Malcolm gritted his teeth.
“What is poetry without style? Without beauty? It is merely a record of trite and useless experiences. A journal. A grocery list. A weather report.” He wasn’t quite shouting. “To excuse Bradstreet her style is to concede a terrific handicap, and that, Helene, is sexist!”
Helene’s nostrils flared, but she was beaten. Saying that Bradstreet lacked poetic style was, to Malcolm’s glee, as good as admitting that she wasn’t a legitimate poet. He managed to move them forward in the syllabus.
His other two classes weren’t nearly as stimulating, sophomore-level American lit surveys. Most of the students weren’t English majors and harbored a kind of sluggish resentment at being required to fulfill 12 hours of English credits.
On the first day of the term, Malcolm warned them to drop out of his section while there was still time to enroll in another. Anyone who didn’t complete the reading assignments was bound to fail, he told them flatly. And anyone who didn’t know the difference between an essay and a Facebook post would be used as an example for the rest of the class.
This speech usually dispensed with a good seven or eight students, bringing his numbers down into the upper teens. And this worked to everyone’s advantage because he kept his promise—gave reading quizzes daily, read samples of their writing aloud, in short, forced them to learn something. It was effective, if occasionally unpleasant.
Two weeks into the semester, two of his remaining 19 students in his 8 a.m. MWF section dropped the course.
“Man, you’re a dick.”
Malcolm looked to the back of the classroom to see a hulking frat boy-type scowling at him. The kid wore a Hog’s Breath Saloon T-shirt that was at least two sizes too small. The bangs of his bleach-blond hair curled in front of his eyes, held in place by the back strap of his baseball cap.
“Excuse me?” Malcolm asked in a voice that was patronizingly calm. He wondered if the kid had enough guts to repeat himself now that Malcolm met his eyes. If he did, Dr. Vashal wouldn’t kick him out.
This outburst followed the departure of one girl who’d become upset when Malcolm had read an excerpt of her response “paper” on Jonathan Edwards.
“’Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a wrong book,’” he’d read, halting over the girl’s pedestrian handwriting. “’No one should be treated the way this preacher treats them. This preacher should be fired and replaced with a new preacher because God is loving, like it says in Psalm 100.’ Come on, people,” he pleaded. “No one in his/her sophomore year of college writes this poorly. ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a wrong book?’ A wrong book?” He’d affected his most incredulous look and shook his head. “It’s not a book. It’s a sermon. Can a sermon be wrong? It’s in-an-i-mate. It can’t think or act. Your dispute—” he glanced a the name on the paper, “Ms. Derouen, is with Jonathan Edwards, who, please note, can’t be fired since he has been dead nearly 250 years.”
At this point, a girl in the second row bit her lip and sunk in her chair.
“Is this yours?” Malcolm asked, holding the paper over his head. The girl nodded, flushed from her neck to her temples.
“Well, it absolutely needs to be rewritten.”
He walked the paper over to her, and when she didn’t reach out to take it, he placed it on her desk.
“Summarize the sermon first, then state your thesis condemning Edwards for his harshness that you find to be counter-Christian,” he advised, standing over her, but she wouldn’t look up at him. “And use that psalm. That’s good support, but for God’s sake, you aren’t writing some absurd op-ed piece for your high school paper. Use a little effort and clarity. Go to the writing lab if need be.”
The girl continued to stare straight ahead until Malcolm moved back to the front of the class and resumed handing out the rest of the papers. But then she swept her books into her arms, crumpled the response paper in her fist, and headed for the door. She flung the paper into the wastebasket with enough force that it bounced out again as she crossed the threshold.
Malcolm pretended to ignore her dramatic exit and handed back the last two papers before Hogsbreath Saloon spoke up.
“I said you’re a dick.” The kid squinted his eyes, looking fearless. Malcolm placed his hands on his hips.
“Well, let me say, that is one of the most articulate, profound, and original observations I’ve ever heard in all of my 10 years in the classroom, Mr….?” Malcolm struggled to keep a straight face.
“Jenkins,” he said it like a dare.
“Jenkins?”
“Yeah. Mitch Jenkins. It shouldn’t be too hard to spell when you write me up.” The boy started to gather his books. Malcolm affected surprise.
“I wasn’t planning on writing you up. You’re entitled to your opinion. That’s your business. My business is getting you to deliver it with some semblance of sophistication.”
The kid rose.
“Dude, your job is to teach us, but all you know how to do is insult people.”
“You are incorrect,” Malcolm said, half glad that this punk was one less he had to whip into shape, half wishing he would stay. “Every student who has the will to improve in my class improves.” He cocked an eyebrow at his opponent. “Sometimes beyond even my expectations.”
Mitch Jenkins gave Malcolm a look of disgust and strode for the door.
“Do you have the will to improve, Mr. Jenkins?”
“Screw you, asshole.”
“Sheer eloquence,” Malcolm sang before forcing the class’s attention back to Jonathan Edwards.
Malcolm learned that the two students had officially withdrawn from his class the next afternoon—when Dorothy requested a meeting with him. He knocked on her open door sill after his Magic Realism class dismissed.
“You wanted to see me?”
Dorothy sat at her desk with her glasses at the end of her nose, reading what looked like an examination blue book. A straight plume of smoke from her cigarette rose up to Malcolm’s eye level before kinking sideways and joining a cloud at the ceiling.
“Why don’t you shut the door, Malcolm.” Dorothy said before taking her eyes from the booklet.
Malcolm gritted his teeth, blew a breath out of his nose, and shut the door.
“Sit down.” She gestured to the brown vinyl swivel across from her desk.
“Yes, Dorothy?” Malcolm droned, aware of the defensive tone in just those two words.
Dorothy took off her reading glasses and held them in her hands, eyeing him.
She’s such a power-happy old bag.
“I’ve received two calls—complaints—about you in the last 24 hours.” She leveled her eyes at him. “Do you want to tell me what that’s about?”
No.
Malcolm heaved a sigh as though already exhausted with the whole matter.
“I assume you are referring to the two sophomores who threw individual temper tantrums before storming out of class yesterday?” He folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head to the right. Dorothy frowned.
“What do you mean? Temper tantrums?”
“Well, the Derouen girl—”
“Angelica,” Dorothy inserted.
“Whatever. I guess she didn’t want to rewrite her paper, so she threw the damn thing into the trash and left in a histrionic huff.
“She said that you humiliated her.”
Malcolm shook his head.
“No, she did that herself. I merely read a passage from her response paper that needed serious revision.”
Dorothy glanced down at a pink phone message pad.
“She said that you said ‘nobody writes this bad in their sophomore year of college.’”
“’Poorly.’ I said ‘poorly,’” Malcolm stressed, using his thumbs and forefingers as asterisks. “And I said ‘his or her sophomore year,’ not ‘their sophomore year.’”
Dorothy narrowed her eyes at him but bit her top lip as though trying to wring out a smile.
“So, minus the grammatical errors, that’s what you said?”
Malcolm sat back in his chair.
“Yes,….yes, but that was before she was identified as the author of the paper,” he explained.
“And who identified her?”
Malcolm tried to recall.
“I did, mostly,…but I told her how to fix the thing, and I encouraged her to get some help at the writing lab. It wasn’t a totally hopeless case,” he defended.
Dorothy picked up her cigarette, tapped the ash, and took a long drag.
“What about Mitch Jenkins?”
Malcolm rolled his eyes.
“It had nothing to do with him. Maybe he likes the girl; I don’t know, but he really should have stayed in the class. He has potential.”
Dorothy sucked her cigarette again, letting the smoke out slowly, looking down at her desk before she spoke.
“Malcolm, I know that your teaching style is somewhat…aggressive—”
“Well, I have standards,” he interrupted, evenly.
She glared at him.
“We all have standards, Dr. Vashal.” She was going for authoritative, but Malcolm thought that now she sounded defensive. He suppressed a smirk. “As I was saying, your teaching style is aggressive, sometimes too aggressive for our student population.”
“It has to be to compensate for what they walk in here lacking.” He felt anger outweigh his disgust and was glad. “When was the last time you taught a 100 or 200 level course, Dorothy? It’s scary what they don’t know and don’t care to learn. If we let them coast, this school will be graduating students who are just this side of literate.”
She began shaking her head.
“Malcolm, I’m not talking about letting them coast—and it has not been that long since I taught freshman and sophomore courses.” Her eyes flashed when she said this, again on the defensive. “But it is your approach that concerns me.”
“So what do you want? Should I give out candy and gold stars to those who can actually write an essay and put little frowny faces on the papers that can’t even pass for bathroom graffiti?”
Dorothy pursed her lips and worked her jaw. Her eyes locked on his for what seemed like minutes. When she spoke, her voice was low.
“I would feel much more encouraged, Dr. Vashal, if you showed more emotional self-control.”
Bitch.
Malcolm stared back at her, fighting the urge to lash back. To tell her what a joke her English department was. To tell her that she should be ashamed of herself for cajoling students who wanted to be cheated out of an education. To tell her that what the school really needed was more “aggressiveness” like his in the faculty and administration—especially the latter. But he just held her gaze, waited for her to finish.
“Are you unhappy here, Dr. Vashal?”
“What?!” Malcolm felt like she’d kicked his legs from under him. It was so unexpected, such a transgression. His heart began to drum in his chest, and he feared he had blanched in front of her. And the fact that such a woman, such a small and withered, tobacco-stained little toad could touch his panic set him ablaze. His hands shook as he spoke.
“I want to elevate my students, Dr. Sheridan.” He enunciated every syllable evenly though rage threatened to choke him. “And if I seem exasperated or unhappy when I am prevented from reaching that end, no one should be surprised. We should all feel so.”
Dorothy dropped her shoulders, looking resigned.
“Malcolm, I want you to protect your students’ identities if you critique in front of the class.”
“Fine.” He bit off the word.
“I hope we won’t have to revisit this subject,” she said, leaning back in her chair, effectively dismissing him. Malcolm hated the condescending words. He rose without giving her the courtesy of a reply and put a hand on the doorknob when she sandbagged him again.
“Oh, Malcolm, before you go,” her tone had grown suddenly congenial. “I was wondering if you’d be working on any translations this year.”
He quailed and gripped the knob for support. This time the anger wasn’t there to save him. He knew the color had drained from his face.
“I’m…,” he coughed and cleared his throat. “I’m looking into some subsidiary rights for a piece. I should know something soon.”
Dorothy put on a leathery smile.
“Good. Let me know how it’s going.”
Malcolm could only nod. He left her office and the department annex without running, but with as much speed as he could inconspicuously manage. He headed for the corridor on the east side of the building, and slammed his office door behind him.
He was out of breath, panting, and Malcolm braced his arms against the desk and tried to bring his respiration back to normal.
He hadn’t lied, exactly. He did have to secure subsidiary rights before he took the risk of investing his time into a translation. And it was true that he had found one over the summer that held interest for him, a haunting collection of poems written by a nun in Antigua. But he’d done nothing yet, nothing really. He’d sketched out a rough translation of one of the shorter poems, but it was unpolished, just a draft. He couldn’t yet call his agent to get the wheels moving. As the sweat on Malcolm’s forehead began to cool in the blast from the A/C vent, he understood that he must do it. He would have to go back to the little book and find two or three poems. Dorothy wasn’t casually inquiring. She was warning him that the university had been very patient. And maybe she was saying that he could be well liked and unproductive, or despised and successful, but not both detested and stagnant.
But that was what he was. Malcolm felt himself about to wretch. He reached for his garbage can and dry heaved once before clamping his jaw shut and breathing deeply through his nose.
It was Thursday afternoon, and the Labor Day weekend lay before him. Surely, he could translate two or three poems then? Yes. Malcolm told himself. Yes, it will be easy.
That was a lie. Translating a poem was about as easy as tearing down a house and using the debris to rebuild it to look new. If he couldn’t do it…? If he couldn’t do even one…?
Somewhere, a voice within him begged him to take the 6mm to his safety deposit box at Iberia Bank. If he did that today, right now, it would be there for four whole days, and he wouldn’t even be able to get his hands on it until Tuesday. And by Tuesday, come what may, the crisis would have passed. The long weekend would be over, and if he failed, he would have more time to think of something else.
But by the time he left campus, it was nearing 5 o’clock, and the drive-through tellers would be the only service available at the bank.
Malcolm got home and went for the liquor cabinet before moving any deeper into his two-bedroom house. He told himself that mixing a cocktail that actually required more than one ingredient wasn’t the same as belting down some booze for courage—that ice, a shaker, and an ounce measurer indicated class, a work of art, not an act of desperation.
He pulled the Scotch and Cointreau down from the cabinet and grabbed the plastic lime and bottle of club soda from the fridge. He loaded his shaker with ice, an ounce and a half of Scotch, and equal parts of Cointreau and juice.
The shaker went frosty in his hands, and the ritual of it, the order of it made him feel more collected, more capable. He strained the mix over an old-fashioned glass filled with ice and topped it off with the soda. He used a bar spoon to give it a stir and enjoyed the satisfaction of the act before bringing it to his lips. A High Voltage. He smiled as the drink went down, the lime juice and Cointreau citric sweetness reassuring him, the soda fizz proving that he needn’t feel afraid. He swirled the ice in his glass as he went through the house turning on the lights. Ricardo met him in the living room and snaked between his legs, tail high and eager for dinner.
“In a minute, Ricardo.” Feeding the cat. Finishing the drink. Two things that would happen after he put the gun in his car. Drink half. Take down the gun. Unload it. Put the gun in the car. Come back in
side. Find the poetry book. Put it on the desk. Feed the cat. Finish the drink.
This was something he could do. He took two more swallows of his cocktail, raised it up to the light in the living room and saw that it was, indeed, half-empty. Malcolm set it down on the coffee table and walked to the hall. He noticed that his hands shook when he reached for the doorknob and wondered if he should have taken the drink with him. He opened the door to the smell of cedar and fabric softener. The handle of the AMT 6mm and the box of rounds were just visible on the top shelf. Malcolm pulled the string and the bare bulb sprang on, showing the pale green box of Sierra bullets with the “Precision Tradition” logo on each side. He looked at the handle of the gun.
Malcolm was right handed, so he made himself reach for the gun with his left hand. It felt awkward, heavy. He set it down on the linen shelf, atop the flannel sheets he almost never used. He grabbed the box of shells and put them next to the gun.
Malcolm told himself to hurry, just to empty the damn thing and get outside, but he knew that then he’d have to find the book.
And if he couldn’t write them? And what made him think that he could? What made him think that he could have the insight to translate the poetry of a Jesuit nun who had given her life to God. Given her life to sweat in an airless schoolhouse in Guatemala so orphaned children had something better than prostitution and abject poverty for their futures? What made him think he could capture her piety, her terrible sense of gratitude, the breath of the poetry that had reached in and stilled his own breath upon his first reading? How could he communicate all of that in English for clueless Americans? He would surely fail.
His air conditioner cycled off then, and the house fell as silent as the inside of a tissue box.
Fall Semester Page 3
