Freewill Read online

  She gets the message. “Sorry,” she says. Sounds insulted. “Didn’t mean to go there. Just making conversation.”

  You edge your cart back toward hers, offering another peek. Clumsy. Bump.

  She smiles. “Thanks, anyway, but I’ve had enough thrills for today. See ya.”

  “See ya.”

  And she is gone and you are standing, like a cardboard whatever parked in front of an unmanned display selling old-folks groceries. You sneak a look over your shoulder, catch her rounding the corner, and snap into gear.

  She has skipped the next aisle, but you are ten feet of the way up before realizing, so you continue on, make the turn, and start a slow-motion pursuit through cosmetics and toothpaste and deodorant.

  What will you do though? You don’t, do you? You don’t do, do you? Do you even know why you are following her?

  You slow down. Slow down some more. Angela’s mother rounds the corner, looks at you, and you know the look. The I’ve-seen-you-and-now-I’m-seeing-you-again-too-soon-and-what-do-you-want-with-us look. Fact of life, you make people nervous. You see it, and you wince. Angela, apparently, sees it too. Looks at her mother, follows her line of vision, traces it back to you.

  “Hey,” she says. “You following me? Or are you lost?”

  And you don’t even have an answer for that soft line, do you?

  “Sorry,” you say, and busy yourself pawing through the medicated shampoos for old flaking scalps.

  You can’t see, because you are intensely trying not to see, but you can hear, somewhat. Angela’s mother is nervously asking what on earth you are. Angela is, in fits and stops, trying to tell her.

  Might be nice to hear, what you are.

  Might not.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sorry, Angela. Sorry.”

  “Do stop apologizing. Just, like, what are you doing? Are you okay? ’Cause, you don’t seem it, you know. And you are scaring my mother.”

  “Oh. Damn. Should I speak to her?”

  “Ah, no. Thanks anyway. But are you following me for a reason?”

  “I’m not—”

  “I don’t date guys, just for the record.”

  “Just for the record, neither do I—I mean, that’s not, I’m not like that . . . I don’t date, like, anybody, so you don’t have to worry.”

  “Didn’t say I was worried.”

  No, she doesn’t look worried. You don’t worry her. That’s good. More than good, that’s it. Can you think of anyone else you don’t worry?

  “I should finish the shopping,” you say.

  “Ya, so should I. Don’t you hate it?”

  You’d like to say you do. Just to be agreeing with her. And to approximate the normal behavior of a seventeen-year-old guy.

  “I kind of like it, really.” You shrug. Perfect for you, you know. The shrug. Even if it isn’t what you mean. What do you mean, Will?

  • • •

  “See, this is what I mean,” Mr. Jacks says as the two of you leaf through the photo album. “Where did all this go?”

  You have no idea where it went, or where it came from in the first place.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Jacks.”

  “You recognize it, though, right? I mean, that desk there,” he points, madly flips pages, “that corner cabinet,” flip, flip, flip, “and of course these . . .”

  These are the worst of it. These are so grotesque you cannot believe it.

  “What are you laughing at, Will? They are beautiful. You have every reason to be proud of work like that.”

  Every reason. Except one. You don’t have the primary reason to be proud of work like that. You don’t remember doing work like that.

  “Yes, Mr. Jacks. Sorry.”

  But you cannot stop staring at page after page of this garish nightmare that you are supposed to be so proud of. Angela wants to talk about penises? She should have a look at this gallery of freakish penile gnomes so carefully sculpted and hand-painted in loving detail down to the laugh lines spiking out of their charming soulless eyes. And whirligigs, with their fantastical shapes, improbable forms, and propellers to nowhere. Scores of them, all the work of an exceptional craftsman who must have worked hundreds of hours on them.

  Who was you.

  Why?

  All those hours. All that concentration. All that dedication to craft.

  Why?

  “Why?” you blurt.

  Good boy. For once. That’s the stuff. If you’re going to listen to voices, why not listen to your own?

  Alas, Mr. Jacks doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get why you asked why. Doesn’t get the important part anyway. The important part is the complicated part. Is the hard, hard part. It’s not Mr. Jacks’s job, to get that part.

  “Why,” he repeats calmly, “is that, I think it is better for you to keep that kind of variety in your work, rather than what you are now doing. You will advance much further in woodworking by broadening your—”

  “I’m supposed to be a pilot, Mr. Jacks. How did I wind up in wood shop? What good does wood shop do for a pilot?”

  That is the stuff. Why indeed. Go on, go get it.

  Mr. Jacks takes a good long sigh. That is never good, is it? He leans far back in his squeaky wooden chair, behind his well-turned hard pine desk, looking like one of the important administrators of the school except for the smell and faint dusting of wood powder that is settled on everything in the office including Mr. Jacks himself.

  “I am sorry, Will, for what happened to your folks. I am truly sorry, for what has been dealt you. But we have to move ahead . . .”

  Do you like that we, Will?

  “. . . The requirements, for your program, can’t be any different than . . . somebody else’s. In fact, it’s even more important now, that I don’t let you slip through the cracks. You are not a pilot, and never were. The aptitude tests don’t lie, okay? And the tests indicated that . . . you don’t have the skill set, for a pilot. As I understand it, Will, you don’t even drive, is that correct? Most guys your age can’t wait—”

  “Surfaces,” you say, stopping him dead. “Surfaces . . . are what I don’t like. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t operate a car or a boat or a motorcycle if I wanted to. I just . . . see myself flying above stuff, you know, Mr. Jacks? That’s what I’d be better at. That’s all.”

  That’s all. Is that all? You expect he’ll hand you your wings now?

  He nods. He is good at nodding. From practice, and from wanting to nod, agree, understand. Even if he doesn’t.

  “The assessment said you would be good with this kind of work, Will. And you are.”

  You wait. Wait for what, Will? He said his bit. That’s his bit. Do you want to say yours? Do you think he’s right? Do you think anything is right?

  “I’m a pilot, Mr. Jacks, not a woodworker.”

  Jacks gets frustrated, bangs his index finger hard off one photo after another. “You used to be a woodworker. Used to be an excellent woodworker. Do you mind telling me just exactly what it is you’re doing out there now?”

  He is pointing toward the door that leads from his office to the classroom/shop, where all the other students are most likely inching closer to get a listen. You should run over and throw the door open to catch them, Will. Would you like to do that?

  “I don’t know.”

  He sighs again. “Will, there are four of them already. You gotta know what they are.”

  You shake your head. It is a strong move, your head shake. The only strong move in your bag, wouldn’t you say?

  “Honestly, Mr. Jacks. I don’t.”

  He stands up. Walks around his desk, over to the wall where pictures of the finest works of wood from the cream of his students of the last ten years are represented in carefully arranged photographs. He looks like he’s shopping for something that he has misplaced, but as everyone knows he spends hours on end going over that wall. You know he is merely stalling. He doesn’t know what to do with you. It’s not the woo
dsman’s job, to know what to do with you.

  Nobody knows what to do with you.

  “Will you do something for me, Will? I’d like you to make me a nice gnome. Would you make me a nice gnome? I showed some of your stuff to my mom, right, who has this big garden, and she said she would really like to have one of those nice gnomes you do, only sort of customized for her with an extra-big chubby, happy face. Then maybe a whirligig if that works out. I know we’re bending the rules a bit but it’s a technicality because as a local senior she would be eligible at the end of the term to select the piece anyway. And I do want to see your stuff get publicized. You are very gifted, you know, Will, and if word started circulating, who knows what this could do for you. So.” He puts his hands on your back, eases you up out of the chair and toward the door as if the two of you have agreed to the deal—or he has just fired you—and sees you out.

  A nice gnome. A nice gnome.

  Angela slides over your way once you are settled back at your post, sizing up a block of wood, and staring.

  “That was a long meeting. What did you do to deserve that?”

  “A nice gnome,” you say.

  “Come again?”

  “He wants me to make a nice gnome for his mom.”

  “Ooooh. You mean those nasty little horrors you used to make all the time before you started making these what-the-hells over here?”

  There would be no shame in getting irritated with all this by now. No shame, Will.

  “Ya,” you say solemnly. “He wants one of those.”

  She laughs. “Guess his mother did some terrible shit when he was little, huh?”

  • • •

  The radio is playing. Are you listening? Listen. No, listen. Down at the pond, last night. Somebody was killed. Listen, Will. You didn’t know her. She was your age. You sort of knew her. She didn’t go to your school. Are you listening? You have to be waking up anyhow. Somebody was killed. A pretty girl who went to school not far from here. You knew her, though not real well. She was very nice. She drowned. Very mysterious. Cops don’t know what is going on. Won’t know until they investigate. You’re awake now. Sad, no? These things are so sad. Aren’t they so sad?

  And they just never, never, stop. They keep coming at you.

  But you do keep setting the alarm to wake you up to it.

  You knew her, didn’t you?

  • • •

  “Maybe you want to stay home today,” Gran says as she wastes another valuable minute of her diminishing time on this earth whipping up some oatmeal and whipping it down in front of you. “I don’t see the harm. Pops, do you see the harm, if he takes a day off today?”

  “I don’t see the harm,” Pops says. He probably doesn’t see the harm. He sees the newspaper pretty well though.

  “So there, see, it is a good idea. Beautiful day like this, a young man like yourself in the prime of life. You should be able to take a day now and again. Your grandfather and I will be going to the bowling green, and you could too. Then we’ll take you to lunch. What do you think, Pops?”

  Pops looks up from the paper, and you can see he’s been frozen in a grimace. “Ya,” he says. “Ya, we could do that.”

  You take four or five decent-sized spoonfuls of oatmeal, which is more than usual and not at all easy for you to manage. To be polite. And reassuring. Then you stand to go.

  “I’m fine, Gran,” you say, standing directly in front of her. The two of you stand there, like the two of you do. Not kissing or hugging or patting shoulders or shaking hands. Not contacting.

  Gran wakes up to the same news you do. She knows.

  Why does she worry so much? What does she think you’re going to do?

  “Really, I’m fine. I have stuff I have to do at shop. I’ll check the green on the way home and if you guys are there I’ll come play. Okay?”

  She just looks at you, little lined corners of her mouth turned down like that. “Okay,” she finally says, though she seems to want to go with you to school rather than go bowling in the sun.

  • • •

  “How’s it coming?” Mr. Jacks asks brightly.

  How’s it coming. It’s a block of soft wood with a few chips lopped off it. It’s nothing yet. He knows it, you know it, his mother knows it. Tell him that.

  You stare at it. “Coming along, Mr. Jacks. Taking shape.” You are looking at it as if it is staring back.

  Is there a face in there, Will?

  • • •

  It is an ungodly massive and professional-caliber high school stadium, representing the other half of the school’s occupational-therapy approach to education. “Busy hands and busy feet, keeps the sad sacks off the street.” It’s not on a plaque anywhere. You all just sort of know it.

  You sit up in the stands, a soft air rubbing up and over your face. You eat a bag of cheese curls and watch her every move even though from this vantage point in the highest reaches of the stands it is hard to follow any one being. From here it looks like an army of busy, possessed little creatures—ants stocking their nest, or slave peoples building pyramids. Everywhere, athletes are doing their thing—springing, jogging, stretching, throwing. You think there will be accidents eventually, pile-ups like on the expressway, but nobody seems to cross anybody else out, even if they all cross paths.

  And Angela does it all. She must be one of those Greek things—decca, hepta—some kind of ’thlete, because she no sooner finishes spiking that javelin than she is out on the oval track, orange head bobbing around four hundred meters like the taillights on a springy jacked-up old Camaro.

  When she cruises to a stop, she tails off the track at the foot of your section of bleachers. She walks in a way you only ever see track speedsters and campy flamey guys do, all loose floppy legs thrown way out ahead of them and hands placed flat over their own kidneys as if giving themselves spontaneous back rubs.

  She looks up, right at you.

  So what? What are you doing? What’s so wrong about that? There are more athletes on the ground than there are watchers in the seats because who is really interested in watching high school runners do their boring meaningless training stuff on a brilliant afternoon? You can be seen, up there in your perch, like they cannot. So what? Are you doing something wrong? If you were, would you know?

  You look down, concentrate hard on your cheese curls. Two left. One left. Crumbs. Tip the bag up. Drink the last of the cheese powder, whey powder, salt, color, monosodium glutamate all down. Wipe the orange bits off your lip.

  You look down again. She’s moving on. You have survived it, whatever it was. Though look there, she is glancing back over her shoulder. Like she doesn’t have anything better to do than worry about you.

  Up you get, and down you go, back out of the stadium. You have things to do anyway, rather than spend your valuable hours watching some sport that hardly anybody cares about even when it is a competition, never mind practice.

  • • •

  Did you hear that? They have not ruled out suicide. They have not ruled it out. But of course they haven’t. They never do, do they? Are you listening? If you didn’t want to get up you wouldn’t have set the clock radio for six forty-five on the all-news-all-the-time station. So listen. Are you listening? They have not ruled out suicide. She may have done it herself, but they are not sure.

  How screwed is that, that they can’t be sure? Of course they can’t be sure. They can never, ever be sure, and they are lying sacks of dirt to ever claim that they can. Isn’t that right?

  Suicide is still a possibility, says mister investigator. You could have told him that.

  Because you know what he knows what we all know. That as an alternative to absolutely everything, suicide can never be ruled out.

  That’s why we have it.

  Neither can foul play, adds mister investigator. He’ll keep you posted. On the bright side, a lovely memorial to the girl is accumulating at the site. Flowers. Cards. Notes. Bears, and things. People care. People are good.
/>   • • •

  “Okay, so are you following me for real? Am I supposed to think now it was a coincidence that you found me at the supermarket? What gives with you?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to watch track-and-field practice, that’s all.”

  “Nobody watches practice. Practically nobody watches meets. What are you after?”

  “I’m not after anything.”

  “I told you I don’t date guys. I did tell you that, right?”

  “You did. I’m not looking for a date.”

  “So then what are you looking for? And what could you possibly want from me?”

  Go on then, tell her. Tell her what you want from her.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. Everyone wants something.”

  “I don’t. At least not that I’m aware of.”

  Now there’s a distinction. Maybe that’s worth exploring. Awareness. Do you think?

  Is something there. If you’re unaware?

  “Will,” Mr. Jacks interrupts. “Will, it appears that one of your . . . things . . . has gone missing. You know anything about that? You know you’re not supposed to remove any of the works.” Unless they are specially commissioned for his mother.

  “I know, Mr. Jacks. That I’m not supposed to remove them. So I don’t know. What happened.”

  “Hmm,” Jacks says, and walks away.

  “You stole one of your own . . . things,” Angela says with an incredulous half grin.

  “Could I come watch you again today?” you ask her.

  She was shaking her head before you’d even asked. “No.”

  “Oh. Okay. I see. Okay.”

  “There is no practice today.”

  You have not been rejected, Will. Congratulations. You may as well proceed.

  “Would you like to come play bocce with me?”

  “Play what? I mean, the answer is no, but, play what?”

  “Nevermind.” You’re talking into your shirt. What did you expect, after all? “Italian lawn bowling. Nevermind.”

  Angela’s face is now all contorted. “Ya, that’s a good idea, neverminding. Let’s nevermind, huh?”

  She goes back to work. You stare at your gnome with the face that nobody can see but you. You pick up your mallet, and your chisel, and you stare and you stare more, as if you are going to make it take shape with nothing sharper than your glares and the laser zigzags of your mind.