Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

“ Where ?”

Ronald laughed at that, and then told her.

Thursday morning. Henry, up by six and without the help of the alarm, as usual, spotting a piece of paper on the floor by the door, not as usual. Henry got out of bed, quietly, quietly, so as not to wake Ellen. He remembered the last time he’d found paper on the floor by the door. It’d been his first night in Broomeville, his first night with Ellen, his first night as Henry Larsen. On those pieces of paper had been the Danish and English words for “counter,” and also the cartoon he’d drawn of himself, with a big black X scratched through it. He’d thought Kurt was responsible for the X. I’ll have to keep my eye on Kurt, he’d thought back then. And he had. And what Henry had learned from two years of watching was that he loved Kurt, like a son, but also that he didn’t totally trust him, also like a son.

He bent over, picked up the piece of paper. On it, the name JENS BAEDRUP had been written in large, uneven black block letters, with a big black X scratched through the name. Whoever had written the name and the X had pushed down so hard that in places the pen had poked right through the paper.

“Kurt?” Henry thought and must have actually said, because Ellen repeated, still mostly asleep, “Kurt, honey? Are you OK?”

“He’s fine,” Henry said.

“He?” Ellen said. “Kurt?”

“I’m fine,” Henry whispered. “Go back to sleep.” Luckily, Ellen did that, and Henry crumpled the note, stuffed it into his satchel, and then went into the bathroom to get ready for work.

Arson! Now that, they all agreed, was the way to protest something. Not the way so many other people did it. For instance, that kid who had graduated from the high school a few years earlier. This was during the graduation ceremony. The kid had apparently had some long-standing beef with the school about something. Or maybe he just didn’t like to sit. Or maybe that was his beef with the school: that it had made him sit. In any case, when it was his turn to walk onstage and accept his diploma and shake Kurt’s dad’s hand, he brought his folding chair with him, in protest of whatever. Everyone laughed at him except for Kurt’s dad, who, to his credit, just shook the kid’s hand that wasn’t holding the chair and then stuck the diploma into it. The kid seemed oblivious to how pathetic the whole thing was: after he received his piece of paper, he turned to the crowd and raised both the diploma and the chair in triumph, as if to say, See! I did it! Now the kid worked down at the pharmacy, where he was allowed to wear a pharmacist’s smock even though he wasn’t really a pharmacist. He was one of those people who dress like someone they will never actually be. This was what happened when you chose such a piss-poor form of protest. But arson!

“But what’s he doing here?” said Tyler. He was sitting next to his twin, Kevin, on the ratty, burn-marked tan corduroy couch. Across the steamer trunk from them was Dr. Vernon, sitting on a kitchen chair. Next to him, semisubmerged in a black beanbag chair, was Kurt. This was in Dr. Vernon’s office. Not his school office, which as a permanent substitute teacher he did not even have, but his home office, which only he called his office, which only he found hilarious when he called it his office. His office was the second story of his detached garage. In it, he dealt and did drugs. Mostly pot, which he dealt to and smoked with students, mostly. Mostly before school. It was the only way Dr. Vernon could face the day. “Sticky bud courage!” he called it. “Wake and bake!” he said. “Breakfast of champions!” he said. All of this spoken at top volume. Sometimes, Kurt had to smoke pot before going to Dr. Vernon’s office just to endure the pot smoking in Dr. Vernon’s office before then going to school.

“Who doing where?” Dr. Vernon said. He’d just finished telling them about what he’d heard the night before in the Lumber Lodge about the stranger who’d come to see and then fled from Mr. L. and who, if he really was who Mr. L. said he was, was involved in this crazy situation involving cartoons and Muslims and murder that was apparently not murder and Scandinavia and also arson.

“The new guy,” Kevin said.

“Yeah, the arsonist,” Tyler said.

“What?” Dr. Vernon said. “No?” He paused seemingly to consider the steamer trunk, on which was a Habitrail of marijuana buds, stems, and seeds; rolling papers and one-hitters; Baggies and twist ties; a scale and a bong and the bong bowl, which Dr. Vernon himself had just emptied. On the floor, next to the trunk, was one of those shower caddies, if that was the term for it, and in his current state Kurt was not at all sure that it was, but anyway, it was a white plastic contraption with a handle that contained several bottles of Visine, a tin of breath mints, a bottle of mouthwash, and some kind of vaporizer or deodorizer spray bottle thingy that made you smell like a just-cleaned public restroom but at least stopped you from smelling like you’d just smoked a lot of pot. But deodorizer? Vaporizer? Was either of those correct? No. More like a bug bomb. Or not a bomb. A fogger. That’s right. A bug fogger. Jeez, Kurt was feeling pretty fogged himself. Although not nearly as fogged as Dr. Vernon. “Right,” Dr. Vernon finally said, and he started whacking the cartridge against the trunk, trying to empty it. “Not sure why the arsonist is here.”

“Come on,” Kurt said. “The stranger isn’t the arsonist.”

“That’s what I said,” Dr. Vernon said. “The arsonist is the other guy.”

“What other guy?” Tyler said.

“The other guy,” Kevin said, and he socked his twin in the right thigh and then socked him again. “ Not the stranger.”

“Stop calling him ‘the stranger,’ ” Dr. Vernon said. “The man has a name .” And here he stopped, clearly trying to remember the man’s name, clearly failing. As for Kurt, he had no idea what the stranger’s name was, either. During his telling of the story, Dr. Vernon had referred to him only as “the stranger.” “But, anyway, yes,” Dr. Vernon finally said.

“Yes what?” Tyler asked, but Dr. Vernon didn’t answer. He repacked and reinserted the bowl and passed the bong to Kevin, who stuck his face into the bong’s cylinder and sucked. Then he handed it to Tyler, who did the same. Tyler passed the bong to Kurt, but Kurt had had enough. He knew he’d had enough because before he started smoking pot he’d intended to ask Dr. Vernon whether he thought Mr. L. might be a spy. But now after smoking pot for an hour, the idea seemed unforgivably stupid. Some people knew they’d smoked enough pot when the most stupid ideas started making a lot of sense; Kurt, on the other hand, knew he’d smoked enough pot when ideas that had earlier seemed quite reasonable now seemed unforgivably stupid. “I’m good,” Kurt said, and then he passed the bong on to Dr. Vernon.

“Come on, just one more,” Dr. Vernon said in an accent — British, supposedly — that let Kurt know that what Dr. Vernon was saying came from a movie Dr. Vernon would say he couldn’t believe Kurt hadn’t watched after Kurt told him once again that he hadn’t watched it. “It’s only a wafer thin.”

“No, thanks,” Kurt said. Dr. Vernon then smoked Kurt’s share, then his own, and then he put the lid on the bong, put the remaining pot in an ornate wooden box, wrapped the one-hitters in a piece of velvety blue cloth and placed them in another ornate wooden box, sprayed himself and the room with his fogger, put several breath mints on his tongue, and in general conducted all the various rites of his particular priesthood. The boys were mesmerized by this display, even though they’d witnessed it many times before. When he was done, Dr. Vernon said, “You know, I think the stranger might be a narc.”