An Eye in the Anti-intellectual Storm

AN EYE IN THE STORM

John Avery wasn’t like the rest of us. We could see that right away. He was too soft, too friendly, too nice; and he talked in an educated way that we weren’t used to. But Connie and I liked him. He was always kind to us. Of course, I rented a house to him, so I had some pecuniary interest in getting along with him. I saw him several times a month: once when he paid the rent, other times if I was over trimming the bushes around his house or mowing the yard or repainting the shutters or doing a pest-control inspection, or if he called me to fix the plumbing or a light fixture or a lock.

He was a new teacher at the high school, and at first the young women in the community were attracted to him because he was educated, made a decent salary and was handsome in a kind of boyish way. All the women began talking about the new handsome teacher.

But it was the women that first turned against him. There’s a folk saying that “women are the conscience of the community,” and we men mostly go along with that because we want peace in the household. We figure we’re too busy earning the daily bread and making ends meet to be watching out for the town, but the women do that very well.

My wife Estelle is kind of the eye in the storm. She isn’t out battering things around. She just sits in the middle and sees what’s going on. Other women talk to her, she listens, and then I get fed what she’s hearing, usually at mealtimes or in bed at night. In fact, after the secretary and the principal of the high school, she had the first sight of the teacher, when he knocked on our door inquiring about the house for rent. She clattered out the back door to the chicken coop where I was cleaning, raking out the old straw, laying down fresh straw. “Freddy, there’s a man here who wants to rent the house.”

Since it was early fall and school began the next week, I guessed, “A teacher?” Since she had a light in her eye and was smiling when she nodded, I added, “Handsome, huh?”

“You could say that.”

I said to Connie, my golden retriever, “Come on, girl, let’s go meet the man.” Connie’s got a workable vocabulary. She trotted happily after me and we both greeted the blond drake standing next to a battered gray Honda. He bent down and patted Connie’s head and scratched her neck. “Beautiful dog,” he said. “What’s its name?”

“Connie.” If Connie liked him, I knew he was probably ok.

Connie and I took him over and showed him the little two-bedroom, one-bath wood-frame house, and I told him how much I wanted to rent it for.

He said, “That’s fine. I’ll take it.”

I said, “What do you teach?’

“Science.”

“Well, listen. Don’t leave any food out because the ants and cockroaches will come in and take over. I check for pests and vermin once a month, but if they bother you, let me know, and I’ll make a special trip.”

Estelle asked me as soon as I got back with the check for the deposit and first month’s rent, “What do you think of him?”

“Seems kind of shy. Connie likes him.”

“We think he’s the hottest thing to come to town in a long time.”

“Been talking to the girls, have you?”

“What else we got to talk about?”

Thereafter began an onslaught by the single, widowed or divorced women of the community toward breaching his boundaries. First were the single women, who thought he’d make a good husband and father, although they knew nothing about him. They looked him over and thought he’d make fine-looking babies. He received a torrent of invitations to church-sponsored events, town-sponsored socials and the JCs, and, although he attended a few of them and danced a little, he never went home with any of the young women or called them later.

Estelle is a member of the First Baptist Church, and I go to some of its sponsored events just to please her, but I have no patience for sitting through a sermon. At one barbeque and dance, I watched John Avery, and to me he seemed reserved, maybe not so much out of shyness, but out of wariness, so I thought he might have gotten slapped around by life and maybe he was older than he looked. I asked Estelle, “How old you think he is?”

“Twenty-two or -three.”

“My guess is older.”

The next week I mowed his yard during a very hot October day, so the sweat poured down my shirt and I had to continually wipe my forehead despite my cap. After an hour, Connie and I paused in the little bit of shade that we could get under the eaves of his home, and he brought out a tall, unsweetened iced tea and handed it to me. And he set down a bowl of cool water for Connie, who lapped it up.

“It’s really hot today,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said and gratefully drank the tea.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Oh, ever since I married Estelle.”

“How long you been married?”

“Going on twenty-six years.”

“That’s a long time. Almost as long as I’ve been alive on the earth.”

I smiled and asked, “How ‘bout you?”

“Once, but it didn’t work out.”

“So many don’t these days. Any children?”

“Two, a girl and a boy.”

“Well, thanks for the tea.” I handed him the empty glass and finished the yard.

I told Estelle, “He’s divorced, near thirty, and has two children.”

After that came the assault of the widows and divorcees. Hurt and injured seeks solace with other hurt and injured. But he didn’t want any of them, evidently, and he could have had them easily. Suffering sometimes needs to reject others’ suffering. The women were befuddled and began to suspect that something was wrong with the man.

Before Thanksgiving, Connie and I dropped by Avery’s place and gave him some snap beans and corn that we had grown in the garden, along with a few fat speckled perch that we had caught in our pond. He thanked us and I asked him what he was doing for the holiday.

“I had an invitation to eat at Ms. Kitchener’s, but I’ve decided to drive to Ft. Lauderdale and spend a few days on the beach.”

“Just as well. Kitchener’s turkeys have a habit of coming out dry. And she over sweetens her pumpkin pie. Well, enjoy yourself.”

While he was gone, Connie and I did a pest-control inspection of his place. It was clean, but I spread some poison in inconspicuous places and saw that he’d taken his school work with him. Other than his clothes, the computer that he had set up on the little desk and a few books, not much in the place was his. His only addition to the décor was a framed poster of Einstein that he had hung in his bedroom. Below the famous face was the famous formula: E=mc2.

During the Christmas holidays, I got a call in the middle of the night from John Avery. He said, “Mr. Sparks, I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but I locked myself out of the house, and I can’t get in without breaking a window. I‘d rather not do that.”

“I’m coming.”

As I pulled up to his house, my headlights shone on two vehicles: his and next to it a sporty little job with New Jersey plates. He and two other young men were standing near his front door. I left Connie in the truck and walked up and said, “Howdy.”

John Avery said, indicating a tall blond fellow as good-looking as he, “This is my brother Stan and his friend Tobey.” Tobey was shorter, darker and very effeminate. “After I locked up the house, I locked my keys in my car. I’m really sorry about this.”

“I hope it doesn’t happen too often.”

“It won’t.”

By then I had registered the smell of alcohol and maybe marijuana, but I’m no expert on that. I unlocked the door and let them in.

John Avery said thanks again. I waved it off and drove home and went back to bed. I had just lain down again when Estelle said, “Was he drunk?”

“No, but been drinking.”

“Was he alone?”

“Two other guys.”

“Hmm?”

“Estelle, go to sleep.”

The next morning I rose to a half-empty bed and in the kitchen found Estelle sitting with the coffee already made. She had even put out Connie’s morning meal, something I usually did. She smiled at me but didn’t say anything, and I knew she’d been up all night mulling over John Avery’s disposition.

In January I heard the talk at Beulah’s Auto Repair where I took my truck to get lubricated. Jimmy Jones, the grease monkey, said to me, “I hear that new teacher’s a fag.”

“Yeah, where’d you hear that?”

“It’s all over town.”

“I bet it is.”

“Well, you seen ‘em together, didn’t you?”

“I saw him with his brother and another guy. That’s all I saw.”

“Well, they stopped in the Ibis and Gar for drinks, and people say that the little guy was a real flamer.”

“Well, I guess it takes one to know one, doesn’t it?”

Jimmy looked annoyed, and he finished the lube job quickly.

At lunch I said to Estelle, “There’s a rumor going round about John Avery being homosexual. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Well, he doesn’t like women . . . evidently . . . and he doesn’t go to church.”

“Did you forget that he’s made two children by a woman?”

“He says, but nobody’s seen those children. Has he even shown you a picture of them?”

“Why would he lie?”

“People do lie.”

“And gossip.”

“Well, we’re worried about the children at the school. Suppose he should seduce them?”

“You’re confusing homosexuality with pedophilia.”

“What’s pedophilia?”

“It’s when an adult is aroused by children.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it because of the evil twinkle it lit in Estelle’s eye. Nothing is more dangerous than a little knowledge, especially if it swirls around town like gospel.

In February, I was weeding the tomatoes, squash and cucumbers when Connie started barking to alert me that the phone was ringing. I pulled off my gardening gloves as I ran and barely made it inside by the tenth ring. The president of the school board Tammy Stallings said, “Hello, Freddy. We’ve got complaints about one of the new teachers at the high school.”

“If you’re calling me, I suppose it’s the science teacher John Avery you mean”

“Yes, it is. Since you rent to him, I wonder if you’ve seen anything suspicious over at his house.”

“No, Ma’am.”

“Seen any drug paraphernalia?”

“No.”

“Seen any fancy boys hanging around?”

“No.”

“But I heard he had two men stay at his place over the Christmas holidays.”

“His brother and his brother’s friend stayed there a few days.”

“Are they gay?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“Have you seen any children hanging around his place?”

“No.”

“Well . . . I know you’ll keep an eye out.”

“Tammy, you haven’t asked about bomb-making equipment or the Communist Manifesto.”

“Did . . . darn you, Freddy. You’re kidding me, right?”

“Right.”

“I know, rumors get started, but I have to check them out. I wouldn’t want folks to think I wasn’t vigilant.”

“Relax. The young man seems quite normal to me.”

Then in March some of the more religious parents got worked up because they heard he was teaching Darwinism.

Outside the grocery store, the card players, despite their irreligious nature, tried just out of meanness to pull me into a discussion of same as Connie and I walked by, me carrying some bread and coffee in a sack. “Freddy, sit down and play a hand,” said “Pepper” Corbett, rubbing his grizzled cheeks with his good hand, the one that hadn’t been caught in the gears of a cable pulley. The damaged other hand was only useful in holding cards or a cigarette – no grip. The others at the table patted Connie, who did her usual tour of greetings counterclockwise around the table.

“You fellows know I don’t gamble.”

“Well, we want to ask you about that pants-chaser teaching at the high school.”

“That rumor hasn’t been confirmed.”

“But it’s true he’s teaching that we came from apes. Do you think we came from apes?”

“I think you formed from fungus in the swamp and learned how to walk and talk in a saloon. You ought to watch the Discovery Channel once in a while instead of sitting in the shade playing cards and drinking beer.”

They howled with laughter. Pepper said, “I don’t have HDTV like you, Freddy. Don’t you believe in creation by God’s hand?”

“I believe all human beings came from the same source. That we’re all connected. Good day, gentleman. Let’s go, Connie”

The speculation about Avery was bubbling and grew throughout April, and although it was just talk, I knew it wasn’t going to stop, not with Estelle in the watch tower and plugged into every other woman in town.

Personally, I thought John Avery was suffering, that his divorce had hurt him and that he had come to our town to get away from the hurt. People handle hurt in different ways. Some take to booze or drugs or sex. Others get lost in their work. Others run to religion for solace. I think Avery was one of those who try to isolate themselves and work through their suffering.

His music was a clue, and in that also he was different from most in the community. Most of the town are country-western fans. The day I trimmed the bushes on Avery’s property, I could see he was inside grading papers and Connie and I could hear softly the sounds of blues coming from inside. Blues and country have a lot in common, but I don’t discuss that fact with anyone else. Both are about relationships and suffering. Both originated from rural areas, although the blues became quickly adopted by cities. Out of the blues came jazz and rock and roll. I learned that by watching a PBS special by that fellow Ken Burns. Even bought a B.B.King CD that Connie and I listen to in my truck.

I figured that John Avery was slowly working his way through the pain and that he would’ve been astounded if he knew the rumors that were swirling around him. I didn’t think he was gay, although his brother probably was.

Unfortunately, the storm was coming and I could do nothing to stop it. The pastors of the community, usually competitive with one another, joined together to pressure the school board to fire him, the women chorused their concerns, and the roughnecks in town were threatening to run Avery out of town with guns and clubs – not because they had anything against him, but that kind of mischief got their juices flowing.

In May I expressed my concern to Estelle. “Honey, you people need to leave John Avery alone.”

She wouldn’t look at me directly, but said between bites of chicken, “It’s bigger than you or me now . . . he just doesn’t fit here . . . he should move on.”

“He’s just a divorcé trying to get a handle on things.”

“His teaching Darwinism . . . that’s got all the churches riled.”

“He’s a science teacher for god’s sake. He’s got to teach science.”

“Well, he can teach it . . . someplace else.”

“Estelle, you’re wrong . . . very wrong.”

Just before summer vacation, Tammy Stallings told John Avery that his contract wouldn’t be renewed. I found out when he paid his last month’s rent. Connie barked to announce the approach of a vehicle and I saw him pulling into our drive and Connie and I went out, so Estelle wouldn’t have to talk to him.

“I guess I’ll be looking for work elsewhere,” he told me as he ruffled Connie’s fur and Connie licked his hands. “It was nice knowing you, Freddy.”

“Likewise,” I said. “You can stay there until you find something else.”

“I’m confused. Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m a good teacher. I’m not sure why they let me go.”

“Let me put it this way, son. You’re bigger than this place. When you’re bigger than the place you’re in, it kind of squeezes you out. It’s no shame on you.”

“Why do you stay?”

“Well, believe it or not, I love Estelle and I’ve made a life here. She’s not a bad woman, but she might’ve been better if we’d ever had children. Besides, Connie loves it here.” Connie barked as if in assent.

Two weeks later on a Saturday in early June, John Avery dropped his key off and left, driving away in the battered car he’d arrived in. Since it was Saturday, I knew the local toughs would be getting liquored up and eager for amusement at the expense of any available scapegoat, so I got me and Connie in my truck, flicked on B.B.King and followed about a quarter mile behind Avery. We followed him over twenty-five miles until he passed the Five-Corners truck stop. After that we guessed he was safely away, so Connie stuck her head out the passenger window and I u-turned and we headed back to our little town.

End.
This story was originally published in A Collection of Nickel-Plated Angels, 2008.  I have taught in small towns in Florida, and although I didn't teach science, I sensed a strain of bias against intellectuals in the local populace.  Everywhere one goes, there exist good and bad people.  An imposing, but difficult, book about this subject was published in 1966:  Anti-Intellectualism in American Life .  Of course, the story is about more than anti-intellectualism because the teacher Avery is misunderstood more because of his psychological state during recovery from a divorce that makes him vulnerable and isolated at the same time.  To order my book, click here. A Collection of Nickel-Plated Angels