Intimidation – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

EMPTY-DESK SYNDROME II: Oh, Danny Boy— It Is What It Is…

First: A Flashback from the End of Part I…

OK. One evening, right after dinner, I was sitting in my stuffed chair, reading some book or other, when I heard the phone ringing. I heard my wife picking up the phone in the next room and saying “Hello?” Then I could hear her murmuring something quietly.

Next thing I knew, she was standing next to my chair and looking down at me with a puzzled expression.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve got a phone call,” she said tentatively, looking perplexed.

“Who is it?”

“The County Sheriff.”

“The who?! The… County sheriff?! Jeez... what the hell?”

I got up, walked out to the kitchen, and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi. So… is this Mr. Lyford? Mr. Thomas Lyford?”

“It is. Why?”

“Tell me. Are you familiar with a Danny Brown, Mr. Lyford…?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Part II

“Ohmygod, yes!” That question! Coming right outta the blue like that! And from a sheriff! What the hell? What the hell had happened?! And why was I being called, for crying out loud?! “Why?! What’s this all about?!”

“Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Lyford. But when I told Danny I’d call his dad, he became really adamant that he didn’t want that. Instead he gave us your name. Insisted we call you. Which struck me as a bit unusual. So, just what, if I may ask, is the nature of your relationship with Danny?”

“Jesus. He’s alive then. Was he in an accident or something? Is he hurt?”

“Oh no. He’s not hurt. But again, I’m just curious here. What is it you are to him?”

“Well, after he got kicked out, expelled I mean, from MHS, the district hired me to be a tutor after the fact. To placate his mom. I was his English teacher anyway, before that. And it turned out I was apparently just about the only teacher Danny didn’t want to kick in the teeth. He liked me. So I sorta took him under my wing. And I’m no counselor or anything, but… well, it was sorta like I was… almost.”

“OK. Yeah. That square’s with what Danny’s telling us.”

“But anyway. I haven’t heard from Danny for a long while. And I’ve been seriously worried. So it really jumped me when you called. He just sorta up and disappeared on me. Ran away from home, you know?”

“Oh yes, I definitely know. So anyway, here’s the thing. A few days ago, Danny escaped from the Juvenile Correctional Center over in South Portland.”

“He what?! Wait… he was… inprison??? And then you’re saying he… escaped?!”

“Well, escaping from there is pretty easy to do. I mean, it’s not Rikers. Or Alcatraz.”

“Oh my God, I had no idea…”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“I mean, shit!”

“Yeah. So anyway… instead of his dad, he’s asking for you.”

“Me?! But what for?”

“Well, I guess… you could call this his one phone call.”

“Uhmmm… OK…?”

“So… if it’s at all possible, we’d like you to come down to the station.”

“What? Who, me?”

“Yeah. You busy?”

“What, you mean right now?!”

“Can you? I’d really appreciate it.”

“Well… whatever the heck can I do down there?”

“I don’t know. But he’s asked for you. You said you’d taken him under your wing. Maybe it’ll just give him a little comfort while we continue to interrogate him?”

“Interrogate? You’re interrogating him?”

“Much more like interviewing him. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. We’re not sweating him under a light bulb and beating him with a rubber hose. We’re just asking some questions, is all. Maybe with your presence, here it’ll make him feel a little more comfortable enough to level with us. You’ll see, when you get down here? OK?”

“Christ. OK. Be there in a few minutes.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I can’t tell you how weird, how kinda scary it felt to walk into a county jail under those circumstances. The place smelled pretty much like my National Guard armory, the smell of uniforms and guns and sweat, I guess. The man at the desk said, “One moment. I’ll get him.”

And the next minute I was shaking hands with the county sheriff. “Good of you to come down,” he said.

“I hardly know what to say, under the circumstances. It’s… nice to meet you?”

“Thanks. Likewise.”

“So. What now…?”

“Basically I just want you to sit in on the interview. I want you to watch him while it’s ongoing. Listen to his part of the dialogue, and then afterwards, just tell me what you think, OK?”

“I dunno. I can’t imagine how that’ll… OK. I guess.”

“So. Come on in. There’s a chair waiting for you.”

He opened the door and escorted me in. Man, that felt spooky. But Danny’s face brightened right up, the moment he saw me.

“Everybody? This is Mr. Thomas Lyford. Danny’s special tutor…”

“…and friend,” I added, shooting Danny the warmest smile I could muster. “Hey, Danny!”

I got a quiet, little, twinkly-eyed “hey,” back.

There were four other men in the room plus Danny seated around a table— two uniforms and two in civilian clothes. I don’t know who the hell they were, and there were no other attempts at introductions.

“So Danny,” said the sheriff. “I was about to ask. How long you been back in town before we pulled you in?”

Danny smiled, as if happy to finally be included. I have to say, he was looking very confident for a kid just freshly incarcerated and then interrogated. “Oh… I dunno.” Then looking calculatingly at the clock on the wall for a moment. “Maybe six, seven hours, give or take?”

“Hmmm,” said the sheriff, also consulting the clock. So… you weren’t in town last Saturday then?”

“Nope. Not even close.”

“So, exactly where were you? Saturday last.”

Danny cocked his head just a tad, one eye closed, looking within and flipping back through the pages of that calendar we all have in our heads. “That’d be Lewiston,” he said, nodding to himself.

“And what were you doing there?”

“Me, hey I got friends all over.”

“And you definitely weren’t here the day before yesterday?”

“Heck no. No way.”

“You’re absolutely sure about that. Right?”

“I said. Truth, I really wasn’t in no big hurry to roll back into town. And obviously, turns out I shouldn’t’ve come back here this afternoon, right?”

The sheriff, smiling. “Right. So then, why did you?”

“What, come back here?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged. “Guess I just missed the old hometown, right?”

And I was thinking, Jesus, Danny not only seems overloaded on confidence here. I get the feeling he’s actually ENJOYING this! And I don’t get that.

The sheriff seemed a tad flustered. Throwing up his hands, he said, “Well, if you weren’t here this past week, that leaves you out of this.”

This seemed to immediately pique Danny’s interest. He leaned in, frowning, to focus on the sheriff. “Out of what?”

Sheriff pushed himself back into his chair, getting himself comfortable like he was about to start telling a campfire story. “Well, to tell you the truth, a lot of copper’s been going missing all around here this week. Copper tubing. Pipes. You name it.”

“Hmmm,” Danny said, appreciatively. “No shit.”

“You know anyone around these parts that would be liable to pull that sort of caper off, Danny?”

At that, Danny barked a laugh right out loud, which startled everyone, especially me. “Come off it,” he said jovially. “You and I both do! You know I could name twenty-five kids, just up to the high school alone who, pulling off a stunt like that would be right up their alley! Same as you. On top of that, I could give you half a dozen names of some dumb-ass hillbilly adults in town, who’d be even better at it.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re right about that. Yeah.”

Danny’d got the sheriff nodding and grinning. And I was beginning to look at Danny in a whole new light.

“My best suggestion?” he said. “I’d check out my old man, if I was you. He ain’t no stranger at it, just sayin’.”

“OK. Will do. Want me to tell him you said Hi when I do that?”

I noted a flicker of darkness pass over Danny’s face before he put on a bigger grin and said, “Sure. He and I go way back.” Which got a little chuckle around the table. Which Danny noticed and seemed pleased by.

Sitting there and watching this gripping little drama unfold was like watching some weird docudrama on television. Because I was strictly a spectator, wasn’t a part of it at all. I mean, yeah, I was there. But what the hell was I even doing there?

“So Danny, another question. Maybe you can help me out on this. Where would anybody be likely to go, say, to try to unload a stash of copper around here? I mean, where would I go if, say, I wanted to ditch a haul like that? You see what I’m saying?”

At this, Danny frowned, jutting out his jaw like he was giving that problem some very serious thought. And that’s when it hit me. I was watching a ‘game of chess’ here. Between a couple of fairly talented opponents. And Danny obviously liked playing the game, despite the fact that he was obviously in deep shit, that he was under arrest, and that he had more than likely already lost the game. So obviously, this wasn’t his first rodeo. So there he was, playing the consultant for now. And that boggled my mind. I mean, what did I really know about my little Danny after all?

“Well, for one thing. You wouldn’t wanna try fencing it anywhere near this town. That’d be too obvious. Right? First places they’d check on. I mean, sure, there are two or three junk yards around here, but no… you’d want to drop it over in the next two or three counties, at least.”

Look at him, that little cock of the walk, I thought to myself. Loving being the center of attention. Loving sparring with the big dogs. Is he… showing off for me…?

Sheriff was nodding appreciatively, chewing on that information and even jotting it down in the little open notebook he had. And goddamn, if he wasn’t play-acting too, right along with Danny. This was more of a poker game than chess. All this back-and-forth bluffing going on around the table. But Danny? He was in his glory. Appeared to be seeing himself as running this interrogation.

I could see I’d never realized who it actually was I’d taken under my wing. Not really. How many sides of Danny were there? I was beginning to ask myself. This boy was loaded with charisma, had it to spare, and damn— didn’t he know how to use it! I was looking at a sprouting little conman in the making. Obviously a conboy already. And damn, wasn’t he just keeping his cool like you wouldn’t believe. How out-of-my-depth I was feeling. I was in awe.

In all, I watched that drama play out before me for a good forty or so minutes, and then bang, it ended. Just like that.

The door I’d entered through opened just a crack, and the guy manning the front desk poked his head in, got the sheriff’s attention with an ahem, and announced, “They’re here…”

“OK. Send’em in.”

And bang! in they came. Two of’em. Two practically seven-foot gorillas in matching white sweat suits, muscles bulged beneath the sweatshirt sleeves. So huge they instinctively ducked their heads down as they emerged from the open door. Two of’em… each of whom, one-handed, could’ve easily muckled onto Danny’s infamous high school phys. ed coach’s shirt front and pinned his dumb-ass, beer-gutted body up against the wall a foot off the ground, leaving his smelly Nikes dangling beneath him like like a pair of ballet slippers.

Their sudden appearance had instantly chilled the atmosphere. Danny’s face had paled and gone blank. I felt mine had too. I watched him shut right down and slump, like somebody’d violently yanked his plug out of the wall socket. This was like watching a TV tag-team of professional ‘wrestlers’ suddenly leaping over the ropes and landing in the ring. There would be no chess game or poker with them. There was no trace of Danny’s bravado now.

And these two guys had no interest in talking to any of us. They simply moved like a pair of gigantic spiders on our little trapped conboy. “STAND!” one of them ordered. And the back of Danny’s chair banged off the wall behind him as he lurched up out of it. I nearly collapsed out my own chair. They had him cuffed and lifted by the armpits in the blink of an eye; and then they were walking him around the table to head back for the door. And Jesus, Danny was so, so tiny now. One of them muttered a gruff, “Thank you” to the sheriff, almost as an afterthought.

And just as they began to pass through the door, I called out in a weak voice to Danny (too subdued to be heard by anybody, I’m sure), “I’m gonna come down and visit you in a week or two, Danny…”

And then he, they, were gone with the wind, leaving me feeling just awful.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The sheriff surprised me moments later with, “Actually, we knew it was Danny all along, with the copper and all. We knew it before we hauled him in this afternoon.”

“Jeez. Really? How?” My heart was still racing from the adrenalin of having just witnessed what looked like a snatch-and-grab abduction of a friend, a very good and special friend whom, I was realizing, I hardly even knew apparently.

“We got one of his buddies to cop to it yesterday. And the funny thing is, their big little gang actually did try to fence the stuff at a junkyard it right here, just outside of town. Why’d you think he was laughingly advising me to look outside the county only? That boy’s really something, ain’t he.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I see that he… really is. But… I mean I wanna tell you, he and I? Christ, we’ve gotten along so damn well.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“No, I’m serious. As his tutor… outside of school? I’m telling you that that kid was really doing his homework. I mean, we actually discussed his history assignments, him and me— you know? Because he’d actually read them. And he was totally responsible for showing up, every time, whenever he was scheduled to. Damn it all to hell, we really had a good thing going, him and me. And hell, I’ve really warmed to that kid. I like that little guy.”

“Hell, I like him too. He and I go back a ways. Unfortunately. He kills me though. And like you, I’d like to see someone, like yourself, be able to turn him around. But you know what? That little bugger has already left that station. And he’s traveled too far down the track to turn around. That’s my sad opinion anyway, based on years of experience. It is what it is.”

“Sad is what I’m feeling too right now, where he’s concerned. Then too, my eyes have been opened, sitting here, as to what a little manipulator he is. He’s got such charisma, for a little twerp.”

“Yeah. Charisma’s the main required asset for a con artist. That, and being a chameleon. Danny? He can be whatever you want him to be… if it benefits him.”

“A chameleon. Yeah. He’s that, it turns out. I guess I have to face that. But… I’m having a hard time accepting that that charisma is the only thing that’s charmed me into liking him. Well, not totally anyway. I mean… I did, I swear, I discovered some goodness in that kid. I never had one single discipline problem with him. I treated him with friendliness and respect, and that’s what he gave me back in return. And jeez, all or most of the other teachers are so down on him over there at school and, sure, I can imagine all the reasons they have for feeling the way they do, too. But… he never stood a chance over there. He had ‘Failure’ rubber-stamped on his forehead long before I ever met him.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it. But unfortunately… it just is what it is.”

I try that on for size. “It is what it is.”

“That’s about all you can say.”

“Tell me something. Why the hell did you want me to come down here anyway. I mean… I was no help. Just a silent spectator. Although I guess I’m glad you did. For… some reason.

“Because Danny really wanted you here. That’s why. I told you, I like the little bastard too. I guess I was impressed that somebody… anybody… had touched him in some way. But I dunno. I have to admit… I just wanted to get a look at ya.”

“Well… thank you. I am glad I came down. Again… for some reason.”

“So… you really gonna go down and visit him at the correctional center?”

“Yeah. I am. Really.”

“Well, good.”

“I mean, I never even knew he was down there. And now that I do know… well, after all this, I imagine he’s gonna be stuck down there a heck of a lot longer than even before. So… well, I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye tonight. And the way I’m feeling now? I really want that chance. To say a proper goodbye.”

“I hear you.”

“Plus, I really want a chance to just talk with him again. One more time. You know. To try to wrap my head around this whole thing. Because it’s really bugging me, all this. I need to ask him some questions. Questions about how he sees his future. What life is like down there, on the inside. But… more than that, I guess mostly I really just want him to know that someone, at least, cares. I want him to know I’ll always remember the time I had with him. As bleak as his life’s probably gonna be, I want him to have that at least, even if my telling him that is the only, single, solitary, damn positive note he ever gets over the rest of his life. I want there to be at least that.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two Weeks Later at the State Juvenile Correctional Center

(Please allow me to begin the closing here by digressing for just a moment. Back in the day, Readers’ Digest had a regular feature titled “The Most Unforgettable Person I Ever Met.” Over my lifetime, I’ve encountered more than my share of characters fitting that description, not the least of which was Danny. And that being said, welcome to one of the most unusual conversations I’ve ever had in my life!)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So, I did it. I made the appointment, traveled the two and a half hours down to South Portland on a Saturday morning, and got the chance to meet with Danny to offer him a proper goodbye.

It had seemed pretty strange, me going down to the county sheriff’s office to see him there that time but, man, it was much more of a bizarre experience jumping through all the administrative hoops to get myself admitted deep inside that prison. And just like the two seven-foot bouncers that had come to escort Danny back here that day, it turned out practically every working man in that institution was built like Sherman Tank. It was like stepping into a Gold’s Gym. I mean me? I stood five and a half feet tall back then but, relativistically, I was feeling like some little horse-racing jockey in a paddock of Clydesdales. Until, that is, little shorter-than-me Danny was escorted over from somewhere in the facility to the table I’d been assigned.

He was surprised to see me. I mean really surprised. And glad to see someone whom he was pretty sure he’d gotten to like him. Sadly though, it hit me that he still looked as tiny as he had when he’d been forcibly removed from the county jail.

We shook hands and went through the small talk. The old howya doin’ thing. But then I got down to the brass tacks of the heart of things. I assured him that the time he and I had spent together, especially those carefree tutoring sessions over coffee and everything from breakfast to apple pie, was one of the better times in my teaching career at that point (a period which was, yeah, only a half dozen or so years, but still…), and that I’d never forget them. I told him that, yes, I realized I didn’t know him as well as I’d thought I did, but that I really liked what I’d had the opportunity to discover in him. That yeah, I was aware that that was coming across as pretty mushy, considering where we were. And throughout this part of our conversation, he’d remained pretty much subdued.

But finally… (and this is the part I’m really wanting to share with you, dear reader) came Danny’s Story:

“So anyway, I’ve got this question, Danny. Whatever happened between the time (A) you slammed my classroom door, called the coach a fat fucker, and took off running… and (B) now? What happened to you that ended up with you incarcerated here? I mean, can I even ask you that? It’s impossible for me to make sense of it, you know? But hey, just go ahead and tell me to go to hell and mind my own goddamn business, if I’m out of line. And that’ll be OK, that’ll be fine. But man, I hafta admit I’m curious. Just trying to imagine how the dots connect between then and now...”

He smiled at me. And that signature twinkle in his eye had returned. “Oh, I can tell you,” he said. “But you’ll never believe me.” And it was good to see the old Danny beginning to peek through at me again, even if I probably should add ‘whoever that was…‘

“Oh. I won’t?”

“Nah.”

“Can you at least try me?”

“Sure. I can do that. But like I said…”

“Alright. So…? Come on. Lay it on me.”

“OK. It is what it is. But here goes. So first of all, just so you know, I ducked quick around the side of the school that day. Circled around the back of the building. Lost myself in some trees. Then made my way down to Route 2 ,and hitch-hiked my way outta town. I mean… I’d just had it, ya know?”

“Yeah, I got that at the time. And believe me, I understood it.”

“Long story short, I eventually ended up being charged with every single count in the books.”

I think about that. “Every SINGLE one, huh?”

“You got that right.”

“Oh. OK. So… Who’d you murder?”

“Hah! Well, no, you got me on that one anyway.”

“Phew!”

“Everything else though! Everything from littering to kidnapping.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake. Listen to you! Danny… come off it. You did not!”

“Told ya you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Now wait a minute! I’m supposed to believe this… ‘littering to kidnapping’? That’s sounding like… quite the tall tale, kiddo.”

“Swear to God it’s true.”

“Jeez. And here you are, sounding proud of it!”

“Hey. It is what it is. What can I say?”

“Come on. I mean, littering to kidnapping don’t quite seem to go together, do they. That’s… quite the stretch.”

“Well, littering’s what started the whole damn thing!”

“OK… OK. Go on, then.”

“It was like this: a couple days after I took off, and I’m in this car toolin’ down the road with my girlfriend, OK? Next thing you know, I got the flashing blues behind me. So I put the pedal to the metal and try to lose him, OK?”

“Of course you did. Right. Great idea, Danny…”

“So for just a minute, see, I get some distance between him and me, and I go flyin’ ‘round a corner, temporarily outta his sight. So I tell my girl, ‘Quick! Throw that bag of stuff on the back seat out the window!’ But she’s a little slow on the uptake, and by the time she finally does toss it, he’s right behind us!”

Good Ol’ Danny, he’s back in story-telling mode mode, happy as a clam now.

“So OK…” I say, “that explains the littering charge. And hey. I’m sure you don’t need me telling you this, but… not the best timing on your part, was it? Not exactly the best time to litter. Just sayin’.”

“Yeah, yeah. OK. But guess what. That bag had my burglary tools in it. Little wrecking bar. Suction cup glass-cutter…”

“Ohmigod! Burglary tools? You had a bag of…? Oh Danny!”

“Uh huh. Like I said. It is what it is. So now we’ve got what,” him counting them out on his fingers now, “littering, speeding, resisting arrest, driving to endanger… and burglary!”

I was shocked. My God, if this was true… the trouble he was in!

“And… it didn’t help that the car I was driving was uninspected. Plus unregistered….”

“Stop it! You’re making this up.”

“Hey. Ask whoever it is you hafta ask. You’ll find out.”

“So… dare I ask… about… you know… the kidnapping charge?”

He shook his head, thinking back, and sighed. “It wasn’t really a kidnapping. She was my girlfriend, for crying out loud. It was her idea to come along with me. She wanted to. And she did.”

“So… where’d the kidnapping charge come from then?”

“Well, number one, her parents didn’t like her hanging around me. At all. They didn’t like me… is really what they didn’t like. Number two, getting informed by the fuzz that their daughter was in custody (along with me)? Well, that didn’t sit very well. And of course, number three… considering she was under age and all…”

“WHOA! Damn it, Danny! I mean, jeez!”

“Well, whattaya think, she was thirty years old or something?? I mean, look at me, bud. I’m underage too, damnit. Right?”

“Well… yeah. True.”

“So number four. It was up to them, wasn’t it. Whether to press charges or not. And her being a minor and whatnot — well, they had her over a barrel, didn’t they. She had to go along with it, right? So: long story short, I guess they made her sign some papers on me, or whatever. And here I am.”

When I exhaled, that was the first I realized I’d been holding my breath. “Jesus H. Christ, Danny. You have a lawyer yet?”

He snorted. “Well, yeah, I guess you could call him that. Yeah.”

“So… then I mean, have you been given some estimation about, like, how much time you’re facing? Or anything about what you can expect at all? I probably don’t even wanna know the answer to that though, right?”

“No. Nothing specific. I’m going to be here a while, that’s for sure. But, he keeps telling me that the bright side of all this is that I’m a juvie. So it’s not gonna be forever. And if I keep my nose clean, that’s gonna help.”

“Keeping your nose clean. I’m guessing he means starting over. Now. After your just-recently-busting-out-of-this-place…”

“First of all, I really didn’t bust out of here. I just walked out. Simple as that. Just walked right out through a door. Simple as…”

“UH-oh, Danny. One of your gorillas-in-charge here is heading our way, coming right up behind you. And I believe he’s signaling time’s up.”

“Figured that was about to happen.”

“Yeah.”

I stood, and addressed the guard with a polite thank-you. Danny took his time getting to his feet.

“Danny. Just so you know: our time together, back there in English class and those café and restaurant discussions we were having? KNOW that that was such a damn good time for me. Just what the doctor ordered. You brought a much-needed breath of fresh air into my otherwise repetitive, routine-teaching-life. And I’m never gonna forget you OR forgive that dick of a gym coach for taking that away from me. I really like you, kid. I want you to know that.”

“Same here, Mr. L.”

“So sorry, Danny.”

He shrugged. “It is what it is.”

And the man behind him barked, “LET’S GO! TIME’S UP!”

I just waited and solemnly watched until the two of them, in my mind looking like a forlorn Mutt and Jeff, passed back out of sight through a door that would take them somewhere else among the warrens of cages, or whatever was out there waiting for his return in this, his new world.

And my God, I was twenty-five years old, a quarter of a damn century old, but I was still having to learn all these unexpected and uncomfortable new-to-me truths about this world I was living in. In fact, I hadn’t totally figured out exactly what I had learned out of all that had happened.

That was gonna take time.

But at least I wasn’t quite as naive that day as I had the day before. Right?

Plus yardage.

It is what it is.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Like I’ve said before, I love comments. If you wish, feel free to leave one in the field below and click on “POST COMMENT. “I usually respond…

EMPTY-DESK SYNDROME: Oh, Danny Boy

Danny occupied a seat in one of my General English classes for a while, way back in the mid-70s.

A sawed-off freshman, standing at maybe four and a half feet, bright blue eyes, a thatch of blond hair, and a crooked little nose that very likely came from somebody’s knuckle sandwich (possibly his old man’s). A scrapper, like most short boys turn out to be, defying all odds in a series of I’ll-show-you-who’s-the short-one dust-ups. A hair-trigger, instantly-ignitable fuse, turning pit bull whenever confronted by aggressive, all-powerful, male authority figures.

But that’s why he liked me so much. I was decidedly not one of the faculty nazis.

I started out as a blank slate when my first signed contract landed me on my feet in a high school English classroom. A blank slate being coached by the administrative cabal to ‘Go in there and show’em who’s boss. Make’em fear you or they’ll eat you alive. Be a General George S. Patton, and give’em hell. They are not your friends. They are them, and you are you. Keep it that way!

And next thing I knew, I found myself trapped in a classroom with thirty ‘they’ll eat you alive!’ predators of all sizes and shapes, and all of’em staring at me at once! Right away I was feeling like Catch 22’s Major Major Major Major—me, desperately striving to fudge being just that All-Powerful Authority Figure… something I was finding out quickLY I wasn’t any good at. Because…

Turns out… I’m a bleedin’-heart empath.

Early on, I became horrified to realize that somehow I was finding myself beginning to (oh no) like them. Even though (and I’m swearin’ this is true on a stack of Bibles here) I was doing my best trying NOT to!

What could be wrong with me, I wondered, spinelessly letting down my defenses like that?

Before long I was becoming known as one of ‘those teachers,’ the patsy who found it nearly impossible to say no when one of’em would ask me for the bathroom pass during class, something that was harped against over and over during just about every faculty meeting I ever attended. And you know, I’ve gotta say I felt pretty damned sheepish and guilty about that. Like I was letting down not just my colleagues, but The American Way.

(But I mean, hell, if it was me and I had to go, I’d be making a bee-line for the men’s room… just like my fellow faculty would if it were them.

(But, REMEMBER, Mr. Tom… “They are them, and you are you.”)

I could barely look at myself in the men’s’ bathroom mirror. But… come on, what was I supposed to do? I mean, they were all little individuals, these kids, weren’t they. Little human beings (kind of like myself actually, what with all their questions, and fears, and joys, their flaws, their baggage, and their disarming and often hilarious senses of humor)! I mean, they all had such interesting little personalities!

Still, from early on I was feeling like the World War II stalag escapee, disguised in a stolen nazi uniform and hoping to pass for a member of the Third Reich.

So. Go ahead. Say it. I was a “teacher” who was never cut out to be a teacher. I’ve accepted that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So: Danny hated authority figures. And Danny liked me. Even liked my English class.

Well, not the English parts of it so much, necessarily, but the me part. Which was cool. I’d be telling my students stories about my childhood as topics for writing prompts, and now and then read aloud to them parts of their literature reading assignments, to give’em a head start and to tickle his interests. But where Danny was concerned, I would honestly listen to him when he had something he wanted to say (which was often), whereas the majority of the faculty, the nazi contingent? Hell, they weren’t all that interested in him enough to do that. He honestly had interesting things to say though. Plus, he had a wicked sense of humor.

So I came to like him as well. A lot of it was that Danny was the classic underdog and, damnit, I’ve always had a soft spot for underdogs. Still do. Therefore, it was an adventure for me getting to know this angry little hothead over the few months I got to spend with him, getting to begin to know what made him tick. I really felt it a privilege to get to see and know the good-hearted little side of the guy. And I’ve gotta say, when he was in my class his attitude seemed so bright and cheery.

But there was also something about that very thing which saddened me too, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I mean, there were all these red flags hinting at some occasional violence so obviously woven into his past. I mean yeah, he was getting into fist fights at school, but this felt that more than that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But then one day he disappeared, was just flat-out gone. And after five consecutive days of recording his seat empty while taking attendance, the kids informed me, “He’s gone, and he ain’t coming back.” They were hazy about the circumstances however and, me, I was figuring despite what the kids told me, he’d more than likely just been temporarily suspended again for something.

Anyway, I decided to drop by the assistant principal’s office to find out what was what. The kids were right— the administration had indeed given him the ol’ hit-the-road-Jack, that’s-all-she-wrote boot.

Turned out our gorilla of a numb-nuts football coach…

(sorry, I just didn’t like him and, yes, he was that very same simian from one of my previous posts, titled “Behind Closed Doors,” who’d provoked the teacher’s little mess-hall-riot with after blowing a cigarette smoke-ring into our science teacher’s face and saying, with all the humanity of Shane’s Jack Palance, “Hey, I know what. How ‘bout I stub this butt out right in that ugly kike face of yours?!”) (yeah— that guy…)

…decided to teach our little boy some proper manners (irony intended) by pinning Danny up against the gymnasium wall during a phys. ed. class and showing him, up close and personal, his big hairy iron fist.

However… unbeknownst to our self-proclaimed, staff Charles Atlas, the little soul he had chosen to manhandle was The Son of Dr. Bruce Banner— that’s right, a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk, Jr. So yes, Coach was taken a little by surprise finding out he had a rabid little Tasmanian Devil going berserk in all directions down at the other end of his arm! And according to the other kids in the gym class, Danny managed to get in quite a few good ones (BIFF! POW! THOK!), before he eventually got sat on and pinned down.

(Oh, what I would’ve given to have seen the look on Coaches’ face when it was HIS nose that took a punch. Go, Danny!)

But… nonetheless Danny was gone. M.I.A. And that hurt. Because it left me with that always unexpected empty-desk-syndrome that all career teachers have to contend with from time to time, often for circumstances much worse than a mere expulsion. But I missed him.

And what stung the most was knowing that his expulsion was so unnecessary. There are so many different ways to handle a potential disciplinary problem other than brute force, you know? Coach, however, didn’t think that way. No, his motto? Always out-muscle your problem (especially if they’re smaller than you) as a first resort.

Actually, it was pretty obvious that Coach and Danny had something in common: an acute need for anger management training. I suspected both of them suffered from secret feelings of being seen and judged as less than down deep inside.

But, oh well. It was what it was. What could I do about it? Nothing apparently.

A week passed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Then…

STRANGE THING #1 happened.

I was sitting at my desk after school one afternoon when the office secretary buzzed me over the intercom.

“Hey there, Mr. Lyford?”

“Yeah?”

“The principal wants to see you in his office.”

Oh shit! “What…? Right now?”

“You got it.”

“Uhmmm… be right there.” What started going on in my gut right then could have been the perfect inspiration for the Jaws’ theme. I mean, I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Had I?

His door was open.

“Close the door,” he said. So I did that and plopped down in the hot seat in front his desk.

“What’s up?” I asked, feeling cautious.

“Any chance you might be looking for a job, Tom?”

What the hell…? That was just me doing my little internal little double-take. But he was smiling a friendly smile.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Looking for work?”

“Not right at this moment I’m not, no.” I put on a matching smile and hoped for the best, asking playfully, “Why? This where I’m about to get my pink slip so that I’d very well better start looking for a job? Or what? I mean…?”

“Oh no no no. It’s just… I’ve got this job for you, if you’re interested.”

Well, I hafta say I never saw that coming. “What’re you talking about? A job? I’ve got two jobs already. Here, and the Phillips 66 part-time. But you know that.”

“I do. But I’ve got an offer to make anyway. You don’t have to take it, of course. But I figure you might. It involves our Danny.”

Double-take #2. “Danny?!”

“Yeah. His mom and a couple of counselors are feeling he got a raw deal. And they want us to do something to try to remedy that, to find a better way for the kid, to whatever extent we can.”

“You wanna know what: he did get a raw deal far as I’m concerned, considering who the other guy was in the confrontation.”

“Water under the bridge.”

“Sure, sure. He wins football games for you. I get that. So we’ll just go with water under the bridge. Yeah.”

“Tom, we’re here to discuss looking forward. Not...”

“I was just sayin’. But… yeah. Sure. OK. Whatever.”

“And point taken, alright? However, moving right along… turns out you seem to be just about the only teacher Danny seems to’ve been able to get along with.”

“Well, yeah. There’s this: I do treat him like he’s a human being, surprise surprise. And on top of that, I’ve never felt the need to try to ‘break’ him, like he was some wild mustang fenced up in a corral.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Plus… he’s an interesting kid. Down deep inside. He really is. And the way I see it anyway, he’s been through a lot. At home. And everywhere else.”

“I hear you.”

“See, in the weekly journals I have the kids writing, he’s honestly revealed a lot. His life hasn’t been any picnic, you know. And because I let him write about whatever he wants, whatever he needs to express, freely… and because I, you know, actually read and discuss his journal entries with him, he’s pretty much happy to be there.

“So… we getting him back, or what?”

“No. He’s not coming back. At least this year anyway. So, here it is: the powers that be have prompted me to ask you to consider being his special tutor. Outside the classroom. Outside the school.”

“What? Really? Huh! Wow, I dunno. I guess I’ll hafta think about that one.”

“We need your answer right away.”

“Well, I mean… how much time is this gonna take? Like, what kind of schedule might we be looking at here?”

“That would totally be up to you.”

“What… totally?”

“Totally. You’d be in charge of it. Your schedule. And here’s the rest of the details… in what I hope you’ll see as an offer you can’t refuse.”

“Alright, I guess. Lay it on me.”

“First of all, you can meet with him wherever you like. Well, any place except here. He can’t be at the school. But… you know, your place. A café, over a cup of coffee. A park bench. Whatever. Totally up to you. His mom’s OK with that.”

“Wow.”

“Secondly, you’re a professional. And your pay would be commensurate with your professional status. I can guarantee you won’t be unhappy with the financial arrangement.”

“Ah. Money. The universal carrot.”

“But here’s the frosting on the cake. When it’s all said and done, what you’d honestly be getting paid for is… and you’ll find this hard to believe, I’m guessing… I did— is to be his friend.”

“Whoa. ‘Paid to be his friend, you say?’ Hold on. Did I just hear you correctly?”

“You did. And I know, right? But that’s the way the board put it to me. Verbatim.”

“Wow. That’s… really something.”

“It is.“

“I mean, I’d feel kinda creepy. You know, money for friendship and everything…”

“Well see, the board really just wants this whole rat’s nest out of their hair. Get this whole thing behind them.”

“Well, that figures.”

“You would, however, be responsible for covering four generic subjects with him. History. English. Math. And Science. And we would ask, of course, that you keep tabs on his progress. You’d, you know, do your record-keeping. Work out some way, your own way, of calculating and recording a grade for each of the four… but in the end, it’ll be strictly on a pass/fail basis only.”

“Wow. Curiouser and curiouser. I’d say somebody’s really greasing the skids here. I’m feeling all like…what’s his name, Mister Phelps of Mission Impossible? Only that guy was never baited with such positive inducements to ‘accept his missions,”

“On the contrary, considering the young man we’re discussing here, I can hand you a baker’s dozen of faculty names who would beg to differ with you on that, and wouldn’t want to touch this deal with a ten-foot pole.”

“Yeah. I get that, I do. But if you, or they, could ever have seen him in my class on most days, you’d witness that little… often funny human being that I’ve come to know.”

“OK. So, can we get right down to it then? Whatta you think? You in? Or are you out?”

“Well, I think the damn kid needs a break. That’s for sure. He’s been through so much, and always getting the sharp end of the stick. And I mean, honestly? I’ve been pissed off, if you want to know the truth, about the whole way he was just tossed aside. Well, that’s the way it seems to me anyway. But more than that, this whole fiasco has left me feeling… I gotta say, sad.”

“So… you in?”

“So… this does sound like kind of an adventure. Sounds like something I ought to do.”

“Is that a ‘yes’?”

“Well…I could be wrong.”

“Yeah?”

“But… I guess that’s a ‘yes,’ apparently.”

And so it was.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Despite the uncomfortable, guilty weirdness of being paid for ‘being somebody’s friend’ (I mean, never in a million years could I have been led to believe that such an arrangement might even be an allowable possibility under any circumstances), that change in my job description immediately swept away that dark heaviness of my ‘Danny’s empty desk syndrome.’ More than that, it brought the proverbial ‘ray of sunshine’ into my routine life.

I mean, try to imagine this. On a Monday after school, say, you pick the kid up and swing over to Freddy’s Restaurant… and there, along with the coffee and apple pie on the table, you’ve got your pair of history books cracked open. And you’re both into it, the assignment I mean. Or on a Saturday morning, over at the Chicken Coop perhaps, the coffee and breakfast (which is on you, of course since, with what you’re unnecessarily being paid for friendship, you can afford it) are providing the backdrop for you and him to discuss his latest journal pages.

And always, on the opposite side of booth you have a student who is both (A) delighted to be rid of the school he just was never fitting in with, (B) honestly happy to see, and be, with you, and (C) on top of that, has honestly read or written his assignment and is ready to talk about it.

And then who knows, maybe even on a Sunday the two of you might walk the sidewalks a mile or two of all over town, talking about Life and where it’s taking you… him telling you stories about his life and you telling him stories about yours.

Considering that all during my career, to that point, I’d been off and on somewhat successfully juggling classes of between twenty and thirty kids at once, this one-on-one thing was such a luxury.

He seemed to be loving my English assignments by the way (mostly because he liked me); really liking the history stuff (we were reading Howard Fast’s gripping historical novel, April Morning, about the battles of Concord and Lexington); wasn’t caring much for general science; and really wasn’t feeling any love whatsoever for math (a kid after my own heart, there). So, science and math were, yeah, more of a challenge for us.

But on the whole, this arrangement was great for him, I was sure of that, and good for me as well. Looking back on the set-up we had, the expression ‘happy days’ springs to mind.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After about three weeks or so of the arrangement running like a well-oiled machine, the weather had started turning colder. And the only sweatshirt Danny had was still hanging in his locker back at school, along with a few other things he wanted to retrieve. So, on a Friday, about an hour or so after the final bell of the day had released all or most of the kids back into the world, he and I pulled up in the school parking lot. We got out of the car and slipped into the building through a side door.

He worked the combination on his locked locker, popped the door open, and gathered up his stuff. My classroom was only a few doors down, and so we also dropped in there for me to grab some things as well.

That done, and with me fishing my classroom key back out of my pocket, we had just started to step back out into the hallway when some deep, thunderous voice bellowed, “God damn it! Just what the hell you think you’re doing in here!”

And there he was! The neanderthal that had really started this whole fiasco in the first place! Marching double-time and charging straight for us!

“Get you sorry ass outta here before I…”

“Hey!” I yelled, stepping in front of Danny, who was half in and half out of my classroom. “Stop right there, Coach! He’s with me!”

“Well he’s gonna be with ME in a second! So get outta my way!”

“No! I said stop! He’s legit! And we’re just leaving anyway!”

“Damn straight you’re leavin!”

Coach and I, scrawny little English teacher me, were now standing nose-to-nose in a near Mexican stand-off!

“He’s not supposed to be here anyway, damnit! He’s expelled!”

“Think I don’t know that!? Look! We’re just getting some things from his locker! He’s not bothering you!”

“Oh, he’s bothering me! You just better believe he’s bothering me!”

My mouth’s open, ready to yell a response, but a bellow from behind me cuts me off!

“You want me to LEAVE, you fat fucker?! OK then! I’m leavin’!”

And before either of us can manage to say anything to that… B A N G! ..what sounds like an echoing gunshot jumps me, and I’m pretty sure jumps the fat fucker in front of me as well, half out of our shoes! Then I’m suddenly aware that Danny’s sprinting for the door we came in through, and that the loud bang that jarred my teeth was actually my classroom door having been whipped shut at Mach 5!

“DANNY!” I yell.

“Let’im go, the little asshole. What the hell’re are you even doing with him anyway?”

Apparently, and unfortunately, Coach hadn’t gotten the memo about Danny’s and my arrangement. Why, I’ll never know.

“ME? How about what the hell’re YOU doing here at all, masquerading as a teacher?! DANNY!” I yelled, taking after him.

But he’d already zipped out of sight through the exit! And by the time I stumbled outside, he’d disappeared! He was nowhere to be seen!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Turned out I hadn’t fully grasped just how disappeared he’d actually become.

Turned out he’d run away from home.

Turned out this wasn’t the first time he’d run away from home either…

I was devastated.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A couple months crawled by.

And so, out of sight, out of mind, the loss of M.I.A. Danny was gradually fading with acceptance.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Next thing I knew, she was standing next to my chair and looking down at me with a puzzled expression.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve got a phone call,” she said tentatively, looking perplexed.

“Who is it?”

“The County Sheriff.”

“The who?! The… County sheriff?! Jeez... what the hell?”

I got up, walked out to the kitchen, and took the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi. So… is this Mr. Lyford? Mr. Thomas Lyford?”

“It is. Why?”

“Tell me. Are you familiar with a Danny Brown, Mr. Lyford…?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

End of Part I. Stay tuned for Part II.

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CROOKED MAN, CROOKED HOUSE II: The Cigarette Smoking Man

I will forever remember Lanpher’s Drug Store in the 60’s as our special little oasis/after-school hangout, and that sweet bevy of 30-something ladies who worked the lunch counter as a blessing to us kids. All actual mothers themselves, they felt to us (in our high-school-drama, soap-opera lives) like post-Cub Scout den mothers or something, who were always there to listen and to take us under their comforting, little mother hen wings. And actually, I’m embarrassed to say we felt we were God’s gift to those women (Berle, Del, Marilyn, and Martha) because back then it was all about us, wasn’t it— we were just so interesting, right?

But I mean just kids, and yet we were made to feel welcomed at that long lunch counter to gab our afternoons away, even though we had very little money to spend. Looking back now, I’m seeing it as a kind of young kids’ Cheers bar…

“Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came…”

Plus, there were always a couple of attractive high school girls hired to work behind the counter as well, one of whom turned out to be my Phyllis (sigh!). And you wanna know what’s a dreamy fantasy for a guy my age back then? Having your cute little soda-jerk girlfriend, the girl you’re gonna marry in a few weeks, fuss over you and bring you the root beer Coke you just ordered. (double sigh!)

But to me at least, the whole place felt like “family.” I spent so much time there, weekends included. I even got to become somewhat of a friend of one of the salesmen who’d show up there every two weeks or so to take the orders for the candy bars, chips, and crackers, etc. needed to keep the soda fountain stocked. Later, I’d be giving him weekly orders to stock the Sebec Lake Beach Concession that was to turn out to be my main summer job in 1966.

Plus there was this one, odd, little, wonderful man, Bob Buzzell, who was as much a part of the scene as we were. I think he must’ve retired early with a disability of some sort, because he was there just about every day. We thought of him as old but, to us back then of course, every adult was “old.”

Bob Buzzell was a character and a half. A cheerful little elf, always entertaining everybody with his corny jokes and cool stories about the past. He was like an uncle to us; everybody loved him. But the one special thing about him that really bowled us kids over (although you’ll likely find it nearly impossible to believe it by looking at him in the photo below), was watching this guy go zipping around the roller rink floor out at the lake on his skates like some teenager. He’d skate fast, he’d skate backwards, he’d spin around in tight circles, and out-skate all the high school kids to shame. Of course he wouldn’t last out there as long as we could, so perhaps he was a little old. But it was a friend, and it was always a joy to watch him.

My whole point here is that, after school, Lanpher’s Drug felt like a little home away from home. It was so very comforting to hang out there with your friends. A place that was just… well, a haven in our little town. A place that was always felt secure and… safe.

Until it didn’t.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One afternoon I strolled in to find the place really packed. All the counter bar stools (OK, soda fountain stools) were taken, and there were even a few kids standing, crowding the seats from behind while they talked it up. The jukebox was playing, so that was a good sign. Normally due to the lack of available quarters among us, it simply sat there silent as a piece of furniture. So apparently somebody had some cash at least. Myself, over time I’d dropped uncountable hard-to-come-by quarters down its slot, mostly to listen to “He’s a Rebel” by The Crystals and The Cheers’ “Black Denim Trousers” over and over again.

But what a crowd that day. I was there only to dally a little with Phyl a bit, so I was feeling pretty impatient while having to wait for a seat. But as I was running my eyes up and down the line of crowded stools, hoping to spot somebody who might be getting ready to give up his seat and leave, my gaze came to a stop on someone who, for some reason, just didn’t seem to rightly belong in that shoulder-to-shoulder, Lanpher’s soda fountain crowd. I’d never seen the guy before. And I was struck right away with an unsettling What’s-Wrong-With-This-Picture? sensation.

For one thing, everybody else was seated back-to to me, facing the counter-length mirror on the back wall. But this guy sat facing my way with his back resting against the counter. But in that crowd wearing jeans, shorts, tee shirts, penny loafers, and sneakers, here sat a man, forty-ish probably (there was a touch of salt-and-pepper gray at his temples), in a white short sleeve dress shirt, slacks, and black shoes.

Cigarette Smoking Man (OK, yeah, I stole *this* one from *The X-Files*)

So there was that. But that was only a small part of the first impression he made on me. Where do I start? His shirt and matted hair was damp with perspiration. With a butt-filled-to-overflowing ash tray on the counter behind him, he was smoking like a fiend, gingerly pinching the last half-inch of a smoldering cigarette between a thumb and forefinger. Though smiling, he was definitely radiating nervousness? So in no way whatsoever was he a part of this young crowd he’d sandwiched himself into? And finally, I’m not sure exactly why, he looked to me like some sweating-like-a-pig Richard Burton.

But then I saw Phyllis, her eyes locked on mine, furtively nodding for me to meet her down at the far end of the counter. She looked uptight. That made me tense up. I made my way down there.

“What’s up?”

“That man’s been here for hours. Just sitting there, sipping on Cokes and smoking his cigarettes. And endlessly playing songs on the jukebox. He’s making us all really nervous back here.”

“Hours? Yikes. So… who is he anyway?”

“That’s just it. We don’t know. Nobody does. He just showed up. But I think something’s… I mean, I don’t know what, but something’s wrong with him. And he smells bad. All sweaty. And he acts funny.”

“Have you told your boss? You probably ought to.”

“Mr. Lanpher’s not in today.”

“Oh great!”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not good.”

“No it really isn’t. So… could you, you know, stick around for a while? I’d really feel better if you’d stay here.”

“Well sure, Phyl. Of course I will!”

Jeez, my beautiful little majorette girlfriend? It was like she was suddenly this… damsel in distress! Like in the movies. My beautiful and demure princess being threatened by the dragon! And she was asking me…imploring me… to be her knight in shining armor?! Her Saint George?

“You got it,” I assured her. “I’m staying right here and keeping an eye on him. For as long as it takes. Till the end of your shift. Don’t you worry. And then I’m walking you home.”

‘You’ll be safe with me,’ a wannabe-gruff voice that sounded more than a little like me growled inside my head. And I say, “wannabe-gruff” because truth is— there was something really off and disturbing about this ‘dragon.’ He was setting off alarms in my gut big-time. I mean, he was a grown man after all, wasn’t he. And what was I? Just a damned frightened kid when you got right down to it. And I knew very well way down deep inside that… hell, I was no fighter! I hated to own it, but I was more a Barney Fife than any Prince Valiant. Which was, of course, one of my darkest and best-kept secrets. And I wanted to keep it that way.

But what’d I do? I pasted on my best Marshall Matt Dillon face, moseyed on over to the jukebox, casually leaned up against it, and began keeping a dark stare focused gun-hard on him. Whenever he happened to look up my way, there was the best hairy eyeball I could muster waiting for him. (Hell, even Barney used to get away with it every once in a while.)

Eventually, a stool right next to him opened up, as the crowd was pretty much thinned out by then. So I nonchalantly stood up, surreptitiously stepped across the aisle, pretended to examine the band-aid display for a minute or two, and then came over and eased myself down onto it.

Man, he did really stink. An overpowering mix of swampy, armpit, sweat-stink a la cologne engulfed me. He was toxic. For a guy who dressed pretty sharp, you’d think he might want to take a shower every now and then, but apparently… no.

So, I braved myself to talk with him a little. As little as possible. Mostly monosyllables. Managed to pry his name out of him. Got him to tell me a few things about himself. Him, being a professor at the UMass Amherst. On a sabbatical leave. Professor of what, I didn’t ask. Currently living in Sangerville, a tiny town about eight miles or so from Dover. But he was really making me nervous so, you know, I didn’t come right out and ask him if he was a pervert or rapist or anything. I cut the conversation short and jockeyed my butt down a few stools for some oxygen and to get closer to my little damsel in distress.

It seemed he’d never leave, although of course he finally did. So yeah. I’d lucked out. Walked her home. Me, the conquering hero…

But after that you’d never know when you strolled in if you’d find him occupying one of Lanpher’s soda fountain stools or not, since he started hanging out there like that a couple or so days a week. And yes, there always hung over him the lingering presence of that undefined, swamp-gassy foreboding. Although there was never sufficient grounds for the management to ask him to leave or anything. I mean, he really wasn’t loitering, was he, not as long as he kept guzzling the Cokes and pumping those sweaty quarters down the throat of that Seeburg jukebox.

But it’s just that there never seemed to be any good reason you could put your finger on for why he preferred to be there, of all places. And then too, things were so different back in the early 60’s. Pretty much all moms were stuck at home throughout the day, trapped in their domestic ‘cages’ of housewife drudgery, while most dads were out there all day somewhere, busy earning a living. So honestly? There were hardly any parents ever shopping the pharmacy aisles during after-school hours to ever eyeball the creep with the kids.

But to us kids, he was just an oddity. One of those local head-scratchers in this crazy old world. And since I didn’t know doodly about much at that point of my life, I simply dismissed it out of hand after a while.

And why wouldn’t I? It was mid-June, 1966, and I was cruising straight ahead into those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. Phyl working the soda fountain. Me pumping gas part-time across the street. And, oh yeah, me just beginning to take on my new Concession job duties at the Sebec Lake Municipal Beach.

We had a lot on our plate that summer.

But of course, more pressing than all of the new changes piling up, the two of us were eyeing our wedding at the end of July. I mean, we had our eyes on the adventure of a lifetime, didn’t we: THE REST OF OUR LIVES! It was all we could think about. Try to imagine our excitement and anticipation.

And hell, even fear! What, you think I wasn’t at least a little terrified, as well? Oh baby, I was! Would I be able to measure up as a husband, as a man? Would I be able to protect my princess? Would I be able to provide enough money? Would I be able to learn all the things that a husband needs to learn?

It was pretty daunting.

So something as odd and inconsequential as Lanpher’s Pharmacy’s stinky cigarette smoking man was totally off my radar.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Until he wasn’t, that is…

Next time: The Strange Summer of ’66.

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DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART ONE

As I pointed out at the beginning of my 44^th blog post, “Just Say No to Streaking,” a teacher’s professional life is comprised of so much more than just the academic subjects she/he teaches. The other fifty per cent of the teacher’s actual classroom existence is spent frittering away on such Mickey Mouse nuts and bolts as the following: lunch duty, hall duty, lobby duty, bus duty, detention duty, prom duty, bullying duty, graduation duty, bomb scare duty, steaking duty, school dance chaperoning, winter carnival chaperoning, study hall monitoring, being a class advisor, being a student club and activity advisor, being a coach of what-have-you, being a vandalism detective, not to mention the breaker-upper of the fights and the smoking in the boys’/girls’ room, and a warrior in the war on drugs in general, etc. And see… I strongly feel that the general population needs to be reminded of this fact from time to time.

So no, I didn’t spend my career only wallowing in adverbial clauses, split infinitives, and Romeo and Juliet. The following three anecdotes, arranged in ascending order from least to most complicated ( i.e., least to the most unbelievable and entertaining), illustrate my experiences with Bomb Scare Duty…

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(First Story) (the least complicated and least entertaining one)

Of the many, the very last time I worked a “bomb squad” detail (please notice the quotation marks, and accept my assurance that I choose the term with a metaphorical tongue in cheek), I was moving left to right, locker by locker, down the third floor hallway of Foxcroft Academy. This was approximately sometime between 1999 and 2001. There had been a one of those ‘bomb in the building’ phone calls to the main office, which was a little odd because it was the day before the very last day of the school year. I mean, what was the point? The seniors had graduated and vacated the premises days before, and the only thing left on the school calendar were the last few of the Final Exams.

So why was I on the so-called bomb squad? Boredom. I had a choice. I could allow myself to get stuck standing outside there in the hot and humid school parking lot chaperoning a good 300 rowdy juniors, sophomores, and freshmen (and oh they were wild and wound up) OR… I could simply raise my hand and shout “Pick me, pick me!” when the police asked for a couple of volunteers. I’d volunteered.

OK, you GOT me. This is not really me. It’s George Santos.

But don’t get me wrong— no hero, me. Everybody (me, the cops, the teachers, and the kids included) knew there was no bomb. So basically it was just a matter of me getting myself in out of the sun and humidity to enjoy some leisurely peace and quiet. And it was quiet up there on the third floor.

I was working the senior locker area. Most of them had been emptied out. A few had still had a few textbook sand some homework papers left in them, stuff some seniors had been too lazy to turn in; and those, we were just tossing out onto the hallway floor to be sorted through later.

But anyway, there I am, looking down at two or three textbooks piled at the bottom of some kid’s locker, and when I pick them up and toss them out onto the floor, I spy something else down there. A bomb? No. There are no bombs. What it is… is actually just a little sandwich baggie stuffed fat with green stuff inside. No surprise to me. (Well, surprised that any kid would leave such an expensive little stash behind.) So I call out, “Got something over here, guys. Not a bomb. Just something… that you might smoke in a bong maybe.”

“Oh yeah…” one of the two officers I’m accompanying says, bending down to retrieve it. On closer inspection, it’s immediately obvious that the Ziploc bag is swollen, as if with some kind of what… gas? The officer unzips it and, pffft! air escapes from it like from a poked balloon. “Jesus!” says the cop, with a wrinkled nose.

“That smell!” exclaims the other.

I smell it too. “What the hell! What kind of pot is that?”

“GAH!” The officer turns and tosses the baggie across the hall, plunk, right into one of the large trash cans on wheels we’ve been using for the paper junk. “Oh, just the very moldy, many-months-old , PB&J sandwich kind,” he says. “Phew!”

So yes, there you have it. My very last “bomb squad” experience turned out to be… a green, moldy, old nothing burger. So it goes. And I warned you not to expect much.

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(Second Story) (a ‘You can’t make this stuff up! kind of story)

So my very first bomb scare experience occurred in Belfast, Maine back in the winter of 1969, the craziest year of my entire professional life. I was a first-year English teacher at the high school and as a first year teacher, I was finding that whole Ohmigod-I’m-a-freakin’-TEACHER-now! experience quite terrifying. I already expressed this in an earlier blog episode titled “Poet…? Peacenik…? Pugilist…? Part Three.” But for those of you who missed out by not reading this great story yet, here is a little excerpt:

“I was terrified. All my life I’d been suffering from stage fright and, now, suddenly having to face classes of thirty human beings six times a day (too many of whom looked a lot more adult than I did) just sitting there staring at me? Waiting for me to begin doing whatever it was I was getting (omigod!) professionally paid to do? Human beings all suddenly required to address me as none other than “Mister Lyford”? I mean… hell, I was no “Mister Lyford,” not the last time I looked!

“On top of that, they’d given me classes for which there weren’t enough books! They’d forced me to take the Dramatics Coach job when I’d never even been in a play in my LIFE! They’d dumped most of the worst classes on me (a common dirty trick school districts play on the unsuspecting new hires). And one of my two Speech classes was filled with “students,” not a single one of whom was willing to even stand up and tell me his/her name.”

So anyway, during a faculty meeting shortly after New Year’s Day, 1969, our superintendent (who, by the way, I’d learned on day-one was considered a buffoon by the teachers and department heads alike) brought up the unexpected topic of bomb scares. He shared with us that a number of other area schools were recently having to deal with bomb threats, so it was likely it was only a matter of time before we experienced one as well. Then he proudly let us know that he had hatched just the plan to catch the miscreants whenever it happened to us. I didn’t find out till later that Superintendent King was known for his cockamamie ‘just-the-plan’ plans. You wouldn’t believe it.

EXcellent. I’ve hatched just the plan to catch the miscreants…

The plan was this: “Whenever a bomb threat is phoned in to one of our schools, I’ve instructed all the respective principals go to the intercom microphone and simply say (all calm, cool, and collected, mind you) ‘Cole Alert.’ Now, when you hear ‘Cole Alert,’ you will know that a bomb threat has been received. But the kids? Hah! They won’t have a clue as to what that expression means. How could they? So, while they’re left in the dark— you, with your advantage over them, will be watching your classroom students like a hawk in that two- or three-minutes interim leading up to the actual School Evacuation Order. And in so doing, one of you will be in the position to witness, say, one student possibly winking at one of his buddies, or maybe grinning knowingly or, you know, perhaps elbowing somebody else meaningfully. So you will record their names, and see that I receive them at once! Then later we’ll have the police call them in for questioning, and together they and I will sweat them down into a confession.”

One of my colleagues whispered in my ear, “His favorite show is Hawaii Five-O. He sees himself as a Jack Lord. You know, Detective McGarrett.

A week went by. And then it happened!

Moments before the bell for the first class of the day was about to ring, I was monitoring my early homeroom period. Suddenly the distraught voice of the principal started barking over the intercom, “COLE ALERT! COLE ALERT! COLE ALERT!” with the same urgency of a World War II B-17 tail gunner yelling, “BANDIT AT THREE O’CLOCK!” Think Major Burns. From M*A*S*H.

I immediately (but surreptitiously, of course) began surveying my students, watching for, anticipating the telltale wink, the elbow, or the knowing grin. Ready to pounce. But all thirty-plus kids erupted simultaneously, every one of them asking similar versions of the same question to one another. “What the hell is this? A bomb scare?” “And who the hell is Cole?” But there were just so many of them, and it was all happening so fast, I just couldn’t see how I was supposed to be watching all of them at once! And I never caught a single wink, grin, or an elbow! I was a failure.

And then, of course, they all turned on me, their wise all-knowing ‘educator’ at the front of the room. “Is that what this is, Mr. Lyford? A bomb scare?” And loser me, wanting to be the ultimate professional, I quickly pasted on my best poker face and feigned ignorance. “Well, gosh… I have… no idea what this is all about…” at which point the entire classroom busted out in a volley of laughter at the flagrant silliness of my attempted white lie. And before the laughter had time to totally die down, the intercom crackled to life once again and began issuing the evacuation instructions.

Now… that was only the beginning of what was about to turn into the longest, most drawn-out days.

First of all, it was still early morning, around 8:00, far too early for a school building to suddenly flush its entire student body and faculty, ready or not, right out of the building and into a winter wonderland with its air temperature down around zero degrees. But suddenly there we all were, populating the sidewalk like a colony of National Geographic penguins on an ice floe. And secondly, our “super intelligent” superintendent had apparently planned his crafty Here’s-How-We’ll-Thwart-the-Malicious-Bomb-Scarer-Plot not one stinking millimeter further than just coming up with the cool-sounding, 007-ish code name, “COLE ALERT!” And that meant we were all left out there freezing on the sidewalk with nobody having any idea what to do with us!

A half-hour passed, while we watched the police cars and fire trucks pull up and park in the big school parking lot. Some kids hadn’t had time to grab their coats. I ended up lending my coat to one of them. Meanwhile, my toes were so numb it felt like they had disappeared.

Then down the line came our assistant principal with news of the superintendent’s emergency ad hoc Plan B (actually Plan A, if you think about it). Having phoned around town for some/any place to temporarily house our little army, a deal had been struck with the owner of the local movie theater. Suddenly we had a destination. We could go there. They would have room for all of us. A place to sit and warm up. So. We got our marching orders and off we marched. The theater was about three quarters of a mile away.

When we finally arrived en masse at the theater, it turned out the doors of the theater were still locked! Once again we had to assume the portrayal of a penguin colony, while the assistant principal went across the street to a pastry shop to use their telephone. Yeah. 1969. No cell phones back then.

After the proprietor finally showed up, in we went. And guess what. Now it turned out that the thermostat was still set at 55 degrees! And we were told that it would take a very long while to warm the place up. So we sat, watching our exhaled breath forming little mini-clouds before our faces with every breath we took. But hey, at least 55 degrees was like… plus yardage, metaphorically. Better than 5 degrees above zero anyway.

It was also very dark in that dingy theater. And I’m sure that you can understand that the kids were getting more restless and obstreperous by the minute from utter boredom, and who could blame them? Some were racing up and down the aisles, some singing songs, some just whooping it up, and a couple of the kids managed to get into a fight and had to be forcefully separated. Meanwhile, we teachers had formed ourselves in a line blocking the exits, so kids wouldn’t escape.

Man, we were there for such a long time.

But by the way, it just so happened that Belfast Area High School had earlier arranged for a school assembly that very morning. The assembly was to feature classical music performed by a visiting string quartet— two violinists, a violist, and a cellist. So our stable genius of a superintendent came up with the great idea of having that quartet appear and perform on the frigid movie theater stage to entertain us! Because you know, “Musick hath charms to soothe a savage breast.”

Somebody found and dragged four chairs up onto the stage. And then, voila! The musicians were trotted out onto the stage witho no introduction whatsoever. Or perhaps someone did introduce them but it was just too loud and chaotic there, that I simply missed it. I dunno. But watching the absurdity of the members of that doomed quartet sitting out there all swaddled up in overcoats and scarves and boots, diligently sawing their bows back and forth on the strings, their frozen breaths forming little empty cartoon balloons above their heads, and starting with their dainty sonata and hoping in vain to work their way toward the minuet…? Let’s just say… it didn’t go well. A loud boom-box blasting Bob Dylan or The Stones might’ve worked.

Ironically, the ill-timed concerto only exacerbated the savagery in the beasts’ breasts. Hoots and hollers and catcalls and loud boos! The stamping of feet! Everything was getting out of control fast, though we tried to shush them and weed out the worst of our little villains, but the anonymity in the darkness made thjat difficult!

Our musicians had found themselves playing with all the distractions of the band on the deck of the sinking Titanic.

What stopped it all dead in its tracks was the sudden, militaristic arrival of the superintendent and his henchmen! Yes, it seems that whenever and wherever he arrived, our ‘commandant’ always showed up with between four and six of his trench-coated tough guys (school board members no doubt, but definite mafia wannabes). They took the stage. The quintet-ers were summarily dismissed and immediately scampered off and away with their strings and bows and music stands in tow. Someone turned up the house lights way up while Superintendent King dramatically faced down the rabble with His terrible-swift-sword wrath… “WE’LL HAVE IT QUIET!”

And lo, suddenly it was quiet. And verily He saw the silence. And He saw that it was good!

He took the few steps from center stage to downstage, all the better to confront His adversaries with His odd mixture of disgust and pity. And He stood there with his feet shoulder-width apart during nearly a full minute of dramatic silence, just daring anyone to make a peep… and then, finally, He spaketh.

“This morning… somebody with a very sick and demented mind, phoned the high school principal’s office and informed them that forty sticks of dynamite were planted up in one of our classroom ceilings. Yes, that’s right. Can you imagine that, ladies and gentlemen? Can you imagine how diseased and twisted the pea-sized brain of this… this Neanderthal has to be? To do something as insane as that? No, you can’t. Because it goes beyond imagination, doesn’t it.

And we have reason to believe… and I’m sorry to have to inform you of this… that it was one of you… one of your classmates, perhaps the one sitting right next to you at this very moment, who made that that deranged call. As hard as that is to believe. Yes. I know. You see, a psycho did this. A sadly sick psycho made that call… and as a result, the rest is history. You were his victims. You are the ones that this psychopath sent out into the freezing cold and left you out there for more than an hour! This… mental patient…”

[Now of course I obviously can’t remember the exact words that Commandant King spaketh to us, because this was back in 1969, some 55 years ago. But I assure you this is very much approximately the speech he made, marked by the vitriol and political incorrectness that citizens of this decade would be shocked to have heard. But… it was just this vitriolic speech that led to the even more unbelievable… next thing.]

I swear, as I was standing there at the back of the theater listening to his words… (and you’re going to find this practically impossible to believe because… hey, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been there) I heard, and a bunch of us teachers heard, a ‘noise,’ a low muttering, an ongoing muttering voice that was basically just a bare buzz under the thunder of the superintendent’s diatribe. Now we, the teachers, had no idea where the voice was coming from so, instinctively, like good soldiers, we all spread out, stealthily moving around the seats in order to home in on whatever the source of it was, because by now you could make out some of the words. And the words I was hearing? I‘d begun to find them more than a little disturbing.

But then suddenly, we no longer had to search for the source. Because a few kids in the middle section all at once just jack-in-the-boxed right up out of their seats and began jockeying themselves frantically, both to the left and right, away from a single, still-seated young man they’d been sitting near to. And what this fellow was saying was essentially this, only in lots more words: “And what, he’s calling ME sick? Hah! HE’S the PSYCHO!”

Of course the boy was quickly apprehended by a trio of phys ed. teachers (no, not by the likes of little ol’ me). The police were called to the lobby where, just before he was transferred into their custody, this young man (an obviously disturbed, solid, heavyweight of a Korean boy) managed for the first time ever to zip the lip of our officious, yammering, Superintendent King (of the Five-O) by delivering an iron-fisted gut-punch to his breadbasket, leaving him entirely at a loss for words as well as the ability to breathe temporarily.

The two immediate outcomes of that little altercation were (a) by the next day, our boy the ‘bomb-scarer’ seems to have been quietly… ‘disappeared,’ never to be seen or heard from again (as far as I know anyway), and (b) as a result, many of the faculty felt compelled to gather that night (as was their wont every night anyway) at Jed’s Tavern, to happily raise their mugs of grog in a toast to… (well, nobody really knew the Korean boy or his name, as it turned out, so…) to the young “Unknown Bombadier” who’d made, for their morning’s amusement, the utimate sacrifice.

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Now dear reader, if you found this I-swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles- it’s-all-true remembrance of mine hard to believe (as I did myself while it was all unfolding around me as an innocent and unsuspecting first-year teacher) I can only warn you to fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, for… DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART TWO (coming soon)

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SATURDAY NIGHT IN DOVER-FOXCROFT: REC CENTER, 1961

The Rec Center over at Central Hall runs on Friday and Saturday nights. On Fridays it’s open exclusively to the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders; Saturdays, it belongs to the big dogs of Foxcroft Academy. Guests are allowed in only if one of our students has personally invited them, and secondly if the invitation has first been cleared with a faculty advisor of the Rec Center Committee (of which I am now a member— I’m the freshman class of ’64 rep) and a permission pass signed by our principal, is presented at the door upon entry. Yeah. We run a tight ship.

Now, I’ve never ever been a committee-kind-of-guy, but this Rec Center is one of the most important things in my life. I’d be so damn lost if we didn’t have Rec Center to look forward to on the weekends. But being on the Committee does mean that I have to man the check-in table in the foyer for a half hour one evening every other week. Because if someone without the official and required ‘invited-guest’ pass manages to slip on in past, me without me catching it (and immediately alerting the faculty advisor or chaperons on duty), I’d probably get kicked off the committee. And I don’t want that.

So tonight, here I am, happily walking the frigid little fifth of a mile in the snow storm from my house to Central Hall. And when I push my way in through the front doors, I check in with whoever is seated at the greeting table and then begin to clomp up the old wooden staircase toward the second floor, drawn forward by the tantalizing thrum of the muffled jukebox bass.

Forty per cent of the reason I love coming here every week is the music, pure and simple. The other sixty can probably be summed up by the title of that 1940’s book (that I’ve never read) titled The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Because that’s me. Lonely heart. Lonely hunter. But a hunter who’s actually pretty pathetic at the hunting, if you wanna know the truth.

At the top of the landing, I stop to stare in at the dance floor, which I can’t really even see yet as it’s cloaked in total darkness. (Ah. It’s a slow one. Jim Reeves. “He’ll Have to Go.”) I’m not too crazy about bumping into anybody in the dark, so I’ll just stand here listening until my eyes have started adjusting to the change in lighting from the brightness downstairs.

Though love is blind, make up your mind

I’ve got to know

Should I hang up, or will you tell him

He’ll have to go?

When I can partially make out some of the shadowy, slowly-swaying couples leaning into one another in hugging embraces (oh yeah, that must be nice), I venture in. Stepping around and in between them, I hang a right and make for the coatroom door which, when I push it open, lets the lone, 60-watt, bare light-bulb-hanging-from-the-ceiling brightness flash-blind the dancers in the dark nearest the door, as well as myself all over again. The music muffles when I close the door.

This room’s the size of a really small office. And, as usual, there’re mountains of jackets and coats piled up here, there, and everywhere, right on the floor even. I unzip my parka, wiggle out of it, and bury it under a pile over in the far corner so I’ll know where to dig r it when it’s time to go. Then, it’s back out through the door. And the new song starting up is “The Bristol Stomp” by The Dovells.

The kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol

When the do the Bristol Stomp!

Really somethin’ when they join in jumpin’

When they do the Bristol Stomp!

I drop myself down in one of the chairs over on the left side, the boys’ side, of the hall, and wait for my night vision to catch back up with me again. The dance floor is actually a basketball court with a hoop at either end, one fixed just above the coatroom door and the other, down at the far end, hanging just in front of the stage. The seats are lined up on either side, left and right. And it’s kinda funny, the left side by some unwritten law being the boys’ side. The girls all park across from us on the other side of the hall.

I watch the couples gyrating to the peppy rhythm. “Bristol Stomp” is pretty lively and yeah, some of’em are really going at it. Me though, I’m pretty much a watcher, basically. Not that I wanna be. I don’t like to think about it too much, but each time the music starts up and the couples rise to meet each other out on the floor, our two segregated rows become, by default, the wallflower rows, I guess.

Yeah, we’re the wallflowers, the shy ones. The ones who are not part of a couple. Not really by choice exactly.

Oh sure, I mean physically…all we’d have to do is get ourselves up on our own two legs and just… walk over there. And just ask somebody, if you have the guts. But the thing of it is, some of us have learned that it’s a whole lot longer walk, plodding way back across the floor when somebody just looks right at you and says, “No.” Especially when a fool bunch of her girlfriends all bust a gut giggling like crazy just as you’re turning around and feeling stupid.

And…isn’t it dumb, and totally unfair how it always has to be the guy that asks. The girls can’t really get shot down, can they. Not when they never have tobe the ones asking. Well, unless it was a Sadie Hawkins dance, which we never even have. And then, too, oh yeah, it’s perfectly all right for the girls to just step right out onto the dance floor in two’s or three’s or four’s and start dancing up a storm together to rock’n’roll songs. But you’d never catch a bunch of guys doing that. It’d be pretty much frowned upon, you dig?

So… yeah, at least they have something they can do instead of just sitting over there like a bunch of morons. Like we do.

Anyhow, most of them left sitting over there in their own little Lonely Hunter Hearts row aren’t ones I’d even want to ask to dance with me. Why? Because stupidly I’m a movie-romantic. See, I go to the movies every week on my allowance. Practically no matter what is playing. So I see all kinds: westerns, comedies, gangster-flicks, horror, sci-fi and, yeah, the love stories. I would never admit this to my buddies, but the love stories? For some reason, they really get to me. Basically, because I can’t help identifying so much with the male leads on the screen in all of those boy-meets girl plots. And then I just can’t help fantasizing all the time that some day, some girl, some Sandra Dee or Natalie Wood, is actually gonna take an interest in me. And then… you know, we’ll get together. Dating. Somehow.

Problem is… it’s just never that day.

Oh God, you wanna know something embarrasing? My favorite show on TV (well, next to The Twilight Zone that is) is something titled The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. It’s a silly sit-com starring Dwayne Hickman as Dobie and Bob Denver as Dobie’s comical beatnik sidekick, Maynard G. Krebbs.

The weekly plot is almost always a variation on the same theme: Dobie has his heart set on Thalia Menninger, played by the gorgeous Tuesday Weld (one of the biggest reasons it’s a favorite show of mine) but she’s totally out of his league, see? Sound familiar? Yeah. The Heart of the Lonely Hunter? Story of my life.

P.S. you can add Tuesday Weld to my Sandra Dee and Natalie Wood list.

OK. Enough watching. I’ll come back upstairs here real soon, but as always, first I’ll just zip back down stairs to scout out which, if any, of my Maynard-G.-Krebbs pals have shown up.

The Rec Center is an entirely different planet downstairs. It’s well-lighted, and looks sort of like a little teen-age gambling casino. The card games always consist of poker, cribbage, and black jack. You can also sign out a chess or checkers set, and so usually there’s always one of those brainy games ongoing too, surrounded by its usual small handful of kibitzers looking on. Me, I mostly can be found playing cribbage or chess. But then too there’s the noisiest thing going down here: the ping-pong table. Ping pong is fun.

So sure, I enjoy it down here and all, but I have to say it: my lonely-hunter heart remains up there in the romantic darkness of the second floor, with all Dover-Foxcroft’s Dees, Woods, and Welds practically living out there on the dance floor.

Part of my problem is that three-quarters of the kids who show up here on Saturday nights are the upper classmen. Well, mostly sophomores and some juniors. The popular seniors (and some juniors) what with having their driver’s licenses and their own set of wheel, have obviously discovered better things to do. Like ‘parking.’ Parking out on lover’s lane. Or parking in the public beach parking lot.

OK, ten minutes have gone by down here. I start to take a deep breath, planning to head back up there with my new New Year’s resolution to honestly ask some girl to dance, when the head advisor appears and pulls me aside. “Glad you’re here tonight, Tommy. Eddie hasn’t shown up. So, I’m afraid I’ve gotta ask you to pull a double shift at the check-in table.”

“What? A whole hour?”

“Yeah. Afraid so. 8:30 to 9:30.”

“But, jeez. That’s a lot.” Man, why does this always happen to me? I mean, I just knew, damnit, that between 8:30 and 9:30? With my luck, that’d be the exact same time that the girl of my dreams, whoever she might be, will show up, alone without a date, and would be looking over the dance floor… someone, anyone…”

“Yeah. But… what can I say? It is what it is. So, can you do this for me?”

“Well… sure. I guess.” Me thinking, Oh sure! But… don’t you see? I was planning to make my move!

“Thanks, Tommy. You’re a good man.”

And then he’s gone. With me glaring at his back thinking, Well why don’t YOU do it then! I look at my watch. Oh well, I’ve still got forty minutes or so left before having to man the table. And plus, after that, I’ll still have 9:30 to 10:00 at least. Anyway, I head for the stairs.

As I start jogging up, I’m hit by a very eerie silence up there. Which is odd. Because even if it’s them just deciding what next song to play, where’s the usual loud buzz of conversation? So I’m feeling that old movie line: It’s quiet. TOO quiet. And then too, jeez, what the hey? The lights are all on. Somebody’s turned the lights on! Is the Center what, closing early? Man, I hope not.

I sort of blunder in. Whoa! All the seats are empty! And what else!? I see everybody’s crowded around in a big semi-circle, facing the stage with their backs to me. But… there’s no one on the stage. I can see that! So… what’re they all looking at? Curious, I squeeze myself into the crush and worm my way in to the front. OK. So there’s some guy, some man, standing at the center of the semi-circle. And he’s got a guitar, and he’s talking. But I can’t hear him that well yet. So I have no idea what he’s talking about. But uh… he looks… and sounds… very familiar! But who in the…?

And then it hits me!

Ohmigod! That’s my French teacher there! Mr. Bennett! Reason I didn’t recognize him at first is I’ve never seen him before without a sports jacket and tie. And then again, too, I’ve always only ever seen him in the classroom, never anywhere else, so… well, he’s… out of context here. Especially holding a guitar. And look at him! He’s wearing a very cool ‘dickie,’ like a turtle neck, under his shirt… and he looks… I don’t know, just so surprisingly casual. And cool. And so what’s he doing here then? I mean, he’s not an advisor, or anything.

The Meddibempsters of Bowdoin College, 1960s. Mr. Clay Bennett, 4th row (right). Strangely, James Howard, front row (alone), was also my high school English teacher at the same time…

Mr. Bennett is a super-great teacher. I’ve fallen head over heels in love with French this year. English will always be my favorite class, but French is a close second. And it’s all on him. When he speaks French, he sounds so authentic. And he makes it fun when we practice those… nasal sounds. Like the on at the end of garçon: -ongh… gar ’çongh!You almost have to wrinkle your nose to say it right. Fun, like I said.

And he regales us some with a few of the memories of his sojourn in Paris. And his recollections leave all of our heads dancing with sugarplums of, say, a bicycle parked on the grassy banks of the Seine, and a romantic afternoon consisting of a baguette, fromage Français, a bottle of wine, and… a friend. Heady stuff. And like I said, I love the class, even though oddly I’m barely passing it, thanks to all the strenuous French literature translation assignments, and the verb tenses. But all in all, I am in awe of this teacher, and I really can’t say that about hardly any of the teachers on the faculty.

And now (surprise) here he is suddenly playing the guitar in his hands, his soft beautiful chords floating around us, and now his voice beginning to sing… surprisingly… “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” And no, not like The Tokens sing it. The way he sings it, because he’s making it his own. And it is really working. My God, I love it. His voice is gorgeous.

I remember now hearing that he was a member of Bowdoin College’s highly regarded acapella chorus, The Meddibempsters, and his vocal training is so obvious. I mean, wow. He’s good. You can feel that everybody in this crowd, like me, is totally knocked out by his performance, and we all want an encore at the end of the song but, no, it looks like that one is all we’re gonna get. However, this little one-song concert is something I’ll long remember, I’m sure. And I’ve just made me a conscious decision: I’m gonna go back and spend a lot more time practicing on my guitar.

And man, I’m just thanking my lucky stars this thing didn’t go down when I’d be stuck downstairs, sitting at the check-in table. So happy I lucked out. But speaking of my check-in duty, it’s pretty close to that time. And since nobody seems to be in any hurry to start the Top Forty music back up again (everybody, content to just be standing around in a daze marveling that one of theirs teachers could be so talented), I guess I’ll have to accept the fact that I’m not gonna get to ask somebody for a dance, at least for right now. But there’ll still be that half hour left between 9:30 and 10:00 though. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky then.

Yeah. Right.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here I am, sitting alone at the table, loose-leaf notebook open in front of me in which I have to log everyone’s comings and goings. And it hasn’t exactly been busy. One set of parents popping in to pick up their daughter. That’s pretty much it, because it’s late. I nod at the guys continuously go back and forth, going up and coming down the stairs. And try rather meekly to engage the giggly girls who are doing the same in clever conversation as they flit by. The restrooms are down at the far end of the hall; that explains the majority of the traffic. Other than that, I’m spending my time contemplating what I’ll probably do after the place closes down. Play basketball upstairs with my brother and his buddies? Join a couple of my own pals and sneak into the movie theater to see who’s there? Oh well. I’ll figure it out.

(yawn) This job is so boring.

Until it isn’t.

The front doorsuddenly gets yanked open, letting in a rogue blast of frigid, wintery wind and a swirl of snowflakes! And right behind that gust, in stumbles four young men, not boys! Their faces rosy. And just bursting with energy. Talking loudly and animatedly about… I dunno, something. Fortunately the door manages to slam itself shut. These guys look like they’re freezing, like they’ve been walking outdoors rather than riding in a vehicle. And they’re too busy yakking to have noticed little me yet.

Even though they’re in their civvies, they’re all sporting their tell-tale Air Force parkas. So. They’re flyboys. Flyboys from Charleston Air Force Base, eight miles southeast from here, up on Charleston Hill. The flyboys? They aren’t too popular with the homeboys around here, as you might imagine. Not enough girls to go around… is the word on the street. But that doesn’t have much to do with me.

So far, they’re so wrapped up in babbling to each other, I don’t even exist. Whatever the topic of their animated excitement, it seems to have something to do with something outside. I decide to introduce myself. “Hi, guys!” They don’t hear me obviously. It’s like I really don’t exist. Before I get a chance to clear my throat and repeat my friendly hello, I hear one of them say, “OK. Let’s go!” And as if somebody fired a starting pistol, all four are swarming up the stairs!

“WHOA there!” I yell (to no avail). I panic and find myself jack-knifing to my feet and bellowing, HEY! YOU GUYS!! I SAID, STOP!!”Miraculously, they hear that one. And freeze, up by about the seventh step. Then all four crank their heads around and let their eyes fall on me. Down here. In the foyer. I don’t say anything. They don’t say anything. A moment passes. They all look at one another. Then down they come. All four. To crowd around my dinky little table and lean their faces in at me with rapt interest. Like I’m a bug or something. One of them leans his face in too close, eye-to-eye, our foreheads nearly touching. His face is a blank. A big, blank poker face. “Well…?”

I find I have to swallow before I can choke out a response. “I’m sorry.” Jeez, I can barely hear myself. “But… see? This is a high school thing. Foxcroft Academy has…”

“A high school thing? So what’re you doing here, shrimp boat? You can’t be what, even in third grade yet? Right?”

I have to swallow twice this time. And I feel a drip of cool sweat sliding down between my shoulder blades. “No… uhmmm, ninth grade. “

“Oh, come off it! That can’t be right. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you show me some ID.”

OK, I don’t like the way this is going. At all. After all. I’m a little chicken-shit, aren’t I. And I’m already wishing I’d just let them pass on by. With, you know, me just ‘accidentally’ looking the other way. But now I have to say… something.

“You gotta be a student at the Academy, to come in.”

“My God. You really talk fast, don’tcha. I can barely understand you.”

“Or Be. Invited,” I manage to add.

“Oh, that! Sure. I know that! That’s OK. Because… I am invited, see? By… Jim. You know Jim, don’t you. Of course you do. Everybody knows good old Jim. Am I right?”

I haven’t been this frightened since that time on my paper route when I got cornered by a growling German shepherd for a half hour. I keep thinking, Where IS everybody? Anybody? Why hasn’t somebody just strolled by…?

“Well, see… you gotta have a signed pass.” I mutter. “Signed by the principal.”

Here, he shakes his head patiently, but with a big wolfish smile. “Ah! So you’re… the hall monitor. Oh my!” And then he does something I really don’t like.

He puts his hands on my shirt. I figure, Here we go. He’s gonna beat the crap outta me, but no. Instead, it’s like he’s just intimately… straightening my collar, and then dusting off my shoulders, like maybe there was something on them, like, you know, dandruff or something, but still all the while smiling at me, like I’m some little kid and he’s my dad, getting me spiffed up to get ready for school. It’s something that bullies like to do.

“You know what I’m thinking,” he says. I don’t say anything. I just wait for him to tell me. “I think… you and me? I think we’ve become friends. Don’t you? Don’t you feel that?”

I’m just looking down at the toes of my shoes.

“So what I’m thinking is, you’ve thought this whole thing all over, right? And because we’ve become such good friends now, you’re going to invite me to go… right on right up those stairs with our other three friends here and… then… hey, it’s all good, right? Am I right?”

I nod.

“Can you just say it? That you’re inviting me?”

I nod.

“Then… please… say it.”

I am so ashamed. “I… invite you.”

“Aw gee, thank you so very…”

Suddenly, the front door gets practically kicked open, letting in another rogue gust of frigid, wintery wind and a swirl of snowflakes! And right behind that gust, in stumbles …a cop. Wait, no, not just a cop. THE cop: Bill Fair!

(OK. I admit it. This image of Robocop is a stretch, but (if you’d ever MET Officer Fair) it’s not that much of a S T R E T C H…)

When you think Officer Fair, think Alpha Wolf. Officer Fair is big. Officer Fair is solid. Officer Fair’s face and neck are a lunar landscape of pock marks and scars. Officer Fair has… a reputation. Officer Fair can be frightening just to look at. I’m frightened just looking at him right now, and yet I’m so glad he’s arrived. It’s like the wind just blew the door in and (surprise) The Abominable Snowman is suddenly standing right in front of you… and studying you!

And Officer Fair has left the door wide open.

What I’m suddenly seeing is these four guys shrinking smaller and smaller. It’s unbelievable. They’ve become one big, cowering, little gang. If they had tails, you wouldn’t be able to winch them out from between their legs with a chain.

“Bill?” says the guy I just invited to go on upstairs. It rocks me that he’s on a first-name basis with Officer Fair. His voice noticeably shaky, he adds, “We didn’t mean nuthin’, I swear to God!”

“Honest-to-God’s-TRUTH, Bill,” whines another. “We just come in here to… find out what time it is! Is all.”

Officer Fair is a man of few words. Right at the moment, Officer Fair is a man of no words. Officer Fair is known as a man of action rather than words.

“We were just leaving, Bill. Really. I’m serious.” All four of them are edging around him now, trying to inch themselves toward the open door. Officer Fair isn’t budging out of their way much, meaning they’re really going to have to squeeze themselves past him to get out, which turns out to be about as easy as being born.

“So… hey. Whattaya say, Bill. Please. We’ll just be on our way. Alright? OK?” If looks could kill, four coffins would be getting ordered from Lary’s Funeral Home right about now.

But then, in a couple of blinks, they’re gone. Just like that. They succeeded in squeezing their way past The Man, and he’s followed them out. The door slams shut. It’s over. Crisis averted. (Well, for me, but probably not for them.)

God bless the U.S. cavalry.

Jesus, breathe, Tommy!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so now that I’ve half-gotten my wits back about me, and I feel my heart rate slowly and steadily ticking itself back down to near normal… and even though I haven’t entirely stopped shaking yet, everything is becoming crystal clear now. Yup.

So, in retrospect it’s now so obvious that Officer Fair had been tailing these fellas before they’d shown up here. That they’d been on the run, running scared from him for whatever reason or other. And so they’d desperately crashed in here to get themselves lost in a very big building with a large crowd of people in it. Which explains why they so needed to get themselves the hell upstairs and out of sight as quickly as possible: to mingle in with the crowd or, even better, find some little cubby hole to disappear in.

“How’s it going? Did I miss anything?” asks my replacement.

I give him the look. “Well, it is now.”

He frowns. “Uhmmm… OK?”

So I suppose I oughtta tell him the whole frigging story. And I do. About how a squad of four soldiers barged in here and roughed me up but good! And about how, since no one was around here to help me out, I’d decided to string’em along as long as I possible could— you know, acting scared and all, but really? Just keeping them down here, on the bottom floor, with me. You know, so nobody else, upstairs, would get hurt, right? And about how it actually worked. About how I was able to hold out just long enough for the cops to show up and kick the door in, rough them up, handcuff’em, and drag their sorry butts off to jail. And yeah. Now I suppose I’ll probably hafta go in and ID’em and all, in a police line-up or something. Plus, you know, then they’ll probably want me to testify against them in court.

Now boy, let me tell you, wasn’t he some impressed!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You know what? To heck with hanging around here for the last dance, especially since I probably would never actually get around to asking anybody to dance anyway. Shoot, I’m rounding up Richie and Dale. I’m gonna talk’em into sneaking into the movie theater with me to see if there are any interesting girls, that need to be walked home. And then maybe we’ll hit Rocket Lanes. Mostly pretty much so I’ll have enough time to wow them with my practically unbelievable story along the way. Yeah.

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Category: Intimidation

EMPTY-DESK SYNDROME II: Oh, Danny Boy— It Is What It Is…

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EMPTY-DESK SYNDROME: Oh, Danny Boy

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CROOKED MAN, CROOKED HOUSE II: The Cigarette Smoking Man

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SATURDAY NIGHT IN DOVER-FOXCROFT: REC CENTER, 1961