Oblivion_ stories - By David Foster Wallace Page 0,49

in his shock, pain, loss of blood, and blindness that he is even upside down, while, meanwhile, diagonally down and across, a C.P.D. technician is kneeling on the dilapidated front seat of the Simmons family’s car, drawing a body outline around the place behind the wheel where the rescue team had found the bright blue body of Marjorie Simmons, whose frustrations and disappointments were now all over, and whose body—still holding its lipstick, which made a small, sharp looking lump in the white blanket that covered it—was being loaded in the blizzard onto a large ambulance stretcher by two orderlies in white gowns while a C.P.D. detective with snow on his hat talked to the heavily bundled housewives who had been shoveling out their driveways and were now all leaning tiredly on their snowshovels talking to the detective, who was taking notes in a small notebook with a very dull pencil, and whose own fingernails were slightly blue in the cold, and the driving snow made everyone’s eyelashes white, and the two Columbus Public Works workers in large yellow boots who had shoveled Mrs. Simmons’ car out of the igloo-sized mound stood together next to a towtruck, blowing into their cupped hands and hopping slightly up and down, the way people who are both cold and bored often do, facing away from the street and the blanket with the lump over the stretcher with just two small boots with fake fur fringe at the ankles poking out, and the house that the two bored C.P.W. workers (one of whom has a red and silver Ohio State U. ski cap on with a buckeye fluffball at the top) are facing without even really seeing it is one of the houses whose backyards (this one’s has a swingset whose swings each have a large, brick-shaped block of snow on them, that has accumulated) abut the copse of elm and fir trees at the edge of Fairhaven Knolls that separates the neighborhood homes from the R. B. Hayes school ballfield in which even now the dominant rottweiler is again trying to mount the Simmons’ lost dog, in the actual field through the classroom window, miming the position and expressions of mating, exhorting the defenseless, long suffering whelp to sit still and endure it or else something really terrible would happen.

IN THE LIGHT OF THE POLITICAL SITUATION OF OUR LATER ADOLESCENCE, ONE OF THE MOST TROUBLING AND MUCH DISCUSSED ASPECTS OF THE TRAUMA FOR THOSE OF US OF THE 4 WAS THAT MR. JOHNSON HAD NOT APPEARED TO CONFRONT, RESIST, OR THREATEN THE ARMED OFFICERS WHO CAME FORCIBLY INTO THE ROOM THROUGH BOTH THE DOOR AND THE EAST WALL’S WINDOWS, BUT MERELY CONTINUED TO WRITE KILL OVER AND OVER AGAIN ON THE CHALKBOARD, WHICH WAS NOW SO FILLED THAT HIS NEWER KILL, KILL THEM’S OVERLAY AND OFTEN OBSCURED HIS EARLIER EXHORTATIONS, FINALLY RESULTING IN LITTLE MORE THAN AN ABSTRACT MASH OF LETTERS ON THE BOARD. WHILE THE JAGGED LENGTH OF CHALK, THE BROAD ARM MOTIONS, AND THE PROXIMITY OF MR. JOHNSON’S BRIEFCASE ON THE DESK WERE CITED AS THE PERCEIVED THREAT TO HOSTAGE SAFETY THAT JUSTIFIED THE SHOOTING IN THE EYES OF THE C.P.D. BOARD OF INQUIRY, THE REAL TRUTH IS THAT IT WAS CLEARLY MR. JOHNSON’S FACIAL EXPRESSION AND SUSTAINED HIGH SOUND, AND HIS COMPLETE OBLIVIOUSNESS TO THE OFFICERS’ COMMANDS TO DROP THE CHALK AND STEP AWAY WITH BOTH HANDS IN FULL VIEW AS HE COPIED HIMSELF WITH EVER INCREASING INTENSITY ONTO THE BOARD’S VERBAL CHAOS, WHICH PROMPTED THEM TO OPEN FIRE. THIS WAS THE ONLY REAL TRUTH—THEY WERE AFRAID.

Of the so-called 4 Hostages, it was only Mandy Blemm and Frank Caldwell (who would later, at Fishinger Secondary, attend both Junior and Senior Prom as a couple, maintaining a steady dating relationship throughout those years in spite of Blemm’s reputation, after which Caldwell enlisted in the U.S. Navy, eventually also serving overseas) who were attentive and aware enough throughout the first part of the incident to recount for DeMatteis and I later how very long it was that Mr. Johnson remained facing and writing jaggedly on the chalkboard while emitting the high, atonal sound while the classroom behind him turned more and more into a bedlam of surreal and nightmarish terror, with some of the children crying and quite a few (Blemm later named them) reverting, under the strain, to early childhood coping mechanisms such as sucking their thumbs, wetting themselves, and rocking slightly in their seats humming disconnected bars of various lullabies