Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

But he had lost his place in the story and he found himself reading the same sentences over and over until the words made no sense at all. He put the book down and, looking out, was transfixed by what he saw: his father standing across the street, gazing up at the window. He was in his blue suit, his arms hanging straight at his sides, the corners of his mouth turned down. Motionless, he stared at James, who felt as though heavy cables were being cast from the sockets of his father’s eyes over the street and through the window until they wrapped themselves around his skull. He rushed to the window and put his hands against the pane, but when he looked again, the figure was gone, dissolved into the rectangles of concrete and the soot-stained wall behind. It was later that day that he fainted, standing over the sink with a glass of water in his hand. He saw the counter begin to move quickly to one side, then blackness. When he came around he was lying on his back on the linoleum floor.

The room was dark, and by the projection of car headlights sloping across the ceiling, he could tell it was dark outside as well. He lay there awhile, listening to the cars pass, and farther off the sound of jumbo jets descending to earth. When he moved to rise, he found he had no strength in his arms, and shifting about on the hard floor, realized he was lying in a pool of sweat. For a moment, panic gripped him and he felt he might scream. But just as it had arisen, so it passed, and he stared again at the sloping lights on the ceiling.

Gently, images flowed before his mind, and the inscrutable enormity of remembered life washed back over him, leaving him weightless and expectant. He thought of Stockwell, and the exhilaration he had felt on winter afternoons when games were through, running back over the fields to where the parents waited in their heated cars. And he thought of his sealed letters gathered on the living room shelf. He was calm. Soon he would be home again, resting beside his father’s grave, just as the minister’s letter had promised.

ON THE FOOTBALL pitch, daylight had begun to fade.

The other boys were inside already. Samuel had stayed on the field half an hour to practice penalty kicks with his friend Giles, who stood now in front of the goal, waiting for another shot to come. Samuel took ten steps back, then ran at the ball, kicking it high and to the left, missing to the outside by a foot or two.

“Shall we pack it in?” Giles said, dragging his foot across the grass to clear off the mud.

“Don’t you want to have a go?”

Giles shook his head. “I’m knackered, let’s go in.”

It was as they were walking back toward the old manor house the school occupied that Samuel became aware of the cooing and flapping of wings inside the crumbling dovecote, the muffled sounds echoing over the lawn. At that moment, for no apparent reason, he thought: How sad that Jevins should die now, like this, alone in his apartment over the sixth-form dormitories.

Mr. Jevins, who had stood over them just that morning in his gown and oval glasses, reciting Latin—by whom, or what it meant, none of them knew. They’d discovered if they set the wall clock forward ten minutes and rang Bennet’s alarm, Jevins, half deaf, would imagine the sound to be the bell and let them go early. Eighty he must have been, or older. His voice a gravelly whisper, only now and then rising to a pitch, on about some emperor or battle, Samuel guessed. Boys ignored him freely, chatting and throwing paper. Ever since he’d come to Saint Gilbert’s, Samuel had felt a pain associated with this man, a feeling he couldn’t articulate or conceive. This morning for the first time Jevins had slammed his leather book down on the windowsill and with a strain shouted, “Do you boys want me to continue with this lesson or not!”

The thug Miller had stood up and addressed the class.

“Proposition on the floor, gentlemen. Do we want Jevins to continue with the lesson? Show of hands for the nays.”

Most of the boys had raised their hands, covering their mouths and tittering. Jevins had just stood there and watched. Then Bennet’s alarm clock had rung and the boys had begun stuffing their satchels and heading for the door.

Samuel was slow gathering his books; he’d been trying to study for a geography quiz. When he looked up, the room had emptied, except for Mr. Jevins, still at his post. He’d been a foot soldier in World War I , they said, shot off the beach at Dunkirk and sent back over the channel on D-Day.

The wrinkled skin beneath his eyes twitched, a tic of the nerves, the expression of defeat unchanged as he stared at his last remaining pupil. Samuel had grabbed his satchel and run from the room. Walking now, back from the playing fields through the dusk with Giles, Samuel could see lights on in the library, where the upper-form boarders would be studying for their entrance exams. At the top of the building he could see the lights still on in Mr. Jevins’s apartment, the curtains pulled. For a moment he wondered if the old man lay shut-eyed on the bed or in the green leather chair in his front room, where he’d sat two autumns ago elaborating the rules for the new boarders: how to treat matrons, whom to speak to if there were difficulties—deputy prefect, then a prefect, and only then a master. It felt wrong trying to picture where his teacher’s body lay, as if he’d come upon Mr. Jevins in his pants in the upstairs hall at some odd hour, an embarrassing thing he wouldn’t soon forget.

In the courtyard, before Samuel could decide whether to say anything, Giles turned off into the changing rooms for Lincoln House. Samuel kept walking on toward his own dorm. When he entered the main hall after showering and eating supper, he saw Mr. Kinnet, the new master, smoking a cigarette at the window by the door to the library. He had night duty this week and was watching the study hall. Samuel wanted to tell him what had happened to Jevins. Someone should know, he thought, an adult.

“Got a problem there, Phipps? Need to use the loo or something?”

“No, sir.”

“You look as if you’ve been sick.”

“Just tired, sir.”

“It’s barely half seven, shouldn’t you be off being terrorized by your superiors?”

“It’s Friday, sir. Most of them have gone home.”

“Make friends with the day boys, that’s my advice. Some local tosser with a big house and a pool. Get his mum to drag you home on weekends.”

He extinguished his cigarette by reaching out the window and mashing it against the iron casement.

“Mr. Jevins,” Samuel blurted. “It’s a pity.”

“What’s that, Phipps?”

“Nothing.” He walked quickly up the front stairs, their creaking awful and loud, and then up the next flight to the landing and along into his dorm. The room was empty. From the window he looked back across the darkened lawn. He wished he were with Trevor, his older brother. He felt an aching kind of sadness, but right away a voice in his head told him not to be a weakling.

Though it wouldn’t be lights-out for another hour, he climbed into bed. He read three geography lessons that weren’t due until Monday and worked over figures in his chemistry lab book, doing the sums in his head, putting a mark next to each figure he’d recalculated. The Latin textbook he left on the shelf behind him, wondering, despite himself, how long it would take them to find a new teacher and whether the old man had suffered as he went.

“PHIPPSY! OY!”

Giles was shaking him awake. It was long before breakfast but all the boys were up and out of bed.

“Jevins croaked! They’re carrying him down right now! The ambulance’s right out front! Bennet’s been crying for ages, the wus. Come on—get up!”