“We’re fucked,” she said.
“We deserve it,” I said back.
“I know. Who’d have thought he’d react so badly?”
“No talking,” Mr. Silver snapped as he opened the door and beckoned us in. The Towering Inferno flinched as though slapped, and I wondered at what age she had discovered she possessed the power to convince men to throw hats out of trains. If I asked her now, would she remember the day? The moment? The event? What I wouldn’t give to exchange the tale of her strength for the saga of my weakness.
In the office there was a skinny middle-aged woman sitting with her hands in her lap, her narrow eyes closing a quarter of an inch with every step I took into the room.
“Well, you two,” the principal said, “what do you have to say for yourselves?”
“She didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said. “It was me.”
“Is that true?” he asked the Inferno.
She nodded guiltily.
“That’s not true,” the woman said, pointing at me. “He did it, but she was ordering him around.”
I took offense at that, because it was true. I stood up and placed my hands on the principal’s desk. “Sir, just take one second and look at the girl you are accusing. Are you looking at her?” He was looking at her. “She’s a victim of her own beauty. Because why? Because beauty is power. And as we learned in history class, power corrupts. Therefore, absolute beauty corrupts absolutely.”
The Towering Inferno stared at me. Mr. Silver cleared his throat.
“Well, Jasper, it’s unforgivable what you’ve done.”
“I agree. And you don’t have to suspend me, because I’m quitting this place.” He bit his lip. “You still want me to read at the funeral?”
“I think you should,” he said, in a cold, serious voice.
Damn. I knew he was going to say that.
The funeral was more or less a repeat of Brett’s: everyone standing there as if dignity mattered, the polished smile of the priest making your eyes squint, the sight of the coffin closing in on you. The Towering Inferno was staring at me, though I didn’t want to be stared at just then. I wanted to be alone with my guilt. Despite myself, I looked at her, the Angel of Death with great legs. Without even knowing it, she was the central figure in demolishing a family.
I peered over the cold body of Mr. White and silently pleaded: Forgive me for throwing your hat out of the train! I didn’t know your head was still inside! Forgive me! Forgive me for throwing you out of a moving train!
The priest nodded at me, the nod of a man tight with Omniscience.
I got up to read.
They were all expecting the psalm. Instead, this is what I read:
“Who is the most wretched in this dolorous place?
I think myself; yet I would rather be
My miserable self than He, than He
Who formed such creatures to his own disgrace.
“The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! Abhorred,
Malignant and implacable! I vow
“That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,
For all the temples to Thy glory built,
Would I assume the ignominious guilt
Of having made such men in such a world.”
I finished and looked up. The priest was gnashing his teeth just as it’s described in his favorite book.
IV
After returning home from Sizzler, I stood alone in the labyrinth, staring at the moon, which looked to be just an empty wreck of a rock, burned out, as if God had done it for the insurance.
“I’m worried,” Dad said, coming up behind me.
“What about?”
“My son’s future.”
“I’m not.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Go overseas.”
“You don’t have any money.”
“I know I don’t have any money. I know what an empty pocket feels like. I’ll make some.”
“How?”
“I’ll get a job.”
“What kind of job? You don’t have any skills.”
“Then I’ll get an unskilled job.”
“What kind of unskilled job? You don’t have any experience.”
“I’ll get some.”
“How? You need experience to get a job.”
“I’ll find something.”
“Who’ll employ you? No one likes a quitter.”
“That’s not true.”
“OK, then. Who likes a quitter?”
“Other quitters.”
Dad left me with a melodramatic sigh that trailed after him like a smell. I don’t know how long I stood in the cold trying to see past the veil covering my future. Should I be a baker of a male stripper? A philanthropist or a roadie? A criminal mastermind or a dermatologist? It was no joke. I was caught in a brainstorm, and ideas were clamoring for prime position. Television presenter! Auctioneer! Private investigator! Car salesman! Train conductor! They arrived without invitation, made their presentation, then made way for the others. Some of the more persistent ideas tried to sneak back in. Train conductor! Television presenter on a train! Car salesman! Train salesman!
I spent the next day staring into empty space. I get a lot of joy out of air, and if sunlight hits the floating specks of dust so you see the whirling dance of atoms, so much the better. During the day Dad breezed in and out of my room and clicked his tongue, which in our family means “You’re an idiot.” In the afternoon he came back in with a loaded grin. He had a brilliant idea and couldn’t wait to tell me about it. It had suddenly occurred to him to throw me out of the house, and what did I think of his brainwave? I told him I was concerned about him eating all his meals alone, because the clinking of cutlery on a plate echoing through an empty house is one of the top five depressing noises of all time.
“Don’t worry. I have a plan for throwing you out. We, you and me, are going to build you a hut to live in. Somewhere on the property.”
A hut? “How the hell are we going to build a hut? What do we know about building? Or huts?”
“The Internet,” he said.
I groaned. The Internet! Ever since the Internet, complete idiots have been building huts and bombs and car engines and performing complicated surgical procedures in their bathtubs.
We settled on a clearing in the maze next to a circle of sinewy gum trees and only a few meters from a freshwater creek, and the following morning, under an orange-copper sky, we started chopping trees as if we were mythic Germanic creatures in an early Leni Riefenstahl film.
I couldn’t stifle the thought that my life had taken a disappointing turn- I had only just left school and I was already doing hard manual labor. Every time the blade of the ax hit timber I felt my spine move a couple of millimeters to the left, and that first day for me was all about raising complaining to a high art. The second day was even worse- I dislocated my shoulder. The third day I said I needed to look for work and so I went into the city and saw three movies in a row, all of them bad, and when I returned I was shocked to see that an enormous amount of work had been done on the hut.
Dad was leaning on his ax, wiping sweat from his brow onto his pants. “I worked like a bastard today,” he said. I looked steadily into his eyes and knew at once that he had called in outside help.
“How’s the job hunt?” he asked.
“I’m closing in.”
“Attaboy.” Then he said, “Why don’t you have a crack at construction tomorrow? I’m going to spend the day in the library.”
And so I dug into the savings he kept in a hollowed-out copy of Rousseau’s Confessions and called a builder of my own.
“Just do as much as you can,” I said.
And in this manner the place was built. We’d alternate. One day I’d pretend to build the hut single-handed, then the next day he’d pretend to build the hut single-handed, and I don’t know what any of this meant, only that it proved we both had damaged, underhand characters. The upshot was, the shack was taking shape. The ground was cleared. The frame erected. The floor laid. The roof beams raised. The door fastened on with hinges. Windows where windows should be. Glass in them. The days growing longer and warmer.