Cocktail Hour

We crucified those frogs, stretched them out on boards with those “T” shaped pins. The air stank of rubber and vinegar — formaldehyde. We ran scalpels deep down their abdomen, some of us cutting the whole frog in two. We gagged.
Owen, that scrawny, Coke-bottle spectacled, shirt-tailed-dangling pyromaniac (also my best friend) fiddled with the bunsen burner gas jets that looked like one-eyed Alfs, rising like herons through wheatgrass, from a black slate marsh. He opened and closed the valves until he couldn’t remember which direction left it open or closed. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey” did not work here. Then he picked up a wire clamp-like igniter, which worked like cricket legs rubbing together. He held it an eighth of an inch from his face and flicked the flint head back and forth over the flat base, watching it spark. It made a grating sound, almost painful, like running your wet finger down a balloon, or fingernails on a chalkboard. This distracted me from frog-butchering and had me concerned that any minute now Owen would engulf us in a fire cloud of methane/butane death.
“Owen! Stop that!” Mrs. Clausen snapped, but too late.
“Wha-”, the last sound Owen ever made, got hushed as if God or some divine librarian of natural gas had put Her finger to Her lips and shushed the life from him. Science Lab, Room 202 exploded in screams, shrieks, flames, and the cacophony of metal lab stools falling over, and Petri dishes and test tubes smashing. The air itself let out an exhausted breath like it tired of keeping us alive, and then everything got quiet.
We survived, Mrs. Clausen and I. She saved me. All the rest died. Among the remains of Science Lab 202, she stood in her scorched, flower-patterned dress, limp and hanging beneath her blackened lab coat. A fire extinguisher dangled from her left hand gripped by its throat. She looked gorgeous, had always been my favorite teacher.
I told my side of the story about a hundred times to the news reporters, and first responders, that besieged the building. They crucified Mrs. Clauson like we’d done the frogs and it aged her; she needed a walker to support her now stooped and drooping frame. The remorse and guilt crippled her, but that wouldn’t suffice for the community as punishment. So, after they fired her, seven women from the mayor’s advisory board and the PTA held a closed meeting with the mayor and they pressured those who possessed power to manipulate the property lines in the historic district, invoked “eminent domain”, and re-routed I-19 straight through Mrs. Clausen’s mid century modern living room. No longer employed, she had to move to “The Apartments”, a low-rent housing project, where families of AIDs infected feral cats lived beneath the dumpsters behind the faded green plastic fencing of a pen behind the utility shed.
“That’ll teach the teacher,” Mrs. Anderson, one of the stately seven, said.
On Wednesday afternoons, I’d see Mrs. Clausen with that walker far out in front, like a battering ram, making her way to the G-Mart. With arms ramrod straight, her head bobbed from her neck between them, like some kind of cocktail dippy bird. Life had atrophied within her, made her bones brittle, her ligaments slack. She never looked up again. Life intended to push her into the ground. Enough to make you cry. I know I did.
I’d just turned 15 back then, but struggling into my early 20s, I watched them dismantle Mrs. Clausen. Sometimes I’d leave bouquets of lilies and irises in her mail slot because I couldn’t stand to see her so sad. And although Owen had been my best friend, I always told the story the way I remembered it: that Owen had done it; that Mrs. Clausen tried to stop him; that sometimes accidents happen and no one is to blame. But nobody listened to me. Nobody listened to a kid. And later, nobody listened period. They shut their ears and held tight to their convictions as they convicted Mrs. Clausen. That roiled inside me like the giant frenzied koi at feeding time in The Hameau de la Reine à Versailles.

Start at the beginning, Mrs. Anderson, who owned the consignment shop. I’d then work down the alphabet.

When Owen and I became friends in middle school, after school, most days we’d break into his father’s lawnmower shed and fill empty 7Up bottles (the “uncola”) with gas (the “unsoda”) we’d pilfered from there. We found rags in an oil-stained Pennzoil box and shoved them down the necks of the now-lethal soda bottles. Then we’d walk into Sadlier’s Woods, to a clearing by the creek where we’d built a small fireplace from stones we found along the bank. There we lit and threw our Molotov cocktails, the ones we’d learned to make from Abby Hoffman’s Steal this Book, a book I stole from my sister. When the glass shattered and the flames leapt, the thrill of transforming air into fire shuddered through our scrawny middle school frames as if a star exploded through the marrow of our bones. It felt that way to me. We called it “Cocktail Hour”.
We must have thrown at least a hundred cocktails. I’d consign Mrs. Anderson to the afterlife as I consigned those bottles of gas to an abrupt intake of oxygen. From her front yard, I could see her flip on the Jane Fonda workout tape, as anyone could see, through that vast picture window, where she never drew the drapes. Her VCR, with the red digital clock, blinked at 12:00, as they all did as if time had frozen, (really, the day had made it to about 5 PM, Happy Hour, the sun just setting).
I’m not sure you’ve ever seen anything like what I saw after that Molotov cocktail sailed through that picture window. At once, the flames engulfed her, transforming her spandex workout jumper into molten viscous goo that slipped down her body in a silky, glistening, napalm ooze. That — and the picture I can’t get out of my head: her screaming lips curled and melting from her teeth, as she defenestrated from that selfsame window — I’ll tell you, can disassemble a person.

About two nights after I’d visited Mrs. Anderson’s, the SWAT team van crept up to my house (I still lived with my parents). So preoccupied with plans to reunite Mr. Boetticher (A, B…) and Mrs. Anderson in the afterlife, (I’m a romanic at heart), I’d heard nothing. I thought it might be nice for them to spend eternity together, like Paolo and Francesca.
They came in through the bathroom window, as Joe Cocker would tell you, (Fuck The Beatles!) and then burst into my room. One of them threw me into the wall where my vintage Woodstock poster hung (you know, the one with half a guitar, the hand, and the dove sitting far up on the neck) — turned it into vintage garbage. Each of them looked identical, like The Blue Man Group, only in black with guns and helmets and plexiglass shields that clung to their forearms. The one that cuffed me smelled like mouthwash, “Arctic Mint” as his breath carried over my shoulder.

Here at Wallingford State Penitentiary, death row, they have what they call their own “Cocktail Hour”. I don’t partake. Baby $nakes Ton & ½ makes it in his cell toilet, and well, some things are just not worth it. I take up my time writing to Mrs. Clauson, checking to see how she’s doing. I’ve written over a hundred letters. I worry about her. She never writes back. I don’t even know if she gets my letters. It’s like praying and talking to God. You never get an answer, and sometimes you may wonder if He’s out there, anywhere. It kind of gnaws at you, a niggling itch you can't scratch. Soon though, right after this meal, from Chez Dante, I’ll be able to tell you all about it.

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Veteran English teacher, Jon Gluckman's work can be found at Micro-Fiction Monday Magazine, 101 Words Weekly, and Mystery Magazine. He lives and teaches in southern New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia, with his lovely wife, two foundling cats, and one rescue puppy.

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