| PEP Writer's Contest 2003 - B Winners
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| FIRST PLACE: Ruben Cruz
Maggie Witherspoon
Mal King
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He collapsed into the chair next
to the open window and muttered, “What have I done?” All his life Terry had felt
like an outsider. He was terrible at small talk and felt awkward around people. When
he’d see two acquaintances meet at a ballgame or concert he wondered what they talked
about. All bent over and whispering, they’d look like they had something important to
say. But what, he’d wonder, could they possibly be saying? All I can ever
think to say is, hello, and ask how they are. Ballgames and concerts were too noisy to
talk about books or political issues. But what else was there? Gossip? Surely people
don’t really care enough about gossip, he thought, to whisper about it at
public events. Besides, he never knew anything about friends’ private lives to
gossip about. He only knew what they told him and that was usually what they were reading
or what they believed in.
Then there was the matter of friends: a sticky issue for Terry. He’d never had
many. When he was a kid Terry had only one friend. His mom used to push him into
activities, hoping he’d make at least one more. It never worked. He’d just fade
into the background when there were other, more gregarious, kids around. He never cared as
much as his mom did. She worried about Terry, fretting that he’d be lonely.
“But I’m not lonely, mom!” he’d protest, never admitting that
he felt lonely a lot. He didn’t like to see her worry and figured if he lied to her
and to himself, soon he wouldn’t feel lonely. It worked…sort of. As he grew
older he made more friends: some from school and work. Single and still living in the
rented townhouse he inherited from his mom, Terry’s whole world was his job and his
few friends.
Then last week he got laid off. Feeling lonelier than ever, he emailed his friends.
He phoned and left voicemail messages. No responses. He started to feel invisible, as
though he didn’t matter in their lives. Hurting and angry, he grumbled, “If I
died tomorrow they wouldn’t miss me.” When no one had returned his messages by
the weekend, he made up his mind. He’d show them! He’d fake his own death.
He packed a small suitcase, emptied his bank accounts, traded his car for another
of like value and took a hotel room a couple of towns west. Next he created an email
account and, posing as a distant cousin, notified his friends that Terry Willard was dead.
He told them they could gather at his home the following Saturday at 4:00 pm to
memorialize Terry and divide what was left of his meager belongings among themselves.
So here he was, peeping in the window, watching his friends cry at his own memorial
service, feeling lonelier than ever and lamenting his harsh and hasty decision.
“Oh, what have I done?” Terry, the outsider, softly cried, “What
have I done?” SECOND PLACE: Maggie Witherspoon
He collapsed into the chair next to the open window and muttered, “What have I
done?”
He looked out the window and shook his head in disbelief. Cars and vans were
pulling up in front of the house until they lined both sides of the street. Photographers
were snapping photos of him, of his dog, Petey, who was going berserk, barking at the side
gate, of the rose bushes next to the front door, for goodness sakes!
“Jay,” his mother said, “Honey. What are we going to do about this?
The phone’s been ringing off the hook. There are all these people in our front yard.
I think I even saw somebody trying to climb the back fence.” Her voice was whiny and
she looked tired. She was making a valiant effort to remain calm in the face of what
he’d done. She cooked meals, cleaned house and was just now washing up the breakfast
dishes. When he looked at her loving, forgiving gaze he regretted everything. Jay tried to
crouch out of view of the prying cameras.
“Thank God for Petey,” she continued, “He’s not vicious but at
least his bark will keep intruders at a distance. What do you suppose we ought to
do?”
“I don’t know, mom,” Jay said, “But I think we ought to bring
Petey inside. All those people will drive him crazy. Remember how hoarse he got when he
stayed at the kennel that time we went on vacation? We worried that all that barking would
damage his throat.” Jay plunged his face into his hands then combed fingers through
his tousled hair. It was clear he was also stressed to the max. Though only 22, tiny lines
appeared at the corners of his eyes. Worry. Fear. Remorse. The emotions defined his life
right now. Thank goodness, he thought, my folks didn’t just up and abandon
me to take the consequences on my own. He wanted nothing more than to erase the entire
episode.
The woman sat on the edge of the blue chenille sofa, folding and re-folding her
red-checkered dishtowel. “Right now he’s the only protection we have from folks
invading the backyard. I’m getting a little afraid. What if they,” she nodded
toward the front of the house, “aren’t all decent people? What if there’s
somebody who wants to do us harm?”
“I don’t think anybody would hurt us, mama,” Jay said as he stood
up. He turned on the reading lamp, closed the window and drew the drapes in an attempt to
silence the shouting. He’d finally turned the ringers off on all the phones at 5:00
in the morning so they could get some sleep. But there was still the unremitting doorbell.
“They just all want to see who I am. They’ve never heard of Jason Allen
Alexander before and are wondering who is so all-fired crazy as to marry Britney.”
His throat made a nervous little noise. “Truth-be-told,” he said, “I’m
wondering the same thing right now.” THIRD PLACE: Mal King
Outside the window, the indifferent Arkansas hills, ripe with a soft leafy
brilliance, ignored his question. Instead of her voice, he heard the wind playing a dirge
in the trees. How beautiful nature was at this dying time of year. Inhaling the scent of
burning leaves, he saw her again – Suzie, the only her who’d ever been in his
life.
“I love maple trees best of all,” she’d said during their autumn
honeymoon.
“Again,” She whispered after the first sheet-twisting time. Her violet,
not-quite-like-anything-else eyes mesmerized him as she cried out over and over.
After dressing for breakfast they left their hotel room as an elderly couple left
the room next door. Winking at Jim, the man rolled his eyes. That’s when Jim knew
Suzie’s voice had carried.
He studied the wall placard she’d painted as a reminder of the delectable
food: GOD MUST LOVE CALORIES, HE MADE SO MANY OF THEM
A law practice for him, college for her and long talks about society’s
unfairness to women. Her assertiveness led to arguments. After one argument, Suzie
enrolled in the ROTC. Upon graduation, she accepted a commission as second lieutenant in
the regular Army, requesting Vietnam.
“I forbid it,” he said.
She pointed to line in Robert Frost’s Mending Wall: Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
“I hate walls. Try to build one around me and our marriage is over. I want to
make a name for myself.”
So, she’d gone to Vietnam. She wrote complaining she’d been assigned to
head a unit of nurses, not infantrymen. Poor woman sometimes forgot she was a woman.
“Suzie’s got an important position up in Washington, DC,” he told
people after the war ended. “Folk come form all over to see her.”
“What have I done? he asked himself again.
He’d committed what his pastor had told him was an unforgivable sin.
“Even God can’t forgive us until we forgive others.”
Jim took out her last letter, faded from age, tapped it against his forehead. Blame
came easily and rapidly; forgiveness came hard and had to be eased into. Time will forgive
her something she couldn’t help – something that made her ahead of her time: a
feminist – mutinous, unashamed.
Two days later, he flew into Dulles International Airport. Funny that an airport
should be named after man about whom a critic said, “John Foster Dulles is the only
bull I know who carries his own china shop with him.”
Still smiling, Jim gave an Oriental female cab driver Suzie’s address.
People were everywhere, taking pictures. He paid the cab and walked past a maple
tree, bright leaves thinning. Finding Suzie’s place – the place she had made a
name – he watched a blood-red maple leaf drift by.
Then he knelt…traced his fingers over her name in…
The Wall. |
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