Read Online The November Criminals by Sam Munson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sam Munson
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context of the book, she couldn’t even come up with even a basic translation of it. She just stuttered and uhh ed and umm ed, like some dribbling retard. Ms. Erlacher started looking pissed off. So I stood up, my eyes closed and covered with my left hand, to show I wasn’t even using the book, and ran through what Virgil was saying (not neglecting to point out the startling fact that Aeneas calls his city’s defense against the Greek assault the supremum laborem of Troy, which means both the “worst travail” and the “supreme work”) and even went beyond the fifteenth line. Why stop at the appointed boundary, right? I got all the way to the part about the once-magnificent isle of Tenedos now being a dangerous, wasted harbor before Ms. Erlacher started repeating, “Addison. Addison. Addison, I didn’t call on you. Addison. Addison.” She just went on like that, I kept going, and all these nervous titters fluttered around in my private, eyes-covered darkness. I took pity, though, and stopped talking, and uncovered and opened my eyes. Virginia went back to stammering. Class continued. At the end, as I was walking out, someone called, “Addison. Addison. Addison.” I couldn’t tell if this was meant to mock me or Ms. Erlacher or what. So I did not turn around.
After school let out I went with Digger to the Dump. Technically it’s called Trash Facility 10, or so the clattering sign on its chain-link front gate says. But the attendant’s shed, a compressed-looking house with green-and-white siding and a fake dormer and everything, never holds any attendant, and you can breeze right through the yawning gate without comment or opposition. It’s down by the Potomac, near its eastern border, touching Maryland. It juts out into the water a bit, so there are always cadres of seagulls flinging themselves back and forth above it. You could fish from the edge, if you wanted. There’s this retaining wall, gray with birdshit and vivid with graffiti. We never encountered its writers. Going there was our Friday ritual. It had no name, and she’d introduced it, as she’d introduced me to most of the innovative, freeing things I participated in. We would go there to break glass and ceramics and scream. It started as a test of the Dump’s isolation. Daring—I guess—whatever authority existed to come and chastise us. No one ever showed up. We have performed this test on one hundred of the past one hundred and four Fridays, by my calculations. Which made the Dump, by far, the most reliable thing in my life. This time, with a breeze kicking from the scummy river, we destroyed a gleaming toilet with rebar rods drawn from the sucking earth. We fenced with them for a while, after the destruction, shouting, “En garde.” And then lay panting on the hood of her car.
“I had to listen to another one of Noel’s stories today,” I groaned. She was the only person who knew about that side of my commercial arrangements.
“And you want sympathy?”
“No, I’m just like, I don’t really know what I can do . Right? Get it from some other guy? Right?” I flopped onto my side to look at her face. She was wearing, again, the bright, hard smile she’d flashed after the assembly.
“Don’t complain to me about that senseless shit. Don’t be like obtuse. You’re not obtuse. I mean, you’re kind of obtuse but not that obtuse,” she said, voice pitched low and steady. I taught her that word, I tell you with regret: obtuse . From the past participle of obtundere , “to beat something against something else hard and resistant.” She was not wrong, however. The rubble of the toilet—an American Standard, the most glorious brand—glittered in the afternoon sun.
You’re harboring all kinds of suspicions about my supposed real feelings right now, aren’t you? Digger and I may not have been dating , but I was still concerned for her honor. A concept that also comes in for a lot of ridicule these days. As do most of my beliefs.
After school let out I went with Digger to the Dump. Technically it’s called Trash Facility 10, or so the clattering sign on its chain-link front gate says. But the attendant’s shed, a compressed-looking house with green-and-white siding and a fake dormer and everything, never holds any attendant, and you can breeze right through the yawning gate without comment or opposition. It’s down by the Potomac, near its eastern border, touching Maryland. It juts out into the water a bit, so there are always cadres of seagulls flinging themselves back and forth above it. You could fish from the edge, if you wanted. There’s this retaining wall, gray with birdshit and vivid with graffiti. We never encountered its writers. Going there was our Friday ritual. It had no name, and she’d introduced it, as she’d introduced me to most of the innovative, freeing things I participated in. We would go there to break glass and ceramics and scream. It started as a test of the Dump’s isolation. Daring—I guess—whatever authority existed to come and chastise us. No one ever showed up. We have performed this test on one hundred of the past one hundred and four Fridays, by my calculations. Which made the Dump, by far, the most reliable thing in my life. This time, with a breeze kicking from the scummy river, we destroyed a gleaming toilet with rebar rods drawn from the sucking earth. We fenced with them for a while, after the destruction, shouting, “En garde.” And then lay panting on the hood of her car.
“I had to listen to another one of Noel’s stories today,” I groaned. She was the only person who knew about that side of my commercial arrangements.
“And you want sympathy?”
“No, I’m just like, I don’t really know what I can do . Right? Get it from some other guy? Right?” I flopped onto my side to look at her face. She was wearing, again, the bright, hard smile she’d flashed after the assembly.
“Don’t complain to me about that senseless shit. Don’t be like obtuse. You’re not obtuse. I mean, you’re kind of obtuse but not that obtuse,” she said, voice pitched low and steady. I taught her that word, I tell you with regret: obtuse . From the past participle of obtundere , “to beat something against something else hard and resistant.” She was not wrong, however. The rubble of the toilet—an American Standard, the most glorious brand—glittered in the afternoon sun.
You’re harboring all kinds of suspicions about my supposed real feelings right now, aren’t you? Digger and I may not have been dating , but I was still concerned for her honor. A concept that also comes in for a lot of ridicule these days. As do most of my beliefs.
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