Black Evening (11 page)

Then too, I
was
a professor of literature, and I
did
have a student who claimed I was sending sexual telepathic messages to her. She did keep calling, threatening, haunting — not only me (I can deal with that) but my
family
. Most of "But at My Back I Always Hear" is true. Except that the student is still alive and, for all I know, lurking.

Finally, after I moved from where I was raised in Canada to graduate school in Pennsylvania and then to the University of Iowa, I fell in love with the boundless sky and intoxicating fertile beauty of my adopted state. I call it exotic. Watch the movie
Field of Dreams
to understand what I mean. It occurred to me that horror didn't have to fester in the traditional Hawthorne-invented gloom of New England, or in the oppressive ghettos of decaying major cities, but in bright sunlight, in the midst of splendor. Remember Cary Grant racing desperately to escape the machine-gun bullets from the "innocent" cropduster in Hitchcock's
North By Northwest
? I began to envision a series of stories that would take advantage of the broad Midwest and Interstate 80 and the space, the sublime, hence terrifying
space
between one isolated community and another. I explored that notion in several stories: "The Storm," "For These and All My Sins." Others. Even the
time zone
changes are fraught with danger.

So if you desperately need security (as the hero of "But at My Back I Always Hear" does and as its
author
does), you choose this story as representative of your work. My alter-ego professor sacrifices his life and his soul for his family. Good man. I understand him all too well. Because given the chance, I would gladly have sacrificed
my
life and soul to save my son.

 

She phoned again last night. At three a.m., the way she always does. I'm scared to death. I can't keep running. On the hotel's register downstairs, I lied about my name, address, and occupation. Although I'm here in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, I'm from Iowa City, Iowa. I teach — or used to teach until three days ago — American literature at the University. I can't risk going back there. But I don't think I can hide much longer. Each night, she comes closer.

From the start, she scared me. I came to school at eight to prepare my classes. Through the side door of the English building I went up a stairwell to my third floor office, which was isolated by a fire door from all the other offices. My colleagues used to joke that I'd been banished, but I didn't care, for in my far-off corner I could concentrate. Few students interrupted me. Regardless of the busy noises past the fire door, I sometimes felt that there was no one else inside the building. And indeed at eight a.m., I often
was
the only person in the building.

That day I was wrong, however. Clutching my heavy briefcase, I trudged up the stairwell. My scraping footsteps echoed off the walls of pale red cinderblock, the stairs of pale green imitation marble. First floor. Second floor. The fluorescent lights glowed coldly. Then the stairwell angled toward the third floor, and I saw her waiting on a chair outside my office. Pausing, I frowned up the stairs at her. I felt uneasy.

Eight a.m., for you, is probably not early. You've been up for quite a while so you can get to work on time or get your children off to school. But eight a.m., for college students, is the middle of the night. They don't like morning classes. When their schedules force them to attend one, they don't crawl from bed until they absolutely have to, and they don't come stumbling into class until I'm just about to start my lecture.

I felt startled, then, to find her waiting ninety minutes early. She sat tensely: lifeless dull brown hair, a shapeless dingy sweater, baggy faded jeans with patches on the knees and frays around the cuffs. Her eyes were haunted and wild. Deep and dark.

I climbed the last few steps and stopped before her. "Do you want an early conference?"

Instead of answering, she nodded bleakly.

"You're concerned about a grade I gave you?"

This time, though, in pain she shook her head from side to side.

Confused, I fumbled with my key and opened the office, stepping in. The room was small and narrow: a desk, two chairs, a wall of bookshelves, and a window. As I sat behind the desk, I watched her slowly come inside. She glanced around uncertainly. Distraught, she shut the door.

That made me nervous. When a female student shuts the door, I start to worry that a colleague or a student might walk up the stairs and hear a female voice and wonder what's so private that I want to keep the door closed. Although I should have told her to reopen it, her frantic eyes aroused such pity in me that I sacrificed my principle, deciding her torment was so personal that she could talk about it only in strict secrecy.

"Sit down." I smiled and tried to make her feel at ease, although I myself was not at ease. "What seems to be the difficulty, Miss… I'm sorry, but I don't recall your name."

"Samantha Perry. I don't like 'Samantha,' though." She fidgeted. "I've shortened it to — "

"Yes? To what?"

"To 'Sam'. I'm in your nine-thirty Tuesday-Thursday class." She bit her lip. "You spoke to me."

I frowned, not understanding. "You mean what I taught seemed vivid to you?"

"Mr. Ingram, no. I mean you
spoke
to me. You stared at me while you were teaching. You ignored the other students. You directed what you said to
me
. When you talked about Hemingway, how Frederic Henry wants to go to bed with Catherine — " She swallowed. " — you were asking me to go to bed with you."

I gaped. To disguise my shock, I quickly lit a cigarette. "You're mistaken."

"But I
heard
you. You kept staring straight at
me
. I felt all the other students knew what you were doing."

"I was only lecturing. I often look at students' faces to make sure they pay attention. You received the wrong impression."

"You weren't asking me to go to bed with you?" Her voice sounded anguished.

"No. I don't trade sex for grades."

"But I don't care about a grade!"

"I'm married. Happily. I've got two children. Anyway, suppose I did intend to proposition you. Would I do it in the middle of a class? I'd be foolish."

"Then you never meant to…" She kept biting her lip.

"I'm sorry."

"But you speak to me! Outside class I hear your voice! When I'm in my room or walking down the street! You talk to me when I'm asleep! You say you want to go to bed with me!"

My skin prickled. I felt frozen. "You're mistaken. Your imagination's playing tricks."

"But I hear your voice so clearly! When I'm studying or — "

"How? If I'm not there."

"You send your thoughts! You concentrate and put your voice inside my mind!"

Adrenaline scalded my stomach. I frantically sought an argument to disillusion her. "Telepathy? I don't believe in it. I've never tried to send my thoughts to you."

" Unconsciously?"

I shook my head from side to side. I couldn't bring myself to tell her: of all the female students in her class, she looked so plain, even if I wasn't married I'd never have wanted sex with her.

"You're studying too hard," I said. "You want to do so well you're preoccupied with me. That's why you think you hear my voice when I'm not there. I try to make my lectures vivid. As a consequence, you think I'm speaking totally to you."

"Then you shouldn't teach that way!" she shouted. "It's not fair! It's cruel! It's teasing!" Tears streamed down her face. "You made a fool of me!"

"I didn't mean to."

"But you did! You tricked me! You misled me!"

"No."

She stood so quickly that I flinched, afraid she'd lunge at me or scream for help and claim I'd tried to rape her. That damned door. I cursed myself for not insisting she leave it open.

She rushed sobbing toward it. She pawed at the knob and stumbled out, hysterically retreating down the stairwell.

Shaken, I stubbed out my cigarette, grabbing another. My chest tightened as I heard the dwindling echo of her wracking sobs, the awkward scuffle of her dimming footsteps, then the low deep rumble of the outside door.

Silence settled over me.

An hour later, I found her waiting in class. She'd wiped her tears. The only signs of what had happened were her red, puffy eyes. She sat alertly, pen to paper. I carefully didn't face her as I spoke. She seldom glanced up from her notes.

After class, I asked my graduate assistant if he knew her.

"You mean Sam? Sure, I know her. She's been getting D's. She had a conference with me. Instead of asking how to get a better grade, though, all she did was talk about you, pumping me for information. She's got quite a thing for you. Too bad about her."

"Why?"

"Well, she's so plain, she doesn't have many friends. I doubt she goes out much. There's a problem with her father. She was vague about it, but I had the sense her three sisters are so beautiful that Daddy treats her as the ugly duckling. She wants very much to please him. He ignores her, though. He's practically disowned her. You remind her of him."

"Who? Of her father?"

"She admits you're ten years younger than him, but she says you look exactly like him."

I felt heartsick.

Two days later, I found her waiting for me — again at eight a.m. — outside my office.

Tense, I unlocked the door. As if she heard my thought, she didn't shut it this time. Sitting before my desk, she didn't fidget. She just stared at me.

"It happened again," she said.

"In class, I didn't even look at you."

"No, afterward, when I went to the library." She drew an anguished breath. "And later — I ate supper in the dorm. I heard your voice so clearly, I was sure you were in the cafeteria."

"What time was that?"

"Five-thirty."

"I was having cocktails with the Dean. Believe me, Sam, I wasn't sending messages to you. I didn't even
think
of you."

"I couldn't have imagined it! You wanted me to go to bed with you!"

"I wanted research money from the Dean. I thought of nothing else. My mind was totally involved in trying to convince him. When I didn't get the money, I was too annoyed to concentrate on anything else but getting drunk."

"Your voice — "

"It isn't real. If I sent thoughts to you, wouldn't I admit what I was doing? When you asked me, wouldn't I confirm the message? Why would I deny it?"

"I'm afraid."

"You're troubled by your father."

"What?"

"My graduate assistant says you identify me with your father."

She went ashen. "That's supposed to be a secret!"

"Sam, I asked him. He won't lie to me."

"If you remind me of my father, if I want to go to bed with you, then I must want to go to bed with — "

"Sam — "

" — my father! You must think I'm disgusting!"

"No, I think you're confused. You ought to find some help. You ought to see a — "

But she never let me finish. Weeping again, ashamed, hysterical, she bolted from the room.

And that's the last I ever saw of her. An hour later, when I started lecturing, she wasn't in class. A few days later, I received a drop-slip from the registrar, informing me she'd canceled all her classes.

I forgot her.

Summer came. Then fall arrived. November. On a rainy Tuesday night, my wife and I stayed up to watch the close results of the national election, worried for our presidential candidate.

At 3 a.m., the phone rang. No one calls that late unless…

The jangle of the phone made me bang my head as I reached for a beer in the fridge. I rubbed my throbbing skull and swung in alarm as Jean, my wife, came from the living room and squinted toward the kitchen phone.

"It might be just a friend," I said. "Election gossip."

But I worried about our parents. Maybe one of them was sick or…

I watched uneasily as Jean picked up the phone.

"Hello?" She listened apprehensively. Frowning, she put her hand across the mouthpiece. "It's for you. A woman."

"What?"

"She's young. She asked for Mr. Ingram."

"Damn, a student."

"At three a.m.?"

I almost didn't think to shut the fridge. Annoyed, I yanked the pop-tab off the can of beer. My marriage is successful. I'll admit we've had our troubles. So has every couple. But we've faced those troubles, and we're happy. Jean is thirty-five, attractive, smart, and patient. But her trust in me was clearly tested at that moment. A woman had to know me awfully well to call at 3 a.m.

"Let's find out." I grabbed the phone. To prove my innocence to Jean, I roughly said, "Yeah, what?"

"I heard you." The female voice was frail and plaintive, trembling.

"Who
is
this?" I asked angrily.

"It's me."

I heard a low-pitched crackle on the line.

"Who the hell is
me
? Just tell me what your name is."

"Sam."

My knees went weak. I slumped against the wall.

Jean stared. "What's wrong?" Her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"Sam, it's three a.m. What's so damned important that you can't wait to call me during office hours?"

"Three? It can't be. No, it's one."

"It's three. For God's sake, Sam, I know what time it is."

"Please, don't get angry. On my radio, the news announcer said it was one o'clock."

"Where
are
you, Sam?"

"At Berkeley."

"California? Sam, the time zone difference. In the Midwest, it's two hours later. Here, it's three o'clock."

"… I guess I forgot."

"But that's absurd. Have you been drinking? Are you drunk?"

"No, not exactly."

"What the hell does
that
mean?"

"Well, I took some pills. I'm not sure what they were."

"Oh, Jesus."