by V. L. Locey
“I’m exceptionally hopeful that I’ll be teaching them soon,” I quickly said.
She rolled her gaze from field hockey to me. She had round cheeks and deep-set brown eyes. Hundreds of silver threads dusted her ebony hair. We sat there for quite some time, her asking questions and me answering. We went over my lesson plans. She added a few suggestions, and I happily added them. She asked personal questions such as why I had become a teacher, what activities or clubs I’d like to coach or become an advisor for, what do I do for entertainment away from the classroom, and how I plan to address my students different learning styles. I answered each of her questions as honestly as possible. She filled me in on class size, which was fantastic. Each class contained no more than fifteen students in a fifty-five minute block. If I got the job, I would have six blocks, three for seventh grade and three for eighth grade.
“How do you plan to handle any parents who may have difficulty with a homosexual man teaching their children?” She locked me down with an intense look.
“In a perfect world, that wouldn’t be a problem but we don’t live in a perfect world.” I rubbed the seams on my leather satchel resting on my lap. “I’d explain to that concerned parent that I’m no different than any other teacher on campus and that while I understand their concerns, they have no need to worry. I’ll also willingly offer to let them see the results for both my state and federal background checks. That goes for any parent who asks. I have nothing to hide from anyone.”
She nodded sagely then patted my knee. “I’ll let you off the hook and say that if your background check comes back clean you have the position.” I leaped to my feet and then sat back down quickly, embarrassed beyond belief at how unprofessional I had just been.
“I am so sorry for that. It’s just been so difficult to even get an interview let alone be hired.” I confessed while trying to tamp down my ear-to-ear grin.
Headmaster Lee laughed lightly. “It’s wonderful to see such enthusiasm. Sometimes we older educators forget how hard it was to get that first job. We have a temp lined up now, so as soon as we hear from the feds you’ll be taking over seventh and eighth grade math.” We both stood up at the same time the field hockey team left the pitch.
“Thank you so much.” I gushed and shook her hand vigorously for several seconds. When she pried her fingers from mine, I blushed even harder. “I can’t wait to get moved into town and step into the shoes of a Brewster teacher.”
“We’re looking forward to having you on staff. I hate to leave, but I have a mountain of work as high as I am tall sitting on my desk. I just had to get outside and enjoy practice. I used to play as a young woman.” She explained as we left the bleachers behind.
A light breeze whistled through the metal benches ruffling my hair as well as hers. She gave me an informal tour of the school and the various buildings. We parted at the main doors of the small administration building tucked behind the middle school building. I took my time walking back to my car. The campus seemed more beautiful than it had when I had arrived. After I was in my car, I made two calls. One to my father, who was so excited he cried, then told me he was taking the Rooks and me out to dinner, and then hung up on me so he could tell our neighbors the good news. The second call was to Garrison stuck way up in Maryland
“It sucks that I’m here when you’re rolling around in town with a reason to celebrate,” Garrison said. Hearing his voice made the feeling of separation worse.
“I plan on having one hell of a big celebration.” I teased.
“Dinner with my folks, Emily, and your dad?”
“Damn you’re good.” I chortled as a bunch of kids ran past my parked car.
“So they tell me. I miss you so much it fucking hurts, Mal.”
“I know, I feel the same.” I confessed, the ache in my chest growing a little bigger. “On the upside, I’ll be moving in sometime this week. Why sit in Willow Glen when I can be here with you?”
“That sounds fucking perfect,” Garrison replied then said something to someone. “My roommate just came back to the room.”
Ah. Well, so much for sweet talk. “I understand. When will you be home?”
“Day after tomorrow.” We fell into harmless talk about the weather, a movie we wanted to see, and some TV show he liked. I hated how the conversation now felt so stilted, but that was part of living a lie. “When will you be moving in?”
“I’ll be there when you get home.” I informed him.
“You still have the key?”
“No, I threw it out the window. Of course, I have the key.” I laughed. He sounded so anxious, like a worried mother hen. “I’ll see you in two days.”
“Can’t wait,” he gruffly said.
We had to end the call with a friendly “Later” instead of a heartfelt “I love you” which was damn crappy. It would all work out though. I had to believe that Garrison would come out after a few months on the team. Then our lives would be open and loving and filled with bright futures for both of us. I sang all the way home.
***
The following evening, I was still digesting the huge meal I had eaten at the “O’Malley Finally Got a Job!” meal of the night before. I was also toting bags of clothing to my Outback in preparation of my move to Columbia tomorrow. My current boss, who is a really good guy, had given me the day off. After shoving the last trash bag into my car and pushing on the hatch to make it latch, I leaned on the rear of my car and gave the neighborhood I had grown up in one final look. I was going to miss Willow Glen but being with Garrison was my future now. This lovely little suburb was my past. I glanced over my shoulder when I heard someone walking up behind me. It was Emily, looking rather aggravated.
“Have you seen Tipsy?” she asked, hands on hips, leash hanging from her hand.
“No, I haven’t.” I told her. The young lady huffed dramatically. “She probably felt feisty today and wandered off to find Mrs. Potamkin’s tom cat.”
“She’s going to ruin things for me. Mom and Dad finally let me stay home alone after school and now I lose the dog,” Emily said, her dark eyes roaming the street. “Would you help me look for her?”
“Sure.” I smiled and took a leash. “I’ll go over to the woods and work my way back from there. You head down to the Potamkin house. If she’s not there check over at the Ashleys. They have that old Dalmatian she likes to visit with.”
“I’ll text you if I find her,” Emily said then walked off.
I set off on a Tipsy search. It was rather nice to meander through the streets Garrison and I had roamed as kids. Memories flooded me. I passed an old tree we had climbed with a young dude by the name of Marcus Wilson, who had only lived here for a year before his parents split up and he moved away. Two houses down was the house where Penny Alders had lived. She had had a tremendous crush on Garrison during our elementary years. Penny now resided in Arizona with her husband and young son.
The more I walked the more memories washed over me. I slipped closer to the strip of woods, my mind on the times that Garrison and I had played here, splashed in the creek and pretended we had been Jedi Masters. I could even see the glow of the plastic lightsabers we both had as we battled against the Empire to save the forest of Endor in my mind’s eye. I swung the pink leash back and forth, pushing through the brambles and bushes that had nearly overtaken the small path.
Then my attention fell to Tipsy, tied to a tree right beside the creek. Her tail began wagging when she saw me.
“What the hell?” I enquired right before someone knocked me off my feet from behind, their elbow slamming into the back of my head with force. I went to the ground hard, my face bounced off the dirt and all the air left my lungs. My glasses flew off and a searing pain exploded in my side.
“Throwing a brick through a window isn’t a hate crime, you little faggot. This is a hate crime.” Crocker snarled in my ear then twisted what I had to assume was his switchblade deeper into my flesh.
I screamed in agony as the blade s
craped a rib. He torqued with even more relish so I lashed out with the leash, swinging it back at him. Crocker yelped and fell off my back, the knife sliding out with a sickly slurping sound. I rolled to my side and slapped my hand to the stab wound. Blood coated my fingers. Crocker was writhing on the ground, his hand over one eye. I kicked out and caught him on the jaw. His head flung back and blood began flowing from his bottom lip. Pulling myself away from him, and his lethal reach, I pushed and scrabbled like a sickly crab to the nearest tree. Tipsy whimpered. Maybe she could smell the blood now coating my side and shorts.
“You miserable fucking queer.” Crocker spat through red gritted teeth. “You fucking nearly blinded me!”
“You stabbed me, you homicidal maniac!” I shouted back as I forced myself to stand. My head spun terribly. Crocker pushed to his feet as he cupped his left eye. “What the hell did you think I’d do? Kiss you?”
“I’ll fucking kill you for turning me into the cops.” He snarled and waved his blade in the air threateningly.
He lunged. I ducked. The blade hit the tree as I drove my shoulder into his sternum. I heard the wind leaving his lungs. Using the meager momentum that I had, I dug, clawed, and pushed him away from the creek and the helpless old dog, our feet tangling. He sliced at me wildly, his blade opening up a gash on my biceps.
Crocker grunted when I slammed him into the fat trunk of a pine tree. I could feel my strength bleeding out of me. He had to be finished now, or I’d be out of this rush of adrenalin and he would kill me. I had no doubt in my mind that he would end me here and now, as violently as he could. It would be the kind of death that you read about and say, “Sweet Jesus, that was a little overboard wasn’t it?” before you flip to the sports section. I’d be another statistic. Another queer killed by a homophobe just for being who I was. God, I did not want to die now. I had a new life with Garrison starting tomorrow.
I held onto him tightly, my arms around his waist, and slammed him into the tree again. His face bounced off my brow. He cussed vividly, I saw stars, and then I brought my knee up as hard as I could. It felt like something crunched. I did it again. Crocker crumpled in my arms. I threw him to the dirt. He rolled around in a fetal position, his hands between his legs. His switchblade lay in the soft dirt. I kicked it far away from him and then fell into a thin oak sapling, my legs buckling as the tree bowed under my weight. Tipsy appeared at my side and I slid to my ass, my blood-stained fingers digging into her long, wet fur.
She stood beside me, the chewed length of rope Crocker had tied her with dangling from her collar. I pawed in my pocket, found my cell phone, and dialed 911 with shaking hands. Mrs. Williams answered my call at the Willow Glen Police Station just as Crocker threw up all over himself and tried, in vain, to get to his feet. Tipsy growled low in her chest. He drew back from the snarling dog but continued working on trying to get to his feet. Tacky red fingerprints covered the screen of my cell phone. Black dots began swimming in front of me.
I could hear the sirens of the Willow Glen ambulance piercing the oncoming night. Crocker slithered off on his hands and knees. I held onto the dog so she didn’t go after him and get hurt. One of us sitting here in the woods bleeding all over the place was enough.
“Good girl.” I cooed as I rested my head against her side. “We showed that asshole, huh?” She licked my face. I clung to her tightly as the woods started to fade in and out like a bad picture on an old TV set. Everything went topsy-turvy for a moment right after Tipsy woofed a friendly greeting to the emergency responders crashing through the overgrown path. A paramedic pried my fingers out of her sodden fur.
“Don’t let her go.” I told the tall man trying to staunch the blood flowing from my side. Another medic, this one a tan woman with big brown eyes, began assisting the man. They were both talking, relaying information about me to the hospital, but no one was worrying about Tipsy. “Don’t let her wander, he’s out there. He did this, he stabbed me.” Even though I knew what had happened it seemed like my brain was now just fastening onto the reality.
The woman asked me to clarify. The pain at the wound was growing exponentially, the dull throbbing now hot and wickedly intense. I tried to fill them in on Crocker but the words started garbling in my mouth. The insatiable throbbing robbed me of proper speech.
“The chief is right behind us. He’ll get whoever did this.” The tan woman told me.
The man said something, asked me a question that was probably important, but I kept looking for Tipsy and couldn’t see her. Everyone was blurry. I wanted to ask for my glasses but the agony of being placed on the gurney wiped out that worry. As we moved through the brambles and brush, wave after wave of pain rolled through me. I must have blacked out for a short time.
When I came around, I was in the hospital in a cubicle with people in scrubs hustling around me. There were machines hooked up to me, as well as an IV. A tall black man in a white coat bent over me and explained what they were going to do me. I heard something about blood and stitches. I enquired about the Tipsy and Garrison. One of the trauma nurses began asking me questions, pointed ones about my HIV status, which made sense since I was leaking blood all over the place. I told her what I could between the ebb and flow of pain in my side. My clothes were removed and I was covered with warm blankets, which felt good because I was cold.
“Where’s Garrison?” I asked repeatedly although I knew where he was. Why I kept asking about him didn’t make sense. It was hard to focus with so much going on and the need to sleep settling in. I was suddenly beyond tired. I wanted to see Garrison.
“We’re going to numb the wound to determine the extent of the injury, O’Malley,” Dr. Nice Man said right in my face. I made a sound and then, thank God the pain went away. I slid into sleep yet again the warmth of the blankets taking away the bone deep cold. Someone, another nurse, woke me up and told me something about my dad and our neighbors being here and that my partner, Garrison, was coming.
I asked about the dog. She smiled, assured me that the dog was fine, and then patted my hand.
“Can I sleep now? I’m tired.” I tried to see the room I was in but all I could make out was that it was pale yellow and not filled with emergency room staff. Which was good, right? “Am I not dead? Did you know I was stabbed?”
“You are certainly not dead, and yes, I did know you were stabbed.” My nurse assured me. “The doctor wants to monitor you. You lost a lot of blood so we’re replacing that as well as giving you some antibiotics. Sleeping right now would be just fine. I’ll keep an eye on you. Can I get you anything?”
“Another warm blanket and Garrison,” I said then dropped off into a nice, warm sleep. How long I slept, I can’t say. I woke up sometime later, my throat dry and my eyes sandy. My father leaped up when I groaned, got me a sip of dusty water, told me he loved me, and then took my hand and cried over it. “I’m not dead, Dad, just sleepy.” I tried to reassure him. He said something that I didn’t catch as sleep pulled me back down.
I couldn’t recall ever being so drained and so cold. Someone stroking my hair from my face pulled me sluggishly out of the dark pit of exhaustion. It took several attempts to get my eyes to open. When they finally did, I saw Garrison sitting beside me, his fingers moving through the long strands of hair on top of my head.
“Hi.” I croaked. He smiled, eyes filling with tears, and then let his head drop to rest on my forearm. “I’m okay.” My voice was weak and cracked. “Is there water?”
“Yeah.” He coughed then sat back up. He drew his hand back, dashed at his eyes, and then poured me a cup of water. He then placed my glasses on my nose. His blurry face came into sharp focus. All I could manage were a few sips before the horrible pain in my side sent me to my back, shaky and gasping. “You need to just take it easy,” he said while putting the cup back beside the pitcher on the bed table. “You’ve got twenty-nine stitches in your side and ten on your arm.”
I rolled my head on the pillows and lifted my left arm. There on my biceps
was a bandage. The stitches tugged a bit when I moved my arm, but that was nothing compared to the deep ache in my side.
“Ouch.” I sighed. He wiggled closer, the chair scraping on the tile floor. I glanced at the window, at the sun streaming in through the cracks in the blind, and then to him. He looked like a long stretch of bad road. There were dark bags under his brown eyes, and his brow was furrowed. His hair was a tangled mess.
“Mal, for the love of fucking God, why didn’t you tell me about this shit with Crocker?” He took my hand, mindful of the IV needle in the back, and wrapped his long, strong fingers around mine. “Make me understand why you lied to me about that window incident.”
I wet my lips and wished I could have a pill to take away the pain by my ribs.
“My father made me promise not to tell anyone. He kind of, well, he didn’t handle it well. He hides things, you know, bad things. Oh shit, my fucking side really hurts.” I moaned. His fingers tightened around mine.
“Yeah, that’s because that asshole Crocker Arnold shoved a fucking knife into it. I swear by all that’s holy I will kill that piece of homophobic shit when I get the chance. I should have done it back in high school.”
“Is he still roaming around?” I asked, a cold ripple of fear rolling down my spine.
“No, they caught him. He was limping along the old Brubaker Road with a broken nose and his lower lip split in two. He’s in custody awaiting a bail hearing.” Garrison’s brown eyes narrowed as he spoke. “If they give that hateful bastard bail I swear I’ll find him and rip his lungs out with my bare hands.”
“No, you won’t.” I argued but it lacked any real verve. “Let the police handle him. You focus on baseball. That’s another reason why I…” I had to pause to let the pain subside. “That’s why I kept the brick incident from you,” I said then rang for the nurse. The pain in my side was akin to an enormous toothache multiplied by a thousand. It hurt horrendously.