Rook: Snowman (13 page)

“We’re going to start our study today with ‘The Ball Poem’ by John Berryman; and I want you to think about this poem in context with what happened to Ray yesterday, and in context with your own lives, and all of those things that you take for granted.

What is that boy now, who has lost his ball,

What, what is he to do? I saw it go

Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then

Merrily over – there it is in the water
!

No use to say ‘O there are other balls’:

An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy

As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down

All his young days into the harbor where

His ball went.

He finished the poem and then he asked the class to discuss it. What did it mean? How did it apply to their own lives, their own growing up? Joyce Capistrano said it was a cynical poem that said life is tough and nobody is ever going to help you. Washington said, “It means you gotta stand on your own two feet, even when you think you lost everything, the same way Ray lost his hands. You gotta say, I lost that ball for ever, man, and I aint never gonna see that ball no more, and all I can do right now is forget it, and go on, because there aint no point in crying over lost balls or wasted days.”

Nestor Fawkes put up his hand and said, “I had a ball once. It was red and yellow. I saved up my allowance for it. I took it home and my father stuck his whittling knife into it. He said that would teach me.”

“And did it teach you anything, do you think?” asked Jim.

“It teach him his old man’s the meanest piece of shit in greater Los Angeles,” put in Tarquin.

But without looking up, Nestor said, “It teached me not to hope for nothing.”

“It taught you not to hope for anything,” Jim corrected him.

“That, too,” Nestor agreed.

“Okay. But was that a good lesson or a bad lesson?”

“I don’t know,” Nestor shrugged. “But if don’t never hope for nothing you don’t never get disappointed, do you?”

They talked a lot about Ray. They were all burning to talk about him, and Jim encouraged them. He wanted them all to put their feelings into words – even if those words were mixed up and ungrammatical or downright obscure. “Ray – shoot – I feel like I lost a crown off of my head,” said Tarquin.

Eventually he approached Jack. He stood very close, but Jack kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “Jack, what do you feel?” he asked him.

“I hardly knew him,” said Jack.

“But you must feel something, surely?”

“I feel … I feel like the sins of the father are visited on the child.”

“I don’t get it. You’re not trying to suggest that Ray’s father had anything to do with this?”

“There are other fathers. There are other children.”

Jim knew what Jack was trying to tell him. He said, very softly, “Okay … maybe we can talk about that later.”

“He’s so mo-oo-ody,” said Susan Wintz, fluttering her eyelashes.

At the end of the class, Jim set them the task of writing a short poem or essay about Ray – “but remember ‘The Ball
Poem’ and don’t make it slushy. I don’t want it to sound like something out of a movie, all misty-eyed and sentimental. The movies are not life. This is life.”

When the classroom was empty, Madeleine Ouster came up to him and said, “Well.”

Jim was leafing through Walt Whitman’s
Specimen Days in America
, looking for a classroom text. She stood there and said nothing else, and after a little while he looked up at her.

“Just ‘well’?” he said. “This is where I usually get the speech on how I mustn’t divert from the approved curriculum; and how on earth can rappers and homeboys and fat dumb kids who can hardly read a Donald Duck comic be expected to appreciate John Frederick Nims.”

Without hesitation, Madeleine Ouster said,

Who gather here will never move the stars,

Give law to nations, track the atom down.

For lack of love or vitamins or cash

All the red robins of their year have gone
.

Jim took off his glasses. “John Frederick Nims, ‘Penny Arcade’. I’m impressed.”

“And I’m impressed, too, Mr Rook. What I saw in this classroom today has no equal in any English remedial class that I’ve seen anywhere. I’m going to ask Dr Ehrlichman if he’ll consider releasing you for a period of time so that you can come to Washington, DC and join my new consultative action force on American literacy.”

“And are you going to ask me if I want to go?”

“You’re a teacher with a great sense of personal duty, Mr Rook. I can see that for myself. My action force has the urgent task of reversing the diminishing literacy levels all
over the country. It’s absolutely vital for our survival as an educated nation. We need skills like yours, Mr Rook, and we need them very badly.”

“How long would this be for?”

“It depends on what results we achieve. A year minimum.”

“That would mean leaving this class.”

“I’m sure West Grove College has access to other English remedial teachers.”

“Yes, but – this is my class. What do you think that somebody like Nestor Fawkes is going to do without me? How do you think Tarquin Tree is going to express himself to a teacher who only believes in Janet and John?”

“It’s precisely that kind of dedication that I need, Mr Rook.”

“I don’t know … it’s very difficult.”

Madeleine Ouster opened her pocketbook and took out a card with the crest of the Department of Education on it. “Why don’t you think it over and call me? But let me just say this: if you become a member of my literacy action force, your next step can only be up. You’ll have access to all of the special educational units in the country. You’ll be able to try your ideas not just in one classroom, on twenty young people; but in hundreds of classrooms all across America, on thousands of young people. I appreciate your loyalty to your students here. But why should they be the sole beneficiaries of this wonderful gift that you have to offer?”

Jim said, “You haven’t talked about money.”

“Because I’m not trying to bribe you, that’s why. I’m just trying to make you see what good you could do – not only for yourself, and your personal career, but for young people everywhere.” She paused, and then she said, “If you’re interested, though, the pay will be roughly twice what you’re making here.”

Jim tapped her card against his thumbnail. For the first time in a very long time, he was lost for words.

Madeleine said, “We’ve already had our initial remit meetings, and I’d like you to join us as soon as you possibly can. Sleep on it, why don’t you, and call me before eleven tomorrow at the Westwood Marquis?”

She shot out her hand again, and firmly shook it, and then she was gone. Jim looked down at the open book on his desk.
‘With me, when depress’d by some specially sad event, or tearing problem, I wait till I go out under the stars for the last voiceless satisfaction.’

At that moment, Jack Hubbard came in, and stood by the door.

“Hi, Jack.”

“You saw my old man last night.”

“That’s right. He told me all about his expedition to Dead Man’s Mansion. Pretty harrowing stuff.”

“He was kind of upset. He said that you were trying to make out that there was some kind of connection between what he did in Alaska and what’s been going down here.”

“That’s because I’m pretty sure that there is. And I think my suspicions were confirmed last night when I was just about to leave your apartment block.” He told Jack about the tapping, and the coldness, and the footprints made of ice.

“Tapping?” said Jack, frowning. “I’ve heard tapping, too. I guess it started about a week after we arrived here. I never knew what it was.”

“It’s some kind of presence, Jack, I’m sure of it. For some reason I can’t see it, the way that I can usually see spirits and ghosts and stuff. But the tapping makes me think that it’s blind, and if spirits can’t see you then maybe you can’t see them either.”

“What do you think it wants?”

Jim closed his book. “I don’t want to frighten you, but
I think that your hunch about the sweatshirt was right. It’s looking for you … but because it’s blind it can only hunt you down with its sense of smell.”

“Why do you think it’s looking for me? I didn’t have anything to do with Dead Man’s Mansion.”

“I think your dad knows. I’m afraid he gave me the impression last night that he wasn’t being totally honest with me. Not lying, exactly. But being very economical with the truth.”

“I’ve asked him so many times, but he just won’t answer.”

“The answer lies in that blizzard, Jack. Something happened up in Alaska – something bad. Whatever it was, that presence is looking to freeze you solid.”

It was another sweltering afternoon and the smog was even more lurid than ever. During afternoon recess, Jim prowled around the college grounds, looking for any sign of the blind, invisible spirit that was searching for Jack. He had a strong sense that it was close, but there was nothing to betray its presence. No icy footprints, no sudden drops in temperature, no sparkling frost.

He was crossing the lawn behind the science block when he saw a bright flash of light. It flashed again, like a heliograph. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he walked over to a group of girls who were sitting together under the wide, shady branches of the cypress tree.

“Trying to attract my attention?” he asked. “Or trying to dazzle me?”

Laura Killmeyer smiled and said, “Sorry, sir,” and put down the large circular mirror that she was holding. “I was showing Joyce her grandfather.”

“You were what?”

“I was showing Joyce her grandfather. It’s a magic thing. You do this special ritual and then you look in
the mirror and the person you want to see is standing right behind you.”

“You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no,” said Joyce. “I actually saw him. Only for a second, but it was definitely him.”

“I saw my cousin,” put in Linda Starewsky. “She was wearing the same red dress she was wearing the day she died.”

“You mean you can see dead people in the mirror?” asked Jim. “Spirits and things like that?”

“That’s right. It’s called spirit-shining. My aunt showed me how to do it. She can see ghosts and all kinds of different spirits. She saw a Red Indian wonder-worker once, standing in her hallway. She can use a mirror to tell how long people are going to live, too, but she doesn’t like to do it any more. When you look in the mirror you can see the person running round and round the room, and the number of times they run around is the number of years that they’re going to live. She did it with a friend’s son. He ran round the room twenty-two times and then he disappeared.”

“So what’s this ritual?”

“You slice an apple in two and eat half facing east and the other half facing west. Then you kiss the mirror and say,
‘Mirror, mirror, take this kiss; and show me all those ones I miss.’
You cover your eyes with your hands, and then you look in the mirror through your fingers.”

“And that’s when you see the spirit?”

“That’s right. But only in the mirror. If you turn around, there’s nobody there, and that spirit will never appear to you again.”

“I didn’t realize you took this witchcraft thing so seriously.”

“It’s really interesting, and it works. And I only ever do good witchcraft, like curing people’s colds and getting rid of
warts and stopping people from having nightmares. I can do this amazing spell which stops your nose from bleeding, like instantly! But I don’t have anything to do with Satan.”

“You believe in Satan?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t really want to find out. A friend of mine had a beautiful new dress once, and I tried to work this spell so that the dress would vanish from her closet and reappear in mine. But when I started to do it, I smelled an awful burning smell and I saw two red eyes looking at me through the net curtains, and so I stopped. Maybe it wasn’t anything, but it really scared me.”

“Do you think I could do it?” asked Jim.

“What, have somebody’s dress appear in your closet?”

“No, the spirit-shining.”

“You don’t need to, do you? I thought you could see spirits anyhow.”

Jim shook his head. “Not all of them, as it turns out. I don’t think I can see blind spirits, for example.”

“Well, you could see them in the mirror. Joyce’s grandfather was blind, wasn’t he, Joyce?”

Joyce nodded. “He had cataracts when he was really old. He used to ask me to sit on his lap and describe things to him. What the clouds were like, what color the flowers were. He used to call me his Little Pair of Eyes.”

Jim checked his watch. It was time for his next class. He left the girls under the tree and started to walk back toward the Liberal Arts building. As he opened the door to enter it, he was sure that he felt a chilly draft on the back of his neck, and his skin prickled. He turned around but there was nobody there, not even any frosty footsteps on the concrete pathway. He went inside, and the corridors were noisy with jostling students. But he still couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that the icy presence was even closer than ever.

* * *

That evening he drove over to West Hollywood and picked up Karen Goudemark from her mother’s orange-painted house on North Kings Road. Karen was wearing a red hairband and a low-cut white T-shirt and a pair of tight red pants. She was all bounce and brightness and dimples and fresh-washed hair.

Jim had changed into his best blue and yellow Hawaiian shirt but he hadn’t had time to press his chinos. He was also acutely aware that the recent hot weather had caused the sole of his left shoe to start coming unglued.

“You look terrific,” he told Karen, as she climbed into the car. The passenger door closed with an excruciating
grronk
. “You know who you remind me of? Olivia Newton-John in
Grease
. ‘
You’re the one that I want, oo-oo-ooh
!’” He popped his fingers and did a John Travolta dance around the back of the car. The sole of his shoe bent underneath his foot and he lost his balance and fell against Karen’s mother’s mailbox, knocking it sideways at forty-five degrees.