Leni Zumas - Red Clocks

Central Coast Regional H.S. seeks history teacher (U.S./World). Bachelor’s degree required. Location: Newville, Oregon, fishing village on quiet ocean harbor, migrating whales. Ivy League–educated principal is committed to creating dynamic, innovative learning environment.

The biographer applied because of quiet ocean harbor and no mention of teaching experience. Her brief interview consisted of the principal, Mr. Fivey, plot-summarizing his favorite seafaring novels and mentioning twice the name of the college he had gone to. He said she could do the teacher-certification course over two summers. For seven years she has lived in the lee of fog-smoked evergreen mountains, thousand-foot cliffs plunging straight down to the sea. It rains and rains and rains. Log trucks stall traffic on the cliff road, locals catch fish or make things for tourists, the pub hangs a list of old shipwrecks, the tsunami siren is tested monthly, and students learn to say “miss” as if they were servants.

She starts class by following her daily plan, but when she sees chins mashing into fists, she decides to abandon it. Tenth-grade global history, the world in forty weeks, with a foolish textbook she is contractually obliged to use, can’t be stood without detours. These kids, after all, have not been lost yet. Staring up at her, jaws rimmed with baby fat, they are perched on the brink of not giving a shit. They still give a shit, but not, most of them, for long. She instructs them to close their books, which they are happy to do. They watch her with a new stillness. They will be told a story, can be children again, of whom nothing is asked.

“Boadicea was queen of a Celtic tribe called the Iceni in what is now Norfolk, England. The Romans had invaded a while back and were ruling the land. Her husband died and left his fortune to her and their daughters, but the Romans ignored his will, took the fortune, flogged Boadicea, and raped the daughters.”

One kid: “What’s ‘flog’?”

Another: “Beat the frock out of.”

“The Romans had screwed her royally”—somebody laughs softly at this, for which the biographer is grateful—“and in 61 CE she led her people in rebellion. The Iceni fought hard. They forced the Romans all the way back to London. But bear in mind that the Roman soldiers had lots of incentive to win, because if they didn’t, they could expect to be cooked on skewers and/or boiled to death, after seeing their own intestines being pulled out of their bodies.”

“That rules,” says a boy.

“Eventually the Roman forces were too much for the Iceni. Boadicea either poisoned herself to avoid capture or got sick; either way, she died. The win column isn’t the point. The point is …” She stops, aware of twenty-four little gazes.

Into the silence the soft laugher ventures: “Don’t frock with a woman?”

They like this. They like slogans.

“Well,” the biographer says, “ sort of. But more than that. We also have to consider—”

The bell.

A burst of scraping and sliding, bodies glad to go. “Bye, miss!” “Have a good day, miss.”

The soft laugher, Mattie Quarles, idles near the biographer’s desk. “So is that where the word ‘bodacious’ comes from?”

“I wish I could say yes,” says the biographer, “but ‘bodacious’ originated in the nineteenth century, I think. Mix of ‘bold’ and ‘audacious.’ Good instinct, though!”

“Thanks, miss.”

“You really don’t need to call me that,” says the biographer for the seven thousandth time.

After school she stops at the Acme, grocery and hardware and drugstore combined. The pharmacist’s assistant is a boy—now a young man—she taught in her first year at Central Coast, and she hates the moment each month when he hands her the white bag with the little orange bottle. I know what this is for, his eyes say. Even if his eyes don’t actually say that, it’s hard to look at him. She brings other items to the counter (unsalted peanuts, Q‑tips) as if somehow to disguise the fertility medication. The biographer can’t recall his name but remembers admiring, in class, seven years ago, his long black lashes—they always looked a little wet.

Waiting on the hard little plastic chair, under elevator music and fluorescent glare, the biographer takes out her notebook. Everything in this notebook must be in list form, and any list is eligible. Items for next food shop. Kalbfleisch’s necktie designs. Countries with most lighthouses per capita.

She starts a new one: Accusations from the world.

1. You’re too old.

2. If you can’t have a child the natural way, you shouldn’t have one at all.

3. Every child needs two parents.

4. Children raised by single mothers are more liable to rape/murder/drug-take/score low on standardized tests.

5. You’re too old.

6. You should’ve thought of this earlier.

7. You’re selfish.

8. You’re doing something unnatural.

9. How is that child going to feel when she finds out her father is an anonymous masturbator?

10. Your body is a grizzled husk.

11. You’re too old, sad spinster!

12. Are you only doing this because you’re lonely?

“Miss? Prescription’s ready.”

“Thank you.” She signs the screen on the counter. “How’s your day been?”

Lashes turns up his palms at the ceiling.

“If it makes you feel any better,” says the biographer, “this medication is going to make me have a foul-smelling vaginal discharge.”

“At least it’s for a good cause.”

She clears her throat.

“That’ll be one hundred fifty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents,” he adds.

“Pardon me?”

“I’m really sorry.”

“A hundred and fifty-seven dollars? For ten pills?”

“Your insurance doesn’t cover it.”

“Why the eff not?”

Lashes shakes his head. “I wish I could, like, slip it to you, but they’ve got cameras on every inch of this bitch.”

The polar explorer Eivør Mínervudottír spent many hours, as a child, in the sea-washed lighthouse whose keeper was her uncle.

She knew not to talk while he was making entries in the record book.

Never to strike a match unsupervised.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.

To keep her head low in the lantern room.

To pee in the pot and leave it, and if she did caca, to wrap it in fish paper for the garbage box.

From the halt hen two eggs come down, one cracked, one sound. “Thank you,” the mender tells the hen, a Dark Brahma with a red wattle and brindled feathers. Because she limps badly—is not one of the winners—this hen is the mender’s favorite. A daily happiness to feed her, save her from foxes and rain.

Sound egg in her pocket, she pours the goats’ grain. Hans and Pinka are out rambling but will be home soon. They know she can’t protect them if they ramble too far. Three shingles have come off the goat-shed roof; she needs nails. Under the shed there used to sleep a varying hare. Brown in summer, white in winter. He hated carrots and loved apples, whose seeds, poisonous to rabbits, the mender made sure to remove. The hare was so cuddly she didn’t care that he stole alfalfa from the goats or strewed poo pellets on her bed when she let him inside. One morning she found his body ripped open, a sack of furry blood. Rage poured up her throat at the fox or coyote, the bobcat, you took him, but they were only feeding themselves, you shouldn’t have took him, prey is scarce in winter, but he was mine . She cried while digging. Laid the hare beside her aunt’s old cat, two small graves under the madrone.

In the cabin the mender stirs the egg with vinegar and shepherd’s purse for the client who’s coming later, an over-bleeder. The drink will staunch her clotty, aching flow. She’s got no job and no insurance. I can pay you with batteries, her note said. Vinegary egg screwed tight in a glass jar and tucked into the mini fridge, beside a foil-wrapped wedge of cheddar. The mender wants the cheese right now, this minute, but cheese is only for Fridays. Black licorice nibs are for Sundays.