Downtown Owl

  It was time for everyone to roll the dice. Horace rolled a pair of fives. It was not enough to win. His luck was never going to change.

  AUGUST 29, 1983

  (Mitch)

  John S. Laidlaw was a football coach, a pheasant hunter, a two-pack-a-day smoker, a notorious cheapskate, a deeply closeted atheist, and an outspoken libertarian. But he was also an English teacher, and—were it not for his preoccupation with convincing female students to have intercourse with him inside his powder-blue Caprice Classic—he might have been among the best educators in the entire state of North Dakota. He was certainly the finest teacher in Owl, even when you factored in the emotional cruelty and the statutory raping.

  “Good morning. Good morning! I hope everyone who’s supposed to be in this room is in this room.” Laidlaw spoke to his class while standing behind nothing; he rarely sat at his desk and never used a podium. He spoke with enthusiasm, but he made no hand gestures; his eyes bulged like a Komodo dragon’s. John Laidlaw was not handsome, but he was Steve Martin sexy. “At this juncture, I would normally welcome all of you to junior English. However, I’m abundantly aware that none of you would be here if this class wasn’t required by the state, so I’m not going to talk to you like cocktail guests. There will be no pretending in this classroom. I am not a showman. I am not a jester or a salesman. This is the situation. The situation is this: For the next nine months, you are my indentured servants.”

  Much of the class (and certainly all of the girls) laughed at this remark, which is what they were expected to do. Mitch, however, did not chuckle. Mitch fantasized about tying Mr. Laidlaw to a bed and cutting long incisions into his torso with a razor blade before filling the wounds with Morton salt. He closed his eyes and imagined this torture while Laidlaw spoke.

  “Now, as many of you may know, junior English is normally when we study ‘American Literature,’ which means we read literature from American literary figures. These are people like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. These are people like Richard Wright, who was black. These are poets like Robert Frost, who wrote about activities such as chopping wood and walking through a forest after a snowstorm, as these things are often symbolic of disenchantment. Herman Melville was an American author, and he wrote Moby-Dick, which is the greatest book of all time. Has anyone here read Moby-Dick?”

  There were twenty-two juniors in the room. Twenty-one of them had never even seen the cover of Moby-Dick, so they remained silent out of necessity. The twenty-second junior, Rebecca Grooba, had read Moby-Dick in sixth grade. She remained silent by choice, just as she had (and just as she would) for the duration of every class she ever took (or would take) during her thirteen years inside the rectangular classrooms of Owl public school. During that thirteen-year span, Rebecca Grooba would never score less than 94 on any scholastic examination, except for one 67 on an extra-credit trigonometry test that no one else was able to attempt. Rebecca Grooba taught herself how to read was she was four. She won the state spelling bee in 1976, 1977, and 1979. (She had mono in the spring of ’78.) She understood how isotopes operated before she knew what isotopes were. She could count cards and memorize Social Security numbers. As an eighth grader, she read Finnegans Wake over Christmas vacation and scrawled the digits “1132” on her Earth Science notebook. No one asked why she did this. Rebecca Grooba was a genius; everyone in Owl knew it, but hardly anyone cared. She was so shy that she wasn’t even unpopular. Over time, her wordless brilliance became routine, and then it became boring. People quit noticing.

  In 1988, Rebecca Grooba would become a registered nurse.

  “So no one here has read Moby-Dick?” Laidlaw continued after a pause. “Not one person. Not even you, Rebecca?” Rebecca did not respond. “Jeepers cripes. Not one person in this room has perused the 752 brilliant pages of Moby-Dick. That’s stunning. That’s really, really stunning. Also, this is sarcasm. Do we all know what sarcasm is? Sarcasm is when you tell someone the truth by lying on purpose. Does anyone in this room even know what Moby-Dick is about?”

  “It’s about a guy who kills a whale,” said Eli Zebra. “It’s about a guy who kills a sperm whale with a harpoon.” Zebra answered a lot of questions during class, especially if they were not important. Contrary to what might seem obvious, Eli Zebra’s name was not pronounced like that of the familiar black-and-white African horse; his last name was pronounced with a soft e, so that it rhymed with Debra or ephedra. Whenever people got his name wrong (and everyone got it wrong), Eli would say, “It’s pronounced exactly how it looks,” which only made them more confused. Eli Zebra was one of the few adolescent males in Owl who did not have a nickname, mostly because it’s impossible to come up with a better nickname than Zebra, particularly when it’s not pronounced zebra. He was exotic by default.

  “That’s true, Zebra,” Laidlaw said, unimpressed. “I suppose the killing of a whale is technically what Moby-Dick is about, although that’s kind of like saying Where the Red Fern Grows is about the best way to feed a dog to a wolverine. If whale hunting was truly the point of that book, nobody would care about the point. Do you understand what I am saying, Eli? Moby-Dick is about a lot of things. It’s about vengeance. It’s about making rope. And the reason I bring these things up is because these are all things you would—normally—learn about this semester. This is because—normally—we always read Moby-Dick as part of junior English. But not this year. You people won’t read Moby-Dick until next year, when I teach you senior English, even though senior English is supposed to be ‘British Literature’ and Herman Melville was an American. Does anyone know why we’re doing this? Does anyone know why we’re not going to read Moby-Dick this year?”

  Here again, no one responded. However, this was not due to apathy. It was due to the fact that this was unknowable, even for Rebecca Grooba.

  “The reason we are not reading Moby-Dick,” Laidlaw continued, “is because I want us to read the novel we would normally read next year, as this particular novel is British. And we’re going to read this book for a very specific reason. Does anyone here know anything about the writer George Orwell? Anything at all?”

  Again, Zebra responded without raising his hand. (Now that he was sixteen years old, raising his hand struck him as immature.)

  “He was a homosexual alcoholic,” Zebra said.

  “No,” Laidlaw countered. “No, he was not. You’re thinking of Truman Capote, who was American. And—quite frankly, Zebra—those are pretty strange things for you to know about Truman Capote, even though both of those facts are true. But I can guarantee you that George Orwell was not gay. Let’s be clear on this: George Orwell was not gay. More importantly, George Orwell hated Communism. Granted, that detail can be confusing to some readers, because Orwell didn’t hate socialism. Now, I’m not sure if any of you even know what those two terms mean, and, even if you do, you’re probably wondering what the difference is. Here’s the simple answer: Right now, in Russia, they have Communism. But socialism doesn’t exist and probably never will. Do you see what I mean? It’s complicated. The difference is subtle, yet vast.”

  Mitch wondered what it would be like to have a girlfriend. What would they do together? What would they talk about? What did John Laidlaw talk about with Tina McAndrew? It was always so hard to come up with things to say. When you want to kiss someone, do you ask for their permission, or do you just go for it? Mitch had kissed only one girl in his entire life: It was thirteen months ago. She was a black-haired eighth grader who had moved to Owl only two weeks before. They were both drinking root beer schnapps. It was at a party at the apple grove, and drunkards were throwing apples at parked cars. This fourteen-year-old female stranger was much more romantically experienced than Mitch, and that made everything terrifying. He could recall the conversation directly preceding the physical exchange, but the words had seemed wholly unrelated to the kissing; she asked him about a rock group he was completely unfamiliar with while he asked if she’d ever heard about some implausible movie called Fas
t Times at Ridgemont High. The black-haired girl ultimately made out with three different boys at this same party, and—late in the evening—she casually pulled down her pants and peed in front of everyone. Her motives were ambiguous. Mitch was relieved when she moved away two months later.

  “Orwell’s greatest achievement was Animal Farm,” droned Laidlaw, gaining both momentum and intensity. “That book was about how unpopular ideas can often be silenced without the use of force. That’s one of the core dangers of Communism—and of all government, really. The story also involves brilliant, diplomatic farm animals, which is why it’s such a classic. However, we are going to be reading Orwell’s second-best book, which is called Nineteen Eighty-Four. Can anyone here guess why we are going to read Nineteen Eighty-Four?”

  “Because it’s 1983,” said Zebra.

  “No,” said Laidlaw. “But at least you’re within striking distance, Zebra. We are not going to read Nineteen Eighty-Four because it’s 1983. We are going to read Nineteen Eighty-Four because it’s going to be 1984. This is something that’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen to all of us. Four months from now, when we finally reach New Year’s Day, you are all going to see a lot of news stories about Nineteen Eighty-Four on the TV and in the newspaper, and everybody in the world is going to be talking about the significance of this book. And the situation is this: I want you all to understand what everyone is talking about. I want you to understand the references. When some bozo on TV says, ‘Hey, here we are in 1984, and it’s nothing like that book by George Orwell,’ you will be able to say, ‘Really? Are you sure about that? Maybe you’re wrong about that. How much freedom do we really have? Where are my taxes really going?’ This is something the whole country is going to be talking about when we attack January. That kind of dialogue is going to be everywhere. So—as always—I’m having the senior class read Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I’m also having you juniors read Nineteen Eighty-Four. And I’m also having the sophomores read it, and I’m having the freshmen read it. I’ve also told Mrs. Strickland that she should have her seventh-and eighth-grade English students read this book, and she has agreed to do so. So we’re all in this together. Everyone in this school is going to read Nineteen Eighty-Four. We will all have this same specific experience, and it’s going to be wonderful.”

  Mitch sketched a three-dimensional cube on his notebook and dreamt about the near future. In three months it would be basketball season; maybe this year he could wear a T-shirt underneath his jersey, not unlike Patrick Ewing.

  “The central issue in Nineteen Eighty-Four is personal privacy,” said Laidlaw. He saw this as the main issue in many novels. “It’s about governmental intrusion, which is a complex problem. For instance, I’m sure you’re all very familiar with the Gordon Kahl incident that happened six months ago, just up the road from here. Gordon Kahl had a long-standing dispute with the federal government, and he didn’t want to pay his income tax. He didn’t want anyone to pay their taxes. Now, that impulse is completely understandable. But when federal marshals from Fargo tried to arrest him for nonpayment, he shot two of them with a rifle. Gordon Kahl was an excellent shot. Can we defend Kahl’s actions? Of course not. We certainly cannot support Gordon Kahl, or at least not his willingness to murder people. The citizens of Medina, North Dakota, will never recover from that tragedy. Their community will never be the same. But such a situation raises many questions: What role should the government play in our lives? What is freedom, really? And at what point is freedom more important than respect for the rule of law?

  “As you read Nineteen Eighty-Four, you will learn about a man named Winston Smith. This is a man watched by the government and hounded by a group called the Thought Police. He is under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. This, obviously, would be horrifying. I’m sure none of you would enjoy being watched twenty-four hours a day. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe some of you would love being watched twenty-four hours a day.”

  Laidlaw smiled and swiveled his skull around the room like an oscillating fan. His arms remained motionless. A few of the girls giggled. They knew what was coming.

  “How about you, Vanna?” Laidlaw finally said, fixing his robotic dragon eyes on the ever-slumping Mitch. “Vanna? Vanna? Are you not getting enough rest, Vanna? How would you feel if we were all watching you twenty-four hours a day? What would we see behind closed doors? Would it shock us? Would we be shocked?”

  There is no viable answer for this kind of query.

  “You would not be shocked,” Mitch said. “I’m not…shocking.”

  “Actually, I think I might be shocked,” Laidlaw said. “I think I would be shocked if I saw you awake, since I can only assume you sleep fifteen hours a night.”

  The other kids laughed, but not in a mean way. They laughed because someone in a position of authority had told a predictable joke, and it would have made things weirder if everyone had sat there in silence and tried to figure out why Mr. Laidlaw was obsessed with the possibility that Mitch Hrlicka was narcoleptic. It was a joke Laidlaw had been making for three consecutive school years; silence would have made the joke seem meaner than it was, so they laughed for the sake of normalcy.

  Minutes passed, or maybe decades. The bell rang. Each of the twenty-two juniors picked up a paperback copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four off the top of Laidlaw’s desk and power-walked toward their lockers; in three minutes, the seventeen smartest juniors would go to chemistry while the five dumbest would attend the alternative option (“Vocational Technologies”). Zebra walked with Mitch.

  “Dude,” said Zebra. Because of Sean Penn, saying dude had recently become fashionable. “Dude, that dude hates you. Why the fuck does he hate you? I don’t understand why that dude fucking hates you so much.”

  “He doesn’t hate me,” Mitch replied. “He just knows I don’t care what he says.” As he said these words, Mitch imagined how wonderful it would feel to jam a screwdriver into Laidlaw’s eye socket. He imagined pushing Laidlaw down a flight of metal stairs, possibly toward a bear. He wondered if there would ever be a situation in his life where it would be acceptable to punch John Laidlaw in the face, and he wondered if his fist could shatter another man’s jaw.

  “Yeah, well, fuck that dude,” said Zebra. “And actually, I must say that this book sounds potentially not terrible. It sounds a little like Escape from New York. Which reminds me: I got the greatest fucking tape last weekend. Have you ever heard of ZZ Top?”

  Mitch had never heard of anybody. Mitch hated rock music, and he could not understand why everyone he knew talked about it constantly. Whenever he tried to listen to FM radio, it always sounded completely ridiculous: All the lyrics were nonsensical and all the guitars were identical.

  “These ZZ Top guys have insane Texas beards and a killer fucking car, and it’s all super heavy,” said Zebra. “They sing about TV dinners. The guitars are heavy as shit. They’re heavier than everything. It’s like a really heavy Cars album.”

  “I never understand why you say that,” Mitch said. “What do you mean when you say heavy? Heavier than what? Sound is just air. Are you saying this band sounds like heavy air?”

  “Yes,” said Zebra. “It’s like listening to a lot of gravity.”

  “That’s incredibly stupid,” said Mitch.

  The two teens walked into chemistry. John Laidlaw sat behind the desk in his room, completely alone. He was free for an hour. The classroom door remained open, and he could feel the cigarettes in his shirt pocket, taunting him. He was thinking about Truman Capote, and about how his life was in shambles, and about the last time he fucked Tina McAndrew, which had been tremendous.

  SEPTEMBER 2, 1983

  (Julia)

  Much to her surprise, teaching in Owl was easier than Julia had ever imagined.

  Julia had spent one semester student teaching in downtown Chicago. It had been part of a collegiate co-op program. It was awful. Half the kids treated her like shit and the other half ignored her completely. It was worse than being a h
igh school student. When she tried to explain the concept of manifest destiny to a fifteen-year-old named Keith, he told her that her breasts were shaped like bananas; this was profoundly embarrassing, particularly since that analysis was accurate. What made things even worse was that she had to spend her sixteen weeks in Chicago subletting a two-bedroom apartment with three other student teachers, two of whom were teetotaling Mormons. The third roommate rarely showered and claimed to be dating an amateur ninja named Tod.

  After her experience in Illinois, Julia did not want to pursue a career in academia; she had majored in education only because she had no meaningful interest in any career whatsoever. When Julia registered for classes as a college sophomore, she was required to pick a major: She almost selected business, but that seemed too vague. She briefly considered public relations, but that type of life sounded pathetic, even though she wasn’t exactly sure what such a job entailed. Julia ultimately selected education simply because it seemed like a reasonable career for someone in her position to pick. She elected to specialize in history because a) she enjoyed looking at maps, and b) there was no fucking way she was going to relearn the quadratic fucking equation. Those two motives designed the trajectory for the rest of her reality; by the time she received her 1980 class schedule, it was too late to become anyone besides the person she already was. And that had seemed acceptable until she got to Chicago; the following four months made her despise teenagers. She truly, deeply hated them. They reminded her of rats. Upon her return to the University of Wisconsin, she considered applying to graduate school with the myopic intention of finding someone to marry. But her father convinced her otherwise. “There are unlimited teaching jobs in the Midwest,” he said. “Find one. Don’t worry about what it all means. Just move to some place like North Dakota and teach for two years, and don’t spend any money. After that, you’ll be able to get a job anywhere in the country, because you will have experience. That’s what employers want: experience. That’s all they want.” Julia viewed her father as wise; as such, she decided to take a job she did not want in a place she had never heard of. It seemed like the logical move.