t Dad have a problem back then, too?”

  “That’s not the point. You have school, you have work, and you have parents who won’t let you get in a car with just anybody and take off for just anyplace. The answer is no.”