Authors: Patricia Wallace
Twelve
Roland Barry arrived at Meadowbrook Elementary at precisely seven-thirty as he’d been doing since being named principal more than two years before. He parked in his reserved space and was gratified to see that, as usual, he was the first to arrive.
He unlocked the front doors and stepped inside, pausing for a moment to admire the serenity and even beauty of the empty hall. It wouldn’t stay this way long, but the night custodian had done a nifty job on the floors, buffing the hardwood to a warm glow.
All along the hall the doors were shut, the classrooms dark and silent.
The building smelled strongly of chalk and pencil shavings, and it evoked nostalgia in him for his own school days, many years ago.
Schoolhouses like this were the reason why he’d gone into education.
Life never got any better.
His footsteps echoed most satisfactorily as he walked to the office and let himself in. After turning on the lights at the master panel, he went into his office and put his briefcase on the desk.
His desk was clear except for an inter-office envelope which was resting face down on the blotter, centered in Lucy Chisolm’s distinctive fashion.
A strip of Scotch tape covered the point of the flap. Beneath the tape was a black smudged fingerprint: she’d been changing the ribbon on her massive old IBM typewriter when he’d left for the day.
He frowned.
Sealed envelopes seldom held good news, but beyond that, if Lucy had information she felt was sensitive enough to justify being delivered in this way, why hadn’t she contacted him at home with it?
She knew how much he disliked being greeted by a crisis before he’d had a chance to make his rounds and get his bearings.
Irritated, he snatched the envelope off the desk and carried it with him as he pursued his routine, going to open the Venetian blinds. It took a moment or two of fiddling before the blinds were adjusted to his taste, and then he stood as he did every morning, looking out on the school grounds, surveying his domain, but of course now it wasn’t the same.
He was uncomfortably aware of the weight of the envelope in his hand.
Trying to ignore it, he squinted at the trees and considered whether they should be trimmed. Yes, he decided, although they looked the same as they had the day before—and the day before that.
One could never be too careful with trees, he believed. They weren’t to be trusted; the damn things could actually go and die, and still remain standing, in a kind of reverse game of possum:
I’m dead but I look alive.
In addition, they developed root rot, housed termites, or became infested with repulsively ugly beetles. They oozed sap—tree blood—that could take the paint off a car.
Limbs as thick as a man’s waist could splinter into kindling under the weight of a first grader, dashing the child to the ground. That very thing had happened the first week of school.
The child had broken his wrist.
Chances were, the news of the latest school mishap was what waited within the envelope he held. Mr. Barry tightened his grip on it, not caring at all that it wrinkled in his hand.
There was no avoiding it, he realized.
He peeled the tape off the flap of the envelope and opened it. Two sheets of paper, one white, one yellow, were folded accordion-style inside.
“In duplicate, yet,” he said, taking them out.
As he’d feared, the letter from Lucy detailed the report the hospital had given her on the injury the Browne boy had received.
Compound fracture of the right radius and ulna. Translated: a badly broken arm.
Well, he’d known that—one look at the boy’s arm was enough to convince him—but apparently it was worse than even the medics had suspected. Surgery was necessary, and the boy was being transferred today to the county hospital in Leland where the fracture would be stabilized by “internal fixation” of the bones.
He’d gained some expertise in medical terminology in his years here, and knew this meant they were going to put metal pins in the child’s arm.
A very bad break indeed.
For the boy
and
the school.
His ulcer threatened to act up as he read further down the page.
Cheryl Appleton wanted to see him during morning recess, or she would “take action” on her own.
“Lord save me,” he said. He’d listened to more than he’d wanted of her crazy accusations yesterday, and put it down to female hysteria.
And what had she really had to say? That little Jill Baker had broken her classmate’s arm.
Right. As if a delicate childlike Jill could even do such a thing. All anyone had to do was look at that pretty face and know better.
The only thing the girl would ever break was male hearts.
Hearing that nonsense from Miss Appleton, he’d wondered if John Downs was right. Downs had a theory for everything, and this theory proposed that ordinary females would always denigrate extraordinary females.
Weren’t the women who protested beauty pageants less attractive than the contestants?
But, although he’d been sorely tempted, he hadn’t accused her of being jealous of the child. Instead he’d walked away.
According to Lucy’s letter, the second grade teacher had left the school in tears after he’d barricaded himself in his office. She had later called to request the meeting, and had hinted that her attorney might be present.
Well, she’d had all night to sleep on it, and he could only hope that she’d come to her senses by now.
Otherwise it was going to be a long day.
He scanned the remainder of the page, grunting as he noted that Lucy had sent flowers to the boy in the hospital in the school’s and his name—a nice gesture although flowers alone wouldn’t necessarily keep the Brownes from suing—and that she’d reported the injury to the school’s insurance carrier.
So . . . all he had to do was defuse the ticking bomb Miss Appleton was sure to throw at him.
He folded the letter and returned it to the envelope, which he then tucked in his inside jacket pocket.
Forewarned is forearmed, he thought, and went to start his rounds.
As luck would have it, he ran into Cheryl Appleton as he was crossing the parking lot.
“Mr. Barry,” she said, hurrying to catch up to him. “May I talk to you?”
He smiled and cocked his head, he hoped disarmingly. “I really haven’t the time now.”
“It’s important.” She fell in step beside him as though he hadn’t spoken. “I know you think I was just upset yesterday—”
“As anyone would be.”
“But it’s more than that.”
Not wanting to encourage her, he said nothing.
“I would have to be blind not to see what’s been going on here.”
“Oh?”
“And you must have seen it as well.”
He felt a flash of annoyance. He didn’t care to be told what he must see by a superior, much less a
teacher.
“I have no idea what you’re referring to.”
She grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks and making him face her.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Miss Appleton,” he said, “may I advise you that you’re dangerously close to insubordination?”
She surprised him by laughing and he noticed that her eyes were glittering. What fires were raging in her mind? he wondered.
“I think you’d better go to your classroom.” He removed her hand from his person. “The buses are starting to arrive and I’m sure you have things to do before the school day starts.”
“You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”
“Not when you’re so clearly having emotional distress.” He saw that her mouth had begun to tremble and felt that he had gained control. “To be honest, it hasn’t escaped my attention that you’ve been having a lot of trouble handling your class. Now that I think of it, it might be best for everyone if you took a sick day.”
“But I’m not sick,” she protested.
There was a hesitancy in her voice that hadn’t been there before and he pressed his advantage. “I insist. As your principal, I would be remiss in my duties to both you and the children if I allowed you to go into that room in your . . . condition.”
Her eyes closed and she lowered her head. “Please let me stay.”
“I’m sorry, no.” Oddly, now that he had beaten her, he
was
sorry. “We’ve a week’s vacation from school, and I’m sure the time off will make a new woman of you.”
Without another word, he walked away.
He had nearly reached the trees when he heard the screech of tires.
In the split second it took him to turn, he imagined the worst—a bus plowing into a crowd of kids—and so he felt a measure of relief when there was but a single person in the vehicle’s path.
Miss Appleton.
What was she doing standing there?
The bus struck her a glancing blow, but it was enough to send her flying through the air. She landed on the steps of the school, knocking down a red-haired little girl who immediately began to cry.
Several yards away, Jill Baker collapsed to the ground in a faint.
When his joints unfroze, Mr. Barry began to run towards the school.
Thirteen
The Winslow Library was bereft of patrons and Georgia busied herself going through the returned books and erasing the margin notes that some of the more opinionated book-borrowers had made.
Most of the notations were innocuous corrections of typographical errors, but some were rather testy asides, apparently meant to talk back to the author, or, she supposed, to alert the future readers of the book to its inadequacies.
A few were obscene.
“What are you smiling about?” Faye Paxton asked as she pushed the book cart to the check-out counter.
“Someone in this town is a pervert.”
“Just one? That’s a disappointment.”
Georgia shook her head and kept erasing. “Don’t be. This is a world-class pervert.”
“Oh? Let me see.”
“Never mind.” She flipped through the pages of the book, scanning for further notations. The pervert had used a red pencil to make sure his or her comments would be noticed.
As if anyone could ignore them.
“Speaking of the sexually imaginative,” Faye said, lowering her voice although there was no one to overhear, “did you happen to notice yesterday that little Brucie Shaw was spending a lot of time thumbing through those paperback bodice-rippers?”
“Was he?”
“Was he ever.” Faye took the books Georgia was finished with and put them on the cart. “It used to be that the male adventure books had the hot stuff, but these days it’s the romance novels that’ll steam your clams.”
“Faye!”
“It’s true. But my point was, kids start at a younger age than you and I did.”
Georgia lifted an eyebrow.
“Well, maybe not me. But he’s what? Eleven?”
“Ten.”
Faye opened the book Georgia had just finished with. “Ten years old and already hot-blooded. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Why should it bother me? I’m not his mother.”
“But you have a daughter.”
Georgia felt a tingle of apprehension and she frowned. All at once she had the strongest feeling that something was wrong.
“What is it, Georgia? What’s wrong?” Faye asked, reaching across the counter to touch her hand. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes, I’m—” But she couldn’t go on. Her mind was racing, but somehow her mouth refused to form the words she wanted to say.
“Maybe you should go in the back and rest for a minute,” Faye suggested.
Georgia nodded mutely.
There wasn’t a couch, but Faye helped Georgia to the only comfortable chair in the library, an overstuffed monstrosity that had been around for longer than anyone could remember.
Georgia sank into the cushions and it seemed to swallow her up.
“Let me get you a glass of water,” Faye said when she was settled, and crossed to the water fountain. She took a Dixie cup and filled it. In her haste, she spilled some on the floor.
Georgia took a sip. “Thank you,” she whispered, finding her voice.
“Should I call a doctor?”
Despite her sudden malaise, she knew that it wasn’t she who was ill. “No, but—”
“Dave? You want me to call Dave?”
She shook her head. “The school. Call Jill’s school.”
“The school, okay.” Faye hurried across the room, nearly slipping in the water. When she’d reached the phone she turned and faced Georgia, her expression doubtful. “Why am I calling the school?”
“I think something’s happened to Jill.”
“The line’s still busy,” Faye reported and hung up the phone.
“Keep trying, would you?”
“Sure.”
Georgia watched as Faye punched out the number for what had to be the twentieth time. Even from where she sat she could hear the drone of the busy signal. “Call the operator,” she suggested. “Tell them it’s an emergency; they can break in on the line.”
“An emergency. What if they ask what kind of an emergency?”
“They won’t. Please, Faye.”
Faye depressed the switch hook. “If it’ll make you feel better—”
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“Don’t you hear that?” Georgia concentrated on the sound. “A siren.”
Faye’s brow furrowed. “I don’t hear anything.”
“It’s getting closer—”
“Hold on.” Faye held a hand up to stop her. “The line is ringing. Damn. You’d think the operator would answer faster than this.”
Georgia sat forward, her hands gripping the arms of the chair. “Do you hear it?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t mean that it’s for Jill. I mean, this town is full of old people . . . oh, hello?”
She got to her feet and stood for a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass, then left the office, ignoring Faye’s pantomimed objections and went straight to the door which faced the street.
There was nothing to see—several streets separated the library from the school—but she was able to tell that the ambulance had gone in that direction.
Just then the siren cut off in mid-wail.
Georgia had taken a few steps, thinking that she could cut across people’s yards and reach the school faster than if she drove, when Faye caught her arm from behind.
“Georgia,” she said, “the operator couldn’t get through. It seems as if all the lines are on hold. None of the people who are waiting on hold are willing to give up their lines, but even if they were, it appears that no one at the school is answering the calls.”
“Something dreadful must have happened.”
“Not necessarily—”
“I’m going to the school.”
Faye held onto her. “How? You can’t drive a car the way you’re feeling right now; you can barely stand on your own.”
“Then you take me.”
“But the library . . .”
“Lock it up. Put a sign on the door.” She gripped Faye’s hand. “She’s all I have.”
Faye’s lips parted in surprise.
“Do you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you. Go wait for me by my car.”
But when they arrived at the school, the ambulance had already gone.
A cluster of children were being waved into the building by Mrs. Chisolm, the school secretary. Several were crying but others were bright-eyed with curiosity.
Georgia searched every face, not finding Jill’s.
Mrs. Chisolm shepherded the stragglers through the double doors. When she turned, her expression grew serious. She walked heavily down the steps to where Georgia stood by the curb.
“You’re Jill’s mother, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Now Mrs. Baker, I don’t want you to worry—”
“What’s happened to her?”
“Not a thing. She just fainted.”
But Georgia had spotted bloodstains on the pavement and she pointed to them wordlessly. If she’d fainted, had she hit her head?
“Really, Mrs. Baker, I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“But the blood . . .”
“It isn’t Jill’s. One of the teachers was injured here this morning.”
Georgia nodded, but in fact the words had fled her mind instantaneously. “Where is my daughter? I want to see Jill.”
“Well, they’ve taken her to the hospital.”
That she heard. “I thought you said—”
“As a precaution. To check her out. She was conscious and alert, and I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
Faye, who’d been standing in the opened door of her car, looking over the roof at them, slapped her palm on the metal. “Come on, Georgia. I can get you to the hospital in ten minutes flat.”
They made it in seven.