Inappropriate Behavior: Stories

I
NAPPROPRIATE
B
EHAVIOR

This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination, and any real names or locales used in the book are used fictitiously.

© 2014, Text by Murray Farish

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.

(800) 520-6455

www.milkweed.org

Published 2014 by Milkweed Editions

Cover design by Christian Fuenfhausen

Cover art © Shutterstock/Vlue

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5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Bush Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Foundation; the Driscoll Foundation; the Jerome Foundation; the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Also, this activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Farish, Murray, 1968–

[Short stories. Selections]

Inappropriate Behavior : Stories / Murray Farish. — First Edition.

pages
      
cm

I. Title.

PS3606.A6925A6 2014

813'.6—dc23

2013037871

ISBN 978-1-57131-902-9 (e-book)

Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship.
We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world's endangered forests and conserve natural resources.
Inappropriate Behavior
was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Friesens Corporation.

For Jack and Hunter,

and for Teresa, till the wheels come off . . .

C
ONTENTS

The Passage

Ready for Schmelling

Lubbock Is Not a Place of the Spirit

The Thing about Norfolk

Mayflies

I Married an Optimist

Charlie's Pagoda

The Alternative History Club

Inappropriate Behavior

Sometimes

you wake up and you're living your life

in the static between stations, between the prayer

and the answer . . .

—David Clewell, “We Never Close”

I
NAPPROPRIATE
B
EHAVIOR

T
HE
P
ASSAGE

It was an unseasonably chilly morning in late September, 1959, when Joe Bill Kendall waved to his parents from the aft deck of the freighter
Marion Lykes
. They'd left Tyler at 3:00 a.m. to get him to the boat on time and to save the expense of a New Orleans hotel room, and now his parents looked, to Joe Bill, small and tired and, his mother especially, slightly worn, the way she kept waving, wiping her face, waving and wiping her face. Although he had not slept the night before, Joe Bill felt no fatigue at all, just the same excited strum in the gut he'd had for several weeks.

After a few minutes of waving, watching his parents grow tinier and tinier—although the ship had not yet moved—he blew one last kiss good-bye and turned, took his luggage cart by the handle, and headed toward the passengers' deck, hearing nothing but French the whole way. He passed some of the deckhands tying down loads and marking the inventory, and understood every word. He passed a pair of officers discussing their plans in Le Havre and picked up most of that as well. It was soon clear that nearly the entire crew was French.

Joe Bill made a sudden decision not to let on that he spoke the language. It would be fun; it would make him feel like a spy on a secret mission, not just a kid going abroad for a few months of study on the cheap. At the exact right moment, he could spring it on some unsuspecting officer or deckhand, respond to some slight about Americans or some clever quip or worldly statement. They'd look at him, stunned, amazed, with
a whole new respect. The man, they would think, is more than he appears.

Joe Bill's cabinmate was already in the room when he arrived, lugging his cart behind him through the narrow hallways of the passengers' deck. Joe Bill was a little disappointed; he'd hoped to be the first.

“I'm Lee,” the other man said. “I don't mind the top bunk.” They shook hands, and Lee looked off to the side of Joe Bill, behind his back and to the left.

He was a slight young man a few years older than Joe Bill, dark brown hair and a knobby chin, small, dark eyes beneath dark, large brows.

“So what brings you aboard the
Marion Lykes
?” Joe Bill asked as Lee untied the gray denim duffel that was apparently his only piece of luggage. He took out three dark pairs of slacks, four or five white button-down shirts, a handful of underwear and undershirts, some socks. The drawer was only half full when Lee was done with the clothes. He threw the duffel, still containing some weight, onto his upper bunk.

“I'm going to college,” Lee said, kneeling back down beside the drawer.

“Me too,” Joe Bill said. “You going in France?”

“No,” Lee said, not looking up at Joe Bill, still fiddling with the clothes in the drawer, lining them up straight and pressing them out flat. “Sweden.”

“Sweden,” Joe Bill said. “How about that? Cold up there.” Lee appeared to have only the coat he still had on, a green military field jacket. “And dark six months of the year.”

“Or Switzerland.”

“Oh,” Joe Bill said. “So you haven't decided?”

“Switzerland.”

“What school?”

“What about you?” Lee said, looking directly at Joe Bill for the first time, then quickly looking back into his drawer. He set each ball of socks next to the other in a tight, lumpy row.

“I'm going to study at the Institute in Tours.”

“How old are you?” Lee asked, setting his eyes on Joe Bill again.

“I'm seventeen,” Joe Bill said. This always made him nervous. He was old for his age, or acted older, and when people found out how old he really was, they did one of two things. They either dismissed him as a child or they went on and on about how smart he was for seventeen, how mature, which was just another way of dismissing him. He'd lied about it a couple of times, but the lies made him feel bad, like there was something wrong with him for being the age he was, like it was shameful somehow. He decided that rather than lie and be ashamed, he'd tell the truth, and when they dismissed him, he'd tell himself that they wouldn't be able to dismiss him for long, that he was way ahead of the game. He was on his way to France, going there on his smarts.

“Seventeen, huh?” Lee said. “I joined the Marines at seventeen.”

“How about that?” Joe Bill said. “A vet, huh?”

“Yeah.” Lee stood from the drawer, shut it gently and turned his back to Joe Bill. He reached into the duffel again and pulled out a couple of journals and some pencils, and as he did, a little black plastic rectangle rolled out onto the bed. Lee quickly tucked the thing back into the duffel.

“So where were you stationed?”

“All around,” Lee said, setting the books and pencils on the desk at the foot of the bunk beds. The cabin was close, and Joe Bill had to step back to let Lee in between him and the edge of the desk. But Joe Bill also realized he'd leaned in some as they'd talked, both because Lee had turned his back and because of the black plastic object Lee obviously hadn't wanted him to see. Now as Lee stepped by, Joe Bill backed up almost out the door, nearly tripping over his three suitcases that still sat there on the cart. “California,” Lee said. “The Philippines.”

“Wow.”

“Japan.” Lee neatly lined up the journals atop the desk and put the pencils in the top drawer.

“And now to Switzerland,” Joe Bill said, moving back into the cabin, putting some six or eight inches between the suitcases and his heels. “That's fantastic, really. You on the GI Bill?”

“Are you planning to unpack or just trip over those things the whole time?”

Joe Bill took the three green Samsonites off the cart and into the cabin, leaving the cart outside in the hall. He strapped two of the suitcases in the rack beneath the lower bunk and set the third atop the dresser. When Joe Bill popped the locks, the first thing he saw inside was the red leather Bible. Lee saw it, too.

“So you're a Christian?”

“Well, yeah,” Joe Bill said. Religion was another topic that embarrassed him. He was a Christian, he supposed, in the sense that he'd gone to the First Baptist Church of Tyler every Sunday morning and Wednesday night since he could remember, like everyone else. But he hadn't brought the Bible on purpose, had little interest in the subject, and certainly didn't want to discuss it here.

His mother had worried about him going to France, a Catholic country, because she thought the people there were drunken and promiscuous. He'd gone, at her insistence, to see Reverend Dunn, who'd asked him if he thought he was strong enough to weather the storm of the Papists, if he was prepared not only to stand up for his own faith but to witness to the benighted French as well. He reminded Joe Bill of his duty to be a fisher of men. He'd written something illegible in his shaky old hand on the inside cover of Joe Bill's Bible, and his mother had packed the Bible with his clothes.

“Humph,” Lee said. He was sitting on the top bunk now, leaning his back against the cabin wall.