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Mary and James Hanna are writers who live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Mary C. Hanna
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James E. Hanna
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The Wall (part 3)
What made us such friends? I had no use for your shallow obsessions, your pedestrian mind, your childish tantrums whenever you failed to make the honor roll or even when you missed questions on your military science quizzes. And you did disappoint me.
You have forgotten, I'm sure, a parade Saturday. The usual hurrying and scurrying -- shoe-dusting, sling-tightening. More competition to begin for the best company flag. The usual bullshit. Except that we started late that Saturday since the weather report was uncertain and they kept changing the dyke on us. At first overcoats and barracks hats were announced as the dress of the day, then it was blouses with white cross belting, and finally it was field jackets with caps. These changes, all of them ordered by the school Commandant, were bellowed by the captain of the guard to the surrounding stoops and punctuated by definitive clangs of the archway bell. The irresolution of our parade orders -- a rare waver in an otherwise formidable ostentation -- awoke in me finally a compulsion to rebel. But it was you who lent me your white dress belting, giggling as you knelt before me to pin it to the dirty fatigues I had selected to put on. "Cute, Tom, cute."
How many others must have laughed when I slipped from our room and waltzed along the balcony stoop as though hurrying to the formation. It must have been everyone but our Commandant; I saw him actually leap from the guard shack when he grew aware of our antic. How quickly he hurried across the quadrangle and flew up the stairs, bursting into our room only seconds after I had darted back through the door, a portly faculty sergeant waddling behind him.
Back and forth he strutted, huffing as he glared about him, a leathery old man who smelled often of gin. "From this idiot I would have expected it. Oh yes indeed I would have, I most certainly would have. But from you, Max, you!" Turning away from you, he ordered me to brace, his scowl now focused, his pinched nostrils flaring; it was only his eyes, swimming frantically behind shallow bifocals, that continued to nurture my seizure of power. I tucked my chin charitably, flattening the skin beneath my jaw, a useless tension -- "You think it's still funny, son?" -- because I couldn't arrest the smile, not even when he marched me down to the quadrangle and ordered me to start my pushups while he barked out the cadence like a seal. I pumped methodically, enjoying the workout, and heard the crowds collecting along the stoops above me. By the count of thirty the hooting began. At fifty my arms gave out so I began on squat jumps, holding high my sweaty rifle while I pranced up and down in the manner of a performing bear.
It was surely the din from the stoops -- the expectancy of an encore -- that kept us so long on the stage-like grass of the quadrangle. I felt buoyed by the jumps, as though riding a horse, yet I knew our performance, spontaneous at first, was evolving into a stale and exhaustive pose. My leaps grew lower as the minutes dragged on while the Commandant's voice, thin, cracking, was finally unable to rise convincingly above the hoots and cheers. But I think I would have enjoyed myself still if I could have seen you among them. Your absence was too conspicuous when I looked for you to appear along the rail. You didn't bother to show -- not even later when the groups had dispersed and the Commandant left me in order to attend to the grander rituals of the day.
I remained kneeling on the grass for several minutes more; your belting had come loose from my shoulders and it took me that long to disentangle myself from the drooping bands. I had barely removed the pins when the bell in the archway resounded once more, announcing the final call for the formation. Since I was still slick with perspiration, it surprised me somewhat that the dyke would be overcoats after all. I arose too slowly, my legs beginning to cramp, and did not pretend to hurry as I made my way across the quadrangle. The webbing, untangled at last, was draped evenly from my shoulder as slowly, wearily, I mounted the stairs to change dress and return it to you.
*
I have almost forgotten the fire. This lapse is forgivable, I'm sure,
since the fire was only one of about two dozen blazes that occurred with
depressing regularity during my two year tenure at Washburn. These fires,
set by some of our less ingenious mavericks, struck me as too ill-plotted
to be of much danger and I did not take them very seriously once I had
accepted them as commonplace events. I grew so accustomed to them, in
fact, that I would often continue about my business when the usual outbreak
of shouts from distant stoops would announce that another room was ablaze.
It was not till my senior year that this chaos drew near enough to merit more than my passing attention. Though my desk was further from the window, it was you who first noticed the caustic scent leaking through the wall that separated us from an adjacent two-man room. You sniffed the air eagerly, hound-like, then slammed shut your book. "Jesus!" you blurted -- an outburst I at first attributed to your obvious frustration with the dark vagaries of Beowulf, the epic we were studying for a literature and composition course. It was only when you dashed to the door of our room, a blanket in hand, that I realized you were referring to a more imminent turmoil.
I followed you into a barely-lit room, clutching dutifully a blanket of my own, and had actually been stung by a blistering heat when I realized the arrogance of your lead, that it was simply a coarseness of imagination -- that same absence of intellect that so often frustrated your studies -- that illuminated you in the wavering glow of the room. Standing dimly before the swirl, slapping the blanket against the wall, you seemed incapable of appraising the leap and crackle that had already disintegrated the decorative wall hangings and filled the air with shriveling bits of cloth. Given the impotency of your efforts, you seemed more comic than heroic and I was glad to lose sight of you as I stepped backwards through the still thickening haze and eased myself out the door.
There were others answering the call by then so I got out of the way as hands, by now well experienced, directed the nozzles of the fire extinguishers. The bell in the archway, now fully awake, leapt skittishly about -- a timely panic since the frail whoosh from the extinguishers seemed only to enliven the dark cloud. I called to you a second time, but was not surprised when the room, crackling boldly but shadowy still, failed to release you.