Exley (10 page)

“I remember now,” I said. I reached into my desk and pulled out my copy of the book. I'd read the book the Friday before, in the nine five-minute periods between when one class ended and the next began.

“Good,” Mrs. T. said. Then she looked at us with big, hopeful eyes. We were probably looking at her the same way. None of us knew what we were supposed to do next. I think America on the Same Page's idea was that after reading the book, we wouldn't be able to look at the world in the same way, and if that were the case, then we wouldn't be able to talk about it in the same way, either. But how
were
we supposed to see it? How
were
we supposed to talk about it? I think we expected Mrs. T. to tell us; I think she expected us to tell her. But we weren't going to tell her anything. You could see Mrs. T. realized this, too. It was scary, a little, to watch Mrs. T. become less hopeful and more resentful as she realized that maybe America was on the same page, but we definitely were not. Her eyes got smaller and smaller as she tried to figure out what to do. Finally, she opened to page —— of the book and told us to do the same. We did. Then Mrs. T. put on her glasses (they'd been hanging on a black string around her neck) and read this passage:

It was finally morning. It had stopped raining and the sun had begun to shine and there was a rainbow arcing yellow and blue and bloodred over the battlefield and the steaming bodies of the men and their horses. The ones that were still alive were moaning in the newdawn; the ones that were dead were dead. The boy realized how awful it was to be dead, because once you were dead, that was all there was to be said about you anymore. “My father is dead,” the boy said. It felt terrible to say that. “But I am alive,” the boy said, and that felt wonderful. And then the boy realized why there had been wars and why there
would always be wars: because it was better to be alive than to be dead. The boy shouldered his father's rifle and whispered, “Go,” in his father's horse's ear. And they went.

When Mrs. T. was done reading, she took off her glasses, looked at us, and asked hopefully, “Well, what do you think?”

No one said anything at first. The only sound was Harold tapping his pencil against his forehead. This was how he thought. Everyone else was quietly looking down at their desks, waiting for Harold to say something first. Because Harold was always the one who said something first.

“I didn't like the part about the rainbow,” Harold finally said.

“You didn't,” Mrs. T. said. It wasn't a question. Her voice was so flat you could have slept on it.

“Because you don't even
need
rain,” Harold said. “I went to Niagara Falls this summer. There was a
rainbow
, but no
rain
. Only water. It should be called a waterbow. That's what I feel.”

“So whatever,” L. said. “I thought it was pretty great. Especially during the battle and the nasty hand-to-hand stuff.” L. was talking about the part before the part Mrs. T. had read, when some of the soldiers ran out of ammunition and so had to try to stab one another with their bayonets. L. was a brown belt and loved anything to do with hand-to-hand combat. He turned back a page and read: “‘The boy raised his bayonet, and for a moment it glistened in the silvermoonlight like some message from God, and then the boy thrust it through the chest of a boy not much older than he and then withdrew the bayonet, which made a terrible sucking sound as it left the other boy's body, and then the other boy fell to the ground and did not move and would never move.' Awesome,” L. said.

“By ‘awesome,' you mean ‘terrible,'” Mrs. T. said.

“Well, yeah,” L. said.

“But why is the horse white?” P. asked. “Why'd the writer have to make that horse be a white horse?”

“Good point, P.,” Mrs. T. said. “It's problematic.” They had this sort of conversation all the time: P. always asked Mrs. T. why something had to be either black or white, and Mrs. T. always answered him carefully, like
she was trying hard to give the answer P. wanted so that they could talk about something else, anything else. “Why
did
the author have to make the horse white? Exactly.”

“But then again,” P. said, “it had to
suck
being that white horse, being sat on all the time by that bloody, gross white boy. White boy sitting on white horse. It's like sitting on yourself or something.” P. paused for a second, trying to work all this out in his head. “It's like everything white is his own worst enemy. Maybe
that's
what the writer was trying to say.”

Mrs. T. nodded and wagged her finger at P. in an excited yes-I-think-you've-hit-the-nail-right-on-the-head sort of way. “Exactly,” she said, and then she turned to J. and asked, “What about you, J.? What do you think?”

Everyone looked at J. She was fingering her scar, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. J.'s father was in Iraq. Everyone's father or mother, it seemed, was in Iraq. But J. was the only one trying not to cry about it. I wondered if that meant something had happened to her father the way something had happened to mine. Everyone but me looked away from her; even Mrs. T. pretended to be very interested in something underneath one of her fingernails. “I think it's
bullcrap,
” J. finally whispered, so softly that you could pretend you didn't hear it, which is exactly what

Mrs. T. did.

“And you, Miller?” Mrs. T. said. I knew that Mrs. T. didn't like me. All my other English teachers had liked me, but not Mrs. T. Maybe because on the first day of class, when she'd asked what I'd read over the summer, I'd told her I'd read sixty-three books. She'd put her hands on her hips and pinched her lips and looked at me like I had done something wrong. I had been about to explain that some of those books were pretty short, which wasn't even true. But L. didn't give me the chance.

“So,” L. had said, “I find when it comes to reading, quality is more important than quantity.”

“Very good, L.,” Mrs. T. had said. “That's using your mine-duh.”

Anyway, Mrs. T. was waiting for me to say what I felt about the America on the Same Page book. What I felt when I was reading it was what I felt now: I wanted it to be over so I could read something else. I mean, it was fine. It was a book, and so it couldn't be that bad. But it wasn't as
good as it could have been. At one point in the book, the boy realized that “the world was killing and death.”
Really?
I wondered when I read that.
Is that all the world is? And if that's all the world is, then can't books be about something else? Anything else?
Exley's book had been written during the Vietnam War, and it was about the war a little, but mostly it was about a bunch of other things. I wondered if this war would have to be over before
A Fan's Notes
could be chosen as an America on the Same Page book. Except the way things were going, it seemed like the war would never be over. And if the war were never over, then we'd keep reading books about war, and
A Fan's Notes
would never be an America on the Same Page book. That seemed terrible to me, more terrible than any of the terrible things that happened in the America on the Same Page book; I couldn't stand for it to be true. I wondered if my dad couldn't stand for it to be true, either, and if this was why he joined the army and went to Iraq in the first place: to help the war end so that people could stop reading the books they were reading or start reading
A Fan's Notes
. That made some sense, but not enough sense. Because my dad loved
A Fan's Notes
so much that he basically didn't do anything the book didn't tell him to, and there was nothing in the book that said he or anyone else should go to war or do anything else, really, except drink beer and sit on the davenport and read. But my dad went to Iraq anyway. Did that mean he'd decided that the boy in the America on the Same Page book was right, that the world was nothing but killing and death, and that if that were true, then he'd better stop reading
A Fan's Notes
and get off the davenport and join the rest of the world? That seemed more terrible than anything else; I couldn't stand for it to be true, either, just like I couldn't stand to just sit around and watch my dad in his hospital bed. This was why, of course, I had to find Exley. And this was also why, during this entire time, I was writing a list of Exley's favorite sayings and expressions. I figured it'd be easier to recognize him if I knew the way he talked by heart. I was so into writing the list that I didn't notice that Mrs. T. had walked up to my desk until she reached down and snatched up the piece of paper. She read it, her face getting redder and redder; I could feel my face getting redder and redder, too, especially when Mrs. T. handed me back the piece of paper and asked me to please stand up and read what I'd written out loud. I really didn't want
to do it. But when Mrs. T. was asking me to do it, she was really telling me. When a teacher tells you to do something, you have to do it, especially if you don't want to. This is what it means to be educated.

Anyway, here's what I read:

EXLEY'S FAVORITE WORDS AND SAYINGS

Jesus H. Keeriiisst.

For Christ's sake.

The trip began on a depressing note.

I had incapacitated myself.

Cha (you).

You're a goddamn drunken Irish poet!

C'mon, friend.

How does one get into this business?

Oh, Jesus, Frank!

Oh, Frank,
baby!

Aw, c'mon, you goofies!

It is very wearying to be honest.

Nobody, but nobody.

I've got human life — do you understand that?
Human life!
— in my hands.

Literary idolaters fell somewhere between blubbering ninnies and acutely frustrated maidens.

It was my fate, my destiny, my end, to be a fan.

Life isn't all a goddamn football game!

I wanted to risk great happiness but I never got the chance.

There are certain appeals that quite startle and benumb the heart.

Fuck you.

After I finished, Harold clapped, like he always did for me when I read something aloud in class. J. gave me a little smile, like she didn't know exactly what I was talking about but wanted me to keep talking anyway. But no one else clapped or smiled at me or even looked in my direction. They were all looking at one another as though someone — me, or them — had totally misunderstood the assignment.

“So whatever that means,” L. finally said.

“That was completely inappropriate, Miller,” Mrs. T. said. She had gone back to her desk and was holding her grade book in one hand, her red pen in the other. We got either a minus or a check for our “freewrite.” I guess that was true for this assignment, too. I could tell by the way Mrs. T.'s pen moved that I got a minus. I don't know about you, but bad grades make me feel like I have to go to the bathroom. They make me feel anxious, and when I get anxious, I'll say things I shouldn't.

“All that was from this great book called
A Fan's Notes,
” I said. “written by Frederick Exley.” By the way Mrs. T. reacted, I was pretty sure she'd never heard of the book or the guy who wrote it. She put on her glasses, then cocked her head and looked at me warily, like she knew I was about to say something objectionable. “I was thinking maybe we could read and talk about that book after we're done talking about this one?”

Mrs. T. opened her mouth, but before any sound came out, J. said, “Maybe we should.”

Mrs. T. closed her mouth. But like every teacher, she had someone to speak for her when she didn't feel like speaking for herself. “So why would we want to do that?” L. asked. He picked up the America on the Same Page book and read aloud from the back cover, which, like all America on the Same Page books, said, “This America on the Same Page book reminds us what it is to be an American and to live in difficult times.” “So I don't know how
his
book” — and here L. pointed at me — “reminds us of that.”

J. squinted at L. and said, “Thanks, but I don't think I need to be reminded.” Then she stood up, shouldered her backpack, and stomped out of the room, leaving behind her copy of the book. Once the door slammed behind J., the room was absolutely quiet — there's no room as quiet as the classroom a kid has just walked out of without the teacher's permission — until finally Mrs. T. cleared her throat, so that we looked at her instead of looking at the door. Her pen was in her hand, and she was looking at me over her glasses, like what had happened was my fault and not J.'s or L.'s or hers.

“Next time, Miller,” she said, making another minus mark in her book, “use your mine-duh.”

 

 

A
fter breakfast (grapefruit, brown sugar) I locate the Veterans Affairs hospital: it is exactly where M. described it and as M. described it. The automatic doors open as he said they would. The female receptionist is seated behind the desk; she is physically as M. described her. I approach her desk and wait for her to recognize my presence; she does not. The swinging doors behind her open and several men rush through them pushing another man on a gurney. The man on the gurney is moaning piteously. But I labor to ignore him. As any mental health professional will tell you, sometimes you have to ignore human suffering — or even make it worse — in order to heal human suffering. It is my understanding that the branches of our armed forces operate under a similar assumption. Which is yet another example of how the mental health profession has a great deal in common with other of our most significant professions.

Regardless, I continue to wait to be acknowledged by the receptionist. She stares at her computer screen for several long moments, then types furiously, then stops again and stares at the screen, fingers poised over the keyboard. I stand there, waiting for her to look up and say “Hello” or some such conventional greeting, but she does not. I think of how useful M. would be at this moment. Perhaps M. could teach her how to speak and when, the way he has taught me.