Tom's Voice

Truth and Consequences

The hulking minister looked like he belonged in a bearskin tunic rather than pastoral robes. He towered over the pulpit and strained the microphone to its full upright position with a large, hairy paw.

“Michael Swanson was dear to us and to God.” He squinted at his notes. “God has claimed him. Too early, we might say. But God's plan is not for us to question or understand.”

Clearly, the minister had never met Mike, a skeptic about all supernatural beings.

Bernard Watkins sat next to me in the pew chomping on his usual grape-flavored gum. The wad tormented me like a little demon: appearing between his teeth, hiding behind his tongue, then coming into view again perched on a molar. I turned away, but the image remained, like when you look too long at a bright light.

I hated him. Our boss, the chair of the LaSalle State University philosophy department. Constant gum-smacker. He knew about Mike's problem. Everyone did. Mike came to faculty meetings smelling of last night's vodka tonics and looking like he'd slept in his clothes. Students actually complained about the number of classes he canceled, giving lame excuses about traffic on I-10 or his car breaking down. Watkins had ignored the signs and my pleas for help getting Mike into rehab and now he chewed his Bubblicious without remorse.

I forced myself to look at Mike's mother instead. She slumped in the front-row pew, swallowed up by her out-of-style suit. Before the memorial service, I had never met Mrs. Swanson. Mike sent her a card every Mother's Day and occasionally made the long-distance call to California. A month before Mike's death, I'd left her a voice mail asking for help doing an intervention. She never called me back.

Still watching the old woman, I gave in to an urge I'd had since I first arrived at LaSalle State. I punched Watkins in the face. Hard. His teeth cracked together and the gum went airborne, tumbling through space until it was finally stopped by Mike's mother's gray bouffant. She grabbed her hair, pulling frantically for a few moments, then gave up and hunched down even further into the pew. Her tiny shoulders shook, Watkins's grape Bubblicious now a purple tumor on the back of her head.

The Chair covered his mouth and turned toward me, the red outline of my hand glowing on his face. I felt nothing but relief.

After a hasty exit from the church, I got into my old Chevy and drove to New Orleans, Mike's apartment keys on the seat beside me.

Mike had insisted that the drinking wasn't the problem. As soon as his book on ethics was accepted by a publisher and the department granted him tenure, everything would be better. I'd still broken up with him. I had to. My tenure clock was ticking too and I couldn't write while worrying about Mike all the time. Of course, even after I told him I wanted to take a break from our relationship, I still worried.

Before the memorial service, I'd cleaned out his wreck of an office and found the manuscript to his still-unpublished book. I'd proofread it for him so many times that I had some passages memorized.

Sartre tells of a student who was trying to decide whether he should take care of his mother or join the Free French Army. The student's problem is a true ethical dilemma. Most ethical systems tell us how to weigh actions to determine the best alternative. Few, however, illuminate what we should do when inconsistent actions are precisely equal in moral worth.

Mike never checked his blood sugar before making the eighty mile drive to LaSalle State. After Harvard rejected the book, he'd spent his nights drinking vodka tonics until the bartender at the Mottled Dog told him to go home. He'd scheduled his classes late so he could get up, sometimes shower and shave, and stumble to his tin can Mazda with the broken headlight.

Sartre said that we proclaim our values, and indeed know our values, by the choices we make. It is the doing that matters, not what we might say or think about it before we act.

The road started to lull me to sleep. As I reached to turn on the radio, I saw a truck in the ditch between I-10 east and I-10 west surrounded by orange-draped figures that seemed to float rather than walk. Their loose clothing reflected the sunlight and rippled in the wind like the impossibly long hair of the women in Mucha posters. Coming closer, my finger still hovering in front of the radio's ON button, I realized they were female prison laborers picking up trash.

It is obligatory for Sartre's student to join the Free French Army, but at the same time it is not obligatory. In fact, it is not even permissible, since to fight the occupation he would have to abandon his mother. We can only capture the nature of these moral dilemmas by allowing that there are true contradictions. In some contexts, it can be right to do x and wrong (not right) to do x at the same time. This doesn't solve the student's problem, but it at least enables us to represent it.

I managed to wedge the Chevy into a tiny space between a pickup truck and a brand-new SUV. I hung Mike's French Quarter residence permit from the rearview mirror and stepped out onto the broken sidewalk.

Even though I've never lived in New Orleans , sometimes it feels like home, albeit a slightly dysfunctional one. As I rounded the corner to Mike's street, a cigar-smoking fat man drinking from a go cup stumbled by. I wanted to beat the look of self-satisfaction off his face, but he was just a harmless drunk. Maybe the Chair was too. Maybe I was blaming him for something that wasn't his fault.

The buildings leaned into the narrow street like old men playing cards. Long shutters were closed against the afternoon sun, some secured with rusty locks. The green paint on Mike's door flaked to the touch. I turned the key and went in.

His place wasn't clean— every hard surface had a layer of film, broken only where he'd set down a glass or ashtray— but it wasn't messy either. No flung-off jackets, no half-read magazines, no empty pizza boxes, none of the usual bachelor pad debris. The only clutter was on his desk: papers, books, a full ashtray, and an outdated computer.

I needed a garbage bag. I went into the kitchen, a cubby hole equipped with a stained enameled sink, half-sized refrigerator, and white two-burner stove. Supplies for the upcoming philosophy department party covered the counter. The last civil conversation we'd had was about the stupid Mardi Gras bash. He'd grilled me for hosting tips. How would he get the apartment clean enough? What if the big cheeses didn't like the food?

I felt nauseous. The useless pile of plastic cups, paper plates, napkins, and disposable forks somehow represented the idiocy of it all: university politics, petty feuds, uninterested students, greedy administrators. Even scholarship.

Sartre was right: trying to come up with a system of ethics to guide our actions was a waste of time. No one would ever really understand morality. Better to just act and forget about all the pondering, the worrying, the arguing.

Opening a white painted cupboard, I found two coffee mugs, a plate, a mousetrap, and a box of garbage bags. I threw everything from the fridge into a bag: a Chinese food container I didn't dare open, a bottle of mustard, and a carton of solidified milk.

On my way out of the apartment, I swept everything from Mike's desk into the garbage bag: notes, papers, photocopied articles, an ashtray, a framed photo of him with a woman I didn't recognize. Outside, as I stood on the steps trying to decide what to do with the trash, two college-age boys walked past the building wearing T-shirts that said, respectively, “If you can read this, the bitch fell off” and "Bikini inspection board.” Neither noticed me; they were staring at a woman in tight jeans who must have also wandered off Bourbon Street . The bikini inspector whistled at her and raised his can of beer.

I dropped the bag and sat down on the top step, watching the overgrown brats amble toward the nudie bars. When they were out of sight, I started crying.

I stood in the doorway to Watkins's office, dumbstruck. After thirty years of tossing his Honey Bun wrappers in the corner and shoving student papers in bulging file cabinets, he was cleaning. Two full trash bags blocked my entrance and he threw crumpled, yellowing papers into a third. He smoked a cigarette and pulled on his grey hair as he worked. I cleared my throat but the Chair just dug around on his desk, probably looking for an ashtray. Finally, he glanced up, realized that it was me, and took another drag.

“Abby. Come in.” He sounded relieved to have a distraction.

“I'm leaving,” I said, holding out my letter of resignation. Watkins didn't reach for it, so I put the envelope on top of the nearest stack of papers.

He closed his eyes for a moment and I worried he'd had a stroke or something. Opening them again, he looked at his cigarette. “You're a shoe-in for tenure, you know. You've got nothing to worry about.”

“I'm going to teach elementary school in Ohio ,” I said. “I like children.”

He studied me as though wondering whether I'd been dropping acid. A bushy, gray eyebrow lifted, then fell. “Never had any kids. Cats. You ever have a cat?”

I shook my head.

“I could watch them all day. Sleeping, eating, stalking the birds outside they'll never catch. Sometimes I think they're looking for Mary Ann. She hasn't picked up all her stuff yet and they'll sniff it, lie on her clothes.”

Mary Ann was his wife, an artist who made strange, awful pottery. She'd left him a few weeks ago. With all the worrying about Mike's tenure, I'd completely forgotten.

Watkins tossed another wadded piece of paper into the trash. “Benny, he likes to lie in the sun. You'll think he's asleep but when the light moves, he does. Always in the sun. TJ follows me everywhere. Sits on the table while I eat.”

I watched the Chair stare at the ceiling while the long ash from his cigarette dropped on a library book. He didn't know the right thing to do any more than anyone else.

“Look, I'm sorry about hitting you at the funeral. I was upset,” I said.

“I probably deserved it. Cigarette?” He lit one and handed it to me before I could answer. “You're sure you don't want to stay?”

I shook my head. Taking a drag, I tried not to cough and failed.



		Truth and Consequences The hulking minister looked like he belonged in a bearskin tunic rather than pastoral robes. He towered over the pulpit and strained the microphone to its full upright position with a large, hairy paw. “Michael Swanson was dear to us and to God.” He squinted at his notes. “God has claimed him. Too early, we might say. But God's plan is not for us to question or understand.” Clearly, the minister had never met Mike, a skeptic about all supernatural beings. Bernard Watkins sat next to me in the pew chomping on his usual grape-flavored gum. The wad tormented me like a little demon: appearing between his teeth, hiding behind his tongue, then coming into view again perched on a molar. I turned away, but the image remained, like when you look too long at a bright light. I hated him. Our boss, the chair of the LaSalle State University philosophy department. Constant gum-smacker. He knew about Mike's problem. Everyone did. Mike came to faculty meetings smelling of last night's vodka tonics and looking like he'd slept in his clothes. Students actually complained about the number of classes he canceled, giving lame excuses about traffic on I-10 or his car breaking down. Watkins had ignored the signs and my pleas for help getting Mike into rehab and now he chewed his Bubblicious without remorse. I forced myself to look at Mike's mother instead. She slumped in the front-row pew, swallowed up by her out-of-style suit. Before the memorial service, I had never met Mrs. Swanson. Mike sent her a card every Mother's Day and occasionally made the long-distance call to California. A month before Mike's death, I'd left her a voice mail asking for help doing an intervention. She never called me back. Still watching the old woman, I gave in to an urge I'd had since I first arrived at LaSalle State. I punched Watkins in the face. Hard. His teeth cracked together and the gum went airborne, tumbling through space until it was finally stopped by Mike's mother's gray bouffant. She grabbed her hair, pulling frantically for a few moments, then gave up and hunched down even further into the pew. Her tiny shoulders shook, Watkins's grape Bubblicious now a purple tumor on the back of her head. The Chair covered his mouth and turned toward me, the red outline of my hand glowing on his face. I felt nothing but relief. # After a hasty exit from the church, I got into my old Chevy and drove to New Orleans, Mike's apartment keys on the seat beside me. Mike had insisted that the drinking wasn't the problem. As soon as his book on ethics was accepted by a publisher and the department granted him tenure, everything would be better. I'd still broken up with him. I had to. My tenure clock was ticking too and I couldn't write while worrying about Mike all the time. Of course, even after I told him I wanted to take a break from our relationship, I still worried. Before the memorial service, I'd cleaned out his wreck of an office and found the manuscript to his still-unpublished book. I'd proofread it for him so many times that I had some passages memorized. Sartre tells of a student who was trying to decide whether he should take care of his mother or join the Free French Army. The student's problem is a true ethical dilemma. Most ethical systems tell us how to weigh actions to determine the best alternative. Few, however, illuminate what we should do when inconsistent actions are precisely equal in moral worth. Mike never checked his blood sugar before making the eighty mile drive to LaSalle State. After Harvard rejected the book, he'd spent his nights drinking vodka tonics until the bartender at the Mottled Dog told him to go home. He'd scheduled his classes late so he could get up, sometimes shower and shave, and stumble to his tin can Mazda with the broken headlight. Sartre said that we proclaim our values, and indeed know our values, by the choices we make. It is the doing that matters, not what we might say or think about it before we act. The road started to lull me to sleep. As I reached to turn on the radio, I saw a truck in the ditch between I-10 east and I-10 west surrounded by orange-draped figures that seemed to float rather than walk. Their loose clothing reflected the sunlight and rippled in the wind like the impossibly long hair of the women in Mucha posters. Coming closer, my finger still hovering in front of the radio's ON button, I realized they were female prison laborers picking up trash. It is obligatory for Sartre's student to join the Free French Army, but at the same time it is not obligatory. In fact, it is not even permissible, since to fight the occupation he would have to abandon his mother. We can only capture the nature of these moral dilemmas by allowing that there are true contradictions. In some contexts, it can be right to do x and wrong (not right) to do x at the same time. This doesn't solve the student's problem, but it at least enables us to represent it. # I managed to wedge the Chevy into a tiny space between a pickup truck and a brand-new SUV. I hung Mike's French Quarter residence permit from the rearview mirror and stepped out onto the broken sidewalk. Even though I've never lived in New Orleans , sometimes it feels like home, albeit a slightly dysfunctional one. As I rounded the corner to Mike's street, a cigar-smoking fat man drinking from a go cup stumbled by. I wanted to beat the look of self-satisfaction off his face, but he was just a harmless drunk. Maybe the Chair was too. Maybe I was blaming him for something that wasn't his fault. The buildings leaned into the narrow street like old men playing cards. Long shutters were closed against the afternoon sun, some secured with rusty locks. The green paint on Mike's door flaked to the touch. I turned the key and went in. His place wasn't clean— every hard surface had a layer of film, broken only where he'd set down a glass or ashtray— but it wasn't messy either. No flung-off jackets, no half-read magazines, no empty pizza boxes, none of the usual bachelor pad debris. The only clutter was on his desk: papers, books, a full ashtray, and an outdated computer. I needed a garbage bag. I went into the kitchen, a cubby hole equipped with a stained enameled sink, half-sized refrigerator, and white two-burner stove. Supplies for the upcoming philosophy department party covered the counter. The last civil conversation we'd had was about the stupid Mardi Gras bash. He'd grilled me for hosting tips. How would he get the apartment clean enough? What if the big cheeses didn't like the food? I felt nauseous. The useless pile of plastic cups, paper plates, napkins, and disposable forks somehow represented the idiocy of it all: university politics, petty feuds, uninterested students, greedy administrators. Even scholarship. Sartre was right: trying to come up with a system of ethics to guide our actions was a waste of time. No one would ever really understand morality. Better to just act and forget about all the pondering, the worrying, the arguing. Opening a white painted cupboard, I found two coffee mugs, a plate, a mousetrap, and a box of garbage bags. I threw everything from the fridge into a bag: a Chinese food container I didn't dare open, a bottle of mustard, and a carton of solidified milk. On my way out of the apartment, I swept everything from Mike's desk into the garbage bag: notes, papers, photocopied articles, an ashtray, a framed photo of him with a woman I didn't recognize. Outside, as I stood on the steps trying to decide what to do with the trash, two college-age boys walked past the building wearing T-shirts that said, respectively, “If you can read this, the bitch fell off” and "Bikini inspection board.” Neither noticed me; they were staring at a woman in tight jeans who must have also wandered off Bourbon Street . The bikini inspector whistled at her and raised his can of beer. I dropped the bag and sat down on the top step, watching the overgrown brats amble toward the nudie bars. When they were out of sight, I started crying. # I stood in the doorway to Watkins's office, dumbstruck. After thirty years of tossing his Honey Bun wrappers in the corner and shoving student papers in bulging file cabinets, he was cleaning. Two full trash bags blocked my entrance and he threw crumpled, yellowing papers into a third. He smoked a cigarette and pulled on his grey hair as he worked. I cleared my throat but the Chair just dug around on his desk, probably looking for an ashtray. Finally, he glanced up, realized that it was me, and took another drag. “Abby. Come in.” He sounded relieved to have a distraction. “I'm leaving,” I said, holding out my letter of resignation. Watkins didn't reach for it, so I put the envelope on top of the nearest stack of papers. He closed his eyes for a moment and I worried he'd had a stroke or something. Opening them again, he looked at his cigarette. “You're a shoe-in for tenure, you know. You've got nothing to worry about.” “I'm going to teach elementary school in Ohio ,” I said. “I like children.” He studied me as though wondering whether I'd been dropping acid. A bushy, gray eyebrow lifted, then fell. “Never had any kids. Cats. You ever have a cat?” I shook my head. “I could watch them all day. Sleeping, eating, stalking the birds outside they'll never catch. Sometimes I think they're looking for Mary Ann. She hasn't picked up all her stuff yet and they'll sniff it, lie on her clothes.” Mary Ann was his wife, an artist who made strange, awful pottery. She'd left him a few weeks ago. With all the worrying about Mike's tenure, I'd completely forgotten. Watkins tossed another wadded piece of paper into the trash. “Benny, he likes to lie in the sun. You'll think he's asleep but when the light moves, he does. Always in the sun. TJ follows me everywhere. Sits on the table while I eat.” I watched the Chair stare at the ceiling while the long ash from his cigarette dropped on a library book. He didn't know the right thing to do any more than anyone else. “Look, I'm sorry about hitting you at the funeral. I was upset,” I said. “I probably deserved it. Cigarette?” He lit one and handed it to me before I could answer. “You're sure you don't want to stay?” I shook my head. Taking a drag, I tried not to cough and failed.
		Emily Cogburn
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Truth and Consequences

Emily Cogburn