Frederick Busch - Girls

A sign outside the language laboratory said FREE HORSTMULLER. When I passed the library, I saw that someone had hung a bedsheet from a reference room window. FREE HORSTMULLER was painted on it in loopy red letters. Big Pete passed me and he nodded, telling me that all was well. So I didn’t understand when, a few hundred yards below, where he must have passed, I found a long Crown Victoria sedan with its right-side wheels stuck in frozen mud the driver had churned his way down to, trying to get free. They were up to visit the campus with their son, a very long boy who sat in the backseat, his legs folded so his knees were almost at the level of his chin. I used the cable and I pulled them out.

I called for Pete to meet me, and we had our little rendezvous in the parking lot behind the Jewish Center. We angled so the driver’s side windows were next to each other.

Pete said, “Jew-bee Jew-bee doo.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nothin’. It’s just Jew town here, so I’m singing a theme song.”

“We can’t do that, Pete. We can’t talk like that.”

“Who says we can’t?” His little face behind thick glasses actually looked confused. He was dumber than water and too small for trouble and he got on my nerves. His job was the one I had in mind for a woman, and not only because he was too stupid to live and we needed a little courtesy on the staff. Like most colleges I’d heard about, rape here was one of the more favored indoor sports, and I thought the kids ought to be able to talk to a trained woman.

“Well, Pete, actually it’s me.”

“No shit, Jack.”

“I mean it.”

“All right.”

“No. I mean I mean it. I’ll get you canned. Actually, I’ll do that myself. I’m halfway there.”

“Over the Jews? Excuse me. ”

“How about the big Crown Victoria down below the library? They were halfway buried when you must have passed them.”

“Jack, these fuckin’ kids with their big cars …”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not sayin’ these were Jews, mind you.”

“No.”

“They lord it over you. You know.”

“Some of them do do that.”

“Like they own you.”

“Well, pretty much, they do, if they pay the tuition here, Pete. Pete?”

“I shouldn’t of left them there.”

“No. Pete?”

“Mm?”

“I think you’re fired. I want you to be. Take a sick day so you get paid, and I’m finding out if I can fire you. If so, you’re gone. If not, you really have to watch your ass around me.”

“You mean like fired ?”

“Off the job.”

“Fired.”

“Take the car back and go home sick. Check with me tomorrow or the day after.”

“You’re gonna be a man short, Jack.”

“Not quite a whole one, Pete. I’ll see you.”

I went around to the farthest dormitory, calling Anthony Berberich to tell him we’d try to tighten our rotations a little. I thought how I’d decided to suspect my English prof on account of his unlatched hood. And there was always poor William Franklin, whose chest must be black and blue from nipple to neck. I thought maybe I should add Big Pete to the list. I seemed to be trying to help the Tanners by considering the world not only a dangerous place — their daughter had proved that — but everyone in it capable of terrible acts. I was not a man you’d call at ease with the condition of things.

We pushed ourselves, and I skipped my lunch break, and we covered our patrols. Snow had begun to fall in the late morning. It came down very quickly. With my window open, I could hear it in the naked tree limbs and against the windows of the school. It accumulated with a suddenness, and all at once the streets needed plowing, and soon enough the plows on campus and off couldn’t deal with the snow. By late in the day, I was using four-wheel drive on the upper campus roads. The plows left cars covered outside the classroom buildings, and we gave lifts to students and teachers leaving the campus. By four, word came that the school was closed. I walked past ice-stiffened posters that rattled on the walls. The faces of the girls were covered by heavy snow and fresh ice. The campus was deserted. I had the night shift called in early and I kept Anthony on.

The buildings were dark except for hallway lights, and the walkway lights on campus shrank in the wind-driven snow to smears of brown-orange. I checked the half-buried cars to make certain no one was trapped inside. I used the radio to remind Anthony and the night men to do the same. I called the campus radio station, which seemed to specialize in the sound of people screaming, and asked them to request that the kids stay in. The president of the college called me to ask if everything was all right. I could have said no, and I could have said yes, and neither would have been true. So I said, “Not bad.” He seemed pleased.

Coming back up, very slowly and in four-wheel drive, behind the humanities building, I saw a new shape. It had snow on it, especially on top of the roof, but it wasn’t buried. It looked to me like a Land Cruiser. I thought to myself, Trust a kid to drive a car worth more than a year’s salary. It was broad and high and there was an arrogance to how it was set on its wheels. I thought I heard a horn, and then I saw the Toyota’s lights go on and off, so I got as close as I could, pointed in at an angle you simply would have to call obtuse.

I left the Jeep running, with its lights on the Toyota, and I walked over to the driver’s side. The back doors opened, and then the front passenger-side door. The driver’s door came out with surprising speed and it caught me on the knee and thigh, and I went down hard in the snow.

A voice said, “Absolutely.” It was ab-so-lootlee , and I knew it was William Franklin. He’d brought some friends for me to meet, I thought.

One of them was wearing a sweatshirt or sweater and speed gloves, what you wear when you work with the light bag. His hair was shiny in the headlights of the Jeep, and it was pulled back in a ponytail. He was either advertising he was a middle-aged vet who hadn’t gotten past 1973, or he was an Indian, maybe an Onondaga, or maybe he was both. He had a big belly and sloping shoulders and those long, ropy-muscled arms. He wouldn’t have stamina, I thought, but he would do a lot of damage before he tired out.

The others wore waist-length jackets, working clothes that would leave them free to pivot, spin, run, or kick. One of the jackets looked leathery; one seemed made of cloth. They were shorter than the Indian, but almost as broad, and while one of them seemed to carry a gut, the other was lean and hard-looking.

I saw this on the run or, really, on the clamber. I got to my feet as fast as I could and leaned my back against the Jeep. The light would be in their eyes, not mine, and they’d not be able to reach my back too easily. It wouldn’t matter in a while, but I thought I ought to do what I knew how to do.

The roll of dimes was in the car, and so was anything else I could use, including gloves. William Franklin shouted, “Absolutely yes! It’s him!”

The Indian came around his door, holding it for balance, slipping a little in what I thought were street shoes, maybe loafers. I held on to the grille of the Jeep and kicked him as hard in the knee as I could with the toe of my heavy boot. He skidded in toward me, but he was down. I let go of the car and hit him in the throat with a chopping fist. I missed the throat because he knew his business and tucked his chin into his chest. I made him uncomfortable, but I also numbed up my fist. He went facedown, then rolled back away from me. His leg wouldn’t work right away.

The first squat one, the one with the bigger belly, threw a big roundhouse left to the body. Amateur, I thought. The amateur connected with the right side of my ribs and I felt him through my coat. I came over his left, like you’re supposed to, with a sweet, short, crossing right. He stopped where he was. My right hand had gone from numb to sore and now it plain hurt very badly. But he wobbled. I ignored his friend, the leaner one, and followed up the right cross with a right knee. I went after that, as he dropped, with the chopping right that hadn’t worked on the Indian. It worked on him, but to the side of his face. I did it again, and I thought he might be through. Something had broken with the last blow, and I was hoping it was inside him and not in my hand.