The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs

by Michael Ciardi

The whoosh of a flushing toilet roused me into consciousness. This time, adding to my humility, I found myself bent double over a porcelain commode with only my elbows preventing me from plunging headlong into the bowl. Fortunately, a custodian must’ve already sanitized this bathroom before I staggered inside. I didn’t detect any random pattern of misfired urine yellowing everything but its intended target. At this stage my vertigo prevented me from standing upright immediately, so I remained stooped upon the tiles inside the stall. If nothing else, my illness provided a resource for me to absorb some of the bawdy limericks scrawled on the interior dividers. Before now, I never really noticed how poetic (and lewd) some of these kids were.

  At least the lavatory’s stall insulated me from prying eyes. But as I gathered my composure, I wondered who flushed the toilet. My hands were still crisscrossed in front of me over the bowl’s rim; a flush handle was mounted against the wall. It was possible that I unintentionally hit this lever during my episode, but a more likely scenario was that someone had entered the bathroom after I had already passed out. I then directed my attention toward a broken lighting fixture in the ceiling above the stall adjacent to my right side.

  Beneath the partition, I noticed a soiled white sneaker shuffling on the tiled floor. Rather than make my presence known at once, I remained silent as this individual exited the stall and stopped directly in front of the washbasins. A slight division in the blue paneled door permitted me to glimpse a student standing near the sink. I didn’t detect the sound of running water, so I presumed he was simply staring into the mirror. For now, I decided to maintain my stealthy watch. Besides, I currently had no desire to confess that I was using the boys’ lavatory as my sanctuary. After nearly a minute, however, this kid still hadn’t walked away from the sink. Since I presumed most of the other students were outside for the fire drill, it occurred to me that this boy was hiding out for the duration. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one in this school who found the timing of this evacuation inconvenient. I couldn’t berate him for violating the exact rule I had ignored. But after nearly two minutes, I realized that most boys didn’t preen their features in a mirror for this length of time unless wounded.

  Another thirty seconds elapsed before I decided to test my own stability by rising to my feet and opening the stall’s door. My reflection appeared in the glass that the boy stood in front of, and this startled him to a degree where he almost surrendered his footing on the slick tile. Honestly, I don’t know which one of us was more mortified, but he must’ve assumed that I had intentions to discipline him for flouting the fire drill’s procedures. I noticed a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses set precariously on the edge of the sink’s basin, and an overstuffed knapsack on the floor that looked as if it contained half of the school’s library books.

  When the boy turned toward me, I tried not to wince, but my reaction must’ve been apparent by the way he rounded his shoulders in a gesture befitting of demoralization. I had seen this uncomely face on many occasions in the hallways, but I didn’t really know (or care to know) his name. Unfortunately, the boy’s head was disproportionately massive in relation to his skinny neck, and misshapen to an extent where it was distracting even by observance through peripheral vision. Adding to this unsymmetrical visage, his skin was laden monstrously with acne that frothed like a sea of white pearls across his forehead, cheeks and chin. His eyes, both squinty and sty-clustered, revealed no spark of vitality. If this kid had ever done anything that required an ounce of physical exertion, it was not obvious in his posture. His arms dangled slackly at his sides, almost as if stitched onto his torso by a farsighted seamstress with a malicious streak. His clothes appeared at least as grubby as his sneakers; they hung on him with the same unkemptness of a vagabond’s wardrobe.

  The boy leaned awkwardly against the sink, staring at me as one might’ve gazed cautiously upon a solar eclipse. His hands fumbled over the wet porcelain, grappling for his glasses with the same urgency as a displaced fish thirsting for water. I felt ashamed for noticing his flaws after greeting him, but I couldn’t pretend to be oblivious to these malformations. I imagined the ridicule that he endured on a daily basis as he slunk through the school’s corridors, invisible to all but those who wished to decimate his character. To him, high school must’ve seemed as antagonistic as a penitentiary. After nearly forty months of abuse at the hands of the students, I wondered what undetectable damage stirred within his mind.

  Rather than augment the boy’s insecurities by locking eyes, I averted my stare. I then approached the sink basin and turned on the faucet. Lukewarm water trickled from the spout. My interaction with him was intentionally casual. “How’s it going?” I asked. Since I anticipated his reluctance to speak, I opted for some lighthearted repartee. “Just between you, me, and this sink,” I started, “I don’t care much for fire drills, and I can see that you’re not too crazy about them either, huh?”

  The boy remained almost expressionless while clasping his eyeglasses. I continued to wash my hands, but while doing so I observed his mannerisms in the mirror’s reflection. He transferred his concentration from me to the blown fluorescent lighting fixture in the ceiling at least twice during this short interval. “I’ll make you a deal,” I offered. “I won’t say anything about you hiding out in here during the drill if you return the favor. Fair enough?”

  “I’m not hiding,” the boy insisted, sounding peeved by my assumption. I proceeded to turn off the faucet and reached for a beige paper towel from a dispenser on the wall. After drying my hands, I tossed the crumpled wad of paper in a trash basket and waited for him to move toward the lavatory’s exit. When he didn’t budge, I became a little suspicious of his behavior.

  “The kids will be back inside soon,” I said. “Maybe you can get a head start to your next class if you get moving.”

  “If I leave now,” he explained in a voice just higher than a whisper, “Dr. Lemus will know I skipped the drill. The last thing I need today is anymore trouble.”

  The boy then occupied himself by reclaiming his bulging knapsack from the floor. I wouldn’t have imagined such a skeletal kid harnessing the strength to tote what looked to be Atlas’s weight upon his shoulders, but he managed to loop the carrier’s straps around his arms and hoist the bundle on his back. As he accomplished this chore, I attempted to recall his name. Eventually, after my thoughts came up blank, curiosity prompted me to pursue a more formal acquaintance with him.

  “What’s your name?” I asked bluntly.

  “Great,” he huffed. “I knew you were gonna report me to the principal.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just asked you what your name was.”

  “Stanley,” he said sheepishly.

  “Stanley,” I repeated with emphasis on the missing portion of his surname.

  His threadlike upper lip quivered momentarily before he clarified, “Stanley Glacer.”

  This, of course, was not the first time I encountered his name today. I instantly remembered that Mrs. Fassal had mentioned him to me earlier this morning. Since Stanley became the latest patsy to instigate Drew Mincer’s wrath, I now understood his reluctance to depart the lavatory.

  “You know, it’s sort of coincidental,” I remarked, “but I was just having a conversation about you this morning with Mrs. Fassal.” My statement didn’t prompt any significant reaction from Stanley. As a matter of fact, he looked at me as though he stared directly into the eyes of Medusa.

  By now Stanley returned his eyeglasses to his face, which only served to magnify his grotesqueness, particularly the scars pitting his cheeks. The boy’s jaundiced eyeballs increased at least two sizes through the bifocal lenses, which provided me with a distinct vantage into his state of anxiousness. He must’ve anticipated that I was told more than he wanted me to know.

  “What did she say about me?” he asked, reservedly.

  “She mentioned you were having a problem with someone in her class.” Since Stanley was no more familiar with me than I was to him, I d
idn’t expect him to volunteer anything too delicate to his sensibilities. For a moment he cast a forlorn stare at his feet and clicked the heels of his sneakers together as if he wore a magical pair of ruby slippers. But both of us wholeheartedly knew that simply wishing for a delivery to a different environment didn’t amount to much of a change.

  “Hey, you’re Mr. Cobbs, aren’t you?” he inquired.

  I confirmed the boy’s question with a single nod.

  “My older sister had you for English about five years ago,” he then remarked.

  “Really?” I said, pretending to be astonished. “Who’s your sister?”

  “Stacy,” he replied with a residue of envy adhering to his tone. For a moment I stood dumb faced while trying to sort through hundreds of former students who traipsed in and out of my classroom over the past five years. Among them I’m sure two or three girls shared that first name, but I couldn’t extract an image of anyone who resembled this boy who stood like a decrepit troll before me now.

  “I’m not surprised you don’t remember her,” Stanley commented. “She was kind of shy like me, but not as ugly though.”

  I purposely ignored Stanley’s last comment, but his self-criticism reverberated like a shotgun between my ears. Not too many kids in high school accessed their physical imperfections so overtly, or at least they didn’t concede to them as frankly as I just heard. It saddened me to know that this boy already recognized his social status was hindered by something as superficial as a pleasant appearance. I identified with Stanley’s dilemma more closely than he would’ve believed, but I didn’t intend to expound on those particulars just yet.

  “Do you feel like talking about what’s going on between you and Drew?” I asked.

  “Not really. By the way, my sister told me you were a pretty cool teacher.”

  In the uncomplimentary realm of education, I learned to accept such verbiage as being as close to a nod of admiration that I’d ever achieve from any student. Of course, I also refrained from polishing my trophy case before any awards were displayed inside it.

  “She also said that you don’t look people in the eyes when you talk to them,” Stanley added. “I once read somewhere that this behavior means the person is hiding something. Isn’t that interesting, Mr. Cobbs?”

  “Profoundly, Stanley.”

  “Well, at least it explains why you can’t remember my sister.”

  Stanley’s curt reminder of my inability to sustain eye contact with students and other faculty members was no revelation to me. Perhaps I struggled with my own introverted nature at times, but I had become marginally more adept at concealing my insecurities as the years went by. In order to verify my progress I purposely trained my eyes at the boy’s face without even flinching, and this was no easy feat by any man’s account.

  “Look,” I resumed, “I understand your unwillingness to talk about this situation with me, but I can get you in touch with a counselor if you think it will help.”

  “I don’t know what Mrs. Fassal told you, but there’s nothing going on.” Stanley’s wooly eyebrows twitched like two metamorphic caterpillars as he fed me this lie. I also sensed a hint of derision in his voice when he spoke again. “Besides, it’s not like Drew just became a menace around this place. Why does it matter to you all of a sudden?”

  “Hey, Stanley, I know all about the garbage Drew gets away with. Someone in this school should’ve done something about his behavior long before now.”

  “Sure, Mr. Cobbs, whatever you say. Are we done here now?”

  “I don’t think so. We still have a few things to discuss.”

  Stanley’s eyes pinched into slivers of white. He looked like a cockeyed scientist trying to probe the interior portion of my brain. “Why do you want to get involved?” he asked.

  “To be honest, I didn’t,” I responded candidly. “But Mrs. Fassal seemed genuinely upset, and she decided to put me in the loop. Now that I’m here, I can’t just back off and pretend like nothing is going on. Besides, I might be able to stop this spat before it gets any worse.”

  Teachers determined quite early on in their careers that acquiring trust and respect from their students didn’t necessarily come without painstaking labor. Stanley certainly wasn’t going to confide in me without exploring my ulterior motives, but I also suspected that such an offer hadn’t been extended to him in the past. His face relaxed as he pondered my proposal, allowing the crimson stains marring his cheeks to soften a shade or two.

  “Drew has been picking on me this whole year in that class,” he confessed. “But I’ve been dealing with bullies like him since I started first-grade.”

  “That doesn’t make it acceptable,” I countered, sounding more like a therapist than a teacher. Sometimes a distinction between these two professions wasn’t readily apparent. I gathered that Stanley was subjected to enough well intended sound bites to placate even the most skeptical teenager. But a glaring reality was that sympathetic promises amounted to nothing but fluff in the heads of Drew’s beleaguered victims. Kids like Stanley Glacer wanted an antidote to bullying that worked, and the enthusiasm implemented to ignite a surefire solution always fizzled out with minimal results.

  “Thanks for offering to help,” Stanley continued, “but up until a couple of days ago I dealt with Drew just by ignoring his rude comments. Take it from a bona fide expert on getting his ass kicked—eventually, even imbeciles like Drew grow bored of taunting kids who don’t backtalk. After all, you can only call someone ‘lava cheeks’ or ‘fester face’ a few hundred times before the rest of the class stops laughing, right?”

  “But I take it your strategy isn’t working anymore?”

  “No,” he replied shamefacedly. “I guess things aren’t going to turn out as neat and tidy as I originally planned. Drew wants to pulverize me now. Apparently, belittling me for nearly nine months wasn’t satisfying his deranged personality.”

  “Why do you think he wants to hurt you physically at this point?”

  Stanley instantaneously wrapped his skinny arms around his torso as if chilled by the briskness of our interaction. His embarrassment required no further clarification, but I sensed an authentic effort at compliance on his part. “I’ll tell you what happened in two words,” he murmured. Then, staying true to his assertion, he uttered, “Regan Cordell.”

  Stanley must’ve witnessed sheer repugnance surging into my expression upon the pronouncement of that girl’s name. Whether it was politically correct or not, I had only recently become comfortable with disliking certain students based on the credibility of their characteristics, just as I did with adults. In my mind, I couldn’t designate more than one other student in the entire school district who was more deserving of contracting a disfiguring ailment than this manipulator.

  “You look like you know who I’m talking about,” Stanley observed.

  “Unfortunately, I do,” I answered, but I didn’t feel compelled to mention my earlier squabble with her today. “Are you saying that Regan is somehow involved?”

  “Monday morning,” Stanley explained, “I was preparing some slides for Mr. Kimble’s biology lab. It was one of those rare days when Regan actually decided to show up for class. Anyway, as I returned to my seat with a tray of phials, I must’ve tripped on a table leg or something…”

  “And so you accidentally spilled the phials on Regan?” I interrupted.

  “Not exactly,” said Stanley, pausing to recollect the details of his story. “In fact, I didn’t spill any of the solvents on her. Most of the stuff splattered in a sink or on the floor next to Regan’s workstation.”

  “So what happened after you tripped?”

  “Nothing really. But according to Candice Bellows, who sits on the opposite side of the room, as I was falling I bumped into Regan and grabbed her…well, you know.” Stanley hesitated as his face flushed with mortification. He cupped one of his hands on the pocket of his cranberry-colored shirt.

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “Did Candic
e say that you touched Regan, or did Regan accuse you first?”

  “From what I remember it was Candice, at first. I know that Regan jumped out of the way and I fell against the side of her work table.” He now pointed his finger to his shoulder. “I still got the bruise.”

  “But Candice said that you grabbed Regan inappropriately—is that right?”

  Stanley motioned to his chest again, this time with both hands. I had every reason to suspect that this boy was emotionally incapable of purposely groping a girl’s breast.

  “If you know Regan,” Stanley proceeded, “then you must realize that she craves attention. “So right after I tripped, Candice started squawking at me, calling me a sick pervert and other unmentionable names. Next thing I know, Regan accused me of touching her boobs.”

  “I see where this is going,” I muttered.

  “Down the tubes for me,” he sulked. “As my luck would have it, Regan and Drew have joined forces to rid Ravendale of any inferior types. She threatened that he was going to break all of my fingers off my hand and shove them one-by-one up my….” Stanley paused and lowered his hands to his rear end. “Well, I think you can guess the rest.”

  Had this sort of intimidation derived from anyone other than Regan, I might’ve refrained from intervening right away. But firsthand knowledge of the girl’s vindictive nature in combination with Drew’s troglodytic mindset added legitimacy to Stanley’s plight. My plan to serve as a mediator now took on a greater relevance in my mind. Of course, Stanley must’ve deduced that he had absolutely no hope of fending off any assault from Drew. Although I hadn’t done anything like this previously, Stanley’s circumstance seemed like it merited a bit of special attention.

  “Listen,” I told him earnestly. “I don’t know you very well as a student, but I’m pretty sure you’re telling me the truth. Has Regan ever given you any trouble before Monday?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “I wonder why she’s suddenly keen on causing you so much grief?”

  “Don’t think about her motives rationally, Mr. Cobbs. Everyone knows that Regan is on a quest to personally humiliate as many misfits as she can before graduation.”

  “Did you ever hear her say that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Just watch the hallways a little bit more closely and you’ll see what I’m talking about. She can’t accomplish all the dirty work by herself, so that’s where Drew steps in. He’s as restless as a shark to chew up anyone she picks out of a crowd. I just happen to be the latest hunk of chum.”

  “Listen to me closely, Stanley,” I said. “I’m not going to stand by idly and let Drew Mincer run rampant in this school. He should’ve been thrown out of here two years ago. Someone has to stop him. I think I should be the one to try.”

  I couldn’t be positive, but I believe I saw a tiny smile skitter across the boy’s paper-thin lips. To me, Stanley’s fleeting gesture signified his support, although he would’ve never confessed as much in my company.

  “I’m glad that you believe me, Mr. Cobbs,” he said, “but I don’t think you can make it any better. Actually, you might even end up doing more damage.”

  The boy’s cynicism didn’t seem outlandish to me. I understood the perils of infiltrating the invisible boundaries that separated teachers from teenagers. We were obligated to involve ourselves in their social conflicts only to a certain measure, and then expected to recognize the limitations of our benevolence. The teachers who lasted the longest in the classroom often conducted their jobs like a business, where the finished product demonstrated its value in the form of credible grades and test scores. Anyone hoping to achieve more lofty objectives usually ended up as a disenchanted educator within the first five years.

  Stanley sought no part of my altruism, or at least that’s what he wanted me to conclude. The simple truth was that most students recovered unscathed from a physical beating at the hands of their social equals. But in high school, lost respect was as unsalvageable as burnt wreckage. At the risk of completely spoiling Stanley’s already curdled reputation, I decided that I couldn’t ignore his predicament.

  “I know you think you can handle this on your own,” I said, “but Drew’s not the type of kid who backs off very easily. Maybe I can persuade him to change his mind.”

  “What makes you think it’ll be any different this time?” Stanley scoffed at what he must’ve viewed as green ambition on my part. Of course, even I harbored considerable doubt about my ability to change Drew’s modus operandi. Stanley continued to dissuade my expectations. “In fact, Mr. Cobbs, there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to prevent guys like Drew Mincer from picking on kids like me. Hatred must be built into his genetic code or something.”

  Stanley’s listless concession unnerved me, but I realized that his defeatism was a common symptom of those who were habitually bullied in school. I still refused to walk away without trying to alter his perception. “Are you just going to put up with Drew’s crap for the rest of the year, Stanley?”

  “You know how it is,” he replied. “The more I resist punishment, the worse it’ll get. I guess some kids were just born to be abused.”

  “Stop thinking like that,” I chided him. “We’ll never be able to make a difference if we just give up and let the bullies control everything around here.”

  “You’re starting to sound like one of the kids, Mr. Cobbs.”

  “So be it then. I’m more concerned about helping you.”

  “You’ll just prolong my agony,” he pouted. “I can’t change what I am or who I am.”

  “What does that mean? How do you really see yourself, Stanley?”

  The boy brooded over my words in silence for a moment before he directed my attention to his reflection in the mirror. He nearly winced at the hideous sight of himself. I wanted to tell him to look beyond the mirror’s surface and find something that made him feel important. But I couldn’t muster the audacity to lie to him. At Stanley’s age, and probably even my own, people instinctually judged each other’s worth on physical indicators. This callous process of elimination only seemed more prevalent in high school because young people were less likely to conceal their condemnation. In this moment, Stanley was far too wise to not know that his unpopularity was linked like an iron chain to his ugliness.

  “Maybe if I become rich and famous someday,” he mused facetiously, “I could fool myself into believing that people liked me for my personality.”

  “I know how you’re feeling, Stanley,” I admitted. “Sometimes I’ll stop in front of a mirror and just wish there was another face staring back at me.” As I looked at myself now, it seemed like a reasonable suggestion. My own ill health gave me a haggard appearance. I looked dreadfully tired, and perhaps frailer than at any previous moment since discovering my sickness.

  “You’re not as disgusting as me,” said Stanley. “Anybody can see that.”

  “I’m going to be honest with you,” I proceeded, “I wasn’t very popular in high school either.” I then attempted to interject some humor. “The worst part is that I’m still not popular, and I’m still in high school.” He almost released a long repressed smile, but sorrow weighted his mouth into a frown as if he had an anchor hitched to his jaw.

  “I guess we’ll both just have to accept our situations and deal with them the best way we can,” he muttered.

  Stanley’s resolution sounded too sophisticated and rehearsed for me to let it go unchecked. I decided to present another question to him before he decided that we had nothing more to discuss. “Before you go to class, there is something else I’d like to ask you,” I said.

  He now turned away from the mirror and adjusted the luggage on his back. “Okay,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “What is it now?”

  “This morning when I spoke to Mrs. Fassal, she mentioned something to me that she considered very serious.” I waited for Stanley to reveal some telltale expression of acknowledgment, but he instead resumed the façade of a stone statuette
. “It had something to do with a handwritten note,” I continued, hoping to spawn a noticeable reaction. He remained remarkable stoic, however. “She said that it was your penmanship.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Cobbs,” he said finally. He then shifted his footing, perhaps trying to accommodate the humongous knapsack on his back. It looked like he was transporting a satchel full of bricks rather than books. His denial flew off his tongue too rapidly for me to accept.

  “She told me that a note slipped out of your book bag yesterday when you were leaving class,” I said.

  “It must be an interesting note,” Stanley returned. “Did you see it, too?”

  “Yes. She showed it to me.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say?”

  “Did you write the note, Stanley?” He simply shook his head, keeping his mouth sealed as if his lips were sutured from corner to corner. “Look, I know kids jot down their impulsive thoughts all the time, and most of those don’t mean anything. But Mrs. Fassal was pretty upset by this note. She’s thinking about going to the principal with it. I just wanted to let you know.”

  “That’s fine with me, Mr. Cobbs, because as I already told you, I don’t know anything about the note.”

  “Your teacher was just worried that it was a real threat.”

  “Oh, and wouldn’t that be a terrible tragedy if it was? After all, we can’t have students writing anything that might be viewed as a nasty threat against someone like Drew Mincer, right? What would that do to our school’s public image? Besides, it’s not the right order of things, is it? The bullies are supposed to intimidate the rest of us. How would it look if a sniveling, lowlife coward actually had the nerve to stand up to one of them? That would just throw this whole place out of kilter.”

  Even a deaf man could’ve deciphered Stanley’s sardonic tone, and I suddenly felt dastardly for merely presenting the issue. I had already embarrassed us both by doing more than what my contract stipulated. Although I couldn’t sway Stanley to say anything further on the matter, I still planned to pursue the intervention with Drew Mincer.

  “You should get to class now,” I advised him. “But I want you to know that I’m going to talk to Drew about what you told me.”

  The boy looked at me as if I was pathetically numb to high school’s unscripted protocol. He didn’t bother to utter anything else to me. He just turned sluggishly toward the lavatory’s door and schlepped away like a wounded animal newly freed from a trap. How could I fault him for devolving into such a gelid bitterness? Unless I had a power to transform his unsightliness into something more favorable, there was no way that he’d ever accept my sympathy as authentic.

  As adults, we often assumed we had a failsafe remedy for social inadequacies at our command. Time was supposed to mend the scars of those who suffered the most lashings. The pitiful fact, of course, was that no one who was ridiculed or battered in high school ever displaced the memories entirely from their minds. In some cases, four years in one’s life altered the outcome of all those that followed. Even now, as I stood slump-shouldered in front of the lavatory’s mirror, I glimpsed at traces of my own ongoing failures and how they were seeded when I was very young. Regrets gnawed away at a man’s flesh like maggots on carrion. I often compared this process to an apparently painless consumption of one’s dreams. In many unutterable ways, the reflection of Stanley Glacer and my own blended as a seamless image, serving as a sullen reminder of the self-loathing and regret that haunted us throughout the ages.

  In these seconds I couldn’t drag myself away from the glass. I studied my darkening eyes, wondering why the spark seemed so diminished. Cold sweat formed in dollops on my skin, and I then knew that my episodes had no intentions of ceasing. This malady manipulated my recollections as unstintingly as an old mariner’s hands gripping a taut fishing line. I was now sent reeling into the choppy fathoms of my subliminal thoughts, while simultaneously struggling to resist the bait cast in a directionless path.

  Chapter 22

  8:52 A.M.