You Want More Page 19

  My father pushed me in the direction of the aquarium. Ms. Suber waved and smiled at Glenn Flack’s parents, who were walking in. I said, “Can I go sit in the car?”

  Ms. Suber said, “You stay right here, Mendal.”

  “I might not have been able to go to college like you did, Lola, but I’ve done good for myself,” my father said. I thought one thing only: Lola?

  “I know you have, Lee. I know you’ve done well. And let me be the first to say how proud I am of you, and how I’m sorry if I hurt you, and that I’ve seen you looking in the window when Mendal does his bogus show-and-tells.” She pointed at the window in the door. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson walked in. “I need to start this thing up.”

  My father said to me, “If you want to go sit in the car, go ahead.” He handed me the keys, leaned down, and said, “There’s a beer in the glove compartment, son.”

  Let me say that this was South Carolina in 1968. Although my memory’s not perfect, I think that at the time, neither drinking nor driving was against the law for minors, nor was smoking cigarettes before the age of twelve. Five years later I would drive my mini-bike to the Sunken Gardens, meet one of the black boys twirling trays out in the parking lot, order my eight-pack of Miller ponies, and have it delivered to me without conscience or threat of law.

  I pretended to go into the parking lot but circled around to the outside of Ms. Suber’s classroom. I stood beneath one of the six jalousies, crouched, and listened. Ms. Suber welcomed the parents and said that it was an exciting year. She said something about how all of us would have to take a national test later on to see how we compared with the rest of the nation. She said something about a school play. Ms. Suber warned parents of a looming head-lice epidemic. She paced back and forth and asked everyone to introduce himself or herself. Someone asked if the school would ever sponsor another cake-and-pie sale in order to buy new recorders. My father said he’d be glad to have a potato-salad-and-cole-slaw sale. I didn’t hear the teacher’s answer. From where I crouched I could only look up at the sky and notice how some stars twinkled madly while others shone hard and fast like mica afire.

  BY THE TIME I reached high school, my mother had moved from Nashville to New Orleans and then from New Orleans to Las Vegas. She never made it as a country singer or a blues singer, but she seemed to thrive as a hostess of sorts. As I crouched there beneath a window jutting out above boxwoods, I thought of my mother and imagined what she might be doing at the moment my father was experiencing his first PTA meeting. Was she crooning to conventioneers? Was she sitting in a back room worrying over panty hose? That’s what I thought, I swear to God. Everyone in Ms. Suber’s classroom seemed to be talking with cookies in their mouths. I heard my father laugh hard twice—once when Ms. Suber said she knew that her students saw her as a witch, and another time when she said she knew that her students went home complaining that she didn’t spank exactly the way their parents spanked.

  Again, this was in the middle of the Vietnam War. Spanking made for good soldiers.

  My third-grade teacher said that she didn’t have anything else to say, and told her students’ parents to feel free to call her up should they have questions concerning grades, expectations, or field trips. She said she appreciated anyone who wanted to help chaperone kids or work after school in a tutoring capacity. I stood up and watched my friends’ parents leave single file, my father last in line.

  Fifteen minutes after I’d gotten back in the car, five minutes after everyone else had driven out of the parking lot, I climbed out the passenger side and crept back to Ms. Suber’s window. I expected my father to have Lola Suber in a headlock, or backed up against the Famous Christians of the World corkboard display. I didn’t foresee their having moved desks against the walls in order to make a better dance floor.

  My father held my third-grade teacher in a way I’d seen him hold a woman only once before: one Fourth of July he had danced with my mother in the backyard while the neighbors shot bottle rockets straight up. My mother had placed her head on his shoulder and smiled, her eyes raised to the sky. Lola Suber didn’t look upward. She didn’t smile either. My father seemed to be humming, or talking low. I couldn’t hear exactly what went on, but years later he confessed that he had set forth everything he meant to say and do, everything he hoped she taught the other students and me when it came to matters of passion.

  I did hear Lola Suber remind him that they had broken up because she had decided to have a serious and exclusive relationship with Jesus Christ.

  There amid the boxwoods I hunkered down and thought only about the troubles I might have during future show-and-tells. I stood back up, saw them dancing, and returned to the car. I would let my father open the glove compartment later.

  THE NOVELS OF RAYMOND CARVER

  ONCE I FINALLY GOT TO EXPLAIN THE FAMILY DYNAMICS of my childhood home life back thirty years earlier—I’m talking I started with my first memory of tracking sand into a Myrtle Beach motel room on summer vacation, and ended with my waving an invention covered in flypaper for my father in order to clear dust motes and imaginary speckles from the air the day before I left for good—the magistrate only sentenced me to 180 hours of community service for attempted grave desecration. The security guard and subsequent sheriff’s deputy believed wrongly that I wanted to steal my dead father’s rings, watch, or lucky change he insisted fill his postmortem pants pocket. They didn’t notice my recently deceased mother’s crematory ashes balanced atop the headstone. This was two in the morning on the outer edge of Gruel Cemetery on the first day of spring—a day, traditionally, that my father made Mom and me scrub the entire house with ammonia, then Clorox, then Texize pine cleaner: walls, furniture, appliances, floors, even ceiling. Back when I had an indoor dog named Slick, it was my job to vacuum him every morning before school, every afternoon at feeding time. Slick took to watching the front door endlessly, and finally escaped through the legs of two Mormons one summer day. He never returned.

  “What you’re saying is, your father had a phobia against germs,” Judge Cowart said as I stood before him without a lawyer two weeks after the incident. “There’s a name for that kind of behavior now.” Judge Cowart wasn’t a real judge seeing as magistrates got voted into office, either Democrat or Republican. In real life he owned Gruel Modern Men’s Wear, one of the last businesses on the square to evaporate.

  I said, “Yes sir. And he was plain mean, too.”

  The deputy and graveyard security guard had stood at the other desk to recount their version of events. There was no jury, but the magistrate’s courtroom was packed. My arrest made the weekly Forty-Five Platter newspaper, the next town over. The deputy, a boy I grew up with, named Les Miles, pretty much went over everything that happened in his life on up to taking me to the Graywood County Detention Center. I think Les liked having such a large audience.

  Say “Les Miles” real fast. It’s one of those names like Mike Weir. Or Derrick Rapp. Ben Dover. Mike Hunt. I hadn’t noticed growing up that maybe it built up inside him so much that his only options in life appeared to be cop, professional gambler, or sad mime.

  Judge Cowart said to the deputy and security guard, “What you’re saying is, he only got a good two feet down in one spot. It wasn’t like he popped chalk down and dug up the entire site.”

  “We measured it out to be a two-foot-by-two-foot piece of sod,” said the security guard, an older man named Niblock who moved down to Gruel from somewhere in Pennsylvania with his wife in order to semi-retire. I couldn’t imagine how bad his life must’ve been up there to make such a drastic choice. “I keep a measuring tape on my belt at all times,” he said. “Sometimes I get time to build bluebird houses up in the office during my shift.”

  I remained seated until the magistrate asked if I would like to question either man. I stood up and said, “Everything they’ve said is true,” which brought about a massive gasp from the pewed spectators, followed by accusations of my being a Satan worshipper and ungrateful son. I sai
d, “All of that is true, but it was for a good, moral, spiritual, ethical, bighearted reason.” I had practiced my speech ever since posting bail.

  Judge Cowart said, “Let’s hear your side of things. Go ahead and loosen that one hundred percent silk tie bought over at Gruel Modern Men’s Wear on the historic square, unbutton your Botany 500 sport jacket, and let all us in on what’s of a higher purpose.”

  Of course I wasn’t about to say that I wanted to pour my mother’s ashes into my father’s grave so that he would have to live forever covered in a fine dust. No, I went through my daddy’s stories of germ-free insistence, how he one time covered the entire exterior of our brick house in Saran Wrap. I told the judge, cop, guard, and seated guests about the times my father installed window fans in every room, blowing out, until our electric bill from Duke Power came in at over four hundred in 1968 dollars. None of these stories were false or exaggerated. I offered midstream to take a lie detector. Some time after I left Gruel for good my father got it in his mind that Mom’s skin peeled off microscopically in their bed, and he bought a neoprene diver’s suit for her to either wear at night with him or sleep in the guest bedroom with the door closed. He’d gone so far as hanging transom-to-floor thick clear plastic flaps at every entranceway in the house—the kind usually found in warehouses, drive-through car washes, and between where a butcher cuts his loins and meets the public in case he needed to hole up by himself.

  Judge Cowart finally said, “This is all very interesting in a woe-is-me kind of way, Mr. Cary. I’ll give you exactly two minutes to find a point.”

  In retrospect I think I should’ve requested a jury. Swaying the gawkers wouldn’t matter, I supposed, but I followed through with my plan. “My father got electrocuted while trying to rewire a central heat and air system backwards so it sucked dust out of his living space. That happened some fifteen years ago. My mother believed that caskets and funeral plots cost too much money, and she requested to be cremated. I followed through with her desire. On the night that I got arrested in Gruel Cemetery, I only wanted to pour her ashes on top of my father’s final resting place. I knew that they needed and wanted to be together. Nothing else. She had already sold the plot directly next to Dad. That’s it.”

  Luckily no one called me on the lie detector test; the final section of my defense—and I got my voice to crack a few times—was not quite as sentimental or melodramatic as the truth, like I said. I really only wanted to envelop my father so he’d be bothered and distracted for eternity.

  I’m pretty sure that I heard more than a few women behind me go, “Ahhh,” like that. Judge Cowart wrinkled his brow and looked at Les Miles and Mr. Niblock. They shrugged in unison. “Well. I got to say I have no precedent to work with. I believe you, Mr. Cary. But we, as a democratic society, can’t allow people to take up shovels at their whim.” He went on and on, said something about both King Tut and the remains of Confederate soldiers trapped inside the Hunley submarine, banged his gavel, and gave me community service.

  I should mention that I came back to Gruel completely alone, that no woman will ever marry me. My first name’s Ellis, so it comes out one of those names like Les Miles, Mike Hunt, all the rest. It’s an old-fashioned South, and exactly zero women want to be called Mrs. Ellis Cary, wife of a desecrater. I’d have a worse chance in a land of Cockney women. At least that’s what I’ve always told everyone.

  IT TOOK MY English department chairman four semesters to completely understand my great scam, a series of sophomore-level courses approved by a six-person curriculum committee, then approved by the stupid dean, a clutch of hands-on busybody trustees, and the president of the college. For all I know our state legislators and governor, too, thought it utterly fantastic and unselfish of me to teach five classes per semester while my colleagues took on only four.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Donna Mickel, a Faulkner scholar who got a master’s degree from Clemson and doctorate from the University of Alabama, said to me more than once. She’d been at Anders College since its 1975 inception as a state institution. “Some of us kind of wish you’d slack up, Ellis. You’re making us look bad.” Donna Mickel liked to tell a story about how she almost had a paper accepted one time in College Writing, College Reading! It was a section of her dissertation entitled “William Faulkner, Closet Merchant Seaman: The Feminist and Oceanic Politics in the Collected Stories.” Then Donna Mickel gave up altogether, and took up the clarinet.

  What else could I ever say to her but, “These first-generation students need to know”? “Call me obsessed, but there are works of literature that I think will only make them stronger citizens, no matter what fields of expertise they choose later on in life.”

  My ex-department chairman once said—I swear to God—“One of the best classes I took in graduate school was the novels of O. Henry. I wouldn’t mind teaching it myself if anyone else could take over my Hardy Boys and Postmodernism course.” Dr. Blocker went to one of those Ph.D.-by-mail outfits. “I got to tell you, Ellis, we’re happy and proud to have you on the faculty here. Keep up the good work.”

  The first-generation students got it, though: They knew that my made-up course in the nonexistent novels of Raymond Carver meant that they would have nothing to read, that they would have no major papers. They showed up faster than Eskimos at a handwarmer giveaway. What started out as my teaching only one Ray Carver’s novels class and four sections of English 101 ended up being five identical courses, each jammed with thirty students. I handed out blank sheets of typing paper for my syllabus.

  “Your students really love the Raymond Carver novels class,” every one of my colleagues told me during the course of each semester. “I wouldn’t mind sitting in on it myself.”

  I didn’t fear that ever happening as much as I feared some pinhead real scholar finding a Raymond Carver novel locked up inside a Syracuse, Iowa City, and/or Port Angeles basement, of the treasure being reported in USA Today or on Entertainment Tonight—how the very first novel ever of Raymond Carver was found by a snooping grad student, and a bidding war continued between publishing houses up in New York. Then I’d have to admit how I met with my students during their Monday-Wednesday-Friday or Tuesday-Thursday sessions and we basically talked about real-life problems concerning love and hate, conformity and rebellion, innocence and experience—the regular themes in all of Carver’s short stories. I’d have to admit that although I urged my students to read all of the writer’s stories, I never tested them, or offered up themes, or graded a paper over a two-year period. Everyone made an A as long as they showed up for class. It had been my contention long before that grades didn’t matter in the history of the universe.

  “It has come to my attention that you haven’t actually taught any of Raymond Carver’s novels since developing the course,” Dr. Blocker finally said. “Could you explain this to me?”

  We sat in my office. I turned off my computer so he couldn’t read the screen where I was writing up another set of fake courses on the novels of Ring Lardner. I looked out the window at two of my students trying to catch a Frisbee in their mouths. One of them, I knew, would grow up to be an administrator. I said, “What are you talking about?”

  “I think you know what I’m talking about. I was going over our majors’ exit questionnaires, and more than a few of them mentioned how they learned more about life in your class than any other, even though there was nothing to read.” I should mention that I already knew that my mother was dying, that her oncologist’s prognosis was for her to be gone in three months tops, and that I would probably have to ask for a leave of absence in order to tend to her limited estate. So it wasn’t like I was brave or anything when I said, “You fucking idiot—Raymond Carver wrote zero novels. If you people here knew anything whatsoever, you’d know that when I made up the course it was only a joke. I thought for sure somebody would say, ‘Hey, that’s funny, Ellis Cary—that would be like teaching a course called the Poetry of Ronald Reagan.’”

  Dr. Bloc
ker sat forward. “Well, as a matter of fact, I brought this up with Dr. Mickel and she said that it would be like teaching the poetry of William Faulkner.”

  I didn’t say, “You bunch of fucking morons, Faulkner’s first book was poetry.” No, I said, “Listen. Let me tell you about my father.” I went into everything, exactly as I would have to do soon thereafter with Judge Cowart, from Myrtle Beach motel sand in the carpet to the giant flypaper swatter catching microbes in the air. Then I said, “In some kind of genetic bad luck, I am highly allergic and fearful to chalk dust. Y’all are lucky that I haven’t sued the college for workmen’s comp, or for not establishing a safe workplace for the handicapped. Anyway, I made up the Carver course because I knew it would keep me from having to write on the chalkboard, thus saving my life.”

  Dr. Blocker leaned back in his chair. “I’m going to have to fire you for insubordination. There’s an insubordination clause in your contract. I can only classify you as being insubordinate.”

  I said, “Nancy Drew wouldn’t have had anything to do with the Hardy Boys, in case you’re interested. Now, she was postmodern.”

  I trashed everything in my computer, outside of a little song I’d written about the English department, and boxed up my books, and left town. My mother died within the week, but not before telling me that she wished to be cremated and scattered in places that I thought she’d be most beneficial.

  MY COMMUNITY SERVICE involved literally painting the town red: fire hydrants on the square, two brick alleyways, the base of Colonel Dill’s statue across from Victor Dees’s Army-Navy Surplus, a wooden house on Old Greenville Road where, supposedly, Jefferson Davis slept while his troops got massacred in a variety of fields to the northeast. Get this: My parole officer was a kid named Buck Hammond who underwent my first Novels of Raymond Carver class two years earlier. I met with young Buck and said, “I take it you’re familiar with what went on in court.”