Tomcat in Love (34 page)

Peculiar, is it not, how the mind works?

Over the years that twisted old apple tree had kept growing in my memory, magnifying itself as the objects of youth often do. And yet, now, in the graying bleakness of my middle age, the tree struck me as scrawny and forlorn and laughable. It held no magic. It meant nothing. It was a tree.

Only two incidents stand out during those empty days in Owago. I bumped into Faith Graffenteen. I became Captain Nineteen.

Faith comes first.

I had last seen her at my high school graduation ceremony, or in that approximate period, but in memory I had carried her through the years as a skinny, hawk-faced, horny little twelve-year-old. Unlike the old apple tree, Faith’s growth had been stunted in my head, fast-frozen at that moment when she approached me in my front yard, bent back my thumb, and demanded that I kiss her. (How could I forget? The consequences vis-à-vis Lorna Sue had been considerable. Beyond that, the incident had established a fundamental pattern of my life: i.e., confusion of the romantic and the martial arts.)

All considered, Faith had changed very little—still slim, still tough, still predatory. Predictably enough, she had married a solid, stouthearted, and extremely well-off physician, who had provided
her with three children and a fancy glass-sided house on Lake Owago. Among her kids, as it turned out, was none other than the precocious young Evelyn, and it was this happenstance that brought about our reunion. Little Evelyn, it seems, had taken to muttering a phrase or two from Shakespeare at the dinner table; her mother could not wholly appreciate the fact that her talented, well-schooled four-year-old had mastered portions of Lady Macbeth’s famous “Out, damned spot” soliloquy.

Things began, in other words, on a sour note. I cannot report that Faith actually “stormed” into my classroom on that blustery Monday morning, but it is certainly true that her demeanor was far from friendly.

A few seconds elapsed before we recognized each other.

“You,” she grunted. “It figures.”

The subsequent conversation need not be transcribed in all its minutiae. Suffice it to say that Faith stuck to her guns, I to mine, and that the dispute eventually reached arbitration in the offices of Miss Askold Wick.

I took the high ground.

“In
this
classroom,” I declared vehemently, “there will be no tampering with art, certainly no butchery at the whim of a tone-deaf housewife.” I gave Faith a contemptuous stare. “What would you prefer—‘Out, yucky spot?’ ”

“Let’s not get rude,” said Miss Wick, who nonetheless eyed me with a shy hint of admiration. (Sterling woman. Paunchy. Wart trouble.) “Anyway, we’re talking about four-year-olds.”

“Indeed so,” I rallied. “All the more reason to set an example.”

“Oh, come on,” said Faith. “Just change one tiny word.” She frowned. “Darn spot? Darn, stupid spot?”

“Ha!” I said.

“Ha yourself. This is a
day
care center, not some theater for foulmouths.”

I smiled menacingly. “Profanity is hardly the issue. You don’t hear
me
suggesting ‘Out, cocksucking spot.’ ”

The debate thus ebbed and flowed.

Acrimony at times. Barbarism up against enlightenment,
censorship versus tutorial liberty. In the end, however, we hammered out a covenant by which I agreed to locate less formidable texts for my students. The compromise, I admit, left a painful splinter in my soul—give away Shakespeare, you give away the crown jewels—yet I had managed to salvage, at least to a degree, the principle of academic self-determination. This alone seemed a victory worth celebrating, and as Faith and I exited Miss Wick’s office, I issued a cheerful invitation to seal our truce over a drink or two.

Faith begged off.

“Not in a million years,” she said, and drilled me with antipathy. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you sucked on my nose that day.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Oh, you
did
. Disgusting then, disgusting now. Just stay away from my Evelyn.”
^*

Not a week later I debuted as Captain Nineteen.

This was occasioned, as such things often are, by a series of complex and coincidental circumstances, one of those unpredictable chain reactions that, for want of inspiration, Thomas Jefferson once referred to—altogether feebly—as “the course of human events.” (Spades are spades. I do not kowtow to celebrity.) Fittingly enough, it began with the precocious young Evelyn. A day or so after my encounter with Faith, near the end of our morning rest period, the tot crawled up on my lap, tugged at my ear, and said, “He’s dead.”

“Dead?” I said.

“Captain Nineteen. And it makes me pretty sad.”

The name did not ring a bell. I did my best, therefore, to
redirect our conversation toward more elevated topics, but young Evelyn, being the independent woman-in-the-making that she was, refused to take the rein. “A spaceship wreck,” she said. “Captain Nineteen got squashed and he’s dead like a bug and I don’t
like
it. I almost cried once.” She eyed me. “Maybe I will now.”

“Please don’t,” I said.

“I
feel like
it
.
”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “I am pleading with you.” I rearranged her on my lap, pried her stubby, tenacious fingers from my ear. “Very well. Who is this unfortunate captain?”

“Nineteen!” she said. “Captain Nineteen.”

“Yes?”

My bereft little tutee looked at me as if I had been born only yesterday. She had the knack, like most of her gender, for underscoring my inadequacies. (Where do women pick up these tactics? The genetic code? A secret pamphlet?)

“He just
is
who he
is
,” Evelyn said brusquely. “His spaceship crashed. And he’s dead. And I want him
back.
”

“Well, I’m very sure we all do,” I told her. “But if the man is no longer—”

“You.”

“Me?”

The tot’s posture stiffened.

“Once in every century,” she intoned slowly, “there is born into this universe a special man. With the strength of Atlas. The wisdom of Solomon. The courage of a lion.” She eyed me, then saluted. “You are that man.
You
are Captain Nineteen. Today’s man of the future.”

I could not help but marvel.

The girl’s diction and tone of voice had taken on the properties of a movie preview.

At the noon hour that day I happened to mention the incident to Miss Askold Wick, headmistress and chief administrator, who brought me up to date on the comings and goings of Captain Nineteen, alias Hans Hanson. The man had perished not in a spaceship but in a 1996 Lincoln Town Car: a head-on collision along
Highway 16. For many years, Miss Wick informed me, the now defunct Mr. Hanson—a local jeweler by trade—had hosted an afternoon television program for children, a mishmash medley of cartoons and live talent and ancient Hopalong Cassidy films. The program was broadcast over Owago’s community access channel, number nineteen on the dial, hence the dead captain’s seemingly random moniker. “A tragedy,” said Miss Askold Wick. “Hans was a real … He was someone special.”

I looked up with interest. “Handsome, was he?”

“Maybe. I suppose.”

“Dashing? Debonair?”

“Well, he did have—”

“Your lover, perhaps?”

Miss Wick blushed. “The man was
married
!”

“Ah,” I murmured, and seized her hand. “Unhappily, I am sure.”

Privately, though, my thoughts had now locked upon Captain Nineteen. A kindred spirit, I realized instantly. Who on this earth might have guessed that my doppelgänger, my spiritual twin, would take the form of a small-town jeweler and weary space traveler? (A small world, obviously, for it was in Mr. Hanson’s downtown store that I had recently purchased an engagement ring that weighed as heavily upon my mind as on my depleted pocketbook.)

After work that day, I made a point of switching on Mrs. Kooshof’s twenty-five-inch RCA, fluffing up a pillow, and sitting back to enjoy a rerun of
The Captain Nineteen Show
. Impressive. Very. The late Mr. Hanson, not unlike myself, was a man of conspicuous command presence, rugged and flinty, exceptionally well groomed, with a piercing military gaze that both disciplined and mesmerized his rowdy studio audience (aptly dubbed “the crew”—children of age six and under). The man had plainly seen much of the world; he ran a tight ship; he did not once abuse the word
hopefully
. On the downside, of course, the show’s production values fell far below network standard: an obsolete, altogether seedy spaceship set; a control panel in dire need of updating from analog to digital; a uniform that brought
to mind the apparel of a refrigerator repairman, hardly that of a seasoned mariner to the stars.

Still, this was community access television, and I gave credit where credit was due. Rarely boring. Riveting in spots.
^*
During the first few seconds, in a pretaped introductory segment, I soon discovered the source of young Evelyn’s oddly portentous oration that morning. As Captain Nineteen gazed resolutely toward the outer galaxies, a beautifully modulated male voice (Hans himself, I assumed) intoned more or less the words that Evelyn had used with me: “Once in every century,” et cetera. Granted, the girl had botched the language in spots
^†
—which is par from the ladies’ tee
^‡
—but at the same time Evelyn had rather eerily captured the gist of it. I felt a chill, in fact, as the introductory footage rose to its climax: “
You
are that chosen individual. [Orchestral punctuation.]
You
are Captain Nineteen—today’s man of the future.”

I felt called to duty.

It struck me—forcefully, in fact—that Captain Nineteen was just the sort of person who could comprehend the military implications of vengeance, a man who might very well stash a bomb or two in his garage. I turned up the volume.

A half hour later Mrs. Robert Kooshof trudged in with a crate of
clay flowerpots. Much to my irritation, she ignored the televised proceedings, prattling on about her new business venture.

Eventually I was compelled to wave a hand.

“If you don’t mind,” I said sharply, “I’m assessing my
own
career prospects. I would very much appreciate your silent support.”

Mrs. Kooshof glanced at the screen, upon which Captain Nineteen’s steely visage had only that moment reappeared.

“Hans?” she said. “I don’t follow. He’s dead.”

“Dead, indeed. Which is precisely the point. I have been asked to replace him.”

“You?”

“None other,” said I.

“But I don’t … You mean somebody down at the station …?”

“Not quite. The possibility was suggested by a member of his crew. The shaveling Evelyn.”

Mrs. Kooshof’s laughter was loud and prolonged, a sequence of outrageous squeals that totally eclipsed Captain Nineteen’s brief interview with a member of his crew.

“I see no humor in this,” I said acidly.

“
You
? Captain Nineteen?”

“Just an option,” I told her, although in truth I had already cooled on the idea. (The one thing Thomas Chippering cannot abide is ridicule.)

Wistfully, I sighed and switched off the television set.

Pity, I thought.

Thus I dismissed the whole notion.

Gave up, in other words.

Over the next day or two I brushed aside Evelyn’s inquiries regarding my future as Captain Nineteen. Out of the question, I told her.

In my heart, however, I felt like a dupe to orthodoxy. I trudged through my day care duties, limped home in midafternoon, collapsed on the sofa, lay watching Captain Nineteen reruns with dull
eyes and dull spirit. Today’s man of the future, I would think, and then I would laugh aloud at my own cowardice.

In retrospect, I now realize, these were symptoms of a larger, more dangerous malaise. The events of recent months were clawing at me, compressing my heart with the relentless G-forces of sorrow. Late one night I found myself sitting in the garage, holding a lighted match, talking to my bombs as if they were living creatures. Lorna Sue’s face seemed to bob before me. “I
loved
you!” I yelled.

Later I yelled, “Where
are
you?”

I smiled and swallowed the match.

In the end, it was one of those random, unexpected incidents of life that gusted up out of the blue to rescue me from the spiritual doldrums. One moment my ship was becalmed, the next I was unleashing the lifeboats.

And if not for the sly, persistent Evelyn, a whole fascinating chapter of my life would have surely been stillborn. (I have discovered through trial and error, primarily the latter, that none of us stands at the helm of life’s great ocean liner; control is an illusion; destination itself is a pitiful chimera; we are at best mere passengers aboard a drifting vessel, some of us in steerage, some in first class, all at the whim of a ghostly crew and passing icebergs.)

The initial circumstances were hardly extraordinary. As was her custom, the affectionate little Evelyn had crawled up on my lap at the beginning of rest period one Wednesday morning, squirming and tugging at my hair and otherwise misbehaving in the most outrageous ways. Eventually I was compelled to insist that she join her classmates on the floor. (Each student was required to have a bath towel on hand for just this daily ritual.) Young Evelyn, however, took poorly to discipline. Fists clenched, her tonsils suddenly in plain view, the little hellcat responded with what can only be called a classic temper tantrum. The decibels were astonishing.

Through all this commotion, and much more, I stood my ground. Even with Evelyn adhering to me like a vicious she-crab, I pushed to my feet and managed to unroll her lavender bath towel.

“I won’t
do
it!” she cried, and took a firm new grip on my hair. “I don’t
like
the floor!”

“You
will
do it!” I roared back.

And so on.

Oddly, if only for a passing moment, I found myself revisiting two or three identical struggles with Lorna Sue, in particular those occasions when I had attempted to affirm my connubial rights and privileges. Lorna Sue, for better or worse, was never one for spontaneity. “I don’t
like
the floor!” et cetera.