THE PALE LIGHT OF SUNSET: SCATTERSHOTS AND HALLUCINATIONS IN AN IMAGINED LIFE

Accounting Class - 1958

103 1958 Accounting Class I am a lousy student. I have no interest in anything. I stumble around the campus not really caring whether I get to wherever I am going on time, or whether I get there at all. I always carry some books. If I do manage to get to class, I want to give the impression that I meant to get there. The books are only a prop. Most of them are novels. Usually, I veer off from the path to class—any class—and wander into the student union. I play ping pong for hours, gradually becoming good enough to enter tournaments. Once, in a tournament open to the entire student body, I place ninth. It is the crowning achievement of my college career. Sometimes I go downtown and drink beer. I run into some other guys, and a few girls, doing the same thing. We sit in darkened beer joints and sip at our glasses, trying not to appear to be alcoholics, only to discover that no one cares whether we are or not. The discovery is sobering. Sitting in a saloon one day I become bored with sitting in a saloon. Even class seems more interesting than what I am doing. I buy a quart Lee Maynard 104 of beer, put it in my book bag and straggle off to class. I get the class time wrong; I am actually early. A student asks me if I am a late enrollee in the class; she has never seen me before. It is an accounting class. Our desks are larger than normal, so that we can spread out the large ledger sheets that we are supposed to use. There is a compartment under our seats where we are supposed to keep our accounting books and the ledger sheets. I have never put anything in the compartment under my seat. I have no idea where my accounting books are. I have no idea why I am in an accounting class. I keep one ledger sheet on my desk as a prop. I put the quart of beer in the compartment under my seat. The professor never looks directly at us. He writes on a chalkboard behind him, then he turns towards us and as he lectures he looks above the heads of the entire class, looking at some spot on the wall above and behind us, his eyes flicking from left to right, never making eye contact. He writes on the chalkboard and I slip the quart of beer from beneath my seat and take a sip. Some of the students are fascinated, their mouths dropping open. Some are disgusted. Some think it is funny, choking back their giggles behind their books and ledger sheets. I do not intend to be funny. I just want some beer. Each time the professor writes on the chalkboard, I sneak out the bottle and take a sip. And then I wonder if he would see the bottle if I left it sitting there. So I do. He never notices. When class is over the bottle is empty. The professor is always the first one out the door at the end of class. I think it is because the class bores him as much as me. Or all of us. One of the girls stops in front of me. I know some shit is coming. I look her up and down. She is wearing a pleated skirt and a white blouse, The Pale Light of Sunset 105 buttoned all the way to her neck. I think I have seen her before—somewhere else. “You are the most disgusting example of a college student I have ever seen,” she says. “You should be expelled.” There are razors in her voice. She makes no move to leave. She has more to say. Some other students pause to watch. I keep looking at her, directly, trying to remember. And then I remember. “That frat house, over on the corner of Morgan Street, didn’t I see you there last Saturday night, screwing some guy on that big wooden table in the kitchen?” Her face begins to glow a frightening shade of red and her mouth opens, then closes, then opens again, but only a sputter of sound comes out, a tiny fleck of foam at the corner of her lips. She looks around at the others. I think she is on...