an eighty seventh story...'vice'

He had been in a helicopter crash, survived ninety-two days in the wilderness, his first wife died of cancer, his father died the day after his helicopter crash.  We’re sitting downstairs in my oak-paneled office, spidery sunlight splayed out across the leather-top desk between us.  He’s a woodsman, hands folded in his lap he looks relaxed in his chair, at one with the furniture – furniture and language, perhaps the two things that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. 

There are some parents who come before me and hover over their seat as if it’s made of an alien material, as if they can’t wait to get rid of their children and back to the Hive, to the computer screen – many of them place their smart phones on the leather-top desk as if their CNS won’t function without the thing in their line of view.  It’ll go ‘Bzzzz’ every now and again and you can see their nerves twitch and panic flit across the whites of their eyes.

The woodsman is a heavy man, and in middle age, in spite of the extra girth, you can tell he’s as strong as mahogany, his hands folded in his lap are large and thick, his shoulders round and wide, as is his neck, and yet his face is boyish and alive, with a ready smile.  We have a mile long line of sycamores flanking the drive to the front of school, it’s an impressive entrance first time around.  ‘I love trees’, he says, ‘you came up the drive’, I say, ‘yes’, he says and leaves it at that. 

I heard the woodsman on the radio a month back and feel like I know about him.  He came across as very open, and it impressed me.  ‘Your child’, I say, ‘is from your first or second marriage?’, ‘first’ he says, still smiling, ‘I see’, I say, remembering his first wife, ‘I couldn’t fix it’, he says almost immediately as if reading my thoughts, ‘cancer’, he says, ‘yes,’ I say.  I haven’t met his boy yet, but I want to – we need some fine young men at our school; his grades were unspectacular, though I suspect it’s because he has better things to do than to waste his youth at study.

‘Would you like a smoke?’, I ask, opening my cigarette case, and taking out a couple, one for him, one for me, and to my vague surprise he says ‘yes’, and reaches out with one of his big, thick hands – in his fingers the cigarette is the size of little, white stub.  I ease back in my chair, and light up, take a drag, he does the same.  ‘You have a vice!’, I say, ‘yes’, he says, inhaling deeply, his broad chest rising and falling, the spidery sunlight crawling through the blinds, illuminating the plumes of smoke rising from his cigarette, ‘and you?’, he says. 

I hit a child once, with the back of my hand, and I didn’t feel proud of it afterwards. Nothing came of it, however - the child seemed overcome by apathy the whole time he was with us.  And I shot a deer once, and not, would you believe, entirely on purpose.  Again, it made me feel dreadful.

‘A vice?’, I say, ‘yes’, says the woodsman shifting in his seat.  I pause, and wonder if I should tell him, after all it used to be common place for men in my position to indulge it, even enjoy it, so long as it didn’t become the wreck of you. The woodsman is looking just above my eye-line, perhaps at the oil painting of the founder of the school in his academic robes that hangs directly behind me.  I lean forward and flick the ash from the end of my cigarette into the silver ashtray in front of me.  ‘A vice?', I say, 'I hit a child once’.  The woodsman looks away and then back again, this time directly into my eyes, ‘you hit a child…’ he repeats.

Ten minutes later, and after the woodsman has left, I’m shaking.  The spidery sunlight has retreated from the leather-top desk, the room has darkened, the afternoon has become overcast.  In the top pocket of my blazer I find my keys, and fumblingly open my desk drawer at the second attempt.  There underneath my school diary and my papers is my beloved bottle of Scotch. I sigh and relax: my beloved Scotch, my vice.