Night, Neon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Well, no—I didn’t say that, Gavin. I wouldn’t say that. Your work is—it is—it is memorable. Yes.”

  “So—what’s wrong, then? You don’t—” (pausing, unable to blurt out the words of hurt, anguish: You don’t praise me) “—‘get it’—I guess?”

  “Maybe I don’t, Gavin. I’ve tried …”

  “You have not tried. Did you think what I wrote about my brother was real?—or wasn’t real?”

  No idea what to tell him. This angry, incensed young man. (Had he killed in Afghanistan? Was that his secret, he has been a killer and can’t bear it?) Wondering if there might be someone—anyone—in the corridor outside this office who might hear you if you called for help.

  “He isn’t eight years old. Not now. He’s older, he didn’t die. I’ve got him trained. If I raise my fist, he pisses himself, he’s that scared. When he was a kid, I told him he’d never become courageous if he didn’t stand up to me, but he never did, he can’t. A beautiful baby, they called him. But no longer.”

  Kroff is on his feet, grinning. He can see that you’re distressed by what he has said, which is either a revelation or a confession, unless it is a further obfuscation.

  “His name is Luke. He’s what you call learning disabled. He loves me, he’s forgiven me everything. It’s like a joke—I’m God to him.”

  Kroff pauses, breathing audibly. “Also, know what, ma’am?—I’m his guardian. Just nine years between us, but I’m his guardian, he is in my control.”

  With a grunt Kroff slips on the backpack. Clearly he is enjoying your distress. “Did you think I was writing about myself, Pro-fessor? Me and my brother? Guess it’s pretty convincing if you and the rest of those assholes believed it.”

  Waiting for him to leave. Calmly gazing at him, trying not to surrender to the pain gathering behind your eyes.

  “Y’know, I don’t think I will be returning to the ‘workshop.’ Fucking waste of time. Imagine Rimbaud in a workshop—Nietzsche! Fucking funny.”

  At the doorway Kroff lingers, as if he expects you to call him back.

  “… disappointment. Waste of time. You’ve been a disappointment. Damned glad I didn’t run out and buy some shitty book of yours, ma’am. You and those assholes.”

  Waiting for him to leave. Waiting for this ordeal to be over.

  Almost you are counting the seconds until he will have left.

  Thinking, with a thrill of fear—He still has time. Whatever he has in the backpack, he can take out to use against you.

  “Fucking cunt. Like all of them.”

  Kroff has stepped out of the office, but he pauses outside the door. You can hear him panting. You hold your breath, praying he will not suddenly turn back.

  But after a moment Kroff walks away … You stand very still, listening beyond the pounding of your heart to him walking away.

  It’s a trick. He isn’t gone. He is waiting.

  In case he is listening, you take out your cell phone, pretend to make a call. In a loud, bright voice saying, “I’m leaving now, I’ve been delayed. No—fine. I should be home in twenty minutes …”

  Hesitantly you approach the doorway. Peer out into the hall, which is dimly lighted. Your eyesight seems blurred, you can’t see clearly. But thank God, no sign of Kroff.

  And so you gather your things with shaky hands, switch off the overhead light. Still, your heart is beating painfully.

  Before you leave, you cast your eyes over the bleak, subterranean room. Two aluminum desks, books crammed into a bookcase, a faded poster for Shakespeare in Love. You will never meet the individual with whom you share this melancholy workplace.

  A discomforting odor here of moldering old books, a young man’s heated skin, your own animal panic. You will never return, you think. If you have office hours, you will schedule them for the seminar room, immediately following the workshop.

  Shut the door, which locks automatically. Make your way to the women’s restroom. Inside, trash containers are overflowing. There is a smell of drains. Timidly you cup your hand to a faucet, swallow two migraine pills. Ecstatic pain has already begun to blossom behind your eyes.

  Soul sickness. The migraine deep inside the brain.

  One day you will discover that Kroff is not a veteran. You will make inquiries, for he will have (soon) imprinted his fury deep upon your soul. Where no one else has entered, in that (secret) place of migraine pain, yet Kroff will (soon) enter. You will learn that he is thirty-two years old. You will learn that he did not serve two deployments in Afghanistan; he did not see combat anywhere. You will learn that twelve days after arriving at basic training in Columbia, South Carolina, Gavin Kroff was discharged for “medical reasons” and shipped back home to Minnesota.

  But now: when you dare to leave the restroom, you hear footsteps on a stairway and recoil in fear, absurd fear (you are thinking), for it’s only a young woman, a student, who takes no notice of you.

  And voices elsewhere, for Lyman Hall is not entirely deserted: evening classes are scheduled for seven o’clock.

  Not alone. Not at risk. You chide yourself.

  The dilemma that is strictly a female dilemma: to be fearful, cautious, cunning, shrewd, and protective of yourself, if (sometimes) overprotective; or to behave as (you suppose) a man would do, not so much fearless as not requiring fear.

  Yet, on the way to the parking lot, you are walking quickly. You are not afraid, yet—you are walking quickly.

  In haste, you’ve left your coat unbuttoned. You are bareheaded, your eyes are wet with tears. You fight the childish instinct to run. For where would you run to?—your car is some distance away, you need to have your car key in your hand but don’t want to take time to pause, to rummage through your bag to find it …

  And there on the path, as if out of nowhere, the tall figure waiting for you.

  “Ma’am—hi! I’ll walk you to your car. I was thinking it might not be safe for you around here, a woman alone like you are.”

  THE FLAGELLANT

  Not guilty, he’d pleaded. For it was so. Not guilty in his soul.

  In fact at the pretrial hearing he’d stood mute. His (young, inexperienced) lawyer had entered the plea for him in a sharp voice, like knives rattling in a drawer—My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.

  Kiss my ass, Your Honor—he’d have liked to say.

  Later, the plea was changed to guilty. His lawyer explained the deal, he’d shrugged okay.

  Not that he was guilty in his own eyes, for he knew what had transpired, as no one else did. But Jesus knew his heart and knew that as a man and a father, he’d been shamed.

  At the crossing-over time, when daylight ends and dusk begins, they approach their Daddy and dare to touch his arm.

  He shudders, the child-fingers hot coals against bare skin.

  Hides his face from their terrible eyes. On their small shoulders angel’s wings have sprouted, sickle-shaped, and the feathers of these wings are coarse and of the hue of metal.

  Holy Saturday is the day of penitence. Self-discipline is the strategy. He’d promised himself. On his knees he begins his discipline: rod, bare skin.

  (Can’t see the welts on his back. Awkwardly twists his arm behind his back, tries to feel where the rod has struck. Fingering the shallow wounds. Feeling the blood. Fingers slick with blood.)

  (Not so much pain. Numbness. He’s disappointed. It has been like this—almost a year. His tongue has become swollen and numb, his heart is shrunken like a wizened prune. What is left of his soul hangs in filthy strips, like a torn towel.)

  Lifer. He has become a lifer.

  But lifer does not mean life. He has learned.

  Shaping the word to himself. Lifer!

  —twenty-five years to life. Which meant—(it has been explained to him more than once)—not that he was sentenced to life in prison, but rather, depending upon his record in the prison, that he might be paroled after serving just twenty-five years.

  As incomprehensible to him as twenty-five
hundred years might be. For he could think only in terms of days, weeks. Enough effort to get through a single day, and through a single night.

  But it was told to him, good behavior might result in early parole.

  Though (it was also told to him) it is not likely that a lifer would be paroled after his first several appeals to the parole board.

  Where would he go, anyway? Back home, they know him, and he couldn’t bear their knowledge of him, their eyes of disgust and dismay. Anywhere else, no one would know him, he would be lost.

  Even his family. His. And hers, scattered through Beechum County.

  Who you went to high school with follows you through your life. You need them, and they need you. Even if you are shamed in their eyes. It is you.

  Problem was, remorse.

  Judge’s eyes on him. Courtroom hushed. Waiting.

  What the young lawyer tried to explain to him before sentencing—If you show remorse, Earle. If you seem to regret what you have done …

  But he had not done anything!—had not made any decision.

  She had been the one. Yet she remained untouched.

  Weeks in his (freezing, stinking) cell in men’s detention. Segregated unit.

  Glancing up, nervous as a cat, hearing someone approach. Or believed he was hearing someone approach. Thought came to him like heat lightning in the sky—They are coming to let me out. It was a mistake, no one was hurt.

  Or, thought came to him that he was in the other prison now. State prison. On death row. And when they came for him, it would be to inject liquid fire into his veins.

  You know that you are shit. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That’s you.

  No one came. No one let him out, and no one came to execute him.

  He didn’t lack remorse, but he didn’t exude a remorseful air.

  A man doesn’t cringe. A man doesn’t get down on his knees. A man doesn’t crawl.

  His statement for the judge he’d written carefully on a sheet of white paper provided him by his lawyer.

  I am sorry for my roll in what became of my children Lucas & Ester. I am sorry that I was temted to anger against the woman who is ther mother for it was this anger she has caused that drove me to that place. I am sorry for that, the woman was ever BORN.

  Pissed him that the smart-ass lawyer wanted to correct his spelling. Roll was meant to be role. Ester was meant to be Esther.

  The rest of his statement, the lawyer would not accept and refused to pass on to the judge. As if he had the right.

  Took back the paper and crumpled it in his hand. Fuck this!

  Anything they could do to you to break you down, humiliate you, they would. Orange jumpsuit like a clown. Leg shackles like some animal. Sneering at you, so ignorant you don’t know how to spell your own daughter’s name.

  Sure, he feels remorse. Wishing to hell he could feel remorse for a whole lot more he’d like to have done when he’d had his freedom. Before he was stopped.

  Covered in welts. Bleeding.

  A good feeling. Washed in the blood of the Lamb.

  He believes in Jesus, not in God. Doesn’t give a damn for God.

  Pretty sure God doesn’t give a damn for him.

  When he thinks of God, it’s the old statue in front of the courthouse. Blind eyes in the frowning face, uplifted sword, mounted on a horse above the walkway. Had to laugh, the General had white bird crap all over him, hat, shoulders. Even the sword.

  Why is bird crap white?—he’d asked the wiseass lawyer, who’d stared at him.

  Just is. Some things just are.

  But when he thinks of Jesus, he thinks of a man like himself.

  Accusations made against him. Enemies rising against him.

  Welts, wounds. Slick swaths of blood.

  Striking his back with the rod. Awkward, but he can manage. Out of contraband metal, his rod.

  It is (maybe) not a “rod” to look at. Your eye, seeing what it is, would not see “rod.”

  Yet pain is inflicted. Such pain, his face contorts in (silent) anguish, agony.

  As in the woman’s sinewy-snaky body, in the grip of the woman’s powerful arms, legs, thighs, he’d suffered death, how many times.

  Like drowning. Unable to lift his head, lift his mouth out of the black muck to breathe. Sucking him into her. Like sand collapsing, sinking beneath his feet into a water hole and dark water rising to drown him.

  The woman’s fault from the start when he’d first seen her. Not knowing who she was. Insolent eyes, curve of the body, like a Venus flytrap and him the helpless fly: trapped.

  Plenty of time in his cell to think and to reconsider. Mistakes he’d made, following the woman, who’d been with another man the night he saw her. And her looking at him, allowing him to look at her.

  Sex she baited him with. The bait was sex. He hadn’t known (then). He has (since) learned.

  He’d thought the sex-power was his. Resided in him. Not in the woman, but in him, as in the past with younger girls, high-school-age girls, but with her, he’d been mistaken.

  And paying for that mistake ever since.

  To be looked at with such disgust. To be sneered at. That was a punishment in itself, but not the kind of punishment that cleansed.

  In segregation at the state prison, as he’d been at county detention, because he’d been designated a special category of inmate because children were involved, and this would be known. Because there was no way to keep the charges against him not known. Because once you are arrested, your life is not your own.

  Surrounded by “segregated” inmates like himself. Not all of them white, but yes, mostly white.

  Yet nothing like himself.

  They’d come to search his cell. Again.

  Because he could not prevent them. Because there were many of them and only one of him.

  In his cell there was nowhere to hide anything. (So you would think.) Yet with sneering faces they searched the cell.

  And inside his lower body with furious gloved fingers, bringing him to his knees.

  Yet they could not discover contraband. For it was nowhere here.

  Where’re you hiding it, Earle?—fucker, we know you’re hiding something.

  Their exultation in torturing him. Flushed faces, shining eyes, his screams are joyous to them.

  In this place they were confining him, but the man who is free in his heart cannot be confined.

  No prison, no segregated unit. No cell, no restraints, no straitjacket, no drugs forced down his throat or injected into his arteries to bind him.

  Left him where he’d fallen, moaning on the filthy floor. A metal instrument (might’ve been a spoon) they’d shoved up inside him, into the most tender part of him, had been so forcibly removed, ravaged tissue was carried with it, slick with blood.

  Thank you, Jesus. Washed clean in the blood of the Lamb, which is the most shame you can bear on this earth before you are annihilated.

  On his knees alone on the night of Holy Saturday, observing the seven stations of the cross, the flagellant begins his discipline.

  Each stroke of the rod against his bare back bringing expiation.

  Crawling on his belly. Tongue extended. Makes himself pencil-thin, slithering like a snake.

  Yet: a snake that can control its size.

  From the crevice to the concrete.

  Scraped raw the skin of his hands, bleeding.

  On Strouts Mill Road, where the guardrail has been repaired.

  Returning to his (ex)wife’s house, his house from which he’d been banished.

  Fluidly he moves. He has the power to pass through walls. He has whipped himself into a froth of blood. He has whipped himself invisible.

  (It has not happened yet—has it? He sees that it is waiting to happen.) And so this time it will happen differently. Jesus has escaped his enemies and will wander the world as free as he wishes, like any wild creature without the spell of a wrathful God upon him.

  He will take Lucas and Esther with him, in their paja
mas. Very quietly he will lift them in his arms. Daddy! Daddy!—the children are smaller than he recalls, this is startling to him, disorienting. The children smell of their bodies, their pajamas are soiled. Halfway he wonders if their mother has drugged them too, to make them sleep.

  Seeing it is Daddy, they are happy. He will take them to safety. Except they are hungry—whimpering with hunger. The woman has put them to bed without feeding them. Daddy! To Burger King in the pickup. He will take them, he is their daddy. The woman has been left behind, unknowing. The woman is unconscious in her bed, sprawled in nakedness and smelling of liquor.

  It will be his error to think that the woman left behind will not exert her power over him.

  Pressing down on the gas pedal. Highway a blur, for Daddy too is ravenous with hunger. And thirst. Stops for a six-pack at the 7-Eleven. Pops a can open inside the store, cold beer running down his fingers. This will be observed on the surveillance tape. That Daddy has not eaten, and Daddy has not slept in forty-eight hours. Love for the kids is all Daddy has to nourish him.

  Driving through stunted pines. Icy road. Slick pavement, black ice it is called. Your mother is to blame. The lying whore has sabotaged our family.

  Until now the woman has been pulling the strings. They have been her puppets—the father, the children.

  But no longer.

  At the crossing-over time. At home in the dark.

  As a boy, he’d been taught. He had not wished to know, yet he had been made to know.

  The stations of the cross are seven. Christ must bear his cross. Christ must stumble and stand upright again. Christ is bleeding from his wounds: chest, back, head. Soon, spikes will be driven through Christ’s hands and feet. It is supposed that Christ was made to lie down upon the rough-hewn cross upon which he was nailed. Christ will submit to his crucifixion, for it is written. Christ will die as a man and descend to Hell. And on the third day Christ will rise again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, where he will dwell with the Father for eternity.