Principals and Other Schoolyard Bullies

by Nick Fonda

  I’m starting a new set of drawings this morning and, as with any project, I begin by tidying up my work space. I am not messy by nature but the by-product of every project is a certain quantity of clutter. I turn on the radio and eventually I hear again the news item that set me off earlier in the morning. The second time round Mulroney’s words ellicit nothing more than a snort from me. I attack the clutter with renewed energy and quite suddenly, my workspace is, if not clean to my mother’s standards, at least amply cleared for my next project.

  For a moment, I wonder what moves such men—well educated and blessed with intelligence—to become tawdry cheats?

  Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, for I have work to do.

  I pick up a pencil and the new manuscript. The text is a piece that I’ve looked at once already, briefly, a few weeks ago, when it came in the mail. Then I was comfortably settled in my reading nook. Not so now. I perch myself at my drafting table and, pencil in hand, I start to read Muffet’s Adventure.

  The Sleigh

  Malachy woke up to the smell of wood smoke from the kitchen. His first thought was one of surprise, surprise that no one had come to wake him up and rouse him out of bed. It was still dark and he had no way of knowing how late, or how early, it might be. The bed, which he shared with his cousin, Joe, was no longer warm for Joe had already risen to start the day. Malachy stretched out his legs and his toes touched the bricks at the foot of the bed. As he expected, they were cool, almost cold to the touch. Cold and rough, the edges almost sharp enough to slice his foot. To think that at night the same bricks, even wrapped in flannel cloth, were so hot that his toes couldn’t touch them for more than a few seconds.

  He wondered why no one had roused him and he lay still for several minutes, listening to the sounds from downstairs. It was hard to understand, because it seemed as if it was only his aunt in the kitchen. There were no voices, only the occasional sound of her footsteps or of the firebox creaking open and the dull thud of a block of wood thrown on the fire.

  The bed got no warmer and here and there he could feel sharp splinters of straw poking through the threadbare burlap and his flannel nightdress. He pushed off the heavy blankets and rolled himself out of bed. The floorboards were cold on his feet. He dressed quickly and, still barefoot, climbed down the ladder into the relative warmth of the kitchen, the large, main room of the small house.

  “Good morning, Aunt,” he said.

  His Aunt Rachel had her back to him and she did not turn to look at him.

  “’Bout time you were up,” she said. “It’s almost light out. I need water. Better fill up both pails.”

  Malachy went to the stove and from the cord strung above it took down a pair of heavy wool socks. The warmth near the stove was like a call to linger. The stove had clearly been lit for some time for the rough wool was not just dry but warm—almost hot—to the touch. With his still-cold fingers he squeezed the material as if to take as much heat from it as he could. He tried to stretch out all his movements, removing the socks slowly and one at a time from the cord on which they hung.

  He glanced at his aunt before taking a chance and moving a chair a little closer to the stove. He sat on it and waited a long minute before pulling on one sock and then the other. Then he sat still a moment longer, aware that his failure to move quickly might earn him the sharp edge of his aunt’s tongue. He noticed that the kettle on the stove was releasing its first preliminary wisps of vapour and that the short-handled wooden spoon was protruding at a slant from the porridge pot. He wondered if the porridge hadn’t already been made, and if there’d be any for him. He looked at the kettle again and it came to him that it had already been emptied once this morning. There were dirty dishes on the sideboard near the basin as if Joe and Uncle Sean had already eaten. Again, he silently questioned where his cousin and uncle might be.

  Malachy stood and on warm-soled feet made his way towards the door. He could tell from the frost on the windows that it was another cold day. As he tied the laces of his worn boots, one of them snapped. He knew better than to say anything to his aunt. As quickly as he could, he reworked the broken lace, struggling to pass it through the eyelets. In the end, he was able to tie on his boot with the two shortened laces so that only four of the eyelets remained empty, and the boot, already a few sizes too big, did not fall off his foot. He wrapped his scarf around his neck and then slipped on the worn jacket that had been given him as a winter coat. He pulled his woollen toque down over his ears and reached for his mitts. Of all his winter apparel, it was his mitts he treasured the most. They were almost new and, even though they were a few sizes too big for his small hands, they were wonderful mitts: heavy, dark leather lined on the inside with warm felt. They were gone. In fact, there were no mitts at all on the small shelf reserved for mitts and scarves and hats, not even the old green ones that were full of holes.

  “Haven’t gone yet?” his aunt yelled. “You should have been back by now. Didn’t I tell ya to go get me two buckets of water, ya lazy good-for-nothing!”

  She took two steps towards him but Malachy knew—he didn’t know how, but he knew—that she wasn’t going to cuff him. Still, he made himself smaller and avoided looking directly at her. She stopped, still a few paces from the door, and scowled at him for a moment.

  “If yer not back with them two buckets in five minutes time there’s no breakfast for ya! Is that clear?”

  Malachy meekly nodded. He knew, at that moment, that there was no porridge left for him. It would take him almost five minutes just to walk to the spring. He picked up one of the wooden pails with his left hand, lifted the door latch with his right and pushed open the door. Less quickly than he normally would, he took the second pail with his right hand and stepped out of the door and into the cold. Sometimes he closed the door by nudging it with his elbow, or even by leaning into it with his shoulder. This morning, he let it swing half open for an extra few seconds and then kicked it closed with his left boot, the one with the lace still intact.

  The cold air closed his nostrils and burned his throat. He put both pails down and pulled his arms up in the sleeves of his coat as far as he could so there would be a bit of sleeve between the skin of his fingers and the rope handles of the pails.

  He stepped off the porch and, before he had taken three steps, he understood what had happened. The sleigh was gone, its tell-tale traces in the dust of snow leading away from the house and turning right onto the Waterloo Road. Malachy stopped dead in his tracks and bent over as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes. He felt a pain he could neither describe nor bear, and if he had, at that moment, been given the option of death, he would instantly have taken it.

  When he finally straightened his back and started shuffling towards the spring, he moved as if walking in his sleep, hardly conscious of his actions. In his mind, the same phrase repeated itself over and over and over: they went without me.

  It was only on the way back from the spring, his fingertips frozen, his arms sore, his left pant leg stiff with ice from water which had splashed over the bucket’s rim, that the simple phrase expanded. And when it did, it was like the expansion of gases in the firing chamber of a rifle. It was an explosion. It was a short lifetime of pain and hurt and anger and injustice that filled his mind with sound and smoke and fury. The death of his mother and then the disappearance of his father; the sudden separation from his sisters and brother; his Aunt Rachel and Uncle Sean who never missed an opportunity to let him know what a burden he was. And today, a Saturday he had been looking forward to for months, a Saturday he had been promised, a Saturday on which he would again see, even if only for a brief few minutes, his sister Colleen and maybe Siobhan as well, a Saturday…

  Then he was home. Not his home, but what he was forced to call home. He almost walked past the house, his mind was so full of confusion. He stopped a moment and put the pails down. He had no idea how long ago his aunt had told him five minutes or no breakfast, but it s
uddenly seemed a long time. The sky was growing light and there was already a bit of traffic on the road. He hadn’t been alone at the spring fetching water.

  Still on the road, where the drive entered towards the house, he put the pails down and flexed his fingers to bring back some blood. He clasped his hands together to try to give them some warmth. He stood for a moment staring at the house as if he had never seen it before. Then he saw his aunt at the window, pulling the white transparent curtain to one side to look out. To look for him. And then his eyes met hers and he saw her scowl with anger and impatience and a moment later she was at the door, yelling at him.

  He bent his knees and reached down with his cold hands to pick up his load and at the same moment heard the yelling stop and the door bang closed. He straightened again, but without the pails. Then, his body acting entirely of its own accord, as if it belonged to someone else, he tipped one pail, and then the other, and with only half a load, walked the last dozen paces to the house.

  His aunt was nowhere near the door when he came in and put down the two, half-full pails. She was at the stove, throwing in another block of wood. She banged the firebox closed and turned on him, her eyes as red as flames.

  “Where have ya bin, ya ragamuffin? All this time I bin waiting for ya. Git those pails over here. But git yer boots off first.”

  Malachy, and again it felt as if his body belonged to someone else, stood stock still and stared at her as if she were a total stranger he’d never before seen.

  “Well, hurry up!” she screamed. “I ain’t got all day. What’s wrong with ya?”

  Malachy heard himself speak and his words surprised him as much as they did his Aunt Rachel.

  “Here’s your water,” he said and then kicked one and then the second pail over, spilling the precious water over the kitchen floor.

  He didn’t hear her words and he was strangely unmoved by her rage. Even when she started to move towards him with her hand upraised, he didn’t cringe or flinch. He was surprised to find a broom in his hands and to see her stop with a look of incomprehension on her face.

  For a moment, the two stood apart in silence, separated by the thin film of water that was spreading slowly across the floor.

  And then she spoke. “When your uncle gets home…”

  Malachy threw the broom at her, spun on his heels and went out the door.

  It took him several minutes to realize what had happened, what he had done. He found himself walking in the opposite direction of the spring, along the Waterloo Road. He didn’t know what he would do next, but he knew he wouldn’t return to that house. His uncle would be only too glad to beat him with a stick or to whip him with his leather belt. And worse would be Joe, who was older and bigger and stronger and, with the unspoken consent accorded by his parents’ anger, would beat him further with his fists.

  Malachy walked in the cold air, past the crossroad leading to the bridge, past the general store, past the post office. A few minutes after he passed the feed mill, he was aware of a team coming up behind him. He saw two big Belgians, a man with a kindly face bundled under a buffalo robe, a sled loaded with bags of feed. As the sled passed him, he ran after it and clambered on.

  This was a common enough game that lots of children played, to hitch a ride on a sleigh or a wagon for a few hundred yards.

  He had been seen by the man, or perhaps the man had noticed the extra weight on his sled. He turned from where he was and gave Malachy a small smile as if to say, I know the game and played it myself when I was young. The man turned his attention back to the road and his horses. Malachy, at the back of the sled, made himself comfortable among the bags of feed and, like the man, looked at the road ahead.

  They’d gone a good mile when the man turned back to Malachy and asked, “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going with you,” said Malachy.

  “Yes,” said the man who understood a joke when he heard one, “but, where are you going?”

  “I’m going with you,” repeated Malachy, who wasn’t joking at all.

  The man looked at Malachy for a long moment, unsure what to do. The horses kept up their steady gait and another mile passed and then another and another after that and when they got to the man’s barn and unhitched the horses and unloaded the bags of feed and met the man’s wife, it was dinner time. Malachy stayed for dinner and for supper and then for the night.

  In the end, he stayed with the man and his wife until they grew old and passed away and Malachy continued on with the farm and met a young woman and raised a family and saw his grandchildren born.

  And, if he had lived a little longer, he might also have seen me, for Malachy was my great grandfather. I don’t know how much of this story is true but it’s been with me a long time and, like my name, was handed down to me as I now hand it on to you.

  The Golden Hawk

  Just after he went around Halverson’s corner, Jimmy tried again.

  It was a good place to try. The road was almost flat and there was a lot of hard pack, where passing traffic had left a smooth, solid, almost oily surface. It wasn’t exactly like the asphalt pavement the town kids could ride on, but it was almost as good. Jimmy didn’t want to be going too fast, but he couldn’t go too slowly either because if he went too slowly the front wheel would wobble. That was another thing. He didn’t have a store-bought bike like the town kids had.

  As he pedalled just a little faster, Jimmy took his left hand off the handlebar. He aimed for a patch of hard pack and, as he came to it, he lifted his right hand in the air.

  Almost immediately the bike started to wobble. Both of Jimmy’s hands fell back onto the handlebars. He would try again going faster. He leaned forward with his head down and lifted himself off the seat. He pumped hard with his legs, using his whole body to push down, first on one pedal, then the other. He loved the feeling of acceleration. For a moment, he stared at the blur of road below his churning legs. Then he eased up, returned to a sitting position and lifted his head to scan the road for the next good patch.

  That was when he saw the bird.

  It was a bird Jimmy had never before seen, but he knew right away it was a hawk. It was so close that Jimmy, for a moment, had the sensation that he might have reached out his hand and snatched the bird in mid-flight. It was moving that slowly and that low to the ground. For a second, the bird seemed to falter, to dip, and then, with an effort that Jimmy could feel, its wings lifted it above the hay growing tall in Halverson’s field. Jimmy came to a quick and quiet stop without ever taking his eyes off the bird. Its underbelly was almost white, but its wings and back were darker. It was a young bird; Jimmy couldn’t have explained how he knew that, but he was sure of it. As the hawk continued to gain altitude, its wings seemed to lift and fall with growing confidence and with less and less effort. Then, all of a sudden, the wings stopped beating. They remained effortlessly outstretched. They teetered one way, then tottered the other, as if the hawk was trying to keep its balance on an invisible beam. As he watched, Jimmy could see that the bird was rising, tilting its wings to lean into a curve, and rising yet higher. Jimmy was completely captivated.

  “…off the road, ya stupid kid!”

  With the words and overwhelming noise came a gust of wind so strong that it pushed Jimmy off balance. At the same instant, he was in the middle of a cloud of dust that made him close his eyes. Too late, he snapped his mouth shut and tasted the bitter dryness of gravel on his tongue. He coughed and spat as he tried to regain his balance. He moved his foot to try to stay standing. His schoolbag shifted its weight. He leaned. He put out his arm. The schoolbag shifted more. He moved his foot again. This time his leg hit the crossbar. He tried to hold his balance….

  …. Jimmy found himself on the ground, entangled with his bicycle and his schoolbag. It was hard for Jimmy not to cry. The truck, because that was what had roared by him and knocked him over, had scared him. Now he was half pinned under his own bike and it felt as if he couldn’t move. He knew that
he had scraped his left knee. He had felt the same kind of pain more than once. He could imagine the skin scraped off, the blood welling to the surface and starting to flow. Jimmy didn’t want to look at his knee, nor did he want to look at the heel of his left hand, because it too felt as if it had been scraped.

  It took forever to liberate the schoolbag from his shoulders and then get himself disentangled from the bike. All the time, he kept spitting out sand and grit. He found a cut on his right hand, a small, straight line as thin and red as if Miss Rousseau had underlined one of his spelling mistakes. It was strange because even though it was unmistakably a fresh cut, Jimmy didn’t feel the least bit of pain. When Jimmy looked at the heel of his left hand, which was now starting to burn, he saw that he had scraped off a few layers of skin. There were shades of white and unexpected pink, speckled with small, sharp, imbedded stones, which he tried to gently brush off. Only then did he dare look at his knee.

  “Oh, no!”

  Jimmy was looking down at his knee, but it wasn’t his knee that made him cry out. It was his pants. He knew his mother was going to be upset. This was his last pair of school pants, the last pair that didn’t have a patch or traces of mending. They were pants that were only just a little too big, that were meant to last him at least to the start of the next school year. And he hated the thought of what could happen at school when he had a tear in his clothes. Someone would see it and then they’d pick at it. Jeremy and Randy and Lloyd. They’d laugh at him and then they’d try to tear the hole bigger. They’d make his day miserable in any way they could. He wished he could just go home and not go to school.