Lessons
by Jack B. Bedell
The private investigator wanted to be a teacher when she was little. She has no idea why, since she’s always hated talking in front of people, but she remembers how much she loved making lessons on the back of her sister’s old poster boards. How to practice capital letters in cursive. Long, neat loops. How to find the verbs in sentences. And circle them. How to count by twos or fours or sevens. That stuff occupied her mind every day until she saw Clarice Starling night-goggling her way through an old basement with her handgun drawn, ready to blow away a serial killer in Silence of the Lambs. After Clarice, she only wanted to be an investigator, to find all the wrong answers wherever they were hiding and correct them. And now she’s followed a subject 500 miles to Austin where he’s unloading a moving truck into a faux-Roman mansion. He’s no Buffalo Bill, but he’s killing it for somebody who’s supposed to be paralyzed from his shoulders to the tips of his fingers. Trip after trip from trailer to door. So many chairs and sofas, end tables, and bed frames carried in loops around the truck, the landscaping, up the front stairs and through the giant, arched entryway. So many trips that she loses track of time watching it all through her viewfinder. The hours of footage and mountain of snappies pile up on their own. Though if there was a lesson in any of it, for her or for the subject, it’s floated away into the sky by the time his truck is emptied and he climbs into the truck to head back to Louisiana. Before she caps her camera lens, the private investigator strains to make out the subject’s outline through the truck’s dark glass, green like night vision. She can’t help but imagine how much his day’s motions would have looked like big, cursive Ls and Qs from the clouds above.
Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Hawkeye, The Shore, Moist, Psaltery & Lyre, Dirtbag, Some Words and other journals. His work has also been selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Fight Nights (Blue Horse Press, 2025). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.
