Rotters

by Daniel Kraus

  When I returned the sun was setting. The refrigerator buzzed and my stomach cramped in reply. I got up, gripped the rusty handle, and opened it. Yellow, stained walls greeted me—there was next to nothing inside. A wad of questionable meat, a row of condiment containers crusted shut. In the lower compartment, called the crisper by my mother, whips of onion skin were trapped in a black gel.

  I closed the door, turned my back to it, and slid down until my butt hit the floor. There was nothing to eat and I had no money. These were the facts, and I was prepared to shame my father with them when he finally returned. In the meantime, though, I would scour the house. There were things I could learn here; better to learn them while still alone.

  There was plenty evidence of hard work—an upside-down boot healing beside a curled tube of superglue, a pair of work gloves with fresh patches meticulously sewn over worn fingers, a pyre of misshapen shovels and hoes—but nowhere did I see proof of my father’s occupation. If he picked up trash, where was his garbage truck? His uniform? Pay stubs from his monthly check? Yet the more I kicked through the crap that blanketed the floor and angled up the walls, the more comfortable I became with the moniker. He was the Garbageman because of the garbage of his life strewn out all around him: piteous scraps of food, mud-matted carpets, expired medicine, spare change in a mason jar, a brush so old it still clutched nongray hair in volume.

  I opened drawers and cabinets—a few plates, a plastic bowl full of coffee grains, a scattering of utensils as random as twigs on a forest floor. Beneath the sink, to my surprise, I found an abundance of industrial-strength cleaning products. The abrasive perfumes of pine and bleach unsettled my empty stomach, but at least briefly overtook the gamey odor. Given the cabin’s state, I considered placing a cleaning product atop each newspaper tower in the room—who knew, maybe he would take the hint. Instead I threw open the front door and all the windows. Through the final window I discovered a small garden between the cabin and the river. Unlike the house, it was tidy, even meticulous.

  Near the floor by the fireplace I found a phone outlet, but nowhere was there an actual phone. Technophobe: the word fit my father perfectly. No phone, no computer, no television, not even a radio. I dreaded oppressive nights spent here in this tiny space with nothing to fill the silence.

  Already on my knees, I began scanning the titles of the books bottommost to the ten or twelve stacks. Most of these were quite old, and my eyes resisted their small print and faded colorings. I hopped into a squat to better read some of the spines. There were two disintegrating books rubber-banded together: Antropologium and Mikrokosmographia. I took them between my fingers, but as I did so, the floor-to-ceiling pile bulged sinuously. I left them alone. Above them, Historical Sketch of the Edinburgh Anatomical School and Great Medical Disasters. There was a pattern here, but it could be explained away: this was an unrepresentative sample, a grouping of books perhaps collected from the discards of a hospital library. I shifted to another pile several feet away. The Confessions of an Undertaker. An audiotape titled Highlights About Wood Caskets. A thick yellow brick of magazines called Casket and Sunnyside; a smaller stack of a publication titled American Funeral Director. And creating stability concerns near the ceiling, the massive Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media. At least this title had some tie to the newspapers surrounding me.

  This was the personal library of Ken Harnett. I backed away, trying to revive the memory of the colorful and reassuring books Janelle and Thaddeus let spill into the rooms of Boris and his sisters. Instead I could only see my father’s dark and troubled face. Sanitary worker or not, this might be a man I shouldn’t meddle with; I thought again of my mother’s disfigured ear. But instead of stopping, I dove into his bedroom, tearing at his sheets, lifting coats from the floor to see what was secreted beneath.

  I found myself facing the narrowest of closets tucked behind the bedroom door. Inside, a few clean white dress shirts, a black suit, even; some ties draped over a nail. Interesting, these items—but I forgot them when I saw the safe. It was large and metal and secured with a combination lock. I kneeled in front of it and gave the handle a pull just in case. Nothing. I tried 10-20-30. I tried the combination of my old gym locker, 32-0-25. Nothing. I gave the safe a push to gauge its weight. It did not budge.

  Behind the safe, wedged between it and the wall, was yet another surprise. I nudged my head through the hanging shirttails and pants legs. It was a cardboard box filled with alcohol. Carefully I lifted a few random bottles. It was the cheap, hard stuff, and plenty of it. Most unsettling of all was that it was well hidden, and the only one Ken Harnett had to hide it from was himself.

  It wouldn’t do me any good to knock back any gin, no matter how raw my hunger. I dragged my feet back to my dusty corner and, feeling too much like a dog, curled myself up on the duffel bags that were my bed. What a strange and mixed-up misery I felt. Come home, I urged him. My very next thought: Stay away.

  10.

  AFRAID OF AGAIN SHOWING up to school drenched from a thirty-minute run, I kept myself alert after waking up at four-thirty. I even tried to make coffee, but the outcome was tepid and bitter, and the caffeine only upped the intensity of my hunger. I waited for him as long as I could, praying that any minute now, he would return, any minute now.

  I reached school early and successfully opened my locker, though still I had nothing to put inside. My green backpack I had protectively left at home, and my books, if they existed, still hid within my father’s fearful collection. I didn’t want to sift through those titles ever again.

  Just outside the door to Pratt’s English class, Laverne stopped me in the hall. “Good morning, Joey! You find those books all right?”

  Students herded past me on their way to class. Several of them shot me doubtful looks. Instantly I saw the scene through their eyes: some short, skinny new kid making friends with the overbearing fat lady who yelled at them for running past the principal’s office. I needed every friend I could get, including Laverne, I knew this, yet I felt the lie coming all the way up my throat. “Yep, got ’em,” I said.

  “Atta boy,” she said, nodding herself into a half-dozen new chins. “You read through that salmon packet?”

  “What?” I only vaguely remembered the BLOUGHTON SCREAMING EAGLES folder I held in my hand. More students, class about to start, another lie I couldn’t stop: “Oh, sure, I read it.”

  “Well, don’t forget, during study hall today you can come down to the office and get all settled for band.” Horrifically, she winked. “I remember you said you had a special liking for band.”

  I saw a girl turn to her friend and mouth in disbelief the words special liking. I nodded quickly in Laverne’s general direction and made telling head-fakes toward Mr. Pratt’s class. She seemed to understand and waved cheerfully, oblivious that half of the class waved at me in perfect mockery as I entered. Still, Laverne’s information had been useful. Anything to get out of study hall, where idle, bored kids were bound to start saying, or throwing, anything.

  I sailed through Pratt’s class with no trouble; cautiously, I let myself nurture optimism. Calculus went just as well; Coach Winter, apparently a feared figure on the practice field, kept order with drill-sergeant authority. It was biology that I most feared, and that was where problems began anew.

  Gottschalk demanded that notes be taken, and it was still early enough in the semester that students paid attention. The lights were dimmed to facilitate viewing transparencies on an old-fashioned overhead projector. I was glad for the darkness: no one could see me and I could resist looking at any faces, Celeste Carpenter’s in particular. Between statements by Gottschalk, the only sound was the scratching of pencils. It was during such a moment that my stomach, empty for nearly forty-eight hours, constricted and squirted out a noise of at least six seconds in duration.

  I clutched my gut and waited for the laughs. They came. “Lunch is one period away,” Gottschalk sang from the front of the room. The titters died down.
I clutched my gut and made frantic pleas to God, even though they were what my mother would’ve called wasted prayers. About one minute later, another sound, this one like a blast of flatulence. More laughter. Again, Gottschalk reined in the class; again, a few minutes later, more elongated and high-pitched squelching. If I were someone more confident and with a cooler head, I could have laughed these off, even turned them to my advantage—I’d seen guys successfully woo girls by magisterially claiming their own farts. For me, it was too late; the absurdity was reaching outrageous levels. In a twisted bit of mercy, I could not fully concentrate on my own mortification, as I was gripped by hunger pains the likes of which I’d never felt. I had to eat.

  I rode out the rest of the class by taking notes so fanatically they ran off the page and onto the desk. All I could think of was food: the distasteful spread of yesterday’s lunch was now my most fervent desire, if only I had the money to buy it. When the lunch bell rang, it was all I could do not to sprint for the door. I pretended to tie my shoes so I could be the last one out.

  I staggered the wrong way down the hallway, applying one hand of pressure against my stomach. Smells drifted at me from everywhere: vanilla shampoo, cherry lip balm, Cheetos breath, an underarm deodorant reminiscent of lime. My mouth swam with saliva. I heard shouts fade toward the lunchroom, footsteps, too, and then echoing around my skull was the last in a series of lockers slammed shut.

  Laverne’s advice about unreliable lockers came back to me verbatim. I let my steps drift to the right until I found myself at an arbitrary locker. I looked both ways. My blood felt thin.

  I pulled at the handle. To my surprise, Laverne was right—the lock did not hold. Only the lower corner of the door remained jammed in place. Inside the locker I could see a hooded sweatshirt, a backpack—and a purse. Just one meal and then the money would be returned, I swore it, and I’d slide the repayment, with interest, through the vent. I shook the door and it thundered like a sheet of aluminum. Too loud, though no more so than my stomach. I kicked at the corner and it crashed like a cymbal. I kicked it again.

  The door banged open against the adjacent locker. Wincing, my stomach acids boiling, I grabbed the purse and unzipped it and looked inside. I was not aware of the block of sunlight on the hallway floor to my right until it was pierced by someone’s shadow.

  It was Gottschalk, motionless, observing me through his thick and rippled features. I looked at the purse in my hand. It was dainty, sequined, and pink. There was no way I could turn this into something it wasn’t. Slowly I put the purse back into the locker and shut the door. I turned my eyes to the biology teacher, but all I could see was my mother’s shamed expression. My hands were shaking; it might have been food deprivation, or it might not.

  “The ruling class at this school is not effective at applying discipline,” Gottschalk said finally. “They’re not effective at prevention, they’re not effective at detection, they’re not effective at sniffing out losers—in short, they’re not effective. This is why I do not involve them unless absolutely necessary.”

  I found myself nodding thoughtfully. It was a pitiful attempt to win him over. I felt like a child.

  “Mr. Crouch, I appreciate the difficulties of acclimation. We were all new somewhere at some time. But this, to be blunt, is quite over any line we could draw. Not that I’m surprised. I foresaw problems with you right away. It’s not all your fault, of course. As you’ll learn in class, genetics has a big part to play in each of us. Nevertheless, the onus is always upon the individual to overcome and transcend those genetics. Biology, Mr. Crouch, it all comes back to biology.”

  I was still nodding. My neck muscles, made of water and coffee, wobbled.

  “So here is what happens now. You walk away from here knowing that the next time you do this, it’s not suspension, it’s expulsion. You also walk away knowing you have an enemy and you’re looking at him. Oh, surprised? That an instructor can say such things? I am not of the new guard, Mr. Crouch. What you get from me, in the class or out, you earn by acting like a man. I suggest you brush up on your biology. Because every day from here on out it is going to be you versus me. Am I making myself clear? Any time I want an answer, it’s you I’m going to call on first. Any time I feel like assigning additional work, guess what? You’re the first one invited. Until I feel you have earned this back, this shameful act, you don’t have a stone to stand on, a pot to poop in.” The thick curds of his features straightened. “That’s the whole kit and caboodle, Crouch. Get to lunch.”

  11.

  THE METTLE IT TOOK to coerce my legs into action and lead me away from study hall was equal to any accomplishment up to that point in my life. I slanted my way to the office. Laverne was not there. It was just as well. I mumbled something about signing up for band. They told me that Mr. Granger, the band instructor, had a free period right now and that I could go see him right away. They indicated the direction and I slid across the wall until I was there.

  Mr. Granger was a tall, thin man with round glasses and an abbreviated mustache. When I appeared in his doorway he blinked at me as if I had blood gushing out of my mouth. “I’m Joey Crouch,” I rasped. “I’m here for band.”

  He beckoned me with a hummingbird gesture that reminded me of my mom at her most impatient. I collapsed into a chair alongside his desk. My eyes locked onto a dish of peppermint candies nearly lost amid the desktop clutter.

  “Candy?” It was all I could say.

  “What, you want a piece?” he asked, but before the question was out of his mouth I had three in my hand and was furiously shredding the wrappers. I sucked and crunched, closing my eyes, the sugar stinging my tongue. Mr. Granger crossed his arms and watched me.

  “What do you play?” he asked after a while.

  “Trumpet,” I mumbled from behind the peppermints.

  “You have it with you?”

  I shook my head, grinding the candies to pink salt.

  “My name is Ted Granger,” he said. The introduction seemed misplaced. I nodded anyway, thinking it might buy me a few more candies. “All my troops just call me Ted.”

  “Joey.”

  “Joey, you’re a transfer,” he said. “You don’t have the Bloughton drawl. Nor do I, as you might have noticed. Even though I’ve been here fifteen years this semester. Ted’s Army never dies—the troops might change, but the war never ends. What brings you to Bloughton? What do your folks do?”

  They were questions best avoided. I busied myself with using a pinkie to dislodge peppermint from a molar. He slapped his hands against the gray slacks pleated across slender thighs. “I’ve got a loaner horn. Come on, let’s see what you can do.”

  Belly buzzing with syrup, I moved to an empty chair before a lowered music stand. Ted put a trumpet in my hands and sat slightly behind me.

  “Play me a C scale,” he said. I raised the instrument. The mouthpiece looked like home and I brought it to my mouth. I blew, feeling the tightness of my lips lock into the C. Once I heard the note, I held it—within was the sight of Boris emptying his spit valve in the next chair over, the smell of my old bedroom where I’d practiced, the sound of my mother in the next room humming an echo to my every note. This was her instrument. Even dead, she could still save me. The note kept on, strong, for fifteen or twenty seconds. Finally it lost consistency and fractured. I opened my eyes and sat there panting.

  “Well, we’ve established that you can play the hell out of C,” Ted said.

  I gave him the scale he wanted, ascending C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, and racing back down. I burned through another few scales and then dodged around as Ted looked me over. “I hope you don’t have braces,” he said. “You’re smashing your lips to the metal like you’re trying to french it.” He set a piece of paper before me, barred and dotted. I played through it the best I could, my fingertips sensing the instrument’s need for valve oil, the minute dents that pocked its shell. “Posture,” said Ted. “Your diaphragm has a purpose, you know.” Vibration anesthetized my
lips, but even the bad notes sounded good; I played faster. “Medium pressure, medium pressure,” Ted said. “What’s with the chipmunk cheeks? Keep those things flat.” As fast as I wanted to play, as hard as I wanted to keep up the illusion, the song was fragmenting and my fingers were turning to butter. The dots on the page ran from me like bugs. “Firm your corners, Joey. Did I just see you breathe through your nose?”

  I shook my head and started over at the first line: C, C, G, B-flat, C. My fingers—thief’s fingers, now—missed some of them entirely. I circled back: C, C, G, B-flat, C—I could hold on to nothing. The cracks in the illusion were huge now: this man next to me was a stranger, my mother was dead, Boris was gone, Chicago had been wiped off the map. C, C, G, B-flat, C—

  And this time I hit all of them. A moment later I realized that Ted’s fingers were delicately moving atop my own, guiding them up and down with nearly imperceptible pressure. “I don’t know what you’re used to, but Ted’s Army is very small,” he said. His fingers continued imploring. “But we can use you. You missed camp, of course, but I bet you catch on quick. Individual practice is once or twice a week, depending. We meet as a group on Fridays, then for three hours every other day after school. Next week we have our first football game, though if you need to sit that one out, so be it.” At some point his thin fingers had retracted just enough so that only the weight of their shadows transferred their magic. I sounded good.

  I stopped and looked at him, lips stunned, throat raw, and lungs aching. Hope, the most painful feeling of all, flickered somewhere even deeper.

  12.

  DURING THE BREAK BEFORE my final class I nearly ran into Woody and some of his gang. I veered quickly, hoping he didn’t see me. Too late. “Crotch!” one of them hollered.