THE GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT — BILL GILLARD
/I sat behind Hassan McMillan in a tiered classroom for Physics junior year at our NYC Jesuit all-boys high school where Father Doyle brooked no haha but I was bolder then and during the course of his forty-five minutes I gently shoved Hassan’s chair inexorably forward across the polished wood floor until his feet hung in the air a foot above the tier below and he punched helpless at my calves whenever Father Doyle turned not often to the chalk board until with a slow crash Hassan cartwheeled forward onto Bruce Chow’s indignant back both of them sprawling onto the floor clutching knees and ankles until the eclipse of Father Doyle whose seismic rage dimmed the lights flaying the skin of innocent Bruce and Hassan left me paralyzed by what I had wrought a silent bystander for all Father Doyle knew and the most courageous act I have ever seen was when Hassan looked back at me with anger in his eyes and then instantly relented he could see the fear in my eyes me and my D in Physics and then set his desk upright apologized to Father Doyle and to Bruce and then sat down and reopened his Physics notebook I don’t know why he didn’t ID me I certainly would have except that maybe Hassan this basketball playing giant of a young man knew he could catch what Doyle was throwing but in that moment when he made his decision he wasn't sure maybe I could and maybe that’s why and he wasn’t wrong let me tell you Father Doyle was just about the scariest thing since the H-Bomb that we learned about in Chapter 4
Bill Gillard is an award-winning teacher of creative writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. His writing has appeared in dozens of journals, and he is the author of the poetry collection, The Vade Mecum of the True Sublime, and two chapbooks, Ode to Sandra Hook and Desire, the River. He is co-author of Speculative Modernism, a study of the origins of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He is the Fiction Editor at the literary magazine, Masque and Spectacle. He earned an M.F.A. from Fairleigh Dickinson University, is a recovering youth hockey coach, and lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters
