Principals and Other Schoolyard Bullies

by Nick Fonda

  His Grandma had walked the Jack Russell the next few days. The task had fallen to Darren one morning when she had an appointment. “Just go around the block,” she had told him, “and take this plastic bag so you can pick up after him. Like this,” and she had shown him how a plastic bag can become a glove and then a small, well wrapped package to be dropped in the garbage.

  It wasn’t hard walking the Jack Russell, even if the dog did tend to give a strong tug on his leash every few steps as he tried to run off after a bird or a squirrel or, much more often, some phantom prey. Darren remembered his aunt’s words and he couldn’t understand what was so special about the dog. Darren didn’t find the animal especially attractive. As his Grandpa had said, it didn’t look like much more than an overgrown rat. Nor did the dog show anything which could be mistaken for endearing behaviour. He had a tendency to nip at your ankles when he wanted something; not that it was easy to know what he wanted. He’d nip at your ankle, scoot back two paces and then stand looking at you and you had to guess if it was feeding time, or if he needed water or if he wanted to go out.

  Another thing: he would suddenly start barking fiercely for no apparent reason and he had a surprisingly loud bark for a small dog. The day he arrived, at supper time, he had made everybody jump by suddenly launching into a fit of strident barking. Grandpa had dropped his fork and Grandma had knocked over her glass of water, which, thankfully, was almost empty.

  Darren didn’t think the dog was very bright either. Once, for example, the dog had wrenched his arm as he lunged unexpectedly off to the right and started barking furiously. Darren didn’t know what had set the dog off until he glanced at the picture window of the house in front of which they were passing. A cat sat placidly in the window, staring with bored disinterest as Darren tugged at the leash of the demented Jack Russell.

  Still, Darren was careful. He always had the leash wrapped around his wrist so even if it slipped out of his hand, the leash would still be attached to his arm. The few times he noticed larger dogs, he pulled the Jack Russell along quickly to avoid any canine confrontation. The trick was to keep a short leash. For some reason, Aunt Tiffany had bought a bright red leather leash that was a good fifteen feet long.

  When they got back home, as when they left the house, Darren liked to keep an especially short leash. Twice already, the dog had managed to start digging in one of the flower beds. The first time, it had happened to Grandpa, and was probably part of the reason he had refused to walk the dog anymore. Back from his walk, grandpa had noticed a fallen branch and instead of putting the dog in the house, he had slipped the leash on a fence picket. A moment later he had seen clumps of dirt flying over the lawn as the Jack Russell burrowed into the rich dark soil without heed for the begonias and snapdragons which had been doing so well.

  The other place the Jack Russell seemed to want to dig was under the veranda, on the driveway side of the house, the side opposite the small door. One morning, as he set out on his walk with the dog, his grandma had called to him to wait. She had something for him to drop off at Mrs. Tremblay’s. Darren was waiting patiently, standing in the driveway and staring at the clouds, when he felt a tug on the leash. He spun around to find that the Jack Russell was behind the trimmed cedar bush that stood like a sentinel near the veranda. With his nose as much as his paws he was starting to burrow under the trellis. Ever since then, if he had enough leash, the Jack Russell would make a beeline for that spot.

  As it turned out, that was the spot where the dog was sprayed. Or at least, the spot where Darren was pretty sure the dog was sprayed. Everybody was always careful about opening and closing doors so the Jack Russell wouldn’t run outside (although Grandpa said if the dog got run over, it would sure save a lot of trouble). The dog probably would never have gotten outside, and gotten sprayed, if Grandpa hadn’t tried to fix the outside faucet that fed the garden hose. The faucet, somehow, had snapped off in Grandma’s hand. Grandpa had grumbled a little, but Darren could tell that he was secretly pleased to have a job to do. Unfortunately, what started as a broken faucet, a few hours later, grew into a pretty serious leak in the basement.

  It was the plumber, going in and out through the side door, who inadvertently let the dog out.

  Darren knew, almost right away, that the dog had escaped.

  He had watched as his Grandpa had worked on the faucet. It was fun to watch almost any job that Grandpa had to do and often he, Darren, would be asked to hold something, or go down to the workbench to find some tool. Of course, once the water started leaking in the basement, Grandpa wasn’t in a very good mood. When the plumber arrived Darren thought he could stay and watch but at a certain point Grandpa told him to run along and play. Sometimes with Grandpa you could just stand a little ways off and then he’d call you to go and get something for him, but this didn’t feel like one of those times and Darren ended up wandering around to the other side of the house and opening the trellis door to his little hideaway. He picked up Muffet’s Adventure but he hardly opened it before he put it back in the cardboard box.

  He was sitting on the cool sand with his back against the equally cool cement foundation of the house, thinking about his Grandpa who was really nice some of the time but was just the opposite when he got upset. Darren could never tell what would upset his Grandpa. Darren tried to think back to times before this summer. For example, when they would come at Christmas, was Grandpa ever angry then? Darren couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t quite remember. Images came to his mind but Grandpa didn’t seem to be in any of those images.

  And when he, Darren, had arrived four weeks ago, how had Grandpa been? Darren wasn’t perfectly sure, but he didn’t think that Grandpa had been angry then. No, he hadn’t. The first day, right after his mom had left, it had been Grandpa who had brought him to the Canadian Tire store and then they’d gone to the take-out and Grandpa had let him choose pizza for supper that night. It was Grandma who had seemed upset the first few days he was there, not an angry kind of upset but sad. Once he had looked up and seen her looking at him and all of a sudden a strange look had come over her face, and she had turned and rushed out of the room.

  It was then, sitting in his hidey-hole, idly wondering if his mom was more like Grandma or more like Grandpa that Darren heard the Jack Russell barking. He sat up and the next thing he knew, through the crosshatch of trellis at the far end of the veranda, he could make out the form of the dog digging furiously. In a flash Darren scooted out the trellis door and ran around to the other side of the house to catch the dog and get him back inside.

  By the time Darren ran around the hedge and half way across the front lawn, he realized that inside the house might no longer be the right place for the dog. The smell of skunk hit him several strides before he made it to the driveway. If it hadn’t been for the smell, the sight of the dog on the driveway might have been almost funny. The Jack Russell was alternately barking and whimpering, rushing forward a few steps and then retreating while trying with his paws to scrape the invisible, offensive smell from his nostrils and snout.

  The plumber, followed by Grandpa, came out the side door and promptly took several steps back towards the garage and back yard, as if staying away from the dog might protect them from the scent of skunk. Darren heard the dining room window slam shut and saw his Grandma’s angry face turning away.

  “There’s just a bit left for me to do,” the plumber said to Grandpa, “but nothing’s leaking anymore so I think I’ll come back and finish up on Monday. Smell should be gone by then. You don’t mind if I leave a few tools down in the basement? I’ll pick them up next time. I shouldn’t need them over the weekend. I can go round the other side of the house, can’t I?”

  It took quite a while after the plumber had left for Grandpa to actually go and pick up the dog. He had quieted down but both his eyes and his nose were clearly bothering him. He smelled awful. Grandpa carried him at arm’s length, not to the house, but to the small shed behind the garage. He shut the dog in the s
hed and, without the slightest tinge of anger in his voice called out to Darren, “Want to come and buy tomato juice with me?”

  Surprisingly, the next day, when Darren thought of the trellis door that, in his rush to get the Jack Russell, he had left open, there was no hint of skunk spray at all in the crawlspace under the veranda.

  It was three or four days after the incident with the skunk that the Jack Russell was killed. It was the middle of a hot, sleepy afternoon. Darren had been ensconced in his hidey-hole and had only just come into the kitchen. He had gone to the pantry and was just reaching for the box of cookies when someone rang the bell at the kitchen door.

  “Hello, young man,” said the plumber. “Is your grandpa home?”

  “Come in,” said Darren. “I’ll go get him.”

  Before Darren had taken two steps towards the swinging door that led from the kitchen to the hallway, his Grandpa arrived, saw who it was and stopped in his tracks.

  “Ah, Benoît! Let me get my wallet.”

  But as his grandpa went out the door, the Jack Russell scooted in.

  “Hey, there’s the little skunkhound,” said the plumber with a smile. “Did you get all the smell off?”

  As Darren started to answer, the Jack Russell barked at the plumber and then rushed at him and nipped at his ankle.

  “Hey,” yelped the plumber lifting his leg out of the way. The dog backed off a few paces and stared at the plumber with malevolent eyes. Then, as Benoît tentatively put his left leg back on the floor, the Jack Russell sprang forward again and latched onto Benoît’s pant leg, growling through clenched teeth. Benoît gave a cry of surprise and lifted his leg with the Jack Russell firmly attached. He yelled at the dog to get off and shook his leg again and again, cursing the dog as he did so. The dog was small, but its weight was enough to cause the plumber to lose his balance and as he jerkily turned to catch himself on the counter, the Jack Russell, as if he’d been shot from a miniature cannon, arced across half the kitchen into the fridge door and slid lifeless to the floor.

  In the moment of stunned silence that Darren and the plumber looked at each other, Grandpa walked in holding his open wallet in one hand and counting off bills with the index finger of the other. “Here,” he said, taking out several bills, “I think this is right.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said the plumber, making no effort to take the money.

  “About what?” said Grandpa.

  All three of them (Darren last) ended up touching the dead carcass to search for a heartbeat that wasn’t there. It took a few minutes to describe what had happened. The plumber, pleading his innocence, and Darren, as the only eyewitness, recounted the last ninety seconds of the Jack Russell’s life a couple of times over.

  “So…I’m very sorry,” said the plumber. “If I could make it up to you…buy you a new dog?”

  “No!” said grandpa. “No, it wasn’t your fault at all. Here, Benoît, here’s what I owe you for your time and here…” he said putting two more bills in Benoît’s hand.

  “But,” said Benoît. “Why?”

  “Your pant leg looks torn,” said Grandpa. “Take it. Get yourself another pair of overalls. I’ll look after the dog. And, Benoît, we won’t mention anything about this, ok?”

  The plumber left and Grandpa turned to Darren and looked at him for a minute. “You know,” said Grandpa. “You know what happened, don’t you?”

  “Yah, I guess,” said Darren.

  “You know that all these little hyperactive dogs have tricky hearts, don’t you?”

  “They do?” said Darren.

  “And that’s what happened to this poor little fella. His heart just up and gave out.”

  “It did?” said Darren.

  “So, when your Aunt Tiffany comes back tomorrow, it might be best if we just tell her the shortened version of the story, that the dog just had a heart attack and dropped dead on the kitchen floor. What do you think?”

  Darren looked at his Grandpa. He didn’t know what to think, but he knew he trusted his grandpa. “Yah,” he said, “I guess so.”

  “It’ll be easier on everyone, I think,” said Grandpa. “Sometimes, the less said, the better. Now, we’ll have to bury the little fellow. What do you think of the flowerbed? Go call your Grandma to come down and ask her to bring an old towel or something that doesn’t have to come back.”

  Failure All Over Him

  “Damn!” he uttered, not to himself under his breath, but aloud.

  “Sir! You’re not supposed to say that.”

  Even as he heard the laughing words, little Rebecca Toussaint slipped through the door he was just pushing ajar, and sprinted around the corner, her laptop case swinging wildly at the end of her outstretched arm. A second later he heard a car door slam heavily shut and a patch of wet pavement was suddenly illuminated before a pick-up truck emerged from behind the school, splashed along the short drive and disappeared up the street.

  Rebecca had surprised him. He had just said good night to Liz, who, as far as he could tell, was the only other teacher still in her classroom. He had also waved at Gaétan, at the end of the hall, waiting patiently to lock up. Otherwise, he’d thought the school was empty. It was going on ten o’clock on a parents’ night that had officially run from five to nine.

  “Damn!” he said again, although this time, just in his head.

  The rain was falling heavily, the drops exploding on the slick asphalt, sending droplets two or three centimetres back up into the air. He couldn’t have said why, but he knew the rain was as cold as it was heavy. He would be soaked and shivering before he took twenty steps.

  Not tonight, he pleaded, not tonight.

  It had been an inconceivable, an unimaginable day. He felt bruised, as if he’d taken a physical beating. He felt as if he’d somehow been eviscerated and, if he dared to look down, he would see a dark hole where his stomach had been.

  He hesitated. Perhaps the rain would ease off, diminish to a light drizzle. He wondered when it had started raining, and how it was that he could have been unaware of it. In the half-open door, he could feel how cold the outside air really was.

  For a moment he wondered if he could phone home and ask Val to come and pick him up. It was such a short drive. It would take no more than a few minutes round trip. But the baby might or might not be asleep, and even if Val could easily plunk the baby in the carrier, she wouldn’t leave the twins alone. Would it be fair to wake them? And if Val were asleep, he wouldn’t want to wake her. He couldn’t call. He’d have to do this on his own.

  He looked at the rain falling out of the dark sky and a line from MacBeth came into his head. During his second or third year of teaching, he’d found himself directing a group of sixth-formers who were determined to mount Macbeth. What came to him was a picture of a skinny, awkward boy—Teng—as Banquo, reciting his lines:

  Tis strange

  and oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

  the instruments of darkness tell us truths,

  win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

  in deepest consequence.

  He suddenly wondered if he had been won by trifles? Had everything—his immense good fortune, of which he was conscious, and for which he was grateful—been granted him just to bring him here, unable to move one way or the other?

  They had arrived in the Townships only a few days after confirming Val’s pregnancy. The Townships were a revelation to him—a little corner of the country he’d never heard of, nor even imagined existed. Ironically, the trip to Canada had already been planned; Val’s parents were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary.

  The pregnancy had put everything in a far different light. Neither of them could imagine bringing a child home into their small apartment. Neither could imagine raising a child in the mass of humanity that crushed up almost against their apartment door. The exotic East had been fine for them, first individually, and then as a couple, for almost a decade, but somewhere over the Pacific they agreed they were
flying home to Canada, as Val put it, to nest.

  Unlike the other trips they’d taken, aside from the weekend of the fortieth anniversary, they’d made no plans at all as to how to spend their six weeks in Canada. The job hunt had started less than twelve hours after they’d landed in Montreal. They were looking for a job for him. Val was going to be a stay-at-home mom, at least for the first seven or eight years. They thought his chances would be best in the Ottawa area, where, right after graduating from Carleton, he had taught for a year. Living in Ottawa, they’d be a short four hours from Val’s parents. If they were lucky, they thought, they might even find a school for him a bit closer.

  One afternoon, a day or two after the fortieth, they’d driven to Craigsville, to visit some cousins. Val’s aunt, anxious to show off her exotic niece from the Far East, had invited a few neighbours over. The afternoon cup of coffee stretched into something of an impromptu, multi-generational, homecoming party that lasted till late at night. A week later, out of the blue, he got a phone call.

  “They’re looking for someone at one of the high schools,” a voice told him. “I’m going to give you a number to call at the school board. Use my name as a reference.”

  Albert Lisgar was a friend of Val’s aunt. He wasn’t perfectly sure which of the people he’d met at the party was Al, but Albert Lisgar, among other things, was a school board commissioner.

  The interview, a day after Al’s phone call, had been almost perfunctory. Hardly two weeks after landing in Canada, they had found their job! And, unexpectedly, in the most emotionally perfect place that Val could imagine. At the end of August he’d start teaching English—he would have to learn to call it Language Arts—less than an hour’s drive from Val’s parents’ place.