Master of the Delta: a Novel by Thomas H. Cook

Author:Thomas H. Cook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Nineteen

Years later my father added this:

There is a reverse quality in heartbreak, the fact that it may in time return what it so swiftly took away, like a shadow that as the years go by begins quite unaccountably to shed its own peculiar light.

JEFFERSON BRANCH, Last Letter to My Son

Now, in my old age, with nothing to await but the postman’s daily visit, such talk of heartbreak rings somewhat hollow. There is an overheated preciousness to it, a whiff of magnolia blossoms. And yet, each time I read my father’s final letter to me, it brings to mind the darker truth that destruction sometimes comes to us not in a sudden fall but in a slow descent, taken in faltering steps, one decision at a time.

Take, for example, Dirk Littlefield’s destruction.

In memory, repeatedly, his hand raises, his voice calls.

“How about you?”

He had spoken abruptly at the very end of the class period, harshly, as if both threatening and preparing for trouble, like someone breaking a bottle on a bar.

“Me?” I answered stiffly, determined to remain unruffled by his attitude, which had always been disrespectful.

Dirk glanced at Wendell, then looked back at me, his mouth twisted in a smirk. “Are you going to write a paper, Mr. Branch?”

Every negative impression I’d ever had of him, and there’d been a great many before that moment, now suddenly coalesced, and I saw him as the very symbol of the sheer, ignorant belligerence of that portion of humanity that irredeemably smothers beneath the folds of its own grim intransigence. With his slicked-back hair and grimy fingernails, he stood not only in his own way but in the way of anyone else who might seek a higher path. Low, he sought only to stay low, I thought, and to make sure others stayed low, too. In his small, round eyes, I saw every obstacle he placed in the way of his progress, the hatred he bore for anything that might, however briefly, allay the bitterness he nurtured at the very center of himself. I knew he would spend his days demonizing every effort to reform him. But worse, he would slap down the hope of others, then stand over it, arms raised in triumph, as if he’d slaughtered a great beast.

“A paper like you’re making us write,” Dirk added. “Pick some bad guy and write about him.” A smile crawled onto his lips. “I mean, we’d all like to know who you think is evil.” He turned to address the class. “Right?”

A few heads nodded and Wendell released a little chuckle, which he stopped when my eyes whipped over to him.

“I mean, the rest of us have picked somebody,” Dirk continued. “So I think you should tell us who you’d pick.”

It was an open challenge and in some way I felt my standing with the class demanded that I take it up. “I don’t care what you think,” I said. “I’m the teacher, and you’re not. I give the assignments and you carry them out.” As if turning from an unpleasant odor, I returned my attention to the other members of the class.

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