Quietus

By Robert M. Joost

A genius professor of mathematics suddenly resigns his tenure and goes to live on the streets as a vagrant. A "dead" girl appears to him after a series of brutal murders. She takes the professor on a trip that involves the very existence of life and death, the non-existence of time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387271597

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Quietus

Quietus

by

Robert M. Joost

Copyright © 2017 by Robert M. Joost

All rights reserved.  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First printing 2017

ISBN: 978-1-387-27159-7

Dedicated to Michael Shain for his belief and help

One

Not long after I first met Jesse, he said to me: No one will ever believe it, so I’m not sure why I seem to have been destined to tell it.  When he said this, he had a distant look in his eyes, the kind of look that shows disinterest and, I guess, seems to impart truth.  In other words, his demeanor at the time implied verification.  Despite that, I didn’t believe him—not at first.

Then, just before Jesse left for good, he said something else that haunted me for the longest time: When I at first realized that all She had told me must be true, I have to honestly say that I was scared.  I don’t ever remember being scared like that during my life.  But I was.  For awhile there I would shake like a person with the DTs.  Even my bowels became weak, and I could hardly eat.  It took awhile—weeks, perhaps a few months, I don’t really recall. But this fear began to fade.  Or maybe it was terror.  Whatever it was, however, I began to climb out of it.  I started to soar, then became euphoric, really.  And I guess I still am.  You can’t touch me.  No one can.  Now I’m just waiting.

Some of my worldly conditioning still lingers, and so it forces me to use the word unfortunate when I report that Jesse passed away not long after.  Yes, unfortunately, Jesse has passed away.

I was haunted by Jesse’s preposterous and bizarre story.  Intrigued, too.  I had to search for any truth that might be in it.  As it turned out, that wasn’t difficult.

Now I think I know the truth.  As Jesse once was, now I too am waiting.

*

Jesse Ingram scared me the first few times I saw him.  It wasn’t that he was physically ominous.  It was what he was doing that scared me.  It made me feel insecure.  I’ve since learned that, subconsciously, I’ve always been insecure.

What brought out my hidden feelings was watching Jesse picking through the refuse barrels of the large commercial bakery near my office.  He would later tell me that these were the bad days, days when he couldn’t scrape up a regular meal.  He’d wait for a lull in the activity on the loading platform, and when the workers were off on other chores he’d saunter onto the platform and take whatever was on top in one of the drums where damaged products were haphazardly tossed by the dockmen.  Bread, rolls, pastries of all sorts; mangled, squashed, twisted, tread upon by floured boots or the grooved tires of carts and forklifts.  In seconds he’d be gone, swallowing half-chewed what was surely a contaminated meal.  And I’d think:  There, but for the Grace of G--.

I should tell you that I was practicing law back then.  That might make a difference in how one accepts what I’m about to relate, given the general reputation of lawyers these days.  I wasn’t one of those hotshot lawyers you read about in novels or books or see in the movies.  I wasn’t even in league with their adoring associates.  I just plowed through some worker’s comp cases, a collision settlement here and there, title searches and closings, arraignments and pleadings for various brethren with more important criminal business to attend to (no telling whether their clients’ or theirs).  That was me, just a non-flamboyant, non-controversial attorney.  No firm, no partnership.  Just in a small association of six lawyers sharing expenses in a renovated old brick building on the edge of the city, second floor, thank you kindly.  I was 34 years old at the time, had been practicing for eight years, and wasn’t going anywhere.  No wife, no kids, no dog.  I had little to offer the first; thoughts of the second affected me like I imagine Judge Roy Bean did to those who awaited his sentence; the last seemed to like me pretty much, given that they liked to defecate on the lawn of the house my late father left me (my mother died of cancer many years back).

Well, that should suffice for my background, since it’s not important here.  But I’m just the average Joe—or, in this case, Henry Watson.  Your average Joe in personality and appearance.  I’m a little shy and introverted, my few friends say, but still functional and comfortable in my life.

At least I was before Jesse came into it.  As he was before She came into his.  Right now I’m just returning from the most screwed up period of my thus far short life to write what I’ve apparently been destined to write for eons.

If there actually is such a thing as an eon.  Or time, for that fact.

*

Jesse Ingram was a genius, or so said many of his friends and colleagues. (I never attempted to talk to anyone in his family.) He had a doctorate in some sort of fancy mathematics before his twenty-second birthday, a second some two years later, and a dozen or more offers of virtually instant tenure at several leading universities around the country not long after.   Despite all that, he opted for a mundane professorship at his alma mater, teaching mathematics to what I learned are the brain-dead—that is, our hometown students.  Even Jesse could never explain why he chose this career.  He once noted to me that perhaps it was because of Her.  And me.  I couldn’t understand that at the time, since She wasn’t even born when Jesse choose his vocation, and I was merely a node in the future.

Despite his scholarly background, including a dozen or so years teaching, when I first met Jesse I thought him a step away from civil commitment.  What I didn’t know at the time was that he was still coming out of a traumatic experience.  At first I didn’t know about his vast knowledge and learning.  As it were, I never knew who he actually was (other than his name) until he was gone with the wind and the rain.

I later learned that even his wife didn’t know Jesse very well, if at all.  She had been a graduate student when they met, and from the little I learned she was the aggressor in the affair, molding Jesse this way and that, until he finally fell into a marriage no one who knew him understood.  The marriage went nowhere, primarily because Jesse persistently resisted his wife’s attempts to encourage him to advance his career by heading into big-time academe (with its higher remuneration) or the corporate world.  She filed for divorce after five years and cleaned him out for all practical purposes.  Jesse didn’t contest anything.  He didn’t care, if the truth be known.  He simply signed away nearly his entire salary and anything that could be deemed an estate.

About a year ago, Jesse resigned his professorship.  Stunned colleagues asked why.  But Jesse was vague, if not curt: Time is up, he said.  Then he vanished.

Later he meandered into my life.  Or so I thought.  Had I been paying attention I would have known better.  His first words in my presence should have exploded in my mind.

*

As I’ve said, my first sighting of Jesse made me apprehensive.  This was because I knew how close at times I was to the vagrant life Jesse was leading.  I didn’t make a lot of money lawyering. It got to be a common occurrence for our association’s secretary to toss not-so-subtle hints at me about my current dues and arrears.  Her ingenuousness, I’m sure, was prompted by my associates.  Not that I blame them.  I had little sense when it came to money.  I had been talked into leasing a new Cadillac, made extortionate payments on law books I purchased that I could have just as easily used at the state law library for free.  And despite these extravagances I lived in my late parents’ ancient and dilapidated house that even the slum lords rejected.  (But it is furnished nicely—another set of payments I’ve been delinquent on.)

By the time I met Jesse he appeared skeletal, down, I learned, some 60 pounds on his five-ten frame that had once carried 210 pounds.  His former pudgy face was now drawn—cadaverous in the dim light—and his brown hair a refugee from a comb.  He had an unkempt beard, a strand here and there showing white, matching his bushy eyebrows.  His clothes were a mess.  I suspected they were the same he had worn during his last lecture: dirty, holey slacks; what might have once been a tweed jacket, now patched with duct tape; tennis shoes formerly worn by every winner of tennis’s U.S. Open on their way to the title—in other words, more holes than shoes.  Underwear had long before tattered and probably had fallen by the wayside.  And let’s not talk about smells.  It would be easier to list what he didn’t smell like.

In any event, it all began because I had this habit of sitting by my only office window whenever I was reading or writing for any length of time.  This utilitarianism was the result of the utilities—that is, my small office’s overhead florescent light, one bulb of which kept blowing out every other day, it seemed.  At first, I had persistently complained about it to the Secretary de Sade, who always claimed that maintenance would have it fixed the next morning, which seldom happened.  To this day I believe the associates had it rigged in an attempt to drive me from their midst.  The lens of my glasses had been ordered from Coca-Cola as it were, and I’m sure the associates’ dim wit didn’t improve matters.

Anyway, that’s why I first spotted Jesse.  I’d pull up a chair and small table near the window and work with the added light.  During pauses I would ponder the street scene below, which consisted of commercial and industrial buildings from another era.  Although the large commercial bakery that I previously mentioned was nearly an entire block from my window, the employee parking lot and loading platforms stretched back towards my office, ending not far from my viewpoint.

Jesse Ingram didn’t look much different from other vagrants I’ve seen, except that he had a distinctive walk, something akin to a waddle.  His facial features must have been plain before they became covered with a beard, which, I soon learned, was a breeding nest for the past week’s meagre orts.  His eyes were a dull hazel color fixed with a vacant stare.  Or so I thought at first.  Later I would learn that they were looking into one’s very soul.

I had spotted Jesse several times before. I’m sure he had come dining other times when I was otherwise engaged, seeing as how the barrels on the platform were such an easy target.  And I would have probably missed him this day also since I was deep into a flowing memorandum of law.  But something distracted my peripheral vision.  When I looked up, I saw that three men, two dressed in the bakery’s uniforms and another man in a suit, had Jesse cornered on the loading platform.  So, Jesse had finally been caught, obviously, and now he was going to be read the riot act.  Or so it first appeared.  But then I noticed that the men didn’t seem to be talking to Jesse, never mind scolding him, but instead had their eyes on the driveway entrance.

I realized what was happening.  I don’t know what compelled me, but I quickly got up and headed out of the office, ignoring Secretary Dracula’s query.

The patrol car had already arrived by the time I reached the platform.  The cop was listening to the indictment by the three grand bakers.  As I approached them I could sense the tone:  The cop was going to haul Jesse down the station at the insistence of the Suit.  But he’d probably be let off with a warning to stay off the property in the future.

I walked up the few stairs to the platform, putting on my best peeved expression.  Is there a problem here? I asked, wearing a sarcastic smile that I’ve been practicing for years on antagonistic witnesses.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have it down as yet and it never came off right.

Who the hell are you? asked the Suit, with authentic authority.

I hadn’t thought out my excursion before I departed.  Some force was driving me to this inane ombudsmanship.  So where was this force now?

That’s Watt’s son, said Jesse, disinterested.

I eyed him more closely.  Did I know him?  From court—an arraignment?  Perhaps during a hearing