Whitney Collins - Big Bad - Stories

For the first week or so, it was just “Nebraska” whenever Teddy saw Leonard. “Missing Nebraska?” he might say, or: “This is my new buddy Leonard. He’s from Nebraska.”

Leonard would always reply smiling. “Well … actually. It’s Illinois. Ursula, Illinois.” To which Teddy would give his head a big oafish shake or tap his temple and say: “Geez! Silly me! That’s right! Illinois!” only to repeat the “Nebraska” trick a few hours later. When, after about ten days, Leonard quit smiling and quit correcting Teddy about Nebraska, Teddy made fast to rewin Leonard’s affection so the training could continue. “Hey, Peoria!” Teddy took up saying. “My man! Peoria!” This new nickname seemed to equally confuse and appease Leonard, and once Teddy felt Leonard was less skittish, he ramped it up with unpredictable shout-outs: “Hey, Tin Man!” across campus. “Hey, Dorothy!” across the dining hall. “Hey, Ozzie, my friend. Ozzie Oz!” down the hall.

Within a month, Leonard looked tired. But also less naive. Teddy gave himself credit for this ripening, but something about it nagged him, too. What it was, he couldn’t explain. There was just a general unease about what he’d taken upon himself to do. Teddy sensed he either needed to call it quits or double down to make himself feel better. And one night, at odds with himself, he wandered up to Leonard’s room to get an idea of how he needed to proceed.

“Nebraska,” he heard himself say unexpectedly as he knocked on Leonard’s door. “It’s your biggest fan. Teddy.”

There was a long pause and then Teddy heard a quiet “Come in.”

Teddy opened the door slowly and took a peek inside. Then he threw the door open wide in awe. “Holy shit!” Teddy said. “This is some setup you’ve got here.”

Leonard looked up at Teddy from his desk. He wore magnifying spectacles and had been tinkering with something miniscule. His eyes grew bigger than big at Teddy’s praise. “You think so, Teddy?”

Teddy wandered around the room with his arms crossed in front of him while he inspected Leonard’s displays. “So I think, Leonard. So I think.”

Leonard’s room was nothing short of a museum, a war museum to be exact, but which war exactly was lost on Teddy, who knew little about history other than his own personal one. “What is all this stuff?” he asked. “How’d you fit all this into your suitcases?”

“Revolutionary War replicas,” Leonard said. “Uniforms, bullets, buttons, and the like.” Leonard smiled, quickly regaining his day-one enthusiasm and speed. “My mother’s been mailing it to me. I make everything to be as authentic as possible. I’m a faker-maker, you could say. Nothing I create is the real thing, but it passes as such all the time.”

Teddy smiled. “So, you scam people?”

Leonard took off his spectacles and set down his tools. “Of course not!” he said. “Absolutely, resolutely not. I make things for myself and occasionally museums.” He stood up from his desk and dug through a stack of photographs. “I had one museum request a pair of colonial boots and, by Jove, I made them a pair of colonial boots. See? Here you are.” He held up a photograph in front of Teddy’s face. The boots in question looked like a pair of women’s old shoes. “You can’t tell the difference between these and George Washington’s. I ran over them with my father’s John Deere to break them in, and then I oiled them and ran over them, oiled them and ran over them, and then finally packed them in some dirt for a week until … abracadabra! Museum quality.” Leonard beamed like he had on the first night, before the lentil loaf and wine had gotten the best of him. “My grandmother thinks I crossed the Delaware in a past life. I’ve been eat up with this stuff since I was three.” Leonard went to the yam-colored cosmetic case and brought it to Teddy. “Open it,” he said.

Teddy looked at Leonard’s ecstatic face. The horse was completely off its lead now. Teddy was going to have to start from scratch. “Go on,” Leonard urged. “Look inside.”

Inside the case was a velvet box about the size of a sandwich, and inside of that was what appeared to be dentures. “They’re Washington’s teeth,” Leonard gushed. “Well, a replica of. They took me a year to make. I made them out of pork ribs. Well, pork rib bones.”

Leonard was on cloud nine. Teddy thought for a moment of how he might be able to knock him down to cloud two or three. He closed the velvet box and put it back into the case and gave a long, drawn-out sigh. “You know, Peoria, the Collective was founded during the Vietnam War.” Teddy handed the cosmetic case back to Leonard, who seemed to wilt a little. “Thirty years ago, some honest-to-goodness flower children got together on this campus in the name of peace and petitioned for their own cooperative dormitory.” Teddy looked for a place to sit, but finding none, went and leaned against Leonard’s desk, knocking several small tools to the floor in the process. “These were peaceable student-activists who wanted to live in harmony … cook together, bang on some tambourines, stand up to injustice. They didn’t believe in Wall Street or mousetraps or razors. And they sure as shit didn’t believe in war.”

Leonard went from looking discouraged to scared. “Oh, I’m as peaceful as they get, Teddy. I’m just into the history of it all. That’s all. Really.”

Teddy leaned up from the desk and more tools fell to the floor. He knew good and well that the present-day Collective was more drugs than hugs, a gathering of imposters—young men and women who hailed from money but dressed as if they didn’t. Potheads with no political agenda who ate beans for show, but prime rib when they went home to their parents’ country houses.

“ I believe you, Leonard,” Teddy said, positioning himself as Leonard’s one and only confidante. “But the others wouldn’t.” Teddy took a final stroll around the room with his arms crossed, as if now assessing a police lineup. “We’ll keep this just between the two of us, okay?”

Leonard nodded silently and Teddy let himself out. Alone in the stairwell, Teddy paused between the third and second floors. He could hear his own heart pounding. He knew he was terrible. He knew he was being just plain rotten. He didn’t know why he’d ever started in on Leonard in the first place. He’d never acted like this in his entire life, at least not that he could recall. On some occasions, maybe he had been a little arrogant, but this behavior was just above and beyond, and Teddy knew it. Far off, from some Collective dorm room, Teddy could hear a whoop of laughter and bongo drums. What a charade , some voice inside his head said. A never-ending costume party . Teddy’s stomach gave a little flip. Maybe he could lay off a little. Maybe he could give the horse a vacation from training, let it out to graze.

Teddy went down to his dorm room and lit what was left of a joint. He pinched it between his fingers like a dead, white moth and turned off the lights. He lay down on his futon and let himself remember Leonard in the doorway the first night. How his amber hair lit up like a halo. How he stacked his luggage like a child stacked building blocks. Teddy let himself feel guilty about everything for a while. He even went so far as to say a prayer, which was something he hadn’t done since he was maybe seven, when he’d wished to God that his parents would stay together, which they hadn’t. Please let Leonard like me , the prayer went. Please let Leonard think I’m a good guy . Teddy repeated the prayer again and again until he felt certain his prayer would be answered. After a while, he fell asleep peacefully and without remorse.