The Dark Path (17 page)

I stand at the window. It's a sunny day and light glares off the thick snow on the school's front lawn. In the crosswalk students are bustling between this main school building and Eckhardt, the new school building across Main Street. Even with the windows closed I hear them laughing and swearing at one another as they either hustle or drag their feet in getting to class, and something in the circus of them churning back and forth across the street tells me that maybe the letter I'm holding is the opposite of what I think. Maybe it's a harbinger of hope, of romance.

I tear the envelope open. She has written to me on pale blue stationery:

Dear David:

It was wonderful and confusing to see you last month. I'm sorry that I haven't called, but my plate's been really full and I—

I skip down to the moment-of-truth part, and phrases pop out at me:

. . . can't see you anymore . . .

. . . part of me will always love you, but I'm in love with him . . .

. . . I think he's the man I'll marry, David . . .

. . . I wish you every great happiness . . .

Sincerely, Mara

I put the letter in my pocket and look out the window. My seniors are filing into the room behind me.

Okay
, I think.
An answer
.

Outside, there are only a few straggler students left crossing the street. One is Drake, who is loafing, and there's another tall boy ambling along, and the last student is a girl I don't know. She looks like a ninth grader, but she's the tiniest, slimmest one I've ever seen. She can't be more than four feet tall and the gigantic bright yellow backpack she wears is loaded fat with books. But she is hauling ass, passing the two bigger boys, getting where she needs to be before the bell.

Okay, Mara Kincannon
, I think.
Okay. Good-bye. I'm sorry that I dragged you to Medjugorje. I'm sorry that I never got to play Billy Bragg for you. But really and forever, good-bye
.

“Hey, Flatlander,” calls out Paul behind me. “This
Crucible
? The girls in it are crazy, right?”

I hear Kira exhale. She sounds impatient with Paul, as she is with all American boys.

“I love this play,” she declares.

The bell rings. I keep staring out the window. I know that I'm in my own body, that these are my own tears streaming down my face. But I feel for a second like the pain is someone else's. And there's a chasm between this other young man and me, and I can't reach across it. I can't help him. I can't ordain him, or marry him off to a Kittery knockout, or fix his fucked-up hip. He has to do it himself, I realize. The old me can't rescue him. He has to be a man now, and handle his own shit, and build a life.

“Flatlander?” calls Paul.

The others have stopped chattering. They know something's up. I still haven't turned around.

Paul is the strongest, heaviest guy in the class and I know the sound of him getting up out of his desk. He does so now and steps up behind me.

“Mr. Schickler? You doing all right?”

I pull the letter out and wave it, then stuff it back in my pocket. “I just got some hard news.”

“Oh . . .” says Paul. “I'm sorry.”

“Thanks.” I keep looking out the window.

“Are you crying?”

“Yes.”

I hear JoBeth make a soft sound in the background. A mother sound. She and the rest of them can hear what Paul and I are saying.

Paul clears his throat. “Do you need to go home? Take the rest of the day off?”

“You all wish.” I sniffle. The ten of them laugh.

“Was it from a girl?” Kira asks. “The letter?”

I nod. They all murmur. This is as invested as I've heard them sound.

I say, “So I just have to get my heart broken to make you guys pay attention?”

They laugh again. It's my first time getting laughs from them.

“Are you going to teach us?” asks Max.

JoBeth shushes him. She walks over beside Paul, behind me. She's been a chatty pain in the ass for weeks, but now she puts her palm on my shoulder. “Mr. Schickler . . . whoever she was, she wasn't the one.”

I nod. Inside, I'm still saying good-bye.

Paul pats my back once, then returns to his desk. JoBeth goes back to hers.

I am hurting. I feel empty. Other than my life, I'm not sure there's much left that can be taken out from inside me.

I turn around. “Just give me a second . . . then we'll talk about
The Crucible
.”

They groan.

Kira says, “Aw, come on, Mr. Schickler. Tell us about the girl.”

They all murmur with assent.

“Yeah,” says JoBeth. “It'll help you.”

I think,
When Alex Bergeron told me about teachable moments, this isn't what he meant
.

Then I think,
Fuck it
, and I tell them about the girl.

LATER THAT SAME EVENING,
I am alone in my apartment, reading my sophomores' creative writing stories. To keep my mind off Mara, I've been sitting on my couch for hours, reading my students' stories and writing comments. Each time I come across a strong, original metaphor or description, I swoop in with my pen to jot down some praise for the writer. I need there to be excellent things in the world today.

The Neighbor Mouse door bangs open in the kitchen.

“Schickler! You want a pop?”

Fuck, yes.

“How about in ten minutes, Ed? I've got one last student paper to read.”

“You're on.”

The door bangs shut.

I've been saving Drake's story to read last, because I've been so looking forward to whatever this smart brooder might have dreamt up. I'm expecting talent.

I read Drake's piece. By the time I'm halfway through, I'm already bug-eyed. I finish and read it all the way through once again to make sure I really saw what I saw. Yes, I did. I read it a third time to see if it somehow could've been written as a joke, or ironically. No. It sounds earnest, even eager. Worst of all, the writing is carefully and urgently constructed. This is what it says:

One day, I, Fake, got accepted to Fapwood Academy in the state of Fermont. I moved into Farchmont dorm. There were lots of Fanish and Forean boys in my dorm, and the Fanish boys all thought they were the coolest. Little did they know.

My Fenglish teacher, Mr. Fickler, thought he was cool too. But the person who thought he was the coolest was the headmaster, Mr. Fement Fowell. He thought he was hot shit.

I planned. Then one day I was ready. I started with Mr. Fickler. I came into his classroom while he was teaching Fenglish. I had my black-handled Boker magnum lock knife, handmade in Solingen, Germany. Mr. Fickler saw the knife and tried to say “stop!” but I cut off his nose and arms and jammed them all up his ass. I cut off his balls and shoved them in his mouth. Blood poured out of his face and arm sockets while he screamed. All the kids in the class screamed, but I just left.

I went to Headmaster Fowell's office. He had a daughter Faphne, who also thought she was hot shit. Headmaster Fowell was practicing putting golf balls into a drinking glass on the floor. I used my Boker on him. I cut open his stomach and pulled out his intestines and used them to decorate the front of the building like tinsel on a Christmas tree. I rammed one of the golf balls in Headmaster Fowell's mouth and made him eat it.

Then I found the Fanish boys and I used my Kalashnikov AK-74 assault rifle, 5.45mm caliber, with the 30 mag clip. I shot them all in the stomach so it would take a long time for them to die. That's important. Everyone screamed. There was blood everywhere on the snow in Fapwood.

I finish reading the piece a third time, then I grab the phone and call Daphne.

“Are you okay?” I say.

“Why wouldn't I be?”

My hip is spasming like mad.

“Is Andrew home?” I ask. “And Laura?” Laura is Andrew's daughter from his first marriage.

“Yes, David, they're fine. What's this about? You sound freaked out.”

I tell her. Andrew gets on the phone and I tell him.

Then I drive over to Clement's house and give him the essay. He reads it while I stand there in his kitchen. His face flushes a livid red, but he lets himself calm down before he speaks. He asks me exactly what the assignment was. I tell him that I just asked my students each to write a story, to express themselves, to try to get at the truth through fiction.

“Did I screw up?”

Clement shakes his head no. I mention my letter from Mara. He says he's sorry to hear about it, truly sorry. He's not a hugger, but he pats my shoulder once.

Then he holds up Drake's piece. “As for this, I'll take it from here.”

I think of Drake smoking beneath the pine tree, all alone. “He doesn't fit in, this kid. I was trying to help him.”

“I'm sure you were.” Clement's voice is even now, not something to be fucked with. “I'll take it from here.”

•   •   •

DRAKE IS EXPELLED
the next morning. Clement makes Daphne stay home and away from campus for the day. Drake and his belongings are carted off to the Burlington airport before the end of the afternoon. Drake makes sure to tell the hulking Academy maintenance men who drive him out of Tapwood that his parents will sue the fuck out of the school. This information—and the story of Drake's essay—are everywhere by day's end. At dinner in the dining hall Gonzalo finds me staring at my plate of pierogies. Holding his hand is Swedish Kira.

“Señor,” Gonzalo says, “I am sorry for your news.”

“Expelling him wasn't my call, but if you'd read what he wrote . . .”

Gonzalo waves my words away. “I don't mean stupid Drake. I am glad he's gone. I mean, I am sorry about the letter you got. Your heart is now crushed.”

I look at Kira, and she glances guiltily away. Judging by Gonzalo's grip on her hand, she is his girlfriend of the week.

“Señor, you will come to Majorca, and you'll feel better. It's the best place. The sun, the nightclubs. So happy!”

I wonder if his father runs the island's tourism council.

I thank Gonzalo for his concerns. Then I finish my pierogies and leave.

Late that night, I drive up to the lake. Light snow falls on the dark water and I pray to the God who doesn't exist. But my prayers aren't angry pleading now. They're coming from a deeper place in me than I've known before, a place lower than feeling. They're coming from the Bottom of me, maybe.

Lack-of-God . . . You know that I don't expect ever to hear Your voice now, since You aren't there. And I know that Mara's gone forever, off to another man's bed, to his laughter. And I know that my hip might never heal, that it might hurt and click like a Geiger counter all my life, and that this panic in me might be here for good, too.

But does it really have to be that every person I try to touch or teach turns out to be literally disturbed? Melvin . . . Drake . . . they're dangerously unwell people. Am I too? Is that why I'm drawn to them, why I try to help them? And why I fail?

I stare at the water. Snowflakes kiss it one at a time and die. Ice has formed around the lake's edges and a few peninsulas of it jut out into the water. Soon the whole lake will be locked over and frozen white.

I close my eyes.

Lack-of-God, maybe I asked for all this. Maybe all those years when I prayed to be pared down and emptied out, maybe I was praying for suffering, for failure, for Gethsemane. But whatever this dark place that I'm in is called—holiness or hell—I want to leave it. Maybe priests and martyrs can love, can actually want the kind of shit I've been going through. But I can't. To want heartbreak and pain and humiliation and suffering is madness. It is fucking crazy.

My hip twinges. I keep my eyes closed.

Help me, Lack-of-God. Help me to change now, to be other than empty. You don't exist, Lord, but help me anyway.

•   •   •

A WEEK LATER
I drive to Montpelier. I'm heading to my first-ever appointment with a psychiatrist, Dr. Brogan. Clement helped me find a doctor whose office isn't in Tapwood. I don't want my students and colleagues to know that I'm a head case.

It's late afternoon and dark out and the panic screams at me the whole drive there.
Never, David, this will never work, I won't let it, you're mine, you're down, you're fucked!

I play a mix tape to kill the fear. The first two songs are “I'll Fall with Your Knife” by Peter Murphy and “Am I Wrong” by Love Spit Love. I play them ten times each.

The weather outside is subzero. I park in downtown Montpelier and find Dr. Brogan's red-brick office, near the state capitol building. Everything in Montpelier is red brick, quaint, and stately.

I sit in the waiting room, feeling un-quaint and un-stately. Dr. Brogan finally shows me into his office. He is tall and trim with a kind face. He looks about thirty. He looks like he bicycles and stays away from red meat and wants kids.

I tell him everything at once:
I'll-never-be-a-priest
-
God's-gone-Mara's-gone-my-hip's-fucked-I-never-sleep-Father-Tillermacher-grabbed-my-ass-I-talk-to-a-lake
. I just about chew my fingertips off while I say all this.

“And you're anxious,” he says, “about talking to me?”

I nod. I talk about the quicksand. I say that it's in me right this moment, that it's here with us.

He speaks quietly. He says that tragic emotional or psychological events can sometimes alter our brain chemistry. He says that from what I've said, there seems to be a depressive glaze over everything that I do and think about. He asks if that sounds right.

I think about it.
Depressive glaze
. I think of my classroom, my students, myself, all the world coated over with invisible quicksand.

“Yes, that sounds right.”

“And how do you feel about medication?”

“I don't want any.”

He studies me. “In my profession, we sometimes say that the people who want medication the most need it least, and the ones who want it least need it most. What do you think about that?”

Medication will kill your mind!
says the panic.
You'll never write again! You won't even be you anymore!

“Um . . . maybe I could try it? Just for a while. I don't know . . .”

He tells me about some medicines. I tell him that their names sound Dwarvish, straight out of Tolkien. “You know,” I say, “like ‘I'm Thorin, in my suit of mithril, bearing the sword of Prozac and the spear of Paxil.'”

He says we should pick a medicine. He talks about different ones. He warns me that for some people the pills make things worse before making things better.

We choose Paxil. He writes me a scrip.

•   •   •

EACH PILL IS PINK
and oval with a little ridge down the center. I bring them home and spill them out on a table in my apartment, lining them up. There are thirty of them, thirty strong little dwarf spears planning to poke at my brain and win the day.

I put the pills away. I don't take any.
If I start taking them
, I think,
my failure is complete. It means that I'm giving up self-control, maybe all of my self, period.

The next evening, the phone rings.

“David, it's Dad. How'd your appointment go?”

I tell him.

“So, you've got some medication now? You've started taking it?”

“Yes,” I lie.

“And how do you feel?”

“Better. Yeah . . . I think it's working.”

There's a long pause. “David . . . do I need to come up there?”

You've never needed pills, Dad
, I think.
Am I that much weaker than you?

“No,” I say.

A couple mornings later I'm in first-period class with my seniors. They're working at their desks, writing an essay about
Lord of the Flies
and
The Crucible
. I've given them a single word as a prompt:
survival
. They're supposed to compose a thesis statement that has to do with survival as a theme, and they have to show with argument and quotes how these books dramatize that theme.

While they're working, Paul and Max, my football thugs, wave me over. Their desks are close to each other's.

“Mr. Schickler,” whispers Max, “we'll be thinking of you on Thursday.”

Paul nods. “We hope there won't be trouble.”

Ever since the letter-from-Mara day, I'm closer with these ten students. But they kid me a lot and I figure this is a joke.

“Why?” I say. “What's Thursday?”

They look at each other.

“Oh, man,” Max tells Paul, “he doesn't even know about it.”

“About what?” I ask.

JoBeth clears her throat. “Mr. S., they're talking about that psycho kid. Dirk. He's flying back in with his parents and their lawyers. There's a big meeting Thursday morning where you have to defend the assignment you gave Dirk.”

“It's Drake,” says Kira.

“Right, Drake,” says JoBeth.

My stomach has bottomed out. My hip twinges and my head throbs.

“Oh, fuck,” I whisper. It slips out.

Kira turns in her desk to face JoBeth. “Can students go to the meeting?”

“No, I hear it'll be closed. Just Schickler and the headmaster and the lawyers.”

I go back to my desk and sit down, stunned.
Lawyers, Lack-of-God? Awesome. Why don't You just save Drake the trouble and shove my nose and arms up my ass all by Yourself?

“How do you guys know all this?” I ask.

Kira shrugs. “Everyone knows. It's Tapwood.”

“I'll mess that Dirk up.” Max is glowering to himself. He recently punched his fist through the glass door of the trophy case out in the school's main hall for reasons that I don't know and that he may not know either. He has a month of detention for doing so.

As soon as class is over, I hurry to Clement's office. He confirms what my seniors told me. The hearing will be Thursday morning.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Just the truth,” says Clement. “It's important that you speak. The assignment came from you.”

And if I'd never given it
, I think,
that boy would still be a student here. Possibly making friends, possibly getting less troubled by the day
.

That night I have Formal Family Dinner. Milagros has transferred to a different table, not wanting to break bread anymore with her ex, Gonzalo, who is also absent tonight because of a field-house indoor soccer game that's running late. The stunning Annabel and her fellow Spaniard from Barcelona, Pilar, sit as they always do at the table's far end, whispering and studying me. My head is rioting with thoughts of Drake, but I spend the meal coaxing short sentences out of Tong and the other Thai boys: