Craig Smith - Cold Rain

When Tubs gave me the ten dollar bill the next morning, he handed me back my business card, too.

It was torn into four pieces. He had had both husband and wife rip it once, just to show me what they thought of my salesmanship. He had promised them he would give the thing back to me, and he was, he told me with the straightest of faces, a man who kept his promises. Of course, after the ceremony of the card ripping, it was only natural that the folks had seen just the car they couldn’t live without. And wouldn’t it teach me a lesson I’d never forget if they bought the thing right on the spot!

It was a lesson I never forgot all right.

My brothers hated Tubs because he was such a righteous old fart who couldn’t tell a lie, but I was the baby. I went out summer after summer to be close to the old man and learn his great wisdom. I even practiced his brand of truth on the lot. I never lied out there, but it was the only virtue I respected. I couldn’t wait to put the tie on and be there with him, to beat him just one time, one month! That was all I wanted, and he taught me how to do it, too, though I never quite pulled it off. I was always second to the old man, and Larry the Liar was somewhere back in the pack, imagining we just told a better story. Tubs showed me that at the bottom of it all the rich and the poor all come down to the same thing: when they want something they get small and greedy and full of fear. You get people to want a thing, and there is no folly they won’t commit in the cause of their desire. Their greatest fear, their only fear really, is that you’re lying. You tell them only the truth and convince them that you never lie, no matter what the personal cost, and they will jump into fire to have what they lust for. That was the secret of Tubs’s greatness.

As the summers passed, I lost the passion that comes with the kill. My soul got farther and farther from the wastelands the more I read the poets. The poets and storytellers of this world lied for the beauty of a good story, lied for the sake of a higher truth, and when I finished reading their tall tales I had a better feeling about what it was to be a human being.

Of course, I also knew that even the greatest of them all would just be another sucker on the car lot. John Keats rises from the dead and lands his skinny ass in DeKalb, Illinois. Poet or not, you’ve got to have a car in DeKalb, so he sneaks up at the back of the lot at closing time to avoid the salespeople, and Tubs is there waiting for him like God.

‘…a wordsmith are you, Johnny? My son’s a poet.

It’s a beautiful life and we need more like you to sing its praises. Now, tell me, and be honest with me, what kind of a car does a poet drive?’

Young Johnny Keats grabs for the antique purse he’s tied to his belt, but it’s too late. The strings are already cut.

I met Molly at a cafe about a week after my suspension. The talk was money and the best way out of some rather complicated property holdings, if it came to divorce. That was my position. As far as Molly was concerned divorce was the only reasonable response to my infidelity.

We added things up, subtracted mortgages, and talked through the most intelligent ways to dissolve our holdings. The problem was the farm. It was Molly’s but she had leveraged a number of loans with it. If my income suddenly stopped, as it was very likely to, we could be caught short. The option was to dip into our retirement accounts or sell off enough at fire sale rates that we could limp along with the other properties until we got our price on the apartment houses.

The best way to handle it really came down to my prospects at the university.

I told Molly I had filed an appeal to my suspension.

That was immediately rejected by the VP, based on what he called ‘accumulating evidence of inappropriate behaviour.’ I had pushed another appeal forward, but it amounted to nothing more than symbolic defiance.

I was getting paid. I had been replaced. No one was going to bring me back into the classroom again until the following semester.

The real issue was the main investigation against me, the charges filed by Denise Conway and Johnna Masterson. The VP had scheduled a hearing to review Affirmative Action’s recommendation for disciplinary action. Comprised of faculty from across campus, the committee would review the evidence and make its recommendation. The VP would then forward this along with his own opinion to the president. While I would have the opportunity to appeal the VP’s finding and even the president’s decision, my best chance, short of court, was at the initial hearing.

How did that look? Molly asked. I ran through a few of the names on the committee. Molly understood what I was saying. I was looking at a stacked deck.

Settling both arms on the table, I told my wife, ‘Gail thinks the best approach is to admit wrongdoing. Given the circumstances, I’d probably get away with nothing more than a letter of censure.’

Molly’s eyes flashed. She was suddenly very interested. ‘What are the circumstances?’

‘They have a copy of Denise Conway’s diary,’ I said.

‘According to it, the affair started before she was a student of mine. Gail thinks if I grovel, really do it up right, talk about the problems in our marriage-’

‘We didn’t have problems in our marriage, David.’

‘And I didn’t have an affair. We’re talking about strategy.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I know you don’t. What I’m saying is if I tell the committee we were having problems and that I started an affair last summer this entire investigation becomes something they can understand. Plus, it ceases to be part of a pattern of behaviour. I get counselling and I’m back in the classroom in January.’

‘What kind of problems are you going to tell them we had?’

‘I don’t know. Problems. It doesn’t matter. If I don’t admit to doing something wrong and give them a convincing reason for it, Gail thinks the committee will be, in her words, “less than sympathetic”.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning the suspension will continue without pay.’

‘Do what your lawyer tells you, David.’

‘It’s a lie, Molly. Everything in that diary.’

Molly shook her head, tears brimming. ‘Don’t do this to me. I don’t want to hear it.’ She tossed her napkin on her plate and reached for her purse. ‘This was a bad idea.’ She stood up and stared down at me with nearly the same ferocity as the night she had pointed her. 22 at me. ‘If we had been having troubles, problems, I could understand what you did. I wouldn’t like it, I might still leave you, but it would be different! I wouldn’t feel so stupid! I wouldn’t stay up nights asking myself why you thought you needed her!’

Up to this point, other than sorrow, my emotions had been in check. I did not consciously decide to let go. I just snapped. She wasn’t the only one losing sleep and asking why, I said.

Molly bristled the moment I raised my voice.

‘Goodbye, David.’

With that, she turned and walked away with absolutely nothing between us resolved. I did not try to stop her. There was no point really.

After the first few days of isolation, I had been able to call Lucy. With her mother’s permission, she had met me for dinner a couple of times. I had gone out to her school to watch a football game with her. We talked about the fall races, the people who had asked about me, and all the usual stuff that comes with belonging to a tightly knit group, such as the people she raced against every weekend.

Lucy was her mother’s daughter, but she was trying not to play favourites. She knew by now I had been charged with sexual harassment by two women and that I was allegedly having an affair with one of them.