Miss Lydia Fairbanks and the Losers Club

by Duane L. Ostler

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Another day passed with joyous reading of The Hobbit, while Harry scared the dickens out of all the students seated near the windows as he stared out at them for the entire time they were there. And then it was the weekend once more. Miss Fairbanks was in much better shape than the week before, when she'd been recovering from the Brent-gun incident. While her students fretted and stewed all weekend that they had to wait until Monday for her to read more of The Hobbit (they were coming up on the ending), she pleasantly continued her reading of war and peace. The war and bloodshed troubled her of course, but she had set a goal to read this classic no matter what, and she intended to fulfill that goal, no matter how gruesome the task.

  Miss Fairbanks' one diversion over the weekend was to go to the bar to see Mr. Brek. Not that she went inside the bar. Indeed, it probably would not have been possible to persuade her to go inside such a place for any price. But she still felt like she owed Mr. Brek the money she had promised him and needed to make an effort to give it to him. The poor man was obliged to burn another five dollar bill while she watched in agony. She finally left him, convinced he would indeed burn the entire half pay check if she gave it to him. Five dollars was five noodle dinners to Miss Fairbanks, and she felt profoundly guilty that Mr. Brek had burned it so casually. If the truth were known, Mr. Brek wasn't too thrilled about it either, since he thought he'd convinced her two days before. But he just laughed it off and made up the five dollars twenty minutes after she left from a tip he got for watching a drunk's car.

  And then Monday rolled around again, and it was time for The Hobbit to continue once more. By Tuesday, each class was experiencing the wonder and horror of Bilbo's fight with the dragon Smaug, and then the Battle of Five Armies. And on Wednesday, to the dismay of all her classes, the story ended. Some of her poor students were nearly in tears at this unfortunate reality. One in particular was Armpit Arnold.

  "But it can't be over!" he wailed after she'd read the last page, a mere five minutes before the bell was to ring at the end of class. "It just can't! Bilbo Baggins isn't dead yet! Why can't we learn more about what happened to him next?"

  Miss Fairbanks smiled. This was another reason she had picked this particular book to read--because it had three even longer sequels that did indeed tell more about hobbits like Bilbo Baggins. "If you really want to know more about Bilbo, I'm afraid there's just one way to do it ..." she said casually.

  "What is it!" cried Arnold, jumping out of his seat and starting to dance around like he needed to go to the bathroom.

  "Read The Fellowship of the Ring," she answered casually. "It starts off with his Eleventy-First birthday party!"

  Many in the class strained to figure out what 'eleventy-first meant, but Arnold's face fell. "You mean the Lord of the Rings?" he wailed. "I saw all the movies. I don't remember Bilbo in them at all."

  "Then you must have seen them years ago. He's there all right," said Miss Fairbanks. "And if you thought the book of The Hobbit was different than the movie, just wait 'till you read the Lord of the Rings! There's a night and day difference between them and the movies!"

  "You mean you're not going to read them to us?" wailed Armpit Arnold. She raised an eyebrow. "I thought you once said having a teacher read to you was a babyish thing," she reminded him.

  "So I was wrong, so what," said Arnold off-handedly. "You're going to read them to us, right?"

  Miss Fairbanks put her hand to her throat, which had become quite tender from five class days of constant reading. "We might need to wait awhile before we do another reading," she said. "But you can always read them on your own! And there are plenty of other wonders waiting for us in the world of writing!"

  Arnold was about to protest some more when the bell rang mercifully.

  The loser's club continued to grow each day after school. Now there were almost twenty 'regulars' who stopped by every afternoon. The group talked about rock bands, sleezy politicians, roaches and whatever else caught their fancy. For many, it was the first time in their lives they had been able to talk freely about their ideas, without fear of criticism. The rules made everyone feel secure, and gradually people were opening up who had never opened up before. Heather in particular seemed to be coming to life, and her eyes were no longer as dead as they used to be. And gradually the number of comic strip pictures on the walls began to increase as the club produced more and more of their favorite characters.

  Meanwhile Miss Fairbanks continued to visit Brent everyday at the detention center. He looked forward to her visits immensely, but was as firm as ever about not wanting to go home. He had gained a little weight so he was no longer so thin, and his face looked healthier too. It was bizarre that incarceration was having such a positive effect on him, but that was the reality. From what Miss Fairbanks could gather from the people at the detention center however, it looked like it would still be a long time before he was released and could come back to her class. Brent didn't seem sad about this at all.

  On Thursday and Friday Miss Fairbanks had her classes experience the strange world of Haikus, limericks and other poems. Heather's poetic genius had inspired Miss Fairbanks to have all of her classes try their hands at poetry. Their efforts were bizarre to say the least. None rose to the quality level of Heather's of course (which she was still unwilling to let anyone but Miss Fairbanks read), but a limerick by Armpit Arnold was quite good:

  There once was a man with a gas balloon,

  Who wanted to fly all the way to the moon.

  One day with a sprocket,

  He attached on a rocket.

  And the last thing they heard was 'Ka-boom!'

  And then another weekend came and went. Life seemed to be settling into a pleasant routine, and Miss Fairbanks was starting to feel more genuine satisfaction and deep contentment than ever before in her life. The letter and phone call from the penitentiary were forgotten as she concentrated on new and interesting ways to engage her students in the joys of writing, and enjoyed the simple friendships that were growing stronger every day in the 'loser's club.'

  On Monday morning, Miss Fairbanks happily greeted her students and informed them that today she was going to check up on whether they remembered how to write a letter. There was a collective groan from the class, since letter writing sounded downright dull compared to all the fun stuff they'd been doing lately. But of course, Miss Fairbanks hadn't told them the whole story ...

  "Now as for this letter," she said casually as she went over to toss a cracker in the window for Harry the spider (who she had grown quite fond of), "it will not be an ordinary letter. Indeed, I'm afraid part of it will have to be rather secretive." She turned to look at her students, and was gratified to see she had their full attention now. Many of them were chiding themselves for complaining. After all, this was Miss Fairbanks! She always had a way of making their assignments interesting.

  "I want you to pretend you are Gandolf the wizard, from The Hobbit that we were reading last week. You're writing this letter to Bilbo Baggins, in the Shire. You must warn him that some evil orcs might be planning an attack on the hobbits--but you fear your letter will be looked at by the enemy before it is delivered to Bilbo, and so you don't want to let your enemy know that YOU know what they're up to. So you must make hints in your letter and give subtle clues to Bilbo that something is not right. Perhaps you will make reference to the adventures you had with him, but change the details in a way that only he would know, so that he sees you are trying to send a secret message."

  Many in the class were looking at her with glassy eyes as if she had completely lost her marbles. But others had caught the drift of what she was saying. "Awesome!" said Arnold, who was particularly fond of deception and giving hints about pending violence. He pulled out a paper and began to write furiously.

  "Miss Fairbanks!" said a boy in the third row who wore glasses taped together with plumber's tape. "I don't know how to write with runes like Gandolf would write."

  "Don't worry about rune
s," said Miss Fairbanks, wondering how on earth he had gotten that idea. "Just write in simple English. But try to be subtle and send a secret message to Bilbo."

  "Miss Fairbanks," said a girl on the second row who was always noisily chewing gum. "Could the letter be to Bilbo's wife? Or could it come from Gandolf's wife? Or maybe her sister in law?" This girl had been particularly troubled by the fact that The Hobbit had almost no female characters.

  "Well, Bilbo and Gandolf don't have wives, remember?" said Miss Fairbanks. "But you can write it to their sister or cousin or mother or aunt, if you'd like."

  There were a few more questions like these, which Miss Fairbanks always marveled at since her students seemed to be as creative in coming up with bizarre questions as they were at fulfilling their assignments. Then the class was busily scratching away at their papers, concentrating hard on how to send a secret message to Bilbo.

  Miss Fairbanks walked slowly down each row, glancing over the shoulders of her students as they wrote. She had learned this was helpful both to assist those too shy to ask a question in front of the whole class, and also to inspire the slackers to get to work. She was nearing the end of a row with her back to the door when a sudden voice froze her in her tracks.

  "Hello, Lydia."

  The words were softly spoken, but to Lydia they were like thunder in her ears. She knew that voice! It was the voice of someone long dead--a voice that she herself had destroyed long ago. And it was a voice she simply could not bear to hear again.

  Spinning around she stared at the man who had entered the classroom. He looked old and shriveled, with graying hair and a shiny bald spot on the top of his head. His hands were gnarled, and gripped a grimy baseball cap that he kept trying to smooth out. He had taken a few steps into the classroom from the door, and stood looking at her with an intensity in his eyes that showed he was not just a casual visitor.

  Miss Fairbanks eyes grew wide, and her hands started to tremble. Her students looked up curiously as she took a stumbling step backward, banging into the desk that used to be occupied by scar face. She stared at the man without speaking, her eyes unwillingly locked on his as if she could hardly bear to look at him, yet could not tear herself away.

  "They told me you were here," he said softly again. "I don't mean to interrupt, but I wanted to see you ..."

  She took another step back. There was a roaring in her ears and her heart started to race. This could NOT be happening. Not here! Not now! Not when everything was going so well! Why had he come? To torture her? To reenact events from the past? To remind her of the terrible thing she had done? To bring her flimsy live crashing around her ears once more?

  She opened her mouth, but only a croaking sound came out. The sight of the familiar face, the eyes, the hair, all brought a series of memories rushing unbidden into her mind. Surprisingly, some of the memories were good ones, of happy times long forgotten, or pleasant days spent together. But always there was the horror of that last day, the day of death, when her world had been shattered and every good thing had been smashed and utterly destroyed. And all because of what she had caused.

  The man's eyes continued to be fixed pleadingly on the slight little teacher cowering in the back of the room. Miss Fairbanks suddenly felt as if she was going to throw up. Her eyes felt hot with tears as she stumbled back through the desks to the far corner of the room. All of her students were watching now in wide-eyed wonder, their assignments forgotten. This was no play acting of their teacher, which they had come to recognize so well. Something was seriously wrong.

  "Miss Fairbanks?" asked Stacy tentatively, who happened to be in this class. "Is anything wrong?"

  "Is anything wrong? Is anything wrong? Is anything wrong? Is anything wrong?" The words seemed to echo endlessly through her mind as a sudden blackness leaped up toward her. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed backward, seeing nothing more at all.

  Principle Clyde was seated uncomfortably in his hated office, working on the quarterly budget report the school board always expected him to prepare. He scratched his painful leg where gout was eating him alive, and coughed hoarsely, his lungs sounding hollow and unhealthy. He was frowning in frustration at the impossibility of juggling tiny budget numbers to make everything come out looking normal. The task was similar to expecting a donkey to drive a car successfully through rush hour traffic.

  There was a sudden rushing of feet and pounding outside his door. Although he was used to loud and unpleasant noises in this loud and unpleasant school, he instantly knew that something was wrong. Before he could even rise from his squeaking chair, Armpit Arnold burst into his office.

  "She's dead!" he yelled at the top of his considerable lungs. His eyes looked frenzied and there was spittle at the corners of his mouth. "She just keeled over and died!" He was waving his arms wildly.

  Principal Clyde bounded from his seat, sure that another student was probably lying in a puddle of blood in a nearby classroom. "Mrs. Jensen, call an ambulance!" he bellowed as he blazed past his secretary's desk. He shoved Arnold out of the way and raced into the hall, not having any idea where the disturbance was. But he didn't wonder long. A stream of students was pouring down the hall, their faces pinched and frightened. They were coming from Miss Fairbanks room.

  Principal Clyde's heart sank as he raced down the hall toward the door. Was the dead person Miss Fairbanks? With all his heart, and with a certain amount of guilt, he sincerely hoped it would be one of her students and not Miss Fairbanks that he found lying comatose in that classroom. The amazing little woman had come to be looked on with both fondness and jealous wonder by himself and all the other teachers, and the thought of any harm coming to her was simply unacceptable.

  As Principal Clyde raced through the door he nearly collided with an older man who was struggling to carry Miss Fairbanks' limp body in his arms. Principal Clyde's heart sank through the floor.

  "What have you done to her!" raged Principal Clyde madly, grabbing Miss Fairbanks out of the man's arms and shoving him aside. The man spun back against the wall with a bang. "I did nothing," he said hoarsely. "All I did was walk in and say her name, and then she fainted."

  Principal Clyde looked down at Miss Fairbanks' limp body which he held in his arms. She was amazingly light, almost like a feather. "You mean she's not dead?" he cried nonsensically. He hastily plopped her in her desk chair and grabbed her arm, feeling for a pulse. He felt a faint one. He then again lifted up Miss Fairbanks' surprisingly light body and charged out of the door and down the hall, while Miss Fairbanks' head bobbed up and down like a ping pong ball.

  Mrs. Jensen was running toward him, her face pinched and worried. "The paramedics will be right here," she said. As she recognized who the victim was, her face turned ashen. "Oh, not Miss Fairbanks! Not her!"

  "She's not dead, thank heavens," said Principal Clyde. "Open up the nurse's station, quick." Mrs. Jensen scurried back down the hall to unlock the little broom closet with a bed in it that doubled as a nurse's station. Because of budget constraints, Inner City Junior High had no school nurse other than Mrs. Jensen who had received some nurse training ten years before. Cursing at the lack of budget that left his volatile school without badly needed medical help, Principal Clyde went quickly through the door and stretched Miss Fairbanks out on the bed. A bevy of worried students clustered around the door.

  "Is she dead?" many of them kept saying to each other. "Did you see what happened?" asked others. "She saw that old dude come in and just keeled over! Weirdest thing I ever saw."

  "Students, go back to your room," said Principal Clyde waving vaguely at them while he vigorously slapped Miss Fairbanks' wrists, trying to revive her. None of the kids moved. Mrs. Jensen was examining her pupils and feeling her neck for a pulse.

  "She feels very cold and clammy," said Mrs. Jensen. "That's a symptom of shock." Turning, Principal Clyde saw the strange man standing just outside the door with the students. All of them were giving him a wide berth and eyeing hi
m suspiciously.

  "YOU!" he cried, suddenly charging at the man. "Who are you, and what did you do to her?"

  "I didn't do anything to her," he repeated. "I'm her father. I would never hurt Lydia."

  Principal Clyde stared at the man dumbly. "She told me her parents were dead," he suddenly blurted. "You can't be her father!" The man's eyes were moist and he was wringing his hands in a way that strongly resembled how Miss Fairbanks wrung hers when she was stressed.

  Principal Clyde became dimly aware of dozens of curious students watching the two of them. He suddenly shoved the man toward his nearby office. "Keep working on her, Mrs. Jensen," he called over his shoulder. Then he pushed the man into his inner office while he closed the door behind them. He shoved the man into a chair. He knew he was taking risks by being so rough with a stranger, but the sight of one of his teachers stretched out made him less than fully rational. Especially since it was helpless, little Miss Fairbanks.

  "What's this all about?" he snarled. "You can't be her father! She said her parents both died long ago! Who are you?"

  The man's eyes were moist as he looked up at Principal Clyde. "But I am her father," he replied. "I was in the penitentiary. I just got out. I've been trying to communicate with her for years, but she never responded. Then I lost all trace of her address until recently. When I got out I wanted to come see her."

  Principal Clyde stared at him with glazed eyes. "You were in the penitentiary?" he asked in a bland voice, his rage slowly dying away. "The penitentiary called here a couple weeks ago."

  "That's right," said the man. "The warden called on my behalf, to see if she'd let me visit her. He told me he talked to Lydia, but what she said didn't make any sense. But he also said that as far as he could tell, she seemed to be ok with me coming to visit her when I got out. So I came."

  The door suddenly was pushed open. "Miss Fairbanks is waking up!" yelled the girl with tattoo ears.

  "Stay here," barked Principal Clyde to the older man. "I want to talk to you some more, but I don't think you should come near her. Not if the sight of you causes this to happen!"

  The man stayed in his seat while Principal Clyde left the office, closing the door behind him. He raced over to the nurse's station, cursing the whole way. The gout in his leg was killing him.

  Two ambulance paramedics had arrived and were quickly examining Miss Fairbanks, who lay stiffly on the bed, her face whiter than the sheet she was on. "Still has a consistent heartbeat," said one of the paramedics as he checked her blood pressure. "Looks like maybe she just had a shock of some kind," said the other.

  Students were still milling around the hall outside the nurse's station, looking curiously through the door to their teacher. "Will you all please just go back to class?" Principal Clyde blared at them angrily.

  Not one of them moved. "We want to help Miss Fairbanks," said the girl with tattoo ears, her chin jutting out with determination. Principal Clyde looked at the faces of the students, completely mystified. And then he noticed for the first time that these students were not cursing and bashing each other and causing trouble like normal. They seemed genuinely worried about their frail little teacher.

  Principal Clyde's heart softened. "Look," he said to the students, "what she needs most is to rest. Go back to the class room and tear it apart like normal, and give her a chance to recover." But still no one moved. They were each craning their necks, trying to see into the tiny room past the paramedics, hoping to catch a glimpse of the still figure of Miss Fairbanks.

  Shaking his head in amazement, Principal Clyde turned back toward the tiny nurse's closet. He watched anxiously as the paramedics continued to examine the frail little woman. There was a tense and expectant silence while each of the people clustered around the door to the closet held their breath, hoping to see Miss Fairbanks open her eyes. But the eyes in the white, pinched face remained closed.

  After a few more minutes, one of the paramedics looked up at Principal Clyde and said, "Well, we've finished our check and there doesn't seem to be any serious problem. Looks like she just had a shock and fainted. Give her some time to rest and she'll be all right." Principal Clyde stood back to give the paramedics some room while they packed up their gear to leave. The tiny space in the nurse's station was so cramped it looked like a sardine can.

  For several minutes after the paramedics left Principal Clyde tried every trick he knew to make the milling students leave the tiny nurse's station. He tried yelling at them, wheedling, snarling and threatening to call their parents. None of them budged. Their loyalty to Miss Fairbanks held them there, no matter what the consequences. They simply had to see for themselves that their beloved teacher would revive and was all right.

  And finally it happened. After what seemed like an eternity, Miss Fairbanks' eyes fluttered and she moaned softly. Everyone gathered at the door to stare down at her. As she opened her eyes, her entire class breathed a collective sigh of relief. "Boy am I glad you're not dead!" blurted Armpit Arnold, voicing the thought that was in most of their minds. She smiled up at them weakly. Then her brow furrowed and she looked confused. "Where am I? What happened?"

  "You keeled over when some old dude came into the room," said Armpit Arnold in his usual blunt way. "We thought you were done for."

  Miss Fairbanks frowned. "Oh yes," she said faintly, her lips drawing together in a tight line. "Now I remember."

  "All right," said Principal Clyde loudly, waving at the milling students in an attempt to get them out of the door to the nurse's station. "Back to class. You can see now that she's all right. Just go on with whatever you were doing, and she'll come join you as soon as she's able." His words had absolutely no effect at all, as the students still refused to budge.

  "He's right," said Miss Fairbanks with a faint smile. "I'll be ok in another minute or two, and then I'll come join you. Just go back to class and keep writing your letters, please."

  With a good deal of mumbling and grumbling that the excitement was now over, her students started moving down the hall. Principal Clyde looked at them grumpily, jealous that nothing he'd said or done had made them do a thing, while a simple word from frail little Miss Fairbanks had sent them all packing.

  He turned back to Miss Fairbanks. "That man," he said, stepping up to her bed. "The one that came into your room. He said he's your father--"

  "I have no father," said Miss Fairbanks with a blank look on her face. "My father died years ago."

  "But he says he ... he ..." Principal Clyde's voice trailed off. There was clearly more here than met the eye. Miss Fairbanks continued to stare unseeing at the ceiling, the happy smile that usually lit up her face these days replaced with a deep frown. Principal Clyde looked at Mrs. Jensen, who just shrugged.

  "Look after her, will you Mrs. Jensen?" he said as he slowly left the room. The few remaining students still hovering around the doorway made way for him like the parting of the Red Sea as he headed for his office. As Principal Clyde opened the door, he saw that the man claiming to by Lydia's father was still seated there, trying vainly to straighten out his crinkled hat.

  Principal Clyde closed the door and sat down heavily in his squeaky chair. He looked at the older man for a long moment without saying a word. Then finally he said, "Maybe you'd better tell me what's going on. Start at the beginning and don't leave anything out ..."