Victor Gischler - The Pistol Poets

The class shook its collective head, mumbled ignorance.

“Never mind. Let’s get on with it. Tammy, read us your poem.”

A thin girl, sandals with socks, dishwater hair, and no makeup. “It’s called ‘The Aftertaste of Love.’ ” She stood and cleared her throat, read from a pink sheet of paper. “How he clings, like the orange dust from cheese puffs. How he screams the silent, dog-whistle need of his generation. But nobody hears…”

Ah. It was as Morgan thought. God had started punishing him already.

Morgan closed his office door. It had been a long morning. He switched on the radio, then rummaged his desk drawers. The radio announcer spit out the local news, then switched to the weather. Mild for most of the week, but winter’s last hurrah gathered up north and west in Colorado. A cold front. It threatened to slide south by the weekend and dust Green County with a few flakes.

Morgan found what he was looking for in the bottom drawer. A flask of Jim Beam. Not his usual poison, but it would do in a pinch. He unscrewed the cap and took a long swig. The familiar warmth again in his belly. Morgan decided that not only had he officially fallen off the wagon, but that the wagon had also backed over him and parked on his head.

He took another swig.

The phone rang in midswig, startled him. A mouthful of booze spilled down his chin. He grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“Morgan? It’s Dean Whittaker.”

Morgan sat up straight. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Good news, Morgan. Lots of press going to be there all the way from Tulsa and Oklahoma City. We pulled some strings. Going to be great press for the university.”

“Uh…”

“Also, we have the honors college assigning the poetry reading as mandatory extra credit for their freshman composition and humanities classes. I know these sorts of events aren’t generally well attended, but we want to put our best foot forward, eh? I think we can fill up the whole damn auditorium.”

“That’s fifteen hundred seats.”

“Well, the press, faculty, most of the administration, the graduate students from the writing program, the usual collection of community art-fags-you didn’t hear me say that-and about a thousand freshmen. I know most eighteen-year-olds don’t usually go in for this sort of thing, but the seats will be filled and it’ll look good. That’s what counts. The eyes of the entire university will be on this show. Exciting, isn’t it?”

“Sure.” Morgan found his hand reaching for the Jim Beam.

“You are going to put on a good show for us, aren’t you, Morgan?”

Morgan cleared his throat, picked his words carefully. “I promise a professional reading with excellent and innovative poetry.”

“Right,” Whittaker said. “Just so long as we get the right message across. You know what I mean.” He said good-bye and hung up.

Morgan drank whiskey, rubbed his eyes. He thought about Ginny. Maybe he should call her. He was surprised to wish he could be with her. She had a soothing effect. She’d been right. People who have a secret together need each other. He picked up the phone, put it back down again. No, she might still be with her parents, and Morgan didn’t have the spine right now to explain himself.

He called Sherman Ellis at home. The phone rang and rang.

Morgan hung up, bit his thumbnail.

Morgan’s phone rang and made him jump. He grabbed for it quickly. Maybe Ellis had *69 and was ringing him back. “Hello? Hello?”

“Take it easy, Professor,” Fred Jones said. “You sound like you just ran a mile.”

“I’m really pretty busy right now, Mr. Jones.”

“Busy my ass. I have four new poems, and we have an appointment.”

Morgan rubbed the bridge of his nose, bit off the first reply, and took a deep breath before saying, “You know, Mr. Jones, part of any good poet’s education is to accumulate a myriad of poetry experiences. There’s a poetry reading on campus tonight. It might be a good experience to give your own work a rest and go hear some other readers.”

“Quit jerking me off.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. But seriously, there’s a guy on campus maybe you could talk to. A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.”

Jones went quiet on his end for a moment, then said, “Who?”

Morgan told Jones how to find Valentine’s office. The image of the two strange old men amused Morgan. Let them drive each other nuts. The thought made his mouth twist up in a grin. It had been a long time since anything had made Morgan smile. His face muscles weren’t used to it. It almost cracked his face in half.

DelPrego was sweating hard. The thermostat in the dingy little farmhouse seemed to be stuck on the ultrahell setting.

And the farmhouse was full of black guys with guns. They all seemed pissed off. DelPrego sat in a corner, tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. The sweat poured down his back, formed under his armpits, and dripped. The thick bandages on his face were heavy and damp, clung sticky to his face with somebody else’s blood and grime.

Duncan had gone to the kitchen with a black man in an expensive yellow suit. It was evident the man in yellow was in charge. He had the hard eyes and easy, cheerless grin of a man used to getting what he wants.

DelPrego’s eyes shifted toward the door. It was agonizingly close, but he was too scared to bolt. Maybe if he simply stood and strolled out like it was no big deal, they’d ignore him. Or maybe they wouldn’t.

The drive in Duncan’s truck had been nerve-wracking. Duncan had held the shotgun loosely in his lap. DelPrego had thought about grabbing it or leaping from the truck at full speed or a number of other things that ultimately all seemed like bad, bad ideas which would make him horribly, horribly dead.

He waited, closed his eyes. When he opened them again nothing had changed. He was still in a world of shit.

Red Zach sat at the kitchen table and drank Moses Duncan’s coffee from a Rebel flag mug. He paged through a J. Crew catalog and wondered how he’d look in a turtleneck. Something subdued. A nice taupe maybe. He liked earth tones. He was supposed to visit his mom at Easter, and he couldn’t go dressed up like no Huggy Bear motherfucker from Starsky & Hutch.

Duncan entered the kitchen, sat at the table across from Zach.

“Maurice saw Jenks on campus,” Zach said.

“Did he get him?” Duncan asked.

Zach sipped coffee, shook his head. “By the time he turned the car around, he’d lost track of him. But we think he must be hiding out someplace at the university. Maybe in somebody’s dorm.”

Duncan shook his head. “Don’t make no sense. If he knows you’re hot on his trail, why don’t he just leave town?”

“I didn’t ask for your peckerwood opinion, but I’ll explain. There’s only five roads out of this town, and I got them all watched. He’s got no car and no money and the next closest town is thirty-five miles. No, he’s tucked in someplace, lying low. You’re going to find him.”

“Me?”

“You deaf or something? You think a gang of brothers can roam your cracker campus without attracting some attention?”

“Eddie looks like a damn freak. You don’t think he’ll attract attention?”

“Good point,” Zach said. “You go by yourself.”

“Great.”

“Go tell your boy you’re taking a field trip.”

“Right.” Duncan left the table.

Zach waved Maurice over. The man stood straight as a blade, hands folded in front of him. “What’s the word, Red?”

“Follow that redneck. Make sure he’s obeying orders.”

“And if he tries to take it on the road?”

Zach’s face stretched into one of his trademark, evil grins. “Pull the plug on his sorry ass.”