by John Smelcer
“Please! Please don’t leave me here!” he begged, trying to wriggle free. “Let me go back. I’ll do better. I promise not to speak Navajo again. I swear.”
When he heard his own words, Simon felt his heart break. He opened his mouth to retract the words, but nothing came out, and the sorrowful words did not return.
The headmaster looked around him; saw the many faces in windows and doorways, the watchful eyes.
“You need to be taught a lesson, Lone Flight. There will be no Indian spoken at Wellington!” he said loud enough to be heard by some of the nearby spectators.
The men pushed Simon through the door and into the large room, lit only by a bank of small windows, up high near the ceiling, which let some natural light filter into the dusty, mildew-coated room. The building was heated by an old, industrial radiator, which knocked and rattled as if a small animal were caged inside it. Nowadays, the building was used mostly to store summer equipment: lawn mowers, fertilizer and grass-seed broadcasters, rakes, shovels, wheel barrows. An array of tools—large and small—were scattered on work benches or suspended on hooks to the walls. Several cement blocks were stacked on the floor. And although the room was moderately heated, Simon trembled as he apologized, promising never to speak his language again.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Simon pleaded, finally crying, his knees weakening.
But the men did not seem to hear him. Instead, they led him toward the back of the musty-smelling room toward two horizontal rows of rusted-metal water pipes running the length of the outside wall, about three feet above the concrete floor. About every eight feet or so, a vertical brace anchored the pipes to the wall. The gym teacher handcuffed Simon’s hand to the lower pipe, between the corner and the first bracket, and yanked it hard to test it.
“That outta keep him. He ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said to his boss, his voice dry as a biscuit. Then he bent close to Simon’s face, his obstinate nose almost touching Simon’s.
“Be seein’ ya, Shrimp,” he sneered.
Before leaving, the headmaster walked over to a rusty spigot and partially filled a galvanized pail with water, which he handed to Simon.
“Two days,” he said sharply.
That’s all he said before closing the heavy metal door, leaving Simon in the dingy, stale-air room.
Simon stood looking at his new surroundings, trying to pull his thin wrist free. But the handcuffs were too tight, biting deeper into his skin the harder he pulled. Outside, he could hear the men pull the heavy, rusted chain through the welded door and snap the lock. Simon had heard about this place. Unused tools weren’t the only thing they imprisoned here. The building also served as a prison of sorts for Indians who broke the most important rule of the school.
English Only!
There was nothing to make Simon’s incarceration comfortable—no mattress or blankets, no stool or chair—only the unyielding concrete floor, the bad-tempered radiator, and the downward curve of rusted metal pipes as they approached the corner and pierced the wall, allowing the thin boy the luxury of lying down in the corner without having to overextend his arms upward. In the other direction, he could slide the handcuffs along the pipe for about eight feet, until the supporting bracket stopped him.
Eight feet.
The length of a jail cell.
Spider webs hung densely in several corners and crowded areas of the room, draped between large pieces of equipment. Black widows. Brown recluses. The room was perfect for them—warm, dark, and quiet as a tomb. Simon shuddered. In the past, some students had almost died from spider bites, untreated during their imprisonment, undiscovered until the door finally opened. And one time, so the story goes, a girl had been locked in the building one winter. That night the radiator stopped working, and the girl was found dead when they opened the doors two days later, her body cold as the brick walls, frozen as the water pipes.
A curious mouse peeked out from behind a pile of fertilizer bags and then scurried across the floor, squeezing through the narrow space between the bottom of the door and the concrete slab, leaving Simon alone again.
Simon slid along the piping to an empty bucket, its walls and bottom crusted black—a honey bucket for going to the bathroom. And although the sight and smell of the bucket disgusted him, Simon had to go.
Afterward, he experimented, trying to learn how best to sit or lie down. He could sit with his back to the wall with his arm suspended over his head, but the arm quickly lost circulation, and he’d have to stand up again. Lying down was not much better, but if he moved into the dark and filthy corner, his shackled arm could reside nearly level with his reclining body. As the sun set, Simon’s stomach growled the way his dog sometimes growled at snakes or scorpions.
He was already hungry.
At first, the musty quiet was peaceful. Simon had felt relieved that the men were gone. No more paddling. No more sermons. No more smelling Mr. Koprowski’s bad breath, and no more of the headmaster’s sarcasm. But then the loneliness and nausea began to creep in on him. Simon began to see himself as if from a removed viewpoint. He saw a handcuffed little boy. He saw a weakling who cried and tried to apologize. He saw a frightened kid who didn’t know how to live like this. And although he fought to control the panic, Simon knew that this kind of isolation could kill the spirit. For the first time in his life—including even that horrible moment when he learned that his parents had died—Simon felt that wave of despair that unhinges a human being from all hope.
He wondered how he would last for two days.
And just at that moment, on that dreadful edge, Simon heard a scraping sound. It came from the corner of the room, where the pipes descended through the back wall just behind him. He cocked his head, following the sound, sliding his handcuffs along the piping. Near the corner, about waist high, he saw one of the bricks in the wall jiggling, then slide out of its place altogether, toward the outside. And then came the slant light of late evening, crowded through the square opening, gray-white and fragile like porcelain.
Simon bent over and peered through the hole.
He could see Noah and George Pancake, who had attended the school for two years. George knew everything about Wellington, including its dirty secrets. He knew about the brick, how the mortar had long ago been scratched away when teachers first began to use the building as a prison. Like the dancing field, it was something the school officials knew nothing about. George had been handcuffed to the pipes on three separate occasions during his first year, once for three days.
“Thought you might be hungry,” George whispered, leaning close to the opening, shoving a cold fried chicken leg and two biscuits through the hole in the wall.
Then Noah leaned close. “Don’t worry, Simon,” he said, smiling. “Everyone will help you.”
And they did.
All day long, at varying times, students, both boys and girls, took turns sneaking to the back of the building, creeping through the bushes along the wall, and pulling out the brick. They comforted Simon with conversation, pushed bits of food through the hole, and passed encouraging notes from other students. They were even able to pass him a thin blanket through the gap, feeding it a bit at a time, wound up like a rope. And although it was difficult to sleep on the hard floor with one hand cuffed to the pipes, it became a bearable prison.
Naturally, his closest friends—Lucy, Elijah, and Noah—visited him the most. It seemed as though one of them was always with him during the long days.
This is the way it had always been done. The teachers laid down the rules, and the students broke them. The school tried to eradicate their language, tried to beat it out of them, tried to torture it out of existence with suffering, but the students always found ways to fight back as best they could.
Noah came for the blanket before Headmaster Dichter returned to set Simon free. They had to hide all evidence of assistance. When the man opened the d
oor at the end of the second day, he expected to find the boy crying in the darkness, whimpering, pleading to be released.
“Are you ready to go back to your room?” he sternly asked.
Simon nodded.
“Did you learn your lesson?”
Simon nodded again.
“Are you going to speak that Indian gobbledygook in my school again?” the balding man asked, fishing out the handcuff key from his vest pocket.
Simon looked straight into the headmaster’s eyes before he answered.
“No sir. I promise,” he said.
In Navajo.
In a fit, Dichter stormed out of the building, screaming so loud that students, who had gathered on the sidewalks, in windows, or congregated in doorways heard him.
“Two more days!” he yelled, as he slammed the metal door and fumbled with the chain and lock.
The next two days were just as uncomfortable but less terrifying than the first. Moses Crow even came to sit outside the brick wall, shivering in the cold. He brought Jimmy Red Cloud’s portable chess set, and he’d play Simon, who could only see the pieces when Moses carefully lifted the game to the height of the rectangular opening.
“Move my knight next to your pawn by your queen,” Simon would say, squatting to peer through the hole. “No, on the other side.”
But their games never lasted long because Moses always got too cold.
One boy brought a deck of cards and he and Simon played poker, Simon pushing his discards through the peek-hole.
“Gimme three,” he’d say.
Three new cards were pushed through.
“Full house!” exclaimed Simon, showing his winning hand.
But more than anything, Simon was happy for all the girls that came to visit. They’d ask how he was doing, and some even asked him to teach them Navajo. In between classes, and whenever the girls had free time, they’d sneak to the back of the building and he’d teach them basic words: hand, face, eyes, yes, no, water, friendship, freedom. In return, they brought him cookies, which they had baked in home economics class.
Simon shared the crumbs with the tiny mouse, his cell mate, which had become so accustomed to him that it sat in the palm of his hand while nibbling its sweet meal, spinning the crumbs in its nimble fingers, its small and black eyes fixed on the boy’s smiling face.
Each day was more or less the same. Simon slept uncomfortably, ate when his friends brought food, used the honey bucket, talked to visitors, and played chess or cards. And so it went. Every time the headmaster came to release him, Simon rebelled by continuing to speak Navajo. Every day he strengthened his resolve to keep that one part of him unbroken.
Every day the headmaster’s frustration hardened.
Some of the teachers and staff began to feel uncomfortable, whispering among themselves in the halls and empty classrooms.
A thing can be taken too far.
The headmaster was becoming exasperated. To him, his struggle with Simon was a battle he had to win. He couldn’t have his staff going against him, questioning his decisions. That might lead to dissidence. He had worked far too hard to build his reputation, for good and for bad. He needed their respect, even their fear. He required a resounding victory in his private Indian war.
Late at night, when no one could see, the headmaster paid Simon a visit.
The sound of the chains being pulled through the door handles woke Simon from his uncomfortable sleep. He sat up, wondering who was coming in the middle of night and to what purpose. Maybe someone had come to release him or to break him out. But then he had the unsettling notion that whoever it was might be coming to kill him, drag him out and bury him in the cemetery in the dead of night, tell folks that he had escaped and run away. Problem solved.
The metal door opened, and a shadow loomed in the doorway, stars outlining the dark form. Then the door closed with a clank and the room was pitch black again.
The ominous shadow was inside the room.
“Hello? Who’s there?” Simon whispered, pressing himself against the brick wall, trying to become part of the wall.
No reply came.
Simon listened for movement where he had seen the shadowy form in the doorway.
He heard nothing.
“Hello?” Simon nervously questioned the darkness, his mouth dry.
Then he heard a rustling followed by what sounded like a match being struck against a matchbox. Twice he heard the familiar sound, and twice the match failed to ignite. On the third try the match lit, and Simon saw the scowling face of the headmaster, twisted and frightening in the flaring light.
Dr. Dichter pulled a candle stub from his trouser pocket and lit the short wick. He sat the burning candle on a stack of cinder blocks and approached the terrified boy.
“I need to end this,” said the headmaster, wringing his hands and looking about the dingy, shadowy room as if checking for witnesses. “It’s gone on long enough.”
Simon tensed, preparing himself for the fierce life or death struggle to come.
But instead of attacking, the headmaster crouched before Simon.
“I’m sure we can come to some mutual agreement, a compromise,” said Dichter in an ingratiating tone.
Simon perked up at the thought of being freed. He relaxed his tensed muscles a little.
“You see, Lone Fight, I need your help. Wellington is a big school. It’s impossible for me to know what’s going on all the time.”
Simon appreciated that the headmaster had pronounced his name properly for the first time.
“I need someone on the inside, someone I can trust, who can help me to make the school run better . . . for everyone’s sake.”
Dichter’s tone was pleading, almost piteous.
“I need your help.”
“How can I . . . help?” asked Simon.
“You could be a secret agent, like in the movies . . . tell me which students are speaking Indian or otherwise breaking the rules. You see, Simon, rules are important, even necessary. They are the glue that holds society together. Otherwise, you have chaos. You can understand that, can’t you?”
Simon didn’t reply.
“I want to make a deal with you,” Dichter continued in the entreating voice. “If you’ll help me, be my spy, I’ll give you your own room. You won’t have to share it with anyone. I’ll make sure it even has a radio so you can listen to baseball games. And you can sleep in thirty minutes longer than other students.”
“Get my own room, huh? A radio?”
Like every teenage boy, Indian or otherwise, Simon was keen on the idea of having his own radio to listen to ball games. Imagine how popular he would be with the other boys.
“All yours,” replied the headmaster, pleased that Simon seemed to be considering his offer.
“And I can sleep in every day?”
“Every day,” mirrored Dichter.
“It sure is tempting. And all I gotta do is tell you when other students are breaking the rules?”
“That’s it. So what do you say? Can you help me out, Simon? Will you help out your school?”
More than anything else, the last two words hung in the dimness, as if painted on the dark walls with sunlight.
Your school.
“I want you to think about it. I’ll come back in two days for your answer. Think on it,” he warned, picking up the gray pail of drinking water and moving it out of Simon’s reach. “Things could always get worse for you.”
Dichter extinguished the candle and opened the squeaking metal door.
“Think about this too,” said the star-traced shadow standing in the doorway, “Your friends could suffer for your arrogance.”
The headmaster closed the door, pulled the clanking chains through the handles, and closed the lock, a now familiar sound to Simon. Simon was unable to return to hi
s uncomfortable sleep. The headmaster’s last words wouldn’t let him rest.
The next day, Simon told Lucy, Noah, and Elijah about the headmaster’s “deal” through the secret peek-hole. He also told them how the headmaster had threatened to punish them if he didn’t stop resisting and making him look like a fool. Most importantly, Simon told them how Dichter had moved his only source of water, without which he could die.
“What a dickhead!” exclaimed Noah.
Lucy and Elijah shook their heads in disbelief.
“How the hell did he ever get to be in charge of this place?” asked Elijah.
But all four knew that he was made headmaster because of such actions.
To combat the headmaster’s wicked plan, all three friends brought water to Simon throughout the day. They also told every classmate about the headmaster’s offer to make Simon into his spy. At mealtime, notes were passed between tables. By bedtime, every student at Wellington knew.
TWO NIGHTS AFTER the midnight visit, true to his word, the headmaster returned for Simon’s answer. If he was anything, Dichter was punctual. Again Simon heard the rattling chains; again he heard the creaking door open; and again he saw the headmaster’s fat, pink face illuminated eerily by match light.
Before saying a word, Dichter looked to make sure the water pail was untouched.
“So, Simon,” he said. “How are you holding up? Thirsty, I imagine?”
“I’m okay,” replied Simon.
“You must be starving?” he said pulling a sandwich from a brown paper bag. “Bet you’d like a nice ham and cheese sandwich? Made it myself.”
“No thanks. I’m not hungry,” replied Simon, yawning.
Simon could see that his nonchalant answers and lack of eagerness were infuriating the headmaster, who shoved the sandwich back into the bag.
“Are you prepared to accept my more than generous offer?”
“I think I’ll stay here,” replied Simon. “I like it here.”