Class Dismissed Read online

“You.” She smiled. “Drove your parents crazy, didn’t you?” She nudged him with that freckled shoulder. It was a delicate subject.

  He’d told her bits from his Midwestern youth, highly selective bits, the parts that conformed to her romantic ideal. She liked to think he’d been a bit of a scamp, a bucolic bad boy. Take me to Minnesota, she’d pleaded. He’d put her off: There’s nothing there to see. His mother had been out to visit briefly, a year ago. She’d said Susan was “lovely,” which meant a little intimidating.

  “Drove them crazy?” Patrick considered, softening. “I believe I did.” She didn’t know the half of it.

  Peterson’s Prairie, 1978

  Preachers’ ’n teachers’ kids,” said Gunther, “you’ve got two choices.” He tugged his black watch cap down on his forehead and stretched against the red pleather of the banquette, surveying the Full Moon Cafe. His blue work shirt was already spotted with brown dots, though he was only halfway through his first cup of coffee. Philosophizing, for Gunther, was always a messy business. “One, you can become your parents. Please them. Try to outdo them.” He threw a scrawny limb to either side, curled his hands around, as if he had a pretty girl under each arm. “Or, two, rebel. Be your own man. Make their lives a living hell.” Gunther scratched his scrubby goatee, smoothed back his ponytail, relaxed into the banquette. He had spoken.

  Patrick, being a teacher’s kid, had some thoughts of his own on this subject, not necessarily in accord with Gunther’s. But he took a sip of coffee and kept his own counsel. Friends, in Peterson’s Prairie, were hard to come by for him—let alone best friends. And the kids at Willard County High School who could quote Kafka or Kerouac in one breath and Harmon Killebrew’s batting average in the next were limited to a party of one.

  It was pointless arguing with him; there was no topic on which Gunther could not, and would not, speak with authority. From women (“girls like it rougher than you’d think”) to the most efficient high (“mixing vodka with Gatorade gets you drunk 37 percent faster”), Gunther always had the critical information. If he was occasionally sketchy as to his sources, Patrick lacked both the background and stamina to pin him to the mat. And when he’d try, Gunther would launch into an upward spiral of psychology-physics-sociology-pop culture that would make Patrick’s eyeballs ache. “You see,” Gunther would screech, popping into the soprano of Eric Idle, his favorite from that Python show, “I’ve run circles ’round you. Law-jic-ly.”

  Today’s thesis couldn’t be easily dismissed. Yes, being a teacher’s kid made one suspect. And when your dad had been a teacher, principal, and superintendent, it pretty much sealed the deal. And—completely unnecessary—Patrick’s mom was the high school office secretary. Education, the Lynches joked, was the family business. Gunther’s family’s business was running the smaller of the two filling stations in town, Hendrickson’s Best Gas. It was their shared sense of irony that had brought the boys together, the superintendent’s son with Mad Magazine hidden in his science binder and the mechanic’s son who was re-reading The Stranger.

  “Your problem, son,” Gunther said, leaning to one side, crushing the invisible girl on his left, “is that you haven’t decided which way to go. You’re too afraid of alienating the old man to risk doing something dangerous.” Since Gunther discovered Camus, alienation was a risk we all had to take. “And, on the other hand,” he cozied up to the girl on his right, “you’re too terrified of failure to boldly go beyond your dad’s achievements out in the real world.” To boldly go. Camus to Captain Kirk: that was Gunther. “Thus, in essence,” he leaned over his coffee cup, took a gulp, “you’re rat-fucked.”

  “Gunnie,” Patrick shook his head, “you’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.”

  “They’re blue.” True, of course; a shocking Norwegian blue.

  Patrick slurped his coffee. “You’re down a quart.”

  Gunther shifted to one buttock, smirked. In a moment, Patrick discovered why.

  “Just a small free sample,” Gunther said, “of Hendrickson’s Best.”

  It was Gunther’s turn. He leaned back against the corner of his unmade bed, clacking the dice in his cupped hands interminably, as he always did at this stage of the game, to heighten the drama. Bat-o-matic, a fantasy baseball game involving dice, a spinner, and cards with the statistics of Major League players, was Gunther’s favorite. After the dice were rolled and the spinner spun, the cards were consulted and a formula followed that only Gunther understood, leading to a triple or a strikeout, a wild pitch or stolen base. It was a slow-paced game, slower than baseball itself. Patrick found it tedious, but it captivated Gunther, combining two of his loves, sports and stats. Patrick indulged his friend only for the pleasure of listening to his play-by-play.

  “Well, Jack, we got a real cliff-hanger here at old Wrigley, don’t we?” Clackety-clackety-clack. The giant tongue on Gunther’s Rolling Stones T-shirt licked the air as he bobbed with the dice. “We sure do, Lou. Bottom of the ninth, and yes-sir-yes-sir-three-bags-full of Cubbies. Two outs, Mets up by three, and…” he shuffled through the players cards “…Paul Popovich ambling out of the dugout to pinch hit.” Gunther always opted for obscurity in key situations. If Billy Williams came through in the clutch, where was the glory in that? Just doing his job. But if Popovich…

  In more lopsided games, when Patrick’s interest flagged long before the ninth inning, Gunther resorted to his rain-delay parody:

  Jack: Should he bring in a righty or a southpaw to pitch to the switch-hitting Kessinger?

  Lou: I guess it’s all relative, as old Al Einstein would say.

  Jack: Are you talkin’ the general or special theory of relativity, Lou?

  Lou: I’m talkin’ the 1915 general theory, Jack, wherein Einstein posited that space is curved and light bends around planets like a Mike Cuellar screwball around Reggie Jackson’s forty-ouncer.

  or

  Jack: This one’s a real tight-collar job.

  Lou: Speaking of collars, that’s a snappy tie you’re wearing, Jack.

  Jack: Thanks, Lou.

  Lou: And I like how those pants fit, kinda snug across the thighs.

  Jack: Oh, Lou…

  And always there was a moment when Gunther would invoke Katie Osterlund. Katie, Queen of Willard County High, the pertest and blondest in a land of pert blondness. It was embarrassing to Patrick, this hopeless crush, but it dated back to elementary school and had grown just as he had grown, unstoppably, unpredictably. That this infatuation was so disconnected from reality, that Katie was smitten with Doug Knutson, broad-shouldered pass-hurler for the Willard County Homesteaders, and that her devotion was manifested every autumn Saturday afternoon as she cheered him from the sidelines, made it worse. That, and Doug being an idiot. “She’s your Daisy Buchanan,” proclaimed Gunther when they finished Gatsby last semester. His friend’s literary allusions, offered up for Gunther’s self-amusement, generally sailed past Patrick, but this one struck home. The implication that Katie was both unworthy of his worship and forever out of his league stung doubly. Years ago, Gunther fell upon Patrick’s object of desire as an essential bit of gamesmanship. At a game’s climax, when Patrick would have his moment of indecision—bring in the reliever? pinch-hit for the starter?—Gunther would husk: “Do it, Pat. Do it for Katie.”

  Finally, Gunther let the dice spill across his stained, gray bedroom carpet. Two sixes. He spun the spinner: ten. He checked the Popovich card. “Back. Way, way back,” he said in his high-pitched Jack voice. “Cubbies win. Can you believe it?”

  “I can’t,” Patrick shouted. “Let me see that.” He stole the card from Gunther’s sweaty fingers, nearly knocking over his lemonade. “I can’t tell what the hell this means.”

  “We’ve been playing this since we were twelve. I’m not explaining it again.”

  “Well, this is a fucking stupid game. And there are way too many ninth-inning grand slams.”
Patrick glared at the card. “And always for your team.”

  “Are you impugning my integrity?” Gunther squared his narrow shoulders, centered his watch cap. Mick’s tongue stuck out from his chest.

  “I’m not playing this again.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m not. I mean it this time.”

  “Fine. Think of something better. I’m sick of always making the plan, then you blame me for it.” Gunther swept the cards, dice, and spinner under his bed and threw himself back onto his carpet, his hands under his head.

  Like an old married couple, they’d had this argument countless times. Patrick knew his next line. He could have typed up the whole transcript and printed it out, had they computers and printers in Peterson’s Prairie, Minnesota, 1978.

  Gunther rolled over to his secondhand record player and placed the needle back on The Dark Side of the Moon, an album he was nearly wearing out.

  Pink Floyd summed up Gunther neatly: anglophilic, like no other teenage boy in Peterson’s Prairie, and angry, like all of them. Patrick was angry, too. At Gunther, for being right. His dime store psychoanalysis at the Full Moon had gotten under Patrick’s skin—he was alarmingly passive, a failure in both the Honor Society sense and the born-to-be-wild sense. What had he accomplished in his sixteen years? He was a minnow even in the tiny pond of Peterson’s Prairie, achieving neither fame nor notoriety. Gunther was weird, true, but Gunther was Gunther. Who was he? His father’s son, that’s who. His father’s son.

  Pink Floyd slipped into “Time,” their clocks chiming, pulsing. Tock, tock, tock. And as Patrick stared at his best friend’s dirty left foot flexing to the metronomic beat, it came to him.

  “Gunther,” he said, “I have a plan.”

  Gunther practically skipped down Main Street ahead of Patrick, nearly knocking over Mrs. Johansson, her arms full of groceries. He’d never looked more delighted or amazed. He was always the one with the propositions. Patrick’s role was to approve or veto: yes to shooting hoops on the backboard behind Hendrickson’s Best; no to shooting squirrels behind the Methodist church; yes to testing bottle rockets in Patrick’s backyard; no to testing Newton’s Laws of Motion at the abandoned gravel quarry off Rural Route 17.

  “This,” he cackled at Patrick, “is perfect. For you, perfect. It’d be like me,” he spread his arms to encompass downtown Peterson’s Prairie, which was two blocks long but their known world, “it’d be like me torching Hendrickson’s Best.”

  Patrick glanced modestly to his left as they passed Knutson’s Shop-Rite. Van Kamps Pork ’n’ Beans was only thirty-seven cents this week. “Oh, it’s not that extreme.” He couldn’t help grinning. “After all, we don’t own the school.”

  “But what a plan, man.” Gunther smacked Patrick’s shoulder. “It’s more than a plan—it’s a scheme.”

  The Scheme had been Patrick’s brainchild; that was the vital thing. But, that understood, the details, inevitably, were Gunther’s.

  “We’ve gotta case the place first, make a floor plan.” Gunther squeezed his eyes shut and rested his head on the steering wheel. “Oh, damn, brain freeze.” The Walgreens in the new strip mall on the access highway into Winnipee Falls had the best grape slurpees. And Gunther’s mom worked there, so they got them for free. When you figured in the gas, though, it was hardly a bargain, but that wasn’t the point. They’d recently graduated from bikes; thanks to Gunther’s new license and use of one of the ancient trucks at Hendrickson’s Best, they’d magically expanded their universe. Delicacies previously unavailable were now within reach.

  “Floor plan? We don’t need no stinkin’ floor plan.”

  Gunther snorted. They both were insomniacs addicted to the Late, Late Movie. He shook his head.

  “Gotta have one.”

  “I got it all up here, Gunnie.” Patrick tapped his temple. “I was raised in that building.” Even Gunther couldn’t argue that point. Patrick’s dad had been a history teacher at the high school when he was born. He and his big sister Erin, now a freshman at the U of M, had had the run of the place when they were little, until Mr. Lynch became principal of Peterson’s Prairie Elementary. Saturdays, when their mom was doing the wash, their dad would take them to the empty high school. While Mr. Lynch planned lessons, his children made a playground of his workplace; there was no teacher’s desk they hadn’t rifled through, no yardstick they hadn’t sword fought with. Now Superintendent Lynch was back at the high school, his office next to the principal’s. Patrick knew every square inch.

  “You’ve memorized all the outlets? The vents?”

  Patrick shrugged. Gunther kept insisting they go in through the roof, though there was no alarm system and a window would be simpler. It was all very Thomas Crown Affair in his mind. Which was okay, maybe, except Gunther would expect to play the Steve McQueen part. And what did that leave him—Faye Dunaway?

  Gunther leaned against the steering wheel, licking his purple lips. Patrick could tell by the way his buddy ran his hands up and down the wheel that this issue was nonnegotiable. For all his what-the-hell goofy indifference, Gunther was, at bedrock, one stubborn bastard. “Okay,” Patrick said, planting his sneakers on the dash, “we make a floor plan first. We can do it Saturday. I’ll tell my dad we’re doing technical drawing in art class.”

  Gunther just nodded, slurping at his slurpee and squinting at the Walgreens that would eventually attract a Target discount store that would attract a McDonalds that would attract a Mobil station that would put Hendrickson’s Best out of business, and then, finally, a Walmart would thump down like that flatulent foot of God at the end of the Python show, squishing the mall, downtown Peterson’s Prairie, and pretty much the town itself. “This,” murmured Gunther, “is going to be so great.”

  Yes, it was only meatloaf, but his mother’s meatloaf was excellent. Patrick was still in that late-childhood stage where the choice of dinner could make or ruin his day. He cut himself two thick slices and spooned several spoonfuls of the au gratin potatoes his mother had made especially for him. He felt her approval as he stuffed his mouth with the cheesy potatoes. Before this recent growth spurt she was always picking at him (Eat, eat), fretting that he was going to be smallish and thin, like her and Erin, which was fine for a girl—hadn’t Erin been adorable in her pom-pom outfit?—but it was harder, she said, for a boy. Since he’d shot up and filled out this school year, she still clung to the possibility of him taking after his father.

  “Frank,” she snapped at her husband as he reached for the potatoes. “Yours is in the oven. I think it’s done.” Patrick watched his dad nod, then lumber into the kitchen and return with his baked potato and a stick of margarine. With surgical care he sliced open the spud and administered a pat of margarine to each half. He then helped himself to a single slice of meatloaf and a bowl of green salad. He dosed the salad with a drizzle of low-calorie dressing and looked up at his wife, waving over the meal as if he’d suddenly made it appear. “Very nice, Francis. Dr. Greene would be pleased.”

  Since Patrick started putting weight on, the focus had shifted to his dad taking it off. Looking at his father, he wouldn’t have called him fat, exactly: a broad genial face centered on a huge pair of shoulders, as if his designer had forgotten the neck part; a Gibraltar of chest overlooking a gently sloping gut. Nothing unusual in a male of forty-eight, particularly in Peterson’s Prairie, where the ’70s fitness craze wasn’t even a rumor. The outline of the high school linebacker was still there. But Dr. Greene had sounded the alarm—lower that blood pressure, take off twenty pounds. The Field Marshal had gone to work: no more bratwurst, no more bacon, Frank’s beloved cream soda replaced by Tab.

  Patrick’s mother tossed her son that girlish grin, as if his dad’s new health regimen was their little conspiracy. But Patrick just looked down at his plate. His father’s bulk was reality at its most basic, a reassuring monument, like Mt. Rushmore or Stonehenge. Do what
you like, it wasn’t going anywhere. “So, honey,” she chirped, “how did that geometry quiz go today?”

  Patrick stabbed his meatloaf. “Okay, I guess.”

  Before his mother could say You guess? his father sighed. “Ah, geometry. My nemesis. My bête noire.”

  His mother laughed. “You? You were good at geometry. You were like Patrick—good at everything.”

  His father waved his fork. “Not geometry, Norma. Why do you think I taught history?”

  “Now I—Erin and I—we’re pluggers.” His mother swirled her salad around her bowl. “We plug away. We get the job done, but it doesn’t come easily.”

  “Geometry’s not easy,” Patrick mumbled through a mouthful of meatloaf.

  “Oh, I’m not saying it’s easy, honey. But when you apply yourself—”

  “Leonardo,” interjected his father. “Everything came easy for him. Painting, inventing. Great athlete, too. They say he could bend a metal bar with his bare hands.”

  “Did Mr. Sheehan like your Catcher in the Rye piece?”

  Patrick shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Well, I thought it was very insightful. You’re good with words, Pat.”

  He shrugged again.

  “Alexander Hamilton,” said his father, lifting his fork, proffering a wedge of tomato to no one in particular, “cranked out four or five of those Federalist Papers a week. Thousands and thousands of words—gorgeous prose—almost no revisions. Remarkable. Mozart, too—”

  “Frank.” Norma gave him her indulgent smile, her cheerleader-who-tackled-the-linebacker smile. Although highly esteemed in the community as an administrator—Dr. Lynch, local farm boy made good—he was ever nostalgic for the classroom. Such history moments were a staple of the Lynch dinner table.

  “My point is,” Patrick’s father set his fork down, “these few geniuses aside, we’re all incrementalists. We don’t learn in sudden epiphanies. We learn,” he moved his hands down the table in parallel vertical planes, “step-by-step. Except for the Newtons and Darwins, we’re all ‘pluggers.’ We just plug at different rates in different subjects. Considering—”