by Brock Clarke
“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!” Dr. Vernon shouted—not at Henry but at the umpire. This was another thing he did at these baseball games: he insulted the umpire—Matty—by way of quotes from Monty Python movies. Matty took off his mask and looked in the direction of the insult. He smiled at Dr. Vernon, then stopped smiling and gave Henry a more complicated look, a look meant to communicate, among other things: I’m watching you, buddy, don’t forget that, and don’t forget that I know your secrets, or at least I know some of your secrets, or at least I know what someone else has told me about some of your secrets, or at least I know you have secrets, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, not that you’re the only one around here with secrets, God knows, and maybe one day you and I will drink some beers and talk about them, and Jesus, that would feel good, wouldn’t it, wouldn’t it feel fucking great to finally stop lying, to tell the truth, not to everyone, just to one person, just to have one person you can sit down next to at the bar and rip open your chest and reveal your terrible secret heart to and have that person sitting next to you at the bar not judge you or hate you for what’s in that heart, for what you’ve done, a buddy, a true friend who will say, after you’ve shown him your heart, I’m so glad you just did that, I understand, we all have our secrets, this is what makes us human, this is what makes me human, now it’s my turn, now I’m going to rip open my chest, etc., and so hey, let’s get those beers someday soon, although speaking of beers, I know that in three days you’re going to be marrying Ellen down at the bar, and I’m glad, or at least I’m going to act like I’m glad, because I know you make her happy, and also because the other day she told me, when I said, casually, like your marrying her didn’t bother me, because it doesn’t, I said, Hey, don’t you think you’re making a terrible mistake marrying this joker, and when I said that, she told me not to be a jealous dick, that I, of all people, have no right to be a jealous dick, and so here I am, not being a jealous dick, no, this is me being glad you’re going to marry my ex-wife, but make no mistake, every time I think about you touching Ellen, even accidentally, I want to murder you, but hey, I hope you’re enjoying the baseball game. Then Matty put his mask back on and squatted back down behind the catcher.
After that, neither Dr. Vernon nor Henry spoke for such a long time that Henry started to forget that he’d ever asked Dr. Vernon the question about the Danish cartoonist, the way, before the stranger had shown up, he’d almost managed to forget that he’d ever been anything but a public-school guidance counselor in upstate New York.
“Danish cartoonist, huh?” Dr. Vernon finally said. “That might ring a bell. Remind me.”
But Henry did not end up reminding Dr. Vernon. Instead he started looking at the students sitting down near the fence. Specifically he was looking at Jenny, who seemed to be telling a crowd of students—including Kurt and his two cronies—a story. Henry assumed, and was afraid, that it was a good story, because for once, people actually seemed to be listening to her.
37
Wednesday, October 6, 2011, 11:43 p.m.
From: undisclosed sender
To: undisclosed recipient
Subject: re: Broomeville
What do you mean, “encounter”? What do you mean, “visit”? What do you mean, “next stage of our plan”? There’s only one stage. That one stage is the whole plan. If I were to write out the entire plan, it would read, “Kill him.”
38
And then he went ga borg ga borg ga borg gya,” Jenny was saying. “And when Mr. L. didn’t say anything back, the guy said in English, ‘Larsen: that’s a Danish name.’ ”
“And then you walked in and the guy took off,” Kevin said. This was the fourth time Jenny had told the story. She’d had to tell it a second time because no one listened to her the first time, because no one ever listened to her the first time. She’d had to tell it a third time because too many people had mistaken the moral of the story to be that Jenny was so unbelievably gross that her mere entrance into a room would cause anyone else in that room to flee, even a mysterious stranger. She’d had to tell it a fourth time because after the third telling, everyone realized that something truly strange was happening and that it’d be useful to hear the facts from Jenny one more time. Now, after the fourth telling, everyone seemed to understand the facts of the story, and they were ready to reach a conclusion.
“He’s a gay,” Tyler said.
“Wait, who is?”
“Well, they both are, obviously. Both Mr. L. and this guy. His lover.”
“His lover? Did you just use the word lover?”
“What? It’s a word. Lover. Someone who loves.”
“What makes you think Mr. L. is gay?” Jenny said.
“There’s lots of reasons,” Tyler said, and he proceeded to list them: that Mr. L. had always acted in a secretive, gay-like manner; that this man, whom no one had ever seen before, was therefore logically part of this secret; that when you catch two men alone in a room and one of them then flees, that is more or less definitive proof of their homosexuality; that the stranger had spoken to Mr. L. in gay code.
“It wasn’t code,” Jenny said. “It was a language.”
“What language, since you know so much?”
“Danish?” Jenny guessed. “Isn’t Mr. L. from Denmark?”
“He’s from Sweden,” Kurt said.
“Aw,” Tyler said, waving his hand dismissively. “Norland.”
“He’s from Sweden,” Kurt said again, but he wasn’t really talking to them. He was simply going through the facts, going through them in his head but also out loud, as though he were studying for a test. “But according to this stranger, he has a Danish name.”
“And he’s gay,” Tyler said.
“He’s not gay,” Kurt said.
“How do you know?”
“How do I know?” Kurt said. “Because he’s getting married to my mother on Saturday. That’s how I know.”
No one responded to that information immediately, though Kurt could sense how much everyone resented him for using this basic point of fact to destroy their fantastic hypothesis.
“Well, what is he, then?” Tyler finally said.
“I don’t know what he is,” Kurt admitted. He looked up at the stands. A moment earlier Mr. L. had been sitting with Dr. Vernon. But now Dr. Vernon was sitting by himself. No wonder, since he was wearing that ridiculous shirt and yelling those ridiculous things at Kurt’s father and supposedly having the ridiculous degree of doctor of philosophy and the ridiculous title of permanent substitute teacher. He was pretty close to unbearable. The only thing that prevented him from being totally unbearable was that he sold pot to Kurt and his cronies whenever they needed it. Before Jenny had walked over, in fact, Kurt and his cronies had been talking about how much they needed it. Kurt waved hello at Dr. Vernon as a way of saying not hello but, We need to buy some pot from you later on, and Dr. Vernon waved back as a way of saying, Yeah, you do. Sometimes that’s all Kurt could think about: how much he needed to smoke some pot. Although now he was also thinking about something else. You can trust me, Kurt, Mr. L. had said. That had been only an hour ago. He’d believed him then. Now he didn’t know what to believe. “I don’t know what he is,” Kurt said about Mr. L. “Maybe he’s a spy or something.” Kurt had intended that as a joke, but the moment he said it, he felt he’d hit on something close to the truth and didn’t want to talk to them about it anymore.
39
Larsen, that’s a Danish name,” he’d said, first in Danish, and then in English. Although that was not part of the plan that Søren had made with the American secret agent. That plan was simple: Søren would find the cartoonist, and he would kill him. The American agent had wanted Søren to kill the cartoonist with a gun, but Danes, even murderous Danes, are famously opposed to guns, and Søren said that he’d rather use something else. A knife, for instance.
“A knife?” the American agent had said. Her face was pinched, as though she found the
idea of using a knife to kill someone particularly distasteful.
“I don’t know how to use a gun,” Søren had explained.
“Jesus, a knife?” the American agent had said. “Why don’t you just hit him with a rock or something?”
“But where would I get a gun?”
“Oh, I could tell you where to get a gun,” the American agent had said.
“But could you tell me where to get a knife?” Søren had said, and the American agent had had to think about it for a long time before saying, “You know, I’m not even sure. I guess at the knife store?”
In the end, Søren had purchased the knife at something called a superstore, which the bus had passed on its way into Broomeville. In the superstore you could buy enormous tubs of mayonnaise and blinking shoes for your children and lawn mowers and boxes of cereal and prescription drugs and also, in a section right next to the other store sections, lethal weapons, including guns and also knives. The knife Søren had bought was a big-bladed thing with smooth edges and a deep, deep groove. The man who sold Søren the knife seemed to think that Søren was missing an excellent opportunity. He cocked his head in the direction of the wall lined with mounted pistols, rifles, shotguns, and semiautomatic weapons of all kinds, and asked, “You sure you don’t want something else? It doesn’t have to be a knife.”
Anyway, Søren had bought the knife, placed it in its protective sleeve and attached the sleeve to his belt, made sure it was obscured by his jacket, and then walked to the high school. The American agent had told him where to go. “Just walk in the front door, like you’ve done it every day of your life. No one will stop you if you do that. Find the stairs that lead to the basement. They always put the guidance counselor in the basement.”
“What’s a guidance counselor?” Søren had wanted to know.
“He’s the jerk you’re going to kill,” the American agent had said.
Søren had found the cartoonist in the basement. But then he immediately began to have doubts about his mission. For instance, this guidance counselor was a white man and the cartoonist was a white man, but other than that, they did not strongly resemble each other. Was this man the same man? Was this man even Danish? He did have a Danish name. Which lead Søren to make his statement, first in Danish and then in English. But this Larsen didn’t respond to either language: he just sat there, arms crossed, frowning, as though asking Søren, Are you really going to do this?
And then the girl with the disturbing neck had walked into the room and Søren realized that he was not really going to do this. So he’d fled, out of the room, past a janitor mopping the hall floor, up the stairs, glancing nervously from side to side as he ran, looking very much like he was someone who had not entered and exited the Broomeville Junior-Senior High School every day of his life. He opened the school’s front door and thought the same thing so many other people exiting that building had thought before him—Freedom!—and then someone pulled Søren’s arms behind his back and quickly bound them with something and then a black four-door sedan pulled up in the circular drive outside the school and the person behind Søren reached around him and opened the back door and pushed Søren in so that Søren fell facedown on the seat. “Scoot over,” the man said. Søren did that. The man climbed in next to him, slammed the door shut. Then the car, which smelled strongly of kitchen grease and potatoes, drove off. There were two people in the front seat. Søren could see only the back of their heads but could tell nonetheless that the driver was a man and the passenger a woman. He turned and looked at the man sitting next to him. He was approximately Søren’s age and was holding what looked to Søren like a black bag or sack.
“Can I put this on his head now?” the man asked the people in the front seat. The driver didn’t speak, and would not speak, but the woman laughed. It was a dry, barking, mirthless laugh. A smoker’s laugh if Søren had ever heard one.
“I don’t know why you need to put it on at all,” the woman said. “What’s he going to see? Who’s he going to tell?”
“Just in case,” the man said, and the woman laughed again. It made Søren’s lungs hurt to hear it. Otherwise he felt calm, maybe because the conversation was so obviously meant to make him feel scared. Suddenly he saw himself at his father’s house. He was finally telling his father that he was the one who’d burned down the cartoonist’s house. He pictured his father listening carefully, the look on his face making the journey from disbelief to disappointment to shame to relief as Søren told him the story of how he had not killed the cartoonist after all, that he’d only been manipulated into thinking so, and then manipulated by the American agent into going to America to kill the cartoonist for real, which he ended up not being able to do, and then, once he told these three American agents this, told them where in Skagen the other American agent was living, they would let him go. Søren would tell his father all this, and his father would say, “Don’t worry, Søren, everything is going to be just fine.” How had Søren not known he would say this? How had he not seen that everything really was going to be just fine?
“It would make me feel better, OK?” the man next to Søren said, and the woman sighed. And only then did the man turn to face Søren. He was holding the bag with his left hand. With his right hand he ruffled the back of his head, the way you do when you’re trying to get used to a new haircut. “I’m sorry,” the man said, and before he put the bag over Søren’s head, Søren thought he saw the man’s eyes watering a little, and that ended up being the last thing that Søren ever saw.
40
Wednesday, October 6, 2011, 11:48 p.m.
From: undisclosed sender
To: undisclosed recipient
Subject: re: Broomeville
The plan has changed. As yours did for me. Plans change. Is this the nature of plans?
41
The Lumber Lodge wasn’t even officially open. The front door was unlocked, but the beer lights were off. The chairs were still on the tables, the barstools still upside down on the bar. The floor was still sticky from the night before. Why, Ellen wondered, is the floor sticky even though I mopped it? And then she remembered that she hadn’t mopped it. She’d been too tired to mop it. But she’d not been too tired to put the chairs on the tables and the barstools on the bar. Even though she knew that she was not going to mop the floor, even though she had no intention of mopping the floor, she had still put the goddamn chairs and stools up. And why? Because she always put the goddamn chairs and stools up before she mopped the goddamn floor. And you really did have to mop the floor before you went home. Because if you didn’t, then the next day you would hate yourself, and your floors, and your bar, and your life. Ellen’s feet made a disgusting sound as she walked. It sounded like a mouse getting stuck in something over and over again. Saturday, she thought, smiling. Saturday, I am getting married on Saturday, and maybe after that I will sell this bar, and Henry and Kurt and I will . . . But she didn’t get to finish the thought. Because just then, Ronald Crimmins walked in. He must have just come straight from school, because he was wearing his janitor’s uniform and smelled faintly of chemical disinfectant. His bad hand was sort of snuggled into the mouth of his pants pocket while the other was bouncing against his thigh.
“We’re closed,” Ellen said.
“Then let me help you open,” Ronald said. He walked over to the nearest table and with his good hand took the three chairs off it and put them on the floor. Then he worked his way around the room, taking chairs off the tables, placing them around the tables. He did this quickly, but not carelessly the way Ellen herself sometimes did. Sometimes, Ellen just dumped the chairs wherever, which gave the impression that a tableful of people had gotten up in a hurry and probably also run out on their bill.
Now the chairs were around the tables. Ronald had taken the barstools down, too, and was sitting on one of them, legs extended. The toes of his brown work boots were so scuffed they were almost white, and the laces were double-looped and knotted and still they were too long
. Ronald was staring at Ellen, head cocked, as though to say, What else?
“I’m not hiring, Ronald,” Ellen said. Because she knew this was how Ronald had gotten his job at the school: he’d basically hung around the school on a volunteer basis, emptying trash cans and erasing graffiti and basically making himself useful until Matty had just gone ahead and hired him.
“Why’d you do that?” Ellen had asked him. This was a year and a half ago, a couple of months after Ellen had moved out, but before the divorce had officially gone through, and so Matty still had hopes of proving to her that she shouldn’t leave him after all and that he was a good guy.
“Because I’m a good guy,” Matty had said. That was part of it. But the other part of it was that Matty felt guilty about firing Ronald’s sister, who then killed herself. That was Matty all over. When he wasn’t being a good guy, he felt guilty for not being such a good guy.
“I’m not hiring, Ronald,” Ellen said. Which was true. But that’s not to say she couldn’t stand some help tonight. Other than the nights before and after Christmas and Thanksgiving, her busiest night at the Lumber Lodge was the night after the baseball game. The faculty and staff always seemed very thirsty then, possibly because Matty always bought them several rounds. He sometimes made a toast, too. The toast often included some kind of classical allusion—Virgil, Shakespeare, Patrick Henry, the fifth president of Cornell University—which always made everyone drink even more desperately, and it was sometimes hard for her to keep up. Plus, she was worried about Henry and Matty being in the same room together. They were in the same room together at school often enough. But tonight in the same room with them there would be alcohol and also her, the ex- and future wife. Besides, Ellen was getting married in just three days, and like so many people in that particular state of limbo, she couldn’t shake this sense of impending doom. If I can just get married, then I know everything will be just fine, was her feeling. This, of course, is a common feeling among people about to be married, even among people who have already been married.
