Frederick Busch - The Stories of Frederick Busch

I said, “Yeah?”

“Was that really true?” He was almost blinking, he wanted so much for me to be a damaged Vietnam vet just looking for a bell tower to climb into and start firing from. The college didn’t have a bell tower you could get up into, though I’d once spent an ugly hour chasing a drunken ATO down from the roof of the observatory. “You were just clocking through boxcars in Baltimore?”

I said, “Nah.”

“I thought so!” He gave a kind of sigh.

“I killed people,” I said.

“You know, I could have sworn you did,” he said.

I nodded, and he nodded back. I’d made him so happy.

THE ASSIGNMENT WAS to write something to influence somebody. He called it Rhetoric and Persuasion. We read an essay by George Orwell and “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. I liked the Orwell better, but I wasn’t comfortable with it. He talked about “niggers,” and I felt saying it two ways.

I wrote “Ralph the Duck.”

Once upon a time, there was a duck named Ralph who didn’t have any feathers on either wing. So when the cold wind blew, Ralph said, Brr, and shivered and shook.

What’s the matter? Ralph’s mommy asked.

I’m cold , Ralph said.

Oh, the mommy said. Here. I’ll keep you warm.

So she spread her big, feathery wings, and hugged Ralph tight, and when the cold wind blew, Ralph was warm and snuggly, and fell fast asleep.

THE NEXT THURSDAY, he was wearing canvas pants and hiking boots. He mentioned kind of casually to some of the girls in the class how whenever there was a storm he wore his Lake District walking outfit. He had a big, hairy sweater on. I kept waiting for him to make a noise like a mountain goat. But the girls seemed to like it. His boots made a creaky squeak on the linoleum of the hall when he caught up with me after class.

“As I told you,” he said, “it isn’t unappealing. It’s just — not a college theme.”

“Right,” I said. “Okay. You want me to do it over?”

“No,” he said. “Not at all. The D will remain your grade. But I’ll read something else if you want to write it.”

“This’ll be fine,” I said.

“Did you understand the assignment?”

“Write something to influence someone — Rhetoric and Persuasion.”

We were at his office door and the redheaded kid who had gotten sick in my truck was waiting for him. She looked at me like one of us was in the wrong place, which struck me as accurate enough. He was interested in getting into his office with the redhead, but he remembered to turn around and flash me a grin he seemed to think he was known for.

Instead of going on shift a few hours after class, the way I’m supposed to, I told my supervisor I was sick, and I went home. Fanny was frightened when I came in, because I don’t get sick and I don’t miss work. She looked at my face and she grew sad. I kissed her hello and went upstairs to change. I always used to change my clothes when I was a kid, as soon as I came home from school. I put on jeans and a flannel shirt and thick wool socks, and I made myself a dark drink of sourmash. Fanny poured herself some wine and came into the cold northern room a few minutes later. I was sitting in the rocker, looking over the valley. The wind was lining up a lot of rows of cloud so that the sky looked like a baked trout when you lift the skin off. “It’ll snow,” I said to her.

She sat on the old sofa and waited. After a while, she said, “I wonder why they always call it a mackerel sky?”

“Good eating, mackerel,” I said.

Fanny said, “Shit! You’re never that laconic unless you feel crazy. What’s wrong? Who’d you punch out at the playground?”

“We had to write a composition,” I said.

“Did he like it?”

“He gave me a D.”

“Well, you’re familiar enough with D’s. I never saw you get this low over a grade.”

“I wrote about Ralph the Duck.”

She said, “You did?” She said, “Honey.” She came over and stood beside the rocker and leaned into me and hugged my head and neck. “Honey,” she said. “Honey.”

IT WAS THE WORST of the winter’s storms, and one of the worst in years. That afternoon they closed the college, which they almost never do. But the roads were jammed with snow over ice, and now it was freezing rain on top of that, and the only people working at the school that night were the operator who took emergency calls and me. Everyone else had gone home except the students, and most of them were inside. The ones who weren’t were drunk, and I kept on sending them in and telling them to act like grown-ups. A number of them said they were, and I really couldn’t argue. I had the bright beams on, the defroster set high, the little blue light winking, and a thermos of sourmash and hot coffee that I sipped from every time I had to get out of the truck or every time I realized how cold all that wetness was out there.

About eight o’clock, as the rain was turning back to snow and the cold was worse, the roads impossible, just as I was done helping a county sander on the edge of the campus pull a panel truck out of a snowbank, I got the emergency call from the college operator. We had a student missing. The roommates thought the kid was headed for the quarry. This meant I had to get the Bronco up on a narrow road above the campus, above the old cemetery, into all kinds of woods and rough track that I figured would be choked with ice and snow. Any kid up there would really have to want to be there, and I couldn’t go in on foot, because you’d only want to be there on account of drugs, booze, or craziness, and either way I’d be needing blankets and heat, and then a fast ride down to the hospital in town. So I dropped into four-wheel drive to get me up the hill above the campus, bucking snow and sliding on ice, putting all the heater’s warmth up onto the windshield because I couldn’t see much more than swarming snow. My feet were still cold from the tow job, and it didn’t seem to matter that I had on heavy socks and insulated boots I’d coated with waterproofing. I shivered, and I thought of Ralph the Duck.

I had to grind the rest of the way, from the cemetery, in four-wheel low, and in spite of the cold I was smoking my gearbox by the time I was close enough to the quarry — they really did take a lot of the rocks for the campus buildings from there — to see I’d have to make my way on foot to where she was. It was a kind of scooped-out shape, maybe four or five stories high, where she stood — well, wobbled is more like it. She was as chalky as she’d been the last time, and her red hair didn’t catch the light anymore. It just lay on her like something that had died on top of her head. She was in a white nightgown that was plastered to her body. She had her arms crossed as if she wanted to be warm. She swayed, kind of, in front of the big, dark, scooped-out rock face, where the trees and brush had been cleared for trucks and earthmovers. She looked tiny against all the darkness. From where I stood, I could see the snow driving down in front of the lights I’d left on, but I couldn’t see it near her. All it looked like around her was dark. She was shaking with the cold, and she was crying.

I had a blanket with me, and I shoved it down the front of my coat to keep it dry for her, and because I was so cold. I waved. I stood in the lights and I waved. I don’t know what she saw — a big shadow, maybe. I surely didn’t reassure her, because when she saw me she backed up, until she was near the face of the quarry. She couldn’t go any farther.

I called, “Hello! I brought a blanket. Are you cold? I thought you might want a blanket.”

Her roommates had told the operator about pills, so I didn’t bring her the coffee laced with mash. I figured I didn’t have all that much time, anyway, to get her down and pumped out. The booze with whatever pills she’d taken would made her die that much faster.