Warriors (originally published in Watchword)
K’Sandra is crying in my office again. There is a small group of adults forming a protective circle surrounding her.
Some exhibit motherly, almost excessive concern, others bored indifference. Mrs. Moody, the school secretary, and Mrs.
Casbah—the librarian (who never seems to find enough work to interfere with her gossiping) are among the former. The
two motorcycle policemen, in helmets and boots, radios cackling, are among the latter. And there are a few students
whose morbid curiosity led them to follow K’Sandra in from the outer office just to gawk. Their level of interest is
somewhere in between
K’Sandra is too big to cuddle, but Mrs. Moody wraps her arm around her the best she can in a gesture of support. The
motorcycle policemen shift their weight from one leg to the other, their handguns sticking out at odd angles. One of
them reaches for a set of stainless steel handcuffs. K’Sandra flinches. At her feet is a grocery bag. From where I sit I
can see the shiny silver tops of canned goods, a clear plastic package of what appears to be macaroni, what must certainly
be a sack of flour, and a fuzzy, hot-pink stuffed toy rabbit.
I get up from my desk and motion towards the door. “Go on,” I say, “get out!” waiving everyone out of my office but K’
Sandra, Mrs. Moody (who wouldn’t have left anyway), and the policemen.
The policeman with the handcuffs in his hand reaches for K’Sandra’s arm and grasps it firmly, but K’Sandra drops to
her knees, all 240 pounds of her, and tears away from him. She gathers the bag of groceries in her arms and tries to
offer it to me. But the bag, wet from the rain, disintegrates completely, and the contents tumble onto the floor. One can
rolls under my desk. Another rolls up against my left foot and stops. I look down at the pink fuzzy bunny.
When I took over as interim principal at Woodrow Wilson High it was only for a little while, and as interim principal,
because I lacked the doctorate degree deemed requisite for the permanent position. Though I was only there to finish out
the term, I asked Mrs. Moody, the portly, middle-aged school secretary, to help me drag my desk around to the side of
the office, where I could watch the rain, see the soggy winter leaves clinging to the tree outside my window. She thought
it was both strange and a waste of time, and when I tried to explain what I know about Feng Shue to her she was certain
I was out of my mind. But it was my office—dammit—and I was going to do as I pleased, if only for a few months. After
all, I was only the interim principal, and my replacement could put the desk on the roof for all I cared.
That was five years ago and they haven’t found a replacement for me yet. Sometimes I think the big-wigs in the
district office have other priorities—fires to stamp out, so to speak. Or perhaps they just can’t fill the position. This is
why my predecessor left: Wilson has the lowest test scores of any high school in the state, and the highest drop out rate.
It has the highest percentage of drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and incidents classroom violence. We have so many
students or former students incarcerated we call King County Jail a satellite campus. In short, Wilson High is a place
administrative careers go to die. It has been the subject of two local television exposes and made Time Magazine’s
national “Worst Schools” list. But “Woody,” as the kids sing in their mock version of the school song, “stands tall.” It
does have a few redeeming virtues. It is a perennial basketball powerhouse, and the jazz band played at the governor’s
inauguration last year. There is that.
And there are the kids, a lot of them like K’Sandra. She is half-black, half-Samoan, and big enough to play middle
linebacker if the district would let her on the team. I believe she’s tough enough, too, but here she kneels, crying like a
baby in my office. Just this past fall she had the gall to run for homecoming queen—and won. But her grades did not
meet the minimum standards so I disqualified her, even though it set off a day of student protests. That meant that
about 25 kids carried picket signs outside while about 300 went home and got high (as opposed to getting high in the alley
behind the gym). The rest stayed in class and probably had their most productive day of the year.
But it’s not all bad. Mrs. Moody, who may have worked here since Wilson was president, is a joy to be around. She knows
her job, does the lion’s share of the work, and does it well. She coordinates the curriculum, files the transcripts, and
handles parent’s complaints. I might interview the new hires but nobody comes to work at Woody without Mrs. Moody’s
say-so. I’m basically a figurehead. And why not? Many (if not most) of the parents went to Woody themselves, and they’
ve known Mrs. Moody since they were kids. They know her better than they know me—and they trust her more. I’m
white, middle-aged, and male. I’m the enemy. They wouldn’t give me the time of day. And besides, I’m the interim
principal. Why should they get to know me? I doubt if Mrs. Moody would implement any changes I suggested anyway,
changes outside of my office, that is, and I know better than to ask. She’s bigger than me—and size is everything at
Wilson.
Just ask K’Sandra. I once saw her knock out a boy with one good punch for disrespecting her. I’ve read her juvenile
files, even though the state swears they’re strictly “confidential.” But once in a while the cops, parole officers,
counselors, and etc. come around asking a favor of me. They open their files and I open mine. We work around the
system, and the truth is it is helpful for me to know which kids are strung out or in trouble with law. Yes, I have eyes
and can pretty much figure things out on my own. But what my eyes can’t tell me is who stole a car, delivered a
controlled substance, fired shots into a teenage night club, assaulted a step-parent, or threw a bottle through the window
of a department store. And that was last summer, just the stuff I know about. The rest I can imagine.
But it’s useful information—if for no other reason but self-preservation. Take K’Sandra, for example. Her step-father
is in jail for sexually assaulting her. She has an anger problem—understandably so—and particularly towards men. She’s
been arrested twice for dealing cocaine and once for prostitution. So when she knocked out this kid, Jerome, for
disrespecting her, Mrs. Moody and I had all these factors to take into consideration. Her anger is exacerbated by her
issues, and by the fact that she is currently clean and trying to kick drugs. The temptation is to label her a bad seed and
get rid of her. “A little leaven ferments the whole loaf,” Mrs. Moody says.
We met with K’Sandra and we met with the boy, and we met with their parents together and separately. It’s standard
procedure. I could fill in the blanks with names and infractions and do it in my sleep. It was getting on towards seven o’
clock when Mrs. Moody and I called Sandra and her mother into the office again. We hadn’t had supper and we all were
all tired and wanted to go home. We didn’t want to throw her out, but we couldn’t say why. I wanted to give K’Sandra one
of those I’m-putting-my-job-on-the-line-for-you motivational speeches, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Finally Mrs.
Moody cleared her throat and asked K’Sandra: “Can you give me one good reason not to put your sorry butt out on the
street where it belongs?” Tact was never her strong suit.
K’Sandra answered in a squeaky voice that sounded more like a little girl than the linebacker she resembled, “I’m
tired Mz. M. Look at me. I’m fat and ugly, and I ain’t never goin’ to graduate no how. Folks been tellin’ me since I was
knee high I wasn’t goin’ to ‘mount to nothin’. I wake up every morning and I gots to fight just to get myself out of bed.
But I decided a long time ago I was goin’ to win that fight. I don’t know why I hit that boy. I don’t know why I do half
the stuff I do. If somethin’ gets in my way, I knock it down. If it gets up, I kick it. Tha’s the only way I know how to
live. But if I didn’t, I would have died a long time ago.”
Jerome’s parents raised a stink, but we didn’t expel her.
I think I do my job well. I keep a low profile with parents and haven’t made community relations any worse than they
were when I got here. I haven’t ruffled the feathers of my superiors by asking for money or crusading for changes that
wouldn’t be popular with their suburban constituents. Best of all, I didn’t start this mess, and as interim principal,
nobody expects me to fix it. Still, I cannot help but believe that someday I will be the lamb whose sacrifice propels some
righteous reformer into the superintendent’s office.
I read a lot. I used to read academic journals for “professional development.” Lately I’ve been reading a lot of classic
novels I never got around to in college, like Paradise Lost, and Jane Eyre. I attend a fair number of meetings downtown,
and the occasional conference or seminar. Once in a while I am called to testify about this or that—sometimes in court,
other times before congressional committees investigating the mess we’ve got our educational system into. Nobody
expects me to offer solutions, just excuses. With my thinning gray hair and rumpled suits I am a poster boy for the
failures of our educational system. It appears I’m about to fail again.
The policeman gently places a hand on K’Sandra’s shoulder but Mrs. Moody snatches it away. “You can’t take my
girlfriend,” she says, and then turns to me. “You can’t let him take him take her, Walter, you got to do something. You
the principal here and you gots to stand up for your girls.”
My girls?
K’Sandra’s skin is chocolate brown, clear and pretty, her hair glossy black and kinky, she wears it pulled back in a
neat bun. Her nose is wide and flat, her lips fat, her arms thick and strong as tree trunks, her eyes dark, glinting from
the puffy folds of her face.
She has the most expressive face I have ever seen. I once caught her cutting up in the hall with her friends. She was
dancing and improvising, imitating one personality after another—Oprah, Rosie, Brittany Spears. She was hilarious.
“You should go into the theater,” I said. K’Sandra walked away without saying a word. I had forgotten the cardinal rule:
they never talk to us—especially not in the hallways, and never in front of their friends. I took this personally at the
time, but after a while I got used to it. I suppose they learn young that if an adult talks to a child, it is only because they
want something.
But what I said was true. When K’Sandra is angry you can sense lightning crackling in the air. It makes you want to
brace your knees for impact. And when she smiles it is like the summer sun coming out after a hard rain, and you expect
to see a rainbow hovering somewhere over her shoulder. Now she’s kneeling on the floor like a child crying over a dead
puppy. I warned her this would happen.
We have a maintenance man named Manuel who I do not believe speaks English, though he seems to understand my
instructions. One day I pointed out a leaking pipe in the gymnasium, and when I checked up on it I found he had plugged
it with a wad of chewing gum. I feel like that, sometimes. I am a wad of gum. That’s my job description. Shortly after I
took over the Principal’s office Manuel installed one-inch thick, bulletproof glass panes in my windows. Then he installed
bars over the windows, presumably to keep people from stealing the bulletproof glass. A lot of stealing goes on around
here. Teachers carry one pen to school. Classrooms can’t keep erasers for the chalkboards. We chain the toilet paper to
the stalls. The kids still steal the toilet paper. Sometimes they steal the chains.
Manuel was going to cut down the tree outside my window—it is an elm, I believe, or perhaps a sycamore. It is quite
messy, always shedding bark or leaves or seedpods and such—but it is the only tree on campus. The only one. I was
shocked when I realized this, and even more disturbed when I saw Manuel preparing to cut it down. I didn’t order it cut.
For all I know, Manuel wanted firewood for his home. I know that he understood me when I jerked the chainsaw out of
his hand and shouted “NO!” Of course, he looked hurt and pretended that he couldn’t hear me over the whine of the
motor, but I knew better.
I’m glad we left it. I remember watching the leaves tumble in the fall, and the buds swell in the spring, a thin sheen of
green appearing like a fine aura around the uppermost branches. And when school let out for the summer, I realized
that I while I should have been busy making calls and sending out resumes, I had done nothing. I was in shock, I
suppose, a deer frozen in the headlights. I stayed on.
K’Sandra looks up at me. There is snot running down her nose, big tears welling up in her eyes. “I was just doin’ what
you axed me,” she says.
I have been called some names in the hallway, but conspirator and collaborator are not among them. “What do you
mean?” I ask.
The policeman lets go of her shoulder and pulls his hand free of Mrs. Moody. He taps the handcuffs impatiently against
his holster while his partner looks on.
Let me tell you about Wilson High. It has all the trappings of a real school. There is a flagpole out front and flags in
most of the rooms, I think. We have desks, old ones, and ridiculously small. The students sit on top of them more often
than in them. They are colored, painted, or engraved with every imaginable form of graffiti. We have an intercom with
loudspeakers, and we make announcements every morning. We have a pep squad and a nurse, a jazz band, and a damn
good basketball team. That’s where the similarities end.
We have more security guards than any other school in the state, and still the hallways resemble a combat zone. It’s
bedlam. Pandemonium. The staff huddles together in groups for protection. The students are on their own.
I have teachers who have forty-five kids in their classroom. How can you teach forty-five kids anything? I can’t get
substitutes, so if a teacher doesn’t show up the kids go to the library, if we’re lucky. Sometimes they leave the campus
and get high, wander around the neighborhood, and I wish I could say I blame them but I don’t. I can’t conceive the
mind-numbing tedium that makes up their day. The security officers try to keep them from getting out—but try to keep
a kid from doing anything he or she really wants to do. You might just as well try to keep the wind from blowing through
a screen door. Sometimes they come back for their next class, sometimes they don’t.
There is an obeisance to politically correct multiculturalism. Once the Wilson Warriors—with a Native American Brave
reminiscent of the old Indian Head Nickel for their mascot—we are now Warriors signified by a red capital W. Our
hallway is adorned with multicultural “Warriors of the World” featuring Native Americans, African Tribesmen, Vikings,
and a mural called “Warriors of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.” We even have an Eskimo “Warrior” armed with
a harpoon, though who he means to impale with it is not clear. I don’t recall the Eskimo being a very warlike people. The
kids mounted a campaign to change the mascot to “The Woodies,” as in Woody the Woodpecker, but their petition was
dismissed by the district office, who surmised it might have a sexual overtone.
Did I mention we have metal detectors on our doors to keep out guns? Of course, anyone who wanted a gun could just
toss one in through one of the broken windows that go unrepaired all year. Contraband—weapons and drugs—finds its
way into schools like this all the time. But after all, we are the Mighty Warriors.
“It was the earthquake in El Salvador,” K’Sandra says. “You told me to buy some food for the relief effort—
remember—only when I got to the store I didn’t have any money and I didn’t have time to come back and make another
trip ‘cause I didn’t want to be late for class. I knew it was wrong, but I knew they wouldn’t trust no nigga to come back—
so I was bringing you the things—like you said—and I was gonna give ‘em to you and then get the money and take it
back after school. Honest.”
I look out the window and see a gang of kids across the street ditching class. I guess they are my kids. It’s hard to tell
sometimes. They are looking at my window and I imagine they are making disparaging remarks about me, the school, or
authority in general. The kids don’t talk to me very often. I can pretend that I am busy with administrative
responsibilities and don’t have time for them, but the truth is they don’t talk to many adults, not any more than they
have to, save a few special teachers who have been here a very long time. It is not cool to be seen talking with an adult.
It is a cause for suspicion on the part of other kids, or, at the very least, a sign of weakness. They make it clear, the
delineation between us and them. They speak hip-hop. They practice effrontery. They elevate vulgarity to an art form.
I have a Monet reproduction on one wall of my office, The Waterlillies, and I look away from K’Sandra towards the
slightly-out-of-focus painting. It is the epitome of serenity, and when I get stressed-out I retreat to my office and look at
it, think about my life, my future. I have a small CD player—not something that would invite theft—but enough to
drown out the between class hallway riots. I like classical music. If I listen real hard right now I can hear Ravel’s
Tzigane. I have a little water sculpture, a round ceramic bowl filled with smooth river stones with a statuette of an angel
pouring water from an endlessly replenished chalice. The trickling sound is particularly soothing after a confrontation.
Mrs. Moody snorted when I brought it in. “Some folks,” she said.
“Look,” says one of the officers, and I am struck by how deep his voice is. He is a tall black man, but skinny, and he
doesn’t seem to have the chest to resonate such a perfect baritone. “I know this unpleasant for all of us, but let’s not
make things any worse. I don’t want to arrest the girl, either, but we have a problem with shoplifting in the area. The
store owners blame the kids and, right or wrong, when the girl gets caught red-handed running out of QFC with a bag of
groceries, I got to arrest her. I got no choice.”
He sighs, bends down, and reaches for K’Sandra’s hands again. K’Sandra tenses and flexes her arm. Her biceps are
bigger than mine, and for the first time I notice that they are ringed with traditional Samoan tattoos.
Mrs. Moody grabs his hand again. “Listen here, Floyd…” she begins, and as soon as she grabs his wrist his partner
comes at her. Just then K’Sandra reaches in her coat pocket with her free hand and we all jump, but she pulls out a
wrinkled paper and offers it to the officer. He takes it with a wary look on his face. I look at his partner and see that he
has unsnapped the strap securing his pistol in its holster.
I used to sit in on classes but I gave it up because the students were unpleasantly demonstrative and the teachers
seemed awkward and embarrassed. Now I let them do their jobs the best they can. I cover for them when they need a day
off. I have just enough budget money to keep them sane, or at least, placated. The last straw never finds the camel’s
back, the last shoe never drops, but disaster is never more than a rumor away.
I expected to be fired at the end of my second year, but perhaps there were wheels squeaking louder than Wilson’s,
and I was overlooked. I planned to quit at the end of my third year, but my foolproof escape fell through and I was left at
the station while my train pulled away. At the beginning of my fourth year I renewed my commitment, but by mid-winter
I was contemplating suicide. This morning I got a call from an old classmate of mine, a buddy, in fact, Gordon
Tannenbaum. Gordon has quietly worked his way up to superintendent of schools at an eastside suburban district.
He said: “Listen, Walter, I’ve got an opening for an assistant principal that came up unexpectedly. I can’t go into all the
details—confidentiality and all that—but and I can fill it at my discretion—no candidates, no hearings, no board approval.
Advance to Go, collect $200. Are you interested?”
“I’m interested,” I said.
“You’ll be coming on board to help put out a fire, but it’s not an out-of-control fire, and, hey, you’re the best fireman I
know.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “sounds like I’m jumping out the frying pan…”
“Yeah, yeah, I didn’t say it would be easy—or fun—but how much fun can it be working at a place like Wilson? I would
think Wilson makes teaching citizenship at Sing-Sing seem like a vacation.”
“Maybe,” I said, “Still…”
“I won’t stick you for this, Walter, this is a favor-for-favor deal. Don’t think of it as a lateral move, think of it as
sidestepping. You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you. We’ve got a new high school opening in two years, and if I
can’t get you the principal’s job there, I can plug you in someplace else. You deserve better than Wilson, Walter—a man
with all your qualifications. The only catch is I need to know next week at the latest. It even pays more,” he assured me,
and that’s the sad truth. An assistant principal in the ‘burbs makes more than a head honcho in the city. Interim head
honcho, anyway.
Gordon’s words stuck in my head—“a man with your qualifications,” he said. What qualifications? I’ve got a Master’s
degree in education and twenty hours of something called continuing education, which means I spent a few summers
sitting in classrooms listening to professors harp on pedagogical theory, multi-cultural classrooms, reversing
underachievement, and whatever current the buzz-words are that year. I’ve got less than five years classroom teaching
experience—I wonder sometimes if I know what I’m doing at all. I have just enough credentials to launch me into a
twenty-year career as a bureaucrat.
I’ve thought about doing other things. My wife passes this off as a mid-life crisis. “All men go through it,” she says. “It’
s the little boy in you that still wants to be a pirate, the center fielder for the Mets, or an astronaut.”
K’Sandra looks at me, her chest heaving with suppressed sobs. “It’s our assignment,” she says. “about the
earthquake. It says a thousand people died and they needed food and stuff. They was a mudslide, and they was lots of
folks kilt, kids left with no parents or nothin’. That’s why I got the bunny. I kept thinkin’ about them little kids, and
how scared they mus’ be at night and all. I know you didn’t say nothin’ about no bunny, but I thought you would
understand, and I can pay you back if you be mad about it.”
I look at the Monet on my wall and remember a girl I knew in college who traveled to France the summer between our
junior and senior years. She bought a bicycle and painted her way across Province. “Come with me,” she said, and I was
tempted. She was a willow-thin hippie girl with long brown hair, given to wearing bandanas and long skirts. She liked
walking barefoot, and making love in fields of wildflowers. I saw an article about her in the paper a while back—she had
a show at a local gallery and her work wasn’t half-bad. The picture of her was hilarious—she wore an evening gown, her
hair styled, a string of pearls around her neck, a few lines gracing the corners of her eyes. I suppose we all look different
these days. In those days I was a wannabe guitar player with a garage band called The HumDingers that lasted almost a
year. But instead of travelling Europe I became a classroom aide with the Head Start Program—got a leg up on the
volunteer hours I needed to get into grad school. It looked so good on my resume.
I suppose that in 1969 we all thought we could change the world. What I really wanted—deep down inside—was to sail.
I wanted to own a little boat and take tourists out on fishing charters. Even better—and there was no such thing as
ecotourism in those days—but even better was taking tourists whale-watching, or camping on deserted islands, or long,
slow trips up the inner passage all the way to Alaska. Who would have guessed it way back then, eh?
Did I mention that a State Department of Health and Social Services survey found that 75% of the girls at Wilson
reported they had been sexually assaulted by the time they were eighteen? And 45% of the boys? “What does this
statistic mean?” I asked the researcher—an attractive young black woman just out of Columbia University. She
shrugged her shoulders. Her right ear was ringed with small silver hoops. “Perhaps they are being assaulted,” she said.
“Or they may think they are supposed to be.” Her hair was short. Her dress was African. The girls loved her.
Our school nurse is Mrs. Cantu—a competent nurse and clever and compassionate woman. I stopped by her office one
morning and found her dispensing condoms. She was making sure, with a graphic explanation, that the girls knew how to
use them. This is strictly forbidden by district policy, which abhors our high pregnancy rate while repudiating sex
education. A fine policy for suburban girls, I am sure, who can afford to buy condoms at any drugstore and keep them
hidden in their rooms, but not very effective for our girls, who often don’t read English well, have no background in self-
heath care, and have no privacy at home.
The girls disbursed from nurse Cantu’s office. As they brushed past me, one of them held up a condom in a silver foil
package and kissed it. “We gonna have us some fun to-night!” she said, swinging her hips in an exaggerated swagger.
Then she turned to me and rolled her eyes, tossed her hair. “Wha’ chu lookin’ at?” she said. The rest of the girls
laughed, then hurried off down the hall.
The policeman is losing patience with me.
“Wait,” I say, raising my hand. “She’s right.”
Mrs. Moody looks at me. The cop looks skeptical, but I reach for my wallet and pull out two twenties. “It completely
slipped my mind,” I say. “I meant to give her the money, but I just forgot. K’Sandra is a good kid and she means
well…she just didn’t want to be embarrassed in class, you know, by being the only one not able to help out. It’s Mrs.
Quintana’s geography class, right?” I ask. I’m guessing, but K’Sandra nods her head vigorously. I see the cop looking at
the homework assignment and I pray that I guessed right. “I promised that I would loan her the money until next
Friday—right K’Sandra—and then you were going to pay me back from your paycheck.”
K’Sandra nods.
The cop looks at her with a doubtful expression on his face. “Where you work, girl?” he asks.
“Wal Mart” says K’Sandra, “in Renton.”
“How you get to work? You got a car?”
I wince—I’m guessing if K’Sandra says “yes” he’ll ask for her driver’s license, or what kind of car she drives, and I’m
pretty sure she doesn’t have either.
But K’Sandra is nothing if not street-wise. “I takes the bus,” she says.
“Which bus you take to Renton?” asks the cop.
“I takes the 169.”
“Look,” I say. “How ‘bout we walk back to the store and talk to the manager together. I’ll pay for the groceries and
see if I can smooth things over. I’m sure we can work this out. We’ll send K’Sandra back to class—she won’t go
anywhere. And you know where to find her, if you have to. It’s not like she’s from out-of-town.”
“And I know where you live, too, Floyd,” says Mrs. Moody, who has still not forgiven him for trying to arrest one of her
girls on campus. “You think I don’t remember you? I know what a mess-around you used to be. And that boy of yours,
too.”
Floyd holds up his hands in a gesture of conciliation. “I know,” he says. “I was kid once, too, but we all got a job to do.
I tell you what. You keep your girlfriend out of QFC, at least until they forget about her, and I’ll see what Mr. Walter
and me can do to fix things up with manager. But I ain’t promising nothing, you here?”
Mrs. Moody whisks K’Sandra away before Floyd can change his mind. I can’t see where they went, but my money says
it wasn’t to class. I suspect Mrs. Moody will have a few words with her someplace private—the bathroom, maybe, or the
teacher’s lounge, and tonight she’ll probably have a word with her mother. I see that K’Sandra left the groceries on my
floor, but she took the hot pink fuzzy bunny with her.
I turn my back on Floyd and stare out the window. There’s a white Cadillac with tinted windows parked outside. I
haven’t seen this one before, and I make a note of it.
Floyd clears his throat. He drops K’Sandra’s homework assignment on my desk and I see that it was not from Mrs.
Quintana’s geography class. I shrug my shoulders.
“How long have you been here?” Floyd asks.
“Five years,” I say, and he takes off his helmet and scratches his head. He’s got a big bald spot on top.
His partner taps him on the shoulder and nods towards the door. “Do you need me for anything?” he asks.
Floyd says “See ya,” and his partner leaves. Floyd sits down. “I graduated in ’65 he says,” and then, laughing, adds: “I
was suspended three times my senior year. Mrs. Moody thought I would never get my diploma. I came back here after
‘Nam and went through the police academy. The first time she saw me in uniform I thought she was gonna die laughing.
‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘The king o’ detention hisself.’”
I look outside and see the Cadillac is gone.
The radio cackles on Floyd’s belt and he turns it off. He looks at his watch, then he looks at me. “Shall we go?” he
asks and I nod.
Outside it has quit raining. Across the school parking lot I hear a whistle and the squeak of tennis shoes on the
basketball court, a mixture of profanities and the guttural grunts of contact sport. I imagine that I will see K’Sandra in
the hall tomorrow, and she will snarl at me and pretend that today never happened. She’ll brag to her girlfriends that she
stole from the store and talked her way out of trouble. But she might, she just might, pay me back. Someday. Who
knows, maybe she will find herself. Maybe I‘ll see her in a police uniform—in a grocery store, perhaps—and I’ll laugh
until my sides split. I smile to myself, picturing Cassandra in a uniform with a badge and a gun. She’d make a pretty
good cop, too, I think.
| Melvin Sterne: Writer, Teacher, Editor, Photographer |
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