Peter Fawthrop

A Little Stem

Novel extract

A Letter for Toadwipe

One does not enter El Carnero high school from the main street unless one veers ruthlessly off the sidewalk, stomps through dense shrubbery, gains traction for an uphill climb over loose sand and gravel, and approaches the chain link fence to stretch the rim of a jagged-edged aperture. The fencing cordons off all of the school except the east parking lot entrance. Through the years, vandals with bolt cutters have persevered in attempts at its annihilation, while handymen have retaliated with its mending. Together they have designed an admirable specimen of patchwork engineering.

 Upon success in squeezing through the wire, to the glory of hundreds of revered truants – escapees and returnees – who have taken passage before, one would find the next obstacle to be mats of noxious puncturevines erupting from dry crusted dirt, lying menacingly in wait. Delicate yellow flowers belie an arsenal of goat heads which, were they to ensnare the trespasser, would bestow visual evidence of criminality. After plucking burrs from shoes, socks, and pants, the going would get easier with soft sand leading to the coral red track which encircles the manicured grass of the baseball field.

At 5:30 am on Monday, the blush ribbon of dawn crowns the Sandia mountains nestled behind El Carnero. Morning sprinklers have left a haze across the green field. Lights on posts click off and a raven glides to perch atop one to croak and caw. Cheerleaders separate into groups of bases and flyers to practice pyramid stunts. Runners orbit the track, pant, kneel, swig blue electrolyte pick-me-up shots. Coach Merzeltwerp stands at a picnic table with his back to the athletes. He blows his whistle and shouts, ‘Give me another lap,’ as he pushes the knob of a two gallon Igloo jug to replenish his foam cup with coffee. Then he ambles over to slump into his lawn chair for a self-served temple massage.

Concrete steps lead up to the campus. If an undiscerning gum chewer were walking them and feeling particularly desperate, they have only to swipe their hand along the bottom of either of the steel orange handrails for a bounteous variety of dehydrated wads and flavors from which to choose – though watermelon Bubble Yum has become increasingly invasive, leaving Big Red and Fruit Stripe feeling glum and displaced. The first building uphill is the cafeteria. Large vents from its rear blow out hot waves fragranced with beef, egg, cheese, tater tots, green beans, soured milk, and food waste already half-evolved into compost. Inside the cafeteria are long tables scattered with early arrivals. One small group plays UNO. A student sitting alone has separated the wax cover from his morning dessert of crisped rice and peanut butter topped with a spread of melted chocolate, served chilled. This Albuquerque cafeteria staple is called a Gold Bar and the student skillfully maintains hypnosis by a Nintendo Game Boy while intermittently shoving portions of the bar into his mouth. Two students are frantically consulting hulking science books to complete handouts they neglected over the weekend, which are due at the start of first period.

In the courtyard, the ROTC officer leads drills. The marching band rehearses. Clarinets squeak, drumsticks paradiddle-diddle, cymbals crash, trombones buzz, the tuba breaks wind (its player does, too).

The scene is set for just another week of school, albeit the next to last until summer vacation and so there is an elevated electricity across the campus, a spirited race through assemblies and year-end tournaments, finals, and yearbook signings. Outside, everything is ordinary for a Monday. 

Up the courtyard stairs by the parking lot was the administrative building. At 6 am, Napoleon the custodian was unlocking doors and turning the office lights on. At 6:30 am, three secretaries arrived and began making copies and phone calls. At 6:45, Principal Toadwipe arrived and greeted all of them. Over the weekend, he wrote a letter of thanks to parents, expressing praise for a delightful prom and informing them of upcoming end of year events. He could not wait for them to read his letter. At 6:50 am, he asked his head secretary, Roxy, to print copies for each classroom. She noted that he was unusually cheerful this early. She took the letter and turned toward the copying machine, but then remembered she had a letter to give to him, too.

‘Someone put this on my desk for you just after you left Friday.’ She handed over a manila envelope, folded in half with the same message written in red Sharpie on both sides. Because the envelope was laminated many times over with clear heavy duty packaging tape, the message was blurred, like goldfish just under the water’s surface. But the words were large and, read as a whole, unmistakable: ‘ASAP / FOR TOADWIPE ONLY / CONFIDENTIAL’.

‘Who put this on your desk?’

‘I don’t have a clue. It wasn’t here before I clocked out.’

‘Did you clock out early?’

‘In six years have I ever?’

‘So it’s a mystery.’ Toadwipe chomped on a corner of the envelope. He tugged and shredded a portion of it with his teeth. Roxy dashed over to a woven basket of faux blue roses and yellow daisies on her desk. They were polyester fabric caps on pens inserted into a green foam brick. She grabbed a pair of scissors stuck in among them and returned to Toadwipe.

‘May I perform the honor?’

‘Ptooey!’ A sliver of tape flew off his tongue. 

‘Which will prevail? Dentures or sensibility?’

Toadwipe held out the envelope. She took it and delicately trimmed the top edge and then a side edge and tried to unfold it.

‘Tough little bugger.’ Roxy looked up to see Toadwipe walking backward into his office. ‘Don’t you want to see what’s inside?’

 ‘It could be explosive. No sense in both of us getting scorched.’

 ‘Oh, right. Yes, I’ll take one for the team.’ She trimmed a third edge, unfolded and pressed the envelope out flat, and put her fingers inside. Just as she began pulling out a sheet of paper, Toadwipe ran up, tsk-tsked and yanked it.

 ‘Nice try, roaming eyes. If the custodian’s resigning, he sure played me for a fool with his goofy smile this morning.’

 ‘Howard wouldn’t quit.’

 ‘Roxy, I used to be an undercooked souffle like you and possessed a gullibility like yours  with a center that’s all gooey and leaky. The trick is I grew up. Course, you’re older than I am but somehow you managed to never fully crisp on top. We should send you back into the oven. I’ve handled my share of deceitful staff over the years. Slick grins and clammy handshakes at the interview. Proclamations of destinies and such. ‘Oh, yes, my parents told me, ‘Son, you were born to unlock doors and remove germs from surfaces.’ Do you know, a guy once came in and said he wanted part-time work because he needed to build a career as a lounge singer. I said, ‘Do you know the meaning of commitment? Are you a custodian or are you a performer?’ He started crooning When You Wish Upon a Star. I said, ‘Go wish on all the stars you can find… off these premises, sir.’ The ones I have hired performed their duties well, tolerably at least, up until the day they didn’t. That day always comes. It may come as a phone call, or as an absence or evasion. Once came as a suicide, which was most disappointing because they were only in their thirties. Or forties I guess. That guy could polish a desk better than any custodian I’ve had. Climbed ladders and replaced bulbs in 60 seconds. But he had a habit of weeping in closets. That’s where they found him. In the janitor’s closet. He was what I’d call a three and a half star employee but I still find it hard to forgive him, leaving no warning at all and every trash barrel full. Be thankful you didn’t work here at that time. It was a nightmare you’d find hard to shake, a morning you wouldn’t want to have seen. Or smelled.’

‘What smelled, the trash barrels or his body?’

‘Who can tell which was which. Regardless of how that day comes, I sometimes think they share the same cause. All that close contact with the purple degreaser changes them, somehow. It doesn’t just break down the grease… it scours the facade. Exposes truth. One of those truths is an acceptance that the only joy a bottom feeder can ever feel is of providing a service to others. The ones who have stars in their eyes, thinking that this is a means to a different end – some unfulfilled dream on the side – get a reality check. When you’re forty years old, scrubbing slop off another man’s toilet, it’s better to lay dreams to rest.  

Roxy sucked in her lips and turned her head down at an angle. She scratched the side of her nose. The aforementioned purple degreaser emanated from the copy room. The room’s door was open. Howard had stopped mid-wring of a mop in a yellow bucket. His rubber-gloved hands were slipping from the mop handle. With a forearm, he pushed up his oversized eyeglasses, and swiped his sleeve across. His glasses fell back into place, if a touch crooked, and through them, his moistened little eyes peered.

Toadwipe met his gaze across the distance, gave a shrug, and turned back to Roxy.

‘Anyway, cheers on opening this for me.’ Toadwipe walked into his office. He closed the door. 

Ten minutes later, the door creaked open. He stepped a foot outside, pressed his back against the door and gripped its handle to stabilize himself, as one might take hold of a tree branch at land’s edge over a pond swarming with alligators. He scanned the office from one desk to the next. A couple of parents sat in the waiting area by a vending machine. Roxy walked out of the copy room, whistling. She carried a hefty stack of copies which she dropped on the front of the desk and then walked around to her swivel rolling chair. She opened a drawer, took out a floppy disc and put it in her Apple Macintosh. She lifted her tortoise shell readers on their neck strap to her mouth and breathed on them. She plucked a tissue to wipe the fog and then used the tissue to dust the corners of the computer screen. While doing so, she caught, through her peripheral vision, the form of Toadwipe. She scrunched her forehead, perplexed at first by the abnormal position of his body, and – upon closer appraisal – his expression of abject terror. He lifted his unoccupied hand up to his suit’s top button and discreetly curled a finger to summon her. Her desk was against the wall, behind those of the other two secretaries. She looked at the back of one of their heads and then shifted a glance to the back of the other. Seeing that they were preoccupied, she stood up, smoothed down the creases on her lap, tugged the hem of her pencil skirt and walked up to Toadwipe. She raised her brow.

He tried to whisper but his voice cracked.

‘Sandals?’ she asked.

He raised his finger to his lip and tried again. 

‘Candles?’

His eyebrows raised and his skull gave a tremor left and right.

‘Do you want to write it down?’

Another tremor.

‘Pictionary?’

‘What part of that word sounds like Pictionary?’

‘I mean to say, do you want to try to draw what you want to tell me?’

Upon his third agitated tremor, Roxy wondered if he were developing a tic.

Having declined her suggestion that he sketch it out, Roxy indulged him in continuing the game of ‘Guess What I’m Whispering’. 

‘Spindle?’ ‘Kindle?’ Kinder.’ ‘Handle?’ ‘Standstill?’ ‘Scoundrel.’ and, nearing his final state of exasperation, he grumbled the word louder than before. She was beyond any doubt that  he said ‘Scaffold’ and, thrilled to have guessed, forgetting that this was a game whose central rule was surreptitiousness, she clapped her hands and laughed and said, ‘Scaffold! Which one? What’s wrong with the scaffold?’

Toadwipe raised his fists in the air and shouted, ‘Scandal! Scandal, Roxy! SCANDAL! S-C-A-N-D-A-L! The greatest scandal of our time! There is unadulterated evil among us. This school is host to the vilest of scandals. We are doomed! Doomed!’Toadwipe turned, red-faced, seething, to find the parents in the waiting area standing and gazing. A student who was squatting by the vending machine had been in the middle of retrieving a Snickers, but left their arm trapped in the drop box as they turned to witness the scene. The counselor had come out of his office and was watching with his palms to his cheeks. Howard the custodian, who had only a minute prior reclaimed his resolve to mop the floor of the copy room, was again in mid-wring-of-the-mop but lost hold of the stick. When it crashed to the floor, all eyes turned, and Toadwipe found the moment as good as any to peel back into his office, with a slam of the door.