"Uh-huh."
"It's about the disparity between free will and-"
"What's this about in line seven?" Morgan asked. "Fuzzy nut sacks..."
Lancaster's lips moved as he counted lines. "Nut soldiers. It concerns-"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
DelPrego squirmed in his seat, bit his bottom lip. He couldn't stand it.
Lancaster had a little sheen of sweat on his forehead. "I use rodentia to symbolize the lower societal strata-"
"Squirrels?"
Lancaster said, "It's really a metaphor for a much broader-"
"It's squirrels, isn't it?" Morgan said.
"Yes, sir, but-"
"Your poem's about squirrels, Timmy."
DelPrego's face had purpled, his shoulders shaking with barely controlled laughter. He stuck the heel of his hand in his mouth to stifle himself. Others in the class giggled openly.
Morgan sifted the pile of poems, moved DelPrego's to the top.
two
Harold Jenks was one tough nigger, and everybody knew it. You had to be tough to work for Red Zach.
Jenks liked to call himself the King of East St. Louis, but that was sort of a joke too many of the neighborhood folks took seriously. More accurately, he was king of about seven square blocks between the bus station and the Missouri State Welfare Offices. But everyone knew Jenks was Red Zach's boy. That made Jenks important.
Jenks and Spoon Oliver hung out in the alley near the bus station. They sipped beer and smoked and waited for something to happen. It was after midnight. When you worked for Red Zach, you didn't keep regular hours.
Jenks's boy Spoon nudged Jenks in the ribs and pointed down the alley. "Check it out."
Some nigger coming down the alley, carrying big suitcases. Jenks watched a minute, puffed his cheap cigar, a Philly Blunt he bought at the convenience store along with a sixteen-ounce can of Bud Light in a little paper sack.
"So what?" Jenks drank his beer.
"Toll," Spoon said.
Jenks shrugged. "Shit."
"I say we toll him. This our alley or ain't it?"
"We ain't charged toll since we was sixteen," Jenks said. "We work for Zach now."
"I'm cash short," Spoon said. "I say we do it."
Jenks sighed, tossed down the cigar stub, and stamped it out. "Okay, but don't go all crazy."
Jenks backed up behind the Dumpster, gave the "stay down" motion to his partner Spoon on the other side of the alley. Let that nigger get closer, then we jack his ass good. Only I got to keep an eye on Spoon. He's over the edge lately. Jenks suspected his boy had developed a coke twitch, dipping into the merchandise.
When the victim got between them, Jenks and Oliver leapt. Poor nigger dropped the bags and tried to run, but Jenks had a fistful of his jacket, and Oliver tackled his legs. They all went down in a pile.
Jenks saw the kid was about his age, maybe twenty-two. He yelled, but Jenks twisted, got on top of him. He punched down hard across his face, twice. A third time broke the kid's lip open, and dark blood smeared down his chin. Jenks let up when he saw the blood.
Oliver stuck a knife to the sucker's throat. "Give it up, boy."
"Let me go," the kid said. "Take the bags. I got money. Take it."
"Shut up." Jenks gut-punched the kid. He pulled the wallet out of the kid's jacket, counted the bills. "Eighty fucking greenbacks. Shit."
He pulled the kid up by the shirt. "All you got is eighty fucking dollars, motherfucker. Shit. Not even worth jacking your ass."
"Please-"
"Shut up, nigger."
"Aw, shit," Spoon said. "We got to kill this boy."
"Please, no, I-"
"I said shut your cunt mouth." Jenks rapped him on the nose.
"I know this boy," Spoon said.
Jenks shook the boy by the shirt. "You know us?"
The boy nodded.
"Who's that?" Harold pointed at Spoon.
"Spoon Oliver."
"Shit," Jenks said. "Who am I?"
"Harold Jenks."
"Who are you?"
"Sherman Ellis."
"He live three blocks over," Spoon said. "Pappy in prison. Momma died of the cancer last year."
"You gonna die now, Sherman Ellis."
"I won't say anything. I promise." He was shaking. Tears.
"Can't take that chance," Jenks said. "Nobody to cry for you anyway. All alone in the world. Say good night." This always scared them good. Jenks had even seen a few motherfuckers piss themselves.
"W-wait," pleaded Sherman. "I'm leaving. What if I promise I'm never c-coming back. Never returning to Missouri. That would be okay, wouldn't it?"
"Shit," Spoon said. "A motherfucker about to die will say any shit."
"It's t-true," Sherman said. "I've got a scholarship to Eastern Oklahoma. Grad school."
"Bullshit."
"The letter's in my pocket," Sherman said.
Jenks pulled the letter out of Sherman's coat pocket. It had been folded into quarters. He opened it and read by the dim light of the streetlamp.
"You gonna be a poet?" Jenks couldn't believe it. Of all the fucked-up things.
"Please." Sherman's face contorted with anxiety. "I've worked hard. Straight A's in high school. I worked two jobs to get through Truman State. Please, brother. Not like this."
As Sherman talked, Jenks felt himself deflate. He let go of the kid's shirt. This nigger was on his way out. On his way to something better. He and Spoon always said that shit about killing. Kept the suckers scared. Make them keep their mouths shut. Hell, maybe they should let the kid go, give him his damn eighty dollars back. Maybe just this once-
Spoon moved forward, stuck the knife into Sherman's chest, slammed it down to the hilt.
"Goddamn!" Jenks fell back.
"Motherfucker," Spoon yelled.
Sherman twitched, clawed at the knife still in his chest, arched his back, eyes open to the night sky. He worked his mouth, no words. A trickle of blood welled up over his lips, stained his teeth red.
"Nigger thinks he can give us that brother shit," Spoon said. "Who the fuck he think he is? He think he better than us. Fucking scholarship motherfucker."
A long, strained breath leaked out of Sherman, and he went slack. Steam floating up from his open mouth, drifting out of the alley like a soul.
"Damn." Jenks stood, looked down at the body, and shook his head.
Spoon grabbed Sherman's bags. "Come on, Harold. Let's go." Spoon jogged to the end of the alley where his Eldorado was parked.
Jenks stood a moment looking at Sherman, then followed Spoon. They put the bags in the trunk, then climbed in the front seat. Spoon started the engine, and they drove away slow without the lights on.
After three blocks, Spoon turned onto the big four-lane and switched on the lights. "I'm going to Wendy's. You want something?"
"No." Jenks still had Sherman's wallet. He flipped it open, looked at Sherman's picture. He and Jenks were both very dark, same hair, same long nose and square chin. He was only a year older than Sherman. There was a Greyhound ticket folded into the wallet. Sherman had been on his way to the bus station. "Nigger was gonna be a poet." He hadn't meant to say it out loud.
"Fuck that," Spoon said. "My cousin Jimmy busts rhymes at the Starlight Lounge Thursday nights. Don't need no bullshit college for that. You sure you don't want a Frosty or something?" He turned into the Wendy's drive-thru.
Jenks put the wallet in his own pocket.
"You crazy?" Spoon asked. "Toss that out."
"I got an idea." The way Jenks said it frightened Spoon.
"Now hold on, Harold," Spoon said. "You know that ain't smart, keeping something like that. Cops hang a murder on you."
"Nigger, I said I got an idea."
And Spoon shut up. He ordered a triple with fries and shut his mouth.
three
Professor Morgan dismissed the class, stepped foot into the hall, and immediately saw Ginny the cub reporter waiting for him at the other end. She lifted her hand to wave, and Morgan turned, fast-walked around the opposite corner. He could hear her cloppity footfalls on the tile behind him.
Morgan zigzagged a labyrinth of office corridors, past a heretofore unseen set of rest rooms, a water fountain, some kind of tutoring room.
Where the hell am I?
The sound of Ginny's blocky shoes pursued, dogged, relentless. Hath thou slain the jabberwock? Morgan scrambled. Looked side to side.
A stairwell.
He darted up and around, into the dark, dusty reaches of the third floor. The door was nailed shut, but the stairs kept going. Dry, wooden, creaking with each step.
He climbed.
A fourth floor. A fifth.
How many floors does this goddamn building have?
Morgan shoved open the fifth-floor door and found himself in a dim hall, murky with yellow light. Faded rectangles still remained where nameplates had been pried from office doors. He walked the hall, stale and silent like a ghost town. He stopped, cocked his ear down a cross hall. Listened.
What was that? He strained to hear. Music. He walked toward it. A smell. Sickly sweet.
He recognized the album now. Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School by Warren Zevon.
Who in God's name is up here? This floor had obviously been abandoned, light fixtures empty, no blinds on the windows, dust.
Morgan glanced behind him. He'd shaken off Ginny. He could find another stairway down and go home if he wanted to, or find his own office and hide. But the smell and the music drew him on, the nagging tickle of curiosity.
He turned down a long hall. The music came from a door at the far end, and the smell grew stronger as Morgan approached. Yellowing pages had been taped to the door: news articles, poems, Far Side and Bloom County cartoons. Also a class schedule and office hours for fall semester 1983.
Morgan lifted his fist to knock, stopped, tried the knob. It turned. He very slowly pushed open the door and went in.
The office was long and dark, the music loud. The room was thick with smoke. Bookshelves lined with assorted tomes from floor to ceiling. Near the window sat a large brown globe of the world like it had fallen there from orbit, more books stacked around it like the edges of an impact crater.
A black-and-white poster of Freud on the wall. Some wag had drawn a penis head at the tip of his cigar with a red Magic Marker.
Morgan waved at the smoke, coughed. This smoke seemed familiar. He inhaled deeply, tried to remember.
Ganja.
The music stopped abruptly, and a voice from the dark recesses of the office said, "Close the damn door."
Morgan jumped. "What?"
"You're letting the smoke out."
Morgan shut the door behind him, peered into the haze. "Who is that?"
Slowly, as if from a long way off, from the other side of a Scottish moor, a reedy, bearded man, round spectacles, pointed frame draped in threadbare tweed, emerged from the smoke like he was walking out of an Arthur Conan Doyle mystery.
In his gnarled hands he held a bong the size of a clarinet.
The old man exhaled as he spoke, eyes narrowed to dreamy slits. "I'm Professor Valentine."
Morgan's jaw dropped. "Valentine? Tad Valentine?"
"The same."
"I thought you'd gone on sabbatical." Valentine was the professor Morgan had been hired to replace for a year, but it was Morgan's understanding the old Pulitzer Prize-winning poet had rented a studio in Prague. It seemed unlikely to find the man smoking weed from a giant bong in a remote office on an abandoned floor of Albatross Hall.
Perhaps this wasn't Valentine. Maybe it was an old derelict junkie who'd wandered in from the cold. Morgan could think of no tactful way to ask.
"Please, please. Have a seat," Valentine said. "Make yourself at home. I haven't had visitors since... well, I don't suppose I've ever had any. Not since moving up here."
Morgan cast about the room. No chairs. He remained standing, hands folded demurely in front of him. "Uh..."
"Want a hit?" Valentine offered him the bong.
"Oh... uh..."
"You're not a cop, are you?" Valentine pinned Morgan with wild eyes.
"No, no, I... Um..."
Valentine frowned. "Is there something wrong with you?"
"I'm Jay Morgan."
"Well, that's hardly your fault, is it?" Valentine mouthed the bong like he was in love.
"No," Morgan said. "I mean, I'm the one-year-contract professor teaching your classes. Why aren't you in Prague?"
"Ah, Prague." Hazy nostalgia washed over Valentine. His eyes narrowed to slits, and he looked off into the dreamy distance. "Yes, I had a glorious few months there, and this wonderful studio apartment overlooking the Charles Bridge." He shrugged. "I got kicked out."
"Out of the apartment?"
"Out of the Czech Republic," Valentine said. "Some leftover Iron Curtain nonsense. All ancient history really, but these chaps evidently have a long memory."