Fifty Cents part one: College and After

It wasn't Jeff's coffee that woke him up that morning so much as it was the change he got back after paying for it. He was still drowsy, doing the morning sleepwalk routine on his way to his first class. Tuesdays and Thursdays were his early days this semester, and three weeks into the term Jeff Baxter was still having a hard time waking up in time for his nine o'clock Humanities lecture with Dr. Hall. Part of the problem was the anticipation of Professor Hall's dusty monotone as he droned on about the Odyssey or the Aeneid or . . what was it this week? Oh, yes . . Poor Henry.

The other part of the problem, the larger part, by far, was Jeff's inability to make himself go to bed at a decent hour when he knew damn well he had to get up for something the next day. He'd developed this particular aversion to scheduled bedtimes as a youth basking in the glorious freedom of irresponsibility afforded only to kids on summer vacation. It stuck with him. Jeff always had the hardest time making himself go to bed. There was always something interesting going on at night when most people were nodding off, he was sure of it. Sleeping during these hours seemed like such a waste to him. Not sleeping late of a morning also was a crime in the Big Book of Life by Jeffery R. Baxter. So the fact that he was out of bed and dressed—if somewhat disheveled and not wholly conscious—was something of a miracle that bright Tuesday morning in September.

He gave the pretty brunette cashier at the Bookstore Bistro two singles for his buck twenty five tall house coffee, and as his hand closed around the coins she dropped in his palm his eyes widened in surprise. One of the coins in his hand didn't feel right. It was too large. He looked down at the two dimes and a nickel dwarfed by the shining silver profile of John F. Kennedy.

“Don't see many of those anymore, do ya?” the pretty cashier asked him. “My grandpa used to give 'em to me and my sister every Easter and we'd get two dollar bills on the Fourth of July. He always said to keep 'em cause they're rare now, but we'd always go blow it all on candy,” she finished this last with a giggle.

“Yeah,” was all Jeff could manage back being slightly more awake but still in his pre-caffeine stupor. Later he would mentally berate himself for not seizing this opportunity to flirt with the girl, something he'd been trying to work on for two and a half weeks now.

He stared down at the coin reading the date. 1978. The same age as me, he thought. How long's it been since I had one of these? He couldn't remember and realized he was just standing there like a goon, so he managed a half grin at the girl and pocketed his change then shambled off to class sipping his coffee.

The caffeine was just enough to boost him through the first fifteen minutes of Dr. Hall's decidedly undramatic account of Leprosy and Sin. Jeff felt himself dozing and let himself drift through most of the class, sometimes jerking alert as his head drooped enough to catch momentum. He wasn't worried about notes—he'd read Poor Henry in high school and again, in it's original language for a German course he'd taken over the summer.

So it was no surprise to him or anyone—including Dr. Hall, who may have been dusty and dry in his lecture delivery, but took strict mental note of those who nodded off in his class—when Jeff awoke with a start at particularly vicious nod and realized the last of the other students was shuffling out the door. Dr. Hall just smiled blandly at him as he hastily grabbed his things and bolted from the room. Adrenaline had him fully awake now, as it only can for one who oversleeps and realizes instantly that they may be late for something important. Like work. Or worse, the first day of a new job.

Or, even worse, as was Jeff's case today: a meeting with his academic advisor and his parents, who had driven three hours last night just for this occasion, to discuss the rest of his academic fate here at Southern Oregon University.

Jeff Baxter had more failings than just not wanting to go to sleep at a decent time, or get up more than an hour before noon. Jeff was extremely bright. Bright enough to have aggravated his high school teachers when he did little or no coursework but aced all of their tests. This behavior, which was a routine for him from early middle school and allowed him to scrape by with decent enough grades after flattering his teachers into giving him a little slack, did not make for a successful college career as Jeff was finding out the hard way. He was on academic probation. Not because he couldn't pass the tests, and not because he was marked down for missing classes. Teachers in college felt it was up to the students whether or not they wanted to apply themselves enough to attend class. Jeff was on academic probation because he was finding out (the hard way) that doing your coursework in college actually counted and you could not ass kiss your way into a better grade so easily here as you could at Bend High.

Jeff had sat down with his advisor, one Dr. Evelyn Percy, the English Department Head, at the start of the term, and she had laid out his options for him in black and white. She had also arranged for this meeting with his parents at that time. His father had not been pleased, nor surprised. His mother had tried to encourage him sheepishly, but deferred to his father's judgment, as she always did. Jeff, himself, had handled it as he did with most stressful situations. He ignored it.

Jeff wasn't ignoring it now. And he wasn't half asleep anymore, either. He was wide awake, wired, some of his friends would say.

He ran across the quad towards Cedar Hall, the building housing Dr. Percy's Lair. The lair in which his parents and Dr. Percy were undoubtedly sitting in an uncomfortable cloud of false pleasantries and unfelt smalltalk. Waiting for Jeff. Wondering where Jeff was. Wondering why he was late. Wondering if he was going to fuck this up like he fucked up so many things in his bright, unguided, Jeff-does-as-Jeff-pleases life.

Sweat broke out on his neck and back as he ran, part of him stressed out and frantic, but the part of Jeff that ruled Jeff's life held that part in check. That part was the part of him that presently relished in the juices now flowing through his veins. The high tension of it. This was the part of Jeff that didn't really believe in repercussions or consequences. The precocious twelve or fourteen year old boy; cocky and believing he understands far more about the world than he actually does. The naively optimistic personality that never really quite died in him as it dies in most people lucky or cursed enough to go through that phase.

Cedar Hall was not large, as some of the more modern campus buildings were. Rather a squat, square three story building perching on the edge of an oval punchbowl of lawn, surrounded by siblings, not twins, of the same ilk. Sitting like a redbrick, ivy crusted toad waiting for unsuspecting insects to wander close enough to be sucked in and digested. He was almost to it when he decided to slow down and walk, calm his breathing and compose. He mounted the cement steps and thrust his hands in his pockets as he rose. His hand found the forgotten fifty cent piece from the coffee stand and absentmindedly turned it over in his sweaty palm just as he crossed the marble threshold of that red-bricked toad.

Something shifted.

Jeff registered the shift on some level of consciousness, just not the level he was concentrating on at that particular moment. So it was that he was up on floor two and starting his ascent to floor three, where his parents and Dr. Percy would be impatiently waiting for him, before he noticed.

He stopped there on the third step up from floor two, almost a quarter of the way up to the landing. Something was not right. Something was askew.

He turned and looked out the picture window behind him at the aspen grove across the quad where the late fall wind was claiming the last of the yellow and brown leaves from their lofty perches, dragging them down to the graying grass already littered with their decomposing brethren. Then it struck him. The common area of floor two, branching off on either side in doorways to paired classrooms, was deserted. There were no students milling about, heading into the classrooms for their next lecture. No professors striding stately through the throng, ready to deliver their practiced insight. The doors to all four classrooms were ajar, revealing empty desks reeking an air of abandonment.

All of this puzzled Jeff, but he was busy thinking of how he was going to sweet talk his way out of his current predicament so he continued on up to floor three. The windows here greeted him with a blazing view of the aspen grove in full summer flower and splendor, but the two classrooms to the left and entry to the English Department's office suite on the right were as empty as the floor below.. Part of his mind registered this as something wrong, something askew, but most of it was composing a convincing apology and a sufficiently remorseful promise to do better and paid no nevermind to his familiar-but-wrong environs.

He swept down the hall towards Dr. Percy's office, growing more confident with each step. The door was cracked and the receptionist's desk, usually filled by girls or boys earning workstudy financial aid, was empty, so he kept his momentum and went right in.

“I'm so sorry everyone, I was just talking to Dr. Hall after class and didn't realize-”

This was when he noticed he was talking to no one in particular.

Mouth agape, Jeff looked at the empty office for a full twenty seconds before glancing at his watch.

It read: 00:00.

Jeff stood staring down at his watch, mouth still open, looking rather like the time when he first got stoned. Not the first time he had smoked weed, mind, but the first time smoking it had worked on him. That time he had gotten seriously baked, had sat on the park bench rocking back and forth, laughing and asking his friends to stop shaking the world, then stared catatonic at the grass with a string of drool sliding from his open mouth.

A string of drool slid from his open mouth towards his watch and he slurped it back up with a big breath and looked around the office once more. It had the feel that no one had been there in a long time. A thin sheen of dust covered the desk, the chairs, the empty bookshelves. Empty bookshelves? Last time I was here, the bookshelves were crammed. There were books stacked on the floor because there wasn't room on the shelves.

He looked out the window, at the aspen grove across the quad, where the late September breeze was delivering the first kiss of gold to the rippling green canopy. This struck him funny, for some reason he couldn't pin down and he giggled like the pretty brunette cashier who'd sold him his coffee this morning.

He kept waiting for the punchline. For his parents and Dr. Percy to burst in on him, laughing. And he'd laugh right along with them, red-faced and admitting they'd gotten him a good one and promising he'd do better in class and could we all just move on now? Like it was before, please?

But that never happened.

Jeff looked down at Dr. Percy's desk—at what had been Dr. Percy's desk the last time he was in here anyway—and the only item on it was a telephone. An old telephone. He couldn't quite recall what type of phone had been on the desk when he'd suffered through that meeting with her starkly laying out his options in a tone that tried for, but missed being caring back at the start of the term. He'd been hungover that morning and was worried more about what he was going to say to his parents on the inevitable call knew he would receive later that day than he was about cataloging the many items that had been on his advisor's desk. But he thought that the phone had been different—was almost sure of it—and he knew there had been a computer there. Hadn't she puled up his records on the computer so she could better discuss his diminishing future with him that day?

Presently, he crossed to the desk and picked up the handset from the phone and was not immediately surprised to find there was no dial tone, only a distant whine that brought to mind the sound of the trains grinding to a halt on the track that ran not far from his parent's house back in Bend. As he stood there listening to that whine, it seemed to increase in volume, as if it were growing closer, and he thought he could hear voices buried under that high-pitched squeal. A chorus of voices speaking low and quick in a tongue he could not make out.

A growing sense of alarm crept up from his stomach at this sound and it really began to hit home to him that things were definitely not right here. Things were most definitely askew.

He replaced the handset in its cradle, cutting off that unpleasant noise. As he did this, the skin on the back of his neck prickled under the drying sweat and he whirled around, sure that someone was behind him.

No one was there.

His heart started to race now, more so than it had during his panicked dash over from the Brayburn Building. Jeff was beginning to get scared now. Something was going on that made no sense at all.

A door slammed on one of the floors below him and he started then gave a nervous laugh. Relief flooded through him momentarily at this sign that he was not alone, and he turned out of the office to see if the noise was made by someone who could tell him what the hell was going on. Someone who was in on the joke.

Relief faded by the time he'd backtracked to the landing between the second and third floors, the unease he'd felt in Dr. Percy's mysteriously vacant office came back stronger than before and Jeff stopped there, wondering if he really wanted to meet whoever had slammed the door. An image arose in his mind that it might not be a person at all, the noise might have been caused by something completely alien. The atmosphere of the building certainly lent credence to the whole notion. He stood there pondering this for several moments, creeping himself out and cheering himself on by turns.

In the end, it was nicotine that decided him. He hadn't had a smoke since before his coffee, and he felt he damn sure needed one now. On the way down, he'd casually check the classrooms on floor two, and if no one was there . . . he'd just go all the way down and out and have a cigarette. Yes, have a smoke and regroup.

Resolved by his plan, he continued down to the second floor, glancing out the window and regretting his tee shirt as he saw the first few flakes of snow pattering off the glass. He took several steps towards the classrooms on his left then stopped. Snow? He looked more closely at the chilly gray sky outside. Wasn't it just sunny? It's September! Or was it? For some reason, when he tried to concentrate on the date, it just slipped away from him. He felt an odd vertigo as his mind whirled, trying to come to rest on what day it was, what season it was, but his thought process couldn't focus on the right answer.

Motion flickered in the corner of his eye and he started out of his whirlwind confusion. The doorway to the classroom was empty, but he'd seen a form duck behind the door there. Chill waves ran up his spine and he found himself possessed of no desire to chase the movement, convinced that whoever was there meant him no good. Another flicker from another room got him moving towards the stairs. This one had been accompanied by a low, barely audible laugh. An almost reptilian snicker.

By the time Jeff hit the landing he was running and he slammed out the doors of Cedar Hall into bright afternoon sunlight. His momentum carried him down the steps where he crashed into a young man just walking up the grassy slope. They both went sprawling in the grass.

“Dude! What the . .?”

Jeff scrambled up, looking around him wildly. The day looked to be the same as it had before he'd gone into Cedar Hall, albeit several hours later. Student's could be seen ambling or rushing their way around the campus. The sun shone down as it should for that time of year. He looked to the aspen grove. Green leaves with just a hint of yellow here and there rustled in a lazy breeze. He looked down at the boy he'd run into and saw it was his roommate Brian.

“Shit, sorry man,” he said, bending to grasp Brian's hand and haul him up to standing. “I didn't see you until it was too late.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Brian said a little resentfully. “What the hell were you running from? Where have you been? I was just looking for you, man, your parents are pissed!”

“I've been in Dr. Percy's office looking for them. But nobody was there. It was all emptied out and there was nobody in the building. I thought I was freaking out or something.”

“Dude, nobody's seen you since this morning. Your parents showed up at the apartment when you didn't show for your meeting and I told them I hadn't seen you since last night. I said I'd thought you were in your room when I left for class, but that I wasn't sure. They said for you to call them when I see you. They had to get back to Bend.”

“What time is it?” Jeff was afraid to look at his own watch.

“Just after four. What happened? Did you get high or something?”

“No, I . . . I guess I must have fallen asleep or something. Look, I'd better go call them. Sorry about running into you.” He walked off to find a payphone, Brian staring after him.

* * *

Jeff pulled the last box out of the trunk of his car and balanced it against his hip, using his free hand to slam the trunk shut. He trudged up to the dingy little four-plex which was to be his new home. He couldn't afford better what with the child support and alimony he had to give her every month. Truth to tell, he was not sure if he was going to be able to afford this little two bedroom on the bottom floor. But he didn't let it stress him out. He ignored it.

He went inside and set the box on a stack of others, the whole thing listing dangerously now with the added weight. So much to do, so much to unpack and put away and all he wanted was a beer and some tv. He helped himself to the former, then, sitting on the torn, second-had sofa, switched on the latter. But after fifteen minutes of channel surfing, and getting well into his second beer, he felt restless, finding nothing on to catch his interest. He glanced at the boxes lining the walls, sitting on the table. Might as well get started.

He got the last box he'd brought in and took it back over to the couch so he could go through it, not entirely sure of the contents. This box had been stuffed all the way to the back of the garage at the house he'd just left to his ex-wife and kids.

Opening the box, and his third beer, he sifted through the contents. It seemed to be full of things from his stint at college. He winced remembering the few months he'd spent trying to prove to himself and his parents that he could do something with his life. That had been over a decade ago, before he'd gotten news that Jenny was pregnant. Before his parents had died in a crash on their way home from visiting him at school. Fuck, he thought, what a waste.

He pulled out old notebooks, textbooks and pens. He found some other odds and ends, reminiscing over them, thinking he probably hadn't seen or held many of these items since just after the wedding, since before Jeff junior was born. There was an old letter from Dr. Percy to his parents, requesting a meeting with him to discuss his grades. This tickled his memory. Wasn't that why his parents had visited him the day they died? He couldn't be sure. Part of him remembered having a great time with them and going out to eat after showing them around the campus. Another part remembered . . something else. He couldn't quite reach it.

He put the letter back in the box, thinking randomly that Dr. Percy herself had died within weeks of his parents, but damned if he could remember how. Something tragic; another accident or a fast-acting disease. He began to put the other relics of his short-lived academic life back in the box as well when he noticed something shiny in the very bottom. He pulled it out. A fifty cent piece.

A cold sweat broke out on his neck and he felt chills as he stared at the coin in his hand. He remembered now. Remembered everything. But, it didn't make sense. He remembered the missed appointment, dashing through the empty building, the confusion wondering where everyone was. But that wasn't right . . because he also remembered meeting his parents and Dr. Percy. He remembered telling his parents afterward in an awkward moment that he had just heard from Jenny and that they would soon be grandparents. He was quite sure, though, that in the memory of that empty building, with the seasons outside changing as he changed floors, that Jenny had not been pregnant yet, that he had not even slept with her yet.

Jeff's mind was reeling as he tried to make sense of it all. He hadn't thought about those times in years, blocking out the memory of his parents death and his struggle to provide for his young family. Now here he sat, divorced from Jenny, sharing custody with their two sons and he held in his hand this talisman of those times. Those strange times.

“The leaves kept changing,” he said. “The leaves on the trees outside. Kept changing.”

He turned the coin over in his hand.

Something shifted.