Kevin Brockmeier - The Illumination

He kept remembering something about his kindergarten teacher, Ms. Derryberry. Ms. Derryberry had kept an unusual toy on her desk. It was a row of metal balls on V-shaped threads. The balls worked like a grandfather clock or a teeter-totter. She would let the first one swing into the others. The ball at the end of the row would jump. When it fell back, the first ball would jump again. Then the last ball would jump, then the first again. Those two balls, the first and last, took turns swinging. Each would land back where it started with a clack. The five or six in the middle stayed perfectly still. After a while, the toy would run out of energy. The noise would stop, and everyone would return to work.

Like Chuck, Ms. Derryberry had believed in having many rules. There were rules about talking and playing and sitting down. There were rules about gum-chewing and lining up for recess. There was even a rule about going to the bathroom. It was rule number seven on the list: Restroom Privileges.

ONE BOY, ONE GIRL, YOU MUST TAKE THE HALL PASS!!

She gave gold stars to everyone who followed the rules. Twenty gold stars were enough to earn you a reward. The reward might be a piece of hard cinnamon candy. It might be the chance to lead the recess line. Sometimes Ms. Derryberry let you hand out the art supplies. And sometimes she invited you to sit at her desk. You got to climb like a king into her chair. She let you play with the little swinging silver balls. It didn’t matter how hard you slung the first one. Soon they slowed down and began tapping against one another. They quickly found their rhythm, going clack clack clack clack . They were like circus acrobats doing graceful tricks in midair. They rocked and tilted, side to side, back and forth. Each collision was a little quieter than the one before. (That was the word for things knocking together: a collision.) Finally a ball would fall so softly that it stopped. All of them would sway slightly on their V-shaped threads. And you would get up and return to your seat.

Just thinking about the desk toy could calm Chuck down. The clacking sound, those seesawing silver globes—they were wonderful. It was true then, and it was still true now.

On hard days, he would remember watching the toy operate. He imagined another toy just like it inside his head. His heart seemed to thump along with the clacking noise. He had the peculiar feeling of being suspended by strings. It gave him a soothing sort of rocking chair sensation.

The sheets billowed in the wind, and Chuck sat up. He had no idea how long he had been outside. He opened the diary to a page in the middle. The man across the street loved his wife’s morning ritual. He loved the way she saved the comics for last. He loved how the smoke followed her around a fire. The walls of the room suddenly began to fall away. Chuck’s mom was taking the sheets down from their clothespins. “Well, hello there, Buster,” she said when she spotted him. “Don’t forget we’re getting that hair of yours cut today.” Chuck leaped up and ran back inside with the diary.

That afternoon, his pretend dad stayed home cleaning the garage. It was just Chuck and his mom in the car. Chuck sat in the front seat, behind the rustiest door. Metal flakes drizzled to the ground when he slammed it. His whole life, he had loved riding in the car. He loved how the tires floated sideways on wet roads. He loved the soft fabric that sagged from the ceiling. He used to laugh whenever his parents honked the horn. It sounded like that Sesame Street monster bopping its nose. That was years and years ago, when Chuck was little. Back then, he sat in an egglike cushioned plastic seat. His mom would buckle him in and shut the door. It would open, like magic, in a completely different place. The grocery store, the park, the church—he never knew. He would’ve stayed there all the time if he could.

At the barbershop, Chuck sat between two big silver mirrors. One was in front of him, the other behind him. The mirrors kept reflecting each other across the open floor. Their frames became smaller and smaller, shrinking into the distance. He could see thousands of Chucks inside the long tunnel. Every time he moved sideways, so did all the others. He nodded so that the barber could trim his neck. The other Chucks nodded, too, at exactly the same time. He shook the hair from his gown—so did they. He stretched his arms out like wings—so did they. The barber told Chuck, “No more squirming around, young man. You don’t want me lopping off one of your ears.”

Chuck pictured his ear hitting the floor like heavy fruit.

The barber paused and said, “Whoa there, no crying now.” He gave Chuck a reassuring little pat on the shoulder. “You have my word, your ears are safe with me.”

Slowly and carefully, he clipped the hair behind Chuck’s ears. His scissoring hand glowed white from every joint and muscle. Chuck stopped sniffling as he watched it open and close. It was like looking at an X-ray of a hand. Behind him a skeleton was sawing and fluttering its fingers. It was making chopping gestures—a strange dance of bones. And then, before Chuck knew it, his haircut was finished.

The barber cleaned his neck, dusting it with baby powder. He unsnapped Chuck’s gown, and hair sprinkled to the floor. Chuck’s chair sank onto its pole with a hissing noise. He got up and followed his mom to the counter. Not until then did he catch sight of Todd Rosenthal. The other barber was shaving his hair down to bristles. He was saying words like head lice and nasty buggers . He lectured Todd’s parents: his mom and his real dad. “Really it’s gotta be your best option with these things.” He mowed a stripe in Todd’s hair with the clippers. “You can comb or you can cut is about it. I had one guy tried to drown them with gasoline. Now that works, but you’d better not light any matches. You’ll have yourself a bonfire is what you’ll have yourself. No, when the lice get this bad, it’s shaving time.”

A thousand Todd Rosenthals glared at Chuck from the mirror. “Say one word and you’re dead,” they mouthed to him.

On Monday, at school, Todd came in wearing a hat. Ms. Mount told him he would have to remove it. He handed her a note, and she read it silently. She nodded okay, he had permission to wear his hat . Todd kicked Chuck’s chair as he walked to his desk. Then he sat by the window, which rippled with rain. A car slid past, and the water separated its headlights. The red dots of its brakes shone from the glass. Then they vanished, and the rain was just rain again. Todd gripped his cap by the edges, tugging it down. Chuck noticed how snugly it fit, but didn’t say anything.

Everyone began trading whispers—everyone but Chuck, that is. One by one they turned to peek at Todd Rosenthal. They all spent the morning wondering the exact same thing. Why in the world was he wearing that stupid thing? What was he hiding that he refused to show them? Someone wrote Todd a note during the American history lesson. Chuck glanced at it before passing it to Nathan Chowdhury. It read, “Do you have cancer (check yes or no)?”

Todd returned it with an extra box checked SCREW YOU. He sat high in his seat like a long-necked bird. He stared straight ahead at the writing on the chalkboard.

At lunch, Matthew Berry revealed the answer to the mystery. He crossed behind Todd Rosenthal and flipped his cap loose. A field of tiny lice marks shone from Todd’s scalp. They looked like stars on the dome of a planetarium. A party noise rose up from the fifth grade table. The lunchroom became loud with the overlapping bubbles of conversations.

“Did you see I think spots yeah must be bugs.”

And, “Man can you totally Todd-Rosenthal-believe head lice.”

And, “Hat-on-comb gag me contagious is this kindergarten?”