On his way from the teachers' cafeteria one morning Bilicki glanced in at the adjoining students' cafeteria and saw Quickenbush. He was pushing a garbage container on wheels between the tables, and with bare hands picking up empty cartons he found on the floor. Laughing and joking with the students, he seemed not at all uncomfortable in his role – the Chapter Chairman reporting for cafeteria duty in his 'building assignment' period.
What on earth was he up to now? Pandering to a student constituency? Parading some new egalitarian image for everyone to notice?
Bilicki caught his eye. Quickenbush looked away, then paused to hold a grinning exchange with two Hispanic girls. They laughed as if Mr. Quickenbush outside the classroom was really something else, a cool funny down-to-earth guy.
Instead of walking away, convinced the man was an arch deceiver, Bilicki entered the cafeteria, his intention, to let Quickenbush know there was at least one person in the building not taken in by his shameless calculated behavior.
"Well, well…what have we here? You plan to run in the student council elections too?"
Quickenbush gave him a cut-off smile; then he stooped to pick up a milk carton. And it seemed in the hiatus as if Bilicki's remark, assuming it was meant to impact, had missed its target by a mile.
"Working hard, that I am," Quickenbush said. "I'm no stranger to menial labor, Mr. Bilicki."
"What are you really doing here?'
"What does it look like I'm doing here?"
Quickenbush paused, asked a student to pass empty trays for deposit in his container, then continued: "My father always told me it doesn't matter how important or how small you think you are. There's no shame, no disgrace in reaching down and picking up something that has fallen."
With that reference to his father, the blatant fabrication about what his father always told him, Bilicki felt in the privacy of his full heart he'd found a reason to reach for Quickenbush's throat, to squeeze that throat slowly with bare hands. He noticed with satisfaction the balding spot on top of his head, which was unusual for a man only thirty years old.
"Shouldn't you be in the hallways somehere…? Patrolling, arresting or handcuffing perps?" Bilicki asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Quickenbush laughed, as if finally he understood Bilicki's game. Then as if to make it seem he was in no mood to play, he had work to do, he moved away pushing the container, inviting Bilicki to trail after him if he wanted to keep up his line of talk.
And Bilicki, not prepared to trail, feeling suddenly stopped and a little foolish, glanced at his watch and swung away out of the cafeteria.
He'd given in to an asinine impulse; he'd committed a gaffe talking that way; now he felt worse than a gaffer. He felt like a beaten bitter veteran with nothing to offer these days but beaten bitter remarks.
It stayed with him for the rest of the day, this embarassed feeling, the subtle push back he'd suffered at the hands of Quickenbush.
Back in his department lounge he tried marking homework assignments; he couldn't concentrate; his heart was filled with misery and loathing. For relief he let his mind play with scenarios of punishment and pain.
A knife was too messy, bare hands too banal for Quickenbush.
He'd like to walk into the building next Monday with six pit bulls panting and pulling on leash. He'd spot Quickenbush in the cafeteria. He'd tell the students to leave, then he'd release the dogs.
The dogs would corner Quickenbush, biting and tearing and chomping. A bleeding Quickenbush, intestines hanging out his stomach, would scream for mercy, confess he hadn't been completely honest in his dealings, beg him to call off the dogs. Bilicki would look at his watch and walk away. He was late for a class. The dogs were well trained. When they were done with Quickenbush they knew where to find him.
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 