‘No,’ Horse thinks. Jones is one to put a lot of stock in narratives and journals, which can be a treasure trove of psychological insight. His hope is that in looking at Peter’s work he’ll have some idea what had happened to Dan. Eyes scan the room, looking for file drawers. Jones looks at him. By now, he had thought Jones would be home, pouring a cheap scotch and sinking into thirty-something loneliness. He wasn’t here to insult Jones at all.
Jones draws his attention with a cough.
“I’m proud of their choices,” he said. “All important people. All people of note.”
“Yes. I’m surprised they discovered Helen Cixous. Who, by the way, is French.”
“Does it bother you that they are ethnic?”
“Ethnic? No. Although the idea of a French feminist being ethnic is an interesting use of the term. I guess it’s accurate, but you must admit it’s an unusual use…” Horse trails off. “No. That they all seem to strive to eclipse Martin Luther King, Jr., well... It seems a reach. I guess they get enough of that complexity—we know King because he changed everything, while Shulamith Firestone—they get that complexity in the younger grades.”
“Do you have a problem with the reports?”
“No. Very interesting. A who’s who of obscurity. I did want to give you a tip on Jason Pueblo’s report on Nelson Mandela.”
“What about it?”
“His subject is Nelson Mandela. Well, first of all, he’s not an American. Apparently, that’s not a concern with this American Hero project. Second, he would know Mandela was South African if he hadn’t plagiarized the entire report.”
“Is this what you came for?”
“Perhaps,” Horse continues, “he misread American and African…”
“Let’s not get all nationalistic. Nelson Mandela is an important figure.”
“Agreed. He’s just not American. Had it been Heroes of the World I might not have noticed, but...”
“Okay, I get it...”
“Of course, you can’t learn the same lessons from Martin Luther King, Jr. Jail. Non-violent protest. Racial equality...” Horse looks out the window. “Oh, wait, Mandela didn’t embrace non-violence, exactly. Still...”
“You mentioned plagiarism...”
“Jacob plagiarized his report from a book in the library.”
“Ridiculous. No offense, but it’s written in Jacob’s style. And, to be honest, it’s written at too basic a level to be plagiarized from our research sources.”
“I know you use a high caliber of text in this class—or high caliber video, anyway—but he stole the work from a book in the library.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Fine.” Horse walks to the door, then lingers. “Know that students in seventh grade go to the library and take out books written at a second grade level. Often, picture books. Then, they can plagiarize at a level the teacher believes they can write at.”
Jones was silent.
“He plagiarized it,” Horse continued. “The person you assigned him did not have a child’s biography, so he picked someone that did. My guess is that he’s not a very good student. When he turned in something, anything, and it was decent, you were so happy you rolled your eyes and accepted a South African biography for an American project. In fact, I bet if you look at his past work this year you could dewey decimal it exactly.”
Inside of Jones grew an anger that comes from personal portrayal.
Horse stands in the doorway. “Empathy can blind. The girl who did Cixous at least tells us she’s French. And compares her to Alice Paul and Firestone. She seems to know what Cixous is about.”
Jones remained silent.
“Go to the library and look.”
“I’ll do that,” Jones finally said.
“Okay. You might want to check out the report on Emma Goldman, too.”
“Do we even have a book on Emma Goldman?”
“Yes.” Horse leaned out of the room, feet still on the threshold, and looked down the hallway. He’s feeling fidgety. “It’s old. I had it ordered twenty years ago.”
“When you still had idealism?”
Horse offered a dismissive chuckle.
“When a parent demanded Jewish heroes,” he said.
Jones rose and the two stand awkwardly for a minute.
Horse turned to leave.
I’ll come back later and get Peter’s work; most days, I’m the last car in the parking lost.
But Wells entered the room. Under his arm are two large interoffice envelopes. “What luck. I’ve found you both together.”
“Department meeting,” Horse said.
“We,” Jones followed, sarcastically, “were just going to go out for a beer. Together.”
“I have your scores.” By this he means the results of the state’s standardized tests; the same results that will appear in the newspaper the following week. Wells waves the two envelopes, and then hands each teacher one. Jones opened his and began to draw the papers out. Carefully, he laid them on the table, covering the correcting he was doing before Horse came in. Horse held his envelope loosely in his hand, which itself hung loosely by his side.
“I think they’re good,” Wells offered up, seeing that Horse wanted to leave, which made him wonder what he was doing in Jones’ classroom in the first place.
No one said anything. For Wells, good test scores were one of the few tangible guides he had that the daily craziness he oversaw actually helped kids. Never sweating a drop of a few points, or rise, it had long been his position that, after one-hundred-and-eighty-six-hour days, over nine years, students should be able to read and add a column of numbers. Scores made him happy. They justified his existence. When lawyers called and the school board dragged him out, he pulled out the sheets and sat and shuffled them. ‘And for this to work, those scores better be damn high,’ he thought. When he pulled any teacher into his office, this is what he would tell them. You better have the scores to justify your foolishness.
Horse heard it monthly.
“I’m not a big test person,” Jones said, flipping through the pages, “but I think my kids have grown a lot this year.”
“Mine can type.” Horse rocked on his heels and toes.
“Yes.” Wells stopped, thought about Horse’s comment, and decided to ignore it. “I think, overall, the seventh grade is doing well,” Wells says, ignoring Horse as Horse ignores the scores.
Jones flipped through a few more sheets, and then put them aside. “I’ll look at them later.”
Horse ventured a thought. “I’ll make a prediction: Ms. Broche’s kids will all be on level.”
“Broche?” Jones looks up from his scores. “The kindergarten teacher?”
“Ms. Broche. Yes.” Horse began tapping his envelope of test scores against the palm of the right hand. Leaning his body out of the door frame, he looked down the hallway. Then, he pulled his body back. “I predict that when you look at the data, all of the seventh graders that had Ms. Broche in kindergarten will have met the standard.”
“More of that ‘All I Need to Know’ philosophy?”
“All I REALLY Need to Know.” Horse stood up straight and looked straight at Jones. “And, yes. If you look at the scores, year after year Ms. Broche’s kids meet the standard seven years later. No other teacher can claim that.”
“Statistical coincidence?” Jones asked.
“Could be.” Horse smiled. “I stack my class with her kids.”
“You take who you can get,” Wells corrected him.
“I’ll check that out,” Jones added, stuffing the papers into his bag as he got ready to leave. Seeing this, Horse decided to get out of his way. ‘Be gone, so I can rifle through your stuff later.’
“I have to... do teacher things that don’t require my talking with colleagues,” he said, and then exited the room.
“He’s a handful,” Jones said, frustration in his voice. Any conversation with Horse made him ready to leave and not come back. His first instinct
was to fight, but Horse even took the fun out of competition because he was always so… ‘Because he wins,’ Jones thought.
“A good teacher,” Wells defended.
“Old school.” Jones sat straight up. He had little interest in correcting, now. “I thought teachers like him were dead.”
“Thankfully not.”
Wells turned to leave, remembering that he wanted to check in with Horse on Peter. It was only at lunch that Wells discovered that Horse was his new foster parent, and this came to light when Peter got in trouble for throwing a football that wound up in the salad bar. When it came time to call a parent, Wells was informed it was Horse.
Informed by Peter.
“Is that why you’re friends with him? Or is your friendship why he still has a job?”
Wells stopped and turned back.
“Did I ever tell you about our first year here?”
“You both taught together?” Jones laughed and fumbled his correcting pen between his fingers. “I thought Horse was assembled from the body parts of old retired teachers.”
Wells ignored this.
“A student looked at him,” Wells began, “and said, ‘Who is this Jefferson guy, anyway?’ It was a unit on the Constitution, and they’d been doing it for a month. Horse just looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. The kid repeated the question. And he really meant it—it was clear that this kid had no idea who Thomas Jefferson was. The kid earnestly wanted to know why they were learning this material. Horse went blank. Then, he did what any teacher would do: he asked the class. ‘Who can tell me who Thomas Jefferson is?’ Nothing. Blank. Not a kid in the class knew who Jefferson was.”
“So?”
“So, they didn’t know what the Declaration of Independence was. Or the Bill of Rights. No idea. He rattled off every basic bit of American history he could think of. Balance of power? No. Horse left the room. He walked across the hall and came into my room. I still remember it. His face was white. He came in, sat in a chair at the back of the room, and just... sat.”
“What did you do?” Leaning forward in his chair, Jones’ elbows on his table, correcting pen leaking ink on his lower lip.
“I ignored him.” Wells moved to the window. “I kept teaching ‘To Build a Fire’. After about ten minutes he interrupted and asked the class if they knew. Blank. Nothing. Ignorance.”
“What did you think?”
“I wasn’t surprised.”
“No?” Jones then said, surprised, “You’re such the optimist.”
“No.” The older man in the tie smiled. “I’m an administrator. Even then, I knew I was more of an administrator than a teacher. I don’t have the right balance to look a kid in the eye and still do what’s best for them. I can hold teachers accountable for the sake of the students, but not the students themselves.”
“So he became a curmudgeon?”
And then Jones laughed.
It was the laugh that grated on Wells, because it was a laugh that said that this was all a joke—the building, the millions in tax dollars spent, the hours and days put in, the work of the faculty and staff and janitors and lunch ladies, and the hopes and dreams of all of the parents and children and community—all of it was a big joke to Bob Jones. One big joke. Twenty years of administration taught him to tamp it down, because Jones was a fool.
Still, he worked for Wells. He was Wells’ fool.
“Look at your test scores.” Wells walked from the window and then stood across the table from Jones. The teacher was forced to look up. It was a stance of power, to remind the employee that some things mattered. “The seventh grade looks good because of Horse’s scores.”
It was a figurative slap in the face.
Jones felt it.
Wells meant it.
“There is more than scores to education,” Jones finally spat back.
“Without reading and writing, there is nothing more. Look at your scores.”
Jones had not really looked when the scores were handed to him a minute ago. Never looked. Had no intention of looking. Scores? What do they show? Wells can have his numbers.
“Like Broche teaching kindergarten?” Jones sneered, and looked away. The papers sat before him.
The Broche Effect, Wells had called it. When her mother was dying of cancer, Wells pitched in with home care so she’d stay at Grace Haven—she had been a recipient of his secret bonus fund, because she was so important to the school’s mission. Even Horse had no idea the fund existed. Wells did have some secrets.
“Did you ever notice during placement which kids Horse asks for?” Wells took a few steps back from the table. “He just has an old class list of Ms. Broche. When you look at your scores, see how many kids who pass are not Ms. Broche’s.”
“One test,” Jones said. “One day.”
“Nelson Mandela as an American hero? What happened that day?”
Finally, Horse thought. They’re gone.
He slips in.
Opening the filing cabinet, he pulls Peter’s file of work for the year. It is abnormally thin. On a nearby table he lays the file’s contents; a lot of work, until late October.
Then, little.
There are four months of work missing.
“Did you misplace your work,” he wonders out loud, “or are you just plain lazy?”
CHAPTER 10
He was lazy and he lost what little he did complete.
That evening, Horse looked across the chessboard at Peter.
“You say you’ve never played this before you came to my house?” he asked.
On the board were eleven of Peter’s white pieces, and only four of Horse’s black.
“I never said that,” Peter replied.
‘Hmmmm,’ the old man thinks.
It was Peter’s move and Horse tried to think exactly what Peter did say in response to his question about having played chess. On the board, the boy picked up his rook and moved it slowly in the air as he thought through the moves. After about a minute, he placed it and let go of the piece.
Many players would have taken the rook with the bishop ready to pounce, but that was a trap. Knight takes bishop; black left with three pieces—a king, pawn, and knight. No, Horse would not fall for that.
“I love the knight,” he said.
“You would,” Peter replied.
Their eyes met.
In seven moves Horse conceded defeat.
In a little over a week the two had fallen into a comfortable routine.
After coming home from school, Horse made dinner while Peter watched a video. The house had only foreign videos. The teacher felt he was expanding the boy’s consciousness, while the boy feasted on adult fare that would otherwise not be allowed. On this night he had watched Kirosawa’s Hidden Fortress. After an hour, they ate and talked, but mainly sat in respectful silence.
There had been conversations about the comic books in Peter’s room, and some of the movies. Horse gave up asking about the boy’s interests after the third shrug. Following dinner the man forced the boy to read a bit. On their third day together he had thrown a copy of The Secret Garden at Peter—assigned it—and it was nearly read. Then they played chess for ice cream; winner got double scoops. Peter was diligent with a brush and floss before saying goodnight.
For Horse, there was an odd feeling in having a student stay in his house. After Peter put his light out, Horse would put his feet up on the couch and open a beer. Leaning back that night, he thought about the new dynamic. That’s the word, he thinks. Student. He thinks about Peter as a curiosity—he had taken him in because there was something not quite right—but another feeling hovers just out of reach. It had been over a decade since anyone had lived in his house. ‘Do I feel affection for him,’ he wonders. No. It is, he decides, more like having a dog. Now, his day never ends.
Talk about bringing your work home with you.
Still, the reasons he took the boy are now muddled in his head. It wasn’t kindness. Horse had too many st
udents with shitty family lives pass through his class and he had never opened his house to them. A puzzle? Perhaps, but he was getting little from the boy. Still, he had no interest in seeing him gone.
Horse fell asleep before he contemplated the possibility of just being lonely.
Peter heard his snoring.
Thinking about the muffle, he figured the old man was in the living room. Every night Peter had found him asleep on the couch in the living room. The first night he was surprised, but now he expects it.
‘What to do?’ he wondered.
Mainly, he wondered how long can it last. Peter knew Horse had not taken him into his home out of kindness. Dan is missing, and Horse has been snooping around and asking questions. He had not asked Peter, yet. Still, word had gotten around that Horse was poking around his backyard with Laporte’s men. Laporte… Peter thinks, but puts the thought away for later. Either Dan would be found—a prospect Peter feared because it will lead to a definite end—or he would not be found, in which case Horse will tire of Peter and cut him loose.
No security; adrift, again, regardless.
Because Dan won’t be coming back.
Slowly, listening, the boy slid out of bed. Gliding down the stairs, he passed through the living room to the front hall where the coats were hung. Looking to the right and left, he put his hand in Horse’s coat and pulled out his wallet. Inside he found a twenty dollar bill. Putting the wallet back in the pocket, Peter made his way back upstairs, first stopping at the refrigerator for some milk.
Back in the room, Peter pulled out an old copy of The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure that Horse had on the shelf. It fell open to a page stuffed with other large bills, mostly taken from Horse’s wallet. As he put this new one with the others, he noticed it’s not like the others: it’s a photocopy of a twenty dollar bill on green paper.
He looked closely, and noticed that instead of Andrew Jackson, there was a picture of Horse.
Smiling.
And below that he read:Stealing Undercuts Trust. You Don’t Want to Lose That.
Absentee List_An Old Horse Mystery Page 10