by Jim Krieg
In recent weeks, local pedestrians find themselves collectively breathing a sigh of relief, and it’s all thanks to a local lawman... who has a paper route! The intersection of Maple Avenue and Third Streets has long been infamous as a gathering place for rowdy grade schoolers, a corner to be avoided by senior citizens, young mothers and anyone who values peace and quiet, but a six year-old crossing guard has changed all that . . .
LOCAL BOY HAS SAFETY IN HIS ‘CORNER’
At the annual Safety Awards Dinner held at the Morris Center Friday night, one concerned citizen walked away with more trophies than anyone else. Third grader Griffin Carver may have been the youngest recipient, but he certainly made an impression as he walked to the stage again and again to receive . . .
CROSSING GUARD RISKS ALL TO SAVE KITTENS
A grateful mother tabby purred joyfully yesterday as she was reunited with her wayward litter of meowing kitties. The heroic actions of a young safety patrol officer who races across a busy thoroughfare to . . .
COURAGEOUS CORNER COP PUTS KIBBOSH
ON MOTORCROSS MENACE
I have news for those jaded cynics who believe there are no more heroes. There are still individuals among us willing to stand up for what’s right, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Case in point, Griffin Carver. Griff, as he likes to be called, is a fifth grader at St. Finbar’s who . . .
Pretty strong stuff, right? Well, these articles got me thinking: How does a righteous dude just 180° like that?
That question kept gnawing away at me. Even when I turned in that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The Scout manual recommends a minimum of seven hours of sleep. Ten hours is optimum during these years of accelerated growth. Based on my sleep patterns, I think it likely that I’m entering another growth spurt now.
Anyway, I got maybe . . . six? hours that night.
That was no good for anybody. I had to do something about it.
I was on hall duty this morning, between second and third periods. And, as you know, that’s a pretty hairy watch, not a cakewalk full of groggy kids like first shift, but nothing I can’t handle. I was temporarily partnered with Dugan and, brotherhood of officers aside, that’s kind of like not being partnered at all.
But, like I said, nothing I couldn’t handle. I was still brooding about this whole Griff thing when I saw Marcus down the hall, campaigning as usual, with the usual crowd, Ben Gave, Morgan Boca, and the rest of them.
“Dugan,” I said, “why don’t you check the expiration dates on the fire extinguishers in the west corridor?”
“But we just did that last week,” he whined at me.
“You’re absolutely sure it was last week?” I asked. “Not the week before? You’re sure, now?” I knew Dugan’s short-term memory (like his long-term memory) was not the most reliable. And I knew he knew that too. I saw his forehead pucker and knew he was thinking.
“I’m not one hundred percent sure,” he admitted.
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Dugan mumbled something under his breath as he headed west down the main hallway. I don’t know what’s getting into these new recruits. Back when I was a rookie, we obeyed orders without—but I digest.
I didn’t really care about the fire extinguishers. I mean, I always care about school safety, but I knew the equipment was in good working order. It was a ruse. I needed to talk to someone . . . alone.
“Heeeeey, Tommy!” said Marcus, as friendly as ever.
“Marcus, have you got a minute?” I asked him.
“I always have time for my friends.” He smiled at me. Just for a second I thought, Are we really friends? He always says I’m his friend, but it isn’t like we hang out or anything. He’s never been over to my house or asked me to play Xbox or whatever. But then I thought, He’s probably just busy. I mean, everybody knows what a great guy Marcus is. I thought about dropping the whole thing, but I’d already interrupted him when he was shaking hands, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just pushed on.
“It’s about Griff Carver,” I said.
The smile vanished from his face for a moment. Seriously, that happy grin that’s always there, gone. He glanced over at Ben and Morgan but didn’t say anything. It was like he was a totally different guy. Then he turned to me and the smile was back. I thought maybe I’d imagined the whole thing.
“Stay away from that kid, Tommy,” Marcus suggested, full of concern. “You did right to report him. Griff’s trouble.”
“I so get what you’re saying,” I responded, “but he’s actually pretty cool sometimes. He just got this messed-up idea that you were, I don’t know, some kind of bad guy . . .”
“I told you,” he said, still smiling, but with a different kind of smile, “he’s trouble. And he’s going to get you in trouble too if you’re not careful. Understand?”
“Look, I set him straight,” I explained. “Told him you weren’t a criminal operator or whatever crazy idea he got stuck in his—”
Marcus Volger pushed me against the marble wall by the broken drinking fountain. Not so hard as to make a scene, you understand. Maybe he was just making a point and got carried away.
“Tommy,” he said, in a way I’d never heard him speak before, “election’s tomorrow. I don’t have time for this right now. And you need to keep your mouth shut. People could overhear you and misunderstand something you’re saying. Get it?”
Of course. The school election. He was probably under a lot of pressure right now. I hadn’t thought. Still . . .
“If you could just talk to Sprangue about Griff,” I said. “Tell him that it was all a misunderstanding and that—”
He grabbed my face. Seriously! He grabbed my face like my older brother sometimes does to get me to stop talking. Nobody in the hall could see, because Volger’s friends were right behind him, blocking the view. “Carver even thinking about causing trouble for me is enough reason to neutralize him.
“Like I said,” he continued, grinning. “I don’t have time to explain it to you right now. Elections. But my friends here have time. They’ll explain for me.”
Suddenly, Marcus, the lockers, and the wall were getting smaller. I realized that Ben and Morgan had me by the arms and were dragging me . . .
The funny thing is that it sounds just like a jet engine. I know that because my Camp Scout troop visited Metro Airport and were given an up-close and personal look at a Learjet 45, and I can say with some confidence that its rear-mounted engine sounds exactly like the flush of Toilet #3 in the Main Hall boys’ lavatory.
But only if you are listening from inside the toilet.
Which I was, thanks to Big Ben and Morgan Boca, who clearly have considerable experience administering a regulation swirly. It’s a common enough crime. In the United Kingdom, it’s known as bogwashing. If you were to experience this in Australia, where flushed water swirls counterclockwise, you would have received a dunnyflushing .
I struggled, of course, but it was mostly reflex. From my training, I know there’s no escape from this maneuver when it is being properly executed. And, from where I was sitting, it clearly was.
But I’ll tell you, Delane, much more than the physical discomfort, the pain I felt was from embarrassment. No, not from the humiliation of the prank, but from my own blindness. That gushing torrent of toilet water splashing me in the face was a wake-up call.
I had no idea this kind of activity was occurring. On my beat. Mine! But if this was happening to me (and, believe me, it was), it was happening to other kids too. Right under my nose.
In that moment it became quite obvious to me that the Rampart Middle I thought I knew so well was nothing more than an illusion. In all my time here, I’d been looking only at the surface. The nice, shiny, multiple Certificate of Excellence in State Education award-winning exterior. But there’s another side. A Dark Side.
It exists in the same place as the school we know and love at the same time. But, unless you know what to look for, it’s invisibl
e.
You know that look Griff gets in his eyes? Like he’s squinting? And how he doesn’t look right at you while you’re talking to him? I think maybe it’s because he’s searching for the Dark Side.
And from now on, now that I know it’s there, I’ll be looking for it too.
At least, that’s what I was thinking in those few seconds (it felt like hours) that Volger’s buddies held my head down in the toilet bowl.
The next thing I knew, I was alone and drying my hair with the wall-mounted air blower. I only used a few paper towels. Why should the environment suffer just because I was the victim of aggravated mischief?
Of course, duty dictated my next move, and, before my hair was even dry, I was marching to your office to make my report. Reams and Montelongo were instantly on their feet when they saw me heading toward your door unannounced.
“He’s busy,” Montelongo quickly piped in as I brushed by him. A lot of the hall cops talk about how big Roy Montelongo is, but you won’t be surprised that he doesn’t intimidate me in the least. I opened your door and stepped in.
“You better be sitting down, chief,” I told you, “because I got some two-Twinkie news for you.”
You slowly looked up at me with the “you didn’t just walk in here” look on your face that I expected. Then, the voice.
“Sounds like some pretty earth-shattering information,” he said. Volger said, I mean. Now, as my eyes adjusted to your office, I could see him. His smile was on but somehow looked different to me now. Like the grin on the face of Mrs. Dochterman’s pit bull just before he sank his teeth into my calf.
The world started spinning around me faster than the water in Toilet #3. I couldn’t tell you my story with Volger there! You know how smooth he is. He’d just laugh it off. I’d sound crazy.
Then, I’m ashamed to say, an even worse thought popped into my head. What if Volger wasn’t there? Would it be safe to talk then? Maybe not!! What if you were in on it? What if you, Delane, were somehow part of Volger’s crew?
I know, that would be nuts, right? As the head of Safety Patrol, your office embodies justice and right! Maybe so, but fifteen minutes earlier I wouldn’t have thought the great Marcus Volger capable of snapping his fingers and initiating a swirling!
It was like I’d stepped into another dimension. The kind of dimension where everyone looks pretty much the same, I mean, maybe they have a goatee or something, but the big difference is that they are totally evil!
So help me, Delane, in that moment, I didn’t know if I could trust you.
“Well?” you asked me, somewhat impatiently. “What is it, Tommy?” I wasn’t sure how long it took me to think all this stuff. You’d know better than me. I closed my mouth. Had to think fast.
“Did you write down Mr. Cogan’s math assignment?” I improvised coolly.
“I don’t have Mr. Cogan for math,” you barked at me, looking at me like I was nuts. “Tommy, we’re not even in the same grade!”
“Oh, yeah.” I nodded, still in character. “That’s right. Never mind.” Okay, that was not my smoothest cover, but I was under a lot of stress.
My heart still reverberating like a dual-shock controller, I sauntered out of the Multipurpose Room very casually, like the whole world hadn’t suddenly turned upside down. I could feel Volger’s eyes drilling into the back of my head.
The hallway, once so familiar and inviting, was now a river of strangers. Any one of them could be in league with Volger.
Obviously, I couldn’t confide in you. I couldn’t be sure of you! Couldn’t be sure of anyone anymore!
Then I realized that there was one person I could be sure of. One guy in school who was beyond suspicion. The target of Volger’s conspiracy. Griff.
I started walking again. My fast walk, the one you make fun of. I searched the busy corridors looking for my former partner. He was nowhere to be seen, but I knew he must be in Rampart somewhere! I resolved to keep searching until I found him, no matter what!
Then the bell rang, and it occurred to me that I might as well find him after next period. I mean, how would me getting a detention help the situation, anyway? It wouldn’t. In fact, it would only make things worse.
But I didn’t find him after class let out. Or after the next class. Or lunch. I scoured the campus, looked in every spot I could think of. The pitch-black photography lab. The nauseatingly antiseptic-smelling nurse’s office. Even the coffee-ground-encrusted teachers’ lounge. There was no sign of Griff.
I kept looking. Between every class. After all, a vow is a vow and, as a peace officer and as a person, I don’t take that sort of thing lightly. But by the end of fifth period, I can honestly tell you, I’d nearly given up hope of finding him.
“Maybe you need to look where the light’s not so good.”
At first I wasn’t sure if I actually heard it or if it was just an echo from some gravel-voiced cartoon character bouncing around my head. But then I saw him. It was that janitor. You know the one I mean. You never quite notice him, but he’s always there. He called my dad by his first name on the day I started here. He’s been here forever. He looks like he’s made of dust.
“What?” I asked, making sure the voice had really come from him.
“There’s an old joke,” he said. Yeah, it was his voice, all right. “Dude’s on the sidewalk, crawling around, looking for something. Fella comes up and says, What’re you doing, man? Dude says, Looking for my keys. Man looks around the sidewalk and tells the dude, I don’t see them. Sure you dropped them here? Dude says, No, I dropped them over there. Man says, If you dropped them over there, why’re you looking for them here? And the dude says, Because the light’s better.”
Yeah, I didn’t laugh for a minute either. But then I got it. Why he was telling me this, I didn’t know. He’d never talked to me before. Or maybe he had and it just hadn’t registered. When I’m on patrol, I’m 110 percent focused on the student body. Guys like that custodian are almost invisible to me. I wonder if he’s like that to everybody.
I must have had my mouth open again.
“You’re looking for him in all the places you usually go, because the light’s good,” the custodian told me. “When a man doesn’t want to be found, he stays out of the light.”
Did I look like I was searching for someone? Even if I did, how would he know I was looking for Griff? Assuming that was even who he was talking about. Which, jeez, it sure seemed like it must have been. Right?
By now, I was kind of getting the gist of what he was saying, and I looked over my shoulder to see if I could spot a place I wasn’t looking. No luck. I knew every inch of that corridor. And I’d already reconnoitered all the usual locations where kids hung out.
When I looked back to the janitor, he was gone. I’d only looked away for like a second! How do these people do this? Do they go to Batman school? Where do I sign up? I mean, seriously, in just one second, no man can just vanish into—
No man. No-Man’s-Land! That was it! I had it! Of course I didn’t find Griff in any of the usual places! He didn’t want to be found! The only place to find Griff was the one place in Rampart Middle where no one ever went.
Not by choice, anyway.
I made my way outside the main building and across the yard. As you know, the asphalt is covered in lines. Game boundaries, free-throw lines, grade-division borders, and the like have all been painted there to bring an illusion of order to recess. As if that were possible. The very nature of recess makes any externally imposed structure impossible.
So, I don’t have to tell you where that blue line leads. You’re probably wondering if I was afraid. Sure, other kids might have been. When the tiny white particles started clinging to their Scout uniform like snow, they might have wanted to run, as fast as they could, far from No-Man’s-Land, far from the playground. Far from Toilet #3 and the knowledge of the Dark Side that came with it.
That’s how other kids might feel, Delane, walking into that fog bank.
“Gri
ff!” I called. Not like I was afraid. The other kind of calling. Search-and-rescue calling. “GRIFF!”
I was in it now. The cloud was so thick I could barely make out the compass heading on my watch. Not that it would’ve done any good; instruments are unreliable in No-Man’s-Land. Even with all my Camp Scout orienteering experience, I’d have a hard time getting out of there without those blue lines at my feet. Orienteering, by the way, is the useful skill of figuring out where you are at any time.
“What do you want?” I heard him say. Weird. I could hear him as clear as day, but the sounds of the kids playing back at the yard had disappeared completely. It sounded like he was right next to me, but I still couldn’t see a thing.
I whipped around and saw him emerge from the fog. He didn’t step out or anything. More like the smoke pulled away from him, opening like a curtain, and there he was. He must’ve circled me, silently. If so, his ninja skills were good.
I told him. He was right about Rampart, right about Volger, right about everything. But the only way to put a stop to this growing evil was to band together and do it ourselves. The TEAM-UP.
I could tell that he was shaken. Better than anyone, Griff knew what we’d be up against. Maybe this was too much for him. Maybe when they took his badge, they took something more from him. Something that could never be replaced.
But I needed his help. I had to convince him. I spelled it out for him. Calmly. Logically. Two years on the junior debate team has given me a pretty good way with words that I’m pretty proud of. Of which I’m proud.
Still, Griff wasn’t going for it, I could tell. Perhaps the challenge was too much for him. He was starting to panic! I could see in his eyes that he was about to freak out, so I grabbed him before he could run.
That’s when he attacked me. I know, I know, Griff’s pretty tough, but when you’ve trained your body to be a living weapon, as I have through my extensive Scouting martial arts training, no thought goes into it . . . your body just reacts like it’s programmed to.