The Taste of Penny (17 page)

I ask Big Daddy to replace the notes under the appropriate stones. Sometimes the stones get turned over and the notes blow away.

When I arrive at the gifted portable the mother duck is shattered across the makeshift ramp. I recognize the feather patterns in the ceramic chips. I crunch over them as I roll up the flimsy plank into the portable.

Today's topic is Dimensions of Wellness. The diligent boy, Michael, jots notes tremendously, dabbing sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. None of the others pay attention. Every now and then Ricky Champagne quacks softly. They forge blowguns from cafeteria straws and needles attached to spitballs. A dart barely misses my ear and sinks into a chalkboard eraser. If I maneuver nonchalantly, giving the impression I'm ignoring their attacks, they eventually get bored and turn on each other. When they aim for my head I can scratch my shoulder with my ear or my chin with my chest. But if they aim for the body, I have to be ready. The chair isn't as responsive as I'd like. So I take some hardy shots, nonchalantly.

Sure enough two of the bigger boys come forward—for a second I think they're coming for me and finger the mace in my breast pocket. But they hook their elbows underneath Michael's arms, lifting him from his desk and inserting him into the materials cabinet, locking it behind them. Then one of them chunks the keys at me. I try to dodge and they hang in my wheelchair spokes. I continue on the Wellness Continuum of Decision Making.

Their aggression is not only physical though. They are masters at psychological warfare. At the moment they are laughing about Michael, scrawling love insignias on notebooks, reaching their grubby hands through the holes in the backs of chairs. I try to regain whatever authority I ever had by describing the four dimensions of wellness: Physical (proper nutrition, exercise, avoiding harmful substances), Intellectual (gathering information, problem solving), Emotional (self-control,
enthusiasm for life, high self-esteem), and Social (making friends, cooperating, being a productive member of society). But none of them are listening.

Ricky Champagne shouts out “Leg” and the entire class goes silent. For a second, thrown out there like that, the word disorients them. But their painful, wide-eyed stares drop to my leg, which still gets the twitches even though I don't feel below the waist. I'm confused myself. It's a part of me I don't consider even. But Ricky Champagne's accusatory shout-out to my anatomy causes me, the whole class in fact, to consider it. I look down at the leg, which is ever so slightly pulsing. Then I look up again and they're all caught up with it, blank-faced, open-mouthed enchantment. The word hanging in the air like that leaves them no choice.

In back, Ever pulls tacks from the bulletin board and gnaws on them. She vibrates occasionally and looks around to see if anyone notices.

The rest of them are fixated on my leg, which is pathetically skinny, devoid of muscle. The cuff of my pant leg crooked, revealing a dirty white sock, underneath a bald cream shin peers out. I fix the cuff then animate furiously, turning circles in the chair, trying to divert their attention.

But they're ready for me. “Hand,” another boy shouts when I scrawl wellness charts on the chalkboard. Then they all stare at my hand. A small liver spot—my first—underneath the big knuckle. The skin is wrinkled like when you straighten out a crumpled sheet of paper. I shake the hand and move it around. Their eyes follow. My hand trembles a tiny bit. I write to keep it in check, “For tomorrow PP. 120-162, Defense Mechanisms: Repression, Rationalization, Compensation, Projection, Idealization, Daydreaming, Regression, Denial, Sublimation, Displacement, Reaction Formation, Negativism...” My hand
jumps, scraggly, incomplete lines. I hold it in front of my face and peer through my fingers at the class, still transfixed, as if my hand was some
thing
they'd never seen before.

The bell rings, breaking the spell. The sound of the word “Hand” is replaced with the sound of zippers on backpacks, shuffling papers, sneakers on the tile floor.

“Bye, Professor Crazier-than-a-Shithouse-Rat,” Ricky Champagne says.

When he and the bigger boys are gone I let Michael out. He thanks me and copies the assignment off the board, looking back at my leg as he leaves, then at my hand, then at my face. I wheel myself to the faculty lounge, where the walkways are too narrow for what the insurance company calls my “personal transportation vehicle.” No one will open the door for me in the teacher lounge even though I can hear voices: the gifted language arts teacher says to another teacher, “You want to hear what this little bastard said to me? He goes, ‘If you can tell the meaning of the word from the context, then why do you need the word?'”

 

The only things worse than the kiddies are the red squirrels. They stalk me like the kiddies do, up into the tree. And this treehouse isn't your ordinary thing. I built it myself in the oaks right around the time I found out about the Wife's affair with the abortionist. I slept here when she didn't come home and I could walk. It has outlets, insulation, running water, an electric platform elevator that operates on pulleys, brown carpet, and several pump pellet rifles. Once I got out of the hospital with the handicap, being alone in the house was intolerable, so I started coming up here again. It was in part a penance. It made life more difficult and kept me in constant jeopardy. Now the electricity is shut off in the main house. The doorways there aren't big enough for the chair and the carpet is impossible to wheel through.

Everything there reminds me of her.

We started off with normal gray squirrels. They were almost tame, cute, their numbers slim. Before she left, I bought the Wife the Holy Grail of yard décor, interactive yard décor at that, a device resembling a little windmill with pegs on the ends to which she'd attach corncobs smothered in peanut butter. Attach that whole apparatus to a tree and the gray squirrels would tip back on their hind legs respectably, spin the mill until they got hold of a cob, clean the kernels of peanut butter, then drop the rest for the birds. Sometimes they slipped and clung to a rotating cob and me and the Wife would laugh, mauling grapefruits on the back porch. I don't know where the red squirrels came from but they started showing up one day. They kept the gray ones at bay. They're smaller than the gray squirrels, with white spots on their chests. These red squirrels took flight from faraway tree limbs and pounced. They held tight and ate peanut butter, kernel, cob, everything, and the Wife and I admired their determination and vigor.

But the red squirrels kept multiplying. Our yard, trees, ornaments, everything overrun with them. They chased away the timid gray squirrels. They evicted the birds from the birdbaths. They nested in the grinning gargoyle curio shelf. And one day we retired the mill when a red squirrel leapt from an overhead limb and bit the Wife.

But they'd moved in for good. Now they burrow their way into the wood of the treehouse. They store nuts and moss there. They mate and fight on the roof at night. They squeeze in under the windows and deposit squirrel shit in the carpet. The pellet guns are for them.

 

Big Daddy and I meet AAA then he follows me to the treehouse. I'm relieved. His car in the driveway is enough to keep the
kiddies away. At home my four garage windows are busted and two red squirrels dart in and out in a game of chase. I lunge for one as it scurries by, forgetting for a moment that I can't walk. The Principal rights me, and we adjourn to the treehouse for SmackDown.

“They trespass everything,” I blubber, gauging the patter of small feet in the tree. I try to get into the match, but the sound of their ratty feet in the tree just has me going tonight.

“Thank God for this sport,” the Principal says.

“I'll take these rodents from beneath,” says I, grabbing a pellet gun and wheeling toward the elevator.

“I'll keep you posted,” the Principal says.

On the ground I take aim at anything red that moves, but my pellets suck dirt. Then I pump the thing up again. It's supposed to be twenty-pump, but I can barely get past five. You'd think my arms would be stronger wheeling around all the time but it's the opposite.

Ever steps out from the trunk like a tree sprite and almost gets shot. She hands me the last duckling, unharmed. She plops to the ground, drawing her knees up close and binding them in her arms. She flicks her earring and taps the koala backpack in her lap. I rest the rifle across my armrests.

“You're the only teacher to know, you know,” she says. “Besides who's-his-face up there. Whatcha think?”

“I think your situation is unfortunate,” I say.

“There's lots of things I miss about being normal,” she says.

“What are you doing here, Ms Quick?”

“It's Ever,” she says. “I wanted to apologize.”

“For what? You helped me today.”

“For when I was here with those boys. They found out where you lived from the auditor's website,” she says. She explains that she's seldom asked to go along on anything.

The Principal hollers: “Annihilate the bastards, Champion! The Rock's in the middle of his speech, and they're munching through the wires.” Ever looks up.

“You better go now,” I say.

“Okay.”

“Thanks for bringing it back,” I say.

Back upstairs I prop the pellet gun against Big Daddy's recliner. The duckling goes on top of the TV. “Did you hit any of them?” he says.

“I'm a lousy shot,” I say, as the electricity flickers, then goes out.

 

Big Daddy is called out of our lunch when another student wrecks at the curve in the road. It interrupts the liverwurst and mustard sandwiches made for us by the secretaries, Gerald and Gerard. They're old men, gay and living together though me and Big Daddy are the only ones to know. They somehow got in the habit of fixing us lunch every day because we are very old helpless men and they are slightly younger old helpless men. They keep a small radio in the main office constantly tuned to the Christian rock station.

With Big Daddy gone, I filter through the files. Evelyn Marquee Quick. 162 IQ. Family from Sewanee. Never received a grade below A in her entire academic history. But last year, an odd blip on the medical records. She was absent from school for a solid two months. I can make out “bingo accident” on the doctor notes, but the absentee forms are blotted out, ripped, damaged beyond readability. I hear steps outside the office, stick the file back into place, and roll back to my liverwurst as Gerard pops his head in the door.

“No fatalities,” he says. “Damn the Jaws of Life.”

Well, the accident just served to rile them up. When it comes time for my class they are heaving textbooks at walls,
and rolling small nails under my wheels. I'm talking techniques for managing stress: “Visualization. Deliberate daydreaming about pleasant surroundings. A defense mechanism.” Ricky Champagne's eyes feast on me. I can see right through to his little brain, pondering my physicality, searching for just the right part. I glance down at myself as well, practice standard defensive body language, arms folded across the chest.

“Crotch,” he announces.

And Ever spits a tack. “Why don't you just shut up, Rick Champagne. Everyone knows
you're
nothing but a hyperactive, pre-pubescent, bald-pecker hormone cluster and no one's all that impressed.”

The class goes silent, but now they consider him. He tries to come at me again, though by less clever means. “You're saying it's healthful to daydream? This is whacked, everyone knows only freaks sit around daydreaming all day. Or those whose lives are so miserable due to their own stupid actions they have no choice but to daydream.” He chuckles, implies me, looks around the room for support.

Ever stares him down. She shakes her head slowly then reverts attention to the front. Everyone else follows suit. It is the first time I understand her power, whether the orgasms are real or not. How her peers must be scared of her and in awe of her. How their barely pubescent minds can't comprehend her. How the mystery of the female orgasm must seem so clear to her. How some women go their whole lives without even one and this girl has multiples every day that seize her foundation.

Ricky Champagne straightens up in his chair. Then he bolts, bawling and blubbering like a kindergartner, out the classroom door.

I capitalize quickly and get through like three days' lessons in one 50-minute period. It's amazing. I teach again. Health is all
of a sudden a magical thing. Their eyes glitter with recognition. Some of them write notes. When the bell rings they wait for me to dismiss them before packing up. I say, “You're dismissed.”

Then I say, “Hold on a minute, Ever.”

Michael stops on his way out the door. He's always the last one to leave class, generally after my releasing him from some sort of confinement, so he feels uncomfortable. He looks from Ever to me. “Fascinating stuff this Immune Response Mobilization, Professor,” he says. “Would you be able to explain to me again the communication between the helper T cell and the B cell?”

“Let's talk about that tomorrow, Michael,” I say. He nods, shuffles. Looking back as if betrayed, he slides out the door.

“Yes, Professor?” she says.

“Why did you do that?” I say.

“You're welcome,” she says.

“Well thanks,” I say. “I owe you twice.”

“Hold on,” she says, reaching out and taking both my wrists in her hands. She looks into my face. I look down at her white knuckles. She shakes.

“Ever,” I say, “Are you faking these?”

Her eyes are like drops of mud. She tightens her grip. “It starts around the baby thing, then shoots all through me.”