Authors: Brad Land
11
THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING.
The pledges have a week left.
I call Brett and no one answers. I’m supposed to ride home with him. When I go down to his room there’s a note on the door. A piece of torn yellow paper with my brother’s jagged writing. This is what it says:
Brad.
Fuck man had to leave.
Ride home with Will.
Brett.
I knock on the door and Brett’s roommate Wes answers.
Brett left last night about four-thirty, he says. Went to Charleston. I nod.
Thank you, I say.
——
BACK IN MY room I call Will.
Yeah, he says, Brett asked me to give you a ride. It’s on the way.
Thanks, I say.
It’s cool, I’ll be out front at six, he says. After my lab.
I don’t want to ride with Will but he has to pass right through Florence to get home. I’ve gone the last few weeks without seeing him. Or Dave. I’ve only had to see brothers or pledges at a distance. When I walk to class. In the cafeteria. I don’t want to sit for three hours and be reminded of what Will’s about to finish and what I left behind. If I had stayed it would have almost been over.
But I didn’t.
That’s what I’m left with.
I LEAN OVER the railing in the outside stairwell and wait for Will’s car to pull up. Someone has added a new line to the wall directly underneath the one about someone’s mother sucking someone’s cock.
This is what it says:
Fuck you all.
And I can’t stand looking at the lines anymore. I want them gone. I go into my room and get a black permanent marker. Scribble out the lines about Phi Delts sucking cock, about someone’s mother sucking cock and the last line that says fuck you all. I cover each letter with the black ink and add my own line. I write my name.
——
I’M IN THE backseat of Will’s car. He turns around.
Ready? he says. All smiles. The car a new-model gold Toyota Camry. Immaculate on the inside. A girl in the passenger seat. She twists around.
Anne, she says.
Oh hi, I say, I’m Brad.
Will puts the car in drive, stops and spins his head.
Oh man, he says, that was rude, Brad Anne, Anne Brad. Nods his head at us each time he says a name. Anne is wearing a heavy green coat, her long hair tucked beneath the collar. Her face is small and round and her hands are warm.
You like the Dead? she says.
Sure, I say, I like the Dead.
Even though I don’t. It feels like the right time to lie.
Man, Anne says, I love Jerry, and we listen to a live show. I keep thinking of a bumper sticker the punk rocker who lives next door to me in Daniel has. It’s on his door. It says Jerry’s Dead. Shave Your Head. Anne turns around.
This is one of the best, she says. Fillmore ’71. I nod and place my face against the cold window glass and for a moment I forget that I don’t like the Dead and the cheers and music begin to blend with the quiet hum of the engine and Clemson slips behind us and we don’t even notice.
I OPEN MY eyes when I feel the car stop. Will pumps gas and Anne smokes through a cracked window. She rests the cigarette against the slit and when she flicks her thumb against the filter the wind carries ash onto the windshield. It rolls down and rests against the wipers.
Will hunched over the gas nozzle, one hand shoved into his pocket. He keeps pulling it out, changing hands to pump. Shaking with the cold. Anne leans back and lets smoke dance beneath the overhead light. She smiles, takes two quick drags and snubs the cigarette out in the middle console’s ashtray.
Still glad that you quit? she says. She knows.
Well, yeah, I say.
Really though I’m lying. I don’t know if I’m glad. Not now. Not with everyone else so close.
Just wasn’t for me, I say. Not my gig.
Yeah, she says, I know what you mean.
Did you? I say.
Did I what?
You know, pledge?
Oh, yeah. Chi-O. Not really a big deal though. I don’t really care much about it.
I nod. The brothers taught us a song about Chi-O’s. It goes like this:
Chi-ho Chi-ho it’s off to bed we go with a Lambda Chi between my thighs and an SAE on top of me Chi-ho Chi-ho.
These verses then repeated.
We don’t have to do crazy shit like you guys do, she says. I mean I understand why someone wouldn’t want to do all that. Will’s told me some.
Not much fun, I say. I turn back toward the window. Will running from the gas station. He opens the car door and plops down into the seat, rubs his hands together.
My God, he says, it’s so cold. His hand twitches when he goes for the ignition. He cranks the car and turns the heat high.
——
ANNE HAS HER feet pulled up close to her chest. Arms wrapped around her knees, head leaned against the window. The seatbelt looped under her chin. No one’s said anything for about an hour. The Dead are still playing but it’s a different show. I think. It all sounds the same.
I lean up between the seats.
You must be excited, I say.
Oh, yeah, Will says, I am. It’s almost over. One more week.
Cool. Been hard I know.
Yeah, really. I didn’t know if I could do it.
You did, though. That’s more than I can say.
He shakes his head.
You don’t feel bad about all that, do you? he says.
Sometimes, I say. Yeah. A lot really.
Well, don’t. You shouldn’t. I mean it’s easy for me to say that now when I’m almost done. But really. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.
I just feel bad sometimes. Lonely, you know.
Yeah, I know. He reaches over into Anne’s lap and takes her cigarettes. He shakes the pack, brings a filter to his mouth.
Since when do you smoke? I say.
Since I became a pledge, he says. Want one?
Sure, I say. Take the filter he’s shaken over the edge of the pack. He cracks our windows and the cold air rushes through. Stiff against my face.
I’m worried, though, he says. I squint my eyes against the air blowing back.
About what? I say.
The vote.
The final one?
Yeah.
Why?
I haven’t been around as much as they want. They call me Ghost Fitch.
Oh, I say like I don’t know already. I wouldn’t worry. I don’t think they’d vote anyone out who made it this far. It’s just a scare tactic more than anything.
Yeah, you’re right, he says. I just worry about stuff. I’m a worrier.
Me, too. That’s why I couldn’t hack it.
I just got lucky I guess. I really don’t know how I did it if you want to know the truth. You don’t know how many times I almost quit. I just tried to stay busy with schoolwork.
Well, congratulations, though. You’ve done something that’s really hard.
Thanks man, he says and I can feel the fear leave his voice. It’s like someone has exhaled deeply, pushed everything out.
That means a lot, he says. From you. Really. It does.
Why?
Just does. All that shit me and you did at the beginning. I mean I still feel like it should’ve been me and not you sometimes. You know, who quit. You’ve got more guts than me.
I don’t.
I think you do. You just don’t know it. But anyway, thanks for the congratulations.
You’re welcome, I say.
He shoots his cigarette through the crack in the window and exhales a stream over the edge. I flick my cigarette out and look back. Orange sparks over the concrete behind us. I turn back and catch Will’s face in the rearview. His eyes are dancing and his hands lie silent on the steering wheel.
A GOAT CHAINED to a basketball post. Head bent, picking at the grass in the raised section of courtyard. Outline of jawbone poking back into his neck. My eyes are hazy because it’s seven-thirty on the first day of exams. I rub them hard and blink to make sure the goat’s really there. When I take a step down from Daniel Hall the goat looks up at me. Ribs poke through its wiry gray coat like curved fingers and small horns have come through the top of the skull. Breath billows from flared nostrils. The goat gives me a blank stare and then bends back down to gnaw at the dead grass. I lower myself onto the last step and watch through the cold. I’m shivering but the cold feels good and I start to rock back and forth, wrap my arms across my chest and begin to laugh. It begins as a slight heave but then I’m shaking with the cold and the laugh for this scrawny bristly chinned goat and for whoever left him here.
AT MY GEOLOGY exam everyone looks drugged or dead. The girl next to me taps her pen and digs at the corners of her eyes, looks at each index finger and wipes them on her torn jeans. The baseball player still has his arm in a sling and has to write with his left hand. I am staring at the blackboard, at the coiled chalk smudges and I haven’t even looked at my exam. The hippie teacher walks through aisles and looks over our shoulders. When he passes by I feel his eyes on me telling me I better get to work but my hands won’t move because I don’t care. His patchouli makes me wince. When I pick up the pencil I mark C for every question.
In three days Will and Dave will be brothers.
In three days I will be gone and I won’t come back.
I get up and leave my test on the desk and the hippie teacher doesn’t even look up. It’s December and he’s wearing a heavy pullover and shorts, leaning on the big desk up front, playing with this geode he bobbles like a grapefruit.
THE KAPPA SIGMA hall is silent. It smells like a cow pasture and I scrunch my nose. I try the knob on Brett’s door and it slides open. The room is dark. Brett’s arm is dangling from his side of the loft, head turned toward the wall. I touch his palm and trace the lines of his hand with my thumb. It twitches when I get to the soft part near the lifeline. I grab his wrist and pull, his eyes tear open, he inhales like it’s his first breath.
What? he says. What are you doing here this early?
I thought you had an exam, I say. This morning.
What?
An exam. A final. This morning.
He looks around like he doesn’t know where he is.
What time is it? he says. Rubs circles across his eyes.
It’s like nine, I say. Maybe ten after.
He falls back into his pillow, rubs his eyes again and lets out a slow oh fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck, he says.
What time was it? I say. He rolls over, places an open palm against the wall.
Eight, he says. Fucking eight o’clock. I laugh.
It’s not funny, he says.
Yeah, I say. You’re right. And then I laugh again.
Fuck it, he says. Whatever. He pulls the sheets back over his bare back.
I close his door softly behind me and the pasture smell hits me again. I look down and there are hoofprints in the floor dirt.
BRETT TELLS ME this after he wakes up at one:
Last night the pledge class steals a goat. Twelve of the pledges drive in two separate cars to a farm forty minutes outside Clemson. Two pledges jump the barbed-wire fence at two in the morning, step in shit, lead the goat through a gate and lift him into the back of one pledge’s red extended-cab Chevrolet truck. The goat doesn’t put up a fight and sits still the whole way back. Like a baby. Somewhere around four they open the doors to the Kappa Sigma hall, lead the goat by a dog leash they’d bought at Wal-Mart, go into the bathroom on the first floor and tie the goat to a stall door handle. A pledge feeds the goat some dog food. Also purchased at Wal-Mart. Puts four tablets of Extra-Strength Ex-Lax into the food because he figures the goat is big but he’s really not and after all animals probably need more to induce diarrhea because their stomachs are strong and a goat has the strongest stomach of all. They eat aluminum cans. One pledge shuts off the lights in the bathroom when they sneak out but another wants to leave them on because he doesn’t want the goat to get scared so they leave the lights on and let the door fall shut.
——
I HAVE ONE more exam and then I’m gone. It’s four-thirty on a Thursday and everything is slow. Have my window open because the day has been mild. The only sounds I hear are an occasional car whirring by. I try to study but the test is on British Literature like Milton and Keats and I don’t care about those guys much right now. My teacher is old and boring and doesn’t really want to teach. Has never looked at us the whole semester. Always stares at the back wall. Talks over our heads.
BRETT’S HEAD IN his hands when I open his door. Turns one eye toward me from beneath the hands and it is bloodshot. The whole hall quiet. All the doors closed. I expect everyone to be running around like mad because pledge season ended last night after the final vote. But it’s not like that. The room dark. Spread hanging down from the foot of Brett’s bed. I ask what’s wrong.
You don’t know, he says.
Nah, I say, what’s going on?
Will, man, he says. He’s dead. A heart attack. You don’t have heart attacks when you’re eighteen. Just fucking dead in his room. Like that.
I can’t think straight.
This place, he says. Pulls hands back through his hair. This fucking place. He slides his hands down across his face.
I sit down on the couch beside him and lean back.
So they voted him out, you know, he says.
What do you mean?
Last night at the final vote.
I didn’t think they could do that.
I’ve never heard of it.
I thought the vote was just a formality.
It usually is. But they can still do it.
I feel like I should be screaming or running through the halls and opening doors and pulling people out, throwing them like dolls, beating them with my fists. But I don’t feel that. I don’t feel anything except this high-pitched whine in my left ear.
Who was it? I say. Were you there?
Yeah, he says. I had to be.
You didn’t have to be anywhere.
He looks at me like I’m crazy.
You don’t know, he says.
You’re right, I say. I don’t.
They wouldn’t listen. Fucking Chance and Dixon and Ben. You have to have two. Will had three.
When did they tell him?
Last night. After the vote. Late.