Class Dismissed

by Kevin McIntosh

  The car inched closer to the entrance. To the left of the WCHS sign was his dad’s old office. To the left of the office––boot prints? No. He squinted through the drizzle. Gunther’s oily boot prints, leading to the roof? The walls, the roof––Gunther’s spirit lurked everywhere. Patrick checked his watch: 2:15. Time to visit St. Norbert’s and pay his respects to Willard County High’s least illustrious alumnus. To his earthly remains.

  St. Norbert’s Evangelical was the most conservative Lutheran church in Peterson’s Prairie. Susan could never grasp how religion played out in his hometown, though he tried, repeatedly, to explain. In Darien, you were Protestant, Catholic, Jewish. If you were Protestant, you were Episcopalian or Congregational. Maybe Presbyterian. How a town of 1,162 souls managed three Lutheran churches representing three distinct branches of Lutheranism escaped her. But just as no one was ever merely blond in Peterson’s Prairie, unmodified by strawberry, wheat, corn silk––some agricultural product––no one was ever just a follower of the mad monk of Wittenberg.

  Growing up, Patrick wasn’t sure he really understood Gunther’s church, or wanted to. Gunther took him there one Sunday, “for laughs,” he’d said, but Patrick could find nothing funny, not even stupid-funny, in the Hendrickson’s religion. There wasn’t much to amuse in the faith of Patrick’s family either, just a bunch of rules, mostly about sex, which you could pretty much take or leave and still call yourself Catholic. And since sex was largely theoretical for Patrick until well into his freshman year in college, he accompanied his parents to St. Immaculata’s without qualm or interest until his father’s sudden death, after which his mother completely lost the will to make him go.

  His mother looked uncharacteristically peeved hunched under the large black umbrella his sister held as Patrick passed in front of St. Norbert’s, spotting for a parking space near the entrance. Identical beige raincoats aside, they looked less alike than they used to. Erin, at thirty-three, a mother of twins, was sturdy, no longer petite; you could envision her commanding the ER at Hennepin County. But their mother, nearly sixty, was still trim, elfin. Both Lynch women wore their hair bobbed and blonde, their mother’s dyed to the grain-color she’d had all her life. The two broke into quick smiles, tempered by the occasion, as people stopped to shake hands, and, once or twice, exchange hugs. Lutherans of this order, generally German or Norwegian, weren’t a huggy bunch.

  Patrick found a space and hustled under their umbrella. Erin threw her free arm up around her tall younger brother’s neck and gave a big squeeze. His mother’s hug was firm, she kissed his cheek. “You’ve saved us,” she chirped.

  “From the rain?”

  “From the gawkers,” said Erin. “What’s become of the Widow Lynch?”

  “Today’s not about us,” his mother said.

  “No, indeed.” Patrick took the umbrella, holding it over them all.

  “Poor Gunther,” said Erin. “Poor Hendricksons.”

  “Sad,” said his mother, “a waste.” This was as much judgment as he’d heard from her on the subject. She’d been the one to inform him of the accident, which she did in her calm, matter-of-fact way. Just one car, she’d said on the phone. Gunther’s pickup—relatively new, candy apple red—had piled into a pylon after missing the exit for Winnipee Falls, where he worked as a mechanic at the Mobil station. With unusual delicacy she posited no explanation for the accident, made no mention of alcohol or drugs. She only said she knew Gunther had been important to him though they’d “drifted apart.” If he wanted to attend the funeral, she would like to send him a check for the airfare.

  “I appreciate your coming, both of you,” Patrick said, as he nodded back to the Lutherans filing into the church. “I know it’s not easy. Being here.” He turned them toward the church doors. Someone inside held a door open for them and Erin ducked in first. His mother put a hand to his forearm. They let an elderly couple pass and the door closed in front of them. She tugged him under the eaves to the right of the doors.

  “Patrick,” she said in her soft, clipped way, “I don’t know what they’ll say about him in there,” she plucked a piece of lint off Susan’s father’s lapel, “but I liked Gunther.”

  “Oh, Mother.” He looked off, over her shoulder. A brown Ford pickup, minus muffler, grumbled through the rain on Main. He met her gaze. “I know.”

  “He was a troubled boy.” She was speaking to herself, barely audible above the dripping gutters. “The deck was stacked against Gunther. I felt sorry for him.” The doors to St. Norbert’s opened a crack. Erin. “But I wasn’t going to sacrifice my son to that family. Saving him wasn’t my job.” She put a hand on his tie. “You were.”

  “And I was a big job.”

  She surrendered a smile.

  Patrick gave his mother’s hand a squeeze and they met Erin inside, where he was surprised to find St. Norbert’s three-quarters full. When had Gunther accumulated so many friends? Once upon a time, Patrick had been his one and only pal. He shook the withered hand of an usher who gave him a bulletin and found them three seats on the aisle, four pews from the back. Patrick scanned the sanctuary, hoping––fearing––that he’d see familiar faces. The crowd skewed well over sixty years old; the turnout on this rainy Friday afternoon was, of course, St. Norbert’s supporting the Hendricksons, longtime members. Still, Patrick picked out backs of heads and quarter-profiles and tried to imagine classmates, former teachers, with fourteen years of life in Peterson’s Prairie added.

  But the only person Patrick knew for sure was the guest of honor, up front by the altar in that big silver box. Beside the box, a young, rather severe, rather Aryan man in black suit and clerical collar stood importantly. Where was old Reverend Norstrand? Had he retired, died?

  The young man in black waxed lugubrious about God’s plan for each and every one of us, how we mere mortals were in no position to understand, let alone question it. His words penetrated Patrick’s ears, but his mind was tuned to another frequency, at first indistinct but then clear as a school bell.

  Alas, poor Hendrick, Gunther declaimed.

  Poor Richard Burton, more like, he jabbed back.

  Richard Burton, my ass. And who’s the Hitler Youth in the black suit and white collar?

  Who’s he? Your minister, numbnuts.

  Reverend Numbnuts? Never ’eard a ’im. Norstrand’s my man.

  And Patrick could see Gunther as he launched into his impression of Reverend Norstrand, his st-st-st-stammer, his palsied gestures at the pulpit, the excess of saliva as he reached the climax of his sermon. A parody that owed more to Jerry Lewis’s Nutty Professor than any school of preaching and was the reason, come to think of it, that Gunther and he were invited to leave St. Norbert’s the last time they were in this sanctuary together.

  Erin and his mother shifted next to him in the pew. Though it was a bit cool in the church his mother fanned herself with her bulletin, a rare sign of displeasure in a woman unfailingly gracious, decipherable only by kin. It was clear the young minister had not known Gunther––how he’d lived, why he’d died––but it was clear, too, by the curl of his pink lips, the knit of those invisible brows, that he was more than satisfied with his take on Gunther’s place in the hereafter. Erin pulled her dark hem primly over her knees. She turned to her brother and rolled her eyes. This was the girl he’d had chalk dust fights with Saturday mornings at Prairie Elementary, now Francis J. Lynch Elementary. He only partly restrained a grin.

  Suddenly they were standing, these Evangelical Lutherans. The organist pounded the opening chords to “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” decidedly not a hymn on St. Immaculata’s playlist, but plenty familiar to Patrick. Everyone in Peterson’s Prairie knew the opposing team’s fight song. Erin checked the bulletin and thumbed to number thirty-seven in the hymnal. She’d sing along, as would their mother; both had sung in the high school chorus and possessed small, pretty sopranos. Patrick had inherited h
is father’s large, croaky baritone. Effective in a classroom, but. He’d hum along.

  And then the Lutherans began to sing. Nothing like this had been heard in the history of St. Immaculata’s, perhaps not of the entire Holy Roman Apostolic Church. The somber, aged assembly broke into the lushest four-part harmony. On-pitch, God-fearing four-part harmony. He’d forgotten how good the music was here. Along with unyielding orthodoxy, it was their hallmark. Even Gunther could sing, sometimes breaking into quite a musical falsetto with the British schoolboys on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Not a feel-good group, his father once said of St. Norbert’s, but Lord, he conceded, those people can carry a tune. And not too surprising, Dr. Lynch instructed, from the folks who gave us Bach. A point their hymnal was proud to reinforce, stating that “A Mighty Fortress,” musical cornerstone of the Reformation, was composed by the denomination’s founder himself. And, Gunther would add, you had to admire a lyricist who could wedge “bulwark” into a song about divine love.

  Gunther called it bullshit, this faith of his father’s, but as Patrick looked around he saw tears streaming on the furrowed cheeks of these stalwart believers, trickling onto their hymnals. There was a purity, a truth in their singing. A devotion that cut to the core of whatever was good in their religion and, yes, right through the young minister’s bullshit. Patrick turned and saw tears coming down the cheeks of his mother and sister and noticed, for once without shame, that his own were wet too.

  The congregation finished Martin Luther’s greatest hit with a swelling “amen” and wiped its tears. The young man in black stood and broke the mood of divine inspiration with some stern exegesis of the Book of Leviticus. The message, as far as Patrick could glean, was that Gunther, poor sinner that he was, may have lived and certainly died in a fashion that paid no homage to God’s great gift, but he never––as far as anyone knew––knocked up any man’s daughter nor had congress with any man’s son, and had died, therefore, in the eyes of God, golden. You’d think Gunther would be relieved to hear the good news. But no.

  How long, he moaned in Patrick’s ear, must I listen to this a-hole natter on?

  As long as he wants, Gunther. It’s your funeral.

  No, matey. It ain’t none o’ my funeral.

  Oh, but it is, Gunnie. Patrick stared at the big silver box. It is.

  The hot-dish table in the basement of St. Norbert’s was the most pungent reminder. The aroma of cheese, egg noodles, tuna fish, and Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup was the comfort food smell of his childhood, the staple of many a church potluck. And this odor, even more than the proceedings upstairs, took him back to his last church potluck, at St. Immaculata’s, where Superintendent Lynch had been the guest of honor.

  Certainly none who recognized him, and there were more than Patrick had imagined, would let him forget. His mother and sister, cornered by too many admirers, or, as Erin insinuated, the morbidly curious, had apologized and fled. They’d see him later at Erin’s for dinner. Patrick was about to do likewise when Coach Carlson, his gym class nemesis and his dad’s oldest friend, hunted him down as he hid behind a battered upright piano just beyond the Jell-O molds.

  “Patrick,” Coach called out in his throaty voice. Near retirement age, Patrick estimated, and still solid except for the basketball-sized gut covered by a plaid sport coat and wide blue tie. His face was the same only more so, textured and brown like much-used pigskin. After forty years, Coach had become the sports he taught. He looked Patrick over with a professional’s eye, clearly pleased––amazed––at his lanky-but-toned six-foot physique. And perhaps there was some professional pride there, too, that all those push-ups and squat thrusts in PE had not been in vain. Maybe the way Patrick felt when he ran into a former student on the subway who’d seemed headed for trouble in ninth grade, but was now, textbooks in hand, headed for Fordham.

  “You look good, Patrick,” he said, seizing his right hand in a clasp that hurt and clapping his shoulder, testing his resistance. “Looks like you been hittin’ the gym, son. Am I right?”

  “Yeah, little bit,” he shrugged.

  “Pumpin’ some iron, right?” Coach grinned, smacking him again.

  Patrick shrugged again and looked down at his newly polished Florsheims. How could this old man, a man he hadn’t seen since high school, make him feel like a skinny fourteen-year-old lost in his oversized gym shorts? And best not to tell him that his main workout was playing Ultimate Frisbee on Saturday afternoons, a recreation Coach would not recognize as a workout, never mind a sport. Tossing a plastic platter around a grassy park. What’s next, he’d growl, Ultimate Slinky?

  Coach continued scrutinizing him, the way adults do children: My how you’ve grown. Patrick tightened the knot of his necktie, pulled his shirt cuffs from the cuffs of Susan’s father’s tweed jacket. “And you’re a teacher now,” Coach stated. “In New. York. City.”

  Patrick moved his chin up and down noncommittally. Not a subject he wished to pursue.

  “Your dad would be so proud.”

  Again, not an assertion he cared to entertain, but he managed to get out, thank you.

  “Boy, bet you got some stories to tell.” Coach rested his hands on the basketball above his belt and waited.

  He would have to wait a long time. Patrick begged Coach’s pardon. “Where is the men’s room?”

  His old gym teacher looked disappointed and said it wasn’t his church, but he believed the facilities were up the stairs behind the noodle-bake casseroles. Patrick offered his hand for a final crush.

  Coach’s grip was gentler this time, but he sandwiched Patrick’s right hand with his left. He’d done the same, Patrick remembered, at his father’s funeral. Coach’s eyes grew moist. He said nothing, then, “Gunther.”

  It was neither question nor statement, but he paused for a response. Patrick shook his head up and down.

  “You were friends.”

  Patrick nodded.

  “Good friends. Like your dad and I.”

  “Yes.”

  “We let that boy go.” Coach swallowed hard. “We…we rescued you, after that stupid…stunt you boys pulled, breaking into school. Then your father died.” Coach’s lips disappeared, reappeared. “And we gave you the full court press. There was no teacher, no janitor who’d let you do the wrong thing, give less than your best. We didn’t let you breathe sideways.”

  It was true. After his father’s funeral, teachers suddenly kept him after school for extra help, demanded revisions on papers even after they were graded. He’d been drafted to the debate team; the garage band he formed with Charlie Sorenson, The Night Creatures, was chosen to play the junior prom. And he, like all teenagers, had taken it for granted. Had viewed the extra attention as punishment, if anything. Even as an adult––as a teacher––he’d looked back on his upswing those final years of high school as natural maturation. He’d grown up, become man of the family.

  “But Gunther, he was Einar Hendrickson’s boy,” Coach rasped, pulling Patrick closer. “No one wanted to deal with that S.O.B.”

  Patrick looked over the crowd, to the opposite corner where the Hendricksons stood by themselves, balancing plates full of hotdish.

  “No one would deal with him, so we let his son drift away. Smartest kid to come through here in forty years. You were second.” Coach tried to smile. “And a fine natural athlete. Nice touch on the jump shot, good backspin.”

  This, too, was true. Patrick could see it, the tight backspin on Gunther’s jumper, the ball caroming off the plywood backboard behind Hendrickson’s Best, slicing through the netless hoop. Then the high-stepping backpedal and the wicked grin: That’s H-O-R-S, amigo.

  Coach took hold of both elbows of Susan’s father’s tweed jacket. “He didn’t just slip through the cracks.” Patrick lurched back. Coach leaned in. “We let that boy go.”

  Patrick wanted to go, but Coach gripped ti
ghter. And, yes, he saw Gunther clutching that rope, sprinting off the high school roof, but the scene was conflated now with James, flexing his scars and glowering at Lord Jim and the uncaring world, and with Josh, too, shouting that Mr. Lynch didn’t dare challenge him because he was too scared of his mother, the professor.

  “I don’t know much about church, or religion.” Coach raised his voice. “Hell, I don’t go to church any more. But I do know that mumbo jumbo about God’s will is a load of crap. If there’s a God, he didn’t plan this. We let that boy go. That’s what I can’t forgive––”

  His eyes were full and he shook, shaking Patrick. Coach Carlson was about to crumble in that way of men of his generation––his father’s generation––who never cried, not about their service in Korea, not about their stillborn children, but who now, in their dotage, could not make themselves stop.

  “I’m sorry,” Patrick mumbled, wrenching himself from Coach’s grasp.

  He took the stairs two at a time, flew past the men’s room and out into the parking lot behind the church. Only then, panting by the garbage cans, did he reconsider the effects of water on tweed. But the rain had stopped; there were cracks in the clouds and shafts of sun fell at angles over Peterson’s Prairie. The scene, he had to admit, was biblical. Well, Bible-movie. Gunther would’ve appreciated the visual, another excuse for his Charlton Heston routine.

  A cough came from a corner of the building. A blonde woman, thirtyish, in a navy blue dress, leaned against the red brick, smoking. Familiar, but familiar like half the women in Peterson’s Prairie. She looked toward him, lifted her chin in recognition. That was no woman, he realized with a twitch. That was Katie Osterlund.