Echoes in the Darkness Read online

  Sue Myers was thirty-two years old by then, and felt fifty when they finally arrived at a tiny Austrian town mentioned in The Cantos. The Austrian town had prospered during the Great Depression when its mayor had created and issued his own money. He dated the currency and decreed that it would depreciate in value each and every week it was not used; therefore, the money circulated and people traded vigorously for it.

  Ezra Pound had immortalized the town as a tribute to Mussolini and he’d made the grandiose generalization that what worked on the village level could work on a national level. Indeed, on a global level.

  At the entrance to the village there was a little bridge bearing a plaque written in German. Sue Myers was finally able to contribute something to the intellectual business at hand. She’d studied German in college and could translate.

  Bill Bradfield was excited to discover that the plaque was a testimonial to the mayor whose economic brainstorm had saved the village. The daughter of the mayor was still alive, and thrilled him even further by giving him pieces of the old money to add to his collection of Pound memorabilia. She also graciously showed them her father’s library and it was just as Ezra Pound had described it! She even had an old photo of the poet holding a neighbor’s baby.

  Well, that was about it. He had the rusty barbed wire, the dated money, and several other relics. Sue Myers had anemia and frazzled nerves and was being driven nuts by his bored teenagers.

  She’d fought with the older boy relentlessly for ten months. The younger had a crush on her and that was almost as bad. Whenever they’d arrive in a new town, she’d slip them some lire or francs or pesetas and tell them to get lost until it was time to move on.

  Bill Bradfield, after concocting the elaborate cover story to explain Sue Myers to his sons, had stuck to it. He was always reassuring them that she was nothing more than a colleague from the English department who happened to be going to Europe, and that they’d pooled their bucks. For a time the boys wanted to believe that two grownups could share the sleeping quarters in the Volkswagen bus while they slept outside in a tent.

  Unfortunately, the younger son’s crush on Sue didn’t wane, and one day he found some birth control pills in her luggage. A years supply. He felt betrayed. Finally, he caught them in bed together in Granada, Spain.

  “The boy never forgave me,” Sue recounted. “I’ve heard Bill Bradfield reminisce about every slight he’d suffered in his lifetime. He remembered every toy he didn’t get as a child. The Bradfields don’t forgive.”

  And then she made a discovery: Bill Bradfield had letters awaiting him at various destinations. Letters from several women. After finding and reading them she knew that he’d been encouraging them all along the way.

  She was heartbroken. There had been other affairs during their years together, but she thought that somehow when they returned from Europe it would be different.

  “I hated springtime,” she always said. “He’d get so active.”

  Sue Myers was certain she’d have a mental breakdown if she didn’t get home to the States. But now she knew that he’d be as active as before with all the cryptic notes, and a secret post office box, and ringing phones that went dead when she answered.

  She vowed to get out. She wanted to be married and have children. Her kiddie clock was ticking in her ears.

  As always, he begged forgiveness and made new promises. This time he pointed out that since he was a poet like Ezra Pound, his affairs were simply “grist” for his poetry. Upon their return from Europe, he proved his sincerity by moving into an apartment with her.

  It seemed like a step closer to marriage. But Sue Myers later came to realize that she was pretty bad at basic math. In their years together he’d written just three poems, but he’d had thirteen relatively serious affairs, one poem for every 4.33 rounds of gristing.

  2

  Prince of Darkness

  She’d heard that the new principal had arrived at Upper Merion Senior High School, but where the devil was he? And who was the tall army officer roaming around the corridors in full uniform?

  Ida Micucci had a whole lot of questions that went unanswered during the first days of Jay C. Smith’s tenure at Upper Merion, though one of them got answered pretty fast. The tall army officer was the new principal. Jay Smith was a staff officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, but why he felt he needed to wear his uniform to school on his first day was a mystery. It was probably the most innocuous of all the mysteries that would trouble the principals secretary from that day until her retirement.

  It took a full week for the new principal to walk into her office and introduce himself.

  “You’ve never seen such a pair of eyes in all your life,” she said often. “There was no feeling in them. You might think you’ve known a few people with cold fish eyes, but not like his.”

  They were not fish eyes. They were eyes that newspaper editors in later years loved to isolate for effect. They were referred to as “reptilian,” but that was not correct either.

  Jay Smith was tall, middle-aged, with receding dark hair, a weak knobby chin and a rubbery sensual mouth. He was not an attractive man. Some thought that Jay Smith looked like an obscene phone call.

  Ida Micucci hated to admit that his eyes scared her, but then she was too busy disliking Jay Smith to be all that scared. For starters, no one could ever find the guy. He’d come to school and enter his office and vanish. When he’d eventually reappear after people went looking all over campus for him, he’d never apologize. He’d simply enter the office and tend to his paperwork. By late afternoon he’d lock his office door and refuse to come out.

  Ida Micucci was annoyed from the start. She knew that sometimes a school principal had private business that needed closed doors, but Jay Smith would lock his door nearly every day as a matter of policy. He did not want to be disturbed unless it was urgent.

  Being several years older than her new boss, Ida felt it was up to her to put this principal in his place. She gave it a try from time to time and was just about the only one at Upper Merion who ever did. For one thing, she’d turn him down when he came around with army paperwork that needed typing. He was going for colonel then with a good shot at becoming a general before he retired.

  She’d say, “No, I’m far too busy to do the army’s work.” And he’d simple turn and walk quietly away.

  It became apparent though that neither Ida nor anyone else was going to put him in his place. He had a quick mind and a sharp tongue and wouldn’t hesitate to draw blood if he was crossed.

  He could speed-read and remember whole chunks of books. He virtually memorized the yearbook, and astonished students by addressing them by name. He loved using arcane words on troublesome faculty members when they bothered him with petty problems.

  One of those troublesome faculty members was Bill Bradfield, whom Ida liked as much as she disliked Jay Smith. Ida thought that Bill Bradfield was handsome and manly and she liked the way he’d come in and give her a hug and a smile and a cheery hello.

  Sometimes Bill Bradfield as teachers’ representative had occasion to start ragging the principal about a teacher who’d received an unsatisfactory notice and thought it unfair.

  Jay Smith would simply fix him quietly with those eyes and say something like “I find your reasoning a bit periphrastic.”

  Bill Bradfield would have to scamper for a dictionary, thereby leaving Jay Smith to do his customary vanishing act.

  One semester the principal gave Ida an unsatisfactory notice and she marched straight into his office and told him that she’d never received an unsatisfactory notice in her entire career and she was not about to take one without an explanation, a written explanation.

  Jay Smith sat there and stared vacantly with those eyes and nodded and wrote his explanation. The report indicated that by bringing in candy every day and putting it on her desk, Ida Micucci was encouraging teachers to loiter around the principals office. And furthermore, Ida Micucci was attracting “bugs and other
vermin.”

  That did it. Jay C. Smith had a very angry senior secretary on his hands. And one day he called her in and apologized for the report. And not just a few times. He apologized every time he happened to glance at the candy jar. She thought he was going to spend the remaining years of her career apologizing.

  He’d be handing her something to type six months after the bugs-and-vermin report, and he’d suddenly say, “Please forgive me, Ida.”

  But he never apologized to another soul for anything. And pretty soon, he got tired of dumping words like “sesquipedalian” on his unfortunate faculty. He started inventing words for the likes of Bill Bradfield when he dared to match wits with Jay Smith.

  Once when the teachers’ representative came reeling out of Jay Smith’s office unable to find a word like “ransmigrifold” in any dictionary, the principal sat and chuckled mirthlessly and finally had to share his secret.

  “I’m inventing words for them, Ida,” he informed his secretary. “Those pseudo-intellectuals need the exercise that I provide.”

  Jay Smith would bring his trash to work. Nobody could believe it at first, but it was so. He’d bring bags of trash from home and transfer it from his car to the school Dumpsters. Even the custodians were asking what the hell was going on! Didn’t they have garbage pickup in his neighborhood?

  And that wasn’t all that the custodians were wondering about. They noticed him hanging around school at night when everyone else had gone home. Late at night. Once, a janitor saw the principal strolling out of his office on the way to the lavatory. It wouldn’t have caused concern except that Jay Smith was wearing nothing but underwear.

  Then there was the matter of his meeting and greeting prospective teachers. One of them was a new member of the English department, a young woman, recently widowed.

  Jay Smith had a full, smooth speaking voice and always enunciated crisply. His most dulcet tone was reserved for attractive women.

  “Do you use Warriner’s Grammar?” he asked the young widow as she squirmed a bit. Many women reported feeling that his eyes were always asking lewd questions.

  “Yes, I do,” she answered, just as his phone rang.

  “One moment, my dear,” he said and picked up the telephone.

  And the teacher started wishing for silver bullets because he was transformed!

  “This is Colonel Jay C. Smith,” he snarled. “And we will bivouac at oh five hundred, do you understand?”

  Bang went the telephone and just that fast the wolfman disappeared.

  It was a velvet frog who said, “Yes, my dear, it’s a very good grammar book and I’m delighted to see that you think so.”

  And there was the “stress” question. Every teacher at Upper Merion, new or old, had to get used to the fact that Jay Smith seemed to have a perverse need to shock.

  For example, he’d sometimes gravely ask a prospective teacher what kind of birth control she used, as though her diaphragm was at least as important as Upper Merion’s football schedule.

  To the user of Warriner’s Grammar, he said, “As a young widow, perhaps you could tell me how you handle your sex life.”

  She answered, “Discreetly,” and the chill in her voice made him conclude the interview.

  He dealt with male teachers in a similar fashion. To a new English teacher named Vincent Valaitis who had the face (and the worldliness) of a Vienna choirboy, Jay Smith said, “Young man, just remember one thing, English literature is nothing more than fucking and sucking.”

  The twenty-four-year-old teacher thanked the principal for the insight and got the job.

  A change took place at Upper Merion Senior High School. It was gradual at first and then it gained momentum as the years passed. It became clear to the faculty that their principal would let them run their classrooms pretty much as they wished. This meant that traditions like a dress code went out the window for students and for some teachers.

  Faculty members like Bill Bradfield came to class in down vests and jogging shoes. And without a dress code Bill Bradfield grew his beard into a John Brown Raiding Harpers Ferry model. His mustache hung over his mouth so long and ragged that Sue Myers practically needed a machete for a kiss. And the kisses were coming less frequently since their return from Europe.

  Jay Smith eventually took a sabbatical to complete work on his doctorate in education at Temple University. But whether he was present or on sabbatical, the principal was ever the subject of gossip.

  For example, there were the “open mike” episodes so called because Jay Smith would, when in a garrulous mood, deliver messages to the students over the public address system. The students loved it, particularly after he returned from Temple University as Doctor Jay Smith. The messages got longer, more rambling, and sometimes wiped out the first period.

  He would say things like “This is your principal speaking. There is a new regulation for gym clothes. You may wear yellow bottoms and blue tops. [Long pause.] Or you may wear blue bottoms and yellow tops. I trust that this will please authoritarians in the faculty and not displease libertarians. But I have one caveat: in the winter it shall be the duty of each and every student to be encased in warm underwear.”

  Dr. Smith hated to be troubled by picayunish disciplinary problems. Once, the-widow-who-handled-sex-discreetly stormed into his office to complain about some students who were racing cars up and down the parking lot, and tossing Frisbees around the corridors, and sunbathing on the roofs of their cars with ghetto blasters turned loud enough to shatter her zircons.

  And Dr. Smiths response? “I have no time for overreacting menopausal women, my dear.”

  When she retired from Upper Merion and had time to reflect, Ida Micucci could only picture Jay Smith in a black suit. The same black suit, she thought at first. But she eventually came to realize that it wasn’t the same black suit because sometimes his sleeves would be two inches shorter than at other times. When Ida could bear it no longer she said, “Where in the world do you get those black suits? They don’t fit!”

  He just slid those eyeballs in her direction and showed her a grin like an ice pick, and said, “You may not believe this, Ida, but I get all my clothes at the Salvation Army.”

  She believed it all right. But despite his secondhand rags, he was clean. Was he ever. The man would wash his hands fifteen times a day. He ran to the john so often that Ida thought he had a bad bladder until male faculty members reported that he’d only wash his hands. Around the faculty dining room they said that Dr. Jay Smith washed his hands more than Dr. Kildare.

  Dr. Smith seldom fraternized with faculty or staff on or off campus, but once a year he might show up at a soiree. One of these was a party given at the home of a teacher who’d been taking belly dancing. She was pretty good, and after everyone had enough to drink she slipped into her harem costume for a little demonstration.

  Fueled by martinis, all the male teachers started clapping, and when the music started she came slinking in. Two of the younger female teachers happened to be standing in front of Jay Smith when the belly dancer permitted the men to slip dollars bills inside her costume as she shimmied.

  Jay Smith moved close enough behind the young women for them to feel his hot breath on the napes of their necks and asked, “What does one do when a portion of one’s anatomy gets hard?”

  And the young teachers started gulping their drinks and jabbering inanely to each other and pretended not to have heard, afraid to turn around and see a pair of eyes that looked like the eyes of a …

  They all had trouble describing the eyes of their principal. “Amphibian” came to mind, but that wasn’t precisely correct either.

  There were constant cryptic phone calls and messages from women to Jay Smith, and that was just one of the many things bothering his secretary. Worse than that were the chemical odors in his office. Ida got so that she’d creep in after his solitary closed-door session in the late afternoon and she’d smell something medicinal, something chemical.

  And when
he went out he always looked as though he’d been asleep. His black suit would be more rumpled than usual and his hooded eyes seemed to have a glaze on them.

  Ida’s husband finally said he was getting sick and tired of hearing all the crazy stories. He got so he was accusing her of being crazy.

  “Would you like to meet the wife of a school principal?” Ida asked her husband. “A man with a doctorate? A colonel in the army reserve? We’ll take a little drive down to the dry cleaner’s where she works, and take a gander.”

  Many a male customer took a gander at Stephanie Smith when she had her back turned. What they’d see was a voluptuous woman in hot pants and white plastic boots, with dyed hair teased and sprayed to the point of fracture. From behind, Dolly Parton. From the front, a hook-nosed hag from Macbeth.

  But she was kind and sweet and friendly. Ida Micucci, after she got over the shock, really liked Stephanie Smith.

  Stephanie called everybody “hon.” She was several years older than her husband, and like him had grown up poor in West Chester. She’d worked very hard all her life and helped put Jay Smith through college. It took about three minutes to get to know her intimately, and from then she was all heart and loyalty.

  If Jay Smith was about as forthcoming as Pravda, his wife Stephanie delivered more gossip than the National Enquirer. She was constantly threatening to leave her husband, or doing it and returning home when she had a change of heart. And she’d give anyone the blow-by-blow whether it was wanted or not.

  “Take a look, hon!” she said to Ida one day before the secretary could escape from the dry cleaners.

  “Oh, I can’t look at private letters!” Ida protested, but curiosity drew her toward the documents that Stephanie was holding.

  “He always keeps his basement apartment locked,” Stephanie confided. “He won’t let nobody down there. Not me and not our daughters. But I broke in!”

  Ida read a few paragraphs of Jay Smiths “love letters” reportedly to be sent to a professors wife at a nearby college. They were all about collies and Dobermans. Nothing that would have shocked the Marquis de Sade, but Ida Micucci got queasy.