Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

“Man, hurry and kick the mudscrapers with your great hobnailed boots and find the one that sounds A flat.”

When I sat down at the breakfast table today, my wife had the morning newspaper folded beside my plate as she always did. I took a sip of coffee, then opened the paper to the first page and got the shock of my life. There, staring back at me, was a picture of Elmer Sesler. I read the accompanying article and couldn’t keep from laughing.

“What’s so funny?” my wife asked.

“It’s a long story, honey. It began twenty years ago.” Then I told her about Elmer Sesler...

I was a freshman in high school when the Seslers moved in next door. There was just Elmer, who was my age, and his parents. His father, who was a minor executive with an insurance company, had been transferred to our city to work in the local office.

Elmer had stood out immediately, and not because of his jug-handle ears or freckled face. He had his own car. Few seniors had cars, but here was a lowly freshman who not only had a car, he had one that was almost new. A couple of guys tried to throw sour grapes on the situation by saying the car was probably his father’s, but I put a stop to that.

“His father drives this year’s model,” I said. “That one’s his, all right.”

If anyone was unconvinced, Elmer’s actions soon convinced them. He began to take the car apart. One day he’d arrive at school with the hood and trunk lid missing; the next day the doors might be gone. After the first few days, no one ever saw that car completely assembled again. The car had to be his. No one could get away with treating his father’s car that way.

On evenings and weekends I’d look across the hedge that divided our back yards and see him tinkering with his car or working on something else in his garage. He had a workbench set up and far more tools than I could name. One time he had his car’s engine completely disassembled and scattered across the ground with each separate part resting on a piece of clean newspaper. Other times he was hovering over an old TV and a vacuum cleaner he had spread out on his workbench. He seemed to have an insatiable curiosity and a genuine talent for taking things apart.

If it hadn’t been for his car, however, he’d have been a social failure. He had all the tact of a kick in the teeth. He always ignored me when he saw me watching him, even though he must have recognized me from school where we had several classes together. Finally I spoke to him, and he walked over to the hedge.

“Yes?” he said in a flat tone.

“I’m Bill Ford,” I said, reaching across the hedge to shake hands.

He ignored my hand and kept a level stare on me until I pulled my arm back in confusion.

“Just because we’re neighbors doesn’t mean you can ride to school in my car,” he said.

“Who said anything about riding to school in your car?” I demanded. “I didn’t say anything about your old car, or about riding in it.”

“No, but you were thinking about it,” he said.

He turned his back on me and returned to the garage where he had a washing machine torn apart on the cement floor.

I stood there for several minutes, shaking with anger. My fury was all the more intense because he’d been right. I had been thinking about how convenient it would be to have a ride to school, instead of having to walk the fifteen blocks every morning.

It turned out I wasn’t the only one he accused of having designs on his car. He accused almost everyone, but apparently I was the only one who hated him for it. Perhaps because he was wrong about them, the other kids at school were able to laugh it off, while I resented having my mind read.

From then on I belittled everything Elmer Sesler did, and never passed up a chance to attack him verbally. Though everyone else seemed to consider him some kind of budding, eccentric genius, I made it clear I thought he was just a lunatic.

“He might even be dangerous, the way he thinks everyone is trying to use him,” I said. “Just because he can take things apart doesn’t mean he’s a genius. I see him in his back yard every day, and half the stuff he tears into never does get back together. Take his car, for example — it doesn’t look or run as well as it did before he started messing with it.”

Nothing I said, though, had any effect. As far as the other students were concerned, Elmer Sesler was going to be famous someday. He was voted the most likely freshman to succeed, while I was given the wet blanket award.

Then, after that one year, Elmer’s father was transferred to another city, and I never saw or heard of Elmer again...

“So what was so funny in the newspaper?” my wife asked. “Did he invent something?”

“No, he didn’t invent anything,” I said, “and I guess it’s really not very funny. Elmer Sesler murdered his wife. The police found her body in Chicago, and Detroit, and Cleveland, and Buffalo.”

Jerome Kotter looked like a cat. However, this did not bring him any undue attention from his schoolmates since almost all of them had an unusual quality or two. Beverly Baumgartner had a laugh like a horse. Bart Hansen was as rotund as an elephant. Carla Seaver’s long neck resembled that of a giraffe. And Randy Ramsbottom always smelled remarkably like a dog on a rainy day.

The only person who worried about Jerome’s unusual appearance was his father, who quietly set about arming his son to face a world in which he was a bit different. He taught Jerome gentle manners, assuring him that no matter how different he looked he would always get along fine if he acted right. He taught him to recite all the verses of The Star-Spangled Banner by heart. He encouraged him to read the Bible. And he taught him to sing the songs from the best-known Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. He felt Jerome was well equipped to face the world.

When Jerome got to high school he became the greatest track star that Quigley High had ever produced, although he had to be careful because the coaches from rival schools cried foul when Jerome resorted to running on all fours.

Altogether, Jerome’s school years would have been quite happy — if it hadn’t been for Benny Rhoades.

Whereas Jerome was tall, polite, studious, and well-groomed with silken fur and sparkling whiskers, Benny was wizened, unkempt, rude, and sly. His face was pinched and pointed and his hair stuck up in uneven wisps. He hated anyone who excelled him in anything. Almost everybody excelled him in everything, and since Jerome surpassed him in the one thing he did do fairly well — running — he hated Jerome most of all. When Jerome took away his title of champion runner of Quigley High, Benny vowed he would get even if it took him the rest of his life.

One of Benny’s favorite harassments was to tread on Jerome’s tail in study hall, causing him to yeowl and thereby incurring the wrath of the monitor. Benny tweaked Jerome’s whiskers and poured honey in his fur. He did everything he could think of to make Jerome’s life miserable.

When it came to Benny Rhoades, Jerome found it hard to follow the admonitions of his father — that he should love his enemies and do good even to those who used him spitefully. He looked forward to the day when he would finish school and get away, for he had to admit in his heart that he loathed the odious Benny. It rancored him to think that Benny was the only person who could make him lose his composure and caterwaul in public, thus making people notice that, despite his suave manner and intellectual conversation, he was a bit different. To keep his temper he took to declaiming The Star-Spangled Banner or passages from the Bible. Once he got all the way through the “begats” in Genesis before he took hold of himself and regained his composure.