Fum

by Adam Rapp

  “Hey,” Corinthia says.

  “Hey,” he says back, mostly in silhouette.

  It’s unlike Channing to knock on her door like this. She can’t even remember the last time it happened.

  “Come in,” she says. “Close the door.”

  “I’m good here,” he offers.

  “So, stay there, then,” she says, trying to make out his face. “What’s up?”

  “If you sit still enough in the presence of a wolf,” he explains, “it’ll talk to you.”

  “A wolf?”

  “Yeah,” he says, “a wolf. But it won’t say anything unless you’re absolutely still.”

  “Oh,” Corinthia replies, a little thrown. “Will it talk to you in English?”

  He nods. Or at least she thinks he does.

  “With any particular dialect?”

  He shakes his head. Again, his face is mostly in shadow, but she can make out its general movement.

  “What kind of a wolf?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Like a lone wolf?” she asks after a long pause.

  “Any wolf,” he finally replies. “But you have to sit really, really still.”

  Another silence. Only the sound of the grandfather clock clipping time in the hallway, the steady ticktock that can be heard most distinctly only after hours when everyone’s gone to bed. Brill had the hourly gong mechanism dismantled two years ago, when Marlene started struggling with her insomnia. The ambient noises of the house — the low burbling of the plumbing; the central air’s preprogrammed, gently whirring cycles; and the grandfather clock’s tiny, mechanical persistence — seem to sharpen and reveal their hidden mysteries at night.

  Channing’s silhouette barely stirs.

  “What exactly are you sitting on during this encounter with the wolf?” Corinthia asks. “Like a woodland stump?”

  “Sure,” he replies, “a woodland stump. Whatever’s utilitarian.”

  There’s that word again — utilitarian: “designed to be useful or practical rather than attractive.” Corinthia wonders if this is a word he learned in the SAT prep class that he takes during his free period in an effort to improve his vocabulary. His test scores as a junior, though respectable, weren’t as good as everyone had hoped, especially the reading portion.

  “Channing,” Corinthia says, “are you talking about Clinton Academy?”

  The Clinton Academy Timberwolves are Lugo Memorial’s opponent tomorrow. It’s been a long-standing intra-county rivalry. Perhaps first-game-of-the-season jitters are responsible for her brother’s weird behavior.

  But Channing doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches toward her. His hand passes through a blade of moonlight that cuts into Corinthia’s room from the gap in her curtains. His hand looks ghostly, lifeless, a thing completely separate from his well-conditioned body. He grabs the doorknob and pulls.

  Then the door closes and he is gone.

  Corinthia dreams of beautiful dollhouses that she and her shop teacher, the one-eared Dolan Yorn-Pamutmut, have been building for thousands of years. The attention to detail is stunning, as precise as frost. She knows that the creation of these dollhouses has been an act of faith spanning a millennium because Dolan Yorn-Pamutmut has a long white wizard’s beard and he uses an ancient walking staff with an assured, balletic wisdom.

  Inside the dollhouses are the smallest, most intricate pieces of furniture one can imagine: bookshelves and cabinetry; settees and sideboards; claw-footed tables. French doors and winding staircases; chandeliers and credenzas; fireplace mantels; lamps and bone-china candy dishes. Corinthia can see how each individual piece was labored over, the years it took to hone the most minute details, the decades of artistry.

  She has the distinct feeling that she made this furniture, that she whittled and forged and carved those lamps and candy dishes.

  In the dream, she feels great purpose. A warmth spreads throughout her limbs.

  Is this love, this feeling?

  Is it grace?

  In the dream, she looks at her hands. They are thin and important. She possesses the wrists of a child pianist. Her fingers are fluted, beautiful. She is a great prodigy with hands as delicate as birds.

  At five o’clock the next morning, with a great intake of breath, Corinthia Bledsoe launches out of her custom-made, seven-by-ten-foot bed on the second floor of the Bledsoe home, precisely at the moment that a family of three tornadoes comes raging into town from the northwest — from the Belleville/Freeburg/Venedy area, to be exact — well ahead of the tornado horn, and pulls the roof off Lugo Memorial High School’s legendary Connie and Dillard Deet Field House, which is located a few hundred feet from the limestone school building.

  The gymnasium had recently been refurbished, thanks to the generosity of a local proctologist and his wife, Dr. Alton and Dorothy Bartizal, but even the state-of-the-art materials and top-of-the-line construction couldn’t keep the roof on.

  The roof is almost surgically lifted away, like the lid from a shoe box, and when local police, firefighters, and other civic officials arrive just before dawn — squibs of siren beams dancing through the half-light — a lone 850-pound Holstein cow, white with black spots, of prominent udder; dark, soulful eyes; and the contemplative, poised face reminiscent of any number of nineteenth-century U.S. presidents, is discovered at midcourt, in handsome if not downright competitive county-fair condition, almost perfectly centered in the cream-and-crimson jump-ball circle, as if the Hand of God had placed it there for all to see.

  The late morning in Lugo is greeted by one of the finest blue skies in recent memory: a cloudless, chromium blue that seems to extend far beyond the firmament.

  Despite the astonishing fact that all of the tornado damage occurred at Lugo Memorial High School, police cars, fire trucks, and other municipal vehicles have been stationed throughout the community. Although the structure of Lugo Memorial’s stalwart limestone building was not compromised in any major way, several windows have been blown out, the electricity systems were mangled, and countless desks, computers, and cafeteria tables were reduced to rubble. The flagpole was sent javelin-like through the air and was later discovered in the middle of the Shelby McSwinton Little League diamond, two miles away, off the frontage road. It now sticks out of center field at roughly 45 degrees, the American flag buried deep in the soil. Fortunately no one was injured.

  Oddly enough, aside from Guidance Counselor Smock’s basement office, the one well-trafficked space in the building left relatively untouched was the library, probably because of its central second-floor location. But when it comes to the chaotic, unpredictable nature of tornadoes, one can never be sure about such things.

  At one o’clock, despite the devastation, an all-school assembly is called in the roofless field house, where Gaylord Yost, a dairy farmer from nearby Kaskaskia, had come by to claim one of his cows only minutes before. As he escorted Daisy into his aluminum cattle trailer, the gentle, confused creature looked like the prize from a beloved annual cakewalk.

  The Lugo Memorial school buses fire up their engines, and some 420 teenagers are brought to the Connie and Dillard Deet Field House. While the shell-shocked student body files into the bleachers, weatherproof tarpaulins are being arranged to cover the field house. The clods of earth, heaps of cotton-candy-pink insulation, and clusters of conduits have been swept away, and the long, glossy floorboards of Lugo Memorial’s beloved basketball court still gleam as if nothing happened.

  But, oh, the missing roof makes the field house look like a toy that some gigantic, whimsical toddler pulled the top off of.

  Apparently one major part of the roof was found in nearby Murphysboro, some twelve miles away.

  There is talk of bringing this section back to Lugo — all twenty by thirty-two feet of it — as a kind of nostalgic totem to surviving disaster and to civic fidelity, and also as an extra-large symbol of resiliency in the ongoing battle of “Us versus Them” in the tornado belt.

  As the student b
ody awaits public address, while homeroom teachers and coaches and department heads nervously mill about the court-level row of bleachers, Facilities Manager Shoreland Splitz quietly confers with Principal Margo Ticonderoga and Vice Principal Doogan Mejerus, pointing skyward to the all-weather tarpaulins, where, on a trio of thirty-foot scaffolding, several men wearing state-issued blue jumpsuits are working at securing the makeshift roof.

  The students peer up at these men, confused, as if they are strange uniformed angels who’ve not climbed the scaffoldings but rather descended upon them from some mysterious rift in the sky.

  Once everyone has settled, Principal Ticonderoga approaches a lectern — one that obviously survived the calamity — and adjusts a microphone that is powered by a small, battery-operated public-address unit arranged on a table several feet off to her left. Without the aid of amplification, Vice Principal Doogan Mejerus, using his calmest, wettest, most benevolent voice, greets the student body and leads the Pledge of Allegiance, placing his hand over the fleshy breast that contains his bursting heart.

  “Let’s all face the field-house flag, please,” he says, and everyone pivots accordingly, sending a rumble under the bleachers.

  Following the Pledge of Allegiance, everyone pivots back to face the podium, and Vice Principal Mejerus asks the assembly to link hands. Though awkward, the student body, faculty, and staff do so, and then Vice Principal Mejerus, once a divinity student, leads the assembly in a short prayer, beseeching God to please pay special attention to the men, women, and children of Lugo, Illinois. He thrusts his face Heavenward — projecting his humble thoughts well beyond the temporary tarpaulins being secured by those men in blue jumpsuits — and closes his eyes, really connecting his heart and soul to his words.

  After a choral “Amen,” Vice Principal Mejerus opens his little piglet eyes, takes a step back, and stands beside Principal Ticonderoga, placing his hands behind his back, the ever-supportive acolyte. Hemispheres of sweat are now visible under his arms. There is no longer central air, after all, certainly not today. Vice Principal Mejerus bows his head deferentially, the crown of his bald skull reflecting a halo of light coming from the temporary fluorescents attached to the scaffolding.

  Principal Ticonderoga stands before the lectern, turns the microphone on, and tests the sound: “One-two . . . one-two . . . one-two-three —”

  A sharp squeal of feedback has many grabbing for their ears. Principal Ticonderoga turns to Vice Principal Doogan Mejerus for help, and the diligent V.P. hustles over to the table containing the temporary P.A. system and lowers a fader.

  “Try now,” he says.

  Principal Ticonderoga checks the microphone yet again, counting a few times, and then goes on to greet the assembly.

  “Good afternoon,” her voice calls out.

  “Good afternoon,” everyone replies in unison.

  No more awful feedback, thank God.

  Despite the rough events of the early dawn, Principal Ticonderoga hasn’t skimped on her wardrobe, and she wears one of her many smart-fitting outfits and her high-end penny loafers. A statement of leadership, perhaps. This day will be no different, and she will lead the community of Lugo Memorial beyond this catastrophe and into the future, and she will do so while sporting her lightweight, cornflower-blue twill pantsuit and cream-colored silk blouse.

  Principal Ticonderoga starts out somberly, speaking to the sadness of destruction and loss, how helpless it feels when one wake up to chaos. She cites the great fortune that no deaths have been reported in Lugo, that no homes were destroyed. Despite the field house’s missing roof and the damage to the interior of the school building, it was a lucky morning for Lugonites.

  And somehow, she suggests, perhaps by an act of God, the varsity boys’ football equipment was spared by the tornadoes! This good news brings heartfelt cheers from the assembly.

  Go, Mastodons!

  Principal Ticonderoga goes on to report that tonight’s game against Clinton Academy, however, has been canceled because both the home and away locker rooms are “no longer affiliated with our current space-time continuum,” she gently jokes. “It’s amazing how delicately discerning a family of tornadoes can be,” she adds to scattered laughter. “They take the roof off our beloved field house, destroy the home and away locker rooms, but spare all the football equipment. Go figure . . .”

  She seems to project her voice above their heads, even those seated in the uppermost bleachers, as though she is also addressing God, or at least His more horizon-bound minions, like maybe a few of the Apostles who were at the Last Supper — those hungry-looking bearded men in flowing pastel robes, at least as interpreted in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, which is a main staple of Rightor Ruggiano’s senior art history class. And there he is, by the way, rarely seen Rightor Ruggiano, sitting between consistent-as-a-mailbox science department guru “Hoppin’” Bob Sluba and the health teacher, Kim “Endless Summer” Linwood, who appears to have a black eye today, at which she keeps dabbing with a tissue.

  Principal Margo Ticonderoga speaks eloquently and with admirable resolve about the unity in community and how students and families of Lugo, Illinois, should not look at the near destruction of their beloved high school and field house — “this legendary athletic cathedral” — as a tragedy but, rather, as an opportunity to come together, to pick one another up by their collective post-disaster bootstraps and embrace newfound civic purpose.

  While the music of her resonant, assuring voice calms the hearts and minds of Lugo Memorial’s student body, faculty, and staff, Corinthia Bledsoe, who woke with a splitting headache, one that might even be classified as a migraine, scans the bleachers. The inflamed, puffy-eyed, tear-smeared faces of her fellow students, teachers, coaches, and cafeteria workers seem to coalesce in a kind of damp, epic Lugo Memorial turkey loaf. . . . She searches until she finds Guidance Counselor Denton Smock . . . third row center, looking sharp as ever with his pristinely combed hair, Clark Kent glasses, and pin-striped skinny rockabilly pants. He’s even wearing a tie today. He is listening to Principal Ticonderoga’s speech with a kind of detached clinical intensity, as if he is a medical student observing surgery being performed on a dying child.

  Corinthia fixes her gaze on him and will not look away. She musters all her available brainpower — whatever has been spared by the pounding headache — and wills Guidance Counselor Smock to turn and face her. She can feel her recent extreme body heat travel from her solar plexus up her throat and spread through her sinuses. She can smell coal and bacon grease.

  A full minute passes.

  The men on the scaffolding continue securing the all-weather tarpaulins, reaching, hoisting, working in teams of twos and threes, braiding and knotting ropes, silent as monks. One of them has eyes like a shark. Another looks like Jesus if Jesus wore a silk rag on his head. Even from a distance one can see the little tattoo of a tear sliding down his cheek.

  Look at me, Smock, Corinthia quietly bellows at Denton Smock with the voice in her mind. Look this way, you ignoramus!

  Principal Ticonderoga’s speech seems to be getting more and more impassioned. There is the sense that an anthemic song is forming. Words like altruism and benevolence and the newly coined hyphenate super-neighbor become musical notes being struck on, say, a really high-end xylophone or, better yet, one of the two retired glockenspiels that survived in the third-floor music room storage closet.

  Phrases like “Community starts with the individual” and “There is no i in teamwork” and “Let’s not let these tornadoes tell us who we are!” form a loose but tenacious chorus. At one point, Principal Ticonderoga, whose usually sallow, somewhat inanimate face starts to redden with the fervor of a Pentecostal preacher, initiates a call and response between her and the student body/faculty/staff crowd in front of her. Phrases like:

  COMMUNITY HAS PEOPLE,

  COMMUNITY HAS PIE.

  COMMUNITY HAS ALSO

  A “YOU” AND AN “I”!

  And

&
nbsp; THREE TORNADOES THIS,

  THREE TORNADOES THAT.

  LUGO MEMORIAL,

  THAT’S WHERE IT’S AT!

  And

  PEANUT BUTTER SUFFERS

  WHEN THERE IS NO JAM.

  WE CAN DO THIS, LUGONITES,

  YES, WE CAN!

  It somehow feels like she’s taken the call to duty beyond the realm of the high school and is now enlisting all citizens of Lugo, Illinois. Is she running for office? Laying track for a mayoral bid? Principal Ticonderoga pumps her fist and shouts these Seussian quatrains a good five feet from behind the lectern, without the aid of the microphone, so that her unamplified, natural voice is doing the work now, because when it comes right down to it, she — Principal Margo Ticonderoga, former Lugo Memorial student herself — is no more important than anyone else; at least this is what the gesture seems to imply. Everyone in the bleachers echoes her clever rhyming arrangements.

  In the midst of this call-and-response game, at the height of the choral esprit de corps, Guidance Counselor Denton Smock finally turns to Corinthia, rotating his head so that his chin is now resting on his right shoulder. He finds her up in the ninth row — she’s not easy to miss, after all. Corinthia’s return look must be one of bowel-shuddering intensity, because once they find each other, Denton Smock has to remove his glasses. His eyes are like buttons on a snowman, at once full and vacant. Corinthia and the Lugo Memorial guidance counselor stare at each other for a full twenty seconds. Denton Smock knows this because he measures such things. He checks his digital wristwatch and chants.

  Then, all of a sudden, he stops chanting with the assembly and, to Corinthia, mouths the following words:

  I

  HAVE

  YOUR

  DESK

  And just like that, Corinthia is standing. The two students seated beside her, sophomores Lucas Blondheim and Natasha Sumpter-Fisk, are surprised, to say the least. Natasha Sumpter-Fisk even loses hold of the banana clip that she was planning to arrange in her hair after the assembly, but now, like so many things taken by the tornadoes, it feels unfathomably lost — in its case, in the dark cavern under the bleachers.