Spiral Bound Brother

By Ryan Elliot Wilson

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2012 Ryan Elliot Wilson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78279-141-6

Contents

Part I Craft………………………………………………………1Part II Burgundy Five Star………………………………………….83Part III The Kingdom……………………………………………….149Part IV Whirlybird…………………………………………………223

CHAPTER 1

I hadn’t been to a doctor in six years. I’d hit an age where Ipreferred a series of arcana, to let it be a surprise, whatever foulthing was growing inside me. Sitting in Earhart High School’scharmingly round library, reading Prufrock as if listening to asong that began anew immediately after fading out, I mashed myhair down with my hand. Finding it moist, of course, and stuckto my scalp like I’d applied rubber cement, I found reason to readthe poem for the fortieth consecutive time.

“I’m not insane.”

My delusion must have been audible, because Mike Dunham,a senior now (I taught him as a freshman), stopped me with agentle hand on my shoulder. All-star second baseman, greatglove man, Mike Dunham, B+ on every paper, every test, forparticipation, every quiz, B+. It was astounding consistency. Ionce gave him a D+ on a paper, which was actually very solid ifnot exactly powerful, just to see what he’d do. I wrote the samekind of notes I always write in the margins of his essays:

– Good start identifying Poe’s theme of Unity, but go further here.You’re cowering from the fire-breathing dragon!

– Keen Observation! Bravo! You’re almost faculty!

– Missing a quote! Looks like someone was watching ESPN while theywrote this part of the essay.

– This quote reveals much more about the narrator than you’re illuminating!Illuminate, Mike! Poe wants you to shine a light.

– Mike, A very solid and convincing argument concerning thenarrator’s unavoidable path to meet all aspects of himself in death.Everything you point out is on target throughout. But try toidentify more of the jaw-dropping choices Poe makes in hisdescription, in mood—in other words, make an incision and lookinside! Go past the skin!

Then: D+

He approached me after class with the essay between his thumband index finger, just cocked his head ever so slightly andwalked away. I’d meant it as raillery, no harm to his semestergrade, but then again I was consciously ignoring what I knewabout Mike Dunham. He always seemed poised to explode. Hewas friable despite his steady glove-work up the middle, thereliably straightforward analyses in class. He made every play hewas supposed to, and the hard shots, too, the tough hops, madesomething like two errors his entire senior season, and at leastone of those was due to the Earhart High scorekeeper guardinghis own son’s earned-run average. But he rarely seemed to comeup with the incredible catch, and never did I see him celebratewith the lowest octane of high-fives after turning the doubleplay, still somewhat rare in high school, or at least for Earhartteams. He just didn’t dance with it.

I called Mike in during his period in Flyer, our schoolnewspaper. Chuck Loder taught journalism, a lovely guy andone of my two friends on campus. Bitter as Job and unafraid tomake the administration squirm. They would have fired himyears ago, but those Famous Barr Clearance Suits that made upthe Earhart administration didn’t have one body part heavingwith life, not a one between them.

“Mike, I’m very sorry about that D+. I meant to write B+.”

“I know what you did, Mr. Craft.”

“Oh?”

“You wanted to see if you could rattle me. Like I’m some kindof robot. I get it. But let me tell you, okay, I have some veryserious crap going on at home right now, and I don’t think it’sfunny at all.”

“Mike, you have me all wrong. I was only trying to light afire.”

Mike’s cheek muscles dropped, and his eyes welled up, notwith tears, but pity, for me, the liar.

“I thought you were the kind of teacher who would own upto it, Mr. Craft.”

I wanted to pull him to my chest and hold him there amoment, but you can’t do that sort of thing anymore.

“I’m not familiar to myself, Mike, and I don’t get muchpleasure from life. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to be different—that’s not true, exactly. I used to honorthe idea that the future was important. That’s it.”

“Yeah. My sister loved you.”

“Really? She hardly said a word in class.”

“She’s like, a real good listener. So, anyway, I gotta go.”

“Okay, Mike. I’m sorry. If you need someone to talk to—”

“No, thanks.”

Three years after our little talk that day, there he was again. Iwas set to implode at the library study table, with the delusionaland masochistic notion that I could tangle with this death-panicepisode, whatever it was, armed only with T.S. Eliot. The manhad a soft spot for dictators (my former colleague, JohnMarauder, who actually now lives in a shack in Hawaii, wrote abrilliant, if a bit overreaching, paper on Eliot’s Nazi imagery inBurnt Norton). And Mike, emitting the same nervous calm forwhich I’d known him, a senior now, an impressively full beard,his hand resting there on my shoulder, watched me read Prufrockfor the forty-first time:

Like a patient etherised on a table …
I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows …
And in short, I was afraid.

I looked peripherally at Mike, and I thought of my mother, howshe’d always envisioned me to be a bold child, and how I’d disappointedher, slowly, until we only feigned closeness and true care,warmth. Thinking of how she toiled the beauty right out ofherself, and hunched herself over, dazed from life’s invisibleblows to the head.

Would the same blows overtake me? My sanity hung there,under attack, in the occupation of saints and idiots, as mydepartment chair and old friend called our line of work. Via thecover of ninth-grade English, I managed to avoid anything thattruly matters, presupposing that anything truly matters. I’dbecome, or more likely, I discovered I’d always been a tragic,grotesque creature, filled with beautiful memories that onlymade things sickeningly more difficult.

I closed my eyes and Prufrock echoed in my head, narrated bymy mother’s voice, morphing into Eliot’s, then mine, then mineas a child, at which point I must have begun vocalizing, somekind of guttural sound usually associated with anguish.

“Ahhkahh,” I said.

“Mr. Craft … Mr. Craft … Mr. Craft … Mr. Craft.”

“Mike. Hello. Ahhkahh!”

The slippages were beyond my control, a kind of possession.

“Mr. Craft, you haven’t turned the page since I’ve been here.And I’ve been here for a while. Like an hour and a half.”

“I’m reading, Mike. Ahhkahh!”

“Are you okay? What’s that sound you’re making—like,where’s it coming from?”

“I’m thinking of teaching this poem—Ahhkahh—class nextyear. I was just going over it.”

“You’re not taking any notes or anything.”

“Mike, you know, you’re observant to a point—Ahhkahh—andhonest, but there’s a reason you got B+s, and not As in my class.Ahhkahh!”

“You shouldn’t equate life with grades, Mr. Craft. That’s solike, teacher, like, stupid.”

“Mmm. But you should realize that with literature, it’s up tothe reader to decide!”

“That’s doesn’t make sense,” he said.

“That’s what makes it powerful. Ahhkahh! When you’ve spentan hour with one page, pouring over the tiny explosions oflanguage, really seeing—Ahhkahh—the … the maelstrom of thehuman mind, talk to me!”

“Okay.”

“Ahhkahh! Things of beauty shouldn’t be given up so easily!”I sent my face plunging onto the table, unconscious. Some ofthe faculty, when alerted to the situation, thought of driving meto the ER, but they were all far behind schedule in their grading.Essays really do take forever, if you do it right. Chuck Loder toldme I was comatose for about an hour and a half, but they werediligent about putting a pocket mirror under my nose everyfifteen minutes or so, presumably the time it takes to grade oneessay and drink a small Styrofoam cup of Folgers Crystals. Thenext day I figured I ought to at least check in with my old, senilemedicine man, Dr. Paul Trisk.

“There’s no good reason,” he said, “for you to have your pantsdown right now. Pull them up.”

“The nurse told—”

“Damn the nurse.”

Trisk, an authentic asshole of the first order, wearing theinscrutable beard of a debilitating hand condition, was my firstdoctor out of college, so I stayed with him, to limit my alreadygargantuan dose of paperwork in my life. It would have come asno surprise to me if he told me I had a few months to live. Insteadhe just scowled.

“Breathe. No. Breathe,” he said.

He touched me on the abdomen, roughly. I cringed.

“You’re fine. Stop smoking or nobody will care when you die.That’s how it works. I’ve seen it.”

“What if I pass out like that again, out of nowhere?”

“It’s harmless probably. Anxiety. You seeing any women?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“None will see me. No, that’s not true. I stopped trying. “

“Start getting intercourse regularly again and I won’t see youfor another six years. You’re going to live to be a hundred if youquit cigarettes. Longevity curse. And better yours than mine,believe me, Craft.”

CHAPTER 2

I stood up there every day, submerged in a windowless hole inthe southwest suburbs of St. Louis, my place of origin,performing maniacally (they say) in front of the eager achieving,ruddy faces (a few brown ones mixed in), for twenty-five years.T-w-e-n-t-y-F-i-v-e. I taught a section of the slower kids, ofcourse. All the honors teachers had to take our share, “What canyou do?!” we used to chortle, all the young teachers, in the spiritof post(post)Woodstockian revival camaraderie, “The fuckingwar!” You actually have to love some aspect of being in a trenchwith no way out, or the children eat your spleen. Can anyoneoutside of the classroom appreciate, truly, how teaching highschool whittles portions of a person away, regardless of gender,genetic make-up, experience, patience, accomplishment—irrelevant—itsquelches, if not your electricity, then at least the abilityto feel your own broken glass heart. And, all right, it replenishes,but only the moment before you dissolve.

My favorite book to teach though, by far, was the first book ofthe year—Call of the Wild. It lights an animal fire in the children’sminds, as if the class is on ice skates, gliding, falling down,racing, and suddenly their whole little pond is ablaze. It broughtme great joy for years, watching their faces, listening to their sobsas Buck gallops into Alaska’s infinite expanse. You could feel thewind. The children with loving mothers and fathers, and more sothe ones who courageously managed, somehow, to make itthrough alone, thought the ending affirming of that essential,unnamable sensation in their intestines that felt like untamed joy.London gave them answers to their questions about freedom andnature—what are they, really, freedom, nature—in a time thatdragged those words behind the donkey to the point that they’dbecome scavenged corpses.

And there were children who drowned in it, the grindingtruth of it, and so denied themselves. London’s husky transcendsthe story of Christ in terms of answering the summons. This, thechildren who read it understood. They added something of valueto themselves, something substantial to pull from in the face of aworld of decay, hollow hearts, and prostitution. It never got easyto stomach the shallow end’s whining, though, the pleading withme—give a goddamn test and be done, can’t you see, Craft, we’refinished with you and your affected voice, the death, Craft, yourperverted leers, your creepy side-part-comb-over, swooped like that, andthe boys, you like boys, Craft, we know, don’t think you’re puttinganything past us, we see you, Craft. We’re done with this sled-dog shit,we can’t hear it, can’t see it, don’t want to, and we’re more than donewith your rat face.

Thesis-Contrary idea-Lead in-Quote-Lead out-Intensification-Provideevidence-Discovery of irony-The absurd-The transcendent-Devices-Thesisexpanded-Conclusion. The kids loved itsome and hated me, maybe loved me some and hated it. Thenone day it was simply over.

The events that seem to be few dominoes that knocked overthe rest, thus handing me this life, are intricately connected to astudent I’d taught seven years before. Lila Bell. She was captainof the Earhart Hockey Cheerleaders, a notoriously bawdy group,but Lila was an earnest girl, plugged into a socket, alwaysconscious of her words, an advanced writer at fourteen. Subtle-subtle-subtlethen pow! Well, one evening not long ago, myhome phone rang, a true rarity. She’d returned home fromPrestige Small New England Liberal Arts College, just beforewinter break of her senior year. There were a few wealthyfamilies at Earhart (we prided ourselves on being better than theprivate schools), but not one had money like the Bells. Her greatgreat-great-greatgrandfather started the first law firm in St.

Louis, which evolved into one of the largest and most respectedlaw firms in certainly the Midwest, if not the entire country, Bell,Higley, & Williams.

Lila had aged to twenty-one when I heard her say my nameagain, Hiya Craft. I was forty-seven years old, divorced, clearly,and had just, days before, lost consciousness in the library, on theverge, I suspected, of unraveling once and for all, despite whatold Dr. Trisk said. Lila suggested we meet for coffee down thestreet from my apartment.

An English major, because of me, she said, the way I didn’t fuckwith the stories, she said, but gave them some overdue fucking glory,she said (somehow she managed another fuck with no context Icould discern). I’ll never forget an early discussion in class on”Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Her voice—not hervoice, exactly—her method of utterance caused me to flip a fewounces of coffee onto my nipple and my already barely usablecopy of Frost’s collected work.

“Joan of Arc!” I shouted into my scalded chest. And thechildren laughed, of course.

“Shut up!” she scolded them. “Are you all right, Craft?” Lilaasked. When she participated, it was always as if she and I werealone.

“Go on, go on, you were saying something marvelous aboutthe horse, about loving that the man considers his horse’sfeelings. That’s called pathos by the way.”

“Yeah, but then the woods become death suddenly! And it’slike he likes it, looking at death, and he just goes home becausehe made some stupid promise. And now it’s too late because youlike him, so you care. And death is what he really wants. This isnot a ‘nice pretty, like really nice poem’ or whatever the hell Juliesaid. I stop listening when she starts speaking. No offense, Julie,”she said, raising a hand in Julie’s direction.

“Is it possible he views death as something good?” I said.

“Only if he hates being alive, I guess. The guy is ill. He’s goingto do it, probably with a shotgun, you know, out in the woods.”

I scanned the class and found furrowed brows from corner tocorner. They always became contemptuous when someone hadsomething to say. But this was an assault. I went through the stopsign anyway.

“Lila, do you think it’s possible that a person could reach apoint in life where those woods might say something reassuringabout eternity, for lack of a better term?””I don’t know anyone like that.”

“No, I don’t either,” I said, realizing how conspicuous mypresent state of mind had become.

“Except like hardcore Christians, I guess, but they’ll believejust about anything they’re told to,” Lila added.

If I didn’t take a hard turn, the class was going to fold in onitself, and, because I didn’t care, I pressed on.

“So are you concluding that the speaker, and that Frost byextension, is offering us a load of manure. To feel tempted by thewoods is just fantasizing about death and to think that way is acapitulation to real life.”

“What does that mean?”

“To give up,” I said.

“Yeah, pretty much. This is the saddest thing I’ve ever read,’cause it’s all in his head.”

“Yes, that’s precisely where it is,” I said, noting that most ofthe class had placed their heads upon their desks or created handpillows.

Thankfully, the bell rang, resetting them for biology,geometry, gym, the day’s class forgotten, except by Lila.

At the café all these years later, as I spoke about mythreadbare life and my fainting spell, she looked at me andlaughed, an extended warm laugh that ended with her foreheadin her hand, a little snorting at the end. I could see in the mirroron the wall behind her head that I didn’t have anything smearedon my face, so I knew it was, at least in part, my utter ridiculousness,and her familiarity with me, the man, the fool.

“I’ve missed you so much, Craft.”

The corkscrew curl of hair on her forehead was long enoughto submerge itself in her coffee. That she never noticed, anddunked it again and again, well, that finished me off.

“It feels good to be here. It’s not weird at all, you know?” shesaid, holding my eyes in hers.

“Thanks for the coffee. It’s delicious,” I said.

“You suggested this place,” she said, “so you shouldn’t besurprised.”

“Mmm. Yes.”

“Craft.”

“Yes, Lila.”

“Okay, listen. I’ve made some stupid choices with boys atschool. Nothing horrible, I wasn’t raped, thank God, a friend ofmine was, right outside a Bank of America.”
(Continues…)Excerpted from Spiral Bound Brother by Ryan Elliot Wilson. Copyright © 2012 Ryan Elliot Wilson. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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