Little Men, by Gordon Haber

I was in my office trying to get a few things done when I heard the sweet little voice of my two-year-old saying, Papa? I stepped into the hall and there was my little man! He wore overalls and held his favorite toy, a cement mixer truck. I scooped him up and kissed his face and I said, Where’s Mama?

Papa, I heard again. And down the hall was my little boy. What I mean is that my son was in my arms and my son was also down the hall. There were two of them. I didn’t know what to do, so I picked up the second one, and now I had my son in either arm.   

I heard it a third time: Papa. Further down the corridor, by the men’s room, my son was stumbling towards me doing his toddler robot walk even though I already had one of him in each arm. It’s very difficult to carry three squirming toddlers, but I figured that I could make it to my office. And there he was again, by the elevator. 

Now I’m pouring sweat, almost hyperventilating, when I see the mail cart. So I dump out the mail and I put the four of them into the cart. I was reaching for my cell phone and wondering who to call—my wife? 911?—when I see him in the lobby. He sees me too and breaks out a gorgeous smile and throws his arms out wide: Papa!

I put him in the cart. 

Through the lobby window there’s my son again in the parking lot, which makes six of them. The poor kids are cramped and whining and two of them are fighting over the toy. But I couldn’t worry about that, because there was one more by the security gate, and another, Jesus Christ, by the highway off-ramp.

Now I have one in each arm and six in the cart, which I’m trying to guide back to my office with a hip, until I see one more on the grass divider of the highway. This was when I thought I might start screaming. But I kept it together, and I waited for the traffic to ease so I could safely maneuver all of us across the lanes and collect my son. 

That’s right, I held it together, and you can bet your ass that I would keep holding it together. Even if there were a hundred of them. Even if there were a thousand. Because what else could I do?

            Don’t worry, I called to my little man as the cars whipped by. Daddy’s coming.

Gordon Haber

The Chair, by Lard Alec

           I was the last to join the meeting— which was already in progress—even though I arrived 15 minutes before its purported start. Nonetheless, there were slides being slid across a giant projector screen while 25 or so of my colleagues sat at all but one of the available seats around a large conference table shaped, I thought, like Pluto’s long, frozen orbit around the sun.

            I was new. I had just been hired. My appointment was for eight months, during which I would teach a 7-4 load of composition courses. If all went well, I would be unemployed for the summer but then hired back to teach a 9-6 load the next year, with—if all went well again—a slight raise.

I looked around at all the colleagues seated around the not-quite round table. They were similar to me in so many ways, but experience told me that I would like one or two of them, maybe, and hate the rest.

            “Excuse me, excuse me,” I said, inching around the table, stepping over messenger bags and chunky handbags filled with elaborate thermoses, which confused me since the conference table was filled with such thermoses as well.

Eventually, I made my way to the last empty chair as the slides slid and someone talked about digital scaffolding and meeting students halfway. Halfway to what? I wondered, and sat down, only to be met with a series of muffled, indignant screams.

            “Get up! Get up! You smell like a bus stop. Agh!” I sprung out of my seat as the colleagues gasped with a mix of horror and frisson. Most were ostentatiously appalled at my faux pas, but some seemed to relish this mysterious act of sacrilege.

            “What the—?” I said, and tried to escape without really leaving, since the meeting was mandatory. I began turning in frantic circles, whipping my own messenger bag around and knocking into the shoulders of two or three colleagues in the vicinity. They quickly arranged themselves so as to look appalled even to theoretical spectators watching the proceedings on soundless security footage or someone spying on the meeting through a telescope, several mountaintops away.

            “Is this someone’s chair?” I asked to a salvo of gasps and guffaws. “If so, could you just kindly suggest that I find another seat, even though all the other seats are taken? I should inform you that I planned to get here early, and, you know, I actually did get here early, only to discover that the meeting had already begun!”

            “Wow. Can he really not see what he’s done?” asked one of the colleagues, looking at me but in no way interested in my reply.

            I feared that if I confessed to not seeing what I had done, then all was lost, so I held my tongue.

            “He doesn’t see it,” said another colleague, “and so he holds his tongue for fear of revealing his blunder.”

            “Oh, yeah?” I said, turning in half circles now, like a lawn sprinkler, as I considered crawling under or over the elliptical table.

            “Will he ever be made to see?” wondered a third colleague.

            Oh, I would see, though not for several more insulting questions. But, eventually, I learned that I did not sit down on just any old chair, but the Chair of the English Department.

 

 

The Chair’s Office

 

“Carl?” the Chair asked, perfumed and draped in elaborate scarves. Silver earrings quivered from the ears of a luxurious sofa chair that was one and the same as the Chair Herself. She looked expensive—her stock culled from rare and possibly illicit rainforest mahoganies, bespoke brocades. She swished and clinked incessantly with each tetchy but elegant gesture.

            “Ah, Steve, actually,” I said.

            “Carl Stevens?” she asked, rifling through a file.

            “Ah, no. Steve—just Steve—Klippger.”

            “You would save us a lot of time,” she confided, “If you didn’t say ahhhhhhhhhh at the beginning of every sentence.”

            “At the beginning of every sentence that I speak, you mean?” I said, warming to the occasion.

            “To what other sentences do you think I might have referred?” she asked, swishing and clattering—her arms and legs staggered with bracelets.

            “You said I would save a lot of time if I didn’t say ah at the beginning of every sentence. But I do not speak every sentence. I was just pointing out—,” I said, and then stopped.

            “You’re in the Composition Department,” said the Chair, reclining—dangerously, I believed—so that her front legs lifted off the floor.

            “Yes, though the Composition Department is not really a Department unto itself. It’s just a subset of the English Department, which is how it was explained to me.”

            “Who explained these things to you, Steven?”

            “Josh.”

            “Josh has left Cooperswich University. I’m sorry to say.” She was not sorry to say this, so far as I could see.

            “I see. And then so. Whom do I report to?”

            “To whom do you report?”

            “Sure, ok.”

            “Janice.”

            “Ah,” I said, “So where and, ah, whom is Janice?”

            “I’m not impressed, Steven. With what I am seeing today.”

“Hmmmumum,” I said.

“Composition is its own Department. It has its own meetings. Joshua should have told you as much before you came, but he didn’t. He is now in the private sector. His career wasn’t going anywhere. He has his money now. That is all that matters. Janice is a 31-year-old recent graduate of an anonymous doctoral program that manufactures PhDs in Writing Center and First-Year Composition Management at a rapid rate of speed. Such programs require just three years to complete. These people write monographs, Steven, about the rhetorical architecture of the syllabus. Did you know that? Do you think you will like Janice?” she wondered.

“I believe so,” I said, not sure which question I was answering, a stranger to myself and others alike.

“Janice, God help her,” the Chair said, “will look after you.”

 

Janice

 

            Janice was not an expensive piece of furniture but, as promised, a 31-year-old woman and a recent graduate of the Bakers University Technical Communication Department’s Writing Center and First-Year Composition Management Program (BUTCD WCFYCM). She was friendly, I think, and walked me a mile and a half across campus to what looked like a derelict medical arts building.

            “This looks like where I used to get my teeth pulled when I was very young, a long, long time ago,” I said, as she swiped us in with her Cooperswich ID card.

            “This is the Richman Building. It’s enormous, old, and mostly empty. There are hundreds of composition associates inside.”

            “Associates?”

            “I prefer composition technicians, but there are obscure guild restrictions on the use of that term in this state.” She did not say which state we were in. I wondered if she even knew.

            “Do you know what state we are in?”

            “When I went to grad school, I pictured myself managing a writing center in San Francisco or New York,” she said wistfully.

            “I, um.”

            “Our offices are on the third, fourth, and sixth floors.”

            “What is on the other floors? And why did Josh leave?”

            “Josh?” she asked and led us to the elevators.

            Very well, I thought, and followed her up to the third, fourth, and sixth floors.

 

The Sixth Floor

 

            She welcomed me into her office, which was L shaped and very small. Janice tucked herself into her minute chair-and-desk arrangement and beckoned me to sit on the office chair facing her tiny desk. The second we were both seated, she opened her laptop and began typing cacophonously.

            “No one will get angry at me if I sit on this, right?” I asked, pointing to the empty chair before me. “It’s not the Office Manager or something, is it?” Janice smiled. I sat down quietly.

            “The Chair was very unhappy,” Janice said.

            “I immediately apologized for sitting on her, ah, seat.”

            “She questioned whether you were even Cooperswich material.”

            “Ok, well…”

            “She suggested that you make weekly appointments with me to ensure you’re not negatively impacting the English Department in any way.”

            “I thought Composition was its own department.”

            “Think again.”

            “Ok, but the Chair insisted—”

            “Technically, yes,” she said, “but, also, technically no.” Janice typed rapidly while staring hard, it seemed to me, at my receding hairline.

            “By the way, what is the Chair’s name? What did she, well, do, or what was she, before, um…?”

            Janice continued typing, wrinkling an eye at my retreating hair.

            “You know,” I said, looking at Janice, “the colleagues seemed very mean to me. Have you found this to be the case?” I hoped she might sympathize. We were both so new.

            “Colleagues?” she asked, pummeling her keyboard.

 

Classes

 

            Under my contract, I was assigned seven composition classes during the fall semester, mostly Composition and Technological Rhetoric (C&TR) 101. My schedule was as follows: C&TR 101-2, MWF from 8:00-8:50 AM; C&TR 101-5 TFF (that is, Tuesday, Friday (early) and Friday (late)) from 9:00-9:50 AM and 7:00-8:10 PM; C&TR 102-105, TH from 6:00-10:00 PM; and then back to back to back to back sections of C&TR 101 (Internet Research) MW from 10:10 AM-4:20 PM, with office hours stretching from 9:00 AM-3:00 PM on Saturdays.

            Classes were ok. Cooperswich students come from the very best mediocre public schools and bottom quartile private schools in the state. The Composition Program’s or Department’s ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION POLICY dictates that “students be encouraged to attend class remotely,” even if they are physically present in the classroom, through their tablets and phones. Cooperswich, I was told, is “Moving away from the writing and completing assignments on personal computers model of learning” in order to “meet students where they are,” and where they are is on their phones. Most of my classes had 23 students. At the beginning of class, I distributed a DLL (distance learning link) which the students joined, via their phones and tablets. I had to remind many of them how to join these virtual meetings despite the fact that we started every class this way. I found this difficult to do because they would not listen to me unless they heard my voice coming out of their phones or tablets. Once most of them had joined the DLL, class, such as it was, began.

            During the first meeting of my C&TR 101-105 class, the Chair sat in on my class, to “observe.” She did not join the class “remotely,” but plopped down in the middle of the front row, politely, almost, elbowing two (occupied) desks aside, a notebook and pen resting on her seat.

            “Ok, class. Welcome to C&TR 101-105, where we—”

            “May I interrupt?” asked the Chair.

            “Ah, you sure did. So go ahead again, if you must, I suppose.” She thought for a moment.

            “Never mind,” she said, and scrawled something jagged in her moleskin.

 

Conference

 

            After class, we conferenced in her office. The class she observed was either entirely normal for this particular school and student population or an unmitigated disaster. I had not, at that point, taught at Cooperswich long enough to know which was the case. The students joined the DLL link but kept their cameras off. I could still see their faces, since all of them were in the classroom, but I could not tell what they were thinking about or actually doing on their phones and tablets. Still, they seemed entirely too busy and pleased to be thinking about class. Only one student, Miranda, paid attention to the lecture and answered my questions. Miranda was wonderful.

            “I noticed that a number of your students spent a lot of time on their phones. Very few of them seemed to be following along or contributing to discussion,” the Chair said.

            “I noticed that too. It is the Composition-either-Department’s-or-Program’s policy that students join classes remotely even if they are physically present. Many of them have boredom disorders and some of them find eye contact repugnant,” I said, declaiming the little I’d gleaned from a recent 90-minute C&TR training webinar.   

            “There is no such policy in the English Department, Steven,” said the Chair.

            “Are we or are we not—”

            “We or you, Steven?”

            “In the English Department?” I continued.

            “We, Steven?”

            “Yes, us,” I said, and then, “we.”

            “You think that you and I—and lord knows who else—occupy this word, usssssssss,” she hissed, “TO. GETH. ER? Why is that? From where I’m sitting—”

            “I have sat where you’re sitting,” I reminded her, “though, admittedly, I’m not sure what this proves,” I faltered.

            “I see,” she said, trembling with indignation.

            “I was told to interact with the students exclusively through the DLL. That way, they are calm and subdued, and the, well, the Composition Part of the English Department or Composition Department that is separate from the English Department can then record all of our classes and later study them. For, I guess, assessment purposes.”

            “Tell your students to wake up, Steven,” she said. “And I advise you to do the same.”

 

Finals

 

            Finals were an abomination. The students used an application called Out~Source (I later learned) to find, summarize, quote, and synthesize materials from assigned readings into competent but eerily impersonal prose that was always technically flawless if slightly or significantly adjacent to the relevant assignment. I gave everyone a B- since I couldn’t say for sure that they were cheating but, with mandatory participation points, per the Composition Program’s or Department’s guidelines, even for those who were incessantly absent, they all got a B+.

            Except Miranda. Miranda got an A+. She composed her own essays and examination responses in insightful if world-weary prose. She made certain mistakes, dependably, (such as using a semi-colon to introduce a quotation after an independent clause) that showed she was a human and not some sleepwalking algorithm, immune to death and nuance alike. Miranda was at once fascinated and disgusted by all that we read, all that we discussed. The other students did not notice her. When she spoke, she lowered her phone. She nodded along with my soliloquies.

            Miranda wrote her final paper on “Digital Barbarism,” in which she described ancient grudges and chauvinisms—Athenian disgust, for instance, for the Persian tongue, during classical antiquity—and connected those “ur-xenophobias” to politically motivated flame wars ever since the early Obama era. The social glue that holds bellicose digital factions together, she claimed, despite sometimes tenuous irl affinities, is a perversion of what she called sports nationalism—an idea she borrowed (and perverted) from Orwell. Digital sports nationalists (DSNs) form a belligerent sense of group identity based on shared hostilities to language and imagery that disgusts them. The are like English football fans (or hooligans) who live and fight entirely online. DSNs, she argued, were the chimerical byproduct of globalized finance and 21^st-century American nativism, which hates, but cannot free itself, from what it imports and consumes.

            I typed A+ as many times as I could onto her essay and promised her that I would nominate her for some kind of award, once I discovered what awards they awarded at Cooperswich University.

 

The Colleagues

 

            Another meeting was afoot, this one “SOLEY” for members “THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT,” as I’d been reminded in an email. Exactly, ah, whom that included or excluded was uncertain. I barged in gently and cleared my throat.

            “Um, hello.” The colleagues glinted at me with their glasses, laptops, and thermoses. I had not, if I’m being honest, thought very far beyond this point.

            “Quick, someone push the Chair under the conference table,” said a colleague loudly. “We must protect her.”

            “Yes, here comes the oaf who shakes hands with his butt,” said another.

            “Now that you’ve learned your lesson,” said a third, “don’t you feel ashamed to show yourself to those you learned your lesson in front of?”

            “In front of those from whom you learned your lesson?” intoned the Chair.

            “I had a good student this semester. Just one. Out of a cast of hundreds, all wastrels. She must be rewarded. I’ve come to ask about awards for great students,” I said.

            The Chair flipped a scarf over her crest rail and angled toward me.

            “Want an award for your protege?” she asked. “Tell her to take a real class. In the English Department.” Chuckles all around.

            “I looked it up,” I said. “There’s an encrypted file deep on the Registrar’s intranet that says that Composition is actually part of the English Department. Don’t ask how I obtained this information,” Miranda accessed it for me, of course, with snide ease, “but I have the printouts. I have proof!” I waved the printed intranet pages around for all to see.

            “Give me those!” said the Chair.

            “Oh, shit,” I said, as the Chair levitated and swirled around in the air, disposing herself finally as though she were held aloft by a hostile party who planned on bludgeoning a foe. “I’ll give you your award,” she said

            “Oh, Jesus,” I said, beating a hasty retreat. The colleagues were rapt and terrified. They quavered but wanted blood.

            “Wanna know what happened to Josh?” the Chair asked, in a winded snarl, “I’ll show you what happened to Josh!”

            I fled, screaming.

            The Chair chased me out of the conference room, down the stairs, out of the Bigman building, home of the English Department. (Well, part of it, anyway. The Literature Department, you might say, though it wasn’t quite that either.) I looked back and saw her scarves and earrings trailing behind her as she screeched in my direction.

            “I’ll give you,” she gasped, “your award!”

            We ran out onto the common. It was a cold day in December. Breath steamed from my plump red face and from the Chair’s luxurious seat.

            “We’re dying,” she said. “There are fewer colleagues every year. They all leave for non-profits and banks!” she gasped. “Fewer than ever are choosing our path. And, yet, we are inundated with Writing Center Managers! With cut-rate rhetors, like yourself!”

            “Um, where’s Josh?” I said, hiding behind a lonely dogwood tree.

            “Where he belongs,” she said. “Come ‘mere, you shit!” and she flipped around in the air as though once again hoisted by a prospective bludgeoner. “You smell like a Salvation Army, you know that?” she wheezed, attempting to strike me. Somehow, I dodged the blow and ran away, keeping the tree always between us. Enraged, she struck at me again and smashed herself to bits against the tree.

 

Miranda

 

            Miranda thanked me for my effusive praise and made-up award, which I simply called the Actually Really Good Award, which I typed in 72-point Rockwell font and printed out on a sheet of Cooperswich letterhead. A few weeks later, per her request, I wrote her a glowing recommendation letter, and, in the spring, she transferred to Pepperdine.

           

The Chair

 

            The Chair was repaired in short order and given a generous buyout by the administration. Days later, Josh was spotted in the woods at the edge of campus, dressed in crude leathers and furs, though he retreated when some colleagues approached him. He seemed frightened of people and averse to daylight. A new Chair was brought in to replace the old. He refused to admit compositional laborers to the English Department proper, though he still made us come to all the meetings. He was a plain red office chair, corporate in appearance, and he said he had big plans to modernize the Department. During the first meeting with all of us together, I pretended not to know who or what he was, and I sat on him.

Allan Watts by Lard Alec

TS: Live from the Milkwood Colosseum, in neutral Norwalk, Connecticut, this is Trent Snuffburger welcoming you to the Tuesday Afternoon Classic featuring a showdown between the Intercontinental Basketball Association’s sworn rivals and contenders to the throne, the Newark Raiders and the Poughkeepsie Steamers. I’m joined by color man and gentle giant Fudge Jablone. Fudge, what do you make of today’s matchup?

FJ: Well, Trent, Poughkeepsie is powered by the crystalline beauty of star forward Julian Swann. He’s an art-school dropout who’s since made a canvas of the hardwood.

TS: He certainly is magnificent, isn’t he, Fudge?

FJ: He sure is. He stands six feet, eight inches tall in penny loafers, has cascading and perfectly translucent hair that you can only glimpse under the brightest of lights—

TS: We’ll see it tonight, I hope.

FJ: And the softest bank shot since the Wizard himself, Stu Gaborst, roamed this arena in overalls during the Water Wheel Riots.

TS: Yes, and to the viewers at home, that is Stu’s rotund silhouette you see in the IBA’s logo in the corner of your screen.

FJ: Swann calls em Backboard Bankers, for reasons all his own, and he just flips em in one after another, like an octopus workin a griddle full of flapjacks. He won’t open his eyes until game time, but you can find him out there right now, casting Spauldings into the hoop, like coins into a wishing well.

TS: I wonder what he’s wishing for, Fudge. Another championship for Poughkeepsie?

FJ: The word from assistant coach Bill Barge is he’s too superstitious for any of that. All he asks is the chance to prove himself against the greats, like Newark’s brooding titan Frank Bigtonski.

TS: Call him Frank the Tank and he’ll kick a dent in your Buick, ain’t that right, Fudge?

FJ: Everyone wants to call him that, but everyone knows better. He was raised a Yahweh’s Witness and says his people don’t believe in nicknames. He’s got hair like sauerkraut and a nose like a rotten gourd. I asked him one time, “Say, what if I nicknamed you Frank Bigtonski, what would ya think of that?” Took him a day or two to respond.

TS: Well, what did he say?

FJ: I dunno, he kinda went from being quiet to being silent. Nothing was said, nothing transpired, except this mood slid off him like an avalanche from a mountain top, and next thing I knew I was waking up in Union City, in the foyer of the old Tissue Museum on Depot Street. The janitor was dousing me with mop water, saying, “You’re burning up! You’re burning up!” I felt great.

TS: Frank sure is a singular case, but his games just bacon and eggs, isn’t it, Fudge?

FJ: Bigtonski likes to take his man down on the low block, tie him to sawhorse down there and just beat the ribbons out of em until he can scare the ball into the hoop.

TS: As if there weren’t enough violence on TV already, Frank and the Newark Raiders are all set to ransack the great mid-sized city of Norwalk and anyone who dares defend the Raiders’ rim. We’ll be back after this break.

>>> 

TS: And we’re back. Hope you liked that song and dance number about America’s hottest new coo-PAY, the Daimler New Orleans: 28 feet long, built of repurposed rebar, and it runs on turnip juice as well as grade E diesel. I hear that it’s legal to drink and drive in the New Orleans, is that right, Fudge?

FJ: As if you were out for a sip-n-stroll on Bourbon Street itself. Be merry and open carry, as they say. Personally, I like to do my drinkin at the YMCA.

TS: They got a brand-new sauna over there, ay, Fudge?

FJ: They do, indeed. Night manager pays me a silver dollar each time I spit on those sizzling rocks.

TS: Well, it looks like the Raiders have rolled their siege-craft out to midcourt.

FJ: They’re not gonna wait for the announcer to hail the starting five man by man. They insist that they are all one unit.

TS: So, I’ll just read the names for the viewers at home. Standing 5’8” and ascending from the University of the Meadowlands is playground legend and point man Tim Sneeb. He’s like a spider on roller skates, Sneeb is. Starting two guard is the battle-tested whippet from Hilton Head, South Carolina, the 6’3” Don Lawndale. Never went to college and I think that was a wise choice. By the way, the man loves his conditioner. Look at those locks jostle and bounce. At small forward is the defensive ace, Maurice Rice, from Urbane University. Power forward is the utility man Snog Preekins. Snog never shoots and seldom fetches a board but still plays about 30 minutes a game.

FJ: College, for people like Snog, is frankly irrelevant.

TS: Couldn’t agree more. He went straight from the potato farm to the pros. And currently anchoring the great state of Connecticut to the receding shelf of the Northern Appalachian Mountains is two-time block champ and that bad odor of a man himself, Frank Bigtonski.

FJ: Frank’s 7’1” and he’s just made of rebounds.

TS: Each of his shoulders looks like James Caan. He went to school at Police University in Chicago.

FJ: His mother was a cop, and his father was an L-train. Frank’s averaging 20 of everything: points, rebounds, and missed free throws per game.

TS: He’d average 20 fouls if the refs’d let him.

FJ: His opponents probably think that’s already the case.

TS: (Cocking a hand to his ear) What’s that? Why, I’ll be. That brief, listless murmur means that the Poughkeepsie Steamers’ starting five has been announced in a colorless rush by that no-good scab of a PA man they have here in, Norwalk.

FJ: That man hates the roundball about as much G. Gordon Liddy hates huarache sandals.

TS: I guess I’ll rattle off the Steamers too while the mic is still warm. At six feet even is “The Priest” Floyd Word, Poughkeepsie’s point guard—only dribbles the ball with his right hand, but he gets by. He’s a 10-year vet out of Marshall McLuhan State College. The starting two guard for the Steamers is the 6’2’ deep threat, Ron Wine.

FJ: Mustache lookin nice and wet on Ron today. He evidently warmed up pretty hard in the layup line.

TS: Ron went to Des Moines State before it blew away. Starting small forward is Trooper Ginftd, all of 6’7” and 160 pounds of him.

FJ: He’s a lite beer man, for sure.

TS: He was a film major at Wharton’s. Trooper goes on sabbatical in between field goal attempts, but the starting power forward for Poughkeepsie sure tries to make up for it. That’s right, it’s the Golden Raisin himself, Julian Swann.

FJ: Swann’s got a 90-inch wingspan and he’s built like a suspension bridge.

TS: Looks like a harp when he’s running the floor. My, oh, my.

FJ: He leads the league in scoring with 40 a game but he’s all swat when he’s roaming the paint on D.

TS: Nobody knows how old Swann is for sure, but he fled Townsend University with ¾ of a fine arts degree and a minor in Peace Studies back in ‘68. Then he dodged the draft and started barnstorming through Alberta with the Rote Armee Runde Kugel Spielers, where he learned his trade. Just about drove Hoover to an early grave, I hear.

FJ: Some say he did!

TS: And at center and a gloomy six feet ten inches tall is the Hudson River Bargeman, Karl Winterheat. Karl spent three freshman years at Yeast College out there in Dutchess County. 

FJ: An unaccredited university.

TS: But Winterheat’s all heart. Wears those phone-book-sized knee pads so he can endlessly dive for loose balls.

FJ: Karl once told me there’s nothin he likes more than skinning his thighs on the varnish and slamming sweatband first into a fan who’s takin a big slurp of keg-fresh Genesee.

TS: He loves the amber shower, that’s for certain.

FJ: Now, Bigtonski and Swann have never acknowledged the other’s presence. Not directly.

TS: Yes, they each have their own plane, their own gravity well, it seems. And, ha, Frank’s got the edge there, I should think.

FJ: Yes, but Swann is never just where he seems to be.

TS: He flickers in and out of traffic like a deck of cards God’s shuffling to pass the time…

FJ: Now the difference in this contest might come down to coaching. The Steamers are helmed by Rod Drisaradops, a mystic of sorts from the Poconos.

TS: He’s a visionary.

FJ: Rod’s got a steamer trunk full of basketball arcana he reads by candlelight. He even has a tarot card for every man on the team. Says Swann’s card is—

TS: You can’t say it, Fudge, not on TELEVISION!

FJ: Well, let’s just say that his coaching philosophy is exotic, even by IBA standards. In crunch time, the Steamers like to run an offence called the Alan Watts that seems…almost like a joke at first.

TS: A set piece, yeah.

FJ: But then it chugs into shape…like a train rising from the sea.

TS: The Priest extends that long index finger of his.

FJ: (Laughing) He’s got three of them.

TS: Ha, ha, ha.

FJ: It sures gives Bigtonski the fits.

TS: Frank’s more of a logician, I’d say.

FJ: A logician of sweat and silence. His grotesque figure is a kind of proof, impossible to ignore. Even Swann can’t eschew the brutal fact of the man for long.

TS: No, he can’t. And Newark’s got no shortage of leadership down on their own bench.

FJ: The Raider’s head coach, Don DeMune, is a jukebox full of plays.

TS: Put a nickel in him and he’s tattooing Xs and Os all over the court.

FJ: DeMune’s got eyes in his head. (Holding both hands, one clutching a long slender microphone, to his eyebrows) He’s as watchful as a cliff full of ravens. Knows there’s a chance Swann will fluctuate into his Net.

TS: There’s the horn. The action is about to commence.

FJ: “Action.”

TS: Indeed. The ref’s got the ball at midcourt and he’s prepared to launch it.

FJ: Whoa, that one’s a beauty.

TS: A long, parabolic toss like that one favors Swann, I think.

FJ: Could be, but big Frank knows his geometry.

TS: The men are crouching, probing their own densities for signs of what’s to come.

FJ: Swann nicks it, and—

TS: The ball resides with the Priest. The Priest dangles it one handed and makes for the sanctum.

FJ: No word from the shot clock yet?

TS: No word at all.

FJ: The Priest twirls a finger to initiate a little choreography and then dashes into the key. He’s looking to draw a crowd.

TS: The Raiders are like paparazzi. Ho-lee smokes.  They’ve got moped feet. It doesn’t look pretty but they’ll snatch your purse.

FJ: Swann runs baseline, as far as I can tell.

TS: It’s a maneuver, alright.

FJ: He sets a pick for Trooper on the strong side block. Trooper breaks free and looks like he sees a pie cooling on the sill. The Priest dishes him a slice of leather.

TS: Trooper’s got it and he’s open. He whispers the Lord’s Prayer just as fast as he can and—

FJ: Up he goes. The notch of that man’s wrist! Boy, that ball’s got a story to tell.

TS: Two points for the Steamers.

FJ: I can’t find Swann!

TS: We’ll find him, we’ll find him.

FJ: Big Frank’s yankin his elbows back and forth, his feet following close behind.

TS: He’s like a ghost ship about to crash into a pier.

FJ: Frank parallel parks on the elbow, which is a bit of a frontier for him. He’s usually no good from more than a foot away from the rim.

TS: He likes to keep his nose in the basket.

FJ: Sneeb feeds it to Bigtonski. The ball disappears like a child’s orange balloon into a storm cloud. Hup! There it is again. And Frank’s edging methodically toward the paint for a shove shot.

TS: Yes, Frank’s long enough that he can shove the ball straight down into its target. Which is the case here, as he grabs his first deuce of the night, and the Raiders are on the board.

FJ: Swann inbounds it to the Priest and—damn it, where did he go?

TS: You hear that?

FJ: Just the faintest trickle of electricity?

TS: Yes, yes, it cuts through all the ambient chatter of the crowd somehow.

FJ: Swann is just a streak of particles at this point. The clock’s vanished. The Steamers are getting into their set—looks like they’re running the Dancing Wu Li Masters this time, but still no sign of Swann.

TS: Poughkeepsie doesn’t seem too worried. He’ll surface eventually.

FJ: Frank is down there lookin for something to chew. He does not have a penchant for theory.

TS: Doesn’t believe in what he can’t see, and yet Swann tests his prejudices, doesn’t he?

FJ: He tests all his opponents. Frank’s only a man, after all.

TS: There’s Swann, I see him!

FJ: Climbing a ladder of wind.

TS: The Priest rainbows the ball up into the mesosphere and Swann… catches it and sends a ferocious dunker spiraling through the iron! Incredible. It was like calligraphy, the way he scissor-kicked into position.

FJ: The crowd’s rustling like a prairie fire now.

TS: Another stiletto dunker from Swann and Norwalk will blow its top!

FJ: As many of the folks at home undoubtedly know, Norwalk is endowed with some strange characteristics.

TS: Very strange, Fudge.

FJ: It’s a land of anomalies. Swann has never played here, but I sense that he’s unlocked something, a privileged facet of the game. What we see tonight may be basketball, but it may be something entirely new.

TS: Snog Preekins dribbles the ball off his size 18s and possession carroms back to Poughkeepsie. 

FJ: Looks like the scorer’s table is having a hard time totaling the points. Swann’s introduced a unique set of variables to their calculations.

TS: Yes, the best they can do at the moment is vacillate between awarding the Steamers 4 and 8 points.

FJ: Could be that neither of those is the true score, or perhaps both simultaneously.

TS: Newark Coach Don DeMune stomps the butt of his Vantage cigarette with his galoshes—

FJ: Weather calls for a wintry mix tonight.

TS: And screeches for a timeout.

FJ: The refs are telling him that time is relative. Don’s not taking it too well.

TS: They never do. You can sound the buzzer all you want, but that won’t stop the Swann.

FJ: You know, Trent, Swann’s never been to New York City. Says he always gets lost in the Lincoln Tunnel—comes out somewhere upstate.

TS: And it’s the only place he does get lost, if I recall.

FJ: Well, you never know for certain what’s in another man’s heart, another man’s head. Maybe Swann is lost constantly and just lucks his way into greatness from one second to the next.

TS: It was luck that originally brought Ron Wine to the attention of Poughkeepsie’s vaunted scouting crew. He was painting chain link fences a rusty orange for the board of education. All the research at the time suggested that constant exposure to dilapidation would make kids want to play less and study more.

FJ: Boy, that’s an old song. And I sure wish they’d quit singin it.

TS: And one day a young boy on a school playground tossed a ball at Ron’s head, just for spite. Ron caught it and persuaded it into the hoop, all without lowering his brush.

FJ: I didn’t know the Steamers hired school kids to do their scouting—

TS: No, no. The scout was nearby, changing a tire, eating a sandwich out of a brown paper bag, covered in cigar ash from pate to foot, combing the neighborhood for pluck and fundamentals.

FJ: He certainly found it in old Ron. Ron’s a talented man. Knows his way around the hibachi. 

TS: Well, Fudge. It looks as though the scorer’s table has peered into the abyss. Swann’s diagramming something with chalk and slate. Who knows if any man, let alone a lowly Norwalk scab, can summon the sublime concentration necessary to digest Swann’s revelations.

FJ: Could be that the game already happened and Swann’s just letting them know.

TS: The fans don’t like it when that happens, but what can you do, Fudge?

FJ: Well, Swann is a man with receipts. He keeps records of all his peregrinations. If he somehow drifted into another dimension where today is tomorrow, he can probably furnish a notarized box score to settle his case.

TS: Swann’s a sight to behold but he’s not always easy to see.

FJ: My ears are ringing.

TS: They’re tapping out some kind of code on the buzzer. I’m guessing they’ll split the difference and call it halftime.

FJ: That’s right, Trent. A new score’s been posted: Steamers 66 and Raiders 33. Everyone’s heading to the locker rooms.

TS: Hard to say what goes on in there.

FJ: Impossible.

TS: Half time it is! Well, folks, we’ll see you on the other side.

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FJ: That’s what’s so hard about this job, Trent. You can’t just say that one thing happened but not the other.

TS: For example, my wife left me, but she’s still at home.

FJ: Still in love with you?

TS: Yes, deeply in love, but…missing entirely just the same. I look for her and there she is, but, even so, she’s gone.

FJ: It’s a sad story, Trent, but is it all the sadder for being inexplicable?

TS: No, I wouldn’t say that. I must speak up for mystery. A man has to know enough to mourn, to know what he’s missing. But knowing everything is no salve, no cure.

FJ: Have you read the Russians?

TS: Hmm?

FJ: Tolstoy (waves his hands), Turgenev.

TS: Oh, yes, yes.

FJ: Say, did I mention that I’ve got a new car? It’s no Daimler New Orleans coo-PAY, but it’s the belle of the block, where I come from.

TS: What kind of car is that, Fudge?

FJ: A Negotiator.

TS: (Whistles). That’s a wicked piece of steel.

FJ: It’s more than a car to me. It is my ride and my destination. It is where I want to go. Do you know what that does to a man?

TS: No, no. It’s…unimaginable.

FJ: Now that my dreams have come true, I will know no peace.

TS: What color is it, Fudge, if you don’t mind my asking?

FJ: Red, with a tan interior. Looks great in the rain.

TS: Makes your pray for rain, does it?

FJ: For restlessness and rain, Trent. My burdens.

TS: The desolation…

FJ: My goodness...

TS: Should we discuss the concessions?

FJ: There are hotdogs, chili dogs, cheese dogs, Italian sausages, knackwurst, soft pretzels, potato chips, popcorn, caramel corn, root beer, cola, lemon soda, and beer.

TS: What kind of beer, Fudge?

FJ: Schlitz, Miller. And Genesee.

TS: Do you think they’re proud of the mess they make here in Norwalk?

FJ: Can I tell you something I’m proud of, Trent?

TS: I’d be honored, Fudge.

FJ: I’m proud to have led the Stoughton Gorillas to a state title back in ‘46. Proud to be the first man in Massachusetts not to try to kick in his foul shots, but shoot them with my hands, like normal basketball shots, instead.

TS: I’m with you Fudge, 100%.

FJ: I’m proud that I got all my neighbors to stop dumping their trash on the golf course.

TS: Right in the hazards, I’m sure.

FJ: And I’m proud that I graduated from Stone House College with a 2.3 in Patronage and Public Works. Proud that I led the Stoners to a perfect record and became the first man in school history to make more than 30% of his field goals. Proud to go pro.

TS: And play with the Chicago Sausage Makers all those years.

FJ: Before my kneecaps fell off, yes. And I’m proudest of all that I once jumped so high that George Mikan himself released a sweeping hook shot directly into my crotch, almost ending my life.

TS: Boy you could sky back then, Fudge. The Reds must have thought you were a nuke.

FJ: But we won the game. I could take on Mikan from time to time. But I look on The Golden Raisin out there, and I tremble. And I look at that big miserable dreadnought Bigtonski and I reach for my golf clubs. I think to myself, there are better games than this, more civilized.

TS: But none so transporting. Viewers may wonder how a second-rate professional league such as the IBA could give rise to two transcendent forces like those we see on the floor today.

FJ: Well, it’s the freedom to experiment our players have. To find their own way. The IBA’s got a unique set of parameters, which has proved fertile ground for dreamers and obsessives. The league’s like a cheap motel filled with exotic fauna and priceless art.

TS: Here in the IBA the rules are sometimes referred to as the 11^th man on the court.

FJ: They are peculiar.

TS: Defenders must keep one hand in their pockets at all times.

FJ: There are many fine Italian Americans in the IBA.

TS: The ball is softer and bouncier than in the NBA. The court’s almost as wide as it is long. The lane is just a streak of action painting running from the baseline to the charity stripe, so big fellas can really graze near the hoop.

FJ: And they can score reverse baskets by swatting made shots back out through the ring.

TS: Yes, and, finally, slam dunkers are worth 2 ½ points, which makes Swann as deadly as an adder in this league.

FJ: Here he comes.

TS: The Herald.

FJ: He shines like a trumpet.

TS: Epiphanies fluttering off him like bubbles from a child’s pipe.

FJ: And here comes that hoagie Bigtonski. Looks like he cut himself shaving.

TS: Could be sauce. Terrible, whatever it is.

FJ: It is terrible, but what more could you want?

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TS: Winterheat inbounds to the Priest to start the second half. The Priest advances. He circles a finger around his ear three times to call for The Whole Earth Catalog, which sends Swann effervescing to the high post, running his man into Wine’s screen. Swann catches a bounce pass with his left and casts his magisterial gaze back over his right shoulder to survey the scene, with Snog lapsing toward his assignment belatedly. Bigtonski snarls and shades off his man to double just as Swann lofts the ball into the air for a swooping Winterheat who feasts on an alley-oop dunker! Oh, boy. Snog hurries back and tries to bat the dunked ball through the rim for a reverse hoop but whiffs. Dejected, he sulks to the baseline and inbounds to Sneeb. Sneeb receives the donation and makes his way conversationally up the court. He says something affectionate to Drisaradops about the cut of his blazer and Drisaradops gives a little speck of a nod in return. Sneeb beams and floats an entry pass to Rice at the high post. Rice gives it right back to the slashing Sneeb, who draws two defenders and dishes to Frank underneath. Winterheat tries to rebut him, but it’s no use. Bigtonski shoves it home and shaves two points off the sizable Steamer lead.

FJ: By now the Raiders have got to start scheming. They need an Eventuality.

TS: But Swann is gliding forth and just like that he’s eaten up most of the court, shedding Raiders as he proceeds. He flicks up one of his immaculate Backboard Bankers and it dashes home like a Minnesota Fats trick shot from cushion to pocket in a hummingbird’s heartbeat. DeMune tantrums toward the scorers’ table and successfully calls for a timeout. He’s gotta think big if they’re to achieve parity with Poughkeepsie.

FJ: Now, this is just a rumor, Trent, but I’ve heard that there’s a clause in the IBA founding documents which give the Raiders room for hope.

TS: Oh?

FJ: Allegedly, the Charter contains some…conditions, written in a sort of cipher, which could tilt the game in their favor.  The story goes that IBA founder Reinhold LaRouche peppered the document with obscure parentheticals written in Hunnic runes.

TS: You don’t say.

FJ: Evidently, he did this to agitate his brother, I forget his name, who’s always fulminating about a conspiratorial elite, you know, ruling from the shadows. It was supposed to be a joke on Reinhold’s part.

TS: But we’re not talkin yucks here, I gather.

FJ: We are not. His brother paid a disgraced philologist named Antonius LeMoyne to translate the Hunnic, and while most of it was gibberish, there did appear to be one major and entirely accidental stipulation folded into the Bill of Rules. It said, “Great and glorious raiders are favored from on high, and their subjects must give them double what they require.” It’s obviously just a bit of campfire rationalization for the Huns’ barbarous conquests, but in context, it appears to mean that Raiders’ baskets should be counted twice. Now, this interpretation has never been tested in a rules committee review. But I think it’s got legs. If DeMune is wise to it, he might try to argue that what looks like a blowout is actually a tied game.

TS: Does Drisaradops know about this? Does Swann?

FJ: If they do, they’re keeping quiet. But I did see some men passing out pamphlets disparaging the Rockefellers over by the Raiders’ bench before halftime. I wonder…

TS: It looks like DeMune has pigeonholed head ref Ray Dibridididio at the scorer’s table and he’s layin it on pretty thick.

FJ: Don’s got some annotations to share.

TS: Yes, he has an armful of scrolls and reference books to help plead his case.

FJ: Dibridididio glances through the materials and chirps some terse instructions to the men behind the switches. The lightbulbs are sprinting toward their new values and, well, well, well.

TS: It’s a tie game.

FJ: Drisaridops is all limestone. If this sudden turn of events bothers him in any way, he’ll never betray it.

TS: The horn sounds. Just seconds are left in the game.

FJ: That clock has some explaining to do.

TS: Don’t get your hopes up. The Steamers are not going to resort to lawfare at the moment. They are huddling and staying loose, doing noodle bends and knee thrusts. Cutting edge stuff.

FJ: Drisaridops rings a tiny bell that sets the Steamers aquiver. They seem to have retreated to some post-hypnotic state, eyes glazed, bones gone mellow.

TS: Only Swann appears to retain control of his conscious mind. He shines like a Cadillac amidst a sea of junkers.

FJ: The buzzer erupts. The moment has come.

TS: The Raiders seem pretty pleased with themselves, Fudge. They’re still over by the bench, high fiving flamboyantly and patting each other on the back.

FJ: They’ve gotta realize that DeMune’s department of dirty tricks hasn’t won them anything yet. They need to order one more bucket for the road. No easy feat against the Swann.

TS: By chance, the listless Preekins is the first to make his way back to the floor. Dibridididio impatiently herds him out of bounds at half court and thrusts the ball into hands.

FJ: Snog is not a trustworthy inbound man, to say the least.

TS: The Steamers have got their tentacles up and it looks like the pressure has got him spooked. Preekins panics and inbounds the ball to a beatific Priest who immediately snaps an immaculate bounce pass to Wine to avoid a trap. Wine returns the favor, and the Priest applauds the ball up the court for the Steamers’ final run toward the rim.

FJ: He unfurls one or more index fingers as though pointing to a lightbulb that’s just switched on above his head.

TS: They’re running the Alan Watts!

FJ: Now, viewers at home will find the next 10 seconds or so disturbing. Though Watts has never, to my knowledge, practiced or condoned it himself, Poughkeepsie is about to engage in some hyper-aggressive Primal Scream Therapy.

TS: Perhaps it’s a diversion, Fudge. Or maybe it just helps them clear their heads. In any case, they’re lashing themselves to pieces out there! Cursing their parents and guidance counselors, ruing a lost age of atavistic candor when man could portray his urges without shame. Wine screeches that he’s wasted his life since he gave up the piano. Trooper tousles the hair of a short, invisible friend, alternately sobbing and bulging his eyes. Winterheat is ripping a doll to shreds. The Priest has gotten a hold of the hot-dog man’s mustard bottle, and it’s a big one. He squirts a large yellow pentagram onto the floor under the Raiders’ hoop. The mop boys can’t be too happy about that.

FJ: 8…9…10! The Steamers recover their wits and scatter to their assigned posts. Swann finds himself in the center of a box with each of his teammates at the corners. No one has the ball per se, but Poughkeepsie retains possession.

TS: Ho, ho, big Frank is frothing mad. When he can’t see the ball, he’s like a border collie listening to Maria Callas on some brand-new Sansui speakers.

FJ: He’s taking his frustrations out on his teammate Lawndale, grabbing him by the scruff and telling him to call Lost and Found to see if they have ball.

TS: Well, Lawndale can hang up the phone because the Priest has summoned it from parts unknown. Wine rushes in from the corner to screen for the Priest as Trooper and Winterheat lock arms with Swann.

FJ: This has the Raiders running in elliptical orbits around the three-man configuration, scrabbling for position.

TS: Now the Steamer troika unlocks their arms and commences a lightning-fast weave, further confounding the matters defensively.

FJ: Swann cuts toward center court before REVERSING COURSE and seething like an ice pick straight at that glacier Bigtonski.

TS: Frank gets down into a three-point stance.

FJ: But Swann is no ruffian. He evades Bigtonski with a leaping corkscrew to the big man’s left—

TS: Frank’s got no sense of smell on that side; he’s helpless!

FJ: And suddenly Swann is swaying gently in an invisible hammock high above the rim—

TS: The Priest dishes it to him and Swann spikes it through the hoop for a saintly one-handed dunker that gives the Steamers a two-and-a-half-point lead.

FJ: The buzzer keens! Poughkeepsie has won THE BIG GAME.

TS: The crowd of 1,100 goes mad. They storm the floor, trying to tear the laces out of Swann’s shoes.

FJ: Swann bounds and gleams toward the tunnel on his way to the locker room, where he and the rest of the Steamers will play tag with champagne until late this Tuesday evening.

TS: Big Frank has cornered a hot-dog vendor. Looks like he’s thirsty. He drinks hot-dog water out of his cupped hands between screams of rage.

FJ: The FEDs are on the court, now, looking for Swann—president Ford’s qualified immunity be damned. They’ll never find him.

TS: Not if he’s got a basketball in his hands.

FJ: Well, I expect that Swann will retreat to plains of central Canada and accept his Championship MVP trophy in absentia once again.

TS: By now he’s already got five golden Gaborsts up on his mantel. What’s wrong with one more?

FJ: Indeed. Reinhold LaRouche has taken the microphone to announce…the IBA’s bankruptcy. Says Bigtonski’s contract’s been sold to a brewery in Wisconsin and that Swann’s rights have been flipped to a new league up in Greenland. Oh, they’re gonna repossess my Negotiator, aren’t they, Trent?

TS: It’s okay, Fudge. It’s a big ocean out there. We’ll spear ya another tuna.

FJ: Maybe (snaps his fingers) Trent and I could take our talents for talk to the tundra?

TS: That’s the spirit, Fudge. If the Swann flies north for the summer, so shall we.

FJ: It turns out that the Poughkeepsie Steamers are the IBA’s valedictory champs, and it was an honor to document their reign. This is Fudge Jablone.

TS: And I’m Trent Snuffburger. The Newlywed Game is next.

FJ: (Waves hesitantly) So long.