Shadows Burned In
Page 11
“Here’s your pencil, Mr. Taylor.”
“Thank you, M-miss McKinley. Thank you very much.”
He looked toward the board and the strategically placed eraser. She hadn’t erased all morning, much to the boys’ collective chagrin. Before class, Freddie had sneaked in and put one eraser on the floor in front of the chalkboard. About once a month they pulled this one, else she’d catch on and—yep!—she’d placed her hands on her hips.
Step one, thought David.
“Has anyone seen my erasers?” she asked, thinking, I lose more erasers in this class than any other . . .
Freddie said, “Um, there’s one on the floor there, Miss McKinley.”
“So I see,” she said suspiciously. “Who keeps putting my erasers on the floor? And I know I have two of those things.”
“I don’t know, Miss McKinley,” Freddie said innocently.
“Mm-hmm,” she replied, walking toward the board.
The bell erupted with a loud clanging. Mrs. McKinley bent over to pick up the eraser.
Fourteen young boys raised themselves six inches in their chairs. Thirteen young girls rolled their eyes again. Theron’s mouth opened slightly.
Mrs. McKinley stood back up and turned to face them, saying, “Tomorrow we start working on both sides of the equals sign, so read up on chapter five.”
“Yes, Miss McKinley.” More or less in unison, the class moaned at the prospect of homework. Some of the girls made disgusted clucking sounds.
“Theron?”
He hadn’t moved from his desk.
“Yes, ma’am?” he asked, sounding shy, even embarrassed.
“You can go, honey. Class is over.”
He was the one student left, and he hadn’t moved from his chair. Hadn’t stood up, even.
“Yes ma’am, I know,” he said, cheeks a bit crimson. “But I just thought I’d sit here for a minute. I’m feelin a little . . . tired.”
She regarded him for a minute, then nodded. “Okay. Take your time.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said sheepishly.
Taking a bite out of a sandwich, David motioned Theron over. “That was pretty good in class this morning,” he said.
“Yeah,” Theron nodded. “Getting a glance at Miss M’s bazongas is always good. Getting her to bend over was just icing on the cake!”
David giggled a bit, almost choking on the bologna and bread. “Man, you’re the best at it too,” he said, trying to chew. It came out, “Manph, you de besht addit too.” He finished up the mouthful and said, “She doesn’t suspect nothing.”
Theron smiled, impressed as usual with his own ability to get Mrs. McKinley to bend over in front of his desk. A stirring in his groin reminded him of the outcome, so he quickly started thinking about kickball, math, and helping his father with the car next weekend. That helped.
“I mean,” continued David, “the way you got her to stand on the spot. Dude, you ought to be in the hall of—”
“Yeah-yeah,” said Theron, trying to change the subject. “What’s going on over there?”
Voices filtered toward them, like a group of kids singing a song or chanting a rhyme like “London Bridge Is Falling Down.” Soon enough the words were clear, and one shrill, pleading voice broke the rhythm. Theron and David smiled. It was turning into a very good day.
“Regina, Regina, she’s such a va-jeena,” came the chant. “She’s so poor she eats day-old farina!”
The chorus could be heard in rounds now, like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and it carried across the playground. The boys could see them now, a crowd of about six kids following one. The girl, pinch faced and red haired, stomped away from the crowd as fast as she could, occasionally turning back and hurling “Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!” at them, as she always did when they made fun of her. Her corduroy dress looked like it was made of sackcloth converted by her mother in an effort to dress her conservatively for school. Trying to be frugal, her mother made all her clothes, every stitch. But Regina hated her homemade dresses, since they only provided her classmates one more reason to tease her. The girl stomped away, fists tight, glasses smudged because she refused to wipe her eyes in front of her tormentors.
“Regina, Regina, she’s such a va-jeena. She’s so poor she eats day-old farina!”
“Shut up!” she screeched.
David and Theron watched her approach. Then they picked up the chant.
“Regina, Regina, she’s such a va-jeena,” they said again. “She’s so poor she eats day-old farina!”
She walked into Theron and David without realizing it, then suddenly found she was boxed in. She looked directly at the kids chanting at her, seemed to study their mouths as if trying to see the words themselves coming out of them so she could catch them and throw them in the trashcan. Theron was laughing and David asked, “Do you still sell magazine subscriptions, Regina? I’d like a copy, please,” then laughed.
As she looked from one group of mockers to the other, the girl’s eyes streamed. “My family ain’t got the money y’all do! We all have to help out!”
“How about seeds, Regina the Va-jeena?” asked Theron. “Still selling seeds? I’ll grow you something nice and big.”
All the children laughed now, repeating the chant. But Regina had had enough. She turned to push her way through when a leg tripped her. She went down with an “Ohhhhh!” The ring of children surrounding her looked down and laughed.
That’s right, on your knees, was the thought that came to David’s mind. He was about to take up the chant again with the rest of the crowd when he looked down at her and stopped. She was sitting on the rumpled skirt of her sackcloth dress, her right knee exposed and bleeding, and looking up at them with glasses so fogged and smudged from crying that she couldn’t even see her tormentors anymore. The knee caught his attention. He saw the blood and gravel from the lot ground into her flesh. The words of the chant refused to come out of his mouth again as he stared at her.
“Regina, Regina, she’s such a va-jeena,” the children said again. “She’s so poor she eats day-old farina!”
Hey, David thought. That’s enough.
“Look!” said one of the girls. “She’s got her pretty dress dirty!”
Another kid said, “Ah, too bad her momma can’t afford a washing machine!”
Regina had lost the will to fight back now. She just sat on the kickball lot and sobbed her defeat.
“Hey,” said David. “That’s enough.”
But no one heard him as they continued mocking the girl. One of the boys drew back a leg.
“I said that’s enough!”
The crowd hushed as the dust from the lot began to settle again. Within seconds there was only the sound of children playing across the playground. And Regina’s sobbing.
“What’s up, David?” asked Peter Lasco, the boy who’d almost kicked her. “It’s just Regina.”
“I know,” said David, “but that’s enough.”
“What’s your problem, man?”
David looked at Lasco. A bully if there ever was one. “I don’t have a problem, Pete. But that’s enough all the same.”
Lasco walked up to him and thumped him on the chest. “Well, well, well. Looks like Regina’s got a boyfriend.”
The children standing around laughed. All except Regina, who still sat where she was, muttering something about how she’d be in trouble with her momma because her dress had been ripped.
“I’m not her boyfriend, Pete,” said David. The thought filled him with revulsion, actually. Regina Va-jeena’s boyfriend?
“Then you’re just a pussy all by yourself,” said Pete. “Maybe I oughta put you in the gravel, boy!”
The rage boiled up out of him before David even knew it was there. He advanced on the bigger boy quickly, reaching up and grabbing Lasco by the shirtfront as the other boy stepped back, startled.
“Try it, Lasco!” David was screaming. “See if you can get me on my knees. Go ahead and try it!”
“Get off me, you pussy!” Lasco was spouting. “Get off me ’fore I teach you a lesson!” He was trying to beat David’s hands out of their locked grip, and the force of the blows brought David back to himself. The last thing he remembered was telling the other kids to quit. And now he had Peter Lasco ready to kick his ass. He let go of the bigger boy’s shirt. Lasco backed up.
“Goddamn, boy, I’m gonna kick your ass!”
“Well, we have several violations of school code here,” said a calm voice behind Lasco. The bigger boy froze. “Language, number one, and fighting, number two.”
Lasco turned around. Principal Sinclair, a balding former science teacher had his arms crossed, a cat in front of a mouse hole. And the mouse was outside the hole, and the hole was boarded up. The principal looked past the two of them and saw Regina still on the ground, crying.
“Regina!”
He brushed past David and Lasco, who gave David a look that said, If you get me in trouble, so help me, I’ll whip your ass.
“What’s happened here?” asked Sinclair. “Are you all right?”
Slowly the children began to slink away from the scene of the crime, but Sinclair had been a teacher for a very long time before becoming an administrator.
“That’s far enough! All of you, in my office! Theron, help Regina here to the nurse’s office. Let’s go, all of you! My office. Now.”
David and Theron walked home from school, and there was silence for a long time. Finally Theron asked, “Will you get in trouble with your dad?”
David shrugged his shoulders. “Probably not. The principal was mad mostly at Pete. At least I didn’t get suspended.”
“No, but Sinclair did say he’d be talking to our parents.”
David shrugged again dismissively. “He always says that. At least I ain’t suspended.”
Theron nodded and put his hands finger-deep in the front pockets of his jeans as they walked.
“Man, Miss McKinley was looking good today.”
David smiled. “Oh yeah.”
“I don’t think I can wait another month to drop a pencil.”
“Oh no,” said David. “But the eraser thing is out for a while. I think she’s starting to catch on.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Theron sounded forlorn. Another month.
“Hey, there it is!” said David.
They both stopped and looked up the street. Theron’s eyes went to the old mansion that had stood at that corner for longer than even his father could remember, and Theron’s father had lived in Hampshire all his life. Bob Taylor liked to say, “That house has stood strong since a time when Texas was one nation, under Sam.” Whatever that meant.
The old mansion sat apart from the rest of the town despite its location in one of Hampshire’s oldest neighborhoods. It stood on a lot a full acre wide, with the house proper nestled on the corner farthest from the sidewalk across a broad front yard of perfectly mowed grass. The white wood of the house, outlined with baby-blue eaves, still shined in places on early summer mornings. The oak trees dressed in Spanish moss shaded the old manse in the warm, sluggish afternoons of July and August. In winter, the drooping mimosas looked like old Christmas trees bent with age, mossy tinsel hanging from them. They surrounded the four corners of the house like gargoyles on an old cathedral, posted there as sentries, warning the evil summer sun to keep its distance.
Still, the trees could not protect their mistress from wind, rain, or time, and all three had had their way with her. The Old South exterior, though still intact in design, had lost much of its grandeur. The house was like the great-grandmother of the town. Stooped with age and having a bit of memory trouble, she still lorded over her retirement-age children, who respected her enough not to point out her creaking faults. The look of the old place made David think there might be some home left in the house.
But then there was the caretaker of the place, Old Suzie herself. She too was something out of the past, a woman who dressed like a man and who had recently lost her husband to the “dipstick disease,” as Theron’s mother called it. She told Theron what she meant was that some husbands, being dipsticks, walked out on their wives when they got older and stupider, but that’s not what Theron had once overheard his mom telling friends over margaritas. After he’d left, Suzie had taken over keeping the gardens in the back of the house and mowing the massive front lawn riding an old John Deere, bouncing up and down and singing old Hank Williams songs into the wind and out of tune.
David stared at the house and wondered, was it a grandmother house, or a grandfather house? Before he died, David’s grandfather had always told him great stories, and he wondered if houses were fathers or mothers or both. He tried to peer past the windows, but they were too far away. That, plus the conspiring shade of the gargoyle-trees kept him from seeing anything more than his imagination wanted him to. Still, the house looked like it had great stories to tell. It must be a grandfather house, David decided.
“Hey buddy, I just got an idea,” said Theron. “I think I know what I want to do for our Halloween trick.”
David looked over at him, then followed Theron’s stare back to Old Suzie’s house. Something in the pit of his stomach gurgled, though he wasn’t really all that hungry. “What?” he asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
But Theron was smiling.
“I want to make me a haunted house,” he said.
Chapter 10
“You ain’t a baby anymore.”
“No, sir.”
David lowered his tone, lowered his eyes, slumped his shoulders—everything but rolled over and showed his belly. Whatever it took to get his father to let him out of the house tonight.
It was Wednesday.
Halloween.
“Trick or treatin is for babies.”
“Yes, sir.”
His father stood in the doorway of his room, leaning against the door facing
(preventing escape)
with his hands in his pockets and looking at the boy disgustedly, as if he’d just stepped in dog shit he should’ve seen plain as day there on the sidewalk.
“Going out is a privilege, son,” his father was saying. “What have you done lately to earn the right to go out?”
David shrugged. The pity factor rarely, if ever, worked on his father. But he’d play that hand for all it was worth.
“I folded the clothes yesterday after school. And loaded the dishwasher.”
His father snorted. “After I turned off the TV and reminded you of ’em, sure.” The old man’s voice was mocking. Pull the other leg, it challenged. “Have you fed the dog? And picked up the crap?”
David nodded. “I fed her. I poop-scoop on Saturdays.”
His father cleared his throat. “I didn’t ask you when you normally do it. I asked you if you had done it.”
“No, sir.”
“Then I suggest you get after it. Then ask me again if you can go out.” His father straightened in the doorway. “Shoveling shit earns you a lot of things in this world, boy. Best to learn that now.” He turned around and headed back for the kitchen.
David sat on the bed a moment longer. He saw the added chore for what it was. The toll. The offering. The tithe to the Father God. If he did it quickly, before his father drank three beers. That seemed to be the foul line in their little game. After three beers, everything went foul, out of bounds.
He hopped off the bed and headed down the hall and through the kitchen to the backyard. At least Mr. Sinclair hasn’t called, he thought. While Pete Lasco had been suspended for three days, David had been exonerated, largely because of Theron’s testimony. Regina Va-jeena hadn’t helped him any, but then he didn’t figure she should have. Not after the way he’d treated her for so long.
As he walked out in the backyard, he made a quick survey around the fairly small fenced area. Not too bad,
he thought. About half a dozen piles.
His dog, a dark-brown collie mix, looked warily from inside her doghouse till she saw and sniffed who it was, then came bounding out, a fluffy fireball of energy ready to race around and play with the boy. David smiled immediately when he saw her, and she trotted up to him and sat down, looking up expectantly, as if to say, What fine adventure can we have together today, my friend?
He bent down and stroked her furry head, and she rolled her eyes up and circled her nose around to lick his hand. His father had named her Queenie for some reason he didn’t know or much care about. She was sometimes the only friend he could talk to who would listen and not feel the need to talk back.
“How are you, old girl?”
Queenie stared up and licked and panted. Her cocoa-rusty fur was lined with silver now, her chin a prickly white. She was ten years old. David had known her almost all his life. But still she acted like a puppy, and except for a bladder problem whenever she got overly excited, he couldn’t tell she was nearly seventy in dog years.
He knelt down and ruffled her ears, and she made a moaning sound.
“Have you been a good girl?” he asked. “Have you been making good poops?”
David always checked her stools to make sure she didn’t have worms or anything. She was never allowed in the house, so she was more likely to pick up something. David tried to do his best to keep up with her health. Only rarely—like when the bladder problems began last year—would his father spring for a vet visit.
“That’s my good girl,” he said. “I’ve got to scoop your poop, then I think I’ll get to go out. The old man is in a good mood tonight. Better take advantage of it, huh?”