Fifth Monday Fiction

Excerpt from the novel This Sweet Intercourse: Raymond in 4th grade

By Michael Hanson

[Editor's note: The prologue from the same novel appeared on August 17.]

The chemistry set came in a boxed metal container much like a small suitcase, hinges on one edge and a latch on the other. On one side of the case were ten small blue plastic bottles in which were kept the chemicals he’d use to conduct his experiments, and on the other were the tools he would need: four test tubes with an accompanying rack in which to stand them, along with a bristly brush for cleaning; a metal tonglike instrument used for gripping the test tubes; and even a small “Bunsen burner,” which was fun primarily because it legitimized his using matches.
    The manual included with the set suggested a number of experiments the amateur could conduct, so Raymond immediately set about to seeing them through one by one. After only the first few, however, he discovered that subsequent experiments called for chemicals not contained in his set—an order form was necessary to send off for extra stuff, costing more money, naturally. This peeved and confused him—why would they suggest certain experiments if the set didn’t include all of the required chemicals? It would be years before he discerned the not-so-subtle marketing strategies employed by most manufacturers, particularly those targeting young people, but by the time he made the connection with regard to his old chemistry set he’d already fallen victim to such manipulations more times than he could ever recall.
    This time, though, his mom said they didn’t have the money.
    But he got busy just the same, ready to see what concoctions he could produce with the chemicals provided, using his imagination rather than the manual. His dad had just built a brown tin workshed in a corner of the back yard, eliminating their fine kickball field but freeing up space in the utility room adjacent to the carport. Here Raymond arranged his chemistry set, converting the oversized closet into a laboratory—test tubes neatly lined up in the red rack and his Bunsen burner set to one side, the blue-bottled chemicals arranged alphabetically along the back. Donning an apron his mother sometimes wore in the kitchen, he’d formally announce to the family that he would be “in the lab” if they needed him, then would disappear into the dark windowless room illuminated by a single unshaded bulb hanging from a cord in the center of the ceiling.
    In actuality there was little he could do “in the lab,” but he liked being there nonetheless, liked pouring some of the powdered crystallized chemicals into a test tube, then heating them with the Bunsen burner until the crystals boiled brown from the flame, “making notes” in the little spiral-bound experiment log provided with the set, and frustrated only by the fact that he’d have to leave periodically and go inside to wash out the dirtied stuff, thus breaking the spell of the atmosphere he’d created. This seemed to be the direction his life needed to take—his own lab fully arrayed with all of the latest and most advanced high-tech equipment…a long white labcoat and an assistant or two...off to one side perhaps a desk with an adjustable-armed lamp where he’d sit to make all-important entries into the all-important notebooks he’d begin compiling, in which his experiments—and their results—would be outlined. His life-work. By then he’d be wearing glasses, wire-rimmed spectacles that made him look serious, a real scientist, and he’d spend long hours there in the lab extending late into the night before heading home to a beautiful wife who’d be in awe of the complex work he was doing. Raymond could see himself in such a lab, living just such a life, not bothering to wonder what this work would involve really, as that was no matter; what mattered was the setting, the accoutrements, the confident sense of himself as someone engaged in something significant. What mattered was that he make a difference in the world, that he live a life others would look up to with admiration and envy, a life in which no one even noticed that he was really just a runt, and with red hair to boot.

So the chemistry set could be the cause of his indifference to school, where only one class out of five could capture his attention and keep it. Miss Hershberger was his science teacher, and entering her class he always felt a queasy excitement no other subject could arouse. Her classroom was crowded with various animals and all sorts of science-related apparatuses, like microscopes and telescopes; multi-layered shelves lined every wall and were filled to overflowing with stuff he’d never seen, hadn’t even fantasized. She had countless aquariums of varying sizes, only some of which contained fish, while the others were home to hamsters and guinea pigs and lizards of every conceivable size and color, also three rabbits in smelly oversized cages in one corner.
    On Thursdays they’d spend the entire class taking various critters out of their cages to hold and handle, while Miss Hershberger talked about this animal or that animal and what kind of foods they liked to eat, what kind of predators they would face were they living “in the wild.” In one aquarium swam a big spikey pufferfish they’d sometimes remove from the water and pass around the room, Raymond wondering why he didn’t suffocate (but never asking, afraid of looking dumb) and confused to find the spikes not sharp enough to hurt your hands as they looked like they would, but the fish all blown up into a big fat ball that might burst if you squeezed his sides too strongly. On some days they’d clean this cage or that aquarium, and on others they’d go around the room feeding various animals their preferred foods. There was almost always something interesting to do in Miss Hershberger’s class, and even when she spent the period just reviewing a chapter from their textbook, his eyes could always roam the room and find something fun to feast themselves upon, a creature going about its business within its own enclosed world.
    And Miss Hershberger herself was riveting, a sexy goddess with curly blond hair pulled back but still loose about her shoulders, eyeglasses heavy with thick lenses. Her appeal was magnified since she knew so much about so many different things, particularly animals, and when she’d talk about snakes shedding their skins Raymond would sit rapt on the second row, mesmerized by the pretty girl with the curly hair and colossal intellect. Then, of course, whenever she conducted an experiment for the class she became beautiful beyond measure—she seemed capable of anything, anything at all, and typically her capacities exposed themselves through some knowledge or experiment he’d never even imagine were she not there to turn his attention to it.
    He longed to take her to his lab, show off his test tubes.
    The school day thus shaped itself around Miss Hershberger’s class: everything prior to that period was leading up to it, and everything subsequent was a sort of sinking from the heights to which she had taken him. He loved to conjure the two of them conducting complex experiments together, alone in that classroom where the bubbly aquarium-born sound of water never ceased, she looking at him intensely through the thick lenses of her glasses and saying serious things. She sent him swooning. He could even conjure the house the two of them would buy together, a big old barnlike structure bursting with books and littered with lab equipment, a place in the country on acres of pastureland where the starry night sky would spread itself brightly above them like a universe lighted so as to be studied. They wouldn’t worry with having children—there were more important matters to which they must devote themselves—and whenever Raymond found himself fantasizing their fabulous future together, the only part of the picture that caused him any concern whatsoever was the name Hershberger.
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Copyright © 2013 by Michael Hanson

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