The First Shoe Drops


The principal told me one boy in particular had no qualms about hitting a teacher. “A seven-year-old with a psychological profile if you care to read it. Not much we can do to him thanks to a State-appointed advocate, and then there’s the others,” he said. He made it sound like the children, rascals he called them, just needed a firm hand and some structure. “That’s where you come in,” he told me.

So much for the particulars, he pressed on to other business.

A quick question and answer followed by an immediate employment offer. Like the job offer had an expiration date measured in minutes, he pressed me for an answer. He sat back with an aggrieved look when I asked him if I could mull it over a day or two. He answered by shaking his head, sliding a pen across the desk. Mustering an appropriate amount of enthusiasm to match his expression, I signed the contract, which was non-negotiable, and filled out a small mountain of paperwork he told me to read later. Due diligence after the fact. “By the way, the offer’s provisional. Subject to the school board’s approval,” he said right after I signed.

We didn’t discuss the particulars of the job really. We didn’t discuss much. The principal appeared more concerned with basic qualifications rather than my proficiency or suitability for a teaching job. I wondered if he was doing the math. Four years in the Marine Corps, four years or so in college, and two years at the rec center doesn’t exactly add up to present day without any gaps. “Main thing is verifying your teaching credentials. Like a driver’s license, they can be revoked,” he said. My concerns ran to payday, and why would anybody put a school way out in the boondocks. I learned from him school construction’s a complicated topic, and he’s not somebody who likes to spend time on complicated topics.

As for my proficiency, I had none. Suitability? Who’s to say? I didn’t know a lot about children really. I was there for other reasons. Used to jobs I have to pack up and leave for, I headed back to the city to rent a U-Haul. That was four days ago.

First day of school. As most days are during summer in the desert, the day I reported to the school was unmercifully hot. Driving in I nearly ran over an arrogant-looking coyote. The road from town ends in front the school at a T intersection. Beyond the road, the desert surface is flat and smooth except for occasional shrubs, succulents, and trees. Small cacti like chubby green fingers claw out of the earth. Clouds like stretched cotton balls float against a blue sky; the sun floats above a small mountain range. The mountains’ jagged tops resemble a saw with teeth hooked in different directions. Beautiful out here, really, when you pay attention.

Gnawing on me nobody wanted this job; I pull into the parking lot - sun-faded gray with barely visible markings. A jacket rabbit with stupendous ears cuts in front of my car. An omen probably, good or bad, I can’t say. The elementary school, middle school, and the school district’s small complex, with its high chain link fences, sparse and pragmatic architecture, remind me of a desert outpost. It’s a good ten-minute drive to the nearest structure, a convenience store with large signs in the window advertising cigarettes, beer, and lottery tickets. Not far from the convenience store, trailer parks and mobile home communities bleed out of the town limits.

Opening the office door I look back and wonder if the road ever gets busy. By the time the door clinks shut, a shoe, barely missing my head, careens off the doorframe. Landing on the receptionist’s desk, it sends curios and trinkets clattering. Pencils and ink pens from a plastic holder spill over the desktop. The receptionist’s thick fingers fumble with odd-looking figurines while yellow pencils and ink pens slowly roll off the desk. The grimy shoe settles on a stack of papers while the receptionist stares at the shambles on her desk.

I don’t see who hurled the shoe, but it came from behind the receptionist. Creaking and tracking backwards, and using some sumo-style foot moves, she swivels in the chair, turning her wide bottom to me. Squeezed into a fissure between a file cabinet and bookshelf is a boy, rail-thin like a feral cat, flashing an expression like he’s ready the burn the place down. Tawny colored legs like spindles, knees drawn almost to his chin, the other shoe’s pinched between boney joints. Scrapes, bruises, scabbed over cuts.

Making an effort to keep my voice calm, I hold up the sneaker. “Want this back?”

The receptionist, who has a short haircut and thick wrists, looks back and forth between the boy and me.

The boy gives me the eyeball. I watch his hands. Like recognizing like.

“Mr. Peaches?” The large woman regains her composure a little. “I’m Mrs. Benedict, the school receptionist,” she says over unintelligible sounds the boy’s making.

The boy crosses his arms.

“Billy, this is your new teacher,” she says.

He spews something out, tearing to pieces the sounds, the phonics of profanity clearly recognizable. I look at Mrs. Benedict for confirmation.

“He’s fine, really.” She makes it sound like we’re dealing with a skittish dog. “Want some coffee?”

“Thanks, black,” I say watching the boy.

Holding a curio, Mrs. Benedict shuffles down the hallway leaving the boy glaring at me with a steer-clear look. He peeks around the bookcase when chatter from down the hallway gets his attention. The paltry waiting area reminds me of a small motel reception. Four chairs and a table topped with piles of notices copied in light blue and golden colored paper. The light blue notices are on the prevention and cure for head lice. Putting a head lice notice down, I see a boy weighed down with a backpack, slugging across the parking lot. We’re not the only early birds.

Like a rabid dog, the boy on the floor growls slowly and evenly, leaning around the desk making me think it wasn’t such a good idea leaving the shoe on the desk because I see his fingers closing around the other one. But the stapler, a heavy duty rig, is the bigger concern. Depending on the velocity and impact area on the body, something like that could put a man my size down.

Mrs. Benedict took her sweet time with the coffee. The boy squeals and sniffs as she passes by. She sighs, sits down. “The principal’s not here yet.”

So much for getting here early. “Thanks for the coffee.” I lift it high enough for the boy to see. I put my paperwork with the little “sign here” stickies on her desk.

Leaning around Mrs. Benedict’s desk, the boy gives me the middle finger.

I gesture at him with the coffee mug. “He know sign language?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Does he talk?”

Lying on his stomach, the boy’s fiddling with a shiny object pulling it apart, paperclip probably.

“You’d better talk to the school counselor.”

“Why’s he back there?”

“He can’t be left alone. Something you need to talk to the principal about.”

I rest the coffee mug on my knee. “When does he get here?”

Her big-chinned face trembles. “He didn’t say. Mrs. Fontana’s running late too.”

“Who’s she?”

“Your classroom aide. Not like her to be late.”

“When’s she going to get here?”

“She didn’t say.” Scratching her neck she looks down the hallway. “Mr. DiAnza’s supposed to show you around.”

“DiAnza?”

“Teacher. Fifth grade. Next to your classroom.”

Gibbering, the boy jabs at the carpet with the paperclip.

A female voice, throaty and choppy, filters up through the hallway. Holding a cell phone in front of her face, a woman with dark, bouncy hair walks down the hallway stopping short of the office area. The boy crawls back into the gash between file cabinet and bookcase.

Watching her go back down the hallway, Mrs. Benedict leans over enough to block my view.

Wrapping his arms around his shins, the boy shimmies in his crevice. The file cabinet makes low boom noises as the metal sides collapse and pop out. Mrs. Benedict reaches over the boy to pull a sheet of paper from a printer. Unlike the coffee, she brings this over.

I skim over a schedule wondering what I should say to the boy because with the principal late we’ve got time to get acquainted, but he doesn’t look like he wants to talk. So it’s wait and see what’s next.

“Too bad you weren’t here last week,” Mrs. Benedict says.

The popping increases, frequency and volume. She doesn’t seem concerned about it, but it’s annoying me, and I’m not in the mood for another shoe.

“You showed up. That’s something,” she says.

I sip forgetting my coffee’s cold.

“You come from the city?”

Idle chat doesn’t interest me anymore so I’m relieved the phone rings.

The boy sneers around Mrs. Benedict’s desk. I lean forward trying to look stern. This seems enough because he back scoots to the bookshelf.

“I hope you like it here,” Mrs. Benedict says.

Not noticing she stopped talking on the phone, I’m watching the boy scrunching his face in concentration, looking at a strand of spider web flittering in front of the air conditioning vent. Looking at the spider web I say, “I hope so to.”

The phone again. This time she needs to give detail instructions to a confused parent it sounds like. I sit back, an arm resting across the top of a chair. The boy looks around Mrs. Benedict’s desk studying me like I was the oddity in the room.

“Is there a roster or list?” I ask after she hangs up.

“Ms. Nobel the school counselor’s taking care of that.”

“Where’s her office?”

“She’s not here. She’s finding out why some of your students didn’t get on the bus.”

“What happened?”

“She didn’t tell me.”

I nod towards the boy now kneeling besides her desk. “Looks like he made it.”

With a hand movement, she shoos him away. “We weren’t sure you’d be here.” She leans forward. “Last year nobody applied for the job.”

“What about this year?”

She starts arranging the knickknacks, pausing to examine a broken piece. She pitches it over the desk’s edge. It lands in the trashcan with a shallow clank. “We’re just glad you’re here.”

The boy crawls over, rescues the broken figurine. He traces over the knickknack’s jagged edges with a finger.

“Everything worked for a change. Mrs. Fontana’s good with the children, but she’s just an assistant,” Mrs. Benedict says.

Humming and flip-flops sounds from the hallway. The boy crawls, turkey-peeks around the corner. He scampers back into his crack when a tall man with spiky blonde hair and dull eyes ambles into the reception area. The man’s grinning, wearing lose-fitting jeans and a t-shirt like he’s ready to clean out the garage.

The boy springs forward, hissing at the man.

Like droplets of water flicked on hot charcoal, the man’s grin evaporates. He backs away, giving himself some distance from the boy. “What now?” the slob asks Mrs. Benedict.

Waving the boy back, Mrs. Benedict says, “This is the new teacher, Mr. Peaches.”

“You made it,” the man says. “Clint Dianza, Fifth grade.”

“William Peaches.”

“Where’s Fencik?” Mr. DiAnza asks Mrs. Benedict.

“Running late.” Mrs. Benedict looks up from tending to her figurines. “He wants you to show Mr. Peaches around.”

He shrugs, makes an expression like he’s being put upon. The phone rings. “I got things to do.” Mr. DiAnza says to her.

Switching the hand set to the other ear, Mrs. Benedict shoots him an annoyed look while jotting something down on a yellow sticky. Holding her hand over the mouthpiece she says, “Check your mailbox.”

Mr. DiAnza motions me to follow him. I got the impression the boy wasn’t coming with us, so I didn’t say anything. Mr. DiAnza stops in an open doorway to a large room with a big worktable in the center, dozens of cubbyholes on the wall. The woman from the hallway still talking on her cell. Nodding nervously, she turns her back on us. Frowning, Mr. DiAnza motions forward with his head. I follow Mr. DiAnza down hot walkways wondering how serious they are about enforcing the dress code for teachers. His tour lasts a whole five minutes. In a random manner, he pulled opened doors. Quick greetings, introductions to teachers arranging desks and laying out materials. Tense, but polite.

The layout of the school consists of five buildings laid out like the Roman numeral three. Up front, offices, cafeteria, nurse’s station. Playgrounds form a U around the classroom buildings and the gym, which is towards the back of the school grounds. A chain link fence runs along the back separating the playground from a paved road. After that desert.

Staring at the desert spreading behind the school I say, “Perfect place for a prison.”

“Too close to the school.” Mr. DiAnza turns, points. “Prison’s two miles north.” On a walkway covered with shiny grass clippings, the two of us look out at the desert like it’s the edge of the world out here.

I cringe at a leaf blower firing up as he pulls a sturdy door open. He points to the next door. “That’s your room. End of the line. Standing just inside the door, he looks around his classroom and says, “I’m still not ready.” It doesn’t look anything like the rooms we peeked in. A box on the floor holds school supplies. Conspicuous bare spots give the room a slipshod appearance. “Your room’s through there.” He points to a connecting door, sky blue like all the others around here.

Except for the unwashed window next to the door, the room’s spotless. In the middle, desks and chairs are jammed, piled up like a bonfire. Smoky grey carpet shows fresh vacuum tracks. The paint scheme is white, beige, and sky blue, same as the other rooms.

“No computers?” I ask.

Mr. DiAnza shrugs his shoulders, a forefinger pecking at his cellphone.

Showing 7:13, at least the clock works.

“When do students get here?”

Still looking down fiddling with his phone he says, “Around 7:30. School starts at 8:00. Most of them eat breakfast in the cafeteria or go to the playground.” He slips the cell phone into a back pocket. “Heard you used to be a soldier.” The first time he looks me in the eye.

“Nope. A Marine.”

“What’s the difference?” He crosses his arms.

“All the difference in the world to a soldier or Marine.” Looking for what’s serviceable, I move around the pile of desks and chairs, lean forward for a closer look. Cast offs. And I thought the Marines were the fanatics when it came to extending a piece of gear’s useable life.

DiAnza leans back on the teacher’s desk like he’s got all the time in the world now. “You in Iraq?”

Nodding, I pull at a desk that looks promising. Two of the legs collapse as I pull. “I don’t suppose there’s a storage room for desks and chairs,” I ask.

“This is it.”

“I guess they’ll have to find another room to hold all the junk.”

“See any action there?” Now he’s looking interested, face looking straight at me.

I let it hang there. I haul a desk upright.

“Ashamed all those people had to die,” he says.

“Got any duct tape?” I ask. Like most slobs I know, I’m figuring him as somebody with a short attention span. I pull at another desk. A chair tumbles off the pile.

Showing no signs he’s going to give me a hand he asks, “What?”

I nudge the leg of another desk with my toe. It wobbles. I grab it. “Patch this junk up,” I say. One of the chairs looks promising. I pull it out with two others, and line them up checking for worthiness. None of them faultless, but they’ll do. “Thanks for showing me around, Mr. DiAnza,” I say matching a chair with a desk.

He blinks a couple of times. On the way out he inspects my line of chairs.

I worked through the rest of the pile until the phone rang with an update from Mrs. Benedict. She told me to work in the classroom until the principal got back. Not much to work with, but I arranged the best desks of the lot, finding enough serviceable chairs to go with them. A grand total of five desks and chairs. The rest I shoved against the front wall, desk and chairs that would never be fixed or thrown out. At least the boy in the office is used to the floor. I unpack several boxes finding tattered books, none of them text books. More boxes in the cabinets. Sealed, dusty, unclaimed - lost and found from another generation. Bleak walls. Too bad. Decorating isn’t my thing.

#

A few minutes before eight, I hear the sounds of children. Shouting, running feet pounding on the walkway. A young girl, a little on the pudgy side, opens the door. The girl, red hair piled on top of her head, pushes her glasses up, asks me where Mr. DiAnza is. I wonder if she’s hard of hearing, because he’s yelling. Looking over the girl, I see children around the playground equipment. Most trot towards Mr. DiAnza. Two boys linger on the swings. Both dismount with exaggerated movements. The bigger boy tosses the heavy swing chains like he’s heaving them over the side of a ship. The jostling swing seat hits the smaller boy in the buttocks, knocks him into the sand. The children around Mr. DiAnza’s door cackle at the sandbagged boy.

“Samson. Get over here,” Mr. DiAnza yells.

The boy looks up, stunned.

Stifling a laugh, a maintenance guy wearing a big straw hat loads a dust blower into the back of a pickup. Must be done rearranging the dust for the day.

“Mr. DiAnza’s its hot. Can we go inside,” a girl whines.

Mr. DiAnza waves the children inside.

The girl with the glasses and red hair looks up at Mr. DiAnza and smiles with unexpected sweetness. She’s holding a large picture book, butterflies on the cover. “Mr. DiAnza, want me to get Samson?”

He glances down at her like he’s surprised she’s there. “Go ahead.”

Holding the book tightly against her chest, the girl bounces across the playground.

A few giggles, quiet utterances come from inside Mr. DiAnza’s classroom. With a stiff arm, DiAnza holds the door open. “Hey, Peaches. Keep an eye on them?” He gestures towards the girl and boy in the sand.

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Fantastic.”

Gasoline fumes and cut grass. I cross the playground while Mr. DiAnza hustles the rest of his students into the classroom. The boy’s slumped over staring into the sand while the girl bends over him with a hand on his thin neck. The lawn crew guy hops in the pickup, drives off. The playground and the concrete walkways now silent. The girl tries to get the boy up by pulling on his arm. A twirl of red hair falls across her glasses. Her book slips out of her hand, wedges into the sand.

“Samson, let’s go,” she says.

The boy’s wiping his unusually large eyes. Reaching down for her book, she grabs his shoulder.

“You hurt?” I ask the boy. The boy’s haircut’s a monstrosity, blonde and rust like a match head, and he’s twisting his fingers like he’s torturing them.

The girl raises her head and scratches her nose. “Who are you?”

“Mr. Peaches.”

“Are you the new teacher?”

“Yes.”

“Samson. He’s our teacher.” Squatting down like she’s looking under a table, she looks at the boy’s face. “What’s your name again?” she asks looking up at me.

“Mr. Peaches.”

She stands up. “Nice to meet you Mr. Beaches. My little brother doesn’t go to this school. He was bad. Can you read this book to us?” She shoves the book up into my face.

“My name is Mr. Peaches.” Using two fingers, I push the book down.

“That’s what I said.” He’s Samson. “Can we go to our class now?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I want to go today.” She peers around me like I’m hiding something. “Hey, where’s Mrs. Fontana?”

“She’s not here yet.”

“Where is she?”

I shrug then bend down in front of the boy.

The little girl kept talking, her voice pattering along. Didn’t seem to matter to her I’m not paying attention.

“Feels like somebody kicked me,” the boy says.

“I’ll bet.” I squat down; grab the swings to steady myself. “Let’s go in, Sam.”

“Samson,” he says into his chest.

“Sorry. Samson.” I reach for his hand. He pulls back. He pounds his fits into the sand then springs up like a released spring leaving me and the pudgy girl between the swings.

“You’d better go to,” I say to the girl watching the boy trot across the grass.

Samson pulls on the edge of the door, leaning backwards, getting it open as the little girl runs inside. A school bus pulls into the lot on the other side of the fence. Its air brakes pop, driver waves.

The heat. Open spaces. Diesel smell. Memories of Iraq.

#

Due to the principal’s curt and business-like manner, I thought he might appreciate me getting right to the point; but he’s staring at me, an incredulous look like I just told him his wife’s cheating on him. Frowning he leans forward on hairy forearms. “What do you mean by broke?”

“Damaged, missing parts,” I say. “Two, three of the desks I can patch with duct tape.”

He rubs his forehead with his fingers, and then looks at me to continue.

“I need tables, book shelves. Like other classrooms.”

He nods, but looks displeased. “Get a screw driver. That’s usually all it takes with the desks.”

“I’ve got a multi-tool. I cannibalized as much as possible.”

“Does it have a knife blade on it?”

“Among other things.”

“Can’t bring a blade to school. I’ll get Mrs. Benedict to talk to maintenance. Anything else?”

“What happened with the kid sitting behind her this morning?”

“Not your problem today. Starting tomorrow he’s yours.”

“Anything I should know?”

Slumping back, he grips the ends of the chair’s armrests. “Ms. Noble the counselor will get with you. She’ll take care of the counseling we have to provide, but basically whatever happens in the classroom gets handled in the classroom. No blood, no discipline slip.” He straightens up; looking at something on his desk like it needs immediate attention.

I remember how vague he was last week. Unique challenges, structure. Didn’t mention blood or discipline slips. He side stepped my questions about books and computers.

“Be careful,” he says, “that kid won’t hesitate to hit a teacher.”

“What happened with the bus?”

“Misunderstanding. The law went out and straightened things out at the Chumbley home.”

“What kind of misunderstanding?”

“The Chumbley boys’ mother thinks she can say or do whatever she wants to our bus drivers,” the principal pauses, “Had problems with her before.”

I’m probably raising an eyebrow or twisted my mouth a bit.

“Anyway Mrs. Fontana will be here tomorrow. She’s a pain, but she’s willing to work with those kids.” His tone changes. “A lot of the aides we’ve hired are like clouds. They come and go.”

Next Chapter: Mrs. Fontana