The Happiest People in the World: A Novel by Brock Clarke

Author:Brock Clarke [Clarke, Brock]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781616201111
Amazon: 1616201118
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2014-11-03T13:00:00+00:00

35

Wednesday, October 6, 2011, 11:32 p.m.

From: undisclosed sender

To: undisclosed recipient

Subject: Broomeville

My first encounter with ”Mr. Larsen” in his office was interrupted by one of his female students. Nothing to worry about. I will visit Larsen again tomorrow and begin the next stage of our plan.

36

Baseball meant it was time again for the annual student-faculty baseball game. Henry had never completely understood why this game took place during football season, nor why it was called a student-faculty baseball game when the only students who played in the game were already on the baseball and softball teams, and the only faculty who played were the faculty who coached baseball or softball. The only thing that made sense about the game was that everyone—students, faculty, staff—was required to go to it: in the case of an out-of-season, inaptly named student-faculty baseball game, you had to require attendance if you wanted people to attend.

The game had already started by the time Henry and Jenny arrived. Jenny went to lean against the fence with the other kids who dressed like something was wrong with them. Henry went to sit by Dr. Vernon, who was sitting by himself halfway up the bleachers. He was wearing a blue-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt with parrots perched on either end of a branch. The branch was supposed to span the shirt wearer’s pectorals, but Dr. Vernon was hunched over in such a way that it looked as though the parrots were feasting on his nipples.

“Hello, Henry.”

“Dr. Vernon.”

Dr. Vernon (his first name was Barry, but no one at the school ever called him anything but Dr. Vernon, with the italics) was the school’s long-term sub. If you went to Broomeville Junior-Senior High School, then sooner or later Dr. Vernon would be your long-term sub, but he would never be your regular teacher because even though he (supposedly) had his doctorate in something or other, he couldn’t be bothered to get his teacher’s certificate. He was that kind of guy. He was also the kind of guy who always wore loud Hawaiian shirts, including to the student-faculty baseball games, where he would announce loud, possibly comic, play-by-play calls of the game to the crowd. For instance, just as Henry sat down next to him, Dr. Vernon had yelled out, “Jared Johnson hits a scorcher to short,” when in fact Jared had hit a dribbler that had barely made it to the pitcher’s mound. It was unclear to Henry whether Dr. Vernon’s commentary was meant to be optimistic or sarcastic, but in any case it was found by almost everyone within earshot to be incredibly annoying. “Why don’t you deck him?” Grace Vernon shouted to Henry. Grace was sitting several rows behind them. She was a home ec teacher at the school, and like so many who’ve had that calling, she seemed as though she’d blown in from some prairie in her long-sleeved sundresses and heavy braids and her crafty ways of making a little go a long way. She was also Dr. Vernon’s wife.

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