The Second Virtue

By Dennis Vickers

Three people; three predicaments; one solution. Telli Trujillo survives a horrifying bank robbery but is haunted by the experience. What does he need to prevail over his fears? Joy Juneau is a plucky thirty-year-old boss's concubine trapped in a rut of cynicism. What does she need to reconnect with the hopeful young woman she once was? Donald Duffy is a high school senior stripped of self-confidence by his overbearing mother. What does he need to mature into a self-assured adult? The answer is courage - the second virtue. Searching for the daring to become themselves weaves these characters into a braid of uplifting, funny exploits, including the Sherlock-Holmesian unraveling of a stubborn crime puzzle, a boy propelling himself to freedom by stealing his mother’s car to take a girl she despises to the prom, and the best sex scene ever involving a woman with casts on both legs. The Second Virtue explores the dimensions of the search for inner resolve and rediscovers in a fresh, perceptive voice the universal truth Charlie Chaplin once observed: "Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dennis Vickers
• Release date: Jun 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311585448

Dennis Vickers

Surprisingly, truth is best told through fiction. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Also, lies are best told through nonfiction, but I don't do that. With fiction, the story can be about anything so long as it has the stuff of life in it. The stuff of life -- aye, there's the rub. Like bears and Sasquatch, Dennis Vickers lives in the north woods. Sometimes he teaches philosophy and creative writing at a tribal college; other times he holds up in a river cottage and writes this stuff. As the previous sentence proves, he knows how to work semicolons and isn't afraid to use them. Book-length fiction: Witless: Rural communities clash in 18th Century Wisconsin. Bluehart: Life story of fictional blues accordion player. Second Virtue: Courage -- where it comes from and where it goes. Adam's Apple: Life story of congressman who f**ks his mother. You thought they all did? Passing through Paradise: Narrative collage mixes quest story, love story, satyr play. Between the Shadow and the Soul: Love and lust, or maybe the other way. Mikawadizi Storms: Open pit mine vs. pristine forest. You decide. Double Exposures: Collection of short stories, some realism, all magical. Only Breath: Ghost story wrapped in mystery wrapped in waxed paper.

Book preview

The Second Virtue

by Dennis Vickers

Published by Sunny Waters Books

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright © 2009 by Dennis Vickers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image by Becca Vickers

Contents

CHAPTER 1

***** Part 1: Lincoln Park

***** Part 2: Perlmutter Institute

***** Part 3: Bowl-Asylum

***** Part 4: Thirty-Seven North on Enterprise

***** Part 5: MoPhones

CHAPTER 2

***** Part 1: Perlmutter Institute

***** Part 2: Curmudgeon’s Coffeehouse

***** Part 3: MoPhones

***** Part 4: Perlmutter Institute

***** Part 5: Emerson High School

***** Part 6: Perlmutter Institute

CHAPTER 3

***** Part 1: Emerson High School

***** Part 2: Lincoln Park

***** Part 3: Perlmutter Institute

***** Part 4: MoPhones

***** Part 5: Duffy House

***** Part 6: WEPT Studios

***** Part 7: Duffy House

CHAPTER 4

***** Part 1: Perlmutter Institute

***** Part 2: Bowl-Asylum

***** Part 3: Telli's Apartment

***** Part 4: Thirty-Seven North on Enterprise

***** Part 5: Perlmutter Institute

***** Part 6: Duffy House

***** Part 7: First Mate Restaurant

***** Part 8: Emerson High School

***** Part 9: WEPT Studios

***** Part 10: Curmudgeon’s Coffeehouse

***** Part 11: Duffy House

***** Part 12: Sara Moore’s house

***** Part 13: MoPhones

***** Part 14: Holy Name Cemetery

CHAPTER 5

***** Part 1: Duffy House

***** Part 2: Touch of the Sensual

***** Part 3: Duffy House

***** Part 4: Bowl-Asylum

***** Part 5: Duffy House

***** Part 6: Paine Street

***** Part 7: MoPhones

***** Part 8: Calcutta Café

CHAPTER 6

***** Part 1: MoPhones

***** Part 2: Duffy House

***** Part 3: Bowl-Asylum

***** Part 4: Lincoln Park

***** Part 5: Curmudgeon’s Coffeehouse

***** Part 6: Bowl-Asylum

***** Part 7: Fifteen Hundred Pomegranate

***** Part 8: Lincoln Park

Chapter 1

***** Part 1: Lincoln Park

Jackson Henry Christopherson is known for two things in the neighborhoods around Lincoln Park: He holds high scores on all of the video games at Beanie’s Arcade and he was launched by a stiff gust of wind from the platform at the top of the television tower that stands over the park. He achieved the first notoriety during the year after his wife ran away with their insurance salesman – JHCHRIST in digital first place became the mark of his loneliness. The second he accomplished on a breezy June afternoon when he was on the platform with his partner Hugo Weisman to repair light fixtures and replace dead bulbs. Hugo happened to be flat on his belly when the freakish gust arose from a dead calm and so didn’t join Jackson for the ride down. Otherwise the two might have been Butch and Sundance plummeting together, hands joined, and shouting ‘oh shit.’

Jackson leaned forward and gave ground to the very edge of the platform in a futile attempt to save himself, but the wind prevailed. Immediately before launch he perched on his toes as though about to attempt a somersault tuck. This position put his center of gravity slightly behind his feet and so he gave in, as we all must one day, to the irresistible pull of gravity and death.

Jackson accompanied his descent with a high-pitched, warbling, lung-emptying scream. A thud-splat similar to the sound a pumpkin might make when it meets the earth at the thrilling speed of three-hundred miles-an-hour interrupted the silence a moment later. Ironically, Jackson’s life insurance had expired a month before.

Hugo was the last person to view the Milwaukee skyline against the steely blue of Lake Michigan from the tower top. He found the view exhilarating: Like climbing to heaven. The higher I climbed, the closer I got to the pearly gates and the more I was looking down on everybody. They don’t call it getting high for nothing, he observed. Most would find the view from the tiny platform on the top of the tower impossible to enjoy. The climb eleven-hundred feet up the ladder is arduous and the risk of slipping distressing. Most would cling to the ladder petrified until fatigue set in and pried the hands open to set in motion the terrible, screaming fall.

*****

Donald Duffy is a senior at Emerson High School. The other students see him as one of the dorky, un-cool, filler people God puts into a high school so most of the seats aren’t empty. They base this judgment on his nerdy interest in cameras and film development, but his interest isn’t photography – he dreams he’ll take photographs for a men’s magazine one day. His passion isn’t F-stops and shutter speeds, it’s G-strings and bubble butts.

Donald didn’t switch from glasses to contacts during early adolescence like most young people. This contributes to his classmates’ misperception that he’s the Prince of Nerd. In fact he wears glasses not for lack of coolness but because the large lenses make his head look smaller, an important consideration because his head is too big for his body – not freakishly big, but big enough that people notice.

The tower rising from the flat blue of Lake Michigan is the first thing the sun sees when it peeks over the horizon from the east. In an earlier day natives would have placed a greeting to the sun on the top. Today people aren’t so sentimental and nothing sanctifies the tower but flashing red lights and Hugo Weisman’s initials.

From its top the tower can see objects up to fifty-five miles away including thousands of television antennas looking back. Once it saw hundreds of thousands but satellite and cable claimed many defectors. Among those that remain, the antenna over Donald Duffy’s house is exactly oriented to receive its signal.

From the kitchen comes the sound of a spatula tapping on a frying pan, the smell of beef frying in hot oil, and the sound of Eunice (Donald’s mother) humming. Donald settles himself, points the remote at the TV and presses the power button. The screen flickers and WEPT comes up. The signal radiating from the Lincoln Park tower completes one more connection all the way through to a viewer. This, after all, is its purpose and we all must fulfill our purpose.

Friends, don’t live in fear, Dr. Drew Perlmutter whispers as he leans toward the camera. In Donald’s living room, his image fills the screen, close enough to be imposing but not overbearing. His nose is florid, perhaps the fault of the TV screen, perhaps not. Your life is filled with anxious moments that make your hands shake, isn’t it? Your thoughts are scattered, aren’t they? Scattered so you couldn’t sweep them together with a broom. Across the bottom of the screen crawls COURAGE THE EASY WAY. Dr. Drew arranges his face into a sympathetic smile showing small, even teeth through the narrow gap between his lips. Take heart, friends. Man has suffered these problems since he climbed down from the trees, but now science provides answers that were unavailable to our ancestors. He squares his shoulders. I’m talking about something that’ll change your life forever. He cements eye-contact with the camera. You want to change your life, don’t you? You do want to bring out your full potential, don’t you? You’re not afraid, are you?

Donald stretches his legs and brings his right foot up to rest on his left knee.

Donny, Honey, dinner’s ready! Eunice calls from the kitchen. Wash your hands!

Donald swings his legs down from the chair arm, points the remote control, and punches the power button. What’re we having? he calls back.

What difference does that make? Whatever we’re having, you still have to wash your hands. You still have to come into the kitchen and sit down at the table. You’ll find out when you get here. If Eunice sounds defensive, understand she’s not yet reconciled with Donald attending public high school for his senior year though he’s now only weeks from graduation. Last summer he made the sensible argument that he needed to practice social skills before attending college. Eunice preferred the safety of home schooling and even looked into college classes available online briefly, but in the end she relented.

Donald ambles toward the bathroom. I like to think about what I’ll be eating while I’m washing.

Do you wash differently for meat loaf than spaghetti? Eunice calls back.

He turns the hot water on, lets it run for a few seconds, passes his right hand through the stream, turns the water off, rubs his hands together, reaches for the towel. We had meat loaf yesterday.

A few moments later he sits with his elbows on either side of his placemat, chin propped on folded hands. The spicy smell of the ground pepper Eunice sprinkles on everything before cooking, during cooking, after cooking, fills the kitchen. She moves a beef patty from the frying pan onto a plate, switches to a spoon and ladles gravy from the pan over the meat. Steam rises and fogs her glasses, two large, round lenses, thick as sandwich cookies. She wipes them on her apron. It’s chopped steak with mushroom gravy. I didn’t have time for anything complicated. I was late coming home from work.

Are there mashed potatoes too? From potato flakes?

That’s right. I didn’t have time.

I like them better than real potatoes.

Eunice puts Donald’s plate in front of him and prepares her own. She sits and pulls her short, sturdy legs under her chair. Mother and son eat without speaking, taking only a few minutes to finish.

Donny, Honey, Eunice says finally, putting her fork on her plate, I’ve been meaning to ask...

Do you have to call me Donny? I’m a senior in high school. You called me Donny when I was in kindergarten.

What? Sure. Of course. Donald, I...

Not Donald. Donald’s a dorky name. Donald’s the name of a duck.

Donald is the name of...

I know where you got my name. Jesus!

He’s a fine actor. I knew I wanted to name a son Donald after I saw him in...

MASH. I know. I’ve heard it a million times. It’s an okay name for him; he’s old. For me it’s a dorky name.

Fine. Don, then. I’ve been thinking about the talk we had with your homeroom teacher last week. You remember?

Donald leans back and looks at the ceiling. Don is lame too. It’s one of those unisex names, like Rene or Carol. It’s like you didn’t know if I was a boy or a girl, or didn’t care. Don or Dawn, either way you’re covered.

What do you want me to call you?

Donald pushes the end of his fork across his empty plate. I don’t know.

Eunice smiles, deepening the lines radiating from her eyes across her temples. Her glasses make her eyes unnaturally large, like a nocturnal jungle creature from National Geographic. Donald’s mother, Eunice Roundtable, has been the author of the locally popular advice column, Ask Eunice, for twenty years and had been divorced from Donald’s father, Larry Duffy, for eleven. She will turn forty-eight in February.

Fine. When you know, let me know. Until then it’s Donny. Mr. Peterson said your problem is you don’t speak up in class. He said all of your teachers think so. He said you’d make better grades if you spoke up more and showed them what you know. You remember?

Donald slides forward in his chair, stretches his legs out, and leans back. He forms his lips to say something but keeps silent.

You want to earn good grades, don’t you? We talked about how important that is, to get ready for college I mean.

Nobody wants to be part of their stupid talk. What year did American troops winter with Washington at Valley Forge? I know! I know! It was 1777! See how smart I am?

Somebody must participate, the ones who earn A’s.

My grades aren’t bad.

I’m grateful for that. I was just thinking that maybe if you had some counseling it would help you overcome that shyness and you’d speak up more in class.

I can talk more in class if I want to. I just don’t want to.

That’s where counseling might help.

Counseling? Jesus!

If somebody wrote into my column and said she had a high school boy who was shy and withdrawn, I’d suggest professional counseling. First of all, I’d publish the letter, because plenty of teenagers have the same problem, and then I’d suggest counseling.

Like for crazy people?

Counseling isn’t only for crazy people. Plenty of people get counseling to help them with everyday problems like shyness.

Did you ever get counseling?

Eunice moves her plate and silverware to the counter. I thought about it after your father moved out but I didn’t go through with it.

See? You got along okay.

Maybe not as okay as I might have with a little help.

Eunice always uses the phrase ‘when your father moved out’ to divide Donald’s life into its two major segments. She began this manner of time accounting in January, ten years earlier, when Donald’s father wrote to her at the post office box for Ask Eunice.

Dear Ask Eunice:

The dream of my life is to live in England. Six months ago, I took a job in the Middle East for one year, leaving my wife and my seven-year-old son in Milwaukee. It was a way to create space for me to breathe. I never wanted to be married in the first place. I never wanted children either. Now six months have passed. When my contract is finished, I have a chance for a permanent job in London. If I let this opportunity pass, I’ll be miserable for the rest of my life. Maybe it seems selfish, but who benefits from me being miserable? I know London is the right choice, but I can’t get over feeling...

(Signed) Guilty in Kuwait.

Certainly, it was cowardly of Larry Duffy not to speak to Eunice directly and to hide behind the anonymity of a letter to her advice column when he decided to leave her. Courage is, after all, confronting unpleasant responsibilities directly. Isn’t it? Larry Duffy had traveled the road called Coward’s Way many times and whenever he found it too difficult to speak to Eunice directly. On a previous occasion he wrote...

Dear Ask Eunice:

After one year of being married, I find I’m bored with the physical side of the relationship. Why won’t my wife be more adventurous? More enthusiastic?

(Signed) Unfulfilled.

Eunice knew the letter was from her husband from the return address and the nature of the complaint. She always responded to Larry’s letters directly to the return address and didn’t expose their problems in her newspaper column but when the letter arrived from Kuwait she published it along with a response some readers found disturbing.

Dear Guilty:

No doubt your wife and son are better off without you, you vile son of a bitch. Enjoy London, bastard. It’s the last stop on your way to hell.

(Signed) Ask Eunice.

Nobody in my classes joins in class discussions unless the teacher calls on them, and they don’t have to see a counselor.

You don’t have to see a counselor either. I brought up the idea because I thought you might want some help. You want to earn good grades so you can get a scholarship and be more independent; right? We talked about that and you agreed good grades are important.

Right.

And the main thing getting in your way of earning better grades is you’re not speaking up. That’s what Mr. Peterson said; right?

Jesus, the school year is almost over. Even if I started babbling away it wouldn’t make any difference now. I’d look like a moron and for what?

I’m thinking about when you’re in college. College professors expect participation in class even more than high school teachers, you know. If you haven’t solved your problem by the time you start college you’ll find it’s a much bigger problem.

It’s not a problem. I don’t say much in class. I don’t say much anytime. That’s how I am.

That’s how you are now, not the way you have to be. Ask Eunice’s advice is to sign up for counseling. It’s easy to set up and it’ll help you realize your full potential.

Donald sighs in resignation. How would it work?

We’ll schedule a time for you to meet a counselor. We’ll do that through the school, I think. We’ll call Mr. Peterson. We’ll ask for his suggestions.

He’s a gym teacher. He doesn’t know anything about counseling.

Someone else, then – Mrs. Orbison, the guidance counselor.

Everybody at school will hear about it.

We’ll ask Mrs. Orbison to keep everything confidential.

What do you think they talk about in the teachers’ lounge? ‘Did you hear about Don Duffy? Crazy as a magpie. Keep an eye on him.’

They won’t do that, but if you’re worried about it, we’ll find someone in the phone book. I was thinking the school might help us find an inexpensive counselor.

What about the Perlmutter Institute?

Who?

The Perlmutter Institute. The first visit is only forty-nine ninety-five, and they guarantee results.

A few minutes later Eunice settles into the overstuffed chair in the living room and turns the TV on. Donald prepares to wash the dishes. The wall phone in the kitchen rings. Donald wipes his hands on his shirt and picks up.

Hello. I’m calling from Starshine People Match. How are you today?

Uh, fine.

Good. That’s good. Listen, the reason I’m calling, we have a special right now but this is the last day. Just for today our premium match service is only nineteen ninety-five. Tomorrow it’s back to the regular price, eighty-nine ninety-five. Are you eighteen or older?

Donald leans on the counter. Yeah.

Good. This is a wonderful opportunity for you, then. Have you heard of Starshine’s premium match service?

No.

We’re the leading matchmaker service in the Midwest. Whatever your preference, casual dating, something more serious, whatever you’re looking for in a partner, we’ve got a database of candidates, a whole database! Tell me – Oops! I didn’t even get your name yet, and I already offered you the special. You are–?

Don.

Excellent. Don. Tell me, Don, would you prefer a blond, a brunette, or a redhead.

Donald watches the door warily. Blond.

Excellent, Don. And what about her age? Would she be eighteen to twenty-one, twenty-two to twenty-five, twenty-six to thirty-two, or over thirty-two?

Eighteen to twenty-one.

Excellent, Don. Now tell me, are you less than five feet four inches, between five feet four inches and five feet eight inches, between five feet eight inches and six feet, or over six feet?

I’m five eleven.

"Excellent, Don.