Zombie
A Novel
Joyce Carol Oates
Suspended Sentence
1
My name is Q__ P__ & I am thirty-one years old, three months.
Height five feet ten, weight one hundred forty-seven pounds.
Eyes brown, hair brown. Medium build. Light scattering of freckles on arms, back. Astigmatism in both eyes, corrective lenses required for driving.
Distinguishing features: none.
Except maybe these faint worm-shaped scars on both my knees. They say from a bicycle accident, I was a little boy then. I don’t contradict but I don’t remember.
I never contradict. I am in agreement with you as you utter your words of wisdom. Moving your asshole-mouth & YES SIR I am saying NO MA’AM I am saying. My shy eyes. Behind my plastic-rimmed glasses that are the color of skin seen through plastic.
Caucasian skin that is. On both sides of my family going back forever as far as I am aware.
My I.Q. when last tested: 112. A previous time tested: 107. In high school when tested: 121.
Born Mt. Vernon, Michigan. February 11, 1963. Dale Springs public schools. Dale Springs High School, class of 1981. Q__ P__ graduated forty-fourth in a class of one hundred eighteen. Did not win a scholarship to any college. Did not belong to any sports teams, school newspaper or yearbook etc. Highest grades in math except in senior year calculus where I fucked up.
I see my probation officer Mr. T__ alternate Thursdays 10 A.M., downtown Mt. Vernon. My therapist Dr. E__ Mondays 4 P.M., University Medical Center. Group therapy with Dr. B__ is Tuesdays 7 P.M.
I am not doing well, I think. Or maybe just O.K. I know they are writing reports. But I am not allowed to see. If one of these was a woman I would do better, I feel. They believe you, they are not always watching you. EYE CONTACT HAS BEEN MY DOWNFALL.
Mr. T__ asks questions like rolling off a tape. YES SIR I tell him NO SIR. I am employed. On a regular basis now. Dr. E__ is the one who prescribes the medication. Asks me questions to get me to talk. My tongue gets in the way of my talking. Dr. B__ throws out a question as he says to get the guys talking. They’re bullshit masters. I admire them. I sit inside my clothes staring at my shoes. My whole body is a numb tongue.
I drive everywhere in my Ford van. It is a 1987 model, the color of wet sand. No longer new but reliable. It passes through your vision like passing through a solid wall invisible. My American flag decal big as a real flag in the rear window.
My bumper sticker is I BRAKE FOR ANIMALS. I thought it was a good idea to have a bumper sticker.
2
Is Time outside me, I started wondering in high school. When things began to go fast. Or is Time inside me.
If OUTSIDE you have to keep pace with fucking clocks & calendars. No slacking off. If INSIDE, you do what you want. Whatever. You create your own Time. Like breaking the hands off a clock like I did once so it’s just the clock face there looking at you.
3
I am a registered part-time student at Dale County Technological College where I am enrolled in two three-credit courses for the spring semester. INTRO TO ENGINEERING & INTRO TO DIGITAL COMPUTER PROGRAMMING.
It was decided that Q__ P__ might become an ENGINEER. There are many kinds of ENGINEERING. Chemical ENGINEERING, civil ENGINEERING, electrical ENGINEERING, mechanical & aerospace ENGINEERING. The college catalog lists the requirements for majors. Q__ P__ might earn a degree in how many years Dad calculated.
In the detention center downtown where they locked me up awaiting Dad posting my bond I was observed doing rapid calculations in pencil. Up and down the margins of old magazines laying around. Weird: my hand moving like it had its own purpose. Like in eighth grade, algebra equations. Geometry problems except I didn’t have a compass or ruler but drew the figures anyway. Long columns of numbers like ants just to add them up for the hell of it, I guess. I don’t know why. This went on for a long time. For hours. I was sweating onto the magazine pages watching where the pencil point moved. Even after the pencil point got dull and the marks were invisible. Even when the guard was talking to me and I didn’t hear.
They had me quarantined as they called it. Ninety-one percent of inmates at the detention center are black or Hispanic, white guys are put together in holding cells. I was with two white guys busted on drugs. I was tagged RACIAL OFFENSE. But it was not RACIAL. I don’t know what RACIAL is.
I am not a RACIST. Don’t know what the fuck a RACIST is.
Sweating & my hand holding the pencil was moving but I wasn’t talking. Nor EYE CONTACT with anybody. It was observed how for that period of incarceration Q__ P__ was not talking & was not making EYE CONTACT with anybody.
In that way the fuckers slide down into your soul.
How Dad learned of these math calculations I don’t know. Might have been they allowed him to observe me through one-way glass. On a surveillance camera. & the magazines were probably gathered & given to him for examination. He is Professor P__ & they call him so. He said the idea came to him then. To lend me tuition for the tech college where I would learn to be an ENGINEER. We would all forget about Mt. Vernon State U., that hadn’t worked out. That was years ago.
A longer time ago when I was eighteen there was Eastern Michigan State at Ypsilanti. We had all forgotten about that long ago.
Quentin has a natural love of numbers Dad said to Mom. In my hearing. His voice thick like he was trying not to clear his throat of something clotted. A gift for numbers. Inherited from me. I should have realized.
THAT IS WHY I am a part-time student at Dale County Technological College. & I am studying hard. Dale Tech is seven miles from my current residence but no inconvenience for me, I told my probation officer Mr. T__, I have my Ford van I drive everywhere in. A distance of seven hundred miles is nothing, but I did not tell Mr. T__ that.
4
As of last Monday my residence is 118 North Church Street, Mt. Vernon. University Heights the area is called. Close by the big State University campus where Professor P__ teaches. (But Mom & Dad live in the suburb of Dale Springs, on the other side of town.)
At 118 North Church I am CARETAKER for this residence once my grandparents’ home. None of the tenants know this fact I am certain and I would not be the one to tell them.
The property is still owned by my Grandma P__ who lives now in Dale Springs. But it is maintained by my father R__ P__ as a multi-tenant residence partitioned into nine rental units as approved by the zoning commission.
As a gesture of our trust, Quentin. Dad said.
Oh but Quentin will do a good job! We know that. Mom said.
Grandma’s house is an old faded-red brick Victorian as they call it. With a smudged look in the front like somebody moved his thumb across it. Three storeys, plus the attic. An old addition at the rear used for storage. A big kitchen where tenants have “kitchen privileges” as they are called. A deep cellar which is OFF LIMITS to tenants. A stone foundation that is very solid. Clearing away some underbrush I discovered at the front right corner the date 1892 chiseled in the stone.