Office Hours

            “Can you say more about that?”

As Wayne says this, I can’t help but be distracted by the objects in his office.  I have never been in this office before and I always find it interesting to see what a professor keeps in their office or at their desk.  When you see them for a limited time every couple days a week, you get to know them as they are in the class room, not their office, a much more personal space than a classroom.  My eyes focus on a clock on the wall to my right, ticking loudly as Wayne awaits my answer like a punch-line to a joke.  I notice the clock’s frame that is made of a very distinguished, grainy wood, different than most of the furniture in the office.  A desk with a thin metal frame and a Formica like top made to resemble wood.  Chairs that seemed as though they were maybe from the 1970s, when orange cushions looked good.  The clock was obviously a choice of Wayne’s unlike the standard issue community college furniture that, except for the clock, would remain when Wayne left.

            “I tried, but I just couldn’t follow it!” I replied.  This response puts an expected smile on Wayne’s face.

            “Can you tell me why?” he retorts with a more joyous smile.  As I reach inside my expected frustration for the answer, I suddenly feel a rush of fright and I lurch up.  Now sitting in bed, something has awakened me.  My heart is pounding quickly.  Where was I just now?  I seem to feel out of place but that feeling is quickly replaced by fear.  This bed is not my bed, although I have slept here for weeks.  This room and even this house is not my own but we must live here for longer.  I don’t know when we will go home.  I don’t like this house at night, but tonight is especially scary.  Something woke me up, but what was it?

            There it is again!  A strange noise from outside somewhere, like someone laughing, but different.  I quietly step down from bed and creep through the hallway to follow the noise.  As I tip-toe down the hallway, I am especially careful to be silent while I pass the room where my Mom and Dad sleep so I do not wake them.  I notice that only my Mom is in bed.  Slowly, I creep down the stairs, carefully watching my feet so that I do not accidentally step on the bottom of my sleeping gown that my Grandmother bought for me when she came to see me last weekend.  When I finally reach the bottom of the stairs, I hear the noise again but louder.  This time it is not like laughing, but instead it sounds like two people talking.  I don’t recognize the voices.

            The sound of my heart, still racing, is finally being drowned out by the sound of crickets and water splashing gently against something.  I follow the noise in the direction of a very dreamy looking light.  The back doors are open wide and the voices get louder.  I peak my head around the open doorway and brush my hair from my face so I can see clearly where the noise is coming from.  Just as I recognize where the noise is coming from, lightning races across the sky and the thunder follows it, making me jump.  My heart is beating faster now as I finally see where, or rather, who the noise is coming from.

            My Dad, sitting by himself in a chair at the side of the pool is talking to himself.  I cannot understand his words but he is having a conversation, with someone.  I tip-toe closer and I can finally see his face.  He is still talking but, as I can see from his closed eyes, he is asleep.

            “See, now I never really thought of it that way before!” Wayne says as he looks at me from across his desk.  Confused, I pause and try to grasp what I have just … seen….or was it imagined?  I try not to seem utterly baffled by what seemed almost like an out-of-body experience and keep up the conversation.

            “Well if he was a prisoner, how would he have had the chance to go fishing?”  I now feel like I have out thought the master.

            “Actually, I think he says that he never really went fishing.”  Wayne says this as he reaches for the book and thumbs through it, trying to find the story again.  Still a little thrown from the odd thing that occurred just a minute or so ago, I straighten up in my chair.  As I look back up, I am looking in my rear-view mirror as my next passenger opens the door and barks out their location.

            This one is neither pretty nor is she completely ugly.  You can tell they are whores the minute they come into view.  Their cloths are never very well kept but they are only there to cover what their customers want to see anyway.  Some of them are dressed very nicely, I have thought about talking to one of them a time or two but their type never need the use of a taxi.  This one, she talks a lot, most people think that just because I drive this cab all day, I want to talk to anyone who is in it at the time.  The truth is, I can’t stand most of these people and can’t wait until they are out of my cab.  Even though I can not stand these whores, I despise even more the damn tourists.  They get in here and demand I turn on the air conditioner.  I tell them to roll down their windows a bit more and they look at me with disgust.

            These tourists come more and more every year.  The citizens of Mexico are very unwelcoming to them.  They will accept their money but want them to leave their country as soon as possible.  The truth is, they are all tourists.  Most of these so called “Mexicans” are not truly from Mexico.  My family has been here for centuries.  My father and mother lived in the jungles and spoke another language.  They moved me and my brother here when we were little kids.  Back then, this town looked much different.  Not so many people, not so many cars, and not as much trash on the streets.

            My mind wanders as the passenger talks on about all these gringos she “knew” and how she remembers their names.  There was this time when I picked up these two girls at the airport.  They needed to go to Chiapas and I needed some money.  I took my wife’s brother with me so that I would have someone to talk to; Chiapas is a long ways a way and I had never been there before.  The girls in the back were doing ok until we stopped and my brother was drinking some cervesas.  They were really weird and acted like we were going to hurt them.  Those stupid whores wouldn’t know real danger until it was too late.  On the way to Chiapas, in the jungles, we saw many Indians that reminded me of my parents and where I really came from.  They seemed so poor and sad.  Living and sleeping among their animals, they had no cars or for that matter, no real shelter.  I was glad I was living in the city now.  I wanted nothing more than to go back home as we finally dropped off the girls, when suddenly……I was looking at the carpeted floor of Wayne’s office.

            I looked back up at Wayne, “I’m sorry, what was that?”  I tried to act as if I had not just totally gone insane but the questions in my head-what the hell was that? Where was I just now? Am I going crazy? – were all I could focus on.  If I truly was going crazy, I was not going to show it here to one of my professors!  Going crazy is one thing, but possibly failing a class was out of the question!

            “I said, what did you think the fish was symbolizing?”  Wayne was somehow keeping his patience with me even though I was obviously not of a stable mind.  The fish…the fish…oh, right, now I remember!

            “The fish obviously is a captive and being in the bucket must be very closter-phobic for it!” I exclaim, proud that I just pulled that from my…….well, anyway.  Wayne leans back in his chair as it creaks and looks somewhat proud of my answer.  If only he knew just how impressive it really was!

            ”I think you may understand this story better than you think!”  He says this with an expression of accomplishment on his face.  I am trying to focus only on him in hopes that I will not fade out of this office and fall into another…dream or …I don’t know what to call it.  I intentionally look only at his face, ignoring the surrounding office and the other objects like the clock that may distract me from this conversation.  As I do so, I notice that there is a spot on one of his glass lenses.

            “You see, there is never really a right or a wrong answer when it comes to short fiction, it all depends on….” The spot on his glasses seems to really be distracting me even as he is speaking directly to me.  I try to stop focusing on his glasses when I seem to be having trouble seeing anything at all.  My eyes are closed and as I open them, I realize that I am lying on the ground.  As I begin to analyze what is going on, I see that the ground I am lying on is not the carpeted floor of the office anymore, but a jungle floor.

            I look up and take in my surroundings.  I am in a jungle with lush green plants growing everywhere.  As I look around more I see this blazing orange and yellow far ahead of me.  I focus more on it and recognize that it is fire!  It is like a fire I have never seen before.  Everything seemed to be burning, the plants, the ground, and even the air seemed to be blazing with this hellish flame.  I stand up and look closer to the area on fire and slowly start to realize that I am staring straight at what seems to be a person in the flames!  Fright grips my whole body as I practically run out of my boots toward the person.  As I near the flailing body, I am joined by other men who are dressed in green outfits like mine, carrying machine guns on their backs.

            The closer we get, the louder the sound is.  Beneath the sizzling of flesh there is an audible sound of screaming.  Dear God, it’s a little girl!  Only from the desperate, life changing, shrieking could I tell that it was a girl!  Her whole body was on fire.  Her hair was burned off and it was difficult to even tell where her face was as she struggled to breath.  She was desperately trying to tear off her cloths but her cloths had burned instantly and what she was now tearing off her body was her own skin!  When we finally reached her, we doused her with water to put out the flames.  Her screaming only intensified when the water touched her body and in the back of my mind, I wondered if we have just prolonged her suffering instead of ending it.  With the flames finally out, I looked at the other men around me as none of us knew what to do or say next.  Suddenly, we are pushed aside as a large group of villagers make their way toward the girl, lying on the ground.

             During my time here, in Vietnam, I have witnessed some horrific things but I know that this one image of the burning girl will be the image that haunts me in my dreams.  I do not look forward to living with this image but know that in comparison, the rest of that little girl’s life will be worse than I could ever know.  They have taken her back into the village and our medics are trying to help her with her pain.  As I stand here with that image literally burned into my memory forever, I get ready to board the helicopter.  I step into it with my right foot and as I lift and hoist my body into the helicopter, I am distracted by a voice.

            “I know you are frustrated, but staring out that window and ignoring me won’t help.” I hear Wayne’s voice bringing me back to the office.  I find myself standing behind his desk, my face inches away from the window that looks out at the golf course and bike path behind the building.

            “Is everything ok?” Wayne has a tone of concern in his voice now that I must admit is reflective of how I am feeling.

            “Umm, yeah, I think so.  I just need to sit down and relax.”  I turn around and take my seat again in the chair with the orange cushion.  The worried look on Wayne’s face still exists but is accompanied by a smile as I try to refocus on what is at hand.

            “You know, reading and literature is supposed to be fun an enjoyable, not some scary intimidating thing!  I mean what is it that has got you so flustered right now?  It isn’t me, is it?  I’m not a scary guy, am I?”  Wayne questions, still with a smile on his face and a slight chuckle in his voice.

            “Oh, no its not you!  I just… its nothing, really, I’ll be fine.”  I reassure him as much as I can.

            “The thing is, I don’t know why I can’t just read a story and take what the story actually says, not what it might possibly mean to someone else.  I mean, I sit in class and hear other people say that when they read about children who come from the sewers, it means that they were born from hookers!  Why couldn’t they just have come from out of the sewers, like the story says?!”  I take a big breath to replace all the air I had used to complain.

            Wayne begins instantly to laugh harder and says, “Right on man!!  That is what I am talking about!  Your suffering right now in class is what is supposed to happen!, its what makes….” Suddenly, a sharp cry of pain from behind me.  I turn around to see where it is coming from.  There are people everywhere and once again, I don’t seem to be in Wayne’s office but instead, it looks like an emergency room.

            There are people rushing around everywhere.  Doctors and nurses moving double time.  Sick and injured people desperate to get any of their attention for just one minute.  Focusing on the group standing before me, I see one doctor, two nurses, a woman patient, and a man accompanying her.  The woman is lying on her back and is getting a quick look over by the doctor.  I have this strong feeling that I am waiting for something or, someone.  A feeling like I cannot leave this group of people without taking something with me. Directing us to go to another clinic for the woman, we head to the parking lot.

            I follow behind them both as we walk and the feeling that I have yet to do my job is nagging at me.  What my job is, I still am unclear about but, the longer I wait, the greater the need to complete it becomes.  As we approach the car the man and woman discuss who will drive but I head directly to the back seat of the car.  It is decided that the woman will drive.  The man seems to have an uneasy feeling about my presence as he continually looks back at me.  The woman might as well not even know I am in the car as she never directs her attention to me.

            The further we drive, the more and more I feel like I must finish my job.  It is all I can think about and the man becomes more and more a part of my focus.  I can’t control it but, I am watching this man’s every move and every breath he takes.  As seconds tick by, the need to have the man leave with me exceeds.  He looks back at me once or twice more each time with this look of unease.  Finally, we reach or destination and the man and woman get out of the car.

            All at once, it is crystal clear to me why I am here.  I am here to do my job.  There are others like me, who reach out and pull someone from this world to the next.  If you see me doing my job, you will surely be coming with me.  It is not my job to wait until you are ready.  The duty I have beckons me to finish it with accuracy and blind determination.  Today, I am here to once again, as it has been for ages before and will be for ages to come, finish my job.

            I finally exit the car and follow behind the man and woman into a house.  When I walk in, the air grows colder.  There are many people inside the house but only one of them is aware of my presence.  I reach out my hand to grip the man’s shoulder and……

            “Aren’t you forgetting something?” All at once, my whole being is shifted to the doorway of Wayne’s office.

            “What?!” I spin around and see Wayne holding a book in his left hand, trying to hand it to me from behind his desk.

            “The book, don’t leave it here!  I have my own, I don’t need yours.”  Still holding the book out in front of him, I look at it and a shiver rolls down my spine.

            “You know what?  Keep it!  I can’t deal with this…. Literature, any more!”  Before he can answer, I turn around and head down the hallway.  As I reach out to grab the door handle to the stairway, a thought occurs to me.

            “Did I finish my ethics homework?”