Bad Boys: Stories and Tales

By Mike Hood

Bad boys deviate from accepted norms of behavior; they act in the extreme. These stories in the Bad Boys collection feature an array of bad boys who do just this. For example, theres Chad Slack who cheats his way through school; the Dean who is overtaken by excessive tenderness because he suffers from pancreatic detachment; Fuzzy Nelson, a marketing major, who obsesses about the perfect focus group; Uncle Hosea, a religious fanatic, who is looking for the Garden of Eden at the North Pole; Cooper Hawk, a sensitive predator, who desperately wants to be a bad boy; Pinky Condon, an auditor and avid member of the Custer Society, who terrorizes branch managers; the Warden who directs "the band," which is really a paramilitary organization; Professor Dumpt whose project is deconstructing the entire Western literary canon; and Beamer Bird, an enfant terrible, who longs to reclaim his reputation in the world of belles lettres.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493165483

Mike Hood

Author Biography: (50-100 words) Mike Hood received his B.A. from Willamette University and his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. He taught American literature, medieval literature, literary criticism, and the history of ideas for thirty-one years at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, where he also directed the Composition and Great Books programs. His short stories have appeared recently in Imitation Fruit, The Ravens Perch, Blank Fiction, Third Wednesday, and Indiana English.

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Glad You’re Back!

Homecoming Letter, July 9, 2010

My Dear Wife,

I’m writing this letter to explain why I’m not at the airport to pick you up. The company softball tournament, which I thought was supposed to be last weekend, well, it’s this weekend. I felt I couldn’t let the team down, especially after all we’ve been through this season and what’s at stake for everyone. And besides, you know how seriously some guys can take these things.

However, as you’ve figured out by now, I arranged for Vartan to meet you instead. I know he makes you a little uncomfortable because he smells funny and his English is still pretty bad, but what could you possibly talk about anyway? He promised to be on his best behavior—no alcohol, at least not before lunch, and no speeding. But how fast can you go in a Yugo loaded down with all those tools he uses for butchering large farm animals? And that’s really my only concern, that you’d be able to get your luggage in the vehicle with all that junk. So much for gas mileage, but I’ve had that talk with him on more than one occasion, so don’t waste your breath!

Thanks so much for your periodic emails. It would have been nice to hear from you more often since I am your husband, but I know your chaperon duties made that difficult. Keeping track of forty screaming high school kids would have sent me over the edge on probably the first day, but since this kind of thing is part of your vocation, as you call it, I’m sure you must have had a great time. Waiting all night in Piraeus for the ferry to debark for Italy, choppy waters aside, must have been an ordeal even for you, especially with the kids being underage and no bar in sight. Agamemnon had the right idea though, which I remember that from the world lit class you made us take together in college. You know, when he had about ten thousand men parked at Aulis, restless, waiting to sail for Troy. He got his daughter to come down to the beach on the promise of a quick marriage to Achilles. Was she in for one big surprise! But the waters smoothed out once they did their little ritual, and then they were on their way. Did you or anyone else think of that? Of course, Clytemnestra did hack him up pretty bad in the bathtub when he came home from the war, which seemed more than a little petty if you ask me.

Also, thanks for the postcard from Venice. But doesn’t it make you wonder? Everyone is either in a gondola or riding in a waterbus. So does anyone really live in Venice besides a few boat operators, some hotel help and an old Doge or two? If that’s the case, why would anybody want to go there unless they were from some hick town in North Carolina?

All these things aside, I just wanted to tell you how much I missed you and that I’ve been lost without you. When I say lost I don’t mean not finding my way home—although that did happen just once, honest just once, but I’ll save that really funny story for another time—I mean lost in a metaphorical sense, lost in just not knowing what to do sometimes. Even though I can’t believe I’m saying this, those honey do lists of yours, honey, do this and honey, do that, keep me on the straight and narrow. I even tried to make one for myself, but I think I lost it down the garbage disposal.

Well, you remember how often I’ve said, Forewarned is forearmed? If I didn’t say it that often, I should have. In any event, just so you’ll know, I did make an effort to get all the empty pizza cartons into the rollout and the beer cans into the recycling bin, but that didn’t work out too well because I missed the pick-up day. When did they change that? Also, I think the stain in the Oriental rug will probably come out. Darlene said they used petroleum products at the cleaners she worked at. Lighter fluid is a petroleum product, right? Well, you’ll just have to see what I mean.

I should also tell you about the downstairs bathroom. I know it was Bob because he’d overdone it big time at the all-night poker party. He was a one-man pizza-eating and beer-guzzling machine! And besides, one of the women, somebody’s girlfriend I think—Cassie, Chrissie or something like that—kept pointing to Bob and like a prophet of doom saying things like, You’ll regret this! or Keep this up and it will all come back to haunt you! Of course, no one paid her any mind, especially Bob, but as it turned out she was right. I wasn’t able to get all the overflow from the clogged toilet mopped up, but it’s sure to have dried by now. Remember our daughter’s CSI kit she had as a little girl? Well, I stuck yellow Crime Scene tape across the bathroom door. Everyone thought it was really funny; you had to be there. But I guess you will be soon enough.

Don’t worry about the oven. I think it can be fixed. Tanya said she’d heat up the nachos but had passed out by the time the buzzer went off and who could hear it above all the noise. There goes another stereotype down the toilet—I thought all women knew how to cook.

Anyway, I just wanted everything to be perfect when you got home, so these little dust ups, so to speak, have been weighing on me more than I can say. Before I got out of bed this afternoon—oh and that reminds me, you’ll need to do some really serious laundry probably sooner rather than later—before I got out of bed it struck me like a bolt out of the blue. You’ve been on vacation for the last three weeks. You’ll be re-energized and looking forward to getting busy around the house again. So I may have done you a favor. It’s amazing how things have a way of working out sometimes.

Well, I’ve got to suit up now and put my game face on. I have a really good feeling about this one. Can you imagine being champs of the Upper Mid-valley Industrial League? If we do pull it off, I’d expect the red carpet treatment when I get home.

Your loving husband,

Aggie

English Class I

On the first day I emphasized the importance of reading. You can’t pass this course unless you read, I said. He sat to my immediate left and stared mostly at the table. The bill of his cap shaded his right ear.

On the second day I told him, You will have to buy a book. He said, The bookstore is out. Later I checked with the bookstore; there were several copies on the shelf.

After he failed the first quiz, I said, Unless you buy a book and bring it to class, you will not pass this course. He said he was on his way to the bookstore.

After he failed the first paper, I said, Please buy a book. He looked at me as if I might be speaking Chinese. It would also help, I added, if you read the stories and took notes in class. He studied my mouth waiting for what I couldn’t guess, maybe for an egg to drop out or a swarm of killer bees to fill the room.

After he failed the mid-semester exam, I received an email from the coach. The coach said, I’ve talked extensively with Jeremy and he is doing everything within his power to bring up his grade. He added that it was a building year for the team and Jeremy was an important part of this effort.

After he failed the second paper, I received a phone call from his mother. She said, Jeremy is a good boy. Couldn’t he run some extra laps or rake your leaves? Maybe he could do extra credit. I explained that he needed to buy a book, bring it to class and read the stories. Then, after a rather long pause, she said, besides that.

When he failed the second mid-semester exam, I received an email from Jeremy himself. There were no capital letters or punctuation marks in the message. He said, i have to use the book of a friend so I cant bring it to class i rite down what you put on the bored there is nothing more i can do my hole future depends on what happens to me in your class what do i have to do to pass the final

In my response I said, Buy a book and bring it to class, read the stories and take notes on what I say about them.

I’m still waiting for Jeremy’s reply.

English Class II

All men are wolves, she wrote in her first college composition on the topic of gender. They’ll say anything, do anything, but they’re just interested in only one thing. In my comment at the end of her paper before the large letter F, I pointed out that she was not only off topic but had not used the readings discussed in class.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. The way she sat forward in her desk displayed an active cleavage from the font and a run-away thong from the back. So I had more of Brandi than I cared to see both coming and going.

The topic of the second paper was education. We had read an essay about the unfairness of the tracking system and another about how high school education mostly required students to process and memorize information. Ignoring these critiques, Brandi wrote that high school was nothing more than a hunting ground for boys to track girls, to lay a trap made of sweet talk and promises, and then bag them in the back seat of a car. I failed this paper as well, but encouraged her to talk to me in my office. She never came by.

I imagined her and her divorced mom and maybe an aunt congregating around the dinette set in a double wide under the haze of cigarette smoke. When her aunt or mom coughed, a gravely voice would rattle the amber plastic room dividers, drowning out for a moment the lyrics of a country-western song on the radio whining on about the heartbreak of romance.

The next paper addressed the question of evolution. The class read the first three chapters of Genesis, an excerpt from Darwin on natural selection, and essays by contemporary writers who agreed or disagreed with the concept of creative design. Choosing to ignore the readings again, Brandi wrote that women had evolved far beyond men, but because they wanted to help men move up the evolutionary ladder—to make them civilized too—they went back down the ladder and instead of pulling them up, got jerked into the primordial ooze themselves. Even though I had to fail this paper too, I told her that her writing showed potential. I asked her to consider a revision; it wasn’t too late to salvage her grade.

At the beginning of class she would often sigh and place her head on folded arms as if the battle of the sexes was getting the best of her, that the burden was too great for her to bear alone. One day after I had returned the evolution paper, I passed her on campus. The way she looked at me gave me pause for thought. While her large brown eyes were innocent like those of a doe (perhaps already in the sights of a hunter), her mouth, turned up at the corners, expressed a troubling cynicism. You’re like all the rest, she said to me without speaking a word. I felt it had been thrown down as a challenge, and I wanted to prove her wrong.

Globalization was our next topic. How could Brandi possibly make this into a paper about the torment of sordid blue-collar relationships? But she did. Globalization was certainly not about economics or the growing conflict between the democratic West and an intolerant Islam. It was really about the desire of Western men to make sexual conquests of women in foreign cultures, especially Asian women who were passive and never fought back. Variety was the spice of life and this is what had driven globalization. The world was just one big trailer park, the newly expanded playground for what she termed the international bad boy. I couldn’t pass this essay either.

Then one day, without warning, she showed up in my office. She had that same troubling expression on her face that I had seen that day on campus—soft on the inside, hard on the outside. She sat down in the chair beside my desk.

Look, I said, I’m sorry about the way this has turned out.

Me too, she said. Her face relaxed and all the hardness was gone. She fought the tears for a moment and then gave in to her emotions.

All men are not wolves, I said. At least not all the time.

She smiled and nodded. Had we reached an understanding? Would she consider revising her earlier papers? I told her I would be willing to work with her on as many revisions as she felt she could do before the end of the semester.

She agreed.

Over the next few days I thought we were making progress, at least in the one essay she resubmitted. However, I received no more revisions. At the time of the final, which required students to comment on the American dream, there was a serious relapse. She wrote that there was no American dream, but rather an American nightmare. After the first child came, the man bailed out and left the wife with all the bills, which she couldn’t possibly pay. Everything, including her heart, got repossessed, which sent her into the typical free-fall American repo nightmare.

I haven’t seen Brandi for sometime now, but I’ve heard that she is repeating the composition class with Danny Turbano, a young adjunct instructor. They call him Professor Turbo because he rides a motorcycle and has quite a reputation with the ladies.

Chad Slack

Gets a Second Chance

If you asked me to name the three best writers I’ve taught in freshman comp over the last thirty years, I couldn’t give you one name much less three. Do you really think that eighteen-year-olds have anything memorable to say even if they’ve learned to indent and put commas in the right places? What I do remember are the oddities, the misfits, the cheats, the ones who were absolutely resistant to instruction, or who were just treading water, hanging out until something happened, or who beavered away with great effort, but never really got it.

So if I were making a list, I’d have to include Vernon. He haunted me for an entire semester with an unnerving grin. It was like he was in on some great cosmic joke and was just waiting, say, for an anvil to crash through the ceiling and pound me down to the next floor, or for my pants burst into flames. Although he may have done an occasional assignment, not one word did he speak from the shadowy back corner of the room. Yet he never failed to sight me in through the loop on his key chain at least once during each fifty-minute class. Was I a squirrel, a raccoon, a deer? Did the professorial herd need to be thinned?

Jared would also make the list. He was tall, tan, blond and sat in the back of the room as well, but in the center of the row where the light at that time of day illuminated his features. As the angle of light shifted during the semester, he changed seats to follow it. When he bent forward, his thick, wavy, shoulder-length hair left his face in shadows. He’d immediately brush it aside with a flick of the wrist and lean back as it bounced against his shoulders. The problem, though, was the t-shirt. The bottom and top were made of flesh-colored net; the band that covered his chest sported au natural a large, but tasteful pair of that part of the female torso. After class when I asked him to change his shirt or cover up, he just shrugged his shoulders. I didn’t have tenure then, so I didn’t push it. Because the images were so realistic, every time I looked up that’s all I saw. It was like a gun being discharged a few deadly paces from my ear. So I quit making eye contact with that part of the room. When the weather got cold, I desperately hoped he would begin wearing a coat. Instead, he dropped out, just disappeared, perhaps to follow the sun to Florida.

Unlike the first two, who were completely disengaged, Gary in true rodent style nibbled me to death. He was what the experts call a developmental writer. You know, the kind who with hard work and tutoring will show some improvement. And he did, moving up from a C first semester to a B-second semester. However, it was at considerable cost to my own time and peace of mind. I say this not only because he clocked what seemed like endless hours in my office discussing topics and seeking advice on multiple revisions, but also because he never really grasped the topics and related readings, or had what might pass as genuine insights. It was only through dogged determination that he moved closer to the mark although never hitting it. I often thought he was like someone looking for something in the dark, but didn’t quite know what or where it was. He even sought me out for advice on topics for papers assigned in other classes. When I saw the evaluations for the second semester course, sometime in the summer, weeks after the students had gone home, I recognized his only comment at the bottom of the form in the crabbed handwriting I had come to know so well. It read: "Wears to [sic] much brown."

And then there was Chad. Chad would be at the very top of the list in bold-face type.

On the first day of class, he was ten minutes late. Is this English? he said when he stuck his head in the door. The registrar sent me on a wild goose chase.

And you are?

Chad.

I looked at the roster. Chad Slack?

No, just Chad.

Just Chad, one name like a pop star?

No, I’m not really a pop star, just Chad.

Great, I said. Have a seat. I gave him a syllabus. When I looked his way again he was writing furiously on several sheets of oversized graph paper. I thought he was taking notes at first, but it was clear he wasn’t listening to anything I said. He was on another planet.

My grandfather and I are putting together a ham radio, he told me with great enthusiasm after class, as the other students were filing out. I have to have the schemata ready by this afternoon and I’m already late. Catch you later. He had gathered everything up in a bundle in his arms and spun out of the room.

He missed the next couple of classes. I wondered if he and his grandfather had contacted some American flier downed in the jungles of Borneo to tell him WW II was over. On the day he returned, I had students write a short interpretative essay on the reading for that day. Chad, of course, was not prepared, but I received the following note. Please accept this as my interpretative essay. I went back to the bookstore to get the book for this course and acted in good faith to do so, but they were still out. They were quite rude when they told me it would be in by the end of the week. Excuse me if I may be somewhat doubting of this promise. ‘Once bitten twice shy’ as the saying goes. So you can understand why I will need to wait a short space before I test these waters again. However, I want you to know that I will do everything possible to make a good grade in your class. It was signed, Just Chad. PS. I tried to copy the reading in the library, but the copier was broken.

After that, he came to class fairly regularly. He always sat forward in his desk so the lower part of his chest pushed against the desktop and his feet straddled the basket under the seat. He was saddled up. The harder he leaned into the desk, the faster the horse would go and the quicker the hour would be over. He seemed on fire to get loose for whatever business was calling for him down the road.

When I asked students to write a brief statement on the influences of capitalism in Updike’s A & P, Chad, who apparently now had a book, made this observation: "I can understand why a guy would make a fool of himself for a chick like Queenie because I have felt the pull of these urges in myself. I will spare you the details. But for him to give up a good job like he had because some old lady jumped on him or because his boss just enforced the rules is stupid. The world should [underlined twice] be hard on him after this. And his boss was a Sunday school teacher and nice guy too in spite of what Sammy said about him being injected with iron. It couldn’t possibly be true, so it was just a mean thing to say."

On the day the first paper was due, Chad caught me after class to say that his paper was totally done. He had written it on his friend’s computer but it wouldn’t print on his (Chad’s) printer because of some technical glitch. He would show me his notes and rough draft if I didn’t believe him, indicating the wrinkled and jumbled mess of papers spilling out from his notebook. I said I sympathized with his situation, but struggling to keep my temper, I reminded him of the policy for late work and gave him until eight the next morning. It was the first thing I saw when I came in the next day. The paper was hanging limply over the folder on my office door like something run over