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"Oh boy," said Garp. But when he reached to take back his story, the knuckles of her long hand were very white and she would not let go of the package.
In the 133-pound class, his junior year, Garp finished the season with a won-lost record of 12-1, losing only in the finals of the New England championships. In his senior year, he would win everything--captain the team, be voted Most Valuable Wrestler, and take the New England title. His team would represent the beginning of an almost twenty-year dominance of New England wrestling by Ernie Holm's Steering teams. In this part of the country, Ernie had what he called an Iowa advantage. When Ernie was gone, Steering wrestling would go downhill. And perhaps because Garp was the first of many Steering stars, he was always special to Ernie Holm.
Helen couldn't have cared less. She was glad when her father's wrestlers won, because that made her father happy. But in Garp's senior year, when he captained the Steering team, Helen never attended a single match. She did return his story, though--in the mail from Talbot, with this letter.
Dear Garp,
This story shows promise, although I do think, at this point, you are more of a wrestler than a writer. There is a care taken with the language, and a feeling for people, but the situation seems rather contrived and the ending of this story is pretty juvenile. I do appreciate you showing it to me, though.
Yours,
Helen
There would be other rejection letters in Garp's writing career, of course, but none would mean as much to him as this one. Helen had actually been kind. The story Garp gave her was about two young lovers who are murdered in a cemetery by the girl's father, who thinks they are grave robbers. After this unfortunate error, the lovers are buried side by side; for some completely unknown reason, their graves are promptly robbed. It is not certain what becomes of the father--not to mention the grave robber.
Jenny told Garp that his first efforts at writing were rather unreal, but Garp was encouraged by his English teacher--the closest thing Steering had to a writer-in-residence, a frail man with a stutter whose name was Tinch. He had very bad breath, remindful to Garp of the dog breath of Bonkers--a closed room of dead geraniums. But what Tinch said, though odorous, was kind. He applauded Garp's imagination, and he taught Garp, once and for all, good old grammar and a love of exact language. Tinch was called Stench by the Steering boys of Garp's day, and messages were constantly left for him about his halito
sis. Mouthwash deposited on his desk. Toothbrushes in the campus mail.
It was after one such message--a package of spearmint breath fresheners taped to the map of Literary England--that Tinch asked his composition class if they thought he had bad breath. The class sat as still as moss, but Tinch singled out young Garp, his favorite, his most trusted, and he asked him directly, "Would you say, Garp, that my b-b-breath was bad?"
Truth moved in and out of the open windows on this spring day of Garp's senior year. Garp was known for his humorless honesty, his wrestling, his English composition. His other grades were indifferent to poor. From an early age, Garp later claimed, he sought perfection and did not spread himself thin. His test scores, for general aptitude, showed that he wasn't very apt at anything; he was no natural. This came as no surprise to Garp, who shared with his mother a belief that nothing came naturally. But when a reviewer, after Garp's second novel, called Garp "a born writer," Garp had a fit of mischief. He sent a copy of the review to the testing people in Princeton, New Jersey, with a note suggesting that they double-check their previous ratings. Then he sent a copy of his test scores to the reviewer, with a note that said: "Thank you very much, but I wasn't 'born' anything." In Garp's opinion, he was no more a "born" writer than he was a born nurse or a born ball turret gunner.
"G-G-Garp?" stuttered Mr. Tinch, bending close to the boy--who smelled the terrible truth in Senior Honors English Composition. Garp knew he would win the annual creative writing prize. The sole judge was always Tinch. And if he could just pass third-year math, which he was taking for the second time, he would respectably graduate and make his mother very happy.
"Do I have b-b-bad breath, Garp?" Tinch asked.
"'Good' and 'bad' are matters of opinion, sir," Garp said.
"In your opinion, G-G-Garp?" Tinch said.
"In my opinion," Garp said, without batting an eye, "you've got the best breath of any teacher at this school." And he looked hard across the classroom at Benny Potter from New York--a born wise-ass, even Garp would agree--and he stared Benny's grin off Benny's face because Garp's eyes said to Benny that Garp would break Benny's neck if he made a peep.
And Tinch said, "Thank you, Garp," who won the writing prize, despite the note submitted with his last paper.
Mr. Tinch: I lied in class because I didn't want those other assholes to laugh at you. You should know, however, that your breath is really pretty bad. Sorry.
T. S. Garp
"You know w-w-what?" Tinch asked Garp when they were alone together, talking about Garp's last story.
"What?" Garp said.
"There's nothing I can d-d-do about my breath," Tinch said. "I think it's because I'm d-d-dying," he said, with a twinkle. "I'm r-r-rotting from the inside out!" But Garp was not amused and he watched for news of Tinch for years after his graduation, relieved that the old gentleman did not appear to have anything terminal.
Tinch would die in the Steering quadrangle one winter night of causes wholly unrelated to his bad breath. He was coming home from a faculty party, where it was admitted that he'd possibly had too much to drink, and he slipped on the ice and knocked himself unconscious on the frozen footpath. The night watchman did not find the body until almost dawn, by which time Tinch had frozen to death.
It is unfortunate that wise-ass Benny Potter was the first to tell Garp the news. Garp ran into Potter in New York, where Potter worked for a magazine. Garp's low opinion of Potter was enhanced by Garp's low opinion of magazines, and by Garp's belief that Potter always envied Garp for Garp's more significant output as a writer. "Potter is one of those wretches who has a dozen novels hidden in his drawers," Garp wrote, "but he wouldn't dare show them to anybody."
In Garp's Steering years, however, Garp was also not outgoing at showing his work around. Only Jenny and Tinch got to see his progress--and there was the one story he gave Helen Holm. Garp decided he wouldn't give Helen another story until he wrote one that was so good she wouldn't be able to say anything bad about it.
"Did you hear?" Benny Potter asked Garp in New York.
"What?" Garp said.
"Old Stench kicked off," Benny said. "He f-f-froze to death."
"What did you say?" Garp said.
