Antrim, Donald - Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World

“Hello?”

“Over here,” from behind the bushes.

I stepped lightly. “Ben, it’s late. What are you doing up at this time of night?”

“Give me a break, Mr. Robinson. I’m not a kid anymore.” He wore jungle fatigues and combat boots and a dark beret; his face was smeared with charcoal. He wore a holster. He said, “Stay low, be quiet, follow me,” then proceeded to duck-walk into deeper recesses of forest. I hunkered down. Clearly Ben was intimate with this marshy topography trimmed in elephant-ear ferns and hanging mosses; he led an easy path beneath silhouetted black limbs hanging low; his steps generated no sound. Mine, of course, reverberated. I said, “Sorry, I’m not very good at this kind of thing,” and Ben whispered back, “Concentrate on step placement, Mr. Robinson. You’ll get the hang of it. There’s a big root up here, watch out.”

“Ben, did you say mines?”

“Claymores. That jerk Mr. Benson planted them. We’ve located some but we don’t have the technology to disarm or remove them.”

“We?”

“Me and my dad.”

“How is your dad?” I knew Chuck Webster from PTA meetings. Years before, when Ben was little and attending grade school, Chuck Webster had been a friendly and supportive presence at our bimonthly open-house conferences concerning core curriculum and dress codes. His input was always appreciated by the teaching staff, who felt from him a sensitivity unusual in the lay community, to the diverse and often contradictory objectives — the whole “socialization versus individuation: which to encourage?” problem, with its attendant classroom dilemmas around issues of fair grading for “fast” and “slow” learners, how to reward effort, whether to encourage interdisciplinarianism, etc. — of primary education. Ben said, “Dad’s okay, I guess. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“Friend or foe?” a man’s voice called from the shadows.

“It’s me, Dad,” Ben whispered back.

Chuck Webster stepped out. He wore a drab and dark military night-ordnance ensemble exactly like his son’s. Additionally, the elder Webster carried a semiautomatic assault weapon slung over his shoulder. He looked intimidating behind his rakish, thin mustache, but he sounded hospitable, neighborly, when he said, “Well, if it isn’t Pete Robinson. What brings you to the park, Pete?”

“Oh, nothing.” Right away I was aware that this was a stupid thing to declare, even to apparently nonhostile types, within an arena, as this clearly was, of suspicion. I said, “So, what’s up?”

“You’re lucky you didn’t lose a leg or your foot, Pete. You’re lucky Ben was nearby.”

We were standing in a clearing. An owl hooted. The night felt unseasonably warm.

“Pete, we’ve got surplus protective gear back at the house, I’m sure we could fit you up. It would be a shame for anything to happen to you. You’re a valuable asset to this community. You have to teach our youngsters to make a better world than the one we’ve made. Am I right?”

“Right, Chuck.”

“Actually, Dad, Mr. Robinson always spent a lot of class time lecturing about war and killing and torture and things,” Ben Webster said.

“I’m sure your teacher was merely highlighting the tragic and beautiful history of human conflict. Isn’t that the case, Pete?”

“Something like that.”

Chuck pointed through the trees. “There’s plenty of struggle tonight in Turtle Pond Park, Pete.”

Sure enough, I could detect distant shadowy forms of people moving. I felt remorse — it was momentary, a swift and transitory psychic experience containing awareness of various realities: the reality of the foot; of my growing guilt and shame around the issue of my failure, the night of Jim’s death, to intervene and turn the tide of vengeance, to administer beneficent justice; the sad fact of Meredith’s coelacanth dreams, her drum-accompanied departure for mental seas where our life together was beside the point. And the school situation. Ben’s presence brought up all the feelings of contrition I’d been repressing, concerning my clear willingness to sit around in my comfortable kitchen and formulate “home school” plans, then do nothing in the way of follow-up. Chuck Webster was right, I had a job to do. And if I got it together now, the home school that is — if I got it together now, we could be looking at practically a complete school year ahead.

I knelt beside Ben, who was observing, through infrared goggles, a mini-battalion of allegedly invidious neighbors snaking along a narrow footpath that traversed the southern sector of the park.

“Hey Ben, how’d you like to be a big player in the future of this town?”

“Me?”

“Your science fair essay on rising sea levels lives in my memory as one of the finest examples of third-grade student research I’ve encountered in my career. You’re a dedicated thinker who understands intellectual thoroughness and the value of knowledge. I’d be proud to have your help recruiting students for the school I plan to open.”

“School?”

“Admittedly your credentials are thin. You’re not a high school graduate yet. What grade would you be now, anyway?”

“Tenth.”

“That’s pretty far along. Plus you have real-world experience. That’s worth a lot. Let’s say you have graduate equivalency.”

“Okay.”

“Now you’re eligible for employment within the educational system.”

“Great.”

“I’ll need your Social Security number. I’ll have to see a birth certificate. We’ll start you out at a reasonable hourly rate to be negotiated later.”

We shook hands, and Ben whispered across the clearing, “Dad, guess what, I got a job!” But his father was nowhere to be seen.

Ben scampered across the clearing. He scanned the perimeter with the night-vision goggles. He called out in earnest, hushed tones, “Dad, Dad.”

Nighttime shadows dappled the forest’s undergrowth and ground; the whole world challenged perception. I could distinguish, with certainty, only Ben, some nearby branches, and the nickel shimmer on the barrel of the unholstered handgun in his hand, when Ben came close and whispered, “Thanks for the career opportunity, Mr. Robinson, but Dad and I made a vow. If he’s harmed, I must hunt down and discharge a bullet into the heart of the person responsible.”

The dark shapes previously roving the southern trail were no longer in evidence. I tried to make light of the situation. “Look, your father probably just went off to conduct some reconnaissance.”

Fear was in the boy’s voice when he said, “Dad wouldn’t go on maneuvers without telling me.”

He stepped into the woods. “Can’t hang around. Dad’s in trouble. Check you later.”

“Hey, wait a minute, Ben. What’s going on with you guys and the Bensons?”

But it was too late, he was gone, vanished into the shrubs, leaving me alone and without insight into the apparent disharmony between the two families.

I stood beneath the spooky trees. The night was quiet. I took off the knapsack, reached in and fished out the trowel. Clouds parted overhead to reveal a few stars. The clearing was, actually, an ideal burial setting — it had all the right qualities. Could I reasonably risk shoveling earth, lighting candles, and reciting incantations in a vicinity likely to be overrun by kin groups brandishing private arsenals? Yes. There was something fitting about it. It was my purpose: to render a symbolic narrative of regeneration, using pieces of Jim as literal embodiments of life transformed — in this case the Foot, which walks over land, alerting us to textures, temperatures, feelings. The burial of Jim’s foot would underscore the pain of physical existence, while attesting to the mortality of the middle-to-high-income households currently vying for control of Turtle Pond Park.