Julia Engelhardt

At midterm, when Hugh Clarkson had slipped in as the new Hainstown High art teacher, Jeffry Grant, then in his winter torpor, hadn’t paid much attention. However, when someone whispered to Jeffry that the teachers’ lounge gossip centered around this guy, a little peaking of curiosity woke him. Then in May, after a blustery weekend of contention, Alyson, Jeffry’s love, ultimately convinced Jeffry that for her twenty-eighth birthday, their colleague, Hugh Clarkson could teach the two of them, us lowly cretins, how to paint.

So, begrudgingly, Jeffry had stopped Hugh in the hall to discuss painting lessons. Hugh seemed delighted in his distant way, nodding while he ate something he had pulled out of his pocket, stinking very much like tuna. Hugh’s casual dress, tall wiry body, his athletic stride, his soft-spoken furtive manner, his ridiculous little ponytail, his cud-like chewing, and especially - as characterized by Alyson - his deep and thoughtful eyes reminded Jeffry of a llama. After they agreed to try some painting the following Sunday in city park, Jeffry had felt an unease.

--

Hainstown City Park was surrounded by white frame houses, with squeaky screen doors and covered, doubtful porch structures under which Jeffry, as a child, had found toads and once a box turtle. For Jeffry, Hugh’s house was still the old Engelhardt residence because Julia Engelhardt, although not his first love, was his first sex. But everything changed when, in his late teens, he and Julia, on their last tryst in the woods by the creek, had played Russian Roulette with a chrome-plated six-shooter. He had been grateful, but traumatized to tears, when, out of nervousness, she had missed her own head with that luckless single loaded chamber, and nearly hit him, maiming a tree with an indelible epitaph. The memory of the deafening explosion left an enduring cavity, as if the bullet had, in fact, entered his head. Every stupid deed he had ever done was lobotomized with that incident, never to be repeated. He was eternally grateful she had missed her own head; who knows how everything would have changed if she had not? But he sat with the question as to why they even tried.

--

Sunday morning Alyson woke Jeffry with the clatter on his night stand of a plate of tortured toast and a cup of spilled coffee.

“Luxury breakfast in bed?” he said.

Before he could sit up, she said, “Put on a t-shirt and shorts. The green stripy tee we bought in Kansas City. By eleven, it’s going to be hot. Get in the shower and hurry up.” 

He said, “Are we wishing away the mention in last night’s forecast of a probability of severe weather?” 

Alyson said, “Jeffry, get going. We’ve spent a lot of time preparing. It’s Kansas. There’s always something blowing in, out, by, or around.”

In defiance of any threat of unsettled weather, she had put on her shortest white shorts and one of her most petite delicate sleeveless white blouses. Open on the sides and low-cut. No bra. And short golf socks and white running shoes. In one way he liked that she was showing off her stuff, but the aroma of her perfume he had once gifted her made him feel a spasm of pain surrounded by a dark sadness.

Hugh’s house and theirs were within easy walking distance to the park’s northeast corner. By the time they arrived at the park, Jeffry, with gnat-swarms crawling in his eyes and ears, was drenched in sweat. The park was exceptionally quiet, the air in traction. No passers-by. No cars. No dissonant power mowers droning in the neighborhood. No screaming children or chirping sparrows. No buzzing insects - just silent black, itchy gnats. Jeffry had seldom felt so uncomfortable. Alyson, on the other hand, seemed unfazed by bugs or heat. And Hugh arriving within minutes, looked no worse for the heat despite lugging a backpack with an easel.

No bra. Although not see-through, Alyson’s top was so open that she barely had to bend forward before her breasts were showing even more. Shamelessly immodest. As they all spoke in hushed tones in the vacuum of the ambient quiet, Jeffry constantly watched Hugh’s eyes, but Hugh seemed impervious to her exposure, while Jeffry’s stomach hatched worms.

Within minutes of Jeffry’s planting their two easels in the grass and while Hugh was squeezing paint onto their palettes, the bright sun darkened, suddenly eclipsed, and with it came a gust of wind that toppled both easels at once. Something, bundled in an ominous darkness, was rapidly descending upon the town. With uncertain laughter, all of them talking loudly about disappointment with no one listening, they picked-up and packed. Repetitive lightning flashes led to snarling thunder accompanied by a constant reverberating roar somewhere deep in the sky as the rain began.

Slamming her paint box shut, Alyson ran with it - Hugh shortly after, carrying nothing. Jeffry was left to chase down the canvases. He managed to tie them - her easel, his easel, and paint box - together by using his belt. As he was about to leave, he noticed Hugh’s untouched back pack and picked it up.

“Hey, Hugh!” he yelled. But he was immediately frustrated by how the name Hugh could not be screamed.

With the weight of his bundle and Hugh’s pack swinging out-of-sync, throwing him off balance with each step, he could do no more than walk at a limping pace. His beltless shorts, wet and heavy, slipped down as he walked. Through the dark rain and rapid bursts of lightning, he had seen the long lanky teacher loping up to Alyson and then running with her toward Hugh’s house. Jeffry felt like a discarded molecule.

The storm’s intensity began sweeping dirt and sand off the streets and ripping small branches off the trees and bushes, slashing cuts in Jeffry’s face, bare arms, and legs. Blinded by the rain and, with his arms loaded, he had to continually turn his back toward the wind to be able to withstand the scoring. While pulling up his pants again, he abandoned Hugh’s pack.

By the time he reached Hugh’s house, the two familiar steps up to the porch were almost invisible through the wind debris, the rain, and the darkness. The screen door, whipping in the wind, was drumming an uneven, rapid rhythm. The porch light was off. He had not expected the door to be locked.

In-between the lightning flares and the dim light from another room, he could not help but see their joined silhouette. It was obvious they had not heard him over the beastly growl of the storm. He pounded angrily on the door to make himself heard and to let the physical abuse to his hand mask the searing pain in his gut.

After eternity, Alyson wrenched open the door, peering from behind it, and gushed, “Oh, Jeffry, you look so wet.”

As Jeffry shut the door, Hugh, in what must have been a mistake, switched on the light for all to see that Alyson was half-naked. Momentarily diverting his eyes from her dumbfounding nakedness, Jeffry saw her blouse hanging on the back of a wooden chair near a dining table on which was her paint box. With this blatant exhibition disinterring Jeffry’s suppressed suspicions, the rupturing epiphany climbed up his throat.

As Hugh left the room, Alyson, who had moved back next to him across the room, took a step nearer Jeffry and began working to unbutton her shorts. Once she had opened the zipper, she looked stolidly at Jeffry. Sliding in her hands to loosen the wet cloth, she let her shorts drop to the floor, showing she had worn nothing underneath, her unveiling intensified by her running shoes becoming her only clothing. She stepped out of her shorts, unhurriedly picked them up, shook them lightly, and meticulously stretched them on the back of a chair. Returning with three towels, Hugh, with no acknowledgment of the ongoing provocation, dealt a towel to each of them. The absurdity of the charade made human speech ludicrous.

Like two cats licking themselves dry in the now-flickering light, Alyson and Hugh ignored the world around them, obviously anticipating Jeffry, third-man-out, to disappear. Jeffry heard the wind tearing at the whole structure of the building, objects, of whatever kind, clattering and battering the windows, trying to crack the glass to get at them. Larger entities pawed furiously on the outer walls.  In atonal concert with the storm outside, rage poured through Jeffry’s mind. Dropping his unused towel, he slipped his belt off the bundle he had created and kicked it into no-longer-wanted pieces, the noise abetted by the abrupt tumultuous vibration of a large tree crashing to the ground. A crackling explosion of a nearby transformer left them in darkness. Doubling his belt in his hands, his only intent was to beat the witch that made a fool of him.

Without a word, suddenly Hugh was painfully contorting Jeffry’s arm behind his back and pushing him out the door. Hugh’s final shove made Jeffry stumble, his shorts now around his knees. With the next step twisting his ankle on the edge of the porch stairs, he was catapulted face down onto the flooded grass and mud next to the up-rooted tree.

Losing his will, he considered just lying there next to the tree, his fallen partner, or rolling under the porch with the toads, but he needed to get away from the two in the house and their derision. Forcing himself off the ground, he climbed over the horizontal trunk of the elm and crawled on hands and knees on the flooded ground like some sort of berated animal, out to the asphalt, ignoring that he had lost his shorts along the way.

Once in the street, he battled to stand up against the wind. It pushed him backwards and shoved him down the street like discarded litter, until he hit a car parked at the curb. Holding onto the car, he stood, facing the dark stinging rain. His face, legs, and arms once again exposed and bleeding from the debris. Trash barrels and other large unidentifiable objects thundered past him in the blur. He felt the ecstasy of torrential pain.

--

While he finished teaching in Hainstown that school year, Jeffry began studying, despite suffering diminished eyesight from the storm damage, to pass the exams required for a Merchant Marine captain’s license. Needing to be alone, and in every respect, far away, he moved to Boston. He amassed the required hours of on-board sailing and was free to hire out as a private yacht captain full-time, if he was lucky enough to find an employer now and then.

During the ensuing six years of skippering yachts off the New England coast, Jeffry realized that his damaged eyesight actually became a blessing. Like the odd, semi-aquatic Platypus, he evolved senses to compensate for poor vision. With growing satisfaction, he could sense the position of the sun, the direction of the wind, the approaching rain, the tidal flows. He could smell the proximity of the land behind the sudden fog.

But Jeffry’s loneliness tyrannized him. Out of this despondency, Jeffry decided to take a guest passenger on his next assignment - moving a motor yacht from Boston Harbor to Bar Harbor in Maine. He would post a notice on the harbormaster’s hut, asking if anyone wanted to accompany him on the estimated twelve hour trip.

A Randy Hart applied, the sole applicant.

--

As Randy Hart and Jeffry meet this warm early morning, the soft breeze making the yacht tug impatiently at the dock lines, he can smell her sour breath, so pungent he can taste it drying and wrinkling his tongue. Her voice has the strain of high intensity. The kind of voice that criticizes. The voice he had so often heard from overwrought teachers. He has an intense feeling that she seems to know him. But her voice and her oddly fascinating eccentricity dilutes his curiosity enough to keep him from asking, just yet, why. With a crooked smile, he impulsively welcomes her on board. He can set the autopilot and they can talk. They’ll have a nice trip.

Off-shore, the yacht motor grumbling under them, the water babbling along the hull, some gulls optimistically circle contemplating a snack of human garbage. Jeffry has pulled on his red and white sailing jacket for warmth and sits across from her high in the open center cockpit so they are facing each other.

She pinches a smile and looks past him. They sit silently staring out over the water like they are ignoring time and challenging whose loneliness will expose itself first. She remains bolted to her thoughts, her only movement to don a black sweater she has pulled from the grey bag bonded to her side. It has been years since he has tried small-talk and now he has vainly hoped she would feel the obligation to entertain him.

Finally he says, “Are you warm enough?” Her assenting nod is not warm. Despite his discomfort, he tries once more. “So tell me about yourself. How did you manage to take the day off?”

After a pause, she says, “I’m a freelance writer.”

“What have you written?”

Seemingly speaking to the water, she says, “Just articles.”

Unsettled, he gets up to check their position. “We’re halfway. We’re making good time. It’ll be another three hours, maybe. The weather’s holding. We’ll be there by late lunchtime, and lunch is on me.” He smiles at her.

She is grinning, not looking at him. He sits down, trying to feel contented with not being alone. Looking at her anew, he realizes she is not prepared for the ocean brightness. She brought a sweater but not sunglasses. While continuing to appraise her, he takes off his own, considering whether he should offer them.

She is sitting straight-backed – unrelaxed. About his age. Short greying hair under a black newsboy hat. Dark circles under dark eyes, and other facial lines. Frail. A nervous mouse that frantically burns calories. He has noticed that she has not much of a figure, at least, not one that shows with her strict white blouse and black pants, so puritan except for the red sneakers. And she is definitely familiar.

“You are staring at me, Jeffry?”

He puts his glasses back on. Embarrassed. “Sorry. I didn’t realize. It’s just that…that….”

“You think you know me?”

He is startled. “Yes. Should I?”

“Well, let’s see.”

She reaches again into the grey canvas bag beside her. She pulls out a large pistol. He stops breathing. She holds the shiny chrome gun on its side toward him on the flat of her hands like an exhibit.

She says, “Do you recognize this?”

He squints, first at the weapon, then up at her. His mind, racing. Tracing his history. The only real pistol he has ever touched in his life had been the antique chrome six-shooter, like this one, with Julia Engelhardt back then. A teenage time. A time to forget.

“Randy?” he says. “I don’t remember….” Then, “Jul…Julia?”

She smiles and finally looks in his eyes. “That’s me. Randy Hart is just my pen name.”

He should say he is happy to see her, but he isn’t. It hadn’t been a happy time. He had used her. Got drunk with her. Had sex with her, promising this and that. Dumping her to stay with Alyson. Never another thought than to stay with Alyson.

Shifting her hold on the gun, she flips a latch on its side and opens it to show the rotating chamber filled with bullets. She looks directly at him but not in his eyes. “You see it’s fully loaded, as opposed to then.”

Hearing the pistol click shut, Jeffry’s mind spirals in rising fear. Her breath rakes his face.

“Why’re you showing me that? You shouldn’t have a loaded gun. You don’t need one. You know me. I mean, there’s nothing for you to be afraid of.”

She smiles. “No, I’m not afraid of you, Jeffry. I simply hate you. Or maybe I don’t hate you. Maybe I feel sorry for you, having been treated so poorly by Alyson. Right? She sort of ruined your life, didn’t she? As I knew she would.”

He is numb.

“Or maybe I don’t feel sorry for you, Jeffry. Maybe I loved you. Maybe I have always loved you. Maybe you ruined my life.”

A seagull’s screech fills the silence.

“You know what you said to me that day, Jeffry? The one with this gun? Do you have any recollection? We had just made love, Jeffry. And you said the most romantic thing you have probably ever said. To anyone. That we should die together. Do you remember that?”

He nods involuntarily.

She says, “I offered myself, Jeffry. I said I would go first. But I didn’t miss my head by accident that day, Jeffry. I just didn’t quite believe you.” Her eyes have tears in them.

The ever-present seagulls empathetically shriek pertinent mournful cries. It is appeasement time if he can only figure out how. He removes his glasses again and says, “I’m so glad you didn’t believe me. Love can be blind, you know. I certainly know.”

“You know how long ago that was, Jeffry? Seventeen years ago. And I have barely thought of anything else since then. I have even visited our inflicted tree.”

He can’t think of anything more he should say. He can’t think at all.

Looking down at the boat deck, in a deeper monotone, she says, “Even if we couldn’t live together, Jeffry, we were meant to die together.”

His mind enters the cavernous hollow where she is. She looks up at him again, her mouth thin and twisted like wire. Jeffry focuses on whether the ocean’s vastness is only a tetrahedronal simulation as she raises the pistol.