Prodigal Blues (22 page)

"I second that," said Christopher.
 
"All in favor."

Everyone raised their hands.

Christopher pulled in a breath, held it for a few moments, then let it out in a quick, hard burst.
 
"Well, hell's bells, people.
 
I never thought we'd ever be doing this."

"Me neither," said Rebecca.

"All in favor," Arnold said.

Everyone raised their hands.

"Who calls shotgun?" asked Christopher.

"Me," replied Arnold, and we all took our seats.
 
Once back out on the highway, Arnold moved to start the CD again but stopped when Rebecca said, "No music right now, okay?
 
I don't much feel like it."

Arnold shrugged.
 
"I guess I don't, either."
 
He sat with his hands folded in his lap, the quiet and ever-attentive student who everyone suspected was the teacher's pet.

After a while, Christopher broke the silence.
 
"Well, at least we won't have to worry about him messing up at line 757 again."

Arnold shook his head.
 
"He never could get that right."

"Line 757?" I asked.

"
Beowulf
," said Rebecca.
 
"It was
Grendel's
bedtime story.
 
Every night after he chained us back up—after we'd done our chores for the day, tending his gardens and all that—he'd pull up a chair in the middle of our room and have us recite it to him, beginning to end.
 
Thomas always messed up line 757:
 
'…the dealings he had there/were like nothing he had come across in his lifetime.'"

"'Then Hygelac's brave kinsman called to mind/that evening's utterance," I said, "upright he stood,/fastened his hold till fingers were bursting./The monster strained away; the man stepped closer.'
 
'Beowulf and Grendel Wrestle', right?"

Arnold turned around, staring.
 
Christopher looked at me in the rear-view mirror.
 
Rebecca leaned closer and said, "You know
Beowulf
?"

I nodded.
 
"I wrote a paper on it in college."

"You went to college?" asked Arnold.

"Yeah.
 
I have a Master's degree in English."

"Then why in hell did you tell me you were a janitor?" snapped Christopher.
 

"Because I am."

He glared at me from the mirror.
 
"You have a Master's in English and you clean toilets for a living?"

"I also strip and wax floors, empty trash cans, polish desks, dust shelves, vacuum carpets, and do windows.
 
I'm told me and my crew are pretty good at it."

"
Why
?
 
Why would someone with your education choose to do that instead of teaching?"

I shrugged.
 
"What the hell difference does it make to you?"

"Come on," said Rebecca, softly smacking my arm.
 
"Don't be that way, please?
 
Tell us."

"Yeah, man," Arnold said.
 
"I'd kinda like to know myself."

"All in favor," said Christopher.

Everyone raised their hands.

"Motion carries, Pretty Boy.
 
Spill."

"You're going to keep calling me that no matter how many times or how nicely I ask you not to, aren't you?"

"Stop trying to change the subject."

I rubbed my eyes and sighed.
 
"Look, my wife's been asking me that same question off and on for years.
 
I've never been able to give her a good answer, okay?
 
And I doubt that any epiphanies are going to occur now,"

"'Epiphanies,'" said Arnold.
 
"Sounds like a college word to me."

"Very funny."

"Then takes a guess," said Rebecca.
 
"C'mon, Mark.
 
You have to have
some
idea."

"Maybe."

"Well, then?"

I looked down at my hands, saw the calluses on the palms, and remembered the way Dad's hands had always felt so rough whenever he hugged me or shook my hand or touched my cheek when I was a boy.
 
He'd always seemed so embarrassed that his hands weren't softer.

"When I graduated," I said, as much to myself as them, "Mom and Dad were so damned proud of me.
 
Neither one of them had even finished high school, and here was their son graduating college.
 
Tanya and I had just gotten engaged, so as far as they were concerned, my future was a lock.
 
Dad still had about seven or eight years left before retirement, and I think it made him feel good to know that his boy was never going to have to work the line or walk a picket during a labor strike or worry about how much bologna he could afford for lunch because the bills had cleaned out most of last week's paycheck.
 
Whenever we'd talk about my plans, Dad would get this look on his face about halfway through the conversation like he didn't understand what I was saying—of course by that time I'd get off on some tangent about Carson McCullers or James Agee or some other writer, and I'd be so busy talking about what books I wanted to teach to students that I forgot Dad wasn't much of a reader.
 
Oh, he read
Readers Digest
and
DAV Magazine
, the articles in
TV Guide
, but novels and short stories, essays, poetry… I was talking way over his head.
 
I didn't mean to.
 
He tried to keep up, he asked all kinds of questions that I always had answers for, but the more we talked, the more I could see that he was… he was embarrassed.
 
His son was smarter than him—I never once believed that, but what I believed wasn't the point; how he
felt
was.
 
And my dad was embarrassed because he thought he looked like a dummy.

"One night as I was filling out an application for an adjunct faculty position at OSU, I realized that once I started teaching, my conversations with Dad would become more and more strained, and we'd be reduced to asinine
smalltalk
—the weather, sports, inflation, politics—and I didn't want that.
 
I didn't want him to feel like he couldn't talk to me.
 
So I told my folks that until a permanent position opened up at OSU or Otterbein or Columbus State, I was going to take a temporary maintenance position because it paid well and I needed to get some money in the bank right away because, well, I had these student loans…

"They understood, and weren't disappointed in the least.
 
Dad even said that it was the sensible thing to do, because the adjunct faculty position didn't pay a whole helluva lot, and with my degree I deserved something more substantial.
 
Plus, it gave us all sorts of new things to talk about; the job was damned hard work, and Dad understood all about hard work, and respected me for my decision.
 
Plus, it got so I was able to give Mom countless cleaning tips after a while and, boy, did she
love
that.
 
I got really good at the job, was given a raise and put in charge of a small crew, and after a while was offered the supervisor's position at a sizeable pay increase with decent benefits, so I took it.
 
I told Tanya that it would only be for another year or so, just to help us build up that nest egg before we got married.
 
Then I told everyone I wanted to stay on until I could train a suitable replacement, but I somehow never got around to looking for one.
 
Then it was going to be just until after Dad retired.
 
And somewhere in there I started looking at the students who were coming in to OSU, how arrogant and sycophantic most of them were, walking around with this attitude that said they already knew everything and were just here for the diploma so they could get out in the world and make the big bucks.
 
For them, college had nothing to do with learning, education didn't mean shit—it was all just a means to a hefty paycheck of one kind or another.
 
And these were kids who looked at me and laughed because what was I?—just some stupid janitor with a mop in one hand and a bottle of Windex in the other.
 
And it finally dawned on me that they way they looked at me, the way they treated me, the outright pity or contempt they showed… it was the same way Dad thought I looked at him.

"So I decided, fuck this noise, and to hell with all of them.
 
I had a good job and money in the bank and a wife who loved me and a dad I could talk to and a mom who needed ongoing household cleaning tips, so why mess with a good thing?
 
I wasn't going to be a teacher who could inspire the likes of them, so why have an illusion shattered."
 
I laughed without much humor.
 
"Of course Mom and Dad are both dead now and our bank account isn't what it used to be.
 
It probably won't be long before Tanya starts asking again if I've I found a replacement yet.
 
I don't know how to tell her that I'm no longer that English grad she married.
 
I'm just a janitor, mop in one hand, bottle of Windex in the other, and I'm actually pretty okay with that."
 
I sighed once more, stretched my back, and look up at all of them.
 
"Was that enough of a guess for you? Because I'm fresh out if it wasn't."

"You must be a real blast at parties," said Arnold.

"Give me a lampshade and on my head it goes.
 
I'll
clean
it, first, but after that… it's wild-man time."

"So you and your family were real close?" asked Christopher.

"Yeah."

"Then what's the deal with your grandmother's inheritance money?
 
Why didn't you want any of it?"

"How'd you know about—oh, right, the magic listening dish, I forgot."

"Thing can hear a fly fart in a tornado," said Arnold.
 
"Well, it maybe ain't
that
good, but we listened in on you and Cletus in the truck pretty well."

I looked at him.
 
"When exactly did you guys decide I was your best candidate, anyway?"

"When Rebecca saw your car had Ohio plates," said Christopher.
 
"A guy from Ohio, traveling alone, not exactly dressed to the nines, and with a broken-down car in the middle of Missouri…?
 
You might as well have painted a bull's-eye on your back.
 
It was going to take a while for you to get or from wherever you were going, so if you took a bit longer, who'd worry about it?"

"That's why you made three passes, to make sure I fit your little profile?"

"That's about the size of it."

His matter-of-fact tone irritated me, and I suddenly didn't feel like talking anymore, so I asked, "What's your story, Christopher?
 
How'd Grendel manage to get his hands on you?"

"Another burning question," said Arnold, turning to face him.
 
"All this time, you never told us—hell you've
never
talked about your family.
 
I don't think you even told us what their first names are.
 
What gives?"

If there had been even a hint of friendliness in Christopher's eyes and manner during the last few hours, it vanished instantaneously the moment he looked at me in the mirror and said, "And pretty Boy just lost
all
his Brownie points."

"Don't start," said Rebecca.
 
"It's almost time to… to wake Thomas."

Arnold checked the map on the computer, then the road signs.
 
"She's right.
 
It's the exit after this one."

"Hell's bells, people," Christopher said.

Then Rebecca added, "All in favor."

Everyone raised their hands.

"You listen to me, Pretty Boy, and you listen good."

"Do I have a choice?"

As we approached the exit he explained to me exactly, specifically, in detail,
precisely
what I was to say and do.

"Fuck up and I'll kill you."

"I hate it when you get like this," said Rebecca.

"Amen to that," muttered Arnold.

And that's how I came to find myself standing behind a tree in a quiet middle-class neighborhood at three o'clock in the morning, counting sixty as Rebecca, still trembling, walked away, then punching in the phone number of a husband and wife whose world was about to change drastically for the second time in as many years.

B
efore we all got out of the bus to assume our positions, I'd reminded Thomas to make sure that he sang the "Bill and Dale" line when he saw his mother; if nothing else, that would let her know that he was really her little boy.

"He won't need to do that," said Rebecca.
 
"His mother will know who he is."