Teachers' Workday - I, II, & III

[leckert]

Teachers' Workday - I - V

Sorry for the length, but, like they told my aunt about her kidney stone, 'Hopefully, it will pass quickly!'

1.​

Rain pinged the window next to the bunk beds. Gene rolled over, and pulled the blankets up around his neck. He could hear Gary’s sleep breathing from above him, and the AM crackle of the Snoopy radio in the windowsill. He closed his eyes against the morning and drifted back to his private world.



The classroom felt like a closet. The air was stale in his chest and the students pushed against him.

“Gene Bean, had a machine…”

They sang at him, and the pretty girls laughed;

“Joe Blow made it go”

His brother had taught them this song:

“Art Bart let a fart, and blew it all apart!”

They shrieked at the end.

They always shrieked at the end.

The teacher entering the room quashed the stainless steel laughter.



This was new.



Gene couldn’t see the face, but he could see the gray white feather of smoke following him, hanging over his head like the “You are here” arrow on a rest area map.



“My name is Mr. Buick, and I will be your teacher today.”



The voice like marbleized sandstone scratched in Gene’s ears. Mr. Buick parted the crowd around his desk and came back to look into Gene’s face with painful blue eyes.



“Did it blow apart, Gene-bean?”



The smoky yellow smile trapped Gene in his desk, pushing him into the wooden seat.



“I don’t think Eugene wants to play with us today, class!” Mr. Buick said to the anonymous mob without losing the tightening grip of his stare.



“I think ol’ Genie-bean wants to go talk to the principal about our little song. Doncha, Gene?”



“No, sir.” Gene whispered to himself.



“I’m sorry, Gene, but you gotta go!”



Mr. Buick stepped to the side and waved his hand as if he were yielding to a lady on a ballroom dance floor. Gene stood, shaking his head, and his hands, twitching-cold scared. He was unable to stop himself from moving to the front of the classroom, and toward the door.



“Sorry, you gotta go!” Mr. Buick repeated. The class joined him in his chant.



“SORRY, YOU GOTTA GO!”

“SORRY, YOU GOTTA GO!”



The bell didn’t stop their monotone, but it stuttered in time with them.



RINNNNNGGGGG…

“SORRY, YOU GOTTA GO!”

RINNNNNGGGGG…



Gene felt a sluggish pull in his mind, like a wooden spoon through cold oatmeal. Something was wrong. The bell – the school bell never rang like that before.



RINNNNNGGGGG…

“SORRY, YOU GOTTA GO!”

RINNNNNGGGGG…

“SORRY, YOU GOTTA GO!”

RINNNNNGGGGG…



Gene became aware. He rolled out of bed to go answer the phone. Gary leaped from the top bunk, grazing Gene’s head with his heel. “Hello”. The ringing stopped and his head began to lift. He sat on the edge of the bottom bunk and stared at the senseless design woven into the green, low-pile carpet in their bedroom. “sorry, you gotta go” The rhythm of the dream class was fading in his mind. While his twin brother, Gary, talked to their mother on the phone, the radio in the windowsill crackled and hissed “The Morning Voice of Logan, Don Geronimo!” He had fallen asleep listening to the Reds and the Yankees in game four of that October carnival ride called the World Series. Gene remembered his idol, Johnny Bench, hitting a two-run homerun in the fourth, but not much after that.



”…and the Cincinnati Reds win consecutive World Series’. Mike, that’s the first time a National League team has done that in over fifty years…”



Gene’s chest puffed up and he grabbed his red hat with the white “C” on if from the dresser.



Mom had arranged their clothes, as always, on the dresser for them the night before. While Gary talked to her, Gene got dressed. “I love you, too” said Gary, and hung up. The boys dressed, and Gene went into the kitchen to pour two bowls of Cap’n Crunch and turn on the TV. As Mr. Rogers extolled the virtues of his particular neck of the woods, they slurped milk from the bottoms of their bowls. Their raincoats waited on the arm of the chair next to the door. Gene tried to put his on. He could get his arms into it, but he looked like a Paddington Scare-Crow in the yellow slicker with his arms stuck out to the sides. Gary’s would button, but the sleeves stopped about halfway between his wrist and his elbow.



“I’m calling Mom” Gene almost cried out loud, fearing he would have to wear this undersized yellow coat, or get wet today.



“Mom”



“Hi, Honey, what’s wrong?”



“Our raincoats don’t fit anymore.” He explained, “Can we get the new ones out from under your bed?”



His mom sighed that “Jesus Christ” sigh, “Go ahead.”



“Thanks, Mom!” Gene slammed the phone down and ran into his mother’s room. “GARY!” he shouted, after he had his arm buried to the shoulder, and could go no further. Gary had followed, and was already halfway under the bed, slinging out two square plastic packages: one black, and one brown.



Gene recognized the Oakland Raiders logo as soon as he saw it. Gary’s boasted the Cincinnati Bengals. They opened their packages, and put on their new ponchos.

 

[leckert]

II of V

October was the beginning of cold in Ohio, but not quite cold enough for snow, yet. The Hocking County Fair had just left town to make room for warm-orange piles of leaves, and the World Series. Gene hummed “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” as they walked.

The boys walked their normal route to school: across Front Street, through the timothy of the empty lot along the railroad tracks. They usually met Brian and Mikey kicking a pop can or throwing rocks down the tracks, but not today. The streets and sidewalks were empty today. Gene began to get that low-in-the-gut, trouble feeling. It suddenly felt very late. Maybe they had missed the first bell while they were screwing around with their ponchos. He picked up his pace.

“Wait up!” shouted Gary, trotting to catch him.

“Come on, dork!” he said, walking even faster.

The two bickered. Gene was irritable because his mind was on getting to school before the tardy bell rang, and Gary was getting pissed because he couldn’t keep up. When they came out of the field on Second Street, they saw the playground was barren. A wet, yellow tether ball rolled lazy on its pole with the breeze, and the swings rocked on their chains. A ripple chased itself across the puddle under the jungle gym. The tardy bell had rung, and everyone was inside! Things came together in Gary’s head at once, and the two began to run toward the white trailers that housed the fifth and sixth grades. Gene put his hand on the cold, heavy brass latch on the door of their classroom just as a bell blared through the breezeway that connected the trailers to the caffetorium. They jumped as if the wrought iron steps they were standing on had been electrified. When their hearts slowed to a safe, steady pulse, Gene reached again for the handle and pushed. The latch was hard against his wet grip. He pushed harder, but it wouldn’t budge. He looked at his brother through the rain dripping from his hood. Gary grabbed the bottom of the windowsill and bicycled his feet up the side of the trailer.

“Stop it!” Gene urged him, shouting under his breath.

“Shut up, Fag!”

“WHAT ARE YOU KIDS DOIN’?”

The voice came from the caffetorium doors. It was the gravel-rake of Mr. Raney, the janitor. They didn’t answer.
The first rule of kids under thirteen:
“When an adult yells at you, RUN!”
But, in this case, that would be in direct violation of the second rule of kids under thirteen:
“Any adult on school grounds is God.”
They were frozen in their quandary.

“I SAID, ‘WHAT ARE YOU KIDS DOIN’’?” Mr. Raney repeated, walking towards them. His keys bounced on his hip; Gene thought of Marshall Dillon’s spurs.

The boys were tentative as they descended the steps to the asphalt. Gene responded with ‘pat response number two’:

“Nothin’.”

“We are trying to go to class” Gary offered, hoping their apparent zeal for school would get them out of whatever trouble they were obviously in.

“School’s closed today” said Mr. Raney. “Teacher workday. Didn’t you look at your calendar?”

Of course they hadn’t looked at their calendar; they were ten. What use did two ten-year olds have with a calendar? They knew it was on the refrigerator, under the “Ohio is for Lovers” magnet, and that it was a purple copy from the ditto machine, but that was all they could have told him about it.

“No.” said Gene.

“Well, go on back home, boys, no school today.” Mr. Raney crossed his hairy, Popeye arms, leaned against the steps, and waited for them to comply.

They walked across the playground, and back home; this time down Depot Street to Front, past the Sohio station on the corner. The last time they had come this way, they elbowed each other as they ran inside to get a long, cold drink from the water fountain. Gene didn’t remember seeing that old primer-gray Wildcat that was in the ally out back before. He wondered who owned it, and if Mr. White would let them play in it the way he had that old station wagon last summer. Today, they just checked the pay phone for change, and splashed each other as they jumped on the rubber hose that rang the bell inside. As they ran down Front Street, Mr. White slammed open the glass door, waving his fist at the boys’ backs like a pissed-off cartoon character. They looked back to see Mr. White smiling and shaking his head, and a stranger walking to the gray car, with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. They rode their motorcycles home, swerving and revving their throaty engines until they coughed. The rain had started to taper, but the air still retained a little chill. At home, they each got a packet of hot chocolate mix, and a spoon, and sat down to watch the rest of “The Electric Company”.


2.

The high, October sun began to brighten with a timid pale glow; flannel gray to white to yellow by afternoon. The few remaining birds came out to find something to eat, and the boys came out to find something to get into. Rainwater dripped from the naked branches of the sappling maple tree in front of their apartment, and Gene felt a little silly with his poncho on. They took them back to the house and got their bikes from under the steps in the building’s common foyer. It was beginning to warm up, and felt like springtime. Neither of them knew why they called it “Indian Summer”, but were glad for the week of warm weather before the snow started. They “S’d” their bikes in front of each other, as the puddles made darkly wet stripes on their backs.

“What do you want to do?” asked Gary.

“Let’s go see Mom!” Gene shouted.

They had walked to the police station from school before, last year when they were little kids, but Gene was relying on his brother’s sense of direction to get them there from home. Their mother had worked as a secretary since they moved back to Logan five years ago, but the boys told their friends that she was a policewoman, just like Angie Dickenson. They turned around, and headed toward Main Street, and Downtown Logan. Behind them, out of earshot, the phone inside their government-subsidized apartment began to ring. They missed their last opportunity to talk to Mom they would ever have.

3.

Brenda rolled out of bed, crossed to the dresser, and pushed her alarm clock onto the floor. She smiled to herself with satisfaction as she started the water running for her shower.

The hot water shocked her awake. As she rinsed her hair, she could hear the alarm again. Apparently, she had just stunned it, and the damn thing still worked. Still dripping, she shut off the buzz, went to the kitchen, and plugged in the coffee pot before she got dressed. Her thin cotton robe stuck to her back as she looked in on the twins; the boys could have been mistaken for cadavers. She slunk into their room and put her hand on Gary’s chest in the top bunk to make sure he was breathing. Gene grunted a snore, and she left them to their dreams.

With all that she had been through, she thought she was doing okay. She had divorced her first love, and left him in Arizona to travel across the country on a Greyhound bus with two four-year old boys and a hundred dollars in her pocket. She found a job at the police department in a few weeks, and was making decent money, for a woman with no real work experience. She had found an apartment that was government subsidized, but not quite ‘ghetto’, and she had two wonderful boys, who, though sometimes selfish and rude, were the best-behaved kids on the planet. She hoped this was factual, and not just fantasy, because being a single mother in Smalltown, Ohio in the Seventies, with only her high-school typing classes to rely on, was not exactly the fast-track to the top; she couldn’t afford to pay a babysitter to watch them while she was at work. But her boys had been managing on their own for the summers and in the mornings for a couple of years now. They had scared the bejesus out of her last summer when they disappeared. Her sister knocked on the door at eleven o’clock that night with a boy in each arm. Their plan had been to catch some fish at Kachelmacher Park for her to put in the freezer. They had only been about five minutes from limping down the slippery rocks on the bank of the river when Annie had seen them, scared and crying, standing on the narrow median in the turn lane to Route Thirty-Three. She sipped her coffee as she watched them sleep. Her eyes stung salty reliving that night, now almost two years gone. She had screamed at them then, as she held them trembling. She felt ashamed for it now. She kissed them both on the forehead and went to get dressed.

She really enjoyed her work. She took the occasional whistle and the constant innuendo, inspired by the knowledge that without her, the office would collapse. And, honestly, it was pretty nice to be admired and flirted with again. Maybe she wasn’t an old maid after all. When the Chief came in, she took him his coffee, and asked if there were any letters he needed done first thing. There weren’t, so she grabbed the pile of reports from the weekend and went to her desk. She dropped the stack of papers on her desk and turned to get herself a cup of coffee. Before she could get out of her office, the phone rang. She picked up the heavy black handset, and found her son on the other end.

“Hi, Honey, What’s wrong?” she said to Gene.

He explained the rain coat crisis. She should have known they would find them. She had come home early one day last summer and caught them pulling their birthday presents out from under her bed. She hadn’t planned on saving the ponchos for Christmas, but was hoping to get another month out of the old yellow ones. She hung up the phone, got her coffee, and went to work.

 

[leckert]

III of V

The Chief checked in with her on his way out to some meeting in Columbus. With just her, and Jeanie in dispatch, she could work without being interrupted. She listened to Don Geronimo, then Paul Harvey, on the radio until noon. She gathered the folders she had been typing from and uncovered the blotter calendar on her desk. There was a big, red circle around the

Tenth. Brenda fell back into her wooden, swivel chair and felt like she might panic. Today was the tenth. Today was a teacher’s work day. She put her face in her hands, and tried to figure out just how stupid she was. The strength gradually came back to her legs. She realized the boys had been staying by themselves since last summer, and that they would be all right, but the headlines in her mental newspaper read “BAD MOTHER SENDS KIDS TO SCHOOL ON A TEACHER’S WORK DAY”. She even added a grainy black-and-white photo of herself, cuffed hands hiding her face. She picked up the phone to call the boys. She let it ring four or five times before she conceded, and hung up. The day had cleared, and they were outside playing. She hoped they had their jackets on, but she really doubted it. She thought, if she got her work done, she might leave early and pick up a pizza from Luigi’s. She thought she would need a pepperoni double-cheese to bury her guilt. She turned back to her work, anticipating a pizza that would never be eaten.

4.​

He had been on at the Logan Clay plant for a few months, which seemed to keep him in Wild Turkey and cigarettes, but he never seemed to have enough left to pay child support – or the rent, for that matter. His wife had always taken care of the bills. He spent most of his money at the Sportsman Lounge in Logan. When she handed him the separation papers, and the support order, and went to live with that faggot in Nelsonville, he put his son, Frankie, to work in his brother’s garage, and stopped paying the bills. After two months alone in the two bedroom cinderblock house, he found himself in Nelsonville, leaning against the faggot’s doorjamb, asking his ex-wife for money.


“You haven’t even started paying child support, yet, and you are asking me for money?”

A curl of blonde hair had fallen over her eye, and he reached to brush it back.


“Don’t!” she moved his hand away from her with icy fingers, and turned away from the door.


“I’m sorry, hon!” he called after her.

She came back after a few seconds and handed him a rolled up fifty, as she looked over her shoulder.

“Take this” she said, jamming the bill into his hand. “Michelle can’t go with you; you’re drunk. You need to leave.” Her voice was flat and without emotion. Screaming hatred would have been better than her apathy. They had been in love, how could she be so gone?


“Can I at least see her?” he begged this woman to see his own daughter.


“She doesn’t want to see you. Now, I’m sorry, but you gotta go.”


“Come on, hon, just let me say ‘hi’ to her” he tried to look past her into the house. She backed into the foyer and pushed the door toward him.


“I’m sorry, but you gotta go.” The door clunked into place, and he heard the deadbolt lock.


He put the money in his pocket, got into the Buick, and drove back to Logan, by way of the liquor store. He clutched the brown-bagged bottle under his arm and stuck his key in the lock as he read the pink sheet of paper stapled to his door.

“Eviction Notice”​

The rest was a bunch of Lawyer’s words that made no sense to him. He tried to turn his key, but the lock was solid in his hand. The letter said the Farmers and Merchants Bank had claimed possession of his home. He guessed that meant his key wouldn’t work. “Sorry, you gotta go!” he mumbled under his breath as he drove away. He found a place to park behind a dumpster at Kachelmacher Park. He slept in his car that night, and went to work sour, and drunk.

5.​

​

The air was wet and fresh. The boys could feel the winter behind the breath of the breeze, not brave enough to come to the surface yet, but warning of what was to come in a few weeks. Gene and Gary swerved their bikes from one edge of the sidewalk to the other. They were in no hurry, and were enjoying the final warmth of October.

Front Street reminded Gene of an abandoned landing strip. Grass poked through the tar where the tracks crossed, and the main drag through Logan was without a car - small town afternoons were a lonely place to play. They stood on their pedals as they crossed the tracks, and popped a wheelie onto the sidewalk. Gary busied himself trying to steady his mount with no hands, so Gene didn’t have to break any capillaries to keep up. He could feel the rubber expansion joints in the sidewalk as he began carving a snake track with his front tire, and grew the rhythm with his body. He had to dump his bike on Tracie’s yard when he heard Gary’s power slide and looked up to see him stopped crosswise on the sidewalk. His sliding tire ripped a black smear in the brown grass. Tracie didn’t notice. Her eyes were lost in his brother, who was leaning over his handlebars, looking as “Starsky-and-Hutch” as possible. Gene turned sideways on his bike and tried to look as “Marshall-Dillon” as his round stomach would allow. The boys were talking themselves into idiocy, flapping their curled lips faster than their brains could come up with words to put on them. Tracie was rapt by their obvious flirting and awkward machismo. She thought they were cute, but was certain her father wouldn’t approve of her interest in the boys from ‘the projects’. She noticed the holes in Gary’s shoes, and the patch on Gene’s pants, and remembered why she never asked them over to play. After they had explained to her each painful detail of their morning, and where they were going, they forgot their native tongue, and stuttered a lot of ‘ums’ and ‘uhhs’. After a long pause, they realized they had run out of story, and had nothing to do but excuse themselves before their faces caught fire. Gary was first, and Gene ran up behind, left foot on the pedal, trying to swing his right leg over the seat. He was inches from success, one last hop and a swing over, when his foot slipped off of the pedal, and he landed on the crossbar, balls first. Boys’ bicycle design and myriad thought-clips flashed through his brain in the microsecond between impact and realization. The pain was intense, hot in his groin, and spreading to his belly. He coasted side-saddle to the Sohio station, out of Tracie’s sight, and let his bike fall away as he staggered around the soda machine, clutching his boyhood. The pain had lost some intensity, but had gained depth. It was now low in his gut, still warm and still spreading.

“Are you alright?” “Are you alright?”

Gary repeated this until Gene thought his ears were melting. The constant grinding of words on his quite occupied brain made a little snapping sound in his head…


“YES! MY NUTS JUST SQUIRTED OUT OF MY ASSHOLE, BUT OTHER THAN THAT, I AM JUST FINE!”

Gary’s cheeks puffed dangerously full of laughter as he conjured the mental image his brother had just painted; his gut surged into his chest. He could no more hold back the laugh then he could have stopped a fart from sneaking out with a cough. His lips burst open, spittle flew from the corners of his mouth, and he laughed a high-pitched squeal that stabbed Gene in the temple.

“SHUT UP!” Gene shouted.


He might as well have tickled him. The laughing grew. Gene got jokes, and, in spite of the pain in his loins, his belly began to jiggle a little. The more he laughed, the better he felt. The two leaned against the faded blue wooden fence, sat on a bald, rotting tire, and laughed until their jaws hurt and they just couldn’t make it funny any more.


As they sat, a primer gray Buick Wildcat pulled into the alleyway behind the station and a long, mean looking man walked around the building, and through the glass door in front. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, and a gray white feather of smoke followed him, hanging over his head like the “you are here” arrow on a rest area map. Gene stared, unable not to look at the man.


They mounted and rode off: Speed Racer and Racer X, straining to see what was around the corner: racing to the ends of their lives.

6.​

On the alley behind the Sohio station lurked a darkly slung, hunkering old two-story garage. The wooden slats that remained looked like they might have been blue around the time Grandpa was a kid; the wood beneath was the gray, hard steel of weathered oak. The standing seam roof was rusted red, but Gene could see its metal, hot and flashing, countless summer suns ago. Now he heard the tapp-taptap of raindrops dripping from the overhanging trees.

 

[leckert]

IV of V

I removed this part of the story because I thought the length of this piece would prohibit people from reading. If you want more, I can certainly provide it...

 

[leckert]

V of V

I removed this final part for the same reason as part IV.

Please let me know if you would like to read the rest...