LITMIR.BIZ

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Farish, Murray, 1968–

      [Short stories. Selections]

      Inappropriate Behavior : Stories / Murray Farish. — First Edition.

      pages cm

      I. Title.

      PS3606.A6925A6 2014

      813'.6—dc23

      2013037871

      ISBN 978-1-57131-902-9 (e-book)

      Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Inappropriate Behavior was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Friesens Corporation.

      For Jack and Hunter,

      and for Teresa, till the wheels come off . . .

      CONTENTS

The Passage

Ready for Schmelling

       Lubbock Is Not a Place of the Spirit

       The Thing about Norfolk

       Mayflies

       I Married an Optimist

       Charlie’s Pagoda

       The Alternative History Club

       Inappropriate Behavior

      Sometimes

      you wake up and you’re living your life

      in the static between stations, between the prayer

      and the answer . . .

      —David Clewell, “We Never Close”

      INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

THE PASSAGE

      It was an unseasonably chilly morning in late September, 1959, when Joe Bill Kendall waved to his parents from the aft deck of the freighter Marion Lykes. They’d left Tyler at 3:00 a.m. to get him to the boat on time and to save the expense of a New Orleans hotel room, and now his parents looked, to Joe Bill, small and tired and, his mother especially, slightly worn, the way she kept waving, wiping her face, waving and wiping her face. Although he had not slept the night before, Joe Bill felt no fatigue at all, just the same excited strum in the gut he’d had for several weeks.

      After a few minutes of waving, watching his parents grow tinier and tinier—although the ship had not yet moved—he blew one last kiss good-bye and turned, took his luggage cart by the handle, and headed toward the passengers’ deck, hearing nothing but French the whole way. He passed some of the deckhands tying down loads and marking the inventory, and understood every word. He passed a pair of officers discussing their plans in Le Havre and picked up most of that as well. It was soon clear that nearly the entire crew was French.

      Joe Bill made a sudden decision not to let on that he spoke the language. It would be fun; it would make him feel like a spy on a secret mission, not just a kid going abroad for a few months of study on the cheap. At the exact right moment, he could spring it on some unsuspecting officer or deckhand, respond to some slight about Americans or some clever quip or worldly statement. They’d look at him, stunned, amazed, with a whole new respect. The man, they would think, is more than he appears.

      Joe Bill’s cabinmate was already in the room when he arrived, lugging his cart behind him through the narrow hallways of the passengers’ deck. Joe Bill was a little disappointed; he’d hoped to be the first.

      “I’m Lee,” the other man said. “I don’t mind the top bunk.” They shook hands, and Lee looked off to the side of Joe Bill, behind his back and to the left.

      He was a slight young man a few years older than Joe Bill, dark brown hair and a knobby chin, small, dark eyes beneath dark, large brows.

      “So what brings you aboard the Marion Lykes?” Joe Bill asked as Lee untied the gray denim duffel that was apparently his only piece of luggage. He took out three dark pairs of slacks, four or five white button-down shirts, a handful of underwear and undershirts, some socks. The drawer was only half full when Lee was done with the clothes. He threw the duffel, still containing some weight, onto his upper bunk.

      “I’m going to college,” Lee said, kneeling back down beside the drawer.

      “Me too,” Joe Bill said. “You going in France?”

      “No,” Lee said, not looking up at Joe Bill, still fiddling with the clothes in the drawer, lining them up straight and pressing them out flat. “Sweden.”

      “Sweden,” Joe Bill said. “How about that? Cold up there.” Lee appeared to have only the coat he still had on, a green military field jacket. “And dark six months of the year.”

      “Or Switzerland.”

      “Oh,” Joe Bill said. “So you haven’t decided?”

      “Switzerland.”

      “What school?”

      “What about you?” Lee said, looking directly at Joe Bill for the first time, then quickly looking back into his drawer. He set each ball of socks next to the other in a tight, lumpy row.

      “I’m going to study at the Institute in Tours.”

      “How old are you?” Lee asked, setting his eyes on Joe Bill again.

      “I’m

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