Rook: Snowman Read online

  Eight

  The next morning, Dr Ehrlichman held a special nondenominational prayer assembly so that the students of West Grove Community College could all pray for Ray Krueger’s recovery in their own way.

  Dottie Osias gave an address which she had written herself, and which Jim found deeply touching. She delivered it in a high, asthmatic voice, her cheeks flushed with determination.

  “Ray Krueger is one of those people who seem to believe that the universe is something they’ve invented in their own minds, and that everybody they meet is somebody they’ve invented, too. I guess in a way you could say that he thinks he’s God. But just like God, he always takes special care of the world that he’s invented. He’s a leading member of the West Grove environmental study group. He went upstate last summer to fight for the redwood forests, and he spent three days helping to rescue a stranded minke whale on Will Rogers State Beach.

  “Everybody knows how tender Ray can be with animals; but not everybody knows how tender he can be with people, too. He suffers from an emotional problem which sometimes makes him shout out rude and aggressive things he doesn’t really mean. That upsets quite a lot of people, and I can understand that. But behind all of those outbursts, there’s a very special person who cares so much for everybody he meets; and I mean everybody.

  “I remember my very first day at West Grove. I didn’t have any friends because my family had just moved to Los Angeles from Cleveland, Ohio. I was overweight. I was asthmatic, and all of the eucalyptus trees in the college grounds didn’t help that any. Nobody spoke to me and I didn’t even know where I was supposed to go for class. I was too embarrassed to ask anybody, because I was in Special Class II, which meant that I was the next best thing to a retard.

  “I was sitting alone crying. But Ray Krueger saw me, and came over to me, and asked me what was wrong. It took me a long time to tell him, but he was so patient and understanding; and in the end, when he found out that I was going to the same class that he was, Mr Rook’s class, he put his arm around me and led me there, and told me that I was going to have a great time in Special Class II. It wasn’t a class for retards, he said. It was a class for people who cared.

  “Well, Ray Krueger cared. And we care for him. And no matter which God we say our prayers to before we go to sleep at night, let’s make sure that we make a special plea for Ray, to help him through his pain, and to bring him back to us. Not intact in body, maybe. But intact inside of his head. Because the world needs people like Ray. I know that I sure do.”

  As everybody filed out of assembly, Jim was immediately approached by Dr Friendly, accompanied by a toothy fortyish woman with bouffant ginger hair and a bright green suit.

  “James … I want you to meet Ms Madeleine Ouster, from the Department of Education. She was supposed to make a visit yesterday, but obviously, under the circumstances …”

  With a jingle of gold bangles, Madeleine Ouster shot out her hand. “Mr Book! I’ve heard so much about you and your Special Class II.”

  “Not Book, Rook,” Jim corrected her.

  Madeleine Ouster blinked at him. “Book, Rook?”

  “Maybe you’d be good enough to take Ms Ouster along to your first class, James,” said Dr Friendly. “You know … show her why West Grove Community College thinks that you’re such a star.”

  Jim gave him a look that would have killed a parrot on the opposite side of the street. But he laid his hand around Madeleine Ouster’s shoulders and guided her toward Special Class II, while he gave her his full ‘gravely disadvantaged but bravely struggling’ speech about his remedial students. “These young people are having to fight against impossible odds, just to be literate. Everything’s against them. Society, their parents, television, peer-pressure. You have to understand how courageous they are.”

  “What interests me, Mr Book-Rook, is your approach. Most remedial teachers rely on simple texts like Dr Seuss and children’s classics. But you’re teaching your students Walt Whitman and Hart Crane and Marianne Moore.”

  “They may find it difficult to read and write but that doesn’t mean that they’re stupid,” Jim told her. “I think it’s a mistake to start them on overly simple texts, especially at this age. They get bored too quickly, and who can blame them? You’re nineteen years old and you’re going to read about Green Eggs & Ham for two weeks? The answer is to challenge their intelligence, to make them think. Once they’ve started to think, their syntactic skills soon catch up.”

  He pushed his way into the classroom. As usual, it was chaos, with Mandy Saintskill and Christopher L’Ouverture rapping together, and the air thick with flying pellets. Washington Freeman III standing on his head and Suzie Wintz was flapping her hands to dry her freshly polished nails. Instantly, however, the pellets stopped flying and everybody was sitting at their desks with earnest, attentive looks on their faces. Jim made a point of looking to see if Jack Hubbard, and there he was, thank God. Obviously the blind spirit hadn’t returned to Pico Villas last night.

  Jim said, “I want to introduce you to Ms Madeleine Ouster, from the Department of Education in Washington. Ms Ouster is interested in the work we’ve been doing here in Special Class II. I hope you’ll welcome her and show her that this remedial class is the equal of any other English class in the country.”

  Tarquin Tree stood up and gave Madeleine Ouster an exaggerated bow. Then he clapped his hands and said, “Everybody here … says aloha and hi … and looks you in the eye … like a piece of the sky … we’re going to show you … that we know the lingo … much better than bingo … so you go back … and say we’re on track … and you’re going to be … Ouster the Booster!”

  Everybody applauded, including Jim. Madeleine Ouster gave a thin smile and said to Jim, “Why don’t you carry on? I’ll sit in the corner and watch. This promises to be educational, to say the least.”

  Jim walked up and down the aisles between the desks, saying nothing at first. He waited for quiet. He waited for everybody in the class to guess what he was thinking about.

  Eventually, he said, “We stood and prayed for Ray today. Ray would want us to carry on with our work, bettering ourselves, day by day, the way that he was trying so hard to better himself. So that’s what we’re going to do. But we’re not going to forget that we have a classmate and a friend who needs our love and our support, and that what happened to him could have happened to any one of us.

  “We’re going to start our study today with ‘The Ball Poem’ by John Berryman; and I want you to think about this poem in context with what happened to Ray yesterday, and in context with your own lives, and all of those things that you take for granted.

  What is that boy now, who has lost his ball,

  What, what is he to do? I saw it go

  Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then

  Merrily over – there it is in the water!

  No use to say ‘O there are other balls’:

  An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy

  As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down

  All his young days into the harbor where

  His ball went.

  He finished the poem and then he asked the class to discuss it. What did it mean? How did it apply to their own lives, their own growing up? Joyce Capistrano said it was a cynical poem that said life is tough and nobody is ever going to help you. Washington said, “It means you gotta stand on your own two feet, even when you think you lost everything, the same way Ray lost his hands. You gotta say, I lost that ball for ever, man, and I aint never gonna see that ball no more, and all I can do right now is forget it, and go on, because there aint no point in crying over lost balls or wasted days.”

  Nestor Fawkes put up his hand and said, “I had a ball once. It was red and yellow. I saved up my allowance for it. I took it home and my father stuck his whittling knife into it. He said that would teach me.”

  “And did it teach you anything, do you think?” asked Jim.

  “It teach him his old man’s
the meanest piece of shit in greater Los Angeles,” put in Tarquin.

  But without looking up, Nestor said, “It teached me not to hope for nothing.”

  “It taught you not to hope for anything,” Jim corrected him.

  “That, too,” Nestor agreed.

  “Okay. But was that a good lesson or a bad lesson?”

  “I don’t know,” Nestor shrugged. “But if don’t never hope for nothing you don’t never get disappointed, do you?”

  They talked a lot about Ray. They were all burning to talk about him, and Jim encouraged them. He wanted them all to put their feelings into words – even if those words were mixed up and ungrammatical or downright obscure. “Ray – shoot – I feel like I lost a crown off of my head,” said Tarquin.

  Eventually he approached Jack. He stood very close, but Jack kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “Jack, what do you feel?” he asked him.

  “I hardly knew him,” said Jack.

  “But you must feel something, surely?”

  “I feel … I feel like the sins of the father are visited on the child.”

  “I don’t get it. You’re not trying to suggest that Ray’s father had anything to do with this?”

  “There are other fathers. There are other children.”

  Jim knew what Jack was trying to tell him. He said, very softly, “Okay … maybe we can talk about that later.”

  “He’s so mo-oo-ody,” said Susan Wintz, fluttering her eyelashes.

  At the end of the class, Jim set them the task of writing a short poem or essay about Ray – “but remember ‘The Ball Poem’ and don’t make it slushy. I don’t want it to sound like something out of a movie, all misty-eyed and sentimental. The movies are not life. This is life.”

  When the classroom was empty, Madeleine Ouster came up to him and said, “Well.”

  Jim was leafing through Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days in America, looking for a classroom text. She stood there and said nothing else, and after a little while he looked up at her.

  “Just ‘well’?” he said. “This is where I usually get the speech on how I mustn’t divert from the approved curriculum; and how on earth can rappers and homeboys and fat dumb kids who can hardly read a Donald Duck comic be expected to appreciate John Frederick Nims.”

  Without hesitation, Madeleine Ouster said,

  Who gather here will never move the stars,

  Give law to nations, track the atom down.

  For lack of love or vitamins or cash

  All the red robins of their year have gone.

  Jim took off his glasses. “John Frederick Nims, ‘Penny Arcade’. I’m impressed.”

  “And I’m impressed, too, Mr Rook. What I saw in this classroom today has no equal in any English remedial class that I’ve seen anywhere. I’m going to ask Dr Ehrlichman if he’ll consider releasing you for a period of time so that you can come to Washington, DC and join my new consultative action force on American literacy.”

  “And are you going to ask me if I want to go?”

  “You’re a teacher with a great sense of personal duty, Mr Rook. I can see that for myself. My action force has the urgent task of reversing the diminishing literacy levels all over the country. It’s absolutely vital for our survival as an educated nation. We need skills like yours, Mr Rook, and we need them very badly.”

  “How long would this be for?”

  “It depends on what results we achieve. A year minimum.”

  “That would mean leaving this class.”

  “I’m sure West Grove College has access to other English remedial teachers.”

  “Yes, but – this is my class. What do you think that somebody like Nestor Fawkes is going to do without me? How do you think Tarquin Tree is going to express himself to a teacher who only believes in Janet and John?”

  “It’s precisely that kind of dedication that I need, Mr Rook.”

  “I don’t know … it’s very difficult.”

  Madeleine Ouster opened her pocketbook and took out a card with the crest of the Department of Education on it. “Why don’t you think it over and call me? But let me just say this: if you become a member of my literacy action force, your next step can only be up. You’ll have access to all of the special educational units in the country. You’ll be able to try your ideas not just in one classroom, on twenty young people; but in hundreds of classrooms all across America, on thousands of young people. I appreciate your loyalty to your students here. But why should they be the sole beneficiaries of this wonderful gift that you have to offer?”

  Jim said, “You haven’t talked about money.”

  “Because I’m not trying to bribe you, that’s why. I’m just trying to make you see what good you could do – not only for yourself, and your personal career, but for young people everywhere.” She paused, and then she said, “If you’re interested, though, the pay will be roughly twice what you’re making here.”

  Jim tapped her card against his thumbnail. For the first time in a very long time, he was lost for words.

  Madeleine said, “We’ve already had our initial remit meetings, and I’d like you to join us as soon as you possibly can. Sleep on it, why don’t you, and call me before eleven tomorrow at the Westwood Marquis?”

  She shot out her hand again, and firmly shook it, and then she was gone. Jim looked down at the open book on his desk. ‘With me, when depress’d by some specially sad event, or tearing problem, I wait till I go out under the stars for the last voiceless satisfaction.’

  At that moment, Jack Hubbard came in, and stood by the door.

  “Hi, Jack.”

  “You saw my old man last night.”

  “That’s right. He told me all about his expedition to Dead Man’s Mansion. Pretty harrowing stuff.”

  “He was kind of upset. He said that you were trying to make out that there was some kind of connection between what he did in Alaska and what’s been going down here.”

  “That’s because I’m pretty sure that there is. And I think my suspicions were confirmed last night when I was just about to leave your apartment block.” He told Jack about the tapping, and the coldness, and the footprints made of ice.

  “Tapping?” said Jack, frowning. “I’ve heard tapping, too. I guess it started about a week after we arrived here. I never knew what it was.”

  “It’s some kind of presence, Jack, I’m sure of it. For some reason I can’t see it, the way that I can usually see spirits and ghosts and stuff. But the tapping makes me think that it’s blind, and if spirits can’t see you then maybe you can’t see them either.”

  “What do you think it wants?”

  Jim closed his book. “I don’t want to frighten you, but I think that your hunch about the sweatshirt was right. It’s looking for you … but because it’s blind it can only hunt you down with its sense of smell.”

  “Why do you think it’s looking for me? I didn’t have anything to do with Dead Man’s Mansion.”

  “I think your dad knows. I’m afraid he gave me the impression last night that he wasn’t being totally honest with me. Not lying, exactly. But being very economical with the truth.”

  “I’ve asked him so many times, but he just won’t answer.”

  “The answer lies in that blizzard, Jack. Something happened up in Alaska – something bad. Whatever it was, that presence is looking to freeze you solid.”

  It was another sweltering afternoon and the smog was even more lurid than ever. During afternoon recess, Jim prowled around the college grounds, looking for any sign of the blind, invisible spirit that was searching for Jack. He had a strong sense that it was close, but there was nothing to betray its presence. No icy footprints, no sudden drops in temperature, no sparkling frost.

  He was crossing the lawn behind the science block when he saw a bright flash of light. It flashed again, like a heliograph. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he walked over to a group of girls who were sitting together under the wide, shady branches of the cypress tree.

&nbs
p; “Trying to attract my attention?” he asked. “Or trying to dazzle me?”

  Laura Killmeyer smiled and said, “Sorry, sir,” and put down the large circular mirror that she was holding. “I was showing Joyce her grandfather.”

  “You were what?”

  “I was showing Joyce her grandfather. It’s a magic thing. You do this special ritual and then you look in the mirror and the person you want to see is standing right behind you.”

  “You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, no,” said Joyce. “I actually saw him. Only for a second, but it was definitely him.”

  “I saw my cousin,” put in Linda Starewsky. “She was wearing the same red dress she was wearing the day she died.”

  “You mean you can see dead people in the mirror?” asked Jim. “Spirits and things like that?”

  “That’s right. It’s called spirit-shining. My aunt showed me how to do it. She can see ghosts and all kinds of different spirits. She saw a Red Indian wonder-worker once, standing in her hallway. She can use a mirror to tell how long people are going to live, too, but she doesn’t like to do it any more. When you look in the mirror you can see the person running round and round the room, and the number of times they run around is the number of years that they’re going to live. She did it with a friend’s son. He ran round the room twenty-two times and then he disappeared.”

  “So what’s this ritual?”

  “You slice an apple in two and eat half facing east and the other half facing west. Then you kiss the mirror and say, ‘Mirror, mirror, take this kiss; and show me all those ones I miss.’ You cover your eyes with your hands, and then you look in the mirror through your fingers.”

  “And that’s when you see the spirit?”

  “That’s right. But only in the mirror. If you turn around, there’s nobody there, and that spirit will never appear to you again.”