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Stewards of the Earth - Part One

By Matthew Vollmer

Jennifer Husk had no intention of attending North Atlantic College; she'd sent her application just to see if she was smart enough to go. Despite the fact that she'd refused to include the $50 application fee, a letter of acceptance had arrived two months later, with a handbook explaining the school's no-tolerance position on alcohol, tobacco, drugs, rock music, and "flesh food" (i.e., meat of any kind). She also received a course catalog whose cover featured four portraits: a black guy in a rugby shirt contemplating a globe; an Asian girl spinning a basketball on an index finger; a tuxedoed Indian boy straddling a cello; and a freckle-faced girl folding her hands over an open Bible. Below these pictures, a caption appeared: Success begins in the soul. These people, Jen reminded herself, believed they had souls; they took classes with names like Light Bearers to the Remnant, Gift of Prophecy and Life in the Balance. Also, Jen guessed, they had to have money: scholarships, loans, trust funds, savings bonds, something. How else could they afford to pay the $28,000 tuition? Jen had nothing, aside from the notion that doors, if they were supposed to be opened, would be opened. The tuition deadline approached. Scratch-offs and Powerball tickets failed to deliver; nobody died and bequeathed her an estate. The deadline passed. Jen tossed out the catalog. Obviously, it wasn't meant to be. The first day of class came and went. Then the second. The third. The fourth. On the fifth day of the semester, she made a decision: she would go anyway.

---

Intro to Humanities met in the committee room of the White House, a sprawling Victorian mansion whose bedrooms had been converted into classrooms. The room, with its scarlet wallpaper, crystal chandelier and table of shellacked wood, was a place where rich people had once taken their meals. Now a plump, stooped woman with round cheeks and a gray bowl cut sat at the head of this table, fiddling with a slide projector. Laycock, Jen thought. Leetha Laverne Laycock. Jen had checked out Laycock's personal webpage. She knew Laycock had a B.A. from North Atlantic, an M.A. from Assumption College, a PhD. from Holy Cross. In her faculty photo, Laycock resembled a good-natured, toothy mammal: a burrower that made homey nests underground. In person? Laycock looked the same -- only older.

Once class began, Laycock dimmed the lights; her projector flung the image of a painting onto the wall. In the painting a woman danced before a floating, disembodied head. Strings of blood streamed from its neck. The head, emanating saw blades of light, showed no signs of missing its body. It gazed unapologetically at the dancer, who was clothed in jeweled garters and flowing scarves. Jen's cheeks flooded with warmth. She was not, she guessed, supposed to find the image arousing.

"'The Apparition,'" Laycock said. "Gustave Moreau. Nineteenth Century." Every few seconds, her eyebrows jerked backwards. "Anyone remember Salome?" she asked. "The harlot who danced for King Herod? He enjoyed the dancing so much he offered her half his kingdom. But Salome didn't want half his kingdom. She wanted the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Why would someone want a head instead of a kingdom?"

A puffy-faced girl, her cheeks perforated with acne scars, raised her hand. "Maybe," she said, "this Salome person was power hungry."

Laycock giggled silently. She pointed to a young man wearing an orange warm-up suit and a bright white hat upon which the letters N and Y sparkled. He scooted his chair back, then stood. "Obviously," he said, "Salome is a ho, right? No disrespect, but for real. Look at her. Ya'll know how ho's be trippin'."

A few students chuckled. Laycock, it seemed, couldn't wipe the grin off her face. She also didn't seem to have any answers, didn't seem to mind that nobody did. "Nicely put," she'd say, as the theories piled up. "Very reasonable."
Maybe, Jen thought, Paul was right: College was for chumps.

---

The next morning, the head of John the Baptist appeared to Jen in a dream. The head -- bearded and bleeding and beset with pupil-less eyes -- rotated slowly, clicking. At first, Jen couldn't make out what the head was saying. Then she realized: it wasn't saying anything. It was singing that Carpenters song about birds appearing: "Just like me/ They long to be/ Close to you." In the middle of the song, she woke up.

Paul straddled a corner of their futon. He held a Fisher-Price Movie Viewer to his left eye. He'd received the viewer in the mail the day before, along with a cardboard box of yellow, rectangular cartridges. He slid a cartridge into the viewer, looked through a tiny hole, and spun a red handle on the side. Clickety-clack. A soundless movie (he had Mickey Mouse, Big Bird, Pink Panther, and Bugs Bunny) played as fast as he could spin the handle, forward or backward.

"You're gonna be late," Jen said, glancing at the clock. It was ten to nine. Paul wore a T-shirt with a Wolverine decal, a pair of crud-streaked jeans. Every day, he packed two Baloney sandwiches on white bread into a rusted lunch box, and drove his Honda Civic to Framingham, where he cashiered at a bookstore.

"You're the one who hasn't gotten out of bed," he said. "Don't you have school today?"

"It's called college," Jen said. "And it's not until later."

"Must be nice to get paid to sit around and read."

"I'm not getting paid," Jen said.

"Your tuition's free, isn't it?"

It was. Sort of. Someone was paying the teachers to show up and teach. A lot of someones. Only none of them was her. She hadn't explained this to Paul, who, after dropping out of Fitchburg State after two semesters with a 1.6 GPA, had taken issue with higher education. Instead, she'd told him the school had given her a full ride. He could not, she'd thought, argue with a full ride. And he hadn't. "Congratulations," he'd said. "Now you can waste your time for free."

Paul slid the cartridge from the movie viewer, returned it to the blister pack he'd carefully opened using a straight razor. "You seen my Wish Book?"

"Wish Book?"

"You know. My Sears catalog. The one from 1985? I can't find it."

"Maybe it's a sign," Jen said. "You've used up all your wishes."

"Don't act dumb," Paul said. "Seriously. That thing cost me ten bucks on eBay."

Another reason Paul didn't need college? He was starting a business -- an online venture that depended upon his ability to track down obscure relics from his childhood and resell them at inflated prices. He'd recently paid fifty bucks for a stuffed bear that moved its mouth when you slid a cassette into its back. According to Paul, he could get a hundred bucks for that bear, easy. In ten years? A thousand.

---

Paul went to work; Jen yanked the covers over her head. She closed her eyes. The head reappeared. The whites of its eyes were slick as boiled eggs; the lids, lined with dried blood, flickered. Coiled clumps of hair writhed of their own volition. Its lips, blistered, quivered and drooled.

Enough, Jen thought. She got up. She made the bed. She picked up the boxers Paul had left on the floor. She folded the Scrabble board they'd abandoned the night before, sweeping the words they'd made -- dark, mend, war, fauna -- into a velvety pouch. She lifted the futon mattress, retrieved Paul's Wish Book. Walking downstairs, she flipped through the kid section, noting little boys in Popeye pajamas, a Rocky Balboa punching bag. Paul's birthday was coming up: no doubt he'd want to consult the Wish Book for ideas about what to search for on eBay, and thus how to spend the money his parents would send him. In the kitchen, Jen opened a door beneath the sink, shoved the catalog into the trash. She buried it deep.