Brock Clarke - Exley

“Pardon me?” I say. Just then, the music begins again, but none of us can remember what we were doing before the coach pushed Pause. “Swing your partner,” Coach B. says. But before we can start doing that again, the voice on the tape player tells us, “Swing your corner.” I turn to J. I offer her my arm, but she does not take it. Instead she says angrily, “I thought you said you were a doctor .”

“I did,” I say. “I am.”

“You’re not a doctor,” she says, louder now, loud enough to be heard over the fiddles and the calls of the tape recording. “You’re a drunk asshole who hit H. in the face ”.

“H. told you that?” I ask.

“Allemande left,” says the voice on the tape player. Everyone stops what they’re doing and just stands there. Because no one can ever remember what it means to “allemande.” Coach B. stops the tape. “Allemande left,” he repeats, as though that will help clear things up for everyone. The left part I understand, at least. I turn to my left, away from J. and to H. His Adam’s apple is way out and quivering.

“Why do you think I’m going to hit you?” I say. “Again?”

“Because you hit me in the face once already!” he yells, certainly loud enough for others in the gymnasium to hear. I can sense the coaches looking in our direction, can sense waves of athletic male and female aggression in the air between them and us.

“Whisper ,” I whisper. “I did not hit you. Where did I hit you?”

“I told you,” H. whispers. “In the face.”

“No, no,” I say. “When did this happen? In what context?”

“In front of the Crystal,” H. says. “I was there with my friend M.”

“What?” I say. “You’re referring to Exley. Or someone who M. mistakenly thought was Exley. He’s the one who hit you.”

“Are you kidding me?” H. says. He squints at me now, like he knows I’m lying to him but can’t tell yet for what reason, to what end.

I assure him I am not. “You and I met that day, but later, as you were fleeing the Public Square. I gave you twenty dollars. Remember?”

H. nods now like he does remember. “You wanted me to keep an eye on M.”

“Yes, yes,” I say. “I still do. In fact, one of the things I’d like you to do is to make M. realize he should give up on his quest to find this Exley.”

“You want him to stop trying to find the guy who hit me?”

“No, no,” I say, and begin to understand something of M.’s frustration with H. “The guy who hit you is not Exley. For Christ’s sake, I already told you that.” And then I hear what I’ve said to H., hear that name— Exley —and those words— Christ’s sake —ringing in my ears, and I think but do not say, Oh no, oh no . “Why did you think I was the man who hit you in the face?” I ask.

“Because you look just like him,” H. says.

“Is there a problem here?” Coach B. asks. He is standing right in front of H. and me with his hands on his hips. His biceps are quivering like Harold’s Adam’s apple was a minute earlier. No one in the gym is dancing. The tape player is off. Everyone is looking at us. J. is to my right, and I can sense her staring at me. My right ear feels like it is on fire.

“A problem?” I say.

“Yes,” Coach B. says. “It seemed like you two were having a problem. It seemed like it might have something to do with you hitting our H. here.” There is a fierce, proprietary sound in his voice, as though I’ve violated the contract stating that Coach B., and Coach B. alone, is allowed to abuse H. I know there is no way I can talk my way out of this situation, especially since I cannot clear my head, cannot stop thinking of what H. has now made clear to me— I look like the guy who looked like Exley; I look like Exley —and so I think once again of what I know about H. from M. and what M. would say in this situation, and then I say, “Harold here was telling me why they call it square dancing.”

Coach B. looks at H., who looks at me. Please , I say with my eyes. And just in case “please” doesn’t work, I rub my thumb, index, and middle fingers together, to remind H. that I’ve already given him twenty dollars and so far have had no return on my investment. H. sighs, which I take to mean he understands my meaning. “They called it square dancing because it was done in the town square,” he says. “If there’s no town square, there’s no square dancing.” Then H. raises his hands to his shoulders, palms up, and looks around, as though to ask, Where is the square ?

Coach B. takes a step toward H. “You know.,” he growls. Then he draws in a big breath, releases it, and says, “I suppose you’re going to tell me what we’re doing is gym dancing and not square dancing at all.”

H. nods. “That does sound like something I would say,” he says.

Authorized Personnel Only

After the VA hospital, I went home and got out the phone book to look up the number of the bus company. While I was at it, I looked up Exley. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before. There were no Exleys — not in Alexandria Bay, not in Watertown, not anywhere. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything: Exley spent half his book sleeping on other people’s davenports, living in other people’s houses, talking, I guess, on other people’s phones. Just because he wasn’t in the book didn’t mean he wasn’t in Alex Bay. I’d just have to ask around once I got up there. Anyway, I found the number for the bus, called it, and found out there were no buses from Watertown to Alex Bay. I was trying to figure out what to do next when someone started blowing a car horn outside the house. I opened the front door and there was J.’s father, in the driver’s seat of his white van.

I walked over to the van. “Hello, Mr. S.,” I said. I guessed S. was his last name, since it was J.’s.

“Don’t call me that,” he said. I didn’t know why not. Maybe he was one of those guys who didn’t like to be known as mister anything. K. had said that my dad always told his students to call him Tom, not Mr. Le Ray and that he always made the corny joke about Mr. Le Ray being his father. “Get in.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to figure out how to get to Alexandria Bay.”

“I’ll drive you to Alex Bay,” he said. “Get in.”

I didn’t exactly believe that Mr. S. was going to drive me to Alex Bay. But I didn’t want to call him a liar, either. It’s hard to call a guy who has no legs a liar. It’s also hard to say no to a guy with no legs. So I got in the van.

“Come on,” Mr. S. said, and pounded the steering wheel. His seat was higher than a normal car seat, and the dashboard was more complicated and busier than a normal dashboard. Mr. S. stepped on the gas by pushing on a lever with his hands and said, “Let’s go make some noise.”

Mr. S. drove northeast on Pearl Street for a long time, where I didn’t see anything worth thinking about until I saw a sign for Fort Drum, and soon after, a huge wire fence, and on the other side of the fence, tall pine trees. The road we were on ended there, and another one started. It followed the fence to the left and the right. We took a right and drove for a long, long time. I didn’t know there was that much fence in the whole world. Finally, we came to a vehicle-sized hole in the fence and a small cabin next to the hole. I could see someone in the cabin. He looked like he was wearing a helmet. Above the hole and the cabin was a sign that said FORT DRUM: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Under the sign there was a road. There was a big white wooden arm across the road and two soldiers wearing helmets on either side of it. They both had rifles, which they held diagonally across their chests. We kept driving.