The Plot to Blow Up Reason (Part 6)

"'Were you a vet or something before?' said Claire. 'You sound like you're talking to a dog.'"

You’re reading Dog Jail, a fiction newsletter about cops, ghosts, and the humanimal inside us all. This is Part 6 of The Plot to Blow Up Reason, a serialized novel. Read previous chapters on this page or subscribe to Dog Jail here.

m. galperina

9: VARIOUS CHALLENGES OF AN ACADEMIC NATURE

The most persistent rumor at North Reason High School — circulating for over 50 years among students, parents, and staff — was that the building's architect had also designed the county jail. The implication, of course, was that this nameless draftsman had used the same template for both, seeing their detaining function as the same. In truth, the men responsible for the buildings were, respectively, Bill and Amos Kietzke, brothers who, despite an intense rivalry for the city's post-war design contracts, produced almost indistinguishable work. In any case, the longer North Reason’s captives spent walking the school’s cellblock-style layout and looking up through its small, high windows, the more convincing the story became.

Arnold Weber certainly felt something close to incarceration any time he had to come down to his daughter's school, a place he thought had left for good more than 30 years ago. Sadly, these visits had only become more frequent as Claire floated through (what Arnold hoped, at least) were her final years under her parent's care. Arnold, Claire, and the human marshmallow the school called its "Emotional and Academic Achievement Counselor" now had a standing appointment for the first Friday of every month, meetings that Claire's mother, Rebecca, had used the family's full influence to lobby for and then refused to attend. 

Arnold looked up at the school's old flagpole as he parked his Miata across two spaces in front of the building. In 1979, he and his friends had stacked 79 tires around it as their senior prank. Today, there was only an American flag dangling limply at half-mast. Arnold wondered who died. As he locked the car, entered the school's dreary halls, and stepped into the office where Claire and the counselor were already sitting, awaiting his arrival among plastic plants and hopeless anti-smoking posters depicting, for example, a child licking an ashtray or a series of animal butts, he wished he was the one being mourned.

"Mr. Weber!" said Dave Something, a man cloaked by a thick vagueness in Arnold's mind that made his name impossible to remember and his oddly wide face a surprise every time. "We were just wondering if you'd be able to join us today."

"Unh," said Arnold's daughter. She seemed to be deeply contemplating her own knees.

"Ah sorry, business and all that, you understand," said Arnold.

"Well, let's not lose any more time. Last time, if I'm not mistaken, we talked a lot about Claire's various academic challenges and—"

"Whoa, whoa, don't put it like that," said Arnold as he sat down in the metal folding chair set out for him. "You're not putting it like that, are you, when you talk to the people who matter? You say 'academic challenges' and it sounds like Claire's one of the moron kids sticking a test tube up his nose."

Arnold knew how it worked. Guys like Mr. Something here weren't so different from slaughterhouse meat graders. His job was to watch the carcasses swing by eight hours a day and affix a little tag to each one. As Claire's father, then, it was Arnold's duty to ensure Claire's little tag read "Prime."

“Arnold knew how it worked. Guys like Mr. Something here weren't so different from slaughterhouse meat graders.”

"Ugh, you don't say that," said Claire.

"What's that, honey?" said Arnold.

"You don't say 'moron kids,' Dad. You say 'special needs students.' Everyone knows that."

"See? This is just what I'm talking about Mr., uh, uh, Dave. How could be Claire be challenged? Seventeen years old and she already knows more than her father. Her very successful father, I might add."

"Ah, excuse me," said the counselor. He took a deep breath. "I merely meant that last time we discussed various challenges falling under the general theme of academics that we, Claire and us, were seeking to develop processes for better optimizing for the overall benefit of all involved parties, chief among them the student, that is, your daughter, that is, Claire."

Arnold tilted his head from one side to the other, rolling the counselor's words back and forth in his mind like a metal ball. 

"Okay," said Arnold, "I can live with that."

"And what I was hoping we could cover today is Claire's life outside of school. How does that sound, Claire, does that sound good to you?"

"Were you a vet or something before?" said Claire. "You sound like you're talking to a dog."

"Claire, sweetie, be nice. Mr. Dave here is just trying to help us."

"Arf," said Claire.

"Hah, very good," said the counselor. "Well, let's start with Claire's extracurriculars or, should I say, the lack thereof!" The counselor grinned like a dope at his big punchline.

"Wait, what are you saying? All her jobs — the pool, the restaurant, that newspaper gig — those don't count?"

"Oh yes, they count, but what work experience should demonstrate is Claire's, let's say, dependability. And four jobs in two years, that's, well, that's not exactly the story we want to tell."

"So what is the story, pal? Some shi—, er, crap about Claire putting in 30 years at the paper mill? Never missing a day, even when the rollers mangled her hand? She's a kid, for chrissakes."

"A kid, yes, but most tertiary institutions are looking for students who can exhibit full character both inside of the classroom and out. She swam for the school until last year, correct?" The counselor shook his head. "It's a shame that didn't work out, lots of scholarships there."

Claire's former obsession with swimming mystified Arnold. Having never shown anything more than a typical interest in the water her whole life, one day it was all she could talk about. Soon, the presence of his only child was announced in their home by the smell of chlorine that clung to her like a smoker's stink. Then, just as she was getting good, bringing home ribbons, and medals, and so on, his daughter stopped for reasons she refused to explain. It was foreign to Arnold, quitting like that. More familiar were the series of petty transgressions that followed, stuff that was no big deal when he was growing up, but had been upgraded to capital offenses in the zero-tolerance era. Now, as he watched her shuffle into adulthood, Claire's father worried that he had raised a child who had absorbed all his worst qualities and none of the ambition that redeemed them.

“It was foreign to Arnold, quitting like that. More familiar were the series of petty transgressions that followed.”

"Well, Claire's more of the, uh, introspective type," said Arnold. "Artistic-like, aren't you honey? 

"Unh," said Claire.

"Perhaps we can we can work with that," said the counselor, steepling his fingers. "Claire, what is it that you're passionate about? Music? The arts?"

"She draws," said Arnold. "I see her doing it all the time. I mean, just look at her clothes."

Recently, Claire had started taking a permanent marker to everything she wore. The $60 dollar sneakers Arnold had bought for Claire at the beginning of the school year were now covered with arcane imagery that looked to him like the back of a dollar bill. And just this week, she had cut the sleeves off a perfectly good denim jacket and drawn thorny wings on the back. As hard as Arnold tried to share his wife's annoyance, however, he couldn't help but admire the skill Claire had exhibited in vandalizing her own clothes.

"Yeah, I guess it's kind of my thing now," said Claire.

"I see, hmm," said the counselor, who seemed to be searching for the artist Arnold had mentioned. "Or, what I mean to say is, excellent! There might be a real opportunity here. What's your experience, Claire, with submitting your work to exhibitions, showcases, and the like?"

"Uh, you mean showing my drawings to other people?"

"Exactly, entering your artwork to venues with open calls for submissions."

"I don't know if I could do something like that. I'm not that good yet. Do you think someone would even want to look at my stuff?"

"Ah, don't talk like that, Claire," said Arnold. "You start talking like that and you've lost the race before it's even started. Do you think anyone, a single person, would eat at my restaurants if that's how I put it? 'Come down to Buckaroo's, our food's not that great, I don't even know why anyone would even want this trash, yucko?' Because that's how you sound right now, honey, and — if I'm being 100 percent straight with you, which I am — it doesn't sound very good."

"I think what your father is trying to say," said the counselor, cutting off Arnold just as he was really getting started, "is that you won't know until you try."

"Huh," said Claire, as if "trying" were an exotic and not particularly appetizing-sounding dish.

"'Huh' is a start," said the counselor, "I think we can work with that. As you may have heard, Claire, there's a poster contest open to students in the district right now. The theme is 'Protecting Tomorrow's Environment Today,' which is to say, the important task of planetary stewardship that will fall to you and your peers." 

"Ooo," said Arnold. "'The environment.' Doesn't that sound good, honey?"

“‘Huh,’ said Claire, as if ‘trying’ were an exotic and not particularly appetizing-sounding dish.”

While proudly unsentimental, Claire's father privately held the Earth in high regard. As a young man, he had gotten to California about a decade too late, arriving only after the latest wave of bohemianism had been exposed for the good, old-fashioned poverty it was. Still, there were plenty of wacky ideas for an aimless bum like him to explore (from UFOs to Eastern religion to ESP) while he tried to correct his fuck up and Arnold had dabbled in them all. The green movement was one idea that stuck with him — as long as it never interfered with his personal journey of self-fulfillment, of course. 

"Yeah," said Claire. "I guess I could figure something out."

Arnold turned in his chair to the counselor. "This poster thing: kind of prestigious, no?" 

"Well, we can certainly frame it that way! All kidding aside, participation in an exhibition like this is what we might call an 'easy lift' — lots of 'bang for our buck,' so to speak, vis-à-vis student time commitment and what it can signal to prospective colleges. Not to mention a nominal cash prize of $800, should Claire win first overall, that is."

"Oh," said Claire. "Huh."

"It sounds like you sold her on it, pal," said Arnold. "You sure sold me. 'Protecting Tomorrow's Environment Today.' I love it."

To Arnold's ears, the words were like a secret phrase opening a hidden door. For the first time in weeks, he could imagine a clear path forward for his daughter, one where she won the contest, studied some kind of eco shit in college, and, after graduating, devoted her life to cleaning up this mess of a world. It was respectable, it was selfless, and, if you played it just right, it was the kind of thing that could honestly make you pretty rich.

"Frankly, I think the topic is one that would be beneficial for you to consider, Claire," said the counselor. "'Tomorrow,' that is."

"What," said Claire, "like, Saturday?"

"Hah, very funny. No, no, I mean 'tomorrow' as a concept. If nothing else, what I hope to impart in these little meetings of ours is that it's never too early to start thinking about the future. It's such an important place..." The counselor looked at the ceiling, allowing himself a moment of silent reflection before returning to the room with Claire and Arnold. "Just today, for instance, I read that global warming could kill 10 times as many people as AIDS by 2060. Can you imagine that, Claire? AIDS! Of course, old fogeys like me and your dad here will be long-dead by then, hah-hah."

Arnold finally chuckled along with the counselor. He had to admit, that one was pretty good.

NEXT TIME: HARDCORE TUNES