Faculty Brat
by Benjamin Jacobson
St. Olaf College

Winning Story in the 2002 ACM Nick Adams Short Story Contest

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Adolescent silhouettes in the cab of a pick-up truck parked in the weedy space between a gravel road and a cornfield.  A common sight for late-night motorists travelling down one strand of the lazy network of back roads that snake out of Peterston, connecting it to the surrounding communities.  Those motorists are inclined to smirk knowingly, unless of course, it’s eleven o’clock and they don’t know where their teenage daughters are.
Right now, distinguished novelist Nathan Walker’s teenage daughter has her face buried in the lap of a young man who is reclining in the driver’s seat of his stationary ’89 Ford Taurus.  He shudders slightly and Nathan Walker’s daughter sits up.  The young man puts his clothes back in order, and starts, with a practiced eye, to roll yet another joint.  Nathan Walker’s daughter gargles a mouthful of warm High Life, opens the door and spits into the weeds.
 “Hey, Shelley, you goin’ to the prom?” asks the young man. 
 Shelley Walker turns away from the dark landscape to see the young man light the joint.  The flame briefly illuminates his face with its light sprinkling of acne.  She sees his dark eyes, his black hair curling out under his Megadeth hat, and his fledgling mustache.  A trace of revulsion interrupts the mellow euphoria of her pot-trance. 
 “What for?” she says, accepting the proffered joint. 
 He shrugs.  “I don’t know.  Just wondering.”  He shifts his position in the seat and looks out the window.
 She softens a little.  “Look, Warren, I just don’t see the point.  I mean, I hate all those people.  And, shit, Warren, they all hate you, too.  It just seems like an excuse for the jocks and their girlfriends to play dress-up before they get wasted and have sex.  You and I can just skip the dress-up, huh?” 
 Her hand goes to his crotch.
 Warren turns, and smiles. 
They begin making out, impassioned, but awkward, mouths open so wide it looks as though they are trying to eat their way through to the back of each others’ heads 
 Warren Dixon has spent the last four weeks in a state of grace.  He can’t get over the fact that he is going out with Shelley Walker.  Before Shelley, he had resigned himself to getting it on with flinty skanks like Heidi Gray.  Now he finds himself going out with a very pretty girl, and she is even kind of slutty.
 Shelley, feeling Warren’s hand climb up under her blouse, thinks about what she sees in Warren.  He isn’t exactly a male model but the faults in his physical appearance are nothing that a Sally Jesse makeover couldn’t fix.  She shakes up the hazy magic eight ball of her mind and begins putting questions to it.  Easy access to drugs?  Maybe.  His truck?  Nah.  Shared hatred for high school?  Could be.  The fact that distinguished novelist Nathan Walker couldn’t stand him?  All signs point to yes.
 Shelley breaks away.  “I better get home.”
*     *     *


The door creeks.  Shelley pulls her shoes off and makes her way through the dimly lit kitchen.  She notes from the microwave clock that it is eleven forty-seven.  She has made her school-night curfew.
 She walks quietly toward the hallway and nearly collides with Nathan Walker, her father.  His thinning hair is poking up in odd places and his shirtsleeves are rolled past the elbow.  He squints. 
 They look at each other quizzically for a moment. 
 “Hey,” says Shelley, her eyes red from marijuana.
 “Hi,” says Nathan, his eyes red from writing.
 They hastily pass each other.
 Nathan heads for the refrigerator.  Listening to Shelley’s footsteps on the staircase, he reaches for the mayonnaise.
 He makes himself a sandwich and sits down to eat it.  His thoughts turn to his daughter, his only child, and how strained he feels in her company.  The lines of communication have been down for a while.  He consoles himself: typical teenage unhappiness.  She was a smart girl.  If he tried to act like her friend, she’d see right through him.  She’d grow out of it.  He briefly worries: he couldn’t think of anything to say to her.  That’s just because it’s late, he thinks, sucking the mayo off the roof of his mouth.
He shuts off the lights and heads up to bed.  His wife is sitting in bed reading. 
She asks how his novel’s going. 
He asks how her essay is going.
They gossip about a few of their colleagues in the English department.
They have a ten-minute conversation about their daughter that demonstrates their command of the terminology.  Although they use words like “angst,” “youthful rebellion,” “necessary phase,” “acting out,” and “emotional space,” the exchange basically boils down to this:
“Do you think we’re losing touch with Shelley?” asks Nathan.
“No,” says Anne.
“Me neither,” says Nathan.
They both agree that she won’t shoot up the school.  “We taught her better manners than that,” says Nathan, deadpan. 
They drift into heavy slumber.
Shelley lies on her bed, musing.  The lights are on.  Billy Corgan wails softly from the stereo.  She’s still relaxed from the pot, despite running into her father -- always a buzz-kill.  She casts her eyes around her room.  Posters of grunge and Goth bands.  On either side of her stereo twin CD racks stand like roman centurions, bulwarks of good taste.  Old track ribbons from before she started smoking hang from her desk.  Her clarinet serving as a doorstop.  Bookshelves lined with the classics of her middle school days -- Lord of the Rings, the Wrinkle in Time Series, Chronicles of Narnia.  Several more recent acquisitions, gifts or recommendations from her parents -- nearly every Virginia Woolf novel, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Annie Proulx, and a bunch of contemporary authors -- all unread.  One paperback bears a familiar name.
She gets up and pulls it off the shelf.  Buckets by Nathan Walker, simple yet elegant font, vermilion sky and wheat depicted on the smooth cover.  Thin sheath of dust, but no creases in the binding.  Dedication page: “To the women in my life: Eileen, Anne, and Shelley, my little Muse.”
 She hefts the book thoughtfully for a moment and squints at the wastepaper basket as if she had just paid a dollar at a carnival booth.  The book arcs through the air and rests quietly among crumpled notebook paper, candy wrappers and apple cores.  Give the girl her prize.
*     *     *


That same elegant font and vermilion and wheat design had first peeked out from bookstore shelves seven years earlier.  That was an exhilarating time for Nathan Walker.  He had been hungry for reviews, and they were glittering.  “Well, I think I’ve collected enough blurbs to put on the next one,” Nathan remarked at the dinner table as he put the New Yorker aside.
“You deserve them,” said Anne, who had played no small role in helping him edit the final draft, and who had recently garnered some praise in the academic community for her essay on the modes of perception in Virginia Woolf’s novels.
His colleagues at the department slapped him on the back. 
Meanwhile, he found himself with a load of free time on his hands.  He felt it to be too soon to start the next one.  He took a year off from novels to write some short stories, watch six years’ worth of movies that he’d missed, and play with his daughter. 
He was on sabbatical for one semester.  He would work on short stories in the morning, pick up Shelley from school and take her for ice cream or to the park or to the mall.  He cooked every night and read to Shelley every night.  Several evenings were spent in serious discussions with Anne about the possibility of having another child.
The merry-go-round would turn and he would climb aboard, lie back and stare up at the revolving heavens.  “I did it,” he would think.  Then Shelley would whine.  “Daddy, it’s stopping.”  He would get off and dig in his feet to start another running push. 
That fall he went back to teaching.  A book of short stories went to the publisher.  Anne stayed on the pill, and Nathan embarked on his second novel, the one he’s still working on.

 

 
 

*     *     *


One time Shelley showed her parents something she’d written.
Nathan furrowed his brow in mock-seriousness and said, “I think this story shows a lot of promise, but there are some plot problems.  Also, this Nina character is especially flat and one-dimensional.  I think you need to ask yourself why you wrote this story, and what exactly you are trying to convey to the reader.  Also, it’s derivative; you need to find your own voice.  Rewrite it and have it on my desk by next week.”
“Why don’t you try to make it more stream-of-conscious?” suggested Anne, with a smile. 
Shelley, tears in her eyes, walked away with the pages crushed to her chest. 
She was eight, and Nina was a bunny. 
“These young writers just can’t take criticism,” joked Nathan to his wife.
*     *     *

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