Victor Gischler - The Pistol Poets

It was Maurice on the other end. He sounded strange, weak, like maybe it was a bad connection. Maurice told him to get a pencil. Zach wrote the words Albatross Hall on a paper napkin. A building at the school.

“What is it?” Zach asked. “Dormitory or something?”

Nothing.

“Maurice?” Zach looked at the cell phone’s display, made sure he still had battery power. “Maurice, you there?”

Must have lost reception, thought Zach. That happened too often with these cell phones. Hit a dead patch and everything goes quiet.

Morgan drank another martini, then walked out of the tavern and into the blizzard. Snow flew sideways, stung his face. He walked across the street bent almost in half against the wind. This was bullshit.

The snow was ankle deep, seeped into his socks. The lampposts along the main sidewalk were fuzzy blurs of light in the driving snow. It took fifteen minutes to trudge to the auditorium, a trip that usually took five. Morgan had to keep stopping and looking around to make sure he hadn’t taken a wrong turn. The campus looked unearthly and strange in the whirling mix of snow and pale lamplight.

They’ll cancel the reading , thought Morgan. How can they not? A sudden, unexpected, freak blizzard. The roads would be a mess. He had heard, in fact, a siren in the distance. Emergency services would be caught back on its heels. Nobody would risk the roads for poetry. Nobody would know Ellis had never even shown.

He finally made the auditorium and ducked into the lobby, stomping his feet and huffing for air. His vodka breath burned up his throat and out of his mouth in a toxic cloud.

He heard the crowd. Morgan cracked the door to the auditorium, peeked inside. The seats were filled. He scanned the throng. Professors and administrators in the front two rows. Bored students packed the rest of the place, chatting among themselves. A paper airplane sailed from the back row. A guy in a university sweatshirt leapt up from his seat and snatched it out of the air to the scattered applause of the adjacent rows.

The freshmen. Morgan remembered what Dean Whittaker had said about filling the seats with honor school freshmen. They’d only had to come from the dorms, didn’t need to drive or hunt for a parking space.

Jesus Christ Almighty. Morgan was well and truly fucked. A crowded auditorium and no Ellis. Morgan belched, tasted vodka, felt slightly dizzy.

He had to do something. The dean and the rest of the administration were expecting something special.

Well, fuck them. Morgan hiccuped. It wasn’t his goddamn fault Sherman Ellis was missing in action. What was he? A miracle worker? He couldn’t find a kid who’d disappeared off the fucking planet.

Still, just to show up empty-handed was pretty feeble.

Morgan scanned the crowd. There, in the back row, just coming through the door, were Bob Smith and Fred Jones. The big bruiser helped the old man into his seat.

Morgan suddenly had a bad idea, but it was better than no idea at all.

Dean Whittaker fidgeted in his seat, tugged at the band of the silk panties through his trousers. He usually liked wearing the panties, red with a little bow, and lace trimming. But he’d been shifting nervously, and the panties had crept into his ass crack. They also had a stranglehold on his scrotum.

Lincoln Truman sat to the dean’s right, a random vice president on his left. Various other department heads and community big shots in the front row, and someplace there was a chancellor.

And where the hell was Jay Morgan? The show was set to start any minute.

President Truman looked impatient and cross. Whittaker opened his mouth to say something reassuring to the president, but a young woman in a long, black dress came onstage and modest applause signaled the reading was under way.

Whittaker recognized the woman as one of the graduating MA students in creative writing. She had a pierced lip and eyebrow, bright orange hair pinned elaborately into sprouting tufts of hair that sprang out at odd angles. How the hell did she expect to get a job looking like that? Whittaker thought about his own daughter, who was in her third year at Kansas State. Would she come back pierced, covered with tattoos, trailing some long-haired “dude” who fronted a speed-metal band? The thought made him shudder. What the hell was going on with the world?

He fingered his panties, watched the orange-haired woman approach the podium.

“Good evening everyone, and thanks for attending Eastern Oklahoma University’s annual graduate poetry reading,” she said. “Usually we give this reading in the big classroom in Albatross Hall, but this year it’s been moved to the auditorium, because, as you can see, we’ve had one heck of a turnout !”

She paused for a burst of applause that never came.

She cleared her throat. “Our first reader will graduate with his master’s in English this spring. His poems have appeared in Word Junkie, Gas-hole , and Pea-Pickin’ Potpourri. Please welcome David Blanding.”

The pale young man took the stage amid a sluggish ripple of golf clapping. He began to read, his voice a hypnotic murmur blanketing the audience like a high-tech sleep ray from a dime-store science-fiction novel. He wove his poems like elaborate spells designed by some evil wizard to suck all that was interesting and beautiful out of life. If his poems had been music, they would have been the same note over and over again. If his poems had been a meal, it would have been a plate of wet cardboard.

Dean Whittaker watched Lincoln Truman stick his fist in his mouth to stifle a yawn. Whittaker’s panties were so far up his ass, he had tears in his eyes.

Morgan got the old man’s attention and waved him into the lobby.

“What’s with sending me to see that old loon?” Jones asked Morgan. “Guy’s got a screw loose. You know some fucked-up people.” Jones sniffed, wrinkled his nose. “You smell like a damn distillery.”

Morgan couldn’t disagree. “Mr. Jones, I need your help.”

“It’ll have to be quick,” Jones said. “Bob’s saving my seat. I don’t want to miss the reading.”

Morgan took Jones by the elbow, started easing him down the hall. “How would you like to be a little more closely involved?”

“Like what?”

Morgan said, “One of our readers can’t make it, and we need somebody to-”

Jones dug in his heels, pulled his arm back from Morgan. “Oh, shit no. Are you fucking crazy?”

Morgan latched onto the old man, started dragging him. “I’m desperate, Mr. Jones. Please. ”

Jones looked like a little terrier being dragged on a leash. He looked side to side for some help, his eyes round with terror. “There’s like a million people in there. I’ll piss myself.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t have my poems. Bob has the folder.”

“I’ll get them for you,” Morgan said.

“Oh, God. I can’t breathe.”

“You’ll be fine.”

Morgan floundered backstage until he found the girl with the orange hair. He told her about the change. She didn’t understand. Morgan said what the fuck was there to understand? The old guy would read instead of the black guy. She looked unhappy but said okay.

Morgan had fetched the old man’s poems from the big bodyguard. It had taken much goading and pleading, but Morgan convinced Jones to read. Jones looked pale and terrified. Morgan had never seen the old man afraid of anything. He wished Jones good luck and left him backstage.

Morgan’s stomach groaned. He belched acid. I should have ordered a sandwich . He went back into the lobby, found the men’s room. Inside he bent over the sink and turned on the cold water, splashed his face. He leaned on the sink awhile, took long deep breaths.