The End of Vandalism (28 page)

AND so they went back home where, one day in January, Albert Robeshaw and Armageddon held a practice on the stage of the high school lunchroom in Morrisville. They were playing a song about snowmobiling called “(Look Out for the) Clothesline.” Albert banged out a series of minor chords on the guitar and stopped abruptly when the foreign-exchange man Marty Driver walked up and rapped on the stage.

Everything about Marty Driver was unacceptable in a young person’s eyes. He walked unacceptably, made unacceptable facial expressions, wore unacceptable clothes. He was that kind of adult, from Kansas City. On this empty midwinter afternoon he wore a tentlike down coat and an absurd furry hat.

“I am looking for Miss Lu Chiang,” said Marty.

“There’s a rabbit on your head,” said Albert.

“Am I supposed to laugh?” said Marty.

“I wouldn’t,” said Albert.

“Nobody likes ridicule,” said Dane Marquardt.

“Especially when it’s aimed at them,” said Errol Thomas.

“You could try pretending to be surprised,” said Albert.

“You know, take the hat off and go, ‘Jesus Christ! It
is
a rabbit!’ and try to win our confidence by being a good sport.”

“Not that it would work,” said Dane.

“It would be too, oh, what word do I want?” said Errol.

“Pathetic,” said Dane.

“That is the word I want.”

“What about Miss Lu Chiang?” said Albert.

“He’s her boyfriend,” said Errol. “Whatever you have to tell her, you can tell him.”

“Oh, I can?” said Marty.

“Are you going to send her home?” said Albert. “Because she doesn’t want to go.”

“Are you Albert Robeshaw?” said Marty.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” said Albert.

Marty opened his briefcase and took out a copy of the school newspaper. “You’re quoted in this article, ‘Love Rebel Chiang Questions Authority.’“

“That’s full of inaccuracies,” said Albert. “And we didn’t know it was on the record.”

“Just tell me where to find her,” said Marty.

“We’re not foreign students,” said Dane. “You don’t have any power over us.”

Marty Driver took his down coat off and left the lunchroom, but soon came back with the principal, Lou Steenhard, who moved quickly in his V-neck sweater and string tie. Albert, Errol, and Dane sensed that Marty Driver posed some kind of threat to Mr. Steenhard.

“You boys will have to leave,” said the principal. “There’s going to be a meeting in here.”

“Where are we supposed to go?” said Dane.

“I don’t give a damn,” said the principal.

“The last time we tried to go in the gym, they said we couldn’t,” said Errol.

“That’s right, because of the trampoline,” said the principal.

“Chiang doesn’t want to leave,” said Albert.

“Shut up,” said the principal.

Actually Chiang had no choice. She had been an exchange student for two years now and had applied for more time. This had been denied. Marty had her plane tickets in his pocket.

Armageddon cleared out of the lunchroom, and soon Chiang and her host family, the Kesslers, joined Marty and Lou Steenhard at a table underneath a sign saying, TAKE ALL YOU WANT BUT EAT ALL YOU TAKE.

The Kesslers—Ron, Delia, Candy, Randy, and Alfie—sat smiling at Chiang. Since their house had burned down they were living with Delia’s mother in Wylie. It was crowded, and the summoning home of Chiang was fortunate in that sense. The relationship between the exchange student and her hosts had been a prickly one. At first Chiang had felt the family was cynically using her as a workhorse. Later, she grew used to caring for the chickens and saw the henhouse as her own province.

Now the Taiwanese girl stood at the head of the table in a tan skirt and red sweater, pretty and composed. If she felt as resistant to leaving as Albert had said, she did not show it.

“To the Kesslers I offer my gratitude and my sincere hope that the rebuilding goes quickly,” she said.

“We’ll be all right, babe,” said Delia. There were tears in her eyes. The onset of goodbyes can paper over so many differences. She gave Chiang a T-shirt that said, “Corn & Beans & Rock & Roll.”

In return, Chiang gave the Kesslers a portrait that she had painted of the chickens. Ron accepted the painting. He wore
the standard uniform of the farmer: baseball cap with seed logo, tight long-sleeved button shirt, blue jeans low on the hips.

“This can go by the piano,” he said.

Lou Steenhard stood and shook Ron Kessler’s hand for no particular reason. He cited Chiang’s accomplishments in scholarship, music, and basketball. The Morrisville-Wylie Lady Plowmen had won the Class AA sectionals with Chiang in the forward court. It is possible that this played a part in her unusually long tenure.

“We will miss Chiang,” said the principal. “She was active in Year Book, Glee Club, and Future Farmers of America. She was part of Mrs. Thorsen’s science class, which studied the eclipse of the sun. I want to read a brief passage from her report on this phenomenon, in which she quotes a Chinese philosopher named Hsün-tzu. This is kind of out of the blue, but I want to give you a sense of the young lady. ‘When stars fall or trees make a noise, all people in the state are afraid and ask, “Why?” I reply: There is no need to ask why. These are changes of heaven and earth, the transformation of yin and yang, and rare occurrences. It is all right to marvel at them, but wrong to fear them. For there has been no age that has not had the experience of eclipses of the sun and moon, unreasonable rain or wind, or occasional appearance of strange stars.’”

The principal then went to the doors of the lunchroom and signaled in the cheerleaders, who wore the blue and gold colors of the school.

That night Albert and Dane heard through the grapevine that Marty Driver was staying at the Holiday Inn in Morrisville. They went over, found a car with Missouri plates, and bent
the antenna into the shape of the numeral four. That was for the number of people in Armageddon when Chiang had sat in, as she sometimes had. But the gesture seemed empty and even a bit mean, and they left unsatisfied.

Albert Robeshaw seemed to lose motivation daily now that Chiang was leaving for certain. He gazed at the
Fur-Fish-Game
magazines that in his youth had promised a bracing and enjoyable world, but he could not retrieve that confident feeling. He lay crossways on his bed, feet on the wall, dipping snuff and listening to Joe Cocker records. When one record ended he would get up, spit tobacco into a 7-Up can, and put on another. His aging parents learned the words to “The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress” by heart. Marietta said that hearing Joe Cocker sing made her depressed.

One night she called up the stairs. “Come down, Albert. Turn that noise off and come down. Your father wants to talk to you.”

Claude was in the kitchen fiddling with their old ice cream maker—a wooden-slatted bucket with a crank on top.

“Goddarned thing doesn’t want to work,” he said.

“Did you ask to see me?” said Albert.

“I did.” They sat at the table. Albert had the album cover for
Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
“What the hell’s your problem,” said Claude.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that.”

“Why? Because I listen to music? I happen to like music.”

“I like boxing, but I wouldn’t want to see two people boxing in my bedroom for four and five hours at a time.”

“Good analogy.”

“Why don’t you join Mother and me in the family room?” said Claude. “The
Mod Squad
reruns are about on. I was going to make ice cream if I can get this thing to work.”

Marietta took Albert’s hand. “Don’t you want to see Line, honey? Don’t you want to see Julie? And that other guy.”

“I’ve seen all the episodes,” said Albert.

“Chiang is a peach,” said Claude. “Your mother and I know that. But she’s not the only one in the orchard.”

“I don’t buy that whole philosophy,” said Albert. “It seems so morally empty.”

“You feel that way today,” said Marietta. “Tomorrow is another day.”

“I will tomorrow, too.”

“The next day, then,” said Claude.

“No day.”

“What are you supposed to say to a kid like this,” said Claude.

“Tell him about the time we made paper mâché,” said Marietta.

“You can tell it as well as I can.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“I’m going upstairs,” said Albert.

“You don’t want any ice cream?” said Claude.

Albert sighed and studied the picture of backup singer Rita Coolidge on the album cover. Her hair sat on her head like a halo. He felt that the hippie era must have been intriguing. “I want to go to Taiwan,” he said.

“You can forget that,” said Claude.

“No, I can’t.”

“Honey, you don’t know anything about Taiwan,” said Marietta.

“I know the language.”

“The hell if you do,” said Claude.

So he spoke Chinese, and Marietta and Claude looked at him as if birds had landed on their ears.

“That means, ‘I like you, let’s have more cold beer.’”

“We’re losing our boy,” said Marietta.

“We are not,” said Claude. “Listen, how far do you think he’ll get on remarks like that?”

“Chiang’s uncle can get me a job in a bicycle factory.”

“You haven’t been talking to her family,” said Claude.

“Why not?”

“Oh, my God,” said Claude.

“What?”

“If we decide to send you to Taiwan, we don’t need help from anyone.”

“Does that mean I can go?”

“No.”

“You take help from the government. You participate in crop set-aside.”

Claude glared at Albert, got up, slammed the top on the ice cream bucket. “Do you have any idea what your grandfather would have done to me for talking the way you do?”

“Smacked you around,” said Albert glumly.

“That’s right. And when he smacked you around, you knew you had been smacked.”

“Didn’t you kind of dislike him? Deep down.”

“I respected him.”

“Well, I guess. In a sense. Like you would a scorpion.”

“You are going to the University of Iowa,” said Claude. “Just like Rolfe did, just like Julia did, just like Albert did.”

“I am Albert.”

“What did I say?”

“Albert.”

“You know who I mean.”

“You mean Nestor,” said Albert. “Susan didn’t go to college.”

“Susan was pregnant.”

“Really?”

“Well, she had the baby. They generally go hand in hand, for Christ’s sake. Do they teach you anything in that school?”

“We learned what an oligarchy is and how it differs from a plutocracy.”

“And how is that?” said Marietta.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Albert.

They sat quietly for a while. Claude ground the crank on the bleached green bucket.

“Can I have the car Friday night?” said Albert.

“What’s Friday?” said Claude.

“The last time I can take Chiang out on a date.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Claude. He checked the progress of the ice cream. “Well, hell,” he said. “Marietta, look at this.”

“What?” She walked over and looked.

“There’s rust all in here. There’s rust in my ice cream.”

“That isn’t right,” she said.

Albert walked upstairs and closed the door. He put the needle of his record player on the song “Space Captain.”

Claude banged on the ceiling. Albert sighed, shut off the music, circled the room, opened a tall green paperback called
Cold Mountain,
by the poet Han Shan.

Albert went to see Ned Kuhlers, the well-known Stone City lawyer, and got a speeding ticket on the way, up north of Walleye Lake. Kuhlers’s office was on the seventh floor of a building next to the park. Albert went up and entered the office. On the wall were diplomas and a flier for a martial arts class that the lawyer taught.

Albert had to wait a long time, and moreover, he did not get a sense of anyone else occupying Ned Kuhlers’s time as he waited. The office was overheated. Beads of sweat appeared on Albert’s face. A woman in a yellow suit went in and came out some time later, crying into a red handkerchief. Albert was then called in to explain his problem.

“Here is this girl everyone likes, and suddenly they want to ship her back to Taiwan when she herself doesn’t want to go,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” said Kuhlers. He was looking out the window and perhaps not listening at all. “My God. There’s a guy down here with the biggest dog I’ve ever seen.”

“It could be a case with a lot of publicity,” said Albert.

“God, what is that? A malamute? Malamutes are supposed to be big. I don’t know what this is, but it sure is big. It’s as big as a horse.”

“If you looked into it, I’ll bet you would find that Marty Driver has done things very sloppily.”

“Just out of curiosity, is the girl mainland Chinese?”

“She’s from Taiwan.”

“Mmm,” said Ned. He cracked his knuckles and shook his head. “You know what I think, Albert? I think you should go with the prevailing opinion. I don’t pretend to be an expert in international law. Never have. But I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that if this Monte from Kansas City—”

“Marty.”

“—that if this Marty guy, whoever, wants to send her home, he can do it. It sounds like what we call an open-and-shut case. And you know what I mean by that, don’t you? I open my mouth and the judge tells me to shut up.”

“You don’t think there’s a case.”

“I think you got a case of the blues,” said Ned Kuhlers. “Let me tell you a little story. My first girl was so good to me. I just loved her. You know, I hadn’t ever been laid, and she walked me through it. Patient, sweet, you name it. She said baby, don’t worry about nothing. I still love her. But one night she called me up and said, you know, she really wants to come over. And I told her I don’t want no company tonight. I don’t know what got into me. Imp of the perverse, I guess. Maureen was her name. I tried calling her again but she wouldn’t have it. You can’t blame her. That was how many years ago. Thirty, forty years, whatever it is. I still think about her.”