The building evolved over the decades, first as a police station (which explained the thick iron bars on all its windows), then as a community center for the elderly (which explained all the handicapped entrance ramps), before converting back to its designed purpose of education.
In its current state, Garfield served as a charter high school for the city’s school district. The student body came from a variety of sources: bigger schools, reform schools, the local psychiatric hospital, and detention facilities. There was a handful of pregnant teens in the mix and a smattering of previously home-schooled youths tiptoeing back into the system to get their diplomas. Only a handful of students dreamed of college.
The Tadpoles stood across the street from the old monolith, deciding whether or not they should go inside. It was past four in the afternoon and the sky hinted towards evening on the empty premises.
“It’s always bad news when we meet Mr. Wirtz,” Julio said. “Besides, we all skipped school this week. He must know,” Matt said.
Amber reminded them they all missed his mandatory meeting days earlier, too. All their families and guardians had been notified.
“When’s the last time you went in, Marie?”
“I don’t know. Two weeks maybe. How ‘bout you, Toby?” “I came yesterday, but they sent me to detention for
sleeping. So I just left.”
“Detention sucks,” Julio said.
“I thought it was your best subject!” Matt joked. “Keep it up, you red-haired freckled freak!” Julio grabbed
Matt and put him in a headlock. “How about I gouge your eyes out? Huh?”
“Okay, but don’t break my glasses,” Matt said.
Julio released him.
Amber shook her head and crossed the street towards the school. “Stupid kids,” she mumbled to herself.
Once again, her friends followed.
“Where are all the other students?” Marie asked.
“Hello, girlfriend!” Matt said. “School has been out for like an hour!”
“I don’t carry a watch,” Marie protested.
Mr. Wirtz appeared on the school steps. His skinny arms were crossed; sleeves rolled up as if for a fight. He was in a sour mood. He pointed a crooked finger at them and gestured for all of them to follow him inside.
“This is your last chance,” Wirtz warned. He sharply turned on his heels and entered the building.
Amber swore she heard Matt gulp with dread as they slowly bounded up the stairs and entered the old school.
Inside, Mr. Wirtz was waiting in the hallway for them, a perpetual grimace on his face. “To my office. Now!” he shouted.
He marched towards his office at the end of the short hall, his scholarly hands clasped behind his back, his head stooped, like an inspector.
The kids followed, passing the office sign that read:
MR. WIRTZ - ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL
A plaque hung beneath it. It read:
CHILDREN ARE MY BUSINESS Inside his office, Wirtz instructed them all to sit. “In chairs, please.”
The Tadpoles prodded and poked each other for seats. Mr. Wirtz watched them with disinterested anticipation.
“Are we done yet?” he finally asked.
The five rebels smiled back at him from their seats.
“Then down to business,” he huffed. “Short and sweet? Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen - you are off the roster!”
The kids exchanged bewildered looks.
“Which ones?” Matt asked.
“All of you,” Wirtz said meanly.
“You can’t!” Julio stood up. “My probation officer says if I drop out, I'm back in Spring Creek 'til I'm twenty, then it's real jail time!”
“You should have thought of that before, Mr. Ramirez.”
Amber started up. “My group home isn't going to let me sit around on my ass and wait for another school to take me!”
“Oh well, Miss Beulah. Perhaps if you sat on your ass here instead of in the woods, we wouldn’t be having this teen drama.”
All of the kids were talking and standing now. Mr. Wirtz had thrown a major wrench into their lives. Mr. Wirtz shook his head, picked up a dictionary and slammed it on his desk. “Enough! I said ‘enough!’ Now everyone, please resume your seats.”
The kids fell silent and sat again.
“You have one last chance at high school here,” Wirtz said stoically. “And believe me, this is your very last chance.” He took a long pause. “Your only option is an after-school program,” he finally said.
The kids babbled again. “An after-school program?”
“What you talkin’ 'bout?”
“Bull... May as well quit now...”
“Beats prison…”
“Isn’t that for retarded kids?”
“Listen to me,” Wirtz said firmly. “This little hole-in-thewall gang of yours has been expelled from every school in the district...”
“Not every!” Marie cried out.
“Okay, Marie... I stand corrected. How about almost every school then? Drugs, alcohol, attendance, bullying, weapons...”
“Sex,” added Marie.
“Yes. And sex. Big deal. Sex. The most overrated pubescent preoccupation in human history. But the real truth of this matter, the reason you are all here, is that your parents don't want you; your group homes don't want you. Even I don’t want you. And if you can't learn from me... Need I say more?”
The kids stared down at the floor.
“I’m not saying you’re a bad teacher,” Toby said. “It’s just that. It’s just that…”
“You’re a prick,” Matt volunteered.
“I have dedicated thirty years of my life to the cause of education,” Wirtz said, turning red in the face. “And never have I been as frustrated as I have been with the likes of this little group. Each and every one of you has a hidden potential. But together, you have sabotaged any hope towards personal resurrection into a healthy adulthood. So... My new rules of engagement... You are not, I repeat not allowed on school grounds during normal school hours. If you are seen on this campus we will call the police, your parole officers and caretakers. Understood?”
The Tadpoles nodded.
“You will be only be allowed on Garfield school grounds after five in the afternoon. A Special Education teacher…”
“SPED! That’s for dummies!” Jason whined.
“Special people require specialized training,” Wirtz said. “As I said, a Special Education teacher will be found to work with you in all subjects to meet the school curriculum and district standards. If you stay in the program, which I doubt any of you will, then you will be readmitted to the school as a regular student next fall.”
“Next fall?” Toby stood up. “That's almost a year away!”
“We need credits now!” Marie said.
“You can earn credits in the after-school program.”
“It’s only part-time, though. I won’t finish high school until I’m thirty!” Julio said.
“Take it or leave it,” Wirtz said, hunching his thin shoulders. “It is the only thing this school administration is willing to offer you, short of being expelled.”
The kids exchanged looks.
“Of course we're going to take it,” Amber spoke for the others.
“I thought you might.” Wirtz smiled. “You will be notified when a suitable teacher has been found.”
“How long will that be?”
“Hard to say,” Wirtz stood up, rolling down his shirtsleeves. “With your reputations and special needs, it could take weeks.”
“What do you mean by that?” Julio asked.
“Come now, Mr. Ramirez. Look in the mirror. You’re almost twenty and if you still can’t help yourself, how can you expect someone else to?”
“That’s a cheap shot, Mr. Wirtz.”
“That’s my honest assessment as an educator. Meanwhile, until a teacher is found, enjoy your little criminal activities in the woods.”
As
the kids moped out of the office, they passed a stranger in the hallway, a gaunt man with kind eyes. He was five feet eight, wearing a Colorado Rockies baseball jacket and cap and studying a school bulletin board. None of the kids noticed him.
Mr. Wirtz locked his office door nearby and approached the man. “The school’s closed,” Wirtz said. “Are you waiting for someone?”
John Battle pointed at the bulletin board. “This announcement,” he said. “Just posted today?”
Mr. Wirtz leaned in and studied the page. “Why, yes. Perhaps you’re interested in applying for the position here at Garfield?”
“Perhaps.”
Wirtz pulled down the announcement and handed it to Battle. “By all means, be my guest. I can put up another.”
“What does the job involve, anyway?”
Mr. Wirtz pointed at the Tadpoles pushing and shoving each other out the front door.
“Survival tactics, mostly,” Wirtz said. “For the teacher, not the students.”
“Then maybe I’m the guy,” Battle said.
Back at Shooks Run, the ancient Cottonwood swayed and creaked in the crisp autumn wind above the teenagers. The big tree would be the last along the creek to lose its foliage. Night was descending all around in a cloak of gray.
“Weird tree,” Amber shivered. “It seems to swing back and forth like it’s looking for something.”
“I’ll bet trees get bored sitting in one place,” Marie said.
The teenagers sat on their log, smoking cigarettes and drinking the rest of Julio’s stolen beer.
“Beer always tastes good after a hard day of school,” Julio said. He took in the line of long faces. Better change the subject. “Hey, look at the bright side! The school’s treating us like we’re special for a change.”
“We are special. Special Ed,” Toby moaned.
“Special Ed is for retards,” Marie said.
“I say we steal a car, drive it to Miami and sell it.” Julio loved cars.
Marie said, “I say we just sit right here frozen stiff and get high for a month.”
“Mr. Wirtz is right,” Toby shrugged. “We don't fit nowhere, man.”
“You’re bumming me out,” Amber frowned.
“Just saying it like it really is.”
Julio chugged down a beer, then violently crushed the empty aluminum can on his head. Everyone looked at him but no one congratulated him.
“Big fat fool,” Amber said. “Hope you get brain damage.”
“Say what?”
“You heard me.” She stared up at the branches of the tree. “Winter's coming.”
“Just like every year, you dumb little bitch,” Julio said. “Is that all you think about is trees and cold?”
“Big fat fool.”
Julio stood up, puffed out his chest and danced around like a boxer. “You want some of this?”
“I don't eat pork.”
The other kids laughed. Julio laughed too. That made Amber laugh.
“Sometimes I wish I was a tree,” she said.
“Why?” Julio asked, seriously, as he sat back on the log.
“I'd have a place of my own, you know? Roots.”
Everyone looked up at the big old tree now. It seemed to be looking back down at them.
Amber continued, “I’d always know where I am, always know my neighbors.”
“No need for school,” Julio said.
“Never have to work,” Marie added.
“Just being alive, day in, day out, wiggling my roots now and then to keep my balance, lifting my limbs in the air to catch the rain.”
“Trees get to dance, too,” Matt said. Several freckles connected when he smiled. “Every time the wind blows.”
“Trees get along, too,” Toby realized. “All shapes and sizes and colors living together.”
“Corforus and Decidils,” Marie said.
“That’s coniferous and deciduous,” Matt corrected her.
“At least I remembered part of it,” said Marie.
“That you did,” Matt said. Marie surprised him sometimes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next day, in the late afternoon, Julio Ramirez stood in the middle of his backyard. Hose in hand, he watered all around him in great big circles. His mind was at peace in the backyard when he was alone. He felt like a little boy here. Safe.
The suspension notification letter from the school had arrived with the postman at eleven o’clock. Julio burned it, just like all the other letters from all the schools and all the courts over the years. A phone call from Garfield followed at two. He disguised his voice and pretended to be his dad.
“I’ll whip his ass for this one!’ Julio promised in a deep voice with a heavy Mexican accent.
“We should never hit a child,” the frightened school clerk said before she hung up.
Julio had a good laugh in the yard after that.
For a change, Miguel, his father, arrived home early.
He was a very big man, with hands of stone, a supervisor on a concrete crew. The money was decent, enough to make the payments on a house and a truck. He had extra money, too. Saved money for the slow weeks in winter, even for the future if he wanted. But he didn’t dream about the future anymore. When he set his lunch box down on the kitchen counter and saw through the back window that his big fat son was watering the lawn, he became very angry. He slid open the patio door and rumbled up to his kid.
“What the hell you doin'?”
“Trying to make the grass grow back before winter,” Julio said.
Miguel ripped the running hose from Julio's hand and turned off the water at the nozzle. Then he smacked the boy in the head with an open hand. Not too hard, just enough to make a point.
“We don't need no grass! We don't need nothin’!”
“I was gonna start fixin' up the house so's...”
“You don't touch nothin’. You don't do nothin’. Everything stays as is. You got it, idiota?”
“I can fix things up poppa, I can...”
“Nothin’ needs fixin'! No theeng!”
Miguel tossed the hose on the ground and marched back in the house.
Frustrated Julio plopped down on a cheap plastic lounge chair on the patio and started to cry.
When Miguel saw this through the window, he became even angrier than before. He flew out of the house again and slapped Julio hard in the face. Twice on both sides, enough to leave bruises.
“Nobody cries here! Ever! You stop it now!”
Julio knew why his father hit him. He knew why poppa didn’t want the grass watered. He knew why his poppa was so mean.
“Mama can’t never come back. You know that, don't you?” Julio asked.
“We don't talk about her!”
Miguel hurried back in the house, his thick callused hands rubbing weary and tired eyes. Even from behind, Julio could see that he had made the old man cry now. He didn’t feel good about it, but he was happy poppa still felt something.
“Talk to me, Poppa,” he yelled. “Mama, she can’t come back! God took her!”
The television came on inside and that was the end of the conversation.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After only two years of operation, the big house on north Nevada Street was already on secret probation with its neighbors. The three previous probations weren’t anything anyone could enforce, just due notice that the house and all the girls in it were being watched very carefully for improprieties. These might lead to enough evidence for the dissatisfied neighbors to have the house’s operating license revoked. After all, it was a commercial enterprise operating in a residential area.
According to the nosy woman with the skin rash that lived next door, it was nothing more than a brothel for little whores. She was the one on the lookout, the one with her finger on the button to get the police involved when the time was right. Last year, it was her voice on the 911 line reporting the fistfight in the backyard. Hers again when a boy in heat broke a second story bedroom wi
ndow with a rock.
“Filthy children,” the neighbor snorted to the police when they arrived. “Why, when I was a girl we had morals…”
Inside the group home, several disinterested girls sat in tight-packed chairs in front of the television in the mismatched living room. A blathering reality show about a woman trying to find a rich husband was on.
Miss Feely, the live-in counselor for the group home came in.
“Tracy finished the dinner dishes. Who has the remote?”
One of the girls lazily raised the remote in the air. Miss Feely snatched it from her hand and turned off the boob tube. Her girls groaned.
“Homework time. Chop-chop.”
“Do we have to?” came the common complaint.
Miss Feely crossed to the television, set the remote down and picked up a wind-up oven timer.
“Two hours starting now,” she said.
“Why do you set the timer?” a girl asked. “After homework, it’s lights out anyway.”
“We all have to learn to be efficient,” Feely said. “Humans are connected by time. Time to eat, time to sleep and work…”
“Time for sex,” one of the girls said. “Have you ever had sex, Miss Feely?”
The other girls broke into a chorus of laughter.
“I don’t discuss my personal life,” the counselor said. “Now, let’s go. Chop-chop.”
Bodies moved in slow motion. Bags were opened, books and homework assignments revealed. Miss Feely ran through her mental checklist of who was not present as the girls left for their rooms.
“Where's Baby?” she asked.
“Who cares?” one girl said.
“Why does she get her own bedroom?” another complained.
“Wow! Do I feel the love here or what?”
Miss Feely shook her head and headed towards the back bedroom on the first floor off the kitchen. Even before she arrived, she knew Amber Beulah was in there doing what she wasn’t supposed to be doing.
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