Whatever Happened to Elaine Kashuba?

In that first hour of my first day of what I didn’t know at the time was to become my life-long career, on that opening Tuesday after Labor Day, which marked the unofficial end of summer, the day before the kids arrived to begin a new school year, I entered the 7th Grade classroom in what they called the “T-Wing.” The “T” stood for “temporary” and “Wing” meant that the sub-standard, U-shaped cluster of prefabricated wooden classrooms was an add-on attached to the real brick and mortar junior high school.

The twenty-four classrooms had been nailed together in those halcyon post-Korean War days, when the suburbs were exploding with people fleeing the City for a piece of Long Island dirt and a parking space. The T-Wing’s purpose was to house the thousand-strong classes of newly entering 7th graders in semi-isolation and prevent them from mingling with the general school population. Apparently economy and not the comfort of so many kids funneling in from the district’s eight elementary schools had been the major consideration when the uninsulated T-Wing with the bouncy floors and vibrating windows was erected. Of course I didn’t know then on my first T-Wing encounter the early fall and spring extreme heat or the bone-numbing winter cold that lay ahead. Ignorance and inexperience were bliss and probably why the 7th grade and most of the new teachers were relegated there. Each September when a new batch of frightened and confused 12 year olds entered the T-Wing for the first time they would invariably ask, “So why didn’t they call it the ‘U-Wing’?”

My classroom was T-3, three doors up on the left side, the odd side, in the corridor that made up the right side of the U. The base of the U was a long empty hall with a small office in the center for Mary Whiting, the new assistant principal. Within it was Mrs. Whiting’s very small private bathroom that made it unnecessary for her to leave her remote T-Wing outpost ever. On the other side of the U were rooms T-13 to T-24, interrupted by a faculty room and a storage area for old furniture and textbooks.

In June T-3 belonged to Miss Kashuba who had tended her resignation on the last day of school after she collected her final check and disappeared. But evidence of her was everywhere in the room, from her name hand printed on a 3x5 index card affixed with tape to the little glass panel in the door, to the ornately crayoned, multi-colored “Miss Kashuba” centered over the cracked slate blackboard directly above her desk, likely student created for extra credit. Posters stapled to the bulletin boards and authors’ names affixed to the wall covered the front of T-3 that was not blackboard including Ernest Hemingway spelled with two m’s. The classroom looked as though Miss Kashuba had fled for her life, taking only what she could carry when the last June bell rang.

At least, I thought, I wouldn’t have to decorate for a while.

Miss Kashuba’s ghost haunted the rest of the classroom as well. In her center desk drawer I found an assortment of teacher stuff – paperclips and rubber bands, safety pins, a math compass that had no place in an English classroom, three leaky ballpoint pens and a handful of pencils with broken points. There were crumbs of lunches past, a half eaten roll of Tums, travel size no-name aspirin and an almost empty bottle of congealed Pepto Bismol, coated on one side like dried out pink finger paint. I tossed it, missing the pail branded in black marker “Ms. K-S,” shorthand, I presumed, for the mysterious Miss Kashuba. I wondered why she would have gone to the trouble of hyphenating Kashuba. It was short enough. Unless the “S” following the hyphen was Miss Kashuba’s married name, “Smith” or “Smyth,” or “Silverman,” making her Miss Kashuba-Someothersomething. Or maybe she was getting married and that was the reason for her sudden departure from T-3. Of course if she were married before her June disappearance she wouldn’t be Miss Kashuba, and if she were planning a summer wedding there was no need for the hyphenation. Was the “Ms.” an indication of her independent spirit? It was a mystery that I pondered while I poured over the rest of her remains – a water pistol, a torn MAD Magazine and matches. Did Miss Kashuba smoke? Or were they taken from a student bent on burning down the wooden T-Wing when no one was watching?

The side drawers contained white ditto paper, lined composition paper yellowed with age and half a box of mimeograph masters to make dittos that made my fingers purple when I touched them. The middle drawer was empty except for a tube of Hazel Bishop Coral lipstick, a bottle of Midol and tampons. And when I fished into the bottom drawer under the jumble of absentee notes, I came up with a pair of lady’s panties – size 7, fringed with lace. Hers? They had to be. They were too grown up, unless I was mistaken about 7th grade girls. Were they a back up pair for the “Days of Midol” when the tampons were too late? I picked up the Pepto Bismol from where it lay on the floor. The hard pink inside had been knocked loose by the impact with the linoleum tile. Some had spilled onto the floor through the cracked plastic bottle and the rest sounded like a baby’s rattle when I shook it. From a hook on the side of the blackboard where they hung I took the small hand broom and metal dustpan, each monogrammed “Ms. K-S,” and swept up the mess. Then I carefully placed the broken bottle, the Midol and the tampons into the pail. I slipped the panties from the drawer and into a folder of my new leather attaché case, a graduation gift from my parents, for closer examination when I had the time. The prospect of getting to know Miss Kashuba more intimately was compelling. And I was twenty-two.

I inspected the rest of T-3 before the 10 o’clock building meeting in the auditorium, poking through the student lockers at the back, the front closet where books never returned to the Book Room lay in a tumbled heap, an old fuzzy sweater covered in cat hair hung from a broken hook and a peeling bumper sticker exhorted, “Go Comets!” in faded orange and black, the school colors. The rusty file cabinet with the broken lock was filled with stacks of unmarked projects and compositions from the previous years. Miss Kashuba was a bit of a slacker.

Then I heard her voice in my ear. “Just you wait, newbie, until those compositions and book reports and class projects start piling up because you have more important things to do with your time than sit around reading them and marking them up with red pencil. Wait until the little gnats are gnawing on your ankles clamoring for their grades. If you make it long enough as a teacher, kiddo, eventually you’ll get tired of marking all those crappy papers with the recurring errors, the alots, its/it’s, your/your and there/their/they’res never learned no matter how many times they are taught. And you’ll run out of excuses for not having their grades, so just to keep them quiet you’ll announce that you lost their papers after you graded them and make up marks. Just be sure to make them higher than they would actually get. That way everyone is happy. In a week you’ll know who’s smart and who’s not.”

I dumped the ungraded papers into the pail, to preserve Miss Kashuba’s reputation and to make room for my own papers.

During the following days I learned a more about Miss Kashuba from the veterans who populated the teacher’s lounge I discovered in the main building where they ate, smoked, napped and played cards. Her first name was Elaine and that teachers’ first name were closely guarded secrets to be kept from their kids at all costs, lest they run around the building calling their teachers Wayne or Fred or Hortense. And one of the many official memos included in the “First Day” envelope directed teachers to address one another as Mr., Mrs. or Miss Whatever.

Some of the things I learned about Miss Kashuba conflicted. She left because she “burned out” on teaching after only five years. She had a better offer for more money that she couldn’t refuse. She had to resign to avoid legal action for a “little indiscretion involving a high school junior,” a boy in her first year class who returned all grown up to thank her personally for everything she had done to and for him. She was single, a player. She didn’t leave to get married. She wasn’t pregnant and she didn’t leave to have an abortion, or to give birth to the young high school junior’s bastard in a distant convent or with relatives out of town, at least as far as the people who knew her knew. Though her “flighty nature and eccentric personality” didn’t preclude her possibility of maybe getting pregnant wherever she might have landed. I gleaned from these conversations that Miss Kashuba wasn’t much liked by most of the females on staff, though she was very popular with many of the male teachers, single and married. Her resignation was another example of her impetuous nature, So go she did, after the end of the school year party, without a good-bye to anyone. She drove off into the summer sunset in her new red Chevy Chevelle SS convertible and a young guy at her side. No one had heard anything from or about her since the day she disappeared.

In mid-November a postcard arrived from Venezuela with one sentence: “Glad I am here! Ms. K-S,” and an arrow drawn in ink pointing to a thatched hut in the center of other thatched huts in a clearing surrounded by of tall jungle vegitation. Some speculated that Miss Kashuba had joined the Peace Corps and was winning the hearts and minds of brown South American people one heart and mind at a time. Others thought she was there growing marijuana.

And still Miss Kashuba (I couldn’t imagine ever calling her Elaine) remained close by – in my class, my mind, my heart and my ear. She spoke to me during those harrowing first teaching days of filling out index cards (“Last name first, people. Last name then first name! And print.”), alphabetical seating charts and book distribution, where I had to invent unique student numbers for that would identify me as the teacher, the class period and year (“Scal-101-64”) and copy them correctly into each student’s book and on each student’s index card so that book collection or accountability for lost books would be easier the following June, or just trying to keep the little nits and gnats in their seats without popping up like Jacks in the box and rushing my desk with their problems and concerns: “Did I do this right?” “I don’t understand what you said to do.” “Can I go to the Boy’s Room?” “My nose is bleeding!” “Ted Fuchs stole my pen!”

“You better get tough with them,” she told me. “This isn’t ‘Camp School’ where everybody has fun and you are the social director. They don’t all have to like you. So if you think of it more like a medium security prison you’ll have a better chance of survival. Don’t smile until Thanksgiving, and don’t show weakness. They can smell weakness – and fear! And if they do, they will have you hanging out the window by the end of the week.”

She was there that first Parent’s Night when a father interrupted my nervous presentation to call everyone’s attention to Ernest (two m) Hemingway clinging to the wall. “His name is misspelled,” he said pointing at the error. “Isn’t that a bad example for students in an English class?”

I hemmed and hawed. I could have blamed it on the teacher who had previously occupied the room, but I didn’t. Instead my face grew hot and I began to perspire, soaking the collar of my white shirt. And then Miss Kashuba was standing behind me. “If you had tenure you could tell the old fart that you really don’t give a shit. And when you have a little more experience and are able to think on your feet, you’ll have explanations ready for such emergencies.”

“I will do that,” I heard myself saying, “not often, but from time to time. I’ll make intentional mistakes – just to see if anyone catches them – who’s paying attention. It’s a fun way to make the students part of the learning process, and–” I added, “– a way to get extra credit.”

Perfect! Some of the parents smiled and nodded their approval. The next morning I had an official memo from the principal in my mailbox instructing me to remove old Ernie from my wall. I did.

Gradually, as I grew more secure, traces of Miss Kashuba faded. Inside T-3 my bulletin boards replaced hers – free color photos of cute baby animals and book cover posters from the Scholastic Book Club. The writers on the wall gave way to “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” compositions, book reports recommending “this book to all my friends,” illustrated haiku, short stories where everything was only a dream and student created advertising projects like Sammy Luban’s “Hershey, Hershey, Hershey Brown Is Beautiful!” poster. He sent it to Hershey hoping they would use the idea and received a personal response signed by the vice-president of Hershey. The letter explained that Hershey was America’s number one candy bar and they didn’t need to advertise. For his efforts Sammy also got a 5 lb Hershey Bar and a $25 gift certificate.

Just before the spring break that first year, someone stole my “Ms. K-S” desk chair and replaced it with a straight back wooden one that didn’t tilt. All my investigative questioning was to no avail. My search failed to turn up the missing chair. It wasn’t in the T-Wing, which led me to suspect it had been spirited off to the main building where some strange ass was resting in the very place where Miss Kashuba’s ass had once resided. The following September I liberated a brand new desk chair with lumbar support from a new teacher’s classroom in T-16. I chalked it up as my “right of seniority.”

All the time the rusty file cabinet in the back of my room slowly filled with my own personal effects and ungraded papers.

Over the years rumors of Miss Kashuba continued to circulate though fewer and further in between as those who had known her personally moved to other schools, retired and died. Joanna Bender, a Home Ec teacher, reported seeing Miss Kashuba in Brooklyn wheeling a carriage with twins through a shopping mall while dragging a toddler by the arm. “And she was fat and unkempt.” Mr. Franks, a flamboyant-bordering-on-gay social studies teacher said she tended bar in The Pines on Fire Island during the summer. And Tony Palumbo, a math teacher and former boyfriend, said that she had moved to become a showgirl in Vegas.

In my head her voice grew fainter, but it never disappeared completely. My mind often wandered as I wondered what Miss Kashuba was doing that very minute I was teaching The Raft, a 213 page non-fiction book by Robert Trumbull about three World War II naval airmen adrift for thirty-four days on the Pacific in a leaky rubber raft. The book’s potential was overshadowed by the ho-hum manner the story was told. It put the kids to sleep and me on automatic pilot, especially after two or three years reading it with five classes. The whole thing might have been better condensed, reduced to a short story, a single page, one paragraph. “The plane crashed. The three guys got into a raft. The survived 34 days with almost no water and the very little food they caught. They were rescued. Period.” I thought about Miss Kashuba as I read about Old Yeller’s demise to the sobbing classes, and at the end of Daniel Keyes short story, “Flowers for Algernon,” when re-retarded Charlie Gordon says farewell to Miss Kinnian in a note asking her to put flowers on his dead mouse Algernon’s grave – “Good-by Miss Kinnian and Dr Strauss and evreybody. And P.S. please tell Dr Nemur not to be such a grouch when pepul laff at him and he would have more frends. Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you. Im going to have lots of frends where I go. P.P.S. Please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard....”

Sometimes I thought of Miss Kashuba while I stared through the cracked glass of T-3, across the grass of the open space between the U arms of the T-Wing and I watched Mrs. Whiting’s rectangular bathroom window illuminate. The light projected her moving silhouette against the frosted glass and the unsuspecting assistant principal sat and stood, sat and stood all day, every day in the course of her administrative duties. My head filled with images of the lithe and supple Miss Kashuba in the Peace Corps peeing in the bushes, tantalizing all those South American men with her straight white American smile and her big American breasts. The conjured pictures of her traipsing through Europe on $5 a day armed only with her backpack, a bottle of Midol, some loose tampons, a supply of birth control pills and a back up pair of underwear excited me.
Passing through the various stages of my life – marriage, parenthood, divorce – I wondered where she was in hers. Had Miss Kashuba ever married? Did she have kids? Had she suffered the pangs of life and collected the scars of living it along the way? Did she find true love in the arms of Juan García Quesada, her Venezuelan coffee farmer? Was she – is she happy?

To this day Miss Kashuba is with me still, well beyond my teaching career and deep into retirement. We have grown old together, Miss Kashuba and I, grown wider and wiser, slower and whiter. I think of her at the oddest moments – during visits with my various doctors, before a routine colonoscopy, standing in line at CVS waiting to have my Lipitor refilled. Has she ever been seriously ill? I think of her while planning vacations. I wonder if Miss Kashuba has ever been to Australia? And I think of her on those long nights when I am alone and can’t sleep, wondering if she is alone and sleepless too. But mostly I think of Miss Kashuba, wherever she may be, whenever I see hanging on the hook in my basement that small hand broom and metal dust pan with the faded monogram, “Ms. K-S,” the very one I took with me on my last day.

© 2012 Joseph E. Scalia

Sliced Tomatoes

In the Jewish neighborhoods he was known as the master of vegetables. The orthodox women hardly talked to him, except to call out their orders in Yiddish, enough of which he understood, or to haggle about his prices or the accuracy of the weight on his scale that hung from the side of his wagon. To them he was Morris, the fruit man, the maven of tomatoes. And even though his name wasn’t Morris, he always answered to it. And he used the Yiddish he had learned to sweet talk the women who complained the most. “I will never get rich if all my customers are like you,” he said with a smile, always throwing a little extra into the bags to keep them happy.

On the Spanish blocks he was to produce what El Exigenté, the demanding one, was to coffee. The kids chased along beside the peddler on the sidewalk pacing his tired horse, Bianca, an old swaybacked mare that was more mottled gray than white. Some urged the horse to giddyap, while others shouted for her to whoa. Most times the old mare just ignored them. Sometimes she raised her tail and dropped “road apples” on the pavement while the little kids laughed and pointed. The older boys on their bikes circling the wagon like the cowboy and Indian movies they’d seen at the Loew’s Oriental on 86th Street at the Saturday matinees, picked them up and threw them at one another. They called to Roberto, el rey de frutas y verdures, the undisputed king of the fruits and the vegetables, to toss them some of the bruised fruit the over ripe bananas he pulled from the bins on his wagon to keep his stock fresh. And he always did. He prided himself on the widest selection of items, from succulent summer peaches to the most exotic melons, from string beans to eggplants, never too young, never too ripe and never bruised.

Bianca knew the daily routine, weaving her way slowly up and down the one way streets, stopping in front of the same houses whether he was on board holding the reins or walking beside her on the sidewalk calling, “Fruit man! Fruit Man!” She knew to turn just one block before the black neighborhood began where the people wanted everything for nothing, and she headed back toward the Italians in Bensonhurst. That was where they lived and where she knew he would put on her feedbag.

One late afternoon of a particularly long day, she was especially restless and exceptionally hungry, despite the occasional apples he had fed her along the route. She had complained all morning until well after noon, while he negotiated prices with the customers. That was when she snorted, clumped her metal shoes on the warm asphalt, neighed and pulled the reins free from where they were loosely tied to the wooden brake next to the empty seat. Without warning she began to move and soon she was trotting away. He called at her to stop and cursed, shaking his fists at the horse as he chased after her on his old legs, but when she turned at the corner he watched her disappear into the traffic, pulling wagon and spilling fruits and vegetables on the street behind her.

A long hour later, perspired and hot, wiping his face with the bandanna he always carried folded neatly in his back pocket and used as a cloth when he ate his lunch, he found her standing docilely at the curb 57th Street waiting for him on in front of the Mrs. Mascucci’s house, where they ate lunch every day. The peddler had known her husband from the old country, and after the man died he made it a point to stop there each day and look after her.

“What happened to you, Fonz?” she called to him with easy familiarity in Italian, using the shortened form of Alfonso that was his real name. “We thought maybe you fell off. Or maybe the gypsies on Second Avenue took you.”

The other women laughed. They had already picked through the fruits and vegetables and filled their own orders and weighed them before Fonz arrived. They used the assorted paper bags he carried on the wagon, making change and leaving their payment in the cash box that was in the driver’s seat.

“We watered the horse with the hose and gave her a bucket to drink, but it looks like she wants to eat.”

“Ah, signora,” he answered in the same Neapolitan dialect, “I knew she would be here.” He smacked the horse on her haunch and the sound made Bianca lift her head and turn back her ears. “This horse knows the route better than I do, and she is quick to remind me where to stop and when to move on. But today she made me take a long, hot walk in the sun. You are a bad horse,” he said in a scolding tone, “and should be made into glue.” But then he rubbed her spotted coat lovingly.

He found the old leather feedbag in the seat on top of the wagon and filled it with oats. Then he slipped the bag over her muzzle and set the strap behind her ears. When he saw that she was quietly munching he retrieved his own lunch, a sandwich made by his wife on Italian bread and wrapped in waxed paper, along with pieces of fruit that were bundled in a brown cloth sack. “I tell my wife, signora, I don’t need the fruit,” he said on more than one occasion. “That I have more fruit on the wagon than I could ever eat. But she insists. You know how women are. And she packs it anyway, fresh figs from the tree.” He showed her. “And sometimes maybe a home grown tomato or two from the garden.”

They climbed up the front steps to the little table and four wooden chairs she prepared for him every day with a carafe of home made red wine and two glass tumblers. He first pulled out her chair and then his own before he opened his bandanna, placed it carefully on the table and laid down the sack of food. She turned over the tumblers and poured some wine for the both of them, half a glass for her and a full one for him. It was their ritual, one they had practiced for years.

“Giuseppe,” she called to her grandson who standing on the sidewalk watching the horse shoo flies with her flicking tail, twitching her leg when the landed there, “you go get the jar of cold water from the ice box for Fonz,” she said in accented English. “And some glasses. But don’t drop them.”

When the screen door slammed behind the boy she reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a brown bag that she handed over to him. It was another of their rituals, one started more recently after her grandson, a finicky eater at best, discovered the fruit peddler’s lunch one afternoon and the man offered part of his sandwich to the boy. Every day after that he looked forward to Fonz’s arrival and lunchtime, relishing whatever the man unwrapped, eating things he would never consider even trying when his mother cooked it. Over the weeks he had devoured yellow squash flowers egg-battered and fried golden brown with onions, cold zucchini circles sliced thin and sauteed in olive oil, marinated in vinegar and garlic with fresh mint leaves that added flavor, green peppers over-stuffed with seasoned breadcrumbs, steamed artichokes that looked strange and tasted delicious, and even fried calamari that made his throat close whenever he smelled it cooking in his mother’s kitchen.

Soon the boy returned with the water, balancing three fragile glasses that he set down carefully on the table.

“So, Giuseppe, shall we see what Mrs. Fonz packed for us to eat today?” he asked, winking at the woman. He unwrapped his sandwich and nodded. “It looks like una bella frittata of potatoes and eggs and some peppers and onions too. And for you?” He handed over the other bag that the boy opened, peeling aside the aluminum foil to show him. “Eggplant parmesan,” he said, looking at the little hero sandwich, the heel of the Italian bread overflowed with eggplant in tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. ”Better than what she made for me, I think. Maybe we can trade,” he joked, but the boy bit into the sandwich and chewed contentedly.

“Your mother made eggplant last night,” his grandmother said, “and you wouldn’t even taste it.”

“That’s because her eggplant isn’t as good as the kind Mrs. Fonz makes,” he said with his mouth full.

And for a few minutes they both sat in silence eating their lunches. Fonz finished his wine and she went to pour him a second glass.

“No, grazie, signora,” he said. “Bianca and I still have miles to go before the day is over.” He reached into his pocket and removed a folding knife that he opened and wiped carefully on his bandanna. “But maybe some of this.” He picked up the large red tomato his wife had packed for him. He cut through the skin with the sharp blade, creating perfect precision slices uniformly thick without damaging the fruit. He handed over one of the slices to each of them.

“Good luck with that,” she said biting into hers. “This boy never eats tomatoes. He even has butter on his macaronis.”

“What?” Fonz asked. “You don’t like tomatoes? What kind of Italian are you? Sicilian?” he joked.

His grandmother laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Ah, what can you do? His father’s family is from Sicily,” she said with a tone that was lost on Giuseppe.

“Well,” he said, turning his attention back on to boy, “I am a tomato expert, you know. Not only do I sell them, all kinds, plum tomatoes your grandmother makes into her delicious sauce, big red tomatoes for salads and for slicing with olive oil and oregano. But I grow them too. And I have eaten them cooked, raw, red, yellow and green, for more than sixty years. Even in my breakfast cereal! So I am quite the expert. Maybe you just think you don’t like them because you haven’t tasted these special tomatoes from my garden the way I like to eat them.” He pulled two slices of fried potato from his lunch, large almost perfect circles, and he put them on each side of the tomato. “It’s a very special potato-tomato sandwich,” he said and handed it over to Giuseppe.

The boy held it between his fingers like a cookie, examined it, and after the slightest hesitation he took a bite. A smile spread across his face. “Delicious!” he said. “I love potato-tomatoes,” and he gobbled it down in three bites, looking for more.

His grandmother laughed again and she shook her head. “Only from you, Fonz,” she said. “Only from you.”

Fonz nodded and patted the woman’s hand. “As with so many things in life, signora, it is all in the presentation,” he said.

© 2010 Joseph E. Scalia

Read Chapter One of Pearl

Pearl

A New Chapter in an Old Story

by Joseph E. Scalia

Chapter I

Lucio lived in the cluster of dusty shacks and metal Quonset huts on the outskirts of La Paz. For generations his people had lived, and worked, and died here. Rarely did a person born in this little Mexican village ever leave it, or even travel very far. This was the only home they ever knew for their entire life, and it was the world to them.

Although the people were not all related by blood, in a family sense, they were bound together by the blood that they spilled in the daily struggles to survive. And it was this that brought them even closer than any family. By chance they were thrown together, but of necessity they were united—against the tantrums of nature manifested in the violent storms that sometimes blew out of the Sea of Cortez, now called the Gulf of California. Periodically, as though willed by the vengeful gods, the winds ripped through the estuary, destroying the houses fashioned from rusted metal and corrugated tin, the rough wooden shacks made from packing crates, and left the people without homes. With great determination they battled the sea, that was at once their friend, providing them with life, and their enemy, often taking away the very lives of so many of these poor fishers.

Together the people celebrated life. They rejoiced in the marriages of their young, and were hopeful with the birth of each new child. And together they mourned, for they were no strangers to Death. Death was something that came and found them much too easily, often assuming the guise of accident and chance. He was a figure who hovered in the dark corners of a room, who came to them in the form of sickness, starvation and in childbirth, or from the stinging bite of a snake. Death was a silent passenger who daily rode with them in their fishing boats, or appeared suddenly in the violent Gulf storms. Death waited in the jaws of the sharks that threatened their fragile lives forty feet below the surface of the blue waters, where the fishers dived for pearls. Here, with only as much air as a man could hold in his lungs, and a diving knife for protection, a pearl fisher struggled to tear Luck loose with the oysters that clung to the coral reefs. And because Death was always so near, the people weren't afraid, but they had learned to accept him with resigned indifference, as the inevitable and sometimes welcome conclusion to a hard life.

It was the tearful women of the village who carefully washed and wrapped the dead, preparing them for burial. And it was the stoical men who carried them to the sacred ground of the cemetery behind the large church. There the tired old priest sprinkled holy water with indifference on the crude wooden coffins, and said his mumbled magic prayers that liberated their souls and elevated them to a better, easier eternal life.

Luck was real and important to these people, as real to them as their religion, that had become a curious blend of Christianity mingled with the old Indian beliefs, from the time before the strangers came to change their lives forever. To them Luck was as tangible and palpable as the Christian God, who lived inside their church. So daily the people prayed to the infant Christ to send Luck on a visit whenever they marked their numbers for the lottery. They lit candles to coax the crucified Jesus, to move God the Father, and the other ancient gods, to send Luck to the Gulf floor whenever they dived for pearls. This trinity of Luck, Religion and Superstition, second only to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, colored every facet of the people's being, and gave meaning to their lives. But even if the gods refused their request for fortune, the people still prayed for Luck, for they knew that often it was only by courting Luck that Death could be avoided.

And in their deepest desperation, the people of La Paz always maintained their impossible dreams, and their fervent hopes. They said their prayers of being blessed some day, of finding a pearl that might give some comfort to their difficult lives and change them for the better. And because this was the way it was in La Paz, it was also how they viewed the world.

Lucio was just one fisherman in La Paz. He was a young man, strong, and dependable. Everyone in the village knew that he was someone to be counted on whenever there was hard work to be done, whenever there was the need of another pair of hands, or a strong back. And Lucio was handsome too. In the day time, when he wandered by the houses of his neighbors on his way to the beach, or into the city to sell his pearls to the buyers, all the little girls giggled and called to him when he passed, "Good morning, Lucio. How are you today, Lucio?"

The young women, who were more reserved, smiled shyly if they caught his glance, or they hid their faces as he went by them, and they blushed behind their hands, to cover their embarrassment that Lucio might be able to read their secret thoughts from their eyes. Often at night time under the security of darkness, when the only sounds were those of sleep, it was Lucio who entered the dreams of these same young women. So now when they saw him pass in the daylight it made them blush even more.

But as Lucio walked by, he always held his head high and kept his eyes focused straight ahead. This was done not out of any sense of pride or conceit, but out of innocence. For Lucio was a simple man who never considered what effect he might have on the hearts of these young daughters of his neighbors. He did not give this a single thought, as he hardly gave a thought to any of them.

However, there was one young woman, Corina, the only daughter of Ernesto and Helena, who was special to him. As a child, he took an interest in Corina and protected her when they played together. Then, when he was older and had to give up play to learn fishing with his father, he often looked for her on the beach where she remained with the other young girls. And Corina watched Lucio as well, worrying him safely home on stormy days, waiting for his boat to return.After the death of Lucio's father, whose life was taken by the sharks in a dive for pearls, and after the death of his mother from her sorrow, Lucio was alone in the world. Then it was Ernesto who became like his second father, completing Lucio's education, teaching him the secrets that would enable him to hold his breath just a little longer to take more oysters on every dive. And it was Ernesto's wife Helena, and their budding flower, Corina, who brought Lucio food to keep up his strength, and provided some solace for his sorrow, until he was able to deal with his great loss.

It was no wonder that this same girl, Corina, having grown into a beautiful young woman, who often found her way into Lucio's secret thoughts, and into his plans for the future. He knew that some day, when he picked someone to marry, it would be no one but Corina, if she would have him. But Lucio also knew that marriage could come only when he had the money to support a wife and the means to provide for the children that would inevitably follow.

So, for the present, Lucio put the thought of Corina and the dream of marriage out of his mind. And although he felt the occasional loneliness of a bachelor, and sometimes he yearned for the warmth and softness of a wife who would comfort his nights, Lucio was glad most often that the only worries that filled his head were for his own survival, and for the illusive pearls that he hunted. Now, at least, his only concern had to be for himself.

Like the other pearl fishers, Lucio prayed to Our Lady of Loretto, the Virgin Mother of the Christ Child, to intercede on his behalf with her Son for the good fortune to find just one pearl to change his life. Sometimes, before a dive, Lucio threatened, and sometimes he pleaded directly with God the Father, and with all his ancient gods, bargaining with them for good luck. Lucio made a solemn promise that if his prayers were answered he would tithe and donate a tenth of his fortune to the church in La Paz. And he would make generous contributions to the poor as well. Lucio knew that this was just a fancy, as remote a chance as picking the winning numbers in the national lottery. But there was a part of him that secretly believed it could all come to pass, and that thought gave Lucio some hope.

La Paz was known for the beauty of its pearls, collected and used by the Aztec artisans in their work, even before Columbus arrived in the New World more than five hundred years ago. When the plunderers came over the blue water in their floating houses, with their horses and their gunpowder and their new religion, they were welcomed as gods. And in return they conquered the people, who greeted them with open arms. They stripped the Gulf of its treasure, sending back large fortunes of gold, silver and pearls in their strange wooden ships to adorn the robes of Spanish kings, of European nobles, and of Catholic popes. The gold and silver were pure and the pearls were cheap, gathered at the cost of the Indian lives which were expendable. For centuries these strangers enslaved and exploited the people and dominated the land and sea.

Even after the stranglehold of Spanish colonialism was broken, the next onslaught that swept south along the Baja into La Paz, came from corrupt government officials in far away Mexico City. And nothing changed for the pearl fishers, except the faces of the strangers who lined their pockets with wealth and almost depleted what remained of the pearls.

In the last remaining years of the 20th century, the invasion came in the form of big North Americano petroleum companies in search of cheap oil to fuel the fancy cars of gringos in the U.S. They were followed by a flood of manufacturers eager for laborers to assemble their machines or sew their expensive labels on clothing and sneakers. A prosperity came to the Baja, as up and down the coast mechanical monsters drilled the sea and tore up the land. But it was a prosperity for the very strangers who built the factories, the vacation homes, the condominiums for the gringo businessmen who managed these factories and needed a place to escape the pressures of their lives. And it was a prosperity for the officials in Mexico City, eager to line their pockets with easy money and bribes. They passed the laws to protect these new conquistadors, again handing over land they didn't own and sacrificing people they didn't know. And the city of La Paz became the new Mecca for hordes of speculators who, like Midas, turned cheap land into gold. Soon vacationing gringos clogged the barren streets, fast food chains mushroomed beside the quaint shops, and the once pure waters of the Gulf filled with dead fish and pollution. Foul oil and gasoline from industrial spills, and the many pleasure boats that put into the estuary, smothered the young oysters and threatened to destroy all that once had been. Now Lucio and his people, even in the middle of such wealth, were lucky if they could wrestle from the sea just enough pearls to survive.

Lucio padded over the rubble that covered the beach. Through the thin rubber soles of his sandals, made from the automobile tires discarded by the new gringo factory, he could feel hundreds of years of history in the generations of broken oyster shells that mixed with the coarse beach sand. Lucio stopped to remove from his sandal a piece of purple shell, rounded and smoothed and made almost translucent by the countless eons of waves that washed into the estuary. He examined it with the intense interest of an expert in such shells, trying to determine its age, wondering if, perhaps, it was part of an oyster that once contained a great pearl. He considered who the man might have been who pulled this shell from the sea, and what his life had been like. He wondered if the man might have been related to Lucio in some way. Maybe, he thought, the shell might have simply been carried by a hungry gull who dropped the oyster, causing it to smash on the rocks. Often had he seen these birds cheat starvation by such cleverness. Lucio turned it over again in his hand, and then he tossed the shell away.

Carefully he made his way toward the place where he and his neighbors beached the brightly colored fishing boats with their proud, high bows and the short, sturdy masts that could support a small homemade canvas sail. Such boats could easily pull a man over the breakers to the blue waters beyond, where the oysters and the fish played out the drama of their lives.Lucio's boat lay on the beach above the dark water line of seaweed and foam that marked high tide. Like the other boats, it was painted and plastered, layer upon layer, with the secret formula of preservative known only to the fishermen of La Paz. The secret was something that had been handed down, over the generations, from father to son. Though each of the boats might appear to be the same to the inexperienced eye, each one was different. Each boat had a life, a soul and a personality of its own. Every fisherman took special pride in caring for his boat, that was, at once, his livelihood and his life, his identity and his status in La Paz. And so the fishermen treated them with tenderness and love and respect.

The gleaming surface of Lucio's canoe was painted and decorated with unique and ancient designs that identified this boat as his own. Once it had belonged to his grandfather, Kino, a pearl fisher who was well known and well respected in La Paz. Even nearly a century later, the stories were told of Kino, his wife, Juana, who was Lucio's grandmother, and their first child, Coyotito. They were an important part of the history of the village. And people still told stories of how long ago, the young Kino had once found the "Pearl of the World," the largest, most perfect, most beautiful pearl ever taken from the Gulf waters, a pearl easily worth a hundred thousand pesos. They told how Kino's prayers of being a rich man, of having a better life for his family, were answered. And they told how it had all been taken from him by the evil that came from the city.

There were those old ones still alive, who said they remembered, though they were only children then, how Kino, in a final act of defiance against the corruption that had ruined his life, threw his great pearl back into the Gulf in full view of the entire village. These same old ones also told how Kino and Juana's first baby, Coyotito, had been killed by the evil unleashed from the great pearl. They told how Chance had sent a bullet through the top of the baby's head. These stories endured in the people's hearts, and in their minds. And because they were told over and again, they had become legend in the village, mythical, a central part of the lore for the people who lived there. The story of Kino and Juana's tragedy was taken as a warning to everyone: "Be careful what you wish for. The gods just may give you what you ask." Still there were others who regarded it as a sign of hope.

Lucio knew all of the stories, and he knew the old place at the back of the holy cemetery where worn stone crosses marked the graves of Kino, Juana, Coyotito, as well as the others who came after, including the recent graves of his own father and mother.

Lucio patted the smooth sides of his boat as one might caress the flank of a horse, or the arm of a loved one. He knew every inch of this boat that had come to him from Kino through his father. Lucio knew even the place at the bottom where once a hole had been broken through. Lucio's father had told his young son the story many times. How the hole had been made by dark forces to prevent Kino from leaving La Paz with his great pearl to get a fair price for it in Mexico City, more than a thousand miles from La Paz. That was long before Lucio's father had been born. And even though the surface of the canoe had been repaired and restored with years of the secret plaster, Lucio could still trace with his fingers, the edge of the break, like the almost faded scar of a wound long healed.

Lucio often thought about these stories, and how his life might have been different if Kino had sold his "Pearl of the World," and kept his fortune of a hundred thousand pesos. Then Lucio would have been born into wealth, and lived in a real house in the city. It was a pleasant daydream, one that brought a smile to Lucio's face, as he imagined his life as it could have been, but he couldn't afford the luxury of indulging these fantasies for long. Sobering reality told him if he wanted to survive, if he wanted to eat, he had work to do.

Lucio checked that all his equipment was ready for the day's fishing — his old net, repaired many times, his harpoon with a place at the end to tie a line so it wouldn't be lost in the sea or in the back of some large fish, his diving rock and basket, the coils of rope that were his life line. He felt in his belt for his knife. And though some part of Lucio believed that a man was ultimately powerless to change his fate, another part of him knew he had to be prepared for all the possibilities.

A pearl fisher didn't expect pearls. They came by luck. And Lucio knew that Luck was a spoiled child, a fickle lover. The illusive pearls, if there might be any at all, were only faint promise of a man's future. Not every oyster contained a pearl, and not every pearl was a good one. A pearl fisher in possession of a pearl had to sell it to the buyers in the city, and a pearl fisher was at the mercy of these men who were stingy parting with their money.

Sometimes, Lucio knew, in order to change his luck when it was bad, in order to find a pearl when one had eluded him for a long time, he must forget about pearls completely. Sometimes, he knew, he must turn his attention to fishing with a net or a harpoon, and turn his back on Luck and on the reluctant pearls. As pleasant as it was to dream of being a rich man, Lucio knew it was better having food to put in his stomach. A fish could be eaten, and some, if the catch was big enough, might be sold. Even a single fish gave a man life, at least for another day. To Lucio that was reality.

Already the sun was a red blister on the blue sky. Lucio shaded his eyes with his hand, and he could see the masts and the sails of some of the other fishers off in the distance. He bent his back against the side of his boat and strained until it grated across the sand and shells, inched along the beach and came alive when it felt the water. Expertly he set the mast and hoisted the sail. The wind, that came across the land and carried with it the strange smells from the city, filled the orange and blue striped canvas, patched over and again, and pulled the tiny boat and its pilot over the breakers and toward the sun.

The prow cut the calm water like the blade of a sharp knife slices through a man's soft skin. Lucio pressed against the tiller and guided his boat to a place about a half mile from the shore where the water formed a deep basin. It was not a place he could take oysters because the water was too deep to dive, but it was ideal for fishing. Often the larger fish chased the little ones into the pool and trapped them there, feeding until they were sated. The pool was a place of death for the fish, and it was a place of life as well, for a skillful fisherman could fill his boat with only a few casts of his net.

Lucio steadied himself, and he set the sea anchor that would catch the water and keep the boat from drifting too far. He turned from the late morning sun toward the shore and the light threw his shadow across the top of the water. Lucio reached into the bottom of the boat for his casting net. The circular net was weighted along the edges so it could be thrown. A coiled rope, long enough for casting, connected with another that formed the circumference of the net, so that the open net could easily be drawn closed like a sack. It was an ancient and efficient device that had changed little over the centuries, a deadly tool in the hands of a skilled fisherman. Opened, it covered a vast expanse of water. Closed, it became a trap, ensnaring whatever had the misfortune of swimming below the surface in the path of the lethal net.

Lucio felt the boat move under his feet as the gentle swells rose and fell. Off to his right a scatter of silver fish broke the surface of the water. He knew the larger fish were feeding somewhere below him, sending these sweet and tender little ones to the surface. Once more Lucio checked the net, and he looped the end of the casting rope around his wrist. He couldn't afford to lose this net. Then he pulled back his arm and prepared to make his first cast into the center of the school of panicked fish.

His eye caught the movement of a long, dark shadow deeper in the water, and he snapped his arms with the practiced timing of an expert. The weighted net arched out and hung briefly in the air, a perfect circle, before it fell. At the same time a shark's dorsal fin sliced through the water toward the center of its panicked prey. The net landed in the very path of the big fish, causing the shark to alter its course directly toward Lucio's boat.

The shark hit the boat broadside with surprising power, and the force tumbled Lucio into the churning water among the panicked fish. He tried desperately to regain the surface, to lift himself into the boat and out of danger, but the casting rope that enabled him to pull in the fishing net had tightened around Lucio's wrist. He fumbled with the wet rope, but the slip knot wouldn't yield. The net was caught around the shark's nose, snagged in the teeth of its gaping mouth. The startled, powerful fish turned and dragged Lucio deeper under the water, trailing him like the tail attached to the end of a child's kite.

Normally Lucio could hold his breath for more than three minutes, while he searched for pearls, but he had managed only a short breath before the shark pulled him down and the waters closed around him. Frantically he struggled to reach the knife in his belt to cut himself free. The pain was intense as the power of the startled fish almost pulled Lucio's arm from its socket, and the taut rope tightened even more around his wrist, stopping the flow of blood to his hand.

The shark picked up speed, taking Lucio lower and lower, to where the filtered light formed eerie shadows on the sand. The pressure pressed in on Lucio's ears and made his lungs feel as if they would explode. Lucio slashed desperately with his knife, but another sudden tug from the shark jerked out his arm just as the sharp blade sliced through rope and skin. Lucio's heart was pounding, and the constricted flow of his blood, suddenly released when the rope was severed, pumped like a dark cloud into the water. The effect on the shark was immediate, as it seemed to hesitate for just a second, scenting the water, and then made a wide turn, looking for this new the source of food.

The shark came up from below, directly at Lucio, with its craggy mouth open wide. Its dark, dead eyes were visible through the net that was still draped over the shark's face and was caught in the triangular teeth. Lucio jabbed at one eye with his knife and pulled on the fishing net with his other hand, trying to tighten it around the shark's jaws, or change its direction. Blood from his wound washed into the shark's mouth, jolting it like an electric shock or the first sharp taste of alcohol. The shark jerked to the left as Lucio swam down and to the right, heading for the bottom. Trailing blood, he scrambled into a small grotto between two large rocks, just ahead of the lunging shark. Lucio's head ached. His chest felt compressed, as under a huge weight, and his lungs were ready to burst. He was dizzy from the lack of oxygen and the loss of blood. He could feel his vision fading and his mind clouding. He knew he had only a few more seconds before he would drown.

With every ounce of strength that remained, Lucio prayed frantically to the Virgin Mary, to his dead parents, to Kino, and to all his dead relatives. And then a little miracle happened in the form of a bright orange fish that swam directly into the path of the frenzied shark. Lucio watched as the frustrated predator took the fish with a snap of its huge jaws, shaking it viciously and breaking it in two. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the shark swam away and disappeared into the shadows.

Lucio whispered a quick prayer of thanks to God the Father and the other ancient gods of his ancestors. Looking down, he saw the reflection of something shiny on the sandy bottom between the rocks where he was hidden. He grabbed for it and closed the hand of his injured arm around the object. His legs kicked off the bottom like a taut spring, and Lucio swam frantically for the surface, his lungs screaming for air.

When his head broke through the water he saw that his boat was less than twenty yards away. In seconds he had pulled himself over the side and he was safe. With the blood still pumping from the gash in his arm, Lucio wrapped it with a piece of fishing line he found on the bottom of the boat, tying off the knot with his teeth. He watched as the flow of blood eventually slowed and almost stopped.

It was then that Lucio realized that the fist of his injured arm was still tightly closed. Slowly and painfully he had to pry open his fingers with his other hand. Lucio stared in disbelief and his mouth dropped open with the surprise of what he saw. In the bloody palm of his hand he held a large and beautiful pearl, one such as Lucio had never seen before. This was the pearl of his dreams.And a small stream of Lucio's blood trickled down his arm, and it mixed with the essence of the pearl, so that the two, Lucio and the pearl, became one, before his eyes closed and he passed out.

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Read Chapter One of FREAKs

FREAKs by Joseph E. Scalia

Chapter One My name is Hilda, but people call me Hildy. Hilda is a German name. My mother was German, and French a little. My father is American. I mean real American, from before Columbus. He's part Cherokee, and a whole lot of other stuff. I guess that makes me a mutt. I used to go to Vanderville Junior High School on Long Island, in Nassau County. That was last year. Before that I went to schools in California, Michigan, Texas, and a couple of other places I can't even remember. I'm fifteen, almost, and already I've lived in more places than anybody I know. We travel a lot, Daddy and me. My mother is dead. I guess my story really starts with her. She was a dancer. Not the ballroom type. She danced classical ballet. She committed suicide, I think, when I was just a little baby, so I don't remember her. We don't talk about it much, so I'm really not sure. Besides Daddy, my only other family is Grandma Olga and Grandpa Louis, my mother's parents. I lived with them for a few years when I was a baby, so we're pretty close. They used to have a big house in Connecticut, but now they're retired to Florida, so I don't see them too often. Sometimes when Daddy looks at me, I know he's seeing my mother. He has a picture of her that he keeps in a silver frame. She was beautiful. Daddy says I look exactly like her. I don't really think so, but that's what he says. Maybe I do, in a way. My father thinks I'm beautiful, but I've never regarded myself as even pretty. He calls me his "precious gem." He's a Romantic and I'm a Realist. Everything about me is average. My height, my weight. My brown hair is kind of mousy and I keep it cut short like a boy's. Less trouble that way. I wear glasses when I read, that leave little red dents on the sides of my nose. And there are braces on my teeth. Two thousand dollars worth of orthodontia work that Daddy is still paying off in installments to Dr. Gresham in Van Nuys, California. Like I said, I'm a realist. My parents met while my mother was dancing with a small touring ballet company. Daddy said he fell in love the moment he saw her, and he followed her around the country until she agreed to marry him. It was all very romantic. It was a terrible shock for him when she died. That was soon after I was born. I'm still not exactly clear about what happened, and maybe I won't ever know for sure. But I guess it's like Daddy says, sometimes bad things happen to good people. Then Daddy started drinking and he lost his job. He left me with Grandma Olga for a while and took off somewhere, until he could "sort things out," he said. It took him a while because I was four when he came back. There was a terrible fight with my grandparents when he announced that he was taking me with him. For a while we just drifted from place to place, getting by a day at a time, but we had fun. I guess Daddy was still trying to forget, but he couldn't. That's the way it is, you know, you can't forget the people you love. And that's only right. I love the dance too. It's something I probably inherited from my mother. I used to dream about becoming a prima ballerina. Sometimes still, I just stand in front of the mirror studying myself in the various dance positions. Well, not so much anymore. And I used to have this fantasy about dancing a command performance for the President of the United States or the Queen of England or somebody, to a standing audience. I know it's silly and it's only a fantasy, and I'll never really do it. You see, I was born with a congenital hip defect and I had to wear a leg brace for a long time. I still walk with a limp. I hate the word handicapped. My father says they handicap horses. And golfers have a handicap too. So anytime somebody says that I'm handicapped, I picture myself with a silly bunch of golfers dragging around a bunch of horses while we're trying to hit little white golf balls all over the place. It's good for a laugh. I have to admit for a while I felt kind of responsible for my mother's death. After all, I was the imperfect product of two perfect people. Once I tried to talk about it to Mrs. Pierce, the school psychologist in one of the schools I went to, but Daddy packed us up before I really got a chance, and we moved to another job in another part of the country. It's not that I feel guilty exactly, and Daddy doesn't blame me, I know. He still feels responsible himself. It's just that I can't help thinking how different things could have been in life if I was born normal, and if my mother was still alive. Well, that's just some of the old stuff that I think about sometimes. And there's more, like everything that happened this past year in Vanderville. It's all still a jumble in my mind, and I haven't quite sorted things out. But I wonder why God-if there is a God-why He just sits around and allows some things to happen. If I sound kind of like a philosopher, I guess it's because I am in a way. In all the hours that I've spent alone, I've had lots of time to think, and to read. More than most kids, I guess. Because of the way I was born, my life, so far, has certainly been different. I guess I am different from other girls my age, and not just because of my hip, I mean. It's not that I don't think about boys and nice clothes and makeup and stuff. It's just that the way things have turned out, those things aren't that important to me. Anyway, it was the first day of school, my first day, I mean. The school year was pretty much well into the first semester when I got there. We had just moved to Long Island from Houston, Texas, and Daddy rented a little house for us in Nassau County. He had a new job with an electronics company that made parts for the Space Shuttle or something. Daddy's real smart, and he's had lots of jobs, so he can do almost anything. A jack of all trades. Grandma Olga calls him "scattered." She says he doesn't apply himself, so he won't ever amount to much. But I don't think that's true, and I think she says it because she's still angry at him about the way things turned out. I was sitting outside the Guidance Office of Vanderville Junior High School, holding the books that my father had picked up when he registered me for school the day before. I didn't particularly like the idea of being the "forever-new-girl" in school, but from all that moving around I had lots of experience. At least I had a lot of practice, and I wasn't nervous. Well, maybe just a little. From what I had seen of Vanderville, it wasn't much different from the other places I'd been. It looked like a school. The sounds that I heard from my seat sounded like a school. It even smelled like a school. You know, a mixture of old tuna fish sandwiches, chalk dust and gym socks. The principal, a Mr. Fagan, was a nervous looking man, who seemed very busy when he rushed through the office. He didn't say anything to me, but he kind of smiled a little and ran out. I was waiting for Mr. Gentile, my new guidance counselor, who was out to lunch. When he arrived, I was doing dance exercises in my mind, in time with the music of the secretaries clicking out their work on computer keyboards. He was thin, thirty-five about, kind of cute and out of breath. He had nice eyes. It's the eyes that I usually notice first about people. Mr. Gentile had gentle eyes. But his fingers were stained yellow from smoking a lot, and I could smell tobacco on his clothes. "I'm sorry I'm late," he said with a rush. "Er... Miss Crocket?" He looked at the index card he was holding. "Hilda. Why don't we go into my office? I have your schedule program made out, and a New Entrant slip for all your teachers to sign. Then I'll take you on a tour around the building. It's pretty big, but you'll get used to it. It won't be hard once you know where you're going." I stood up and took a step towards him. Because of my hip problem my right foot points in, and I move kind of on tip toes. Someone once described the way I walk as a string puppet with a twisted string. I liked to think of it as a special way of dancing. But poor Mr. Gentile wasn't ready for it. I guess no one had warned him. The smile on his face vanished and the expression in his eyes changed to fear and pity, just for a fraction of a second, until he recovered. I felt kind of sorry for him. He didn't know if he should help me, take my books, or ignore it. So I just smiled. We were out in the halls making the rounds of my classrooms. Mr. Gentile was right, it was a big building, but Vanderville wouldn't be too hard to negotiate. I had classes on every floor, and there were four of them. And I was scheduled for gym too. He apologized for that, and said he'd set up an alternate activities program so I could get course credit. "Of course I'll find you an elevator key, and an early dismissal pass so you'll have plenty of time to get from class to class. I'll call Transportation to make arrangements for the special bus. And maybe I can juggle some room changes so you won't have to-" "It's no bother, Mr. Gentile," I explained. "I actually prefer using the stairs. I'm really able to manage." Then the bell rang and a stampede of kids shook the building. I pressed myself against the lockers and allowed the stream to rush past, but poor Mr. Gentile was caught in the flood. He tried to battle his way back to me like a fish fighting the current. That was when I saw them walking in front of me, three boys, who had to be 9th Graders, in identical club jackets with WHEELS lettered on the back. They were strolling casually with their arms locked, holding up the crowd behind them. It made for a gigantic traffic jam. But nobody dared to push through, or tried to get around them. The three WHEELS were laughing and horsing around and having a great time. Then they spotted somebody coming from the other direction. He was a tall kid, but skinny and frail looking, with like zero muscle tone. And he was wearing tortoise rim glasses that made him look a bit doofie. You know the type that goes through life with a "Kick Me Hard" sign taped on his back and the word "Victim" written all over his face. The WHEELS changed direction, attaching themselves to him, and they headed back down the hall in my direction. "Well, well, well, if it isn't Jakove the Jack-Off!" one of them said loud enough for everybody to hear. "Oh, Harrison," another one mocked with a falsetto voice, "How are things in Fairyland, Jack-Off?" They circled him like sharks, but he didn't answer. He tried to ignore them, but I could see it in his eyes, a mixture of fear, contempt and resignation. "Don't you like us, gayboy? You never have anything to say to us." Harrison Jakove held his books tighter in his hands and against his body, bracing for what he knew was about to come. "I would stop and engage you in conversation guys, but I'd be late for my next class. And besides, I'd have to explain the meaning of too many words to you." His remark made me laugh, as the four of them stopped right in front of me. "You know," the biggest WHEEL said, "I get the feeling that the our pal Jack-Off doesn't like all the attention we show him." He laid his fat and sweaty hand on Jakove's shoulder and spun him around. Jakove tried to break away, but it was too late. He was caught and the others began turning him around and around in a circle, faster and faster, until he was too dizzy to stand up. There was a crowd around them laughing and cheering. I felt really sorry for the kid. "Just leave me alone, will you?" he protested as he staggered around. But that wasn't to be. Somebody put out a foot and somebody else slapped at his books, and Jakove was down on the floor in one direction, and his notebooks, loose-leaf and biology book in the other. I was standing right there practically pinned to the lockers. "Break it up!" Mr. Gentile yelled from across the hall. He was trying to push his way into the middle of things. "Are you all right, Harrison?" He helped him to his feet. "I think so." His glasses were crooked on his face. "But my books? My homework?" They were scattered all over the hall. Mr. Gentile glared at the WHEELS. "Galante," he said to the biggest one. He was trying hard to control his voice, but the veins in his forehead were sticking out. "What are you looking at me for? I didn't do it. Ask anybody." He turned to the kids around him. They were all shaking their heads. "Pick up those books, Galante. You and your friends pick up every one of those papers." "What for? We didn't do it. This kid is a spaz. He can't even walk straight." Everybody laughed. "I said pick them up!" Then the second bell rang. "That's the warning bell, Mr. Gentile. We don't want to be late for class. Will you write us all late passes?" Galante asked with unmistakable sarcasm. "Just get out of here, Galante. Everybody, go to class!" Mr. Gentile practically yelled and the crowd broke up. He picked up some of the papers and handed them to Harrison Jakove. When everything got back to normal, Mr. Gentile showed me to the rest of my classes. He apologized for what had happened and he hoped it wouldn't affect my opinion of Vanderville. He said that it really was a good school, with a very few exceptions. We ended up back in his office. I started school the next day.

If you would like to read more or purchase this book go to www.xlibris.com/FREAKs