The Witch of the Wood

by Michael Aronovitz

  He knew the combinations of the gym lockers as a result of his access to Coach Sullivan’s file cabinet, and had defecated in Brandon Fowler’s bookbag last year. When the kid got to Spanish class, he reached in for his text and with instant revulsion withdrew his soiled hands, holding them up in mute horror, earning the name “Shit-Finger Fowler” for all eternity.

  Duffey snuck up behind guys in the hallway, punched them hard in the back of the thigh, and then screamed “Run!” as he and his friends laughed like hyenas. He’d pushed a few faces into toilets and had gained schoolwide fame for walking up beside the given dude, whacking him in the nuts backhand, all knuckles, and shouting “Take a bow!”

  And this was just what Rudy had picked up on the fringe, walking the room, offering bowls of Ranch Doritos and trying to remember more than three or four soft-drink requests at a time.

  Evidently, like two prize bulls sniffing something different and threatening in the arena, Brian Duffey and Wolfie Barnes had become aware of each other from the minute the “new kid” stepped foot in the front lobby.

  Duffey had been coming out of the nurse’s office, a couple of Tylenols in his palm for the pain he always had in his ankle midweek when he practiced his signature swim-move/cut-left the afternoon before, and Wolfie had just checked in with the secretaries in the main office area. Evidently, Wolfie approached Duffey, who was bent over at the water fountain.

  “Nice,” Wolfie had said. Duffey snapped his head up and turned.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nice,” Wolfie repeated. He nodded to indicate that he was looking at the mural behind Duffey’s shoulder. It was a wide collage of photographs: students and teachers with their arms around one another, all smiles, in some pictures marching together, in others working at outdoor stands at last year’s “Spring Fling” and at tables by the auditorium backgrounded by the signs advertising Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

  Wolfie smiled warmly.

  “It’s a nice presentation. In my old school, I was the chairman of the Gay-Straight Alliance and it looks like you have an awesome group here. Are you a member?”

  In what Wolfie had described as “a beautiful moment,” Duffey moved his mouth without saying anything, fists bunched, the tips of his ears turning red. He took a step forward, but the assistant dean came up suddenly from the stairwell, pushing open the door with a bang, and asking both of them rather sharply where they were supposed to be.

  Before going their separate ways, Duffey had quietly hissed, “You’re dead.”

  Wolfie had replied in a voice slippery and honey smooth, “Sounds like you’re really looking for a date.”

  Later at lunch, Wolfie was sitting with a group of girls when Duffey came up from behind with a Deer Park. But Wolfie moved at the last second, seemingly inadvertently, and Duffey wound up dousing Linda Birch, one of the most popular girls in the school.

  Tonight, she’d brought all her friends, hence the imbalance of male nerds and girls who had crossed the boundaries of their cliques to unite for the cause. Sure, Duffey had gained credibility by taking his team to states last year. He had his followers and fans, but when you got right down to it he was not going to win anyone over by embarrassing someone like Linda Birch, who had the gmail name “Pretty, Pink, and Perfect,” who had been voted “Best Ass in the School” two years running by everyone’s Tweet tally (God, Rudy couldn’t believe what these kids talked about so openly), who was in the running for prom queen this year, who was known to party a bit, could rip-cord a beer with the best of the boys, but didn’t have any problem staying after school to sell cookies so they could donate the money to the homeless.

  The crazy thing about it was that Duffey liked her and everyone knew it. He also liked her best friend Brittany Sinclair, and before lunch today it had been up in the air as to which he was going to try for.

  And with one wrist-flick of an opened water bottle he’d lost both. Worse, he’d had to save face, and when she’d called him a stupid jerk, he’d come right back with, “Stuck-up bitch.”

  The cafeteria had gone silent. He’d made Linda Birch cry. He immediately dropped a rung on the social ladder, but neither Linda nor any of his prior male victims really felt vindicated.

  They wanted blood.

  “Guys!” Wolfie called. “Guys, c’mon, quiet down!”

  Everyone gradually came to a hush and turned to Wolfie, standing on the footrest with a Sunny Delight in his hand (secretly spiked with iodine of course). He looked around at everyone.

  “So? What’s our move here?”

  “We come forward,” someone called.

  There were murmurs of agreement and Wolfie put up both hands.

  “What’s that going to get us?” he said. “Duffey gets suspended for absolutely trashing Linda in front of everyone? He gets a three-day vacation and a lecture? Then what?”

  “Yeah,” someone said. “I gotta walk by his locker between third and fourth block or I’ll be late for calculus. Last year he pushed me into the fire hydrant and chipped my tooth because I wouldn’t give him a dollar. Said he’d kill me if I told. What if he finds out any of us ratted on him?”

  “Yeah, we’d be dog meat,” someone replied. An especially pretty girl with flaring nostrils and hair tumbling down in jet black ringlets folded her arms.

  “If you’re all too chicken, leave it to the females.”

  “I agree,” Wolfie said. “This is a woman’s job, but telling on Brian Duffey isn’t going to hurt him. By the time he gets his own version spread all around, he’ll end up looking like a champ. I know his type. He’s never going to be any famous doctor or lawyer, but he knows how to win the cafeteria.”

  “That’s so unfair!” Linda Birch exclaimed. Voices backed her, and Wolfie quieted them again.

  “Yes, it’s unfair,” he said. “And to solve this, to stop the abuse, to . . . hurt Brian Duffey we’ve got to be brave, and rash, and maybe a little bit unfair ourselves. The only question is whether we’ve all got the guts to go all the way, to stand strong, to face those in the school who would not approve of what we know in the end was the right thing to do.” He tilted his chin. “Do you have the courage to fight back or not?”

  “How?” Rudy said. That really quieted the room, and Wolfie carefully moved hair off the side of his face.

  “We need more soda, Dad. Be a pal and run down to the store for us. Last time, I promise.”

  A sea of eyes turned back toward Rudy, and what he saw in those eyes was pain, frustration, and impotence just aching . . . dying just this once to turn into something stronger. They’d found their light in the tunnel standing on a footstool, and they were saying to Rudy, What you don’t know won’t hurt you, or more importantly, If you do know, it will.

  Rudy stood his ground for a moment, wondering how he could stop this. Everything he knew as an adult and an educator screamed that whatever they were planning wouldn’t really solve anything, just prolong it. Additionally—and he hated himself deeply for this one—he was considering the liability here, possible lawsuits, litigation, investigations identifying his own specific role in what was to come.

  A footnote, Dad.

  Rudy started and looked up at his son, who had done one of those close range silent communications. No, he couldn’t quite read minds, but he knew his father. Like a book of old morals. Wolfie’s lips didn’t move, but he spoke clearly into Rudy’s mind:

  No one will care about you in all this, Dad. It’s too big. I’m not planning a “Columbine,” so don’t worry your head. Trust me, none of it is going to matter in the end anyway. You’re free of it, just . . . let this happen.

  Rudy worked his jaw and looked at all the faces telling him to leave, quickly if not awkwardly. They’d had their fill of the Brian Duffeys of the world, and to tell the truth, Rudy knew full well that they had a right to strike back. “Punishments” for bullies were rational, corrective devices tailored for people with compassion, geared toward those built mor
e like the victims. Did that make sense even a little bit? The targets had already been scarred. And to their heartless adversaries, the ensuing detention, suspension, piece of community service, or sensitivity meeting was no more than a bother they had to smile through. Where was the justice?

  Rudy turned toward the door. That was Wolfie’s gift, pointing out what was truly deserved rather than what might be more universally acceptable after the smoke cleared. Yes, universalities were invented by those sitting in a boardroom somewhere, spinning ideals and wearing masks of virtue while down below their feet in the trenches kids were getting whacked in the nuts, punched in the thigh, and tricked into reaching into bookbags filled with feces. Wall Street was blatantly stealing the money right out of the Main Streeters’ pockets. Wars were being waged because we needed an enemy to blame. An old sin kept an entire race of women trapped in the dirt beneath the trees.

  By the time Rudy went, got another case of soda, and returned the place had been vacated. It was a mess, but not that bad. Wolfie was sitting on the footstool he’d used as a pedestal, and he looked tired.

  “So,” Rudy said.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “You’re going to fight this boy? Maim him? Kill him?”

  Wolfie smiled a bit sadly.

  “No, Dad. That comes the day after. Remember, I am practicing the division of a mass, a necessary simulation with a dual purpose, the latter of which will indeed send me to the incarcerated men who will become my initial puppets of destruction. For tomorrow, though, I’m not even going after Brian Duffey; in fact, I’m steering clear of him.”

  “Who then?”

  “Someone he cares about.”

  “His father?”

  Wolfie laughed.

  “Hell no. I’m not going to do the bastard any favors. I’m talking about Duffey’s coach, Mr. Sullivan, the guy who picked the son of a bitch up off the street corner and made him into something.”

  “And you’re going to kill him?”

  “No. Destroy him. Humiliate him in the ugliest arena there is.”

  “How?”

  Wolfie looked at his father with the slightest hesitation and then his eyes steeled.

  “Something I found, Dad. In your biography.”

  The next day was excruciating. Inevitability hung over Rudy’s head like a storm cloud, and he barely made it through his classes, fumbling across instances of Hemingway’s use of the Aesthetic Theory of Omission in the base text, making halfhearted sweeps at linking more modern examples and coming up empty. There was a clear disconnect here, static in the broadcast, but the students didn’t seem to notice or care, all of them listening blandly, writing robotically.

  He did not use the spy-link except for one brief glimpse he took up in his office after class with the door closed.

  He grabbed his thumb and saw legs, bare legs, a chorus line of them, and there were pink shorts and white shorts and tan khaki shorts, and black shorts, yellow hot pants and blue jean shorts with white dangling frays . . . all the colors of the spectrum and all the timely styles, most of them crotch-high, and some so brief you could see three-quarters of the exposed hanging pockets, others so tight they looked like silk undergarments.

  Rudy disengaged immediately, sweat popping up on his forehead and above his upper lip. These were high school girls, and the vision he’d just been exposed to had a pedophilic feel to it, akin to robes, lotions, sex toys, and old perverts. Of course, he didn’t know the context here, but it sickened him to know that whatever Wolfie was doing, it was inspired by something he’d found in Rudy’s biography.

  The day crawled by.

  No cell phone calls, no texts, no indicators. When Rudy got home there were no messages on the machine, and he turned on the 4:00 news.

  What he saw shocked him.

  It was his ex-wife Patricia standing at some sort of outdoor podium, making a passionate plea, mascara running down her face like Tammy Lee Baker. She’d had her hair recently cropped into a boy’s crewcut and she was wearing a black hat with a pin in it. Within half a second, Rudy recognized the background as the curved stone wall at the entrance of the high school, and at the bottom of the screen the story-tag said, “High School Teacher Suspended for Inappropriate Conduct.”

  “He should be arrested!” Pat was in the middle of claiming. “We trust our educators to protect our children, not leer at them.”

  “He was looking at the cell phones!” someone shouted from off camera.

  “Why was he looking down there in the first place?” Pat snapped back. “The young women of our community should feel safe and secure in their classrooms, not threatened that some monster is going to be studying them in a sexual manner.”

  “He was doing his job!” someone else called out, voice cracking a bit at the end, causing an uncomfortable laughter to ripple through the crowd. Pat’s eyes went wide.

  “His job? To ogle underage girls as if he’s in a strip club?”

  “Why were they dressed that way in the first place?”

  “Yeah!” another voice agreed. “Your (bleeped) kid set him up!”

  Pat grabbed the edges of the podium, eyes shut. Tears squeezed from the corners, running down the streaked paths of those previously made, and she managed:

  “My son . . . my love, had heard from his new friends that this invasion . . . this abuse was a sick and longstanding tradition between the female students of this community and this particular instructor. Do not blame my son! He offered the girls a way to fight back, and he should be applauded!”

  Rudy was shaking his head in disbelief and disgust. He had rushed through the forms at Wolfie’s request and listed both himself and his ex-wife as guardians, just in case he was unavailable. He’d done it as an afterthought, thinking in the back of his mind that there was no way, unless someone was bleeding to death, that they would contact her. But “Pat” came before “Rudy,” and she’d been involved first here. And the fact that it was all part of Wolfie’s plans didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

  The camera suddenly cut to another podium, this one positioned outside of the district building three blocks away. A tall, slump-shouldered man in a blue suit with quicksilver hair was addressing another crowd, this one even more raucous than the one that had been positioned offscreen at Pat’s confrontation. His voice was soft, but his eyes were steel. Below him, the graphic said, “Joe Winslow: Union Representative for accused teacher Bill Sullivan.”

  “We are not accepting this,” he said smoothly. “And we are ready to take on the district, its supporters, and those who have let the morals and standards we all hold dear slip to the point where none of it makes sense anymore. The young women in this country are to be protected certainly, but we will argue that they consistently dress in an inappropriate manner. According to the student handbook, no skirt is to be shorter than where the tips of the fingers would reach with the given student’s hands at her sides. So why on earth would security let these girls through with shorts on? Should not that article of clothing be banned? And what about gym class? How can we effectively enforce a rule, when we contradict that very rule in analogous circumstances?”

  “Speak English!” someone jeered, and Winslow didn’t miss a beat.

  “If we outlaw short skirts, why on earth do we supply field hockey kilts and cheerleader uniforms that break the original code? We absolutely sexualize our children, cheering them at pep rallies where the ‘fliers’ are taught to hold up one of their outstretched legs, exposing the private area beneath the skirt in moves like ‘The Scorpion’ and ‘The Heel Stretch,’ and then cast blame when a male instructor notices that all his female students wear short shorts on a February morning. First, you must prove he wasn’t inspecting his class, in spite of the contradiction I just mentioned, in reference to a dress code he is advised by administration to enforce. Secondly, cell phones are not allowed in class, and it is Mr. Sullivan’s job to confiscate them. Third, there is no law that I know of that claims ‘looking’ is ill
egal, or even inappropriate.”

  The camera cut back to the newsroom anchor, who clicked a thin stack of papers before him, and set up the dramatic “cap-off” to the report.

  “The case is under review at this time with the superintendant’s office. For those just tuning in, a student who will not be named admitted to school administration at Franklin Heights High School today that he engineered a demonstration to prove the lecherous nature of Health and Phys. Ed. teacher William Sullivan, by convincing female students to wear revealing clothing in their 3rd block health class and put cell phones in their laps, recording Mr. Sullivan’s alleged ogling. Whether Sullivan’s behavior reflected the responsibility of enforcing a dress code and confiscating cell phones or some gross invasion of student privacy is to be determined soon by school officials.”

  Then came the thunder, and Rudy’s mouth dropped open. They showed the recording(s). Clearly, Wolfie somehow got the cell phones to the newsroom, whose editors did a fine job of splicing together the images.

  The establishing shot was a rough pan of the classroom. It was one of those “amphitheater” set-ups, where one white desktop curved across an entire given row, therefore leaving exposed the legs and waist areas of the students. There was someone in the background throwing a balled-up piece of paper at a trash can and someone behind him looking out the window. The next image came from a different phone held low and aimed at the first two rows of students, many of them female, most of them crossing their bare legs. In the background a man’s voice said, “Come to order, ya knuckleheads, let’s go.”

  There was then a cut to a sightline from low and far to the side. At the periphery of the shot you could see the edge of a thigh and a knee, and in the center of the screen was Bill Sullivan, standing at the board. He had short hair, thick twelve-o’clock shadow, a black-collared shirt, and black sweat pants. He was thin-waisted and topheavy; clearly a man who lifted weights, and as a girl wearing a tight white top, pink shorts, and sandals entered late, he looked over, eyes falling north to south and then sliding back on up again, strike one. Next was a camera change, now on the side of the room by the door, this particular cell phone so tilted it almost gave a view as if you were lying sideways. Sullivan was talking about a pre-class paragraph on the subject of STDs, and right after assigning it he told them they were “on the clock . . . write until you feel like your hands are falling off.” Then he scanned the room, slowly, carefully.