“I’ve got one in every key,” he tells anyone who’s interested.
Then he names them all: one in A, B, B flat, C…
His worship for Lindsay Lowe is known among students and faculty. He’s fine with this. I witnessed some of his classmates tease him about his obsession. His response, always, is to shrug it off.
“What can I tell you? She’s pretty much perfect,” I heard him say before carelessly blowing into one of his harmonicas.
The Dimitri Ames situation must have him up at night. As far as I can see, no jocularity abounds about this. No playful teasing. No mention of it, even. He must’ve been crestfallen after the illicit affair surfaced. Not only was it likely a blow to his ego, but to his relationship with Lindsay. After all, Matt and Lindsay are friends. Good friends. And she hid a profound secret from him. But when the news of her recent late night rendezvous broke, Matt’s expression seemed to change a little, occasionally resembling the stoicism of his good friend, Adam.
Each morning, the boys look out my classroom window, sizing up the Old Man’s Winnebago, discussing it in technical terms, asking me questions to which I have no answers. Then, when class lets out, they head outside where they circle the vehicle, study it together, and point out God knows what.
“We could get this thing running,” they tell me as though I’ve challenged them on the matter. “Talk to Rollie for us, will you?”
Aside from the boys’ tendency towards arguments and harmonicas and hopeless mobile homes, they have another pastime. It’s one that I’m told is catching on, especially in certain higher echelon towns. Dumpster diving. My questioning of this during the last few minutes of class one day is met with incredulity.
“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” said Matt.
I ask them to explain. Put simply, they tell me it’s rooting around in dumpsters in search of buried treasure.
“There’s a science to it,” Matt said. “It’s more involved than just picking through garbage.”
“He’s right,” said Adam.
The other HASERS in the class, a morose boy named Will, and Sloane, the first female skinhead I’ve ever seen up close, eavesdrop on our conversation. The boys tell me about their recent exploits. Adam found a skeleton clock downtown by the professional building. And an old wooden cigar box behind the drugstore. And a stash of Saturday Evening Post magazines. And a footrest he’s currently refinishing. As for Matt, well, he’s been in a bit of a slump for a few weeks now. His last interesting discovery, though, was right here, on campus. And it’s this that has prompted the boys to share their hobby with me in the first place.
“Tell him,” Adam said.
Matt looks at the other two students in class. Then he leans in towards me and lowers his head.
“It was in the cans behind the Homer House,” he whispers.
“We’re not limited to just dumpsters,” Adam points out.
“It was just a few days before Rollie fired Dimitri,” said Matt.
“Tell him what you found,” Adam coaxes.
“Confirmation,” said Matt. “Confirmation that he was sketchy from the start.”
He found several boxes of blank checks, he explained. They were in different names and addresses, all from Old Brookview.
“I told Rollie,” he said, his voice suddenly flatlining, “but he was dealing with the other Dimitri thing.”
Adam chimes in:
“That’s not all he found. I believe there was some drug paraphernalia to speak of. Let’s not forget that.”
“Some empty sleeves of rolling papers,” Matt said.
As though I’ve challenged the veracity of these findings, Adam, with a powerful show of persuasion, tells me that the articles no doubt belonged to Dimitri. Other effects, he tells me - crumpled lesson plans and dorm reports with Ames’ name on them - were alongside the contraband. Both boys study me for a moment, as though waiting for a counter to their claims. Adam, squinting his eyes a little and cocking his mouth, suddenly becomes pensive:
“I’d bet anything he had something to do with that girl’s murder,” he said. “No doubt.”
Matt nods in agreement. The boys continue to study me, waiting for a reaction. To appease them, I nod. Lowering his voice, Adam leans towards me and says how they’ve found some interesting items here on the HAS campus, most of which have been from the trash of dorm staff.
“One of those old CB radios. A bunch of Playboys from the 1980s. A couple of Zippo lighters. A fish tank.”
All I can think of is the litany of worries a HAS teacher endures in their job: summoning the mental and physical stamina to last a weekend on-duty; not getting woken up at 3:00 a.m. over some trivial squabble; the sodium content in Mickey’s chicken marinade. Now these boys have alerted me to one I had never previously considered: being conscious over the contents of my garbage.
. . .
News of outsiders at the Hundred Acre School travels fast. It’s often cause for speculation among students as well as staff. The visitors, a man, woman, and young girl, were seen roaming the campus before being escorted into the Old Man’s office. They were an attractive threesome. One report stated that the woman, blonde, slim, and in her forties, seemed close to the verge of tears. Another said that the young girl, around seventeen, hung close to the woman’s side with her head bowed low. The kids conjectured. Maybe an interview for a new student. Maybe the family of a current student about to withdraw from the HAS. In any event, the trio was holed up in Rollie’s office for nearly two hours.
Because of this, for the first time in all the years since its inception, Rollie misses the talent show. He asks that a few of the staff share emceeing duties. So Tim/Tom and Tennille share the mic and usher the acts on stage. Most students are in attendance. Those uninterested must go to the pavilion where a few staff members supervise a showing of Cool Hand Luke.
The dining hall is made up to resemble a dinner theatre. Tables and chairs are pulled back from the rear of the room where the stage is set up. A makeshift curtain is suspended over a tautly drawn rope that runs the length of the stage and is tied at both ends on flagpole platforms taken from a couple of classrooms. Lighting and music are done by two students, who crouch in front of the stage with iPhones and multi-colored spotlights. This is my first talent show.
I find a vacant seat next to Amber and Scotty. I have a good view of the stage, as well as the Homer House boys, who sit together in a tight cluster, two tables to my right. The lights dim and the show begins. Tim/Tom and Tennille, standing in front of a drawn curtain, start things off with a series of impromptu impressions of staff members. I only know two of their subjects, and they seem like accurate renderings. From there, they introduce the first act, a girl named Margot, who plays piano and sings an original number. The song, sad and slow, has a catchy chorus: “The light you light is the light in me,” which causes the crowd to eventually sing along. The next act is Josh, a brawny kid I teach in one of my American Lit. classes. He does a five minute comedy set. He talks about when he was a baby: He didn’t have a first word, but first letters, which were OCD. He tells a story about his fear of sitting on Santa Claus’s lap when he was a boy, how his parents would drag him, against his wishes, to tell the corpulent, bearded stranger what he wanted for Christmas. The punchline of the joke is that it happened in the middle of May in some back alley near an abandoned apartment complex. For his closing bit, he tells a story about how his mother once found a Penthouse magazine in his room and as a result registered him as a local sex offender. He exits the stage amid much applause. Tim/Tom and Tennille, still laughing, take the mic and comment that Josh’s material was all original.
Next up is the girl who serves breakfast on the weekends - I think h
er name is Courtney - and she sings a mid-tempo ballad she wrote, accompanying herself on a twelve-string acoustic guitar. A boy I recognize from his frequent visits to the Homer House, parodies Cassius’ soliloquy from Julius Caesar. He performs it impeccably, and though the original context might be too esoteric for some, the deftness of articulation gets him a nice reception from the crowd.
Scotty turns to me and tells me I must be impressed with the parody - being that I’m an English teacher. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him I’m really not an English teacher. I opt to smile politely and agree that it’s impressive.
More acts follow. Comedy sketches. Songs. Impersonations. Monologues. Dumpster-diving Matt even reads a poem, which he describes as an ode to something indescribable:
I held your breath for you for an entire second.
Upon promising its return, you said I could keep it,
so I did, for the rest of the day.
That night, you ran and sang and built a cathedral of whispers.
We never mentioned much after that,
but I always wanted to know,
what exactly was I holding of yours?
Matt exits the stage. The crowd applauds. Again, Scotty turns to me. This time he says nothing. I nod. During a flawless performance of “Dueling Banjos,” which two boys each play on saxophones while seated in a humorous face-off, I’m tapped on the shoulder by Louise, who has just entered the dining hall. Her expression looks sunken and almost bereft of color. Pressing her face to my ear, she whispers that the Old Man is requesting Nick Russo. Nick, in a subtle show of defiance, takes his time rising from his seat. Louise, watching the saxophone piece, waits patiently before escorting the boy from the building.
The talent show ends with what Tim/Tom describes as a last minute addition. The curtain parts and Dan Hart steps on stage with a black acoustic guitar and a stool. The kids yell Dan Juan! at him; some shout out requests for Lou Reed and Pink Floyd songs. Unfazed, Dan sets himself up, adjusts the mic and begins his song. After a few strums, he stops to tune the instrument a bit. Then he leans into the mic and says something to the crowd:
“I don’t really remember writing this song. But friends of mine tell me that I must’ve written it. It’s called ‘Escape Artist.’”
His singing voice is nothing like his speaking voice. It’s strong and self-assured. Dan’s stage presence is stoic and even calming. He seems at ease up there playing and singing. The tune is memorable and its lyrics belie the kid’s age:
Back roads are so beautiful
There’s angels in the dust
I swear I’ve seen ‘em all before
They know my wanderlust
Temporary dreamer
And temporary dreaming
Working hard to get somewhere
And tryin’ to find some meaning
The show ends and the lights flicker on. Tennille commandeers the mic from a male student who begins singing “We are the Champions.” She wishes everyone a pleasant evening and asks all on-duty staff to escort their kids back to their dorms. Following the Homer House boys outside, we find Nick sitting on the front steps. He’s hunched forward with his elbows resting on his knees. It takes me until I walk past him, down the steps to the gravel walkway, to see that he’s smoking a cigarette. And though I’m focused on Nick alone, I can feel the Homer House boys all awaiting my reaction to this blatant misdemeanor. Before I can say a word, Nick rises, takes a step towards me, and flicks the still lit cigarette over my head.
“Ready?” he says, walking past me to join the rest of the boys.
When I enter my apartment, I find I have a visitor. My father is sitting at my desk, thumbing through some magazines I purchased in town the other day. When I walk into the room, he doesn’t get up.
“Comfy?”
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he says dryly.
We both scan the unadorned, wood-paneled room that probably looks as sparse as it did when Dimitri Ames did God knows what in this very space.
“Let me guess,” I said, taking another step inside the room, “you’re here to put these little princes to bed - maybe read them a story?”
He rolls up the magazine he’s been reading and looks through it towards his shoes. Laughing a little to himself, he says how he’s got a bedtime story for me instead. The couple he met with in his office, he tells me in that solemn nonchalance he uses when he wants to show off his self-control, were Nicole D’Ambrosio’s parents. They called earlier in the day and asked to meet with him this evening.
“Very nice people. We spoke for a while. The way they’re handling themselves, well, it’s a hell of a thing. I can’t imagine what they’re going through. It’s unthinkable.”
It takes a moment for it to register that Rollie must’ve considered the torture in losing a child.
“They received news from their daughter’s friend, news that came as quite a shock to them,” he adds.
Nicole D’Ambrosio’s friend, a girl named Paige Vickerman, accompanied the couple to meet with Rollie. The news, he tells me, lowering his voice to just above a mumble, is that their daughter knew Nick Russo.
“Knew him quite well,” he tells me, pointing the rolled up magazine to the wall behind him, through which is Nick’s room. “The little fucker seems to have kept this detail from everybody - including the police.”
My mind suddenly flashes back to a crude conversation some of the Homer House boys had one afternoon. It was mostly Noah and Cal doing the talking. Nicole D’Ambrosio was the focus. Yet what I remember more about that day was Nick. He was reticent. And he didn’t join the depravity; he just took it in, considered it for a bit, then walked away. A coping strategy, perhaps. Maybe it was a way of creating emotional distance so he wouldn’t reveal himself.
Rollie continues. Nicole’s friend, who also knows Nick a little, was reluctant to say anything about their relationship. She may have been trying to protect Nicole. It’s doubtful, he adds, that she was trying to protect Nick.
“What does Nick have to say about this?” I ask.
“Not a damn thing,” he says, dropping the magazine to the floor. “Right now, he’s scared. And he should be. And he’s covering right now with his typical machismo. But he knows how serious this is. My guess is he knows something about what happened.”
The girl’s parents wasted no time in contacting the police, the Old Man tells me; and with the help of Paige, they revealed what they know about their daughter’s relationship with Nick.
“I spoke with the cops tonight, shortly after they left. It’s just a matter of time until they pay Nick a visit.”
The Old Man reminds me that the boy is legally an adult and can therefore be questioned by the authorities without a parent present. Then he urges me to keep this matter to myself. Nick, he says, is unstable; for now, the key is to keep him safe and calm.
“Oh, and there’s this,” he tells me, pulling out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, which he hands to me.
It’s a picture, printed from the internet, of a white-gold Tiffany’s ring that has Roman numerals circling the band.
“Nicole’s folks told me about a ring she wore. That ring. It was a gift from her grandparents. From what I gather, it’s worth a few bucks. A prized possession of hers, based on what her folks tell me, and something she never took off. Apparently it was missing from her body. We asked Nick about it. Naturally, he says he knows nothing.”
Ryan, the Old Man adds, also has a copy of the picture. Then he says there will be a discreet yet thorough room search the following day when Nick is in class. I tack the picture on the bulletin board above my desk.
“Still, keep an eye out for that ring. If he has it, who knows what he’ll do with it? He might show it off or try to sell it. If he’s smart, he’ll swallow the goddamn thing.”
“You’re really intent on buying this place? Your life expectancy has to be compromised with having to deal with this type of thing.”
He opens the door to my apartment and steps outside into the cool night air.
“Why now? After all this time? I could’ve seen this ten years ago. But why now?”
Twisting his beard a little, my father looks at me with caution. He starts to say something about my mother before stopping himself. After a moment, he reminds me to keep an eye on Nick and a lookout for the ring. Then he wishes me a goodnight and turns to walk away. Stepping outside, I urge him, to his back, to answer my question. He stops in his tracks, but doesn’t turn around.
“You want to talk about life expectancy?” he asks, his voice filled with a casual sternness. “Yet you’ve left your own life close to a thousand miles west of here. Are you ready to talk about that with me?”
Everybody’s Out There Page 15