A Short Piece of Fiction-- The Idealist [Part 7--The End]

Ok, here is the end! Finally, I am such a slacker!

Jim continues to open, read, mentally catalogue, and destroy the garbage that encompasses his desk. As he works and drinks, the vehemence of his thoughts gives way to a dull, numb, gnawing desire to be done for the night. Still, he reads on, and as time drains and presses, he finds he has only one letter left for the night. He never reads the return addresses on the envelopes, and this one is no exception. He merely notes that it is addressed to Dr. James Bentley and rips open the top, (it having progressed far too late in the evening, and he having progressed far too deep into his open can to continue bothering with the letter-opener.) and reads:

Dr. Bentley:

You may be surprised upon opening this letter to find that I, an old Chemistry student of yours, should spend time writing you a letter, especially one that has very little to do with the subject of Chemistry, or any other scientific pursuit. I never would have pinned you down as a man of the arts, and so when I heard that you would be carrying out Rob's project in its entirety, I was surprised. Pleasantly, of course, but surprised nonetheless. Please excuse me if I address the remainder of my letter to Rob. I know it seems strange, a boy I passed in the coffee shop a few times, and stranger that he is no longer with us. I'm not sure why, but I think I would feel better if I told him how he changed me. Please excuse this little indulgence.

Rob:

People always talk about how they wish that they could talk to and thank those who have passed on. I decided not to waste any time on wishes, and just talk to you. Your project will be open to the public in a few days, but I have a confession to make: I have seen it! Alone, not with one of the touring groups. I snuck over the gate last night and wandered amidst the rocks, metal, mirrors, and the colors for four or five hours before coming back to and sneaking out unnoticed. I'm not sure how many others have done the same, but I would assume others have wanted to. I'm sure you can understand that we are all dying to "see what we've been missing."

I will admit that, at first, I felt nothing but disappointment. I just stood there in the middle of the field, looking at all of the foreign objects, the numbers, the formulas, all so carefully placed and measured, and I thought, "wonderful! Just like every other piece of art I've ever seen! It is worthless and makes no sense." I will admit that the only thing that kept me there was having known you. I told myself, "You knew the artist. Give him more of a chance than you've given everyone else!" So I sat, and I waited, and waited, and waited. It got cold, and I zipped my jacket tighter and waited some more. I wish that I could say it was right at sunrise, when the first morning rays hit my eyes that some great illumination came to me, or in the witching hour when some fairy ring appeared, and revealed all that I had been lacking. Honestly, I'm not sure what time it was when I realized what you had been getting at. Or, I guess what I see in it. If someone were to ask me right now what it "means" I would tell them: it means that it means. There is meaning everywhere, if we want to look for it. When we look hard, we are rewarded, and we come away better people. If we dismiss, we are the ones who suffer. Your work is a celebration of meaning, and of man's search for it, and his conquering of the unknown. The unknown will always become known with enough determination--perhaps a lot of patience, and a good wind-breaker. Shoot, it's probably a bit of faith as well. To escape finding meaning is to deny our nature.

Thank you for showing me that, I had definitely been missing it.

-Sylvia (from the coffee shop)

The only outward indication that Jim hesitates over finishing this last letter the way that he has finished the others is a slight deviance in his normally impeccable timing. He takes one long sip from his can before folding the letter again and inserting it back in its destroyed envelope. He may also let it fall just a bit more slowly over the scorching heat. The flame that follows, lying on top of the ashtray, has become a perfect lighter for one more piece of paper. Jim snatches The Professor in his Ideal and drops it on top of the burning mess. He knows he should have done it long ago. There is no reason to hold on to yesterday, or to think about tomorrow. All the days are the same, aren’t they? He stares blankly on, not registering the irony that the paper, writhing and twisting over the smoke-stained metal, has become the perfect visual to accompany the sound of an ambulance, several streets away, rushing off to some new emergency.

A Short Piece of Fiction-- The Idealist [Parts Five and Six]

Almost done! Here are parts Five and Six. Just one more part after this!

It is interesting that the two of them had become friends at all. No. “Friends” isn’t even the appropriate word; more like colleagues. Though Jim was nearly thirty-five years Rob's senior, the young artist had been convinced that he could change the old professor's views. Jim, likewise, wanted to change Rob's views. Not for Rob's sake, for his own.

"If I could just convince one more wide-eyed dreamer that the only 'reason' or 'meaning' in things are chemical processes, I could retire a happy man." He had once said to his housekeeper, whose name may or may not have been Nancy. He had started calling her that on the first day she had begun working for him, and had never bothered to ask if her name was, in fact, Nancy.

“Nancy” never seems to mind. She never asks questions, or responds to his tirades. She simply looks at her employer when he talks, as though out of some vocational obligation, and then she turns around when he finishes talking and continues on with her duties. He loves her for it, and never asks her to respond, somehow sensing that he will be severely disappointed if she were ever to answer.

Jim knows that he never made any progress with the boy just as well as Rob knew that he never made a dent in the belief system of his elder. During their almost weekly meetings in Jim's office, the two of them would take turns speaking. One week Jim would talk at Rob who would nod over and over without responding. When Jim was through discussing chemical processes, natural selection, and the chaos of the world, Rob would nod more solemnly. After Jim had been through talking for thirty seconds or more, Rob would rise from his chair, shake Jim's hand, and exit the room, always turning back when Jim asked, "where are you going?" to reply with something like, "out there, to see if anyone needs anything."

The first time he had said it, Jim had scoffed, and asked, "Out where? And who needs anything?" Rob had just replied, "I don't know. I guess I might just end up over at the library going over some notes. I just want to feel like I made a difference somewhere today, you know?" The chemist had shrugged. He didn’t know. And then, the artist had walked out.

On the other weeks, it was unofficially Rob's turn to talk, and his speeches were (to Jim) endless. Rob talked about how things were "meant to be" and how the world was infused with meaning just waiting to be discovered by an inquisitive mind.

"What is it that you want, Rob" he had asked one such afternoon. It wasn't like him to ask questions after Rob took his informal turn. He would usually say something along the lines of, “you'd better run along kid, I've got exams to grade.” And if Rob was lucky he would add, "Good luck to you this week." But on this particular occasion, for no particular reason, he could not help asking it.

The response was annoyingly familiar. "I want to show people what they have been missing."

"That's what he would always say!" Jim roars aloud to the hungry flame of the candle.

"He wanted to show people what they had been missing. I'll be hanged if I ever knew exactly how he was hoping to accomplish this task." Jim closes his lips in thought, and switches his audible, yet one-sided conversation to the inside of his head. He had known about Rob's project from the moment it was conceived. He had occasionally patted himself on the back for having been the first to hear about it.

Rob had come practically running into Jim's office, had sat down in his usual chair, opened his notebook and shoved it under the other man's nose. In black ballpoint ink, Rob had amassed a million chicken-scratches, and above them scrawled the words "MY MAGNUM OPUS!" From the look on his face, he must have been expecting a reaction out of his older mentor. But Jim remained unmoved.

"What does it mean, Rob? I'm not an artist."

"This is it. This is what people have been missing. I have finally got all of my plans made."

"What plans? Where are these plans?"

Rob signaled his forehead. "Where they belong. I will work strictly from my head."

"It's pretty convenient that he worked straight from his head. His head was the only thing that didn't survive the crash." Jim spits, now back to voicing his recollections.

"Funny, when planes crash in movies, they always burn. Not Rob's. It almost looked as though nothing had gone awry, like the plane didn't fall far."

He never can remember, this late at night, what it was that the authorities had said about the accident. Malfunction of something or other. Wasn't a malfunction of some piece of equipment the problem behind all failures? Why do authorities need to make statements about such things? Arbitrary, pointless, mundane, ordinary. Exactly like the letters he spends his Sunday evenings reading. He has heard it all by now. As the press photos had begun to leak, the letters had started to come in by the dozens. As special pre-release guided tours had sent hundreds into the prairies, the letters had come in by the bag-load. They all vary in their opinions of the work, but it is all the same drivel to Jim.

He now reviews some of the best ones in his mind, the center where he has stored quotes from these letters, like some catalogue of all that is ridiculous.

"It is almost as if Smith was foretelling his own tragic death in this work." Or, “It is such a stark metaphor for his difficult childhood, illustrating the early death of his absentee father, and the humiliation at being put through school by his elderly mother.” Or, “It is clearly a commentary on current political unrest, calling for new unification between differing political parties.”

He knows others would scorn his entertainment, but it is not possible to suppress laughter when one regularly reads such tomfoolery as,

I have seen pictures online of the project that is about to launch. The juxtaposition of all of the red and blue in the rocks at the west end of the exhibit gives such a startling insight on what it means to be an American. I was so inspired by the pictures; I hope to take my wife and kids to see it when it opens in a few weeks. Thank you.

Jim has a keen mind, and it doesn’t take him long to memorize the gist of these letters before he sets them to burn. It is all so delicious. It is all so close to what he had expected would happen. It is justification, and he is angry that Rob no longer exists to see himself proved so utterly and entirely wrong. If, when Rob was alive, Jim had ever worried that his belief system was being rocked by the stubborn enthusiasm of some snot-nosed 23-year-old kid, all of the worry is now eaten up as the flames climb to claim each sheet of worthless propaganda. All of it goes up in smoke. All of the "I am profoundly inspired" "I am moved beyond expression" "I have begun looking at the world in a new way" "I went home and hugged my kids a little tighter" "It gave me the courage to go back to school" "The exhibit inspired me to start drafting a letter to a child who ran away from home twenty years ago, one I vowed to cut myself off from."—these all had burnt beautifully, even if the plane hadn't.

Jim has hoarded Rob's notebooks. Nobody must ever see those, those alleged blueprints. No one must ever know that Jim works from no blueprint. Guided instead by a twisted sense of vindication. It is so easy to make a pretense at being a genius, especially with such a story.

Jim is sorry that Rob is gone, isn’t he? There are plenty of things he misses, of course. He'd grown quite accustomed to their talks. He had almost even become accustomed to never getting through. Yes, Jim is sorry that Rob is gone; but it had happened. It had worked out perfectly to allow for this little experiment.

Jim catches his thought.

“No, it didn't ‘work out perfectly’ it wasn't fated. It just happened. He died, and I took advantage of that. 'Show people what they're missing.' I'll show them what they're missing! No, no I won't. They'll never know that there were no blueprints. They will never know that I worked, just as Rob did, from my head, and that I never put a thought into the placement of the boulders, the direction of the lines, the reflection of the mirrors. They will never know that what they are missing is that there is nothing to miss! The spectacle is in their heads, and they had better stick to the hard sciences; because, at the end of the day, if you crash a plane and hit your head hard enough, that is that. That is what really matters."