The Nix(77)

Faye had applied to the school in secret.

“If these people weren’t so destructive and angry,” her mom says, “I think regular people would be more likely to support them. Why don’t they go out and organize voters? Propose some solutions instead of just smashing everything?”

Faye looks out across the backyard to ChemStar’s distant glow. Her father would be working now, probably ignoring the news of the world. The one time he spoke on the matter of college was when Faye showed him Circle’s acceptance letter and brochure. He was the first person she told. After a brief private celebration in her bedroom, she came to him in the living room, where he was reading the newspaper in his easy chair. She handed him the documents. He looked at her and then at the papers. Read through them silently, slowly accommodating this new information. Faye was ready to burst. She waited for him to praise this extraordinary thing she’d done. But when he finished reading, he simply handed back the papers and said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Faye.” Then he opened the newspaper and gave it a shake to snap out the wrinkles. “And don’t tell anyone,” he said. “They’ll think you’re bragging.”

“It’s chaos in the streets!” her mom says. She’s getting really roiled now. Sometimes lately it’s like she’s a top capable of spinning herself. “I don’t even know what they’re fighting for! These people. What do they want?”

“Probably, for starters, less murder,” Faye says. “That’s just a guess.”

Her mom gives her a long, measured look. “When John Kennedy was shot we didn’t riot.”

Faye laughs. “Yeah, because those things are exactly equivalent.”

“What’s gotten into you tonight?”

“Nothing, Mom. Sorry.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

“I’m worried about you going to Chicago,” she says, finally coming around to her point. “It’s just—it’s so far away. And so big. And so full of, you know, this urban element.”

By which she means Negroes.

“I don’t want to scare you,” she says, “but think about it. One night you’re coming home from class and they snatch you and take you into a dark alley and rape you and shove a gun in your mouth so hard you can’t even pray to God.”

“Okay!” Faye says, and she stands up. “Thanks, Mom. Great talking to you.”

“Plus, what if you have an episode while you’re away? What are you going to do if I’m not around?”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Faye.”

“Nowhere, Mom. I just need to take a drive. Clear my head.”

Which is a lie. She’s going to Henry’s, of course. Good, gentle Henry. She will go to him tonight, before her mom can scare her even more with tales of violence and rape. She takes the car and drives out of her little neighborhood, a parcel of small bungalows called Vista Hills (but this is Iowa, and that name has always confused her, the Vista Hills sign showing a wide panorama atop mountains that nowhere in this state actually exist). Then out onto the main boulevard, past the Dairy-Sweet Good-Food, the Dollar General, Schwingle’s Pharmacy. She drives past the Quik Mart station, across the street from the Spotless Touchless, past the gray water tower that some of the old folks call the green tower because it was green many years ago, before the sun bleached it, and Faye wonders if she should pity those who live so narrowly inside their memories. Then past the VFW and the restaurant named Restaurant with its sign that never changes: ALL YOU CAN EAT WALLEYE. FRIDAY, SATURDAY, AND WEDNESDAY.

She turns onto the highway and sees in the distance, through a clearing in the trees, what she playfully calls the lighthouse: It’s really a tower at the nitrogen plant where gas is vented and burned, where one can see, at night, a blue flame. So it looks like a lighthouse, sure, but it’s also a joke about geography: Iowa, after all, is landlocked for a billion miles. This is the way to Henry’s. She drives the empty streets, the night like any other night except for what’s on TV. The catastrophe on the news means people won’t notice her—they won’t be on their porches, in open garages, won’t say: There goes Faye. I wonder where she’s heading. Faye is aware of the attention, the neighborly curiosity, the unyielding abstract gaze of the town, the way everything sort of shifted when word got out about Circle. People at church who previously had no outward opinion of Faye whatsoever suddenly began saying things that felt hostile and passive-aggressive: “I suppose you’ll forget about us when you’re off in the big city,” or “I guess you won’t be coming back to our boring little town,” or “I imagine when you’re a big shot you won’t have time for little old me,” and so on. Things that seemed to have an ugly edge to them, like: You think you’re better than us?

The answer being, in fact, Yes.

On her desk back home is a letter from Circle—so official-looking with its logo and heavy paper—informing her of her scholarship. The first girl from her high school to win a college scholarship. The first girl ever. How could she not feel better than everyone else? Being better than everyone else was the whole point!

Faye knows it is wrong to think this, for these thoughts are not humble; they are arrogant and vain and choked with pride, that most hazy of sins. Everyone proud of heart is an abomination, the pastor said one Sunday, and Faye in the pew nearly crying because she did not know how to be good. It seemed so hard to be good, and yet the punishments were so vast. “If you’re a sinner,” the pastor said, “not only will you be punished but your kids will be punished, and their kids will be punished, to the third and fourth generation.”