The Coming Storm Read online

  STONEWALL INN EDITIONS

  KEITH KAHLA, GENERAL EDITOR

  Buddies by Ethan Mordden

  Joseph and the Old Man by Christopher Davis

  Blackbird by Larry Duplechan

  Gay Priest by Malcolm Boyd

  One Last Waltz by Ethan Mordden

  Gay Spirit by Mark Thompson, ed.

  Valley of the Shadow by Christopher Davis

  Love Alone by Paul Monette

  On Being Gay by Brian McNaught

  Everybody Loves You by Ethan Mordden

  Untold Decades by Robert Patrick

  Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time

  by Carl Morse & Joan Larkin, eds.

  Tangled Up in Blue by Larry Duplechan

  How to Go to the Movies by Quentin Crisp

  The Body and Its Dangers and Other Stories

  by Allen Barnett

  Dancing on Tisha B’Av by Lev Raphael

  Arena of Masculinity by Brian Pronger

  Boys Like Us by Peter McGehee

  Don’t Be Afraid Anymore by Reverend Troy

  D. Perry with Thomas L. P. Swicegood

  The Death of Donna-May Dean

  by Joey Manley

  Latin Moon in Manhattan by Jaime Manrique

  On Ships at Sea by Madelyn Arnold

  The Dream Life by Bo Huston

  Show Me the Way to Go Home

  by Simmons Jones

  Winter Eyes by Lev Raphael

  Boys on the Rock by John Fox

  End of the Empire by Denise Ohio

  Tom of Finland by F. Valentine Hooven III

  Reports from the holocaust, revised edition

  by Larry Kramer

  Created Equal by Michael Nava

  and Robert Dawidoff

  Gay Issues in the Workplace

  by Brian McNaught

  Sportsdykes by Susan Fox Rogers, ed.

  Sacred Lips of the Bronx

  by Douglas Sadownick

  West of Yesterday, East of Summer

  by Paul Monette

  I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

  by Ethan Mordden

  Another Mother by Ruthann Robson

  Close Calls by Susan Fox Rogers, ed.

  How Long Has This Been Going On?

  by Ethan Mordden

  My Worst Date by David Leddick

  Girljock: The Book by Roxxie, ed.

  The Necessary Hunger by Nina Revoyr

  Call Me by P. P. Hartnett

  My Father’s Scar by Michael Cart

  Getting Off Clean by Timothy Murphy

  Mongrel by Justin Chin

  Now That I’m Out, What Do I Do?

  by Brian McNaught

  Some Men Are Lookers by Ethan Mordden

  a/k/a by Ruthann Robson

  Execution, Texas: 1987 by D. Travers Scott

  Gay Body by Mark Thompson

  The Venice Adriana by Ethan Mordden

  Women on the Verge by Susan Fox Rogers, ed.

  An Arrow’s Flight by Mark Merlis

  Glove Puppet by Neal Drinnan

  The Pleasure Principle by Michael Bronski

  And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts

  Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl

  The Sex Squad by David Leddick

  Bird-Eyes by Madelyn Arnold

  Out of the Ordinary by

  Noelle Howey and Ellen Samuels, eds.

  This book is for

  Christopher Canatsey

  and for

  Tom Heacox

  COURAGE TEACHERS

  Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Acknowledgments

  I

  The young man came striding across the threshold of Louis’s office with all the vigor and self-possession his recommendations had promised, and though something in Louis’s soul paused there momentarily, he dismissed that pause as nothing but a shadow. Tracy Parker’s handshake was firm, his smile clear and winning. And scrupulous punctuality, in Louis’s book, always boded well.

  “Please.” He gestured, and Tracy seated himself with the loose-limbed ease of someone who makes himself instantly at home. In deference to the mid-August swelter, he wore no jacket. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt and loosened his tie. His hair, Louis noticed, was in some need of a trim.

  “Not to worry,” Tracy apologized as if having intuited his interviewer’s thoughts. He ran long fingers through lazy, straw-colored locks. “It’s as shaggy as you’ll ever see me. I just didn’t have time to get it cut.”

  Certainly it was a promising start. Louis dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief and said, “Thanks so much for getting yourself up here on a moment’s notice. I hope you won’t hold the weather against us. The humidity can really be quite ferocious.”

  Tracy smiled indulgently. “It’s just as bad down in the city,” he said.

  “I think you’ll find the humidity is even worse up here,” Louis told him with some certainty. Then, glancing needlessly over Tracy’s résumé: “I see you’ve been doing carpentry work the last few months.”

  Tracy held out a bare forearm. “How’s this for a tan? It’s probably the best shape I’ll ever be in. At least my body. Though I’m afraid my brain’s turned to mush. I get home at night and all I do is watch TV. I can hardly wait to get back to the life of the mind. Slumber of the mind is what I call the last six months or so. I’m incredibly excited. Books and education and learning are what my real life is all about.”

  “I have to say,” Louis told him, “that we were really very interested in you back in April. But unfortunately we only had the one position. Though now, as it turns out, we still have that position.”

  Tracy nodded amicably. “You’ve been left in the lurch,” he said. Comfortably—or perhaps it was nervousness—he rested his right ankle on his left knee, and proceeded to massage the knob of his anklebone.

  Louis was a little disconcerted to see that Tracy wasn’t wearing any socks. “Left in the lurch. You could say that,” he admitted.

  “What an odd phrase,” Tracy said reflectively.

  Louis didn’t follow. He kept watching, with some skepticism, the gap between khaki cuff and black loafer.

  “I mean, ‘Left in the lurch.’ What do you think that means, exactly? Left in the lurch.” He mouthed the phrase with relish.

  “You’ve got me,” Louis confessed. The curiosity of the young intrigued him.

  “Do you ever think what a peculiar language we speak?” Tracy went on. Whatever the cause, he seemed admirably able to generate his own enthusiasms out of thin air. “When I was in college, I studied in Germany for a year. I hardly spoke a word of English the whole time, and what it made me realize was what an amazing language English really is. This crazy, jumbled-up language, not like German, that’s so consistent, no exception to the rules. English seemed so alive—like, I don’t know, some kind of slithering snake. I don’t think the German department ever forgave me, but Germany was definitely an important learning experience for me.”

  Perhaps, Louis thought with a sigh, the young man would turn out to be something of a bore when one got to know him. This penchant his generation had for saying everything at once. Still, to call English a snake was somehow odd and interesting.

  “I have a long-
standing interest in Germany myself,” he felt he should mention, if for no other reason than to spare Tracy the need to fill him in too fully on what he called his learning experience.

  “Have you been there?” Tracy asked animatedly. “I mean, I’m sure you’ve been there. But a lot?”

  It made Louis smile. “Oh, fairly frequently,” he told Tracy. “My wife and I. We’ve traveled all over. Munich, Dresden, Berlin, Stuttgart. We enjoy the cultural offerings, especially the opera. There are some splendid provincial operas, you know. We were in Freiburg—”

  “Freiburg,” said Tracy. “That’s exactly where I was—at the university. Freiburg im Breisgau.”

  It was Louis’s turned to be dogged. “There was a production of Rosenkavalier we saw four times,” he went on. “So fiercely intelligent. And then we were in Berlin later and saw another production, much better singing, the orchestra was magnificent, but the production was a complete mess. No idea behind it. That’s what you can get in those smaller theaters. Exciting young directors who have ideas. Who aren’t running on automatic.”

  He stopped. He’d been on the verge of saying, “Running on automatic is the problem with most people’s lives.” But he was wary of seeming to preach. It proved an increasing hazard as the years went by, and there was nothing like the subject of music to draw him out. You should have been a musician, Claire was always telling him—but he had no aptitude whatsoever for music, except as a listener.

  “Opera’s a bit out of my league,” Tracy admitted with a smile. “I think it’s definitely an acquired taste.”

  “Well,” Louis teased, “isn’t that what education’s all about?”

  “And I’m always willing to be educated,” Tracy affirmed. He smiled broadly, even remarkably, Louis thought; as if a smile could be generous enough to enlarge the recipient as well. He’d seen enough. The spark was there, the earnestness, the enthusiasm. It shone through whatever inexperience might cloud the young man.

  Besides, with the semester starting in less than three weeks the position needed to be staffed immediately. He’d been wrong about one candidate already, but proceeding with caution wasn’t something he could afford at the moment. That Tracy would take the job seemed a foregone conclusion. Still, he felt he should talk him through one or two things. Youthful enthusiasm could be blind to the broader realities.

  “You haven’t taught much before,” he noted.

  “I taught a year in Japan…”

  “But not American students,” Louis cautioned him. “Especially not our particular brand here. The Forge School fills a certain niche.”

  He was conscious of choosing his words carefully.

  “Our students are not exactly, for the most part, what you would call model students. They’re quite talented, many of them, but for one reason or another they haven’t performed well in their previous schools. Still, they’re boys who should go to college. They come from affluent families, they have good prospects out in the world. But they need an extra bit of prodding. Our mission is to make sure they don’t damage their futures too much at this stage in their lives. Our job, to be blunt about it, is to get them into college. If I may say so, most of our students suffer from a kind of inattentiveness to their best interests. That’s the main challenge: to get these boys to understand their best interests, at least in terms of education. As simple as that. It’s not just about getting them into college. It’s about teaching the value of education. We’re a progressive institution in the best sense of the word. We try to help each of our students find his place and fulfill his potential there. If that interests you, then I’d like to offer you the chance to work with us for the coming year.”

  He’d been long-winded—he knew that—but Tracy’s attention hadn’t seemed to flag. The young man furrowed his brow only for a single, inscrutable moment. Then, looking Louis in the eye, his gaze bright and direct: “I think this is something I’d be good at,” he said. “I have to tell you, to be honest—I could make twice as much money carpentering, but this is where my life is. I’m sure of that.”

  So it was done. He could stop fulminating inwardly against the young woman who had so impressed him back in the spring but who had, at the last minute, excused herself with no more than a brief note of apology to say that she had, as she blithely put it, been made an offer she could not refuse by a girls’ school in Lausanne, Switzerland.

  He’d considered firing off a frank note of warning to that Swiss school, but resisted the temptation. At his age, he didn’t need to go ruining crass young lives. Experience had shown that they could manage that quite nicely on their own. And in any event, this Tracy Parker would work out just fine. William and Mary English major, class of 1991, B-plus average, a year’s teaching experience at a technical school for young women in Nagoya. How effortlessly he must have won their hearts with his American good looks and easygoing style. And the Forge School, he suspected, would prove no different. The students would adore him, if for nothing more than that youthful charisma for which there was, one regretfully had to admit, simply no substitute.

  Louis himself had possessed such a quality once, had held on to it, in fact, for many years. Teaching had been his life, though his abrupt and traumatic elevation to the post of headmaster had effectively curtailed his classroom activities. It was perhaps just as well. With the years, the task of winning over his students had become harder and harder. He could see the suspiciousness in their eyes, their all-too-understandable reluctance to open themselves to this old man. What on earth had he to tell them anymore about their troubled young worlds?

  He thus found himself, on this August afternoon of his sixty-fourth year, fiercely envying Tracy Parker the intangible currency of youth he carried so unawares. Twenty-five years old. He had been twenty-five himself when he first started teaching at the Forge School—though he had not, he reminded himself sternly, in those days felt himself possessed of any kind of currency, intangible or otherwise. Twenty-five was a terrible age, after all; like any other, fraught with all sorts of anxiety and disquiet.

  He moved distractedly about his office, sifting through stacks of paper left over from last semester: obsolete memoranda, reports, notices of one kind or another. Some stacks he shifted from one cluttered surface to another. Would he miss any of them? In a sudden bout of resolve, he took up a batch of pages and, without so much as glancing through them, placed them in the wastebasket.

  What a mood he felt himself in! August was a month he survived only by creeping from one air-conditioned refuge to the next. His office, unfortunately, was not one of those refuges: Seldom used in the summer months, it had never been modernized. The large windows lay open to the leafy, listless quad. No breeze stirred through. Out on the sun-dappled lawn nothing moved except for two crows that marched arrogantly up and down. Years ago there hadn’t been so many crows, had there? Now scarcely a dawn came when their hideous cries didn’t wrest him from his hard-won sleep. Songbirds, he’d read, were disappearing from North America. The noble raptors, also, were all but wiped out. Crows, jays, grackles—only the scavengers seemed inclined to proliferate. The future promised a tough, ugly world all around.

  He threw another stack of papers in the trash and, if only to put off the actual exertion a quarter hour more, contemplated the walk home. On fine dry days he loved a brisk walk. Autumns were glorious that way, but in this tropical simmer his body betrayed him. He turned porous; incontinent sweat oozed from him. Whose fine idea had it been, on the Olympian heights or deep in the bowel-dark underworld, to condemn us to the messy, intractable burden of bodies, the sheer tedium of our confinement in the flesh?

  He wanted nothing so much as to find himself lying on the sofa in his cool, darkened den—wafted there instantly, effortlessly—and listening to music on the stereo, Brahms or Bruckner, body on hold, mind adrift and yet hyperalert, his attention both compelled and freed by the rigorous structures of sound surrounding him. There was this indolence about him; had he been born in the previo
us century, he might well have found his way to the opium dens, languishing there as his thoughts roamed extraordinary landscapes. It would have been a danger, certainly. The temptation to dream his life away had always lurked.

  A knock on the door startled him. Reid Fallone’s broad round face peered in slyly.

  It took some effort for Louis to rouse himself from his torpor. “Welcome back,” he said. “You survived.”

  His colleague glided into the office and conspiratorially shut the door behind him. It was a habit Louis hated: as if anybody would be eavesdropping on an empty campus.

  “Alas.” Reid sighed. “Survived only to return to this benighted exile. Did you know we’re to have dinner tonight? Libby spoke to Claire. She said you were over here.”

  “A headmaster’s work is never done,” Louis told him with a certain degree of satisfaction. “I managed to fill that position we had open back in the spring.”

  Reid looked confused. “I thought we’d already filled it. That terrific young lady from Yale. The one who wrote her thesis on Anthony Trollope.”

  “It turns out she’s not coming. It’s a long story. But dinner’s fine. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “But that’s terrible,” Reid went on disappointedly. “She was spectacular. Exactly right for us.”

  “This young man will be just fine. He certainly seems eager enough.” Even as he said it, though, he detected a strain of defensiveness creeping into his voice. Perhaps he had been too hasty. Perhaps he should have consulted Reid before making an offer.

  “Another eager young man,” Reid said. “Just what we need around here.”

  “Well, it’s done,” Louis told him irritably. “For better or worse. But now tell me about Athens. I’m sure you had a marvelous time, as usual. Thanks, by the way, for your cryptic postcards.”

  Reid sighed grandly. “One never knows what to say. Anyway, I’ll regale everybody with the official tales at dinner.”

  He paused, and suddenly, out of nowhere, Louis was on the alert. He knew his colleague too well. (What if Tracy Parker wasn’t, in fact, a prudent choice for the job? One gave oneself away at every turn.)