Rooster

Rooster

Don Trembath

O
RCA
B
OOK
P
UBLISHERS

Copyright © 2005 Don Trembath

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission
in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Trembath, Don, 1963-
Rooster / Don Trembath.

ISBN 1-55143-261-7

I. Title.

PS8589.R392R66 2005    jC813'.54    C2005-901966-2

Summary
: Rooster wants to graduate from high school,
he just doesn't want to work for it.

First published in the United States, 2005
Library of Congress Control Number:
2005924421

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing
programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the
Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Cover design and typesetting: Lynn O'Rourke
Cover photography: Getty Images

Orca Book Publishers
Box 5626, Stn. B
Victoria, BC Canada
V8R 6S4

Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 468
Custer, WA USA
98240-0468

Printed and bound in Canada
08 07 06 05 • 5 4 3 2 1

To my mom,
small in stature, big in support,
encouragement, laughter,
companionship, character and love.

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

1

G
loria Nixon was furious with the way things had gone, but as she well knew, how she felt about things didn't matter. Not at Win–ston High School, anyway. No way. At Winston High School, if you weren't the school principal and your name wasn't Judith Helmsley, what you thought or cared about or said meant nothing. Gloria knew it, and everyone else knew it too.

That didn't matter either, of course. How Gloria felt and what she knew fell into the same category. But, dammit, she was irritated! Especially this time. As a matter of fact, this time she was so irritated, so frustrated and so annoyed, she came
this
close to saying something.
This
close!

“I was ready to let her have it,” she told her husband, Bernie, at lunch. She was talking to him on her cell phone from the front seat of her car. Her hands were still shaking as she talked, and her head hurt from the stress of it all, which was not a good sign. Slim, neat, extremely health-conscious and meticulously well-groomed, Gloria was nevertheless vulnerable to headaches that could sideline her for days and rashes that would haunt her for weeks when anxiety got the better of her.

“Good for you,” said Bernie, himself an elementary school teacher on the opposite side of town. Gloria had become one of the three guidance counselors at Winston High last year. They were both twenty-seven. They'd been teaching for four years and married for two.

“She thinks she can push anyone around.” Gloria's nostrils flared as she spoke.

“She obviously doesn't know you very well.”

“Next time she does something like this, that's it.”

“Now you're talking.”

“I'm going to tell her to take this job and shove it.”

“Careful now. We've got eight years left on the mortgage, and that car you're sitting in isn't paid for either.”

Ironically, as Gloria sat in her brand-new, candy-apple-red, freshly washed and waxed BMW, the very student she was most upset with walked past her. Roy Cobb, or Rooster, as he was better known, was a tall thin kid with dark spiky hair and a pointed nose. He had two earrings in his right ear and another on his right nipple, which he insisted on showing off whenever the weather allowed for it by taking off his shirt and strutting around the school grounds. He was smoking, as usual, although God only knew what. Gloria shook her head and followed him with her eyes.

The file on Rooster was as thick as any she had in her office: His father died when he was ten. His mother, Eunice, thin and pointy as well, and a pain, if the truth be known, remarried three years ago. Irving was her new husband. He was a former baseball player, apparently. None of the gym teachers had ever heard of him.

Rooster had no brothers or sisters, a fact that provided Gloria with the only sense of relief she ever felt when discussing him with her colleagues, or even just thinking about him, as she was now. He was born and raised right here in the small city of Winston, Alberta, population 47,000. He was in grade twelve at Winston High.

Gloria had been his English teacher in grade ten. At the start of that school year, she'd made the mistake of announcing to her students that she'd gotten married over the summer. From that day on, Rooster announced her arrival in the classroom each morning with a noisy rendition of “Here Comes the Bride.” He oohed over her engagement ring but wondered aloud why it wasn't a bit bigger. “Did he get you something else with it? An Xbox or a stereo or something?” He continually referred to her husband as her “old man,” and when, in an uncharacteristically public display of anger, she told him that the next time he called Bernie an old man, she'd bring Bernie to school to talk to Rooster personally, Rooster switched to calling him her “kept man” and began wondering aloud what other sorts of things she let him do.

Her frustration mounted with each writing assignment he submitted. Generally regarded as a lazy student who wasted his potential at every turn, there was no questioning his ability as a writer — when he chose to put his mind to it.

The closet in my mother's bedroom is a cluttered
jumble of shoes, pantsuits, bright summer dresses
and very small bras,
he penned for his assignment on descriptive writing.
She hides chocolate bars and
hard candies on the top shelf, a habit from when I was
small and constantly hounding her for something fun
to eat. On the floor in the back right corner is a box of
old photographs, including many of my father, who is
dead now. She still cries occasionally when she looks
at them, which is why there is always a box of Kleenex
nearby, and little balls of used tissues on the floor
.

“He writes better than some of my best students,” she would moan in the staff room. “He doesn't even have to try.”

In grade eleven, he began asking her if there were any “little Bernies” on the way yet. When she scolded him one day for asking about things that were “extremely personal,” Rooster said, “Wow, I figured old Bernie would be too young to have problems like that.”

By grade twelve, he'd found an additional target for his troublesome ways in the form of Mr. Taylor, a kind, passive English teacher who fervently believed that kids must find their own passions in order to pursue them with the vigor necessary to learn. “I want you to write a book report on any book you choose,” he said, with a level of joy that no one in the class could quite understand. “I'm not going to burden you with one of my choices. I want
you
to choose. Anything. Anything at all.”

Rooster selected
Penthouse Forum: The Anthology,
2003 edition. The essay he wrote was entitled, “
Penthouse:
Great reading, but where's the love?”

Sure, I have a greater appreciation for co-ed aerobics
classes, and who knew working overtime could be so
enjoyable? But you do get tired of it all after a while,
don't you? I mean, I didn't, but not all adults are like
the people in this book, are they?

Mr. Taylor had not anticipated this response to his assignment.

“Can we do a pictorial essay on the same topic next time?” Rooster asked when the written essays were finished.

“That would not be appropriate,” said Mr. Taylor, blushing slightly.

“Speak for yourself,” said Rooster.

Gloria shuddered to think of what might be coming next from the boy. And while she was happy to know that he would be leaving the school for good in a few months— if his marks permitted him to graduate, that is— she had spent more than a few minutes wondering what was in store for him in the future.

“Why waste your time?” Bernie had said to her just last week. “He'll be out of your hair soon. That's a good thing.”

“He's still a young person graduating from
my
school who will be living in
my
town,” said Gloria earnestly. “I think it's natural to think about.”

“You think he might do something to the house?” said Bernie, suddenly frowning.

“Or the car. He has no scruples. He's proven that already.”

Rooster's dismal history made the decision earlier in the day by Principal Helmsley to involve him in Gloria's plan to get students more active in the community almost impossible to comprehend.

“Who?” Gloria had said in their meeting, her brain refusing to accept what her ears had unmistakably heard.

“Rooster Cobb. He's perfect for it. Talk to him after school. We have to get moving on this. The year's almost over.”

In fact, Gloria's plan had been to partner some of the “star” students at Winston High with places like Common House in the same way that other kids sign up for work experience programs, except the emphasis would be on volunteerism, and social and community awareness.

“We'll go the star-student route next year,” Principal Helmsley said, leaning back in her chair. She was a big, intimidating woman, standing over six feet tall on size twelve feet. She could palm a volleyball without effort and was known to patrol the hallways at school like a drill sergeant examining the troops. Her white hair was short and severe, much like her sense of humor. She wore glasses that magnified the heat that came from her eyes when she was angry. “For now, Rooster's your boy.”

“May I ask why?”

Principal Helmsley came forward in her chair. “This is it for him. His last chance. He does well, we can see about getting him out of here at graduation. If he blows it, too bad. He's back again in the fall for another year, or he can live his life as a high-school dropout. See how far that gets him.”

In hindsight, this was the point in the conversation where Gloria had felt that she had enough anger and courage inside her to speak out against Principal Helmsley's idea. This was the exact moment that she was referring to when she had talked to Bernie.

“But that's not the point of all this!” she had wanted to say. “This is to reward the special people in our community, and to give the best of our students the opportunity to show the world how truly great they really are. This is so the young people and the old people and the special needs people can come together and
share
and
grow
and do
beautiful
things with each other. You're turning it into a final testing ground for a worthless little twerp who we already know is going to fail miserably and take the school's honor with him and probably crush the spirits of the people he's working with. I think that's wrong! I think you're wrong, Mrs. Helmsley! You are absolutely, totally dead wrong,
and
I am not going to stand for it
!!”