In less than an hour I’d be sitting fretfully in front of Dr. William Pearson with a diminishing hope that he uncovered something about my health that I currently didn’t understand. I no longer fooled myself into believing that this ailment was curable. A rivulet of blood seeping liberally from my nose supplied an unnerving reminder of how precious and precarious each second of life was for me now. Not so unusually, contemplations of my own demise caused me to reflect upon all the fractured and unfulfilled dreams still flickering inside my head.
The aborted enterprises of my youth still roosted like a bleak centerpiece of disappointment for me. As a boy, I instinctually presumed that the luxury of time perched in my palms like a fledgling ready to take its wings to air. Who would’ve forfeited the right of any child to dream of a boundless future? I often reminisced about my boyhood journeys amid those illimitable summer days. With journal and pen in tow, I drifted like a windblown feather along the pristine trails enwrapping Lake Endelman. And within that forested haven, naively divested from rejection, I scribbled bizarre and fantastical tales to share with those who once believed in me.
Without fear fettering me to the soil, I shifted blithely into illusionary worlds, where the outcome was solely determined by the sound of syllables. Even with my numerous imperfections, I was never a better writer or person after the age of twelve. Then, as surely as flesh sagged and grayed on an elderly man’s skeleton, my notions of indestructibility began to erode. The creative flame burning within my mind was gradually sprinkled with a retardant that made each new idea fizzle. Ultimately, the unbridled enthusiasm of preadolescence smoldered into embers of self-doubt and reservation. I always promised myself that I wouldn’t permit anyone to douse my passion for the written word, no matter how petty or grandiose my ideas registered to those who claimed to love me. Once the Muse was relinquished in favor of conventional pursuits, a part of every man was snuffed from existence.
As a teacher I once presumed that my satisfaction might’ve been apprehended if I encouraged other children to develop their talents for storytelling. But every authentic writer realized that this was an unachievable compromise. Just as any painter couldn’t be pacified by the brushstrokes of another artist’s creations, so was true for those who crafted prose. An alternate author’s words—however marvelously scribed—couldn’t supplant my own visions. Yet now, despite all my younger years penning what I hoped had an inherent power to enhance perceptions, much of what I sculpted read as unpolished as a scrap pile of tarnished metal.
The pages of unfinished manuscripts still fluttered within my brain. A long time ago I convinced myself that there was never a valid reason to go backwards for any worthy quest in life. But I now realized the prudence of retrospection. If it was indeed possible for a man to propel himself forward by reaching into his past, I wanted to cling fiercely to whatever remained within range of my fingertips.
The journal that I carried to school this morning remained untouched by my pen. Its crisp pages still held an earthy scent of wood pulp. The thought of never having another opportunity to shape a sentence with ink caused me to tremble with a dread that was as fathomless as the uncharted oceans of our world. I might’ve been inclined to loiter in this pathetic state for a while longer, but the hallway I presently stood in wouldn’t be a refuge for me much longer. With this realization in mind, I became distracted by the sound of an amicable voice. Seeing Dale McCoy springing toward me in gangly strides with a fresh stack of tissue in hand was indeed a welcomed sight. He still clutched his copy of Ulysses in his opposite hand as if it was adhered to his wrist.
“Mr. Cobbs,” he yelled out with an urgency that surprised me. Dale’s baggy clothing billowed around him as he scampered up the corridor. Before I had a chance to address him, he angled in front of me and forwarded the tissue into my hand. “A few of the kids told me you might be able to use this,” he remarked, while trying not to gasp in the aftermath of his sprint. “What happened to your nose?”
Upon receiving the tissue, I discarded the discolored mass of paper I previously held into a conveniently placed trash bucket. During this exchange, I noticed that my nosebleed had subsided a bit. As a precautionary measure to any random leakage, however, I pinched my nostril closed with the new paper enveloping my fingers.
Although slightly mortified by my appearance I said, “I guess it’s easy to see that I’m having a pretty rotten day, huh?”
Dale shrugged his shoulders as if at a loss to comment on my situation. “Where are you going now?” he asked.
Another joke might’ve curtailed the tension wavering between us, so I quipped, “I figured I’d head down to the nurse’s office for a transfusion.” Dale’s awkward grin indicated that he wasn’t in the right spirit to laugh. “Seriously, I’m just going to clean up a bit and then get out of here.”
Most kids Dale’s age wouldn’t have bothered to hang around long enough to fret about any teacher’s troubles. But Dale was as humble and homespun as a wedge of apple pie, and juxtaposed almost every stereotypical fault that I associated with American teenagers.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll walk you the rest of the way to the nurse’s office,” he offered.
“Don’t you have a class to get to?”
“No. I’m just running office errands for this last period. When I stopped by your classroom, Mrs. Fassal told me what happened.”
If any other student than Dale enunciated this offer, I might’ve found it peculiar. But I liked his company even at one of my most inconvenient moments. We walked abreast for fifty feet or so before I sensed that the boy had more brewing in his thoughts than my safe passage. He kept glancing at his own sneakers, as if the words he wanted to blurt out were somehow lodged beneath the treads of his black Converse.
“Something troubling you?” I asked him directly.
“Not really,” he said, “but do you remember what we were talking about earlier in the auditorium?”
“You mean about your haughty taste in literature?” I joked while gesturing to Joyce’s existentialistic tome cupped in his hand.
“No. The other thing.”
It took me a few seconds to recollect our prior conversation. Given the amount of information I already absorbed today, I felt no shame in my dithering mannerisms. Eventually, I found the right file in my brain. “Is this about Lenore Rivers?”
“In a way, yeah. I know you’ve got other things to worry about,” Dale conceded. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to bring it up.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “I’m glad you’ve given it some thought.”
Dale’s flustered face took on a confident sheen as he paused and squared his shoulders towards me. He then straightened in his stance a bit, and puffed out his concaved chest like a peacock flashing its iridescent plumage. I sensed he was finally ready to make an important choice on his own for the first time.
“You know, my parents never really encouraged me to get involved with anything nonacademic, but it’s not fair for them to do that. I was thinking it might be pretty cool to go to the prom after all.”
I didn’t know Dale’s parents very well, but I realized that the people who spent the most time with a young man often molded his disposition. “It’s okay to grow up,” I told him. “I’m sure your folks mean well, but you’re not a little kid anymore either.”
Dale’s posture slumped a tad, but he still had a new glow of reserved optimism that he wore like polished mail. “It’s just that I never asked a girl out before,” he admitted in one breath. “I’m not even sure what to say to Lenore.”
“You simply ask her to go to the prom with you,” I said, but realized this was not a failsafe insurance policy that Lenore would’ve receptively signed.
“What if she turns me down?”
“Well, you can’t sit on the sidelines and expect to score a touchdown, can you?”
“Thanks for the sports metaphor,” he smirked. “I guess she probably already knows that I’m not the most outgoing kid at scho
ol, huh?”
“Look, Dale,” I said earnestly, “stop worrying about how Lenore might feel about you. Just tell the girl how you feel about her.” I wished I followed my own advice when I was his tender age. “At the end of the day,” I said, “if you know you at least tried your best, there’s no apologies necessary.”
I wasn’t normally a practitioner of platitudes, but sometimes dusting off the oldest suggestions from Mom and Pops cupboard of trite rhetoric worked better than any of the newfangled psychological prattle. As it was, when we resumed walking down the corridor, Dale continued to shimmer like a knight-errant. Occasional glimpses of hope kept me in the classroom for all these years, and I often tried to remember moments from my own youth that seemed so replete with promise. The callow-hearted boy who strode beside me still believed in his dreams. In this way, teaching was a liberating exercise for me as I advanced beyond middle age. Students such as Dale McCoy reminded me of a time when every sunrise felt like a shining gift from the heavens.
When Dale stopped again, I noticed that we stood in front of the nurse’s suite, which was directly across the hallway from the main office. I detected a faint fragrance of sliced cucumbers as I glared at the door to Principal Lemus’s office.
“Okay,” Dale announced as he motioned toward our destination. “I guess this is where you wanted to go.” I noticed the boy hesitating slightly, almost as if he had a medical condition more dire than my own. By now I had removed the blotted tissue paper from my nose and realized the blood had congealed.
“Hey, I think your nose has stopped bleeding,” Dale confirmed.
I crumpled the tissue in my hand and searched for the nearest trashcan. “So when are you planning to ask Lenore?” I resumed, perhaps too abruptly. The question seemed to perplex Dale; he looked as if I had just asked him to annotate every allusion in the novel he toted.
“I guess I should do it soon,” he said.
“The prom is only a month or so from now. You better do it sooner rather than later, Cyrano.” Dale smirked at my humor, which still hadn’t failed me entirely.
“Today might be good,” he pondered. “I can ask her before she gets on her bus.”
Dale had apparently debated this strategy long before bringing it to my attention. He was merely fetching for my approval now. “It looks like you’ve got it all worked out. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about her turning you down.”
“I wish I had as much faith in my chances as you did,” he said. Dale thanked me for whatever assistance I provided, but I was infinitely more grateful for his contributions. For just a few minutes in an otherwise bleak day, he reminded me why I had become a teacher in the first place. I watched him float down the corridor as if he had puffy clouds tethered to the bottom of his sneakers. In that same instance, I envisioned myself ascending the unknown treads of time with such heedless exuberance. Nothing worth conquering seemed unattainable on this bright and boundless stairway to fulfillment.
But as it was in my current position, another distraction displaced my quietude with the swiftness of a viper lunging at prey. In this instance, the fangs of reality pierced my eardrums with a bone-jarring burst of sound. The fire alarm blared from designated foghorns throughout the school. This amounted to the second alarm today. Suddenly, the custodian’s earlier insight rang louder than the Sirens in Odysseus’s ears. Could it be true? Did Lemus and Mrs. Finnegan design their afternoon trysts around planned evacuations? I only required a hint of cucumber lotion permeating the hallway to compel me to investigate this matter more thoroughly.
Instead of entering the nurse’s suite, I turned toward the main office to observe the evidence firsthand. After barging through the doors like an uninvited vagrant, I must’ve looked foolish at the urgency in which I scanned the surroundings. Naturally, Mrs. Finnegan’s routine was not startled by the alarm. She proceeded to tap away at her keyboard as if immune to the decibels, but the container of scented moisturizer was open on her desktop. I don’t believe she would’ve acknowledged me had not Morgan Lemus bolted from his office like a lumbering lout. His Cyclopean eye zeroed in on me like a periscope scanning for a target.
As I anticipated, the uni-eyed principal didn’t surprise me with any creditable behavior. Even in the midst of my intrusion, half of his concentration swayed to his secretary’s light-bulb frosted loins. A sheath of sweat coated his brow and balding crown as he glowered at me with his one functional eye.
“Mr. Cobbs,” he grimaced in a voice reserved for despised subordinates. “What are you doing in my office? Can’t you hear the alarm? You’re supposed to be accompanying your students to the building’s parking lot.”
“I know the procedure,” I remarked. “I was just wondered why we’re having two drills in one day.”
Lemus’s muddy eye almost squirted free from its socket as his face crunched up into a fleshy ball of tension. If Lemus had an ability to do so, I believed he would’ve popped off his own clubfoot and bludgeoned me senseless with it. As he moved closer to me, I smelled Mrs. Finnegan’s cucumber lotion mixing with his musky perspiration.
“You think you’re pretty bright, don’t you?” he asked.
“Is it wrong to question procedures?”
“Why don’t you get all your facts in order before you start asking nonsensical questions, Mr. Cobbs?”
“Don’t you think two drills in one day is a bit excessive, Dr. Lemus?”
“Who said this is a drill?” he huffed authoritatively.
“Then it’s the real deal?”
The principal enfolded his arms across his barrel-like chest, defying me with a protracted silence. “This is a code blue,” he murmured vehemently. “Do you even have the slightest inclination of what that means?”
“I probably should, but I don’t,” I confessed.
“You probably should do a lot of things around here that you never quite get done,” he chided me. What provoked this principal to loathe me was beyond my present understanding. His acrimony couldn’t be attributed to my habit of leaving school prematurely whenever manageable. I guessed Lemus recognized that I hadn’t given my full potential to this profession. The custodian didn’t need to warn me about this man’s agenda. Lemus was intent on sabotaging what remained of my career in any way legally possible. It must have delighted him beyond belief to have an upper hand in this conversation.
“Code blue designates a mandatory evacuation, “ Lemus explained through clenched choppers. His discolored front teeth nearly chiseled into his lower lip as he spoke. “This doesn’t have anything to do with a fire or a drill.”
“Why else would you evacuate the building?”
Lemus still looked at me begrudgingly before commenting, “Somebody threatened to blow up the school with a bomb.” The principal’s response caused a bemused look to engulf my expression. Certain schools had an ongoing problem with false reports of explosive devices being planted furtively in stairwells and other locations. But to my knowledge, Ravendale High School hadn’t experienced any phony emergency calls in the last fifteen years.
“It must be a hoax,” I insisted.
“Whether or not that’s true isn’t for me to determine,” Lemus fumed. “The law specifies that I’ve got to empty this building of its occupants.” He then pivoted toward Mrs. Finnegan, who had given her fingernails, a much-needed respite. Lemus directed his next words to her. “Do you believe one little message scribbled in a lavatory could cause so much commotion?”
“That’s how you found out about it?” I interrupted. “Which lavatory?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lemus grunted, but he decided to point a blunted finger at the door just beyond his office anyway. “But in case you’re writing a book, Mr. Cobbs, a kid found it scrawled in black marker on a stall’s petition in the boy’s room on the opposite side of this hallway.”
As I suspected, the bathroom was the same one I had removed the handgun from earlier, but I had no intention of relaying this information to the princi
pal now. Despite having one eye, however, Lemus perceived a distinct change in my expression. It suddenly registered to him that something unsettled my thoughts.
“What do you have to tell me, Mr. Cobbs?” he asked grimly.
“Oh, it’s probably nothing,” I fibbed, but my concentration drifted over Lemus’s rounded shoulders to examine the room directly behind Mrs. Finnegan’s work station. Drew Mincer still occupied this space, and I had a hunch almost as pronounced as the lump between Lemus’s shoulder blades that this boy might’ve known something about the gun or recent bomb scare. Before Lemus had another chance to throw me out of the office, I motioned toward the room where Drew sat at a table with his head buried between his folded forearms. “What about him?” I asked Lemus, pointing to Drew.
“I think I already told you that he’s my problem now.”
“Doesn’t he have to leave the building with the other students? This is a code blue, after all,” I returned. I knew that my presence exasperated Mrs. Finnegan more than an empty cosmetics case, and she displayed her ire with no pretense.
“Why do you ask so many questions?” she piped with indignation. “We are perfectly capable of watching Drew until his father picks him up.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” I insisted, now resorting to an alternate strategy to get beyond the barriers that kept me from Drew. “And I know you’re both very good at what you do in here, but I just needed to talk to the boy for a few minutes alone.”
Dr. Lemus played his part as a counterfeit counselor at Oscar-level performance now. “Sounds like you want to be an administrator, Mr. Cobbs, but I’d strongly advise against it. Besides, I have already determined Drew’s punishment. The conflict between him and the other student is over.”
“This isn’t about the fight. I have other business to discuss with him.”
“Business? Of what nature?”
“I’d rather not elaborate, Dr. Lemus,” I replied. “But if I talk to him right now, I might be able to get you some more information about this bomb scare.”
“Drew couldn’t have been involved,” Lemus refuted. “He’s been isolated in that room for the last two hours.”
“I’m not saying he’s directly involved, but he might be able to help us figure out who is responsible.”
Lemus wasn’t exactly enthusiastic to approve anything I might’ve suggested, but he also knew that an incident such as this couldn’t be kept from the morning news. He needed answers for the media when they came fishing around like a school of hungry piranha, and right now both his eyes looked as glassy as the bottom of two beer bottles.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Lemus remarked suspiciously, “why do you think Drew would willingly give you any information that might incriminate himself?”
“Honestly, I don’t know if he will or not. But it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?”
Lemus hesitated, but he had few options that sounded more auspicious than mine at the moment. Still, his utter distrust in my ability to do anything worthwhile prevented him from relenting his position so easily. “One more question,” he said. “I don’t know what to make of you, Mr. Cobbs. You’re usually the first teacher I see leaving the parking lot at the end of every day. Now, all of a sudden, you’re acting like an overgrown boy scout. I’m not handing out any merit badges, if that’s what you’re fetching for.”
I started to say, “Look, I know we don’t see eye to e….” Lemus’s face glistened with rage as he waited for my unintended pun regarding his disfigurement. I wisely rephrased my response. “Isn’t it enough to know that I want to help? I’ll only need five minutes with him. If he doesn’t fess up by then, he never will.”
I had no doubt that Lemus would’ve wished for any teacher other than me to undertake such a challenge. But with no such assistance in sight, he begrudgingly tottered to one side and gave me clearance to the room where Drew sat. “Okay,” he said to me as if I was the bane of his soul. “You’ve got five minutes. But you better not leave his side for one second. Once you’re done talking to him, I want you outside with the rest of the students and faculty. Is that understood?”
My nod proved sufficient at getting the lummox to shift far enough for me to squeeze between him and Mrs. Finnegan’s desk. A scent of rotting cucumber almost caused me to gag. I extended no further pleasantries to either him or his secretary as I approached the room’s closed door. Neither Dr. Lemus nor Mrs. Finnegan lingered around to monitor my conversation with Drew. They had already relocated to the hallway to direct student traffic before I readied myself for another exchange with this high school’s biggest scalawag.
The door’s glass panel was fogged with Drew’s breath. It appeared as though he had fallen asleep at some point, making his time here as irrelevant as it was everywhere else within this building. Before entering the room, I balled my fist and tapped tentatively on the door’s plate glass window. Eventually, Drew’s mane of Gothic-black hair shifted to one side as he pivoted his head from the concealed pocket on the tabletop. I didn’t expect such a Cheshire grin, but that’s exactly what Drew’s lips offered upon noticing me. His smile was as slick as if he had just gargled with a can of motor oil. His eyeballs, no bigger than flecks of soot, glowered at me with pernicious intent.
At least our detestation for one another was mutual. I didn’t bother waiting for Drew to summon me forth with any sort of exuberance, but as he methodically uncurled the middle finger of his left hand and wagged it in my direction like a dog’s tail, I knew this tête-à-tête was destined to descend into a verbal quarrel. Maybe he anticipated a hostile reaction on my part, but I calmly entered the room and positioned myself on the table’s opposite side. My feigned serenity caused the boy to latch his hands into fists as he splayed them on the table’s sticky surface.
Drew hoisted his head up as if a crane’s cable had cinched the back of his neck. Despite the vagueness in his expression, he looked rested and gleefully ignorant of any wrongdoing. I considered the oddity of his supposed punishment. Apparently, doing bodily harm to another student afforded the offender to a half-day of leisure in a private room. I’ve spent evenings at hotels with inferior accommodations.
It always puzzled me that the most abusive and obnoxious students became practically narcoleptic when isolated from their classmates. Were they bidding time in their dreary dreams, plotting their next unpardonable deed? In Drew’s case, no amount of sleep would’ve remedied his astringent nature. As he leered at me through eyes set like two fathomless wells within their sockets, I found it impossible to detect any redeeming feature in his character.
“Look who it is,” he belched hoarsely. Drew knotted his bloodied fingers and popped his knuckles like strips of bubble wrap. The skin on at least three of his knuckles was scabbed over or freshly torn.
“Do you mind if I talk to you for a few minutes?” I asked, expecting to be greeted by this demon as if I had a sermon to recite.
“I got nothin’ else to say to you,” he grumbled like an old jalopy’s engine.
“Sorry I can’t claim the same, Drew.”
The boy then tested my patience with another patronizing smirk, revealing a ribbon of teeth that looked as gritty and misshapen as his gnawed fingernails. After a few seconds, Drew’s attention swayed to the hallway outside the office. He heard the students shuffling outside. Miraculously, this tyrant slept through the entire alarm, which silenced at least three minutes before I sat down with him.
“What’s going on?” he said through the remnant of a yawn. “Another drill or something?”
“You mean you don’t know?” I asked. His quizzical look revealed more than what he intended. I had no reservations about labeling him as a tactful liar who devoted the superior part of his adolescence perfecting his nuances of manipulation. But his obliviousness to this current tumult struck me as authentic.
“I hope you didn’t come in here to blame me for anything else, Cobbs,” Drew complained. He then leaned closer toward the table so tha
t our heads nearly butted like two mountain rams defending a perch. I smelled a faint odor of sour coffee coating his breath, and maybe a hint of vodka.
“Have you been drinking alcohol?” I asked him. “At least that might explain your erratic behavior.” My accusation seemed incredibly naïve. Why did I even expect this insolent bastard to demonstrate his veracity to me? He chortled fiendishly in my face like Pazuzu taunting the Exorcist.
“The way I see it,” he snorted, “I don’t got a problem with the way I am. It just seems that everyone else does.”
“It’s a little late for me to come in here and try to change who you are, Drew, so I’m not even going to waste my time on such a venture.”
“Then what do you want from me, ass-clown?”
“Honestly,” I said, ignoring his insult, “I planned to ask you if you knew anything about this latest evacuation, but now I’m just wondering why you’re always so damn disagreeable.”
Drew arched his back a bit and clasped his hands behind his neck. He then reclined in his chair, emitting pure mischief in his squinty-eyed glance. This wasn’t the first time where I attempted to espy a trace of decency in his persona, but I now realized that such an enterprise was as futile as trying to wring a drop of water from the sands of the Sahara.
“I got to give you your props,” said Drew. “You’re really putting on quite a show for ol’ Cyclops today. All year long nobody has heard a peep out of you. Now you’re zipping around this school looking to fix everything like you’re Hercules on Prozac. Is the superintendent in the building or something?”
“Don’t make this about me, Drew. Just tell me why you’re so angry all the time?”
“Are you some kind of a cut-rate psychologist all of a sudden, Cobbs? ’Cause last time I checked, you were just a lowlife English teacher.”
I suddenly felt compelled to inject this toxic personality with a syringe full of cynicism. “People use one another for different reasons. Your fight today with Stanley Glacer is a perfect example of how even you can be manipulated.”
“Hey, nobody plays Drew Mincer more than once. You can bet on that.”
“Then how do you explain Regan’s magnetic hold on you? I’ve seen trained seals act more disobediently than you do whenever she’s around.”
Drew’s toothy smile diminished as if he absorbed a brass-knuckled punch in his chops. “Leave my girlfriend out of this, Cobbs. As a matter of fact, why don’t you just leave right now while you still can?”
My eyes honed in on the tar-colored eyes entrenched in Drew’s skull before I said, “I can’t do that. I still blame her for the fight you had with Stanley. It sickens me that she uses imbeciles like you to hurt innocent people. If you don’t mind being her pawn, I guess there’s nothing I can say to change your mind.”
The bully suddenly sprang back toward the table and clasped its edges with a distinct hostility brewing in his countenance. Purple veins bulged from his neck and temples like engorged peapods, which forced my eyes to drift onto the unsightly ivory scar scaling down the left side of his face.
“If you want to know the truth,” he seethed, “I would’ve eventually found my way to kicking the crap out of that creep. Regan just helped speed up the process.”
“I guess if you lie to yourself long enough it’ll eventually sound genuine, huh, Drew?”
“Back off, Cobbs. I’m warning you.”
“Why don’t you take an honest look at your situation?” I advised him. “Can’t you see that you’ve become a parody of what a bully is? You’re no more original than those faded blue jeans that you’re wearing.”
Drew’s face tightened as if the skin had been yanked taut against his jaw line. “You don’t know when to shut up, do you? If you keep diggin’ at me, I might just forget that you’re a teacher and whack the gusto out of you.”
“And you think that’s going to improve your status? We’ve already established that you’re a tough guy, Drew, at least when picking on kids who are smaller and frailer than you. Let’s face it, you’ve earned recognition by playing it safe, but it can’t go on like this forever. You must know that.”
As I expected, Drew’s fists clenched and slammed onto the table, nearly collapsing the cheap aluminum legs out from under it. Even cruel-minded idiots didn’t like to be reminded of their deficiencies. I figured Drew wouldn’t be able to compose himself much longer, and maybe I wanted to provoke him. But instead of lunging any closer to me, he flattened his hands and exercised a bit of self-restraint. I hadn’t observed this sort of control in him before this moment.
“So you do have a speck of discipline after all,” I said while studying his eyes for as long as he held my gaze. Drew’s cheerless smile had all but disappeared from his mouth in these seconds. His face took on a somber, introspective look.
“You think I can’t stop myself from fighting, Cobbs?” he asked.
“I believe you can resist it when it’s inconvenient for you,” I replied.
“Maybe you shouldn’t try to analyze me. It’s not worth it.”
“Are you saying that you’re not that complicated?”
“No more so than the average teenager who likes kicking the snot out of people who piss me off.”
“And you need violence to make a salient point?”
“It’s the only thing that really works, Cobbs. As a teacher, you got to know that much at least. Hate it or not, violence has shaped every culture on this stinkin’ planet. Without a desire to beat someone to the punch, you’ll just be sittin’ around waiting to become the next victim. And let me tell you straight up right now, Drew Mincer ain’t never gonna be nobody’s victim.”
My dislike for Drew didn’t prevent me from acknowledging a legitimate point when I heard one. His philosophy on violence might’ve sounded primeval, but who could’ve candidly refuted the correctness of his claim? In a sense, he had become a contaminated product of the environment in which he was reared. I still wished to understand at what moment he elected to view others as hindrances to his contentment.
“When did you really stop caring about people?” I asked him, earnestly searching his stare for a flicker of repressed compassion. His eyelids twitched momentarily, displaying an involuntary reflex that might’ve perforated the tear ducts in a less callous boy. He simply shook his head pitiably at me, as if I had no more ability to pry inside his mind than a dull can opener trying to slice into a steel girder.
“You know,” he sniggered, “I betcha that one-eyed worm sent you in here to pick my brain like a buzzard, huh?”
“No, Drew. This was my idea. Whatever road we go down today in here, stays between us. You have my word.”
“Well, you’re driving down a dead end street, Cobbs.” Drew’s eyes flinched again and this time I thought—if only for a second—that a watery film layered each lens. I didn’t expect him to start blubbering on my shoulder anytime soon, but maybe I chinked his armored emotions slightly. “I’ll tell you the same thing that I told all those shrinks they sent me to when I was a kid,” he continued. “The fact is that I enjoy harassing sniveling wimps. It gives me the respect I want.”
“You know there’s a huge difference between being respected and being feared, don’t you?”
Drew’s mouth opened like a yawning ditch again before he commented, “The result is the same. I get what I want from all of them, including Regan.” As the boy spoke to me, I noticed his left hand instinctually grasping the same side of his neck, as though he was massaging a kink out his shoulder. It then occurred to me that Drew was subconsciously shielding the elongated keloid from me. If this was indeed his vulnerability, I intended to expose it now.
“You want to tell me about that scar you’re favoring on your neck?” I asked him, pointing to where he clasped his fingers.
Drew kept his hand firmly clamped over the injury; his eyeballs reddened as he considered my inquiry. “Nothin’ worth talkin’ about,” he muttered.
“Looks like you had an accident. Ma
ybe surgery?”
“You might say that.” Drew’s lips tightened, and I wondered how far the old wound stretched over his body. Did the proliferated tissue cease at the top of his collarbone? Or did it continue down across his torso?
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“You really are pushing it today, Cobbs, you know that?”
“I’m just trying to figure you out, Drew.”
“That’s your first mistake. Don’t try to make me out to be your poster boy for misguided teens, got it? I like who I am—scars and all.”
I still looked wishfully into Drew’s sagging eyes, perhaps hoping to uncover a glint of goodness entombed somewhere in the darkened abyss. But there was nothing here for me to unearth. Maybe Drew had it all figured out better than I did anyway. He had learned a long time ago that in almost every instance in life the strong dominated the weak. I couldn’t even present an earnest exception where the reverse was true. If Drew ever stood a chance to transform himself into a more compassionate human being, it wouldn’t be fostered through those whom he conquered.
Without any healing antidote to neutralize Drew’s virulence, I retreated from the table. My slumped posture verified my compromise, and sitting in this boy’s presence only intensified the feelings of uselessness that draped on my back like a pox-laden blanket throughout most of my adulthood. Ironically, in the midst of my attempt to comprehend Drew’s bitterness, I had inadvertently exposed my own.
Had it not been for a spell of dizziness interrupting my flow of thoughts, I might’ve delved further into the tainted sectors of Drew’s mind. Prior to succumbing to what I no longer feared or resisted, I heard Drew’s voice calling my name a couple of times before the room darkened. I didn’t want to display my Achilles’ heel in front of him, but I waited far too long to escape this predicament. The trappings of another episodic vision soon lured me into a realm that felt increasingly more authentic than reality.
Chapter 53
2:14 P.M.
The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs Page 53