Whitney Collins - Big Bad - Stories

“Come on, Peoria,” Teddy said. “The party can’t go on without you.”

And that was when Leonard took off, fast and frantic. He had an unexpected agility, and Teddy thought, with some level of parental admiration, that maybe he had, once again, underestimated him. Maybe he knew nothing about him at all. He watched with awe and horror as Leonard made for the dark span of distant maples, where the far field met the wilderness. The Collectives, beyond inebriated, were delighted by this unexpected turn.

“Go, Nebraska, go!” someone hooted.

“All the way to Mount Vernon!” another shouted.

In the glow of the bonfire, all that Teddy could make out as he tried to follow Leonard’s retreat was the white wig bouncing in the night, growing smaller and smaller against the jagged silhouette of the forest like the terrified end of a cottontail. There was a chorus of laughter that followed when the wig could no longer be seen. It was laughter that soon faded to an intoxicated murmuring and later to a glazed glee of stupidity.

When the sun came up a few hours later, innocent over the woods, no one seemed to recall what had happened—to Leonard or themselves. The fire was now nothing but a handful of ashes. The discarded baking pans and tambourines dotted the scene like battle shields. The Collectives eventually rose up from beneath their dewy blankets and squinted out empty at the world, before staggering back into the dormitory for eggs and sleep.

Teddy’s fear unfolded with the day. At first his anxiety was manageable. He stayed out in the far field for the morning, picking up debris, pouring warm beer in the ashes, staring off at the maples in the hopes he’d soon see Leonard emerge, rumpled but golden, shaking his head in good humor, holding his flattened wig in one hand and waving Hello! Here I am, Teddy! with the other. But by noon, there was no sign of Leonard, neither in the Collective nor in the field, so Teddy went off into the woods on his own. He kept reminding himself of Leonard’s unexpected agility as he walked. He reminded himself that Leonard had grown up on a farm and had raised a cow from calf to bull. Teddy tried to imagine Leonard strolling over fallen trees and whistling with the birds, but instead he saw him pale and dead on a bed of crimson leaves. He tried to imagine Leonard sitting on a stump in his Revolutionary garb, buttoning his boots and reciting the Preamble, but again, Teddy saw him dead and white, his eyes open in a last moment of panic that Teddy had orchestrated.

Teddy came back from the woods in the late afternoon. By the time the sun began its descent, Leonard still had not returned and Teddy was near panic. He called a meeting of all the Collectives, but some were in too poor a shape from the night before to attend, and of those who did, nearly half of them found Leonard’s absence insignificant.

“Nebraska’s fine,” Gavin said. “Schoolchildren have eaten worse brownies.”

“He’s probably in town,” Howie said. “Have you even checked the diner? Twenty bucks he’s there right now drinking a six-pack of milk.”

Teddy gnawed his bottom lip. “I think we should tell the administration. Maybe campus security.”

There were some audible groans and Gavin shook his head. “Leave the school out of it. The kid’ll turn up eventually. Dapper and dumb as ever.”

The meeting adjourned without Teddy’s blessing. Teddy went up to Leonard’s room to see if he had crept back into the Collective when no one was watching. But Leonard wasn’t there. Teddy sat at Leonard’s desk and turned on the desk lamp. He tried on Leonard’s magnifying glasses. He scraped at a brass button with a dental tool. Then he took off the glasses and curled up on Leonard’s bed and prayed the prayer he’d prayed before, plus one more. Please let Leonard like me. Please let Leonard think I’m a good guy. Please let Leonard be alive .

Three days later and three towns over, Leonard was eventually found. He wasn’t dead, but he was dehydrated and weak and had a broken arm. The Collective gathered around the common room television to watch the local news. Leonard was still dressed as a soldier. He still had on his old wig, as well as a new cast, as two policemen helped him into a cruiser.

“Look at him!” Gavin said. “He’s as white as a sheet.”

“Check out his eyes.” Howie whistled. “They don’t look real.”

Teddy hung back in the common room and stared at the floor while the newscaster gave his report. Leonard had been found on an elderly couple’s front porch. When confronted, he’d told authorities he was the first president of the United States and that he was originally from Nebraska. Thanks to a student ID, the cops were able to determine that his name was Leonard Salts and he was from Ursula, Illinois. He was now in good hands and being sent back to his parents, accompanied by a school counselor. “He’s a lucky young man,” the newscaster said in closing. “He was pretty bad off when he was found.”

The Collectives, save for Teddy, clapped when the segment cut to a commercial.

“All’s well that ends well,” one said.

“Talk about making history,” said another.

Teddy skipped class for the rest of the week. On Saturday, a tall sad man, accompanied by a dean of some sort, came to pack up Leonard’s things. Teddy stood in the hall and listened while they wrapped Leonard’s creations in newspaper.

“I can’t figure out what went wrong,” the tall man said. “Leonard always had a good head on his shoulders.”

There was a long silence. Teddy’s stomach spun one way and then another.

“Some people do better close to home,” the administrator finally said. “I’m sure he’ll bounce right back once he gets back to what he knows.”

Teddy left the hallway and went to his room. An hour later, he watched from his window as the tall man and the dean walked from the Collective with the yam-colored suitcases and a dolly full of cardboard boxes. Teddy watched until they disappeared around a wooded bend in campus. He watched the bend until the sky was black. Teddy couldn’t stop thinking about Leonard or the teeth in the velvet box. He couldn’t stop thinking about the museum waiting for the teeth, and how they might never receive their order and Leonard would lose his chance. But mostly he thought about watching Leonard work—his bent back and the gentle scrape of his tools and the slow evenings suspended in amber.

Teddy sank into a deep depression. Within a week, he took a leave of absence and went home to his mother in Massachusetts. She babied him with soup. She gave him half of her Prozac prescription. Teddy spent his time sleeping and reading old comic books and trying not to think about Leonard. On Thanksgiving, Teddy picked up the phone and called Information and got a number for a Walter Salts in Ursula, but before he could convince himself to call, he burned the piece of paper the number was on. He lit a match and held it to the paper and dropped the paper right before it burned his fingers. The ashes of Walter Salts’s number left a little brown scar on Teddy’s white bedspread.

“Why don’t you go somewhere after the holidays?” his mother suggested. “Somewhere where people really have it bad? A place that will make you feel better about yourself?”

Teddy was doubtful, but he took her advice. In January, he went somewhere hot and humid and primitive—a place where he was tall and godly and the bearer of good and necessary things. It turned out his mother was right: seeing people worse off than himself really did put Teddy in a better mood. Before long, his spirits soared. He saw himself as a benevolent king. One who was good with a shovel, a soup ladle, a campfire guitar. Teddy gained approval, mostly from himself; he grew nearly giddy with self-righteousness. By the time he returned to the States that summer, Teddy had, for all intents and purposes, erased Leonard Salts from his memory.