He hit the metal box again and again, denting the sides and cracking the dark green paint.
John took that moment to sit in his chair. As he drew himself forward he used his left hand to pull open the top drawer from its underside.
“Is there something wrong, Mr. Tackie?”
“Why the fuck you say all that shit about us, man?” Flecks of spittle popped from his lips.
“What did you expect me to say?”
“You called us immature and evil and cruel.” Pete slammed his bat against the cabinet to punctuate each claim.
“You called me a coward,” he added.
“Yes.”
“You admit it?”
“Does anyone other than Carlinda and Tamala know about your part in making those yellow broadsides?”
“Kerry and her boyfriend.”
“Do any of them think you a coward?”
“No.”
“You did this to help me didn’t you, Pete?”
“I guess.”
“And if I said that the professors named should be fired and the people who put up the posters should be seen as heroes then I would have been suspected of being part of the posters’ origins — no?”
“But you coulda said that we were real historians who knew how to use our studies to change the way things happen.”
Pete slammed the bat down on the desktop. With his knee John closed the drawer; the belt-buckle knife was in his left hand.
“So you did this for praise and not the restructuring of social context?”
“We really liked you,” Pete said lowering into John’s visitor’s chair. “We did this so that they wouldn’t fire you. And then, and then you called us names and said that we were stupid. We’re not stupid.”
“No you’re not.”
John peered into his would-be attacker’s eyes.
Pete dropped his bat.
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because my role was to pull everything together after you tore it apart. It has, so far, worked. You and Tamala and Carlinda created an atmosphere that will make a difference.”
“But I feel like shit.”
“When you play against a really good rugby team,” John said, “go into overtime and fight as hard as you can, how do you feel afterward?”
“Sore as hell,” Pete said. “Sometimes there’s bones broken and all kinds of bruises and shit. Sometimes the girls that hang around wanna take us home but we hurt too bad.”
“It’s the same thing here. We’re doing work that will make a difference. It’s hard work and when it’s over we’re exhausted. You’ve made a difference and nobody but your friends can know about it.”
“Then you don’t really think all those things you said?”
“Of course not. I’m merely playing my part. Without you I couldn’t do it. And you will gain invaluable experience that will serve you well for the rest of your life.”
“I was gonna kill you,” Pete admitted. “I was gonna beat you to death with that bat.”
Something about the young man’s confession was a balm to John’s restless mind. He was certain that he would have killed Pete before the rugby thug knew there was a knife. The fact that he came so close to murder brought back a long-dormant memory: moments after killing Chapman Lorraine Cornelius felt completely at peace.
“Go on back to your dorm, Pete,” John said. “You did good.”
“Maybe I’ve done it all wrong,” John said after Pete had gone.
He was talking to, or at least looking at, the discarded bat in the corner next to the empty chair.
His father’s Chapman Lorraine was Jimmy Grimaldi and his Excalibur a heart brave enough to stand unarmed against an unbeatable foe.
John read the same books as Herman, had tried his best to disappear into stories that were both true and indecipherable. But rather than a king in exile he’d become a kind of Tallyrand agitating between the ruling classes, the workers and the revolutionists. Where Herman had been heroic John was just a scarecrow, forgotten in a barren field that had once been flush and fruitful.
Remembering that true self-abnegation was possible only for a man willing to die he replaced the knife and took from the drawer a yellow legal pad and a number two pencil. It took hours to write, erase, write again, reject and finally decide upon the first few words of his second Deck Rec lecture. He didn’t trust himself to deliver an impromptu talk this time. His life had been a long series of spontaneous acts — it was time for a change.
We have come here today not to be lectured to or addressed but rather to look into ourselves and see what it is that makes us possible. After writing these words Professor John Woman sat back in his chair and read them over and over until he was satisfied that this was the right beginning for the rest of his life.
18
John spent the night at his Prometheus Hall office, writing.
There were so many cross-outs and erasures that at around three in the morning he redrafted the speech. As he rewrote, new ideas formed. What he had written lost its power, so he was compelled to begin again. A few minutes past six he began practicing the speech, making notes and rewording, changing sentence structures and adding asides. By eight he was finished. An hour later he lay down on the hard floor behind his desk and slept. A dream brought him to the secret room in the projectionist’s booth. He became Chapman Lorraine sealed away, nearly forgotten. In that stasis there was no guilty conscience or demonic elation. He simply took Lorraine’s place for a short while, affording his victim some relief.
When John awoke he felt stiff but exonerated. He’d done penance for the murder and accepted that he and his father were not the same. They loved each other but these loves did not encompass a singularity. They were different men: Herman a teacher and Cornelius an unaffiliated samurai. The elder Jones suffered the curse of physical weakness with superior moral strength in a world that sneered at the first and could not believe the second. John was a trickster, a coyote gratefully licking the bloody wounds of his savior.
On the walk over to Deck Rec John noticed flimsy yellow flags flapping in the breezes around the damning broadsides. It wasn’t until he investigated that he remembered the assignment he gave the two hundred or so attendees of the previous day’s class.
One sheet read:
I threw my cat from the roof of my parents’ house when I was five and angry that they wouldn’t let me ride my bike around the block. The cat, Puddin, didn’t die but I knew that I had tried to kill her. I had sex with my mother’s best friend, Dora N., when she was taking me to visit a college. My mother was supposed to take me but she had strep throat and Dora stood in. I cheat whenever I can on tests and schoolwork. I need the grades so that I can get student aid.
I have no excuses but at least I know that I am wrong.
The fourth confession was more cogent:
I did a hit and run when I was drunk one time. The guy didn’t die and he got better, pretty much. I should have turned myself in but I didn’t and now it’s too late to do anything about it.
The sixteenth revelation made John stop and think:
I steal. Whenever I can get away with it I take things that don’t belong to me. It could be a framed picture or change off somebody’s desk, an iPod or a pair of shoes. I once took a very expensive vase from the apartment of a house I’d only been to once. I unlocked the back door when I was there in the daytime and came in that night when the guy that lived there was asleep. He was my boyfriend’s best friend so I knew him pretty well. I was scared I might get caught. After, I went right home and fucked my boyfriend hard.