ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
by Bill Spratch

The day before my fifteen-year class reunion I had a job interview. Position requires excellent interpersonal and telephone skills. When I called up this woman said are you qualified. I said I'm using the telephone right now. She told me my name is Sindy with an S why don't you come on down and meet with us.

So I had to give my newest Arrow brand dress shirt a test drive. I opened the package, carefully removed the one thousand silver pins and the cardboard cross which I have a collection of and which is why I insist on buying a new Arrow dress shirt before any important event such as an interview or reunion. On these cardboard crosses I have depicted various slain christs with magic marker. It's nothing. I'm just 33 years old and goofed-out on symbol and cleverness. What I do when test driving the shirt is slip it on with its wide grid of package creases and put on some shorts, say, and sandals and walk around the block and have my first cigarette of the day.

The children of this neighborhood, like all children, are cruel. I understand this and depend on them to point out any deficiencies in my shirt: poor color choice, striping or pattern not vetted by fashion magazines--any sticker, tag, or pin I have overlooked and not removed. Look at that mufuckas shirt, kid. That shit date to the Geriatric Period. They rescue me, the children do. The sharp fold lines grow dull also, saving time with the iron and the trouble of unfolding the board. I have been known to iron shirts while wearing them when they just need a minor touch-up. Injuries have been minor. The drawback of shirt test driving is soot. My neighborhood is next to the expressway overpass, practically beneath it, and the soot from automotive exhaust is thick upon us all, upon the trees and birds and the laundry hung between buildings. My shirts grow gray. I don't know how many showers it finally takes to remove the clinging black ash from one's skin. I give up after three or four a day. Even so, when I awake it is to a body print in the bed that resembles the Shroud of Turin. I should switch to black sheets because who wants to wake every morning in the embrace of a soiled suggestion of Christ before even the first cup of coffee?

Believe this. In the office building where I had the interview I rode the elevator with Earl Campbell. He runs his own sausage company, headquartered there. I hear they are spicy like you will not believe and delicious. He was holding a large box of the sausages and their aroma in the elevator suggested old time smokehouses with cedar planks and swinging meat.

He wore a handsome brown suit and cowboy boots that looked exotic and when he saw me admiring them he mumbled, "They ostrich. This sausage ostrich too." Then he hiccuped, or hiccoughed if you prefer.

The elevator doors took some while to close and we waited and waited for them to finally slide from their housings. A bell went ding and Earl Campbell stood towering over me going hic hic hic. We began to rise, slowly. Earl Campbell's throat kept hiccing as we ascended. After a few moments of this I turned to him and screamed, "Stop goddammit right now! Just fucking knock it off!" He didn't flinch in the slightest, maintained his sausage grip.

"Damn, white folks." he told me. "You crazy."

I loved it. I was made plural. White folks: I had never heard the phrase outside a piece of fiction. I adopted a tone of apology. I told him, "It's supposed to help. Fright is supposed to be the cure." In turn he suggested that running about screaming at strangers in an attempt to frighten them might cure myself of the disease of living. He was right on the money.

At the interview I met with Sindy with an S. She was the office manager and was polite if somewhat chill. The knowledge of her own position of authority stupefied her. She used the word disconnect as a noun. As I waited in a chair across from her desk she spoke to someone on the telephone.

"No, Paul. No no no. That's not what was agreed upon in the meeting. That was not my take-away from the discussion. I think you and I are having a disconnect here."

When Sindy with an S got off the phone she wanted to know how was I doing. I opened my mouth wide and let her have it until my vocal cords felt taut unto snapping.

A fifteen-year reunion. I didn't even know they had those. I thought maybe it went ten then twenty. There was a ten but I didn't hear about it. I never hear about anything unless it's odd.

Consider a man of such limited intellectual scope that he develops a tendency to never look where he is going and as a result constantly bashes his head into door lintels, low-hanging tree branches, the thrust-out sword of a war memorial in the park. These near constant episodes of self-inflicted blunt trauma will further blunt his already less than keen mind. The chances of his banging his head against the world will only increase. And so on and so on. Evidence of this phenomenon, the perfect human traps we devise for ourselves, was in abundance at the reunion.

They had the reunion in the special events room at Chili's Lobster Garden. Find it on the interstate, any interstate, like I did, humming along to car radio songs with my damaged throat. Divorcées in slinky things shook and shimmied in the space of cleared-away tables and chairs. This is what happens in fifteen years then. Tired-looking men sat on folding chairs and recalled hijinx from the shop classes of yore. They had given away their hair and narrow waists and gotten children in return. Maybe a hundred people even bothered to show up for the event. This is what fifteen years give you: One hundred and forty-three divorces, two hundred and seventy-six kids. Still they went at it on the dance floor, drunkenly prowling for one another's spouses, and getting themselves even more deeply lost in thick sorrow like flies leaving their limbs behind in glue.

A large sweating man who I vaguely recognized stood behind some turntables on a small stage. Occasionally at the start of a new song he would shout, "Now this is a class that knows how to rock! Let's hear it!" He was quickly added to my list. I would remove his headphones, lay hands on him and fill his ears with loud hope.

Boys in bowties carried trays of finger foods and room-temp champagne through the gathered classmates. People in groups were eating off plastic plates with plastic sporks and drinking from plastic champagne glasses in an assortment of translucent colors.

Renaldo was there, Renaldo who chose early on to pursue the path of the bully. One day in particular I remembered wanting to smash him over the head with a cafeteria tray, helping him toward the pattern of head-trauma I have mentioned. But he seemed to have done a good job himself without my assistance. Back in school he once tore his roll into pieces, shaped small doughy balls and threw them into my tray, making a game of it, trying to achieve every compartment. He even landed one yeasty wad into the spout of my milk carton. No need to correct him with cafeteria plastic now. He's made the list of those who will receive the roar. The word, when I deliver it, will do him good, will do us all some good.

Suze Marist stood with Renaldo and George Somebody. Suze agreed to go on a date with me once, it never happened for some reason or other. Unlike many high school girls Suze had moments of kindness. I can help her too.

George Somebody wore lots of gold jewelry: watches, bracelets, some sort of chain shining from his open collar. Even the rims of his eyeglasses were golden. He looked like he had spent much time applying the blow dryer and hair products to effect the look of an evangelist or elected official. "Howdy-Howdy," he cried out to everyone that drew near him. From the talk I overheard it seemed he sold cars these days. He told them it sure has been a while. I can see you in this. Or I can picture you in that. Why don't you come by the shop sometime and we can talk it over. He produced endless business cards like a magician and snapped his fingers upon delivery.

People were taking unopened bottles from the bowtied boys. Plastic corks from the champagne launched across the room like shuttlecocks. Suze spilled some of hers as she slapped George on the arm and said, "Plastic glasses--now that's funny." To which George replied, "And plastic corks too." He leaped around snatching in the air, pulling back an empty fist, trying to catch the corks that popped through the room. They both broke to pieces with hilarity.

Someone discovered that the stems could unscrew from the drinkware so I did just that and cradled the orphaned bowl in my palms. Still no one approached, no one noticed me in the crowd. I had no choice but to go to them. With the transparent vessel of champagne in my hands I approached my classmates and offered them the champagne and screamed, "Drink you this in remembrance of me!" Renaldo moved toward me raising a hand as if he might put his arm around me and lead me away. Instead he veered off and disappeared into the crowd. Suze swayed slightly, moved closer to George and pushed her thighs against his. She seemed afraid, I thought. But then she leaned forward into my face and screeched, "Plastic glasssss." I will admit she sort of outdid me on that one. George chuckled and stuck out his hand and said, "Howdy-Howdy." He said, "What are you doing these days, big guy?" I dropped the bowl. Everyone was watching now. I placed both my hands on his shoulders and pulled him near. I shouted with all I had, "I have achieved plurality. I contain multitudes. I hold you and your divorces and your accidental babies. I am getting closer everyday to the cure."

All my old classmates searched themselves and one another for whatever signs of disease or injury they could find.