Life After Genius (22 page)

Mead closed the book. “Fine. Fail algebra. It doesn’t make any difference to me. But you might wish you’d paid more attention in class when all those numbers in the ledger book don’t add up anymore and you start losing money.”

Percy stopped running. “Are you referring to the furniture store?”

“Maybe.”

“That store ain’t my problem, cousin. I’ve got other plans.” Placing his right hand on his hip, Percy leaned over and touched his left hand to his right foot.

“I know,” Mead said.

“What do you mean, you know. What do you know?”

“I’ve seen you. Through the window in the library. On the baseball field.”

Percy stood up straight. “Since when did you start watching sports?”

“I wasn’t watching sports, I was watching you.”

“You were watching me? Really?” Percy smiled. “Do you love me, Teddy? Huh? Do you?” And he reached for Mead’s cheek, trying to pinch it.

“Stop it,” Mead said and pushed his cousin’s hand away.

Percy glanced past Mead into the trees, making sure the coast was clear, then sat down next to him and said, “A scout came by the school the other day. He thinks I’m good enough to play professionally. You know, after I graduate high school. I’m gonna be a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, cousin. Whadaya think of that?” And he made a fist to show off the muscle in his right bicep. “This arm is my ticket out of here.”

“Does Uncle Martin know?”

“Please,” Percy said. “He’d have my ass if he knew.”

“But he’s a big baseball fan, isn’t he?”

“Sure, he loves watching other people play it, but not his son. He’s got other plans for his son, plans that I am not the least bit interested in. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life burying dead people. But then look who I’m talking to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Spare me the act, cousin. You don’t want to be an undertaker so bad that you’re willing to spend every waking hour of your life studying your ass off to get out of it. Your father doesn’t have any choice but to send you to college. Genius. Damned straight you’re a genius, that was the most ingenious move in the world. I only wish I’d thought of it first.”

“That’s not why I study, Percy. I do it because I enjoy it.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, and stared out across the cornfield.

“But it’s true.”

“Well, if you love it so much then you can do it for both of us.”

“You want me to do your homework for you? But that’s cheating; it’s wrong.”

“It ain’t wrong unless someone finds out about it and no one is gonna find out because neither you nor me are gonna tell anyone.”

“I,” Mead says. “Neither you nor I are going to tell anyone.”

“Great. Then we’ve got us a deal.”

M
ARTIN LEADS THE WAY
, Lenny follows behind him, and Mead takes up the rear. The day is getting brighter by the second, the trees now standing in silhouette against an azure sky as the three men hike along the perimeter of the field. They walk for maybe ten, fifteen minutes before Martin finds a spot that suits him and hunkers down with his shotgun and cooler. Lenny steps past him, eyes set on another spot about twenty yards farther down, and Mead starts to follow. But Lenny raises his hand to stop him and nods at Martin. Mead shakes his head. Lenny gives him a stern look and Mead gives in.

He sits down on a rock maybe ten feet from his uncle. Far enough away to be out of swinging range but close enough to talk, should his uncle be so inclined. Should he decide that he wants to offer up an apology for how he has been acting toward Mead ever since he got home. If Mead could turn back time, he would do it. And next time around he’d turn down the airline ticket Herman offered him. He’d spend his one-week spring break on campus and stay in his dorm room the entire time. That way he would be there when Percy dropped by unexpectedly. And that way he wouldn’t have had to come home one week before graduation. He could have given his presentation in Epps Hall and then he could have sat down and prepared his valedictory address for graduation day. But he can’t. He cannot turn back time.

A brown rabbit hops out into the field maybe thirty yards away, well within shooting range. Uncle Martin lifts his gun into position, tucking the butt into his shoulder and sighting the animal down the barrel.
Look with your gun and shoot where you look.
Mead plugs his ears and braces for the shotgun blast.

P
ERCY SQUEEZED OFF THE TRIGGER
and the loud report stunned the air, sending a flock of grackles flying up out of a tree. A cloud of black smoke rose from the end of the muzzle and drifted into Mead’s eyes. He closed them and waved his hand through the air to clear it. When he opened them again, his cousin was holding the dead rabbit upside down by its hind legs. He strung it up to a tree and slit its throat.

“I’m not going to do your homework,” Mead said. “It’s wrong.”

Percy inserted his knife into the back of the rabbit’s neck and twisted off its head. Holding it in the palm of his hand, he said, “How much would it freak your mother out to learn that her precious little brainy-boy shot and killed a rabbit all on his own?”

Mead knew what Percy was trying to do. And it was tempting —boy, was it ever tempting —but it wasn’t right. “That would be lying.”

“Strictly speaking, yes. But there’re many shades of lies, cousin, ranging all the way from black to white. You do my homework for me and this rabbit is yours.”

Mead pictured his mother’s face as he walked through the back door with a dead rabbit in a plastic baggie. Blood all over his hands. “It’s wrong.”

“I don’t see it that way, cousin. I see it as one hand washing the other. That’s the way it works in life. Family members are supposed to stick by one another. So what’re you gonna do, are you gonna stick by me?”

Five. That’s how many rabbits Mead supposedly killed and gutted that fall before his mother took his shotgun away and sent him to the library as penance.

M
ARTIN LOWERS HIS SHOTGUN
and looks over at Mead, nods toward the rabbit. Hands shaking, Mead lifts his gun into position. This time he is going to do it. To pull the trigger himself. If he kills the rabbit, it’ll make up for the five lies he told that fall. Wipe the slate clean. Clear his conscience. Right a wrong. The little brown rabbit lifts its head and sniffs the air, then looks directly at Mead. But it can’t see him because he’s in the shade and it can’t smell him because he’s downwind. The poor critter doesn’t have a clue. All Mead has to do is squeeze off the trigger and that rabbit is his. It’ll never even know what hit it. But Mead can’t do it. Because when he looks at that rabbit he sees himself sitting in the university library, reading a book. If only he had glanced up every once in a while. Paid more attention to his surroundings. Then maybe he would be sitting in his dorm room right now and not here in this stupid field.

Mead lowers the gun. “I’m sorry, Uncle Martin. I knew.”

“You knew? You knew what?”

“That Percy was going to run off. And that A he got in math freshman year in high school? That was mine. I did his homework for him. I should’ve told. When you and Aunt Jewel were freaking out that Christmas, I should’ve told you. And I should never have agreed to do his homework, but I did and I’m sorry.”

Martin turns away from Mead, lifts the gun to his shoulder, and squeezes off the trigger. The rabbit does a backward flip through the air and lands on its side. Martin stands up and walks out into the field to retrieve his prey, the shotgun blast still ringing in Mead’s ears. That must be it. That must be why he does not hear his uncle say anything back.

M
ARTIN AND LENNY DROP MEAD OFF
at the house so he can change out of his coffee-stained pants before going to the store. But instead of heading inside, Mead stands on the curb until his uncle’s truck drops out of sight, then walks over to the local department store. He’s searching through a rack of khaki trousers that look virtually identical to all the pairs of pants already hanging in his closet when he decides that he needs to make a change in his life. Beginning with his pants. He steps over to a table stacked with blue jeans, selects a pair, and ducks into the fitting room. Mead has never before owned a pair of blue jeans. His mother would never buy any for him. Only farmers and rednecks wear jeans, that’s what she always said when he asked.

It hurts like hell pulling them on over his lobster-colored legs but the physical pain serves as a welcome distraction from all his other troubles. They fit more snugly than trousers, giving shape to parts of Mead’s anatomy that heretofore had always remained hidden beneath loose folds of double-worsted gabardine. Mead checks out his backside. It looks sort of like a James Dean ass, the sort of ass with which girls fall in love. Girls like Hayley Sammons, for example.

Mead leaves them on and steps out of the dressing room. And almost runs smack-dab into Mr. Colgan. Shit. First his mother invites his junior high school principal over for supper and now this. His high school principal. In the men’s department of Melnick’s Department Store, checking out button-down shirts. It has to be a conspiracy, his mother working in concert with God or something. Mead turns to go in the opposite direction, to make a quick getaway, and trips over a display of sunglasses, almost knocking it down. Grabbing the first pair he touches, he slides them on over his prescription glasses and sidles along a wall of suits, feigning an interest in double-breasted tweed jackets as he makes his way toward the checkout counter. But there’s a line. And a chatty girl working the register. Mead glances over his shoulder, looking for Mr. Colgan, but the man is nowhere in sight. He probably ducked into the fitting room or strolled off to another department. “Hurry up,” Mead mumbles under his breath at the checkout girl, “before he reappears.” Finally, it’s his turn. Mead rips the price tag off his jeans and hands it to her along with the sunglasses.

“Teddy?” she says. “Teddy Fegley? Is that you?”

Oh shit, here we go again. Must be another classmate. “No,” he says, “I get that a lot but I’m not him. I’m from out of town.”

For a second it looks as if she is going to buy it, then her expression changes and she leans forward over the counter. “What’s the capital of South Dakota?”

“Pierre.”

“I knew it. I knew it was you. I’m Donna, Donna Eubanks. We were in the same class in second grade. With Mrs. Salter. You sat in the front row. That’s the one state capital I could never get to stick in my head. Pierre. So wow, what’re you doing now? What’re you doing here?”

“I’m part of a traveling exhibit,” Mead says. “Me and Stephen Hawking are doing a whirlwind tour of the states. And after that, we’re off to Paris.”

Donna looks confused. “Who’s Stephen Hawking?”

“One of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century,” Mr. Colgan says.

Shit, so much for escaping sight unseen. Mead should’ve just stolen the pants.

“Mr. Colgan, sir, what a pleasant and unexpected surprise.”

“Likewise,” the principal says. “I was just reading about you in the local newspaper. Congratulations on your recent graduation. And on the presentation. Very impressive. But then I always knew you would amount to something. So where’re you off to next?”

“Paris,” Donna says. “He’s going to Paris with that Stephen guy.”

“And then I’m taking some time off,” Mead says. “I thought I’d come back here for a while, take a break from school, you know, to gain some life experience.”

Mr. Colgan’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline like two cockroaches running from the light of day. “Time off? Life isn’t a vacation, Theodore. One doesn’t take time off to experience it.”

“I know, sir, I didn’t mean it like that.” Mead hands his father’s credit card to Donna. “If you don’t mind, I’m kind of in a hurry here.” She takes it and rings up his purchase but not fast enough. It’s as if he is back in high school, sitting in the principal’s office, talking over all his options for college, back when he believed that it would lead him to a better life. Back when he believed every word that came out of Principal Colgan’s mouth about the opportunities that awaited him there. But they were just more lies. Because now he knows that those opportunities come at a price. One he is not willing to pay.

“I gotta go,” Mead says and bolts for the exit.

“Teddy,” Donna says. “Wait. You forgot your card.”

M
EAD RINGS THE FRONT DOORBELL AND WAITS
. He should have brought along the swimming trunks as an explanation for his unexpected appearance. He could have said he dropped by to return them, but that would have required stopping by his house first.

As he waits he hears a terrible racket coming from the garage, like someone is playing a warped vinyl album on a cheapo turntable at the wrong speed. It reminds Mead of the music his dormmates were fond of listening to on Saturday night when they got stoned. He couldn’t blame them, really. It would have been intolerable to listen to in any other state of mind.

He rings the bell again, and is about to give up, when the door opens. Mrs. Sammons pulls a wad of cotton out of each ear and says, “Theodore. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear the door chime.” Then, on taking in his burnt skin, “My lord in heaven, what happened to you? You look awful.”

“Is Hayley around?”

“I’m afraid not. She never stays in the house when her brother is practicing. Don’t you think you should go to the hospital or something?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Sammons. Just tell her I dropped by.”

Mead walks back to the street and turns to leave, then changes his mind and turns back. Standing at the end of the Sammonses’ driveway, he peers into the garage, where a set of drums sits next to a lawnmower, a ladder, and a couple of garbage cans. A pudgy teenage boy is perched behind the drums, whacking away at them as if he were beating up on his little brother. A second teenager is standing a few feet in front of him, strumming an electric guitar and screaming into a microphone. Mead waits, his red arms hanging at his sides radiating heat, until the song ends.

“Well,” the guitar player says, “whadaya think?”

“Which one of you is Hayley’s brother, Eric?” Mead asks.