At Risk of Being a Fool (13 page)

Dillon’s phone beeped. He flicked it open. “Yeah.” He held it out to Jeanie, eyes still on his book.

“Hi, Randy. Yes, he’s here. That was good news, wasn’t it? Three tests down, two to go. Sure thing. Bye.” She placed the phone on his desk.

Dillon picked up the phone. With a twist of his mouth, he punched an autodial number. “Hey, Gram. Yeah. She’s here. Right.”

Dillon stood up and held out the phone to Jeanie. “My grandma, she wanted to talk to you.” His look challenged her.

“Sure, I’d be glad to speak to your grandmother.”

Jeanie reached out a hand. Dillon pulled the phone back, and advanced it again slowly. Tug-of-war? Jeanie closed her fingers around the phone. After a long moment, Dillon released it.

“Mrs. Otero? Jeanie McCoy here. I’m delighted to speak to you.”

“Thank you. I am so pleased.”

Dillon stepped closer, his face threatening.

“Hold on just a minute, Mrs. Otero. Excuse me, Dillon.” Jeanie walked to Mackie’s office, and turned in the doorway. Dillon was right behind her. He hulked over her, fists clenched at his sides.

“Dillon, I can’t talk to your grandmother with you hanging over me. Trust me.” It was a stupid thing to say, she realized instantly. Dillon didn’t trust anyone.

Dillon spoke, in a low, rumbling voice “You don’t upset my grandma.”

There was a sudden growl. Jeanie jumped. At her feet stood Corrigan, fifteen pounds of aged protection. Jeanie stooped to pick him up, cradling Corrigan in her arms, a living shield against violence. Mutely, she held out the phone to Dillon.

He didn’t take it. “She wants to talk to you.”

“Then you’ll have to let me talk, won’t you? I’m not going to do it without privacy.” She knew she was pushing him, but there were times when a teacher didn’t dare back up.

“Anybody upsets my grandma,” said Dillon distinctly, “is gonna be real sorry.”

“Mrs. McCoy?” The distant voice from the receiver insisted. “Are you there?”

Corrigan whined. He poked his nose at Dillon. Dillon stepped back. Corrigan thrust his head forward, his tail wagging furiously. Dillon looked at him for a moment. He turned on his heel, and said over his shoulder. “You remember what I said.”

Jeanie pulled a chair into the doorway and sank into it. She set Corrigan on the ground. “You, Corrigan, are an utter fool,” she muttered. “Your instincts are totally screwed up.” Corrigan yipped, and sat between her feet, defending her from predators. Five pairs of eyes looked from her to Dillon and back again. Dillon put on his headphones, turned up his music, and bent to his book. One by one, the heads bent to their books as well.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Otero,” Jeanie managed. “One of the students had an important question. I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Oh, it is no problem.” Mrs. Otero’s speech was slow but precise, and sang with the unconscious melody of the native Spanish speaker. “I like to talk to teachers of my Dillon. When he was in school in
Portland
, I could not. But now, he lives with me, so I say to him, Dillon, I talk to your teacher.”

“That’s a good idea.” Jeanie was baffled. Why had Dillon thought it necessary to threaten her? Her fright passed, and she threw him a puzzled look. “Dillon is doing fine here. His progress is quite steady. He’s passed three of his tests. He’s told you, hasn’t he?”

“Oh yes, but,” a small chuckle floated from the other end, “I think, best to call, to be sure, yes? My grandson, he is sweet to his old grandmother, but sometimes, he does not tell me all the truth. Boys are like that. They hide away, and keep their little secrets.”

Jeanie felt disoriented. Were she and Mrs. Otero were talking about the same young man? “Well, he’s telling the truth about this. And I went to the cannery today, and his supervisor says he’s a good worker.”

“Ah. It is good to know.” She sounded exhausted and old. “It is good that my Dillon tries hard. This time. My little one.”

Jeanie watched the “little one,” hunched in his heavy jacket, the thug’s face capped with headphones. His alien yellow-brown eyes turned on her. “He’s an excellent worker, when he puts his mind to it. He seems to have changed a great deal, from what Randy tells me.” At least, his behavior had changed. His internal change was open to question.

“Yes, I would say so. They agreed, the officers, that he could stay with me at home instead of at the res-i-den-tial fac-i-li-ty. He went there last time. Did not work,” she said. “But with me, maybe. Just an old Mexican lady,” she said, laughter weaving through her words, “but he is my boy. He likes my pancakes, do you know?”

“I’m sure he does.”

Across the room, Dillon watched her. For a moment, she almost read the expression on his face, but the shutters fell and there was no one home. “Your grandson loves you. He loves you so much.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Otero softly. “
Es mi hijo,
my little one. He will do good this time.” Her gallant words couldn’t hide the undercurrent of doubt.

“Yes, he will.”

“Thank you, Mrs. McCoy. I talk to you again, later, yes?”

“Yes. Call any time at all.”

With a toe, Jeanie shifted the dog on his way. Corrigan ambled off to see what Quinto was doing. Jeanie put the phone on Dillon’s desk. “Why don’t you go out in the hallway, Dillon? Call her back.”

Dillon snatched the phone and left the room in great strides.

Indignantly, Brynna burst out, “Hey, he’s not allowed to leave for private phone calls.”

“Brynna. Hush.”

~*~

The darkness wrapped him like a blanket, warm and secure. He’d always preferred darkness to the light. In the light, people demanded, insisted, begged, and cried. They wanted actions, words, emotions, or loyalty. He resisted them all in small, hidden ways. In the nighttime, he was himself, alone and free. In the daytime, he worked, learned the book stuff, and went through the motions. Every move seemed to carve away a little of himself, to make him less of what he could be.

Once, his grandma told him a story, about a statue in a church. She’d gone there with her women’s group, gone for a week or two, he didn’t know where. There was a huge statue of some saint, all in granite or marble. St. Peter, maybe, or Paul. He could never keep them straight. The front foot of the saint was worn down, lots thinner than the other one. Grandma said it was worn down from kisses, just hundreds of years’ worth of kisses. He hadn’t believed it, but she’d showed him a picture.

He thought it about it sometimes, about rock wearing thin, just from people getting too close. That’s what he’d felt like, backed into a corner by the judge, his boss at work, the teacher, the parole officer, and even the gang when it flocked around him. That was crazy, thinking his homeboys were like the judge, but they didn’t understand, any of them. They’d wear him down, all of them, until the day came when he crumbled into dust.

He got through the days somehow, and survived all the people pulling at him. But he watched the windows, waiting for the nighttime, his old friend. It was the worst thing about being locked up, never being outdoors at night. He’d missed the glow of the streetlights, the sharply-cut shadows of the apartment buildings, the screech of brakes, the smell of sweet-and-sour from the dumpsters behind the Chinese place, the leftover heat from the asphalt on the soles of his feet, and the breeze whiffing around his ears, humming to him.

He could scarcely breathe sometimes, until night fell.

He strolled around the car, his shoulders back, looking casual for any who might see him. It wasn’t likely, not there, not at this time of night. Like chickens, they all roosted at night, until the fox came by. He snorted and shook his head. All this education messed him up. He’d never seen a fox, except on TV.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. She’d locked the car. Without using his hands, it was a bit harder seeing how the hood opened, and the trunk latched, but they were standard for these little cars.

The question was, where the thing should go. It was a nice little scientific experiment, like Jeanie would say. There was this much metal in a car, and that many angles to affect the blast. If you wanted to hit your target, you had to think it all through. You had to be proactive.

Why did she have to stick her nose in things?

Why did they always do it? Push and prod, until a guy couldn’t breathe.

It was like that natural selection thing he’d read about in the textbooks. There was the predator and the prey. The predator, he’d lose his place to live because of all the people crowding around, filling up his space, scaring off his natural prey. If the rabbits were all gone, what was the fox supposed to eat?

That was easy. Where the people were crowded together, there were chickens.

And any fox knew what chickens were for.

Eating. Preferably fried.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Shelley’s e-mail was true to form. Jeanie chuckled her way to the end. Shelley had such courage, taking a hut-to-hut hike across the
Alps
at the age of sixty-one. The account could so easily have been a litany of complaints against aging, but not for Shelley. Why live in
Europe
for two years, she said, if one couldn’t be a fool and try new things. If her explorations entailed imaginative uses of Ace bandages, and small children who propped her up against large boulders, so be it.

...
So glad to hear you sounding like your old self. I’ve spent so many years reading your teaching stories, I’m addicted. Edward is a dear, sweet man. He loves you for who you are, even if he doesn’t remember your name. And who you are, dear sis, is a teacher, retired or not. I’m happy you found that job.

Love, Shell

So was Jeanie. Teaching was a good half of her soul. She’d almost lost touch with the other half. In the last decade, only three people had known Jeanie through and through. One of them was dead, one was in
Germany
, and the third and most dear couldn’t remember her name.

Except for Annalisa, her friendships with other teachers remained at work. Annalisa, with her great gales of laughter, taught biology down the hall from Jeanie’s math room. When Annalisa died of throat cancer four years ago, school life lost much of its zest. Then Michelle, her dear Shelley, faced her own marriage crisis, and moved to
Germany
for her self-discovery adventure. Letters and e-mail bound them together, then and now. The ocean, though, was wide. She dreamed of it often enough. She stood on one shore. Edward, Shelley, Annalisa, and her sons stood on the other. She screamed her throat raw, but they couldn’t hear her. The waves thundered, roared, and surrounded her until she stood on the remains of a tiny sand castle, alone forever, cold salt water dragging her feet from under her.

But at least she could teach. Her drive to love total strangers had rushed back full force, staving off the loneliness. Now at one in the morning, along with the familiar worries about Edward, she faced the nightly parade of faces of her students. Her sons wouldn’t consider it an improvement, probably, but she did. Shelley understood. She typed her response, running through her students in her mind, showing Shelley what she could see, and what she couldn’t.

Quinto’s thin, mobile face was always the first in the nightly parade. Appearances were deceiving. People heard the naïveté spouting from his every sentence, and shook their heads with a half-smile. Nice kid, just totally brain-dead, they figured. Jeanie knew better. His mind might skip a few gears now and then, but his hands had brains of their own. Once he sensed a connection between knowledge and the skill in his hands, the information soared into his brain like an electric shock to the heart. Quinto and blueprints went together like cocoa and marshmallows. Ravenously, Quinto had begun swallowing the practical world of spatial geometry with great, satisfied gulps.

Sorrel, on the other hand, was in dreadful shape. She rattled her fingers on the tabletop, swung her leg incessantly, and combed her hair until little shreds of it blanketed the floor around her desk. After her breakdown over the essay on Tiffany’s birth, Sorrel raised her barriers, and peered over them suspiciously. Sorrel had a hell of a life in front of her: pain and agony everywhere, it was easy to see. But soft places filled her heart, evidenced by the semi-circle of her daughter’s pictures around her workspace.

Jeanie hoped to God she never met Brynna’s mother. The uncles were the mother’s drug pipelines. The woman ignored their abuse of her daughter, and threw Brynna out when she dared to fight back. Brynna lived on the street, and found her safety in a girl gang. Jeanie had thought that girl gang members were girls who slept with guy gang members, but it wasn’t so. Many girl gangs relished their family atmosphere, with their own “family” businesses in drugs or larceny. Despite Brynna’s snarls to the contrary, she’d generally steered clear of prostitution. After numerous arrests for larceny, burglary, and possession, she plea-bargained her way into Bright Futures. With her gang connections stripped away, she had no identity left except as a sniping backstabber. Brynna’s unhappy future seemed foreordained.

Rosalie’s emotions were real, but transitory. She was fond of her mother, and fond of the baby she’d barely seen, but her father’s rejection tore at her soul. Jeanie couldn’t blame Mr. Perea. Rosalie’s drug-scarred brain was a permanent liability. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that reconciliation would bring him a lifetime of pain. Who was the man at the day care, for whom Rosalie had ignored every child on the premises? Who was Silvio? Was he Dominic’s father, who swore at Judge Hodges? Had he set the bomb, and she, perhaps, called in the warning?