City Kid

City Kid Mary MacCracken From the author of international bestsellers A Circle of Children and Lovey comes an inspiring true story of a gifted teacher’s determination to understand the ‘rotten’ city kid everyone has given up on.Sitting quiet and withdrawn at a battered school desk, Luke had the looks of a shy angel – and a past that special needs teacher Mary MacCracken could barely believe.Already Luke had been picked up 24 times by the police. He’d set over a dozen major fires, and had a staggering record of thefts. No adult could reach him, no teacher could control him, and no policeman could cow him. All this – and Luke was only seven and a half years old.Trying to help Luke was Mary MacCracken’s job – and a seemingly impossible challenge. This is the remarkable story of how the impossible came true. (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) Copyright (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) This book recounts the essence of my experience and in that sense is a true story. However, it is not intended as a literal account and it is not to be taken as a portrayal of any living person. All names of individuals, places or institutions are fictitious. HarperElement An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) and HarperElement are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd First published in Great Britain by Little, Brown & Company, Inc, 1981 This updated edition published by HarperElement 2014 Copyright © 1981, 2014 by Mary Burnham MacCraken 2014 Mary MacCracken asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014 Cover photograph © Diane Kerpan/Arcangel Images (posed by model) Mary MacCracken asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. 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Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green) Source ISBN: 9780007555161 Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007555178 Version 2014-07-22 Dedication (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) For Cal: who believed in me Contents Cover (#u839e5972-b0e2-5021-8ce5-4f4b73ba9324) Title Page (#u55f41833-710e-5ca3-87c1-2323b89516fa) Copyright (#ulink_c6cfb8d0-b202-59b2-a8e8-4019af138adc) Dedication (#ulink_e9c79917-42a9-5063-b098-dc913152d04d) The Fire Within (#ulink_6cbfad5f-6b70-5482-afc1-6441ff82c369) Chapter 1 (#ulink_9c9debf8-0921-54e5-b017-6d6ae064d10d) Chapter 2 (#ulink_21d476ec-0c26-5ed8-ac25-cb5eff82a255) Chapter 3 (#ulink_6254c37e-c750-5951-b29f-b579654124d3) Chapter 4 (#ulink_693b94bf-605b-5a8e-b83a-bc65b3439c02) Chapter 5 (#ulink_5d6149f9-3ac0-5352-80d6-cac99e31e5f3) Chapter 6 (#ulink_5a410699-981c-5f61-9d29-46f36ccc916f) Chapter 7 (#ulink_c92660c0-6a6b-5ba7-8e03-d76e7e482cdc) Chapter 8 (#ulink_713dde36-f590-51cc-993d-6ce232ee3d69) Chapter 9 (#ulink_70210b6a-b44a-5b7b-9e83-d5e5b51407fd) Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo) Afterword (#litres_trial_promo) Coming soon … (#litres_trial_promo) Exclusive sample chapter (#litres_trial_promo) Also by Mary MacCracken (#litres_trial_promo) Moving Memoirs eNewsletter (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) The Fire Within (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) “Luke,” I said, “why do you like to start fires?” “Don’t know,” Luke said. “Just like to watch ’em. They’re pretty, all red and blue and orange, dancin’ around.” “The big fire last fall? Did you set that?” Luke smiled – and I hated that smile. “That one was real pretty. It kept on gettin’ bigger and bigger ’til it was taller than me.” Luke paused. There was no guilt or repentance in his voice, only admiration for the fire. “The cops came, then the fire trucks, but they couldn’t put it out – it just kept goin’.” His voice sounded hard and cruel, not like Luke’s at all. There was a fire burning within this seven-and-a-half-year-old boy – a fire that would destroy him if a dedicated but near-despairing teacher couldn’t find what fueled it and how to put it out. Chapter 1 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) “Which one is Luke?” I whispered. “There, next to my desk,” Lisa answered. “The one not working, of course. He doesn’t even answer when his name is called. Listen, I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.” Lisa walked to the front of the classroom to continue the math lesson I’d interrupted. I sat on a radiator cover and studied Luke. I couldn’t believe it. When they had told us at college that we’d be working with children who were socially maladjusted juvenile delinquents, I conjured up images of burly kids with bulging muscles and perpetual sneers. And now here was this little boy in second grade who couldn’t be more than seven years old. I peered at him intently, saying his name under my breath, “Lucas Brauer, Lucas Brauer,” trying to make him real. He shifted slightly in his seat and I could see that his brown hair curved around his cheeks, so that from this angle he looked almost like a girl. There must be some mistake, I thought. How could this child have a record of twenty-four arrests for arson, theft, and truancy? I shook my head. Something was wrong somewhere. But if something was wrong, something was also right. For the first time in months, I felt the beginnings of the familiar, soaring, ridiculous excitement that came with teaching – a feeling I’d almost forgotten since I’d become a student at the state teachers’ college. I had entered in September, full of hope and determination. By February I was full of disillusionment. In fact, until that day when I found Luke, I wasn’t sure I could make it through one year, much less two. So now I memorized him – the scruffy sneakers half the size of mine, the faded jeans torn at the knees, a plaid shirt with one button missing, and each inch of his small profile. I could help Luke, now that I’d found him. I knew I could, and he would help me, too. He would make me remember there was some reason for the endless empty courses, the meaningless assignments, and the foolish terror of exams. I had known it wouldn’t be easy, going back to college at age forty-four. In 1970 the movement for continuing education had not yet become popular and ninety-nine percent of the members of the junior class at Union State College were under twenty years old. They walked the campus in pairs or clumps, ate in noisy groups at the student union, shouted cheerfully at one another over the blare of rock that poured from speakers mounted in the ceiling. I walked alone, ate my cheese and apple in my old convertible, and tried to learn to be heard over the sounds of the Grateful Dead. That was all okay. I was there to get a degree, to get certified so that I could continue teaching, not to develop my social life. I had remarried in June and the excitement of living with Cal and trying to blend our combined seven kids, aged fifteen to twenty-seven, into some kind of homogeneous group was challenging and absorbing. None of the children lived at home full time, but they arrived in bunches on weekends and vacations and filled our apartment or country house with excitement, laughter, and dirty laundry. It would be difficult to give up teaching and go back to college after a twenty-five-year interval between sophomore and junior years, but it was also the one way I could continue to teach. What I hadn’t expected was the stifling boredom, the frustration of hours spent taking courses that had nothing to do with teaching, and most of all, the overpowering, unending longing for the troubled children I had taught. I had been teaching seriously emotionally disturbed children full time for more than six years, when the school where I taught became “state approved” and its teachers had to be fully certified. I had no certification, only two years at Wellesley and some night-school education credits. Not enough. I had to leave because the only way I could continue to work as a teacher was to get a bachelor’s degree in education, and certification. I could get my degree and dual certification in elementary and special education in two years going full time during the day; it would take six years at night school. At my age there was no choice. But where were the children? Children had been the warp and woof of my life for years. Without ever really asking, as an education major I had assumed that my days would be filled with children. Not so. They saved the children until senior year, and then only for six weeks of student teaching. I railed inwardly at the poor preparation the young teachers-to-be were getting. How could they learn to be teachers without children, without the models of experienced teachers, without being in a classroom? I remembered Helga, the wonderful teacher I had worked under as a volunteer when I had first started, and all she had taught me. Where would these young people learn about commitment and involvement and communicating with children? Not in my courses in Background of Mathematics I, Adapted Physical Education, Integrated Techniques, Current Methods and Materials for the Mentally Challenged, and Teaching Reading to the Mentally Challenged. Of all my courses, Background of Mathematics I was the worst. Not only did it have nothing to do with children, it was also couched in a foreign language. Math to me meant addition, subtraction, multiplication, fractions, decimals. Maybe word problems and a few math concepts. Not so to Mrs. Kaiser, our professor. She talked of sets and union and commutative properties. Each morning she said coldly, “Good morning, class. I will explain the work to be assigned. Follow now.” With that she turned her back to the classroom and the tight blood braid that ran across the back of her head bobbed up and down as her chalk made numbers, arrows, circles with overlapping circles, equations resting between and below her drawings. She talked rapidly to the figures on the board, never turning her head. She covered one, two, sometimes three of the blackboards that surrounded the room. Then, “Volunteer?” she demanded more than asked. Five hands in the front row shot up. She chose two and sent them to the unused portion of the board. Then she read a problem out loud and the race was on. Who would finish first? Who would get it right? I watched from the back of the classroom, never volunteering and hoping only for invisibility and sudden insight. Ian Michaels, the boy in the seat next to mine, attended only every other day and never volunteered. Instead he silently scratched out the problem on a back page of his notebook. He was always right, always ahead of the blackboard people. I decided I would try to do the same. I was beginning to understand some of the vocabulary now – matching sets, equivalency, the commutative property – but usually I got lost about halfway through the problem. One morning Ian’s hand reached lazily across my paper, underlining the place where I had gone wrong, putting it right, then finishing the problem. After several days of this, I began to follow it through, while Ian dozed beside me, coming awake just before the end of class to circle those I had gotten right. Dr. Kaiser was a believer in unexpected quizzes. She would sit wearing the same bland expression as we arrived each day, but twice a week, always on different days, after her “Good morning, class,” the scribble on the board was put there for us to solve on paper and hand in. I began to wake in the middle of the nights from the sound of chalk on blackboard rattling in my dreams. My stomach was queasy on the morning elevator rides from the apartment to our cars. “Are you all right?” Cal asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve got a sixty-eight average and I dream about Mrs. Kaiser.” Now Cal, too, studied the associative, distributive, and commutative properties, shaking his head, saying almost inaudibly, “This is math?” Cal was an engineer and inventor with over eighty patents. If he had trouble understanding Background of Mathematics I, how could I ever hope to get it straight? I was okay in my other courses, averages in the nineties, but I wasn’t at all sure I would pass Background of Mathematics I. I said so to Ian Michaels. He opened his eyes slightly and looked at me through half-raised lids. “No problem,” he said between yawns. “Just copy my answers on the final. Then go back and mess up enough to get what you need.” He closed his eyes again. Cheating. He was suggesting that I cheat. I knocked my sneaker on his boot. “That’s cheating,” I said. His eyes stayed closed. “No shit,” was his nearly inaudible comment. I wasn’t sure how to interpret this. I sat silently drawing circles on my notebook, watching the others file into class. Everybody cheated. This was my first exposure to the marketing of papers. All the various societies and clubs on campus had a file of papers for every course, going back over several years. This was supposed to be a secret, but unless you were considered the type that would rat, the availability and cost of papers were discussed openly. Students mocked professors for giving an A to a paper that had earned only a B two years before. Copy machines made it possible simply to “rent” a paper for a day, copy it, return it, and then, depending on audacity and/or willingness to risk, either retype it or simply hand in the copy, saying you were keeping the original for your files. Did anybody ever get caught? Not that I knew. Did the professors know what was going on? Again, not that I knew. But somehow the fact that it was happening contaminated the atmosphere. There was an “I’ll get away with as much as I can” philosophy among a large group of students. The environment was so impersonal that the students often reminded me of little children with their hands in the cookie jar, wishing desperately that someone would catch them, just so they’d know someone cared. Adapted Phys Ed was a two-credit course, which meant that we met only three times a week. As if to make up for this, Mrs. Hogan assigned twice as much work as any other teacher. Each class ended with a lengthy new assignment, and a moan from the students. Mrs. Hogan had graduated from Union State five years earlier. It was as if she were saying, “In my class, you’re going to work for those two credits.” I admired her spirit, but wished she had a subject closer to my work. One of her favorite assignments was to ask us to write twenty abstracts on twenty different physical education articles. I spent hours in the library. Locating the article was a major problem in itself; often the one needed issue was missing from the stack. Then I spent more hours reducing articles on wheelchair volleyball and adapted jungle gyms to short abstracts, and still more hours typing them up. Where were the children? What was I doing here? We were assigned to demonstrate before the class a “phys ed technique” that would be useful with “special children.” I could not do this. I had taught Rufus to swim, Hannah to ride a bike, Brian to climb a mountain, but I could not bring myself to stand before those forty nineteen-year-olds and put on a demonstration. An old shyness returned, and for the hundredth time I thought, “I cannot do this. I cannot stay here in these classes for two whole years, while the children are out there.” Cal put his arms around me in the middle of the night, and then wiped my tears. Neither of us spoke. The next morning I wrote a letter to Mrs. Hogan asking if I could substitute a paper or else more abstracts for the demonstration. Perhaps because of my age, the letter came back. “Permission granted for substitution of twenty abstracts for class demonstration.” Back to the library. If only I had known about Luke then. Chapter 2 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) Our final math exam was on December 20. I was later than usual and I could feel nervousness building as I inched the car along the highway. It was snowing lightly and snow combined with Christmas shoppers made travel slow. I finally reached the college parking lot, found a spot heading downhill, and then walked rapidly across campus, quiet and beautiful under the fresh cover of snow. For once, Ian Michaels was in his seat before I was. We always sat in the same seats. I don’t know why, but it was the same in all my classes. There was some slight juggling and changing the first week. After that we returned as though programmed to the same seat each day. I hesitated inside the doorway for a minute. Maybe I should take another seat. Maybe I couldn’t resist looking at his paper, with the problems worked so simply, so elegantly, so clearly once I saw him do it Ian, I thought, whatever I have learned in this class, I’ve learned from you. I sat down in my regular seat next to him. He opened his eyes to half-mast and winked at me. “Listen,” I said, the wink catapulting nervousness into annoyance. “Keep your answers to yourself. I can do this on my own.” The eyelids lowered. “Sure, lady.” Thirty minutes later, Ian had handed in his paper and was gone. Forty-five minutes later, everybody was gone but me. On the hour, Dr. Kaiser announced, “Time’s up. Pass the papers to the front, please.” There was no one there to pass to. I carried my paper to her desk. A week later, Dr. Kaiser stood in front of us. “I will announce both your exam grade and your final grade. Anyone who wishes to see his paper may request it after class. Barker, Frank – exam eighty-six, final grade eighty-two. Cavaluso, Florence – exam sixty-five, final grade seventy-eight.” I studied my notebook, wondering how far Dr. Kaiser would go. Would she read the failures? “Mann, Anita – exam forty-eight, final grade fifty-two.” She would. She was – and she was already to the M’s. Could my stomach really churn like this over a math grade? “Michaels, Ian – exam ninety-eight. Congratulations, Mr. Michaels. Final grade ninety-six.” What was the matter? Where was MacCracken? MacCracken came before both Mann and Michaels. “MacCracken, Mary. I always leave the Mc’s and Mac’s till the end of the M’s.” She pinned me with her eyes. The others turned to look. Ian Michaels’s eyes were closed. My stomach rumbled beneath my jeans. Say it. Would you just say it and get it over with? “MacCracken, Mary – exam eighty-eight, final grade, eighty.” I passed! I not only passed, but a B! Exultation flooded through me. How could I care so much about a math grade? I felt foolish, but anyway, I wouldn’t have to take this course again. I did it! We did it! Ian Michaels’s boot nudged my sneakers. Eyes half-opened, he gave me his accolade before lowering his lids once more. “Way to go, MacCracken.” The second half of my junior year was still filled with required courses, but the ordeal of scheduling and registration was a little easier the second time around. I was getting to know most of the professors in the special ed department by name and/or reputation and that helped. “Have you had Bernstein yet? Well, don’t if you can help it. He’s a pig.” “Jones? A good lady. Marks hard, but knows her stuff.” “Telker? Terrific if you need an easy B. Never gives anything lower.” I wondered if the teachers knew their reputations were graven into oral history and available to anyone who listened. Still, registration was always tedious, sometimes traumatic. We were classified like so many potatoes. With us, the identifying characteristic was the first initial of our last names. On the first day of registration names beginning with A through F were admitted; on the second day, G through L; on the third, M through R; and on the fourth, S through Z. The following semester the order would be reversed. Patiently we lined the walks and stairs and halls of the student union, where various rooms and floors had been partitioned into cubicles representing different courses. The faculty took turns at the adviser’s desk. To actually get in the front door, an hour process in itself, took two things, your student identification card and your social security number. Nobody cared what your name was, only what letter it began with, to make sure you were with the right potatoes. After that you were known by your social security number. I wondered, as I stood waiting in boredom, if I could find my numerical relatives by adding up my digits and matching the total results. If I was a 46, who were the other members of my clan? Were there 42’s and 48’s around me? I contemplated the girl ahead of me, her hair combed into a high Afro; maybe she was a generic 40. Behind me a red-haired woman in her twenties shifted from foot to foot. “What’s taking so long? Christ! If Statistics is filled by the time I get there, I’ll kill myself. I only need six more credits, but that one’s required. I’ll have to come back to this hole again next semester if I can’t get that course.” I understood. I had some required courses myself. If I didn’t get them I could quit, I told myself. I could stop taking these inane courses … but what about teaching? What about the children? Inside, we raced frantically from booth to booth, checking our catalogs against our schedules. Working with schedule sheets and catalog in hand, I was trying to keep to my plan of double certification (in both elementary and special ed), which meant I had a lot of courses to fit in. Trouble came when the course planned for 10:40 or 11:40 turned out to be filled; then there was a scramble for the catalog. What else have they got at that hour that’s required? Teaching math. Great. Nope – turned out it wasn’t allowed. “You don’t have the prerequisite. You have to complete Background of Math Two first. Sorry, it’s the rule,” said the graduate student manning the booth. The rules! I was beginning to understand the frustrations of some of my natural-born children and their friends. It had been different in a small private college like Wellesley, where students were honestly seen as individuals, or at least they had been twenty years ago. But in a state college like the one I was attending, there were no exceptions. As long as it came out right on the computer, it was okay. (Computers don’t make exceptions.) Well, Statistics and Orientation to Psychological Testing didn’t have a prerequisite – and what’s more, it was required and met only once a week, on Thursdays from 4:00 to 6:30. I signed up. Finally, my spring schedule was complete: Counseling and Guidance for the Handicapped; Current Methods of Teaching Mentally Challenged Adolescents; History of Education in the United States; Background of Mathematics II; Statistics and Orientation to Psychological Testing; and a Practicum in Teaching Reading to the Mentally Chalenged. All required courses. Schedule and course sheet in hand, I headed for Professor Foster’s office. I had discovered at registration that he had been assigned as my adviser and his signature was required on my completed course schedule. A stroke of luck to get him, I was told. He was considered one of the best. Foster’s office door stood open and he sat with his feet on the desk, chair tipped back against the wall. “Professor Foster?” I asked from the hall. “I’m Mary MacCracken. Could I see you for a minute about signing my course schedule?” “Mary MacCracken? Where the hell do you keep yourself? I’ve been trying to locate you for weeks. Ever since I discovered you’d been a teacher at Doris Fleming’s school and have over six years’ experience with emotionally disturbed kids. Is that right?” I nodded. “Well, come in. Sit down.” He lifted a pile of journals from a chair beside the desk. “Do you ever hear from Doris? I’ve been out to that school several times. Damn good reputation, even before it got state approval. Those are tough kids. When did you teach there?” “Until last year.” “What the hell are you doing here?” “Trying to get certified.” “Ah, I get it. Last year is when the state approval came in, right? No tickee, no job, eh?” I nodded. “Well, Doris is a tough old war-horse, but she kept that school alive when no one else could.” “Yes, she taught me a great deal.” Glad that I could say it. That the hurt of having to leave was easing. “Okay now,” Foster said, “let’s get down to business. We have come up with a terrific idea.” “We?” “Yeah. Bernie Serino and me and the Falls City Mental Health Clinic. You know Bernie?” “Yes. He was supervisor of special ed when I was teaching and helped me get one of my kids back into a regular class in junior high.” “Yeah. Well, Bernie and I have lunch every Wednesday. A little business, a little pleasure. We’ve known each other a long time. “In some of the districts they’re having a hell of a time with the younger kids. Not just truancy, you expect that, but stealing, setting fires, drugs – you name it. So what happens, they call the school social worker or psychologist, she adds a name to her list. Then the truant officer, they call him something fancier, but I don’t remember what it is, checks in. Nine times out of ten he comes back and says it’s a ‘broken home,’ either the father’s skipped or nobody knew who he was. All they got is uncles, Uncle This and Uncle That. Every time Mom gets a new boyfriend, the kids get a new uncle. Convenient, but unstable. “So they have a conference and call up Bernie and tell him they need ‘special services.’ Well, about the only ‘special services’ Bernie’s got any connection to where he might get help for these kids is the Mental Health Clinic. They’re a good bunch, working hard in the community, but they got an even longer waiting list than the school social worker.” He paused and I asked what he knew I would ask. “What happens?” “What happens?” Professor Foster banged his feet to the floor and leaned toward me. “Same damn thing happens every time. By June the kid has moved up to number thirty on the waiting list. He’s been picked up by the police, taken to court, warned and fined, and released. The school year ends and the whole thing begins all over again the next fall.” I said nothing. I sat looking at my hands, feeling the old familiar sadness as I heard about the children. What sense did it make? Any satisfaction I had felt at completing registration faded. What was I doing here in this college memorizing the commutative, associative, distributive mathematical properties and the content and study skills of reading? I was so deep in my own thoughts that I missed the first few words or sentences of Professor Foster’s next statement, tuning in when he got to “… the Mental Health Clinic has gotten a grant to put ‘therapeutic tutors’ into one of the schools in Falls City on a trial basis. Bernie’s agreed and picked the school and I’ve offered to supply the therapeutic tutors.” “What’s a therapeutic tutor?” I interrupted. “Somebody who’s good with kids. What else? You can hear it in fancy words later. So what do you say?” “It sounds like a good idea from what you’ve told me.” “No. Not that. Will you do it? Be a tutor?” “Me?” I couldn’t believe it. I answered instantly before he could change his mind. “I’d love to. Where do I go?” Professor Foster smiled at me. “Don’t you want to know about credits – hours?” I looked down, embarrassed and immediately shy. I had been too eager, revealed too much. I nodded. “Well, first there’ll be training sessions at the clinic. Then you’ll see your child three times a week for about fifty minutes each session. Eventually you’ll have three children.” In my mind’s eye, I could see the schedule of courses that I had just completed. Falls City was about twenty minutes from the campus; that would mean another forty minutes each time I went down. There wasn’t a day when there was a block of time long enough. Wordlessly I handed Professor Foster my schedule. He studied it briefly, then whacked it down on the table. “What the hell is this? How could you sign up for classes before you checked with me? Am I your adviser or not? Why didn’t you ask for advice? “Never mind,” Foster said after a minute, picking up my schedule. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to yell. Let’s see what we can do.” He studied it closely and then grinned at me. “At least you’ve got good taste, picking ‘Counseling and Guidance for the Handicapped’ – that’s mine. Unfortunately, it’s only a two-credit course, but at least that gives us a couple of hours to play with. Mmm-de-dum-dum.” Professor Foster hummed to himself as he flipped through catalog pages, checking them against course requirements and my own schedule. Finally, he looked up at me and said, “That’ll do it. Drop History of Ed and take Independent Study in its place and spend the time of my course at School Twenty-three and you’ll be all set.” “What’s Independent Study? And what do I do about History?” “Independent Study is whenever I want you to do something. I just write up a slip and send it to the dean. You’ll get your three credits.” “Power,” I said. “What was that?” “Nothing.” “Okay, now. Go on back to registration before it closes and drop that history course. You can always take it next year, there are plenty of sections. Here’s a note if you need it.” “Thank you,” I said as I stood up. “When, where will I start?” “Well, the other two tutors are both seniors with much more freedom in courses, so scheduling will be a lot easier for them. Let’s see your schedule again. Okay. You’ve got some time on Monday afternoons. We’ll meet down at the clinic at two.” He glanced out his door. Four pairs of blue-jeaned legs could be seen below the hall bench. “Ah. Gotta rush now, way behind. See you next Monday. Call the clinic to get directions down there. Sorry I can’t talk longer.” He was already standing, tucking in his shirt, smoothing back his hair. The line was still long at the student union. I went up to the guard at the door. “I’ve already registered. I just want to drop one course. Is it all right if I go in?” “Name, please.” “Mary MacCracken.” “MacCracken. M. That’s all right. Social security number?” “No. Look, I’ve already done this. I don’t need to regis –” it wasn’t any use. I was just wasting time. I sighed. “One four seven –” “All right. Step to the back of the line. No exceptions.” I went back. Six new people in line since I arrived, but I should have known better than to ask the guard. There were no exceptions on the lines, only in professors’ offices. But if the system bothered me, it couldn’t snuff out the small bubbles of excitement surfacing inside me. What kind of children would they be? What were we going to do together? Who would be my child? Chapter 3 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) It was cold, even for the end of January, and the fact that there was no snow made it worse. The campus looked bleak and bare, and the contrast with the remembered warmth of Christmas made it even more difficult for me to return. We had spent most of vacation and winter break at our house in the country. We cut our own tall, wonderful, scraggly Christmas tree and carried it up from the woods. We hung eleven stockings in front of the stone fireplace, ours and the children’s and the grandparents’ and friends’. The house was not meant to be a winter house. Cal’s parents had built it for summers fifty years before. It took days to warm the stone walls and floors. The small furnace worked valiantly, shedding soot as well as heat. Gusts of wind and small mice scurried through chinks in the stone walls to the inside warmth of the house. In the mornings we lay in bed and blew smoke rings of warm breath into the frosty air and then rushed from bed to shiver by the window as we watched deer leap across the meadow. We ate simple meals and trudged along un-plowed roads, chopped logs and read and talked quietly to each other. Happiness was almost visible that week. Vacation over, spring courses began. I wondered if every one had as hard a time coming back to school as I did. But I did have seventy-six credits now – five A’s and a B – and fifteen more credits coming up this semester. If I could just get through Statistics and Orientation to Psychological Testing and Background of Mathematics II, I’d have ninety-one by May. And now, thanks to Professor Foster, there would be children. Many of the faces in Background of Mathematics II were familiar, but instead of Dr. Kaiser, the teacher was a man in his thirties, wearing black horn-rimmed glasses – and there, sleeping beneath a grubby tennis hat, was Ian Michaels. My spirits lifted. I stepped over several pairs of blue-jeaned legs and settled beside Ian, who continued to sleep, or to pretend he did. On the board was written Background of Math II. Beneath this was the statement: A denumerably infinite set is one that can be put in a 1–1 correspondence with the set of counting numbers. Oh, no. Here we go again. I had thought we’d at least be to something like fractions. I opened my notebook and copied the statement down anyway; I could puzzle over it later. A familiar hand reached lazily across the page and scrawled an example. Ex: The set of multiples of 5 is a denumerably infinite set. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … n … 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, … 5n … I looked at what Ian had written. Okay, I see that. I smiled at Ian’s tennis hat. “Thank you,” I said, settling back in my chair. “The one thing I’m good at in math is knowing how to pick the right seat.” If classes at college were as frustrating as ever, our training sessions at the clinic were fascinating. The Mental Health Clinic was in the center of Falls City on the second floor of the Logan Building, and although the streets were littered and the surrounding buildings shabby, there was a lingering ambiance of power and elegance. In earlier years Falls City had been a leading manufacturing center. Its chief industries were the dyeing and finishing of textiles and the manufacture of silk. But with the rising popularity of synthetic fabrics, business declined and companies closed. Although pockets of culture remained, the downtown area had become drab and rundown and the population was predominantly lower middle class. Inside the Logan Building, shabbiness was more evident. Water stains marked the ceilings, walls needed painting, floors were bare, furniture was folding metal. But there was a lot of space, a large waiting room, several secretarial offices, and a half-dozen rooms for therapists to meet with clients. Some rooms were furnished with chairs, table, and couch; another had low furniture and toys for children. We met in the children’s room. The other two tutors were both seniors, Shirley Hayes and John Hudson. Shirley was quiet, with a soft sure voice and dark smooth skin. Hud was tall, slender, red-haired, filled with vitality. Shirley was going on to graduate school next year, and was working now as a clerk in a department store after her college classes to earn tuition. Hud was job-hunting, hoping to teach teenagers with emotional problems. I liked them both. Hud had worked with multiply handicapped children at summer camp. Shirley with disadvantaged children at a day care center. Jerry Cotter had been put in charge of the program and conducted our training sessions. He was small, with a brown-gray beard and a gentle handshake. His official title at the clinic was psychiatric social worker. At our first meeting Jerry said, “This program could be the beginning of a revolutionary change in the treatment of emotional problems in children. The central idea is to expand and intensify mental health services in the schools themselves, instead of letting kids vegetate on waiting lists. We are going to try to do this through therapeutic counseling and tutoring at the school – and you are the ones who are going to do it.” At later sessions Jerry stressed again that help would go to the child in a familiar place, his school, rather than the child going, or waiting to go, to a clinic. He also said we would not be asked to work with psychotic children, the ones who were so disturbed that they would be considered autistic or schizophrenic. He smiled at me. “These children are not as out of touch with reality as the children you’ve worked with, Mary. Instead, they take their anger out on society, stealing, burning, destroying, and earn the label of ‘socially maladjusted’ or ‘juvenile delinquent.’” I smiled back but didn’t reply. Labels meant little to me. In fact, as far as I could see, their only use was to give a name to a program so it could be funded. Nobody funded anything without a name. The next four sessions focused on diagnostic tests and teaching procedures. Jerry demonstrated the administration and scoring of various tests given to screen for emotional or neurologically based impairments. We, of course, did not have the skill to score the tests ourselves, but we were all amazed at how much information he was able to obtain from such seemingly simple devices. Our last session was on observing and charting behavior. Jerry gave us stopwatches and taught us how to use observation charts, marking down the number of incidents of a child’s disruptive behavior during short intervals carefully timed by the stopwatch. At the end of this session, Jerry said, “That’s it. I, of course, will be at the school scoring tests and supervising from time to time. The grant covers the rest of this year and I’ll get over as much as I can, but we’re short-handed here and you’re going to be more on your own than originally planned. “Anyway, good luck. I’ve enjoyed our sessions together and I’ll see you all at School Twenty-three on Wednesday.” How could I wait till Wednesday? Chapter 4 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) School 23 was a half-hour drive from the college, just off one of the main streets of Falls City. It was old, like most of the city’s buildings, its dark red brick packed with city grime. The gray cement steps, worn smoothly by thousands of children’s feet, dragging in, rushing out, descended directly to the sidewalk of the small street. There was no front yard or back yard, only a macadam side lot that evidently served as teacher parking lot and play yard. Small, rundown houses surrounded by yards consisting of brown dirt and cracked cement lined the rest of the short block. I parked across from the school and started across the street. A large white dog came off the steps of one of the houses, snarling and hurling himself against the chain-link fence that surrounded the house. I shivered involuntarily and then ran back and locked the car doors before I climbed the steps to School 23, not realizing I was holding my breath until I reached the door. “Remember,” Jerry Cotter had warned us at the beginning of the training sessions, “the kids you’ll be working with are different than most. We call them ‘socially maladjusted with an overlay of emotional disturbance.’ What we mean is – they are tough, street-wise, and don’t give a damn.” The warmth inside the school was unexpected. Steam radiators clanked cheerily. Mrs. Karras, the principal, was waiting in the hall. Her handshake was strong, her smile warm, and I liked her immediately. Jerry arrived next and then within minutes of each other John Hudson and Shirley. Mrs. Karras poured us mugs of steaming coffee and we carried them across the hall to the music room and sat down around a long folding table that had been set up in the back of the room. “This will be your room,” Mrs. Karras said cordially. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, we don’t seem to have a music teacher this year, so the room is all yours. I’ve had those file cabinets over there cleaned out for you. I know you said you needed room for some materials.” Jerry nodded his thanks and then we all listened intently as Mrs. Karras described her school, kindergarten through fifth grade, twenty-eight to thirty children in each room. Many of the teachers were on the far side of fifty and tired of teaching unruly kids, but money was short and jobs hard to come by. Tenure assured these teachers their jobs at School 23, though they longed to be elsewhere. Mrs. Karras again added her welcome and delight we were there and then said, “Let’s not waste any more time.” She turned toward Jerry. “I understand you feel it’s best for each tutor to begin working with just one child at first and then gradually take on two more. Right?” Jerry nodded, and Mrs. Karras continued. “Here’s a list of the youngsters we’ve selected for the program. They’ve been given an intelligence test by the district psychologist. The tests are in the file in my office. Just ask the secretary for the key, their records are open to you. That’s been made clear to their families. You do understand that in ninety percent of the cases, family means a mother and, of course, other brothers and sisters. Almost all of the kids live in the low-income project, and the reason they live there is that there’s no father around to provide adequate income. “Norm Foster called and asked me to pick three youngsters for you to start with. I don’t know if it’s fair to you, but I picked the three worst. Seemed to me they needed help the most. Of course, it’s up to you to decide who gets who. “So here are my three candidates. Vernon Schofield, Lucas Brauer, and Milton Green. Vernon’s in fifth grade, Mrs. Jacobson’s class – eleven years old. He’s black, disruptive, been in several knife fights, picked up by the police for shoplifting. Has a younger brother who’s on the list as well, but Anthony isn’t as bad yet. “Lucas Brauer’s in second grade. German background. Luke’s hard core. Nobody gets through to him. He’s got a list of arrests as long as your arm. Been picked up twenty-four times. He’s set over a dozen major fires, stolen over fifty dollars’ worth of goods from the stores on Main Street. He’s got a hundred and two average IQ, but he’s a truant and even when he does come to school he doesn’t do any work. Just sits at his desk drawing pictures. Actually, he’s one of the lucky ones that made it off the waiting list into the clinic last year. They worked with him for six months and then discontinued, said they just couldn’t get through to him. “And then there’s Milt Green, black, one of eight kids. He’s in third grade, quiet, except he cries all the time and then climbs on the desk and swims like a fish.” “I’d like him,” Shirley said. “And if you don’t mind, Mary, I’d like Vernon Schofield,” said John Hudson. “I think I’d do better with a fifth grader.” If I had been asked, I would probably have picked Milt. It took a certain amount of something to swim like a fish on a desk in a third-grade classroom, but it didn’t really matter. I could never tell anything anyway until I saw the child. “Fine. I’ll work with Luke.” Jerry glanced at his watch. “Suppose I take each of you down to the classrooms. Let’s see, Vernon is in Mrs. Jacobson’s class, you say? That’s on the second floor, isn’t it?” “Yes,” Mrs. Karras responded. “And Luke is in Miss Eckhardt’s class and Milt in Miss Fuller’s, both just down the hall. I’ll show you.” Miss Eckhardt’s class was first, a jumble of confusion and noise that was instantly quiet when Mrs. Karras walked in. “Miss Eckhardt, would you please go out to the hall for a moment? I’ll take the class. All right, class. Get out pencil and paper and copy these five words that I dictate. “Hen. The hen laid an egg. Hen.” A boy in the third row laughed out loud. “I’d like to see you in my office at three o’clock, Jimmy,” Mrs. Karras said. The room was absolutely silent as Mrs. Karras said, “Hen. Do you have that? All right. Your second word is ran. The dog ran after the ball. Ran.” One thing was obvious. You didn’t fool around with Mrs. Karras. Miss Eckhardt walked through the room, which was now absolutely silent. In the hall, Jerry held out his hand. “Lisa, do you remember me? Jerry Cotter from the Mental Health Clinic. We met at Bernie’s a couple of months ago.” “Of course, Jerry. I’m glad to see you.” Lisa Eckhardt’s voice was warm and deep dimples appeared by the corners of her mouth when she smiled. Her brown hair was cut short and it curled in disarray around her pretty face. Jerry introduced me as the tutor for Luke Brauer and Lisa immediately invited me into her classroom. Jerry pressed a data sheet and stopwatch into my hand. “Good luck.” Lisa and I went back together, and it was then that she pointed Luke out to me. He was just a little kid, I thought once again, as I watched him from my seat on the radiator. As Lisa took over from Mrs. Karras, she said, “Class, we’re lucky to have a visitor today. Mary MacCracken is here.” The kids paid no attention. A boy in the back wadded the paper he’d been writing on into a ball and, as soon as Mrs. Karras closed the door, threw it at the girl across the aisle. She yelled and the others immediately joined the fracas. Except Luke. He turned and looked at me as though from a million miles away, and then turned back to his desk. It was as though he looked but didn’t see me, any more than he heard the shouts and yells around him. At his desk, small and alone, Luke drew something on a paper. I put the stopwatch and data sheet in my pocket and moved to a windowsill near his desk. What was he drawing? Horses? I couldn’t quite tell. “The first two rows go to the board.” Eleven bodies crowded along the blackboard at the side of the room, grabbing chalk from one another. “Luke,” Lisa said, “aren’t you in the first row? Go to the board.” Reluctantly, Luke stuffed his picture in his desk and walked to the blackboard. By the time he arrived, there was no chalk left and almost no space. He wedged himself in between two other boys, looked up and down the chalk rail and then, seeing no chalk, just stood silently. “All right, now,” Lisa said. “I’ll call out a problem for each of you. You write it on the board, figure it out, and then we’ll check it. John, nine plus five. Ed, seven plus six. Luke, eight plus six.” Luke had no chalk. He could easily have asked to borrow some, or told Lisa. He did neither. He just stood, doing nothing, and then returned to his seat. “Luke,” Lisa called sharply. “Where are you going? I told you to write your problem on the board. Eight plus six. Go on now.” But Luke’s head never turned. He hunched down in his seat, turning his picture over and over. A boy at the board hit his neighbor with an eraser. “John! Stop that! Now read your answer to the class and see if they agree.” As Lisa talked she went toward Luke, then stood in front of his desk. “What’s the trouble, Luke? Don’t you feel well?” Luke shrugged without looking up. A boy in the back row yelled, “John’s hittin’ Ed again. Lookit him, Miss Eckhardt.” “John, get back to your seat, since you can’t behave at the board.” As soon as Lisa turned away, Luke pulled out his picture and spread it on the desk, his head bent down so that it almost touched the paper. I edged closer, trying to make out what he was drawing. Maybe they were lions. One large one lying down and three little ones on the far side of the paper. I squatted beside Luke’s desk. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Mary. Will you come with me for a minute? Bring your picture. “Luke and I are going to do a little work,” I said to Miss Eckhardt. “We’ll be back in about a half hour.” I knew I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing. I could feel the stopwatch pressing on my thigh in the front pocket of my jeans. I knew both Luke and I should still be in his classroom while I “charted” his behavior. But I couldn’t stand to waste the time. It was already clear that he did no work and his behavior was negative. What I had to know was why and I couldn’t find that out with a stopwatch. I had to listen to Luke, even when he wasn’t talking, and I couldn’t do that in a roomful of thirty kids. I walked down toward the music room, Luke beside me, hoping that Jerry had gone back to the clinic. I was glad to find the music room empty, filled only with a musty, unused smell. “Let’s sit here,” I said to Luke. He wiggled onto a chair at the long table and I sat beside him. He kept his picture under the table. “I think,” I said, “that those were tigers on your paper. Very, very tired tigers.” Luke’s round eyes stared at me. “They probably get very tired because of all the noise in the zoo and had to lie down,” I said. Luke turned away and we sat silently for three or four minutes. I concentrated on Luke – the ring of grime on the back of his neck, the sharp points of his elbow bones. What went on in his head when he set fires? What was he thinking right now? I felt, rather than saw, Luke move, and then slowly he brought his piece of paper up from under the table. “Nope,” he said in a voice so soft I could hardly hear him. “They’re lions. They got no stripes.” “You’re right,” I said. “I should have noticed.” Luke got a little stub of a pencil from his pocket. “And this one’s got fur around her face,” he said, drawing whirls around the lion’s face. “It’s a her,” I said. “Yup. Even though she’s got fur like a beard.” “It must be a pretty big cage,” I said. “Those little lions are so far away from the big lion.” “It’s not a cage. It’s Africa. It’s the mother lion and her babies in Africa, and then a zoo keeper came to Africa and they got caught and he put them in a big field with a big, BIG, fence around it.” Luke was on his knees on the chair drawing a fence around the lions. “There are three babies … and –” Luke stopped suddenly, obviously surprised at himself. He wasn’t ready to trust me with any more. “That’s all.” It was enough for one day. “That’s a good story,” I said. We sat silently looking at the lions. I had no materials with me. What to do? What to do? Suddenly I remembered the stopwatch. We were supposed to use the stopwatch. I took it out of my pocket and laid it on the table. “Do you know what this is?” I asked Luke. He nodded without expression. “This one works like this. Press the thing at the top to make it go. See, there are sixty seconds in a minute. Press it again to make it stop. Now this little thing on the side makes the hands go back to the beginning when you press it. Try it.” I nudged the stopwatch toward Luke. Luke stared at it, then touched it tentatively with one finger. Suppose he threw it, dropped it, broke it. Suppose he did? I wanted him to know I trusted him. And I did trust him. More than that. Already more than that. Luke picked up the stopwatch and held it carefully in his left hand, pushed the button on the top with his right index finger. Tick, tick, tick. The stopwatch and my pulse beat together. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty. “Okay,” I said. “Time me. Give me something to do and see how long it takes.” Luke pushed the top button and then the side button. The hands returned to the top. He looked at me steadily. “What can you do?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Think of something.” “Can you do dition?” “Dition?” “Like pluses. Add.” “Oh. Sure. Addition. I think so.” “All right. One million dollars plus two million dollars. Write it down here. Go.” Luke snapped on the stopwatch and turned over the lion picture. I wrote it down. “Ten seconds. Twenty seconds,” Luke counted off the seconds. “Three million dollars. There.” I pushed the paper back. Luke clicked off the watch and put it down carefully on the table away from the edge. He studied my face and then, never saying anything, turned back to the paper and wrote 100 beside my dition and turned back to me. “You can keep it if you want,” he said. “Thank you, Luke,” I answered. “Listen, we’ve got to go back now, but I’m going to come down here every week, a couple of times a week or more, and see you. If that’s okay with you.” Luke nodded and we walked back to class without talking. Just outside the door, he stopped. “When you comin’?” he asked. “Tomorrow,” I said, without thinking. “I’ll be down again tomorrow.” Chapter 5 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) Time dragged the next morning. It was harder than ever to sit through Current Methods of Teaching Mentally Challenged Adolescents and Practicum in Teaching Reading to the Mentally Challenged. This was a practicum with no practice, only mimeographed sheets. Finally the clock buzzed its muted signal to freedom and I was out and on my way to School 23. I thought about Luke as I drove. I’d talked to Cal the night before. I didn’t understand it. Luke just didn’t seem that bad to me. Was it because I had taught such seriously disturbed children before that now Luke seemed easy in comparison? Partly, perhaps. Or was it his environment that didn’t give him a chance? It seemed as if people didn’t listen to him. Did Luke realize this and so didn’t bother to talk? Maybe his resistance grew into refusal to do work and he escaped into the fantasy of his drawings. I would have to get into the office and read his records carefully. I arrived at ten to one, and the yard at the west side of the school that served as parking lot and playground was jammed with kids. A heavy woman, with a plastic kerchief tied over her gray hair and black galoshes on her feet, stood in the center of the yard blowing short shrill blasts on a whistle. The children cheerfully ignored her, pushing, shoving, moving like a tidal wave from one side of the yard to the other, back and forth, swirling around the teacher almost without noticing her. Occasionally something would distract them. A fight would break out between two boys, and a small group of ten or twelve children would form a protective circle around the combatants, their cheers drowning out the agitated whistle blasts. A long loud bell rang inside the school and the wave of children rearranged itself. “Line up. Line up. We’re not going in till I see straight lines.” The children separated themselves into a dozen or so groups. “Straighten up those lines” – a few more whistle blasts. The children didn’t move at all, except to dart from their clusters to pick up a forgotten glove or book. “All right. Kindergarten first.” No one seemed to expect to have to form lines as they had been instructed to do, and one group after another tramped through the side door. Once again, words were meaningless. Lisa Eckhardt was mixing paint when I walked into her second grade. “Hi,” she said cheerfully. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon. Come on in.” “I know,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be here so soon. I think we’re only supposed to come twice a week in the beginning.” “Well, feel free. Come whenever you like. You know, Luke actually said something to me yesterday. Didn’t do any work, of course, but he did say good-bye when he left. And that’s something. I wasn’t sure he even knew I existed.” The door burst open and the kids poured in. Lisa yelled, “Put your boots in the closets or else wipe off your feet. The floor’s getting too wet to paint on.” “Okay, Miss Eckhardt.” “We gonna paint. All right!” In between pokes and yells and boots tossed across the classroom, the children managed to find a pile of men’s shirts and help one another button them up. I watched, liking what I saw. Obviously they had all done this before and knew what to do. It was noisy and chaotic, but there was a sense of unity, almost of a family. The bickering was part of their communication. Remembering Luke’s pictures, I knew this was not the time to take him out of class. During art, at least, he could be doing the same thing as the rest of the class. Luke came in last. No boots. No gloves. His hands rough and red, nails black with dirt. I stood beside him as he hung his jacket on a hook in the closet. “I’m going to come back for you in about a half hour,” I said. “I have to go down to the office right now. Okay?” Luke nodded without expression. He stood by the coat closet, alone and silent. I wanted to get him a shirt, help him button it, find a paintbrush. Instead, I walked to the door. It would not help to treat Luke like a baby in front of the other children. Mrs. Karras was nowhere in sight when I walked into the office, but the secretary willingly gave me the key to the file and in a minute I had lifted out Brauer, Lucas. The file was thick and the folder smudged and bent. It had obviously been in and out of the drawer many times. I took the file to the music room and sorted the contents on the long metal table. There were four piles of pink absence slips signed by the truant officer. Twenty-five slips in three piles, twenty-eight in the fourth. One hundred and three altogether. Luke had been enrolled in school for two years. One hundred and eighty days to a school year. Two years and half of this one. Four hundred and fifty days altogether and Luke had missed over a hundred of them – over half a year. Had he been out more days this year than last? I tried to read the dates, but the carbon print was smudged and illegible. I sighed and put the pink slips back in the folder. There was another large pile of white typewritten pages. I began to leaf through these and realized they were descriptions of Luke’s arrests. Twenty-four pages, a separate sheet for each arrest. Last November he had stolen over ten dollars’ worth of toy guns and army men from the five-and-ten. The previous April, a woman’s purse and gold earrings from the local department store, and before that, a cigarette lighter and aspirin and cough medicine from the drugstore. The accounts of fires were more numerous. Luke had set both small and large street fires, and there was one major episode on the hills on the edge of the city during a dry spell. The fire had gotten out of control and it had taken the entire Fire Department two days to put it out. My stomach felt queasy. The reality of the folder hit me harder than the report Mrs. Karras had given us the day before. But the mismatch between this file and Luke of yesterday was the hardest to understand. How had all this started? Why? I searched the folder for a social history or background information, but there was none. Only a signed permission slip from Luke’s mother, agreeing to his being part of the program, and the intelligence test Mrs. Karras had mentioned. I studied the test form closely, trying to decipher the psychologist’s handwriting and remember what Jerry had explained about the WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children). He had felt that there was some bias against culturally deprived children on all verbal sections of intelligence tests, but that the performance sections, made up of puzzles, pictures, and mazes, were more accurate. I could see that there was a great deal of difference in Luke’s subtest scores. He had given mainly one-word answers or no answer at all to verbal questions, but on the performance part of the test, where he had to arrange pictures sequentially or build block designs from patterns, his score was far above the mean of ten. I made a mental note to discuss all this with Jerry at our next meeting. I glanced at my watch. I’d spent over twenty minutes going through Luke’s file. No more time to think about the past. Now I needed to think about today. I took the file back to the office and hung my jacket and scarf in the closet in the music room and then stood looking around the room. We were not going to have much in the way of books, or any kind of equipment; at least I wanted to keep my coat in our room. It was going to be difficult to work in a room that wasn’t mine. For the past six years I had tried to build a room for children where they could feel physically and emotionally safe. I was convinced that all children needed a safe place somewhere in their lives in order to grow. A place where they knew they were listened to, accepted, and cared for. I had filled my room at school with books, records, pictures, and plants, with scraps of bright carpet sewn together for mats, old pillows covered with soft prints, fish tanks, and homemade games. There would be none of this in the bare, drab music room of School 23, only cold metal furniture and an old piano. Yet somehow I was sure Luke could grow. The pink truant slips and typed arrest sheets faded from my mind. That was last week, last month, last year. Now the image of yesterday’s Luke hunched over his lion picture filled my mind. Suddenly I knew what to do. I took Luke’s lion picture from the file cabinet where we were to keep our records, data sheets, and tests on the children and wrote down his story as nearly as I could remember it; then I went back to the office and typed it on a white unlined piece of paper. I wrote the title in capitals. THE LIONS There were four lions. A mother lion with fur around her face and three baby lions. They lived in Africa. A zoo keeper caught them and put them in a big field with a big, BIG fence around them. They lived happily ever after. by Luke Brauer As I typed, I thought of Luke’s picture. Was there any relationship between the baby lions and Luke and the large space between the lions and their mother? Careful, I warned myself, don’t read in too much. In the music room, I cut a file folder in half to make front and back covers, punched the picture, the story, and the covers with a three-hole punch, I put Luke’s story and lion picture between the two halves of the folder and laced them all together with some red yarn from the materials drawer. With Magic Markers, red, yellow, and blue, I wrote LUKE’S BOOK on the front cover. Painting was over by the time I got back to Lisa’s room. They were cleaning up, to use the word euphemistically, accompanied by Lisa’s shouts. “… Dump the water in the sink, for Pete’s sake. Not on the floor. Pick up the papers!” Lisa looked up at me. “I swear I don’t know why I do it. It’s not worth the mess.” Then she smiled. “Well, maybe it is. Look at this.” She pointed to what was obviously a picture of School 23, grimy red bricks outlined in black, gray stone steps, even a lady with a whistle in the yard beside the school. We smiled together. “It’s worth it,” I said. “How about Luke? What did he do?” “God! You know, I don’t know. He’s so quiet. The other twenty-nine are so noisy, it’s like he’s not there. But I know he did something – I would have noticed that at least.” Lisa wiped her hands with paper towels at the sink. “Luke,” she called. “Come here.” Luke’s body crouched lower over his desk. “Luke Brauer. Do you hear me? Come over here.” Lisa’s voice was not mean. Just loud. Reluctantly, Luke stood up as the class watched with interest. “Come on over here. Now what did you paint?” Oh, Lord, I thought. Why had I asked? I never wanted him to be singled out like this. Luke stood in front of Lisa. Paint was smeared on his shirt, his face, his hair. “Well,” she said, “what did you paint?” Luke shrugged. “See,” Lisa said. “That’s all he ever does.” She hunched her own shoulders in imitation. “I’ll ask you once more, Luke. What did you paint?” Luke kept his eyes on the floor. “All right. All right. I give up. Go on with Mary.” She shook her head at me. “Maybe you can get something out of him.” Lisa turned to the class as Luke and I headed for the door. “Get out your phonic workbooks.” The class groaned and then shouted its objections as Luke and I left. I walked down the hall toward the music room with Luke beside me, not talking, wanting only to give him some space to let the humiliation dissolve a little. When we got to the music room, Luke crawled up onto the same metal chair of the day before. I sat beside him, turning a box of crayons in my fingers. After a while I said, “I thought maybe you might be tired of drawing or painting. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe we could read a little.” Luke’s expression never changed, his eyes stared straight ahead. He had yet to speak to me today. Still, I might as well try; there certainly was nothing to lose. I pulled the file folder toward us and turned it over. “I made this while you were painting. The cover isn’t too good, because I made it very quickly. You can make another one sometime, if you want.” “Luke’s Book,” Luke said. You are wonderful, Lucas Brauer, I wanted to say, remembering my other children and how it often took months to get a single spoken word. You talk. You read. But I’m sure you startle easily. I kept myself silent, my body still, not even turning the cover. Luke looked at me and reached for the book at the same time. “Luke’s Book?” This time it was a question and there was surprise in his voice. “Mm-hm. Remember how you drew the lions yesterday?” Good! He can’t resist. Luke opened the cover, then turned the book sideways to study the lions. Then he looked at me. “I can make better lions,” he said. “Do you want me to make better ones?” “I like these,” I said. “But you can make more if you want.” Will he look at the story? Can he read more than his name? Luke turned the book back and easily, as easily as anything, he read, “‘The lions. There were four lions …’” When he’d finished he said, “You forgot to say they were lying down.” He said it softly, without accusation. “Yes,” I answered. “I thought that was all right because anybody who looked at the picture could see they were lying down.” Luke turned the book around again and studied the picture. “I guess,” he said. “But next time put in about how they’re lying down.” Next time! There was going to be a next time. Luke might set fires and lie and cheat and steal, but there was no doubt that he could be reached. Now I was the one who leaned back and stared out across the room, wanting the moment to last a little longer. Where was the arsonist and thief of the file folder? Where was the rebellious truant? It didn’t make sense. Luke squirmed beside me and rubbed his nose, leaving new smears of red paint across his face. There was a sink in the back of the room and I nodded toward it and smiled at Luke. “How about washing up? You’ve got red paint from here to here.” I touched my own face to show him. I turned the faucets back and forth – hot, cold, a little more hot. Making it the right warmth, as I had for my own children. “Okay,” I said. “Here’s a piece of soap.” I wanted to mix the soap between his hands, wash his face, but I knew better. I moved back and sat on the table, watching him from across the room. Luke rewarded me with a question. “Know how I got so much paint?” “Unh-unh. How?” “From the kangaroo. I made him all red.” “The kangaroo you made during art?” “Yup. I could tell a story about it, but you write it down so you don’t forget stuff this time. It’s called ‘The Kangaroo.’” There was a long pause. Then Luke said, “How’ll I start?” “Lots of good stories begin ‘once upon a time.’” If pretending made it easier for him to talk, it was okay with me. “Okay. Once upon a time there was a kangaroo, and he hopped very high. He was funny and he was a boxing kangaroo. One day he hopped into a bucket of red paint. That was bad. The kangaroo was sad. A zoo keeper put a fence around him. But then he remembered how high he could hop and he hopped right over the fence.” Luke stopped. “Do you think a kangaroo could hop that high?” I nodded, still writing. “A good young boxing kangaroo could definitely hop that high,” I said. Luke nodded. “Write ‘The End by Luke Brauer.’” Friday night Cal and I drove up to the country. The snow was gone, but there had evidently been a heavy windstorm and broken branches lay across the road and path into the house. Before breakfast the next morning, Cal was out prowling around, inspecting the damage. “There’ll be a lot of clean-up work to do in the spring. A couple of big trees are down in the meadow. Must have had a wet snow before the wind.” I poured our coffee and Cal talked to me as I cooked the eggs. “You know, my father used to tell a story about President Roosevelt. After he had finished his first term in office, he went to register to vote. In those days you had to write down your occupation. You know what he wrote? ‘Tree Grower.’ I was thinking about that this morning. When I’m here in this place, I think if I couldn’t describe myself as engineer or inventor, I’d say ‘grower of trees.’ Not very good trees, maybe, but certainly lots of them.” I put our eggs on the table and climbed in on the bench next to the stone wall. “Yes,” I said. “I can see that. You are a grower.” “And you,” Cal asked. “If you couldn’t say teacher or writer, what would you say?” I watched the sun glimmering through the small window panes, highlighting a pale brown spider who was beginning to spin a web in the far corner of the room. Cal was one of the few people who knew about the journals I kept and the occasional poems and articles I’d published. He teased me sometimes about my diaries, but it was an old habit. From the time I was a little girl, things stayed brighter, clearer for me if I wrote them down. After I began to teach, I kept a small black and white notebook for each child I taught. My version of a lesson plan, I suppose. A montage of the children I’d known imposed itself upon the spiderweb and I smiled at Cal. “I know what I would think, but I’m not sure I could tell other people.” “What?” “A lover of children.” This time Cal smiled at me as he got up to pour us more coffee. “That sounds very nice. You should get used to saying it.” Chapter 6 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) We no longer had our meetings at the clinic on Mondays. Now that we were with the children at School 23, it didn’t seem natural to meet in any other environment. We had unanimously agreed that our meetings would be at the school. Each week we discussed one child in depth and shared opinions, ideas, and suggestions about things we should eliminate, continue, or increase. We altered discussions of children and this time it was Luke’s turn. I was eager to talk about Luke with Shirley and Hud. Luke was so different from the seriously emotionally disturbed children I had known. I thought perhaps at the day care center or camp they might have had other children similar to Luke. Most of all, I wanted to talk to Jerry. He had promised to check the records at the clinic for background information about Luke. He had also asked me to copy Luke’s subtest scores from the WISC test and to give Luke two other tests: the Bender Gestalt, in which a child copied designs to test visual perception, motor and memory abilities; and the House-Tree-Person, in which drawings often revealed to a trained examiner how a child felt about himself and his world. Luke had enjoyed copying the nine design cards of the Bender and doing the drawings. I also had asked Luke to draw a picture of his family, and now I spread his tests and stories and my notes on the table for Shirley and Hud to inspect and Jerry to score and interpret. “Well, he’s not dumb, that’s for sure,” Jerry commented as he examined the WISC. “His scores in information and vocabulary are low, but look at this sixteen in Block Design and a fourteen in Picture Arrangement. This kid knows how to plan, organize, and then carry out his thoughts, and he’s socially aware and alert to detail. Whatever the reason for his acting-out behavior and poor school performance, it is not because of lack of intelligence.” Shirley commented in her soft voice as she leafed through Luke’s book, “His stories seem to be mainly about animals. Does he talk about other things?” I shook my head. “No, not much, although he didn’t object when I asked him to draw the House-Tree-Person – or even to drawing his family. I really feel he’s trusting me an awful lot when he talks at all. Do you think I should ask him more?” “Not yet,” Jerry answered. “The records at the clinic show he didn’t talk at all while he was there. Just poured the sand back and forth from bucket to bucket. I’d go slow for now. Besides, he’s telling us a lot with his drawings. “See how tiny the door is on this picture of a house? “Now I don’t feel you should try to read an entire psychoanalysis into children’s drawings, but if you treat their pictures as one more piece in the puzzle, they can be helpful.” “What’s the matter with a little door?” Hud asked. “I bet I’d put a little door on a house if I drew one. I’d probably draw my camping tent with a very little door.” “I doubt it,” Jerry said. “In any case, don’t put too much weight on any single drawing. But still, studies do show that a door like this one often means the child is reluctant to share his thoughts and tries to keep a lot inside.” “That certainly fits Luke,” I said. “Notice how small his picture of a person is?” Jerry continued. “How over in the family picture there is no father, the mother is positioned a great distance from the three children, who are huddled together?” Jerry talked further, pointing out evidence of anxiety, depression, and hostility. “Are there three children?” I asked. Jerry nodded. “Luke has a younger brother and sister, The parents are divorced. His mother was described by the clinic social worker two years ago as having physical and emotional problems, and much of the care of the two younger children was left to Luke, but the social worker added that it was hard to get much information as Mrs. Brauer was very guarded.” I sat silently, trying to put together all Jerry had said. What did it mean? How would it help Luke? Finally, I asked the last question out loud. Jerry shook his head. “Tests can only give so much information. The rest you have to get from personal interviews and interaction. Let me ask you about that, Mary. What’s your impression of Luke?” Again I sat without speaking, thoughts tumbling through my head. Impression of Luke? I shook my head, trying to answer. “I don’t know, Jerry. I guess the main thing is he just doesn’t seem that bad to me. He is not spitting or biting himself, or talking in weird gibberish, or refusing to eat. Besides, the way he acts in the music room just doesn’t fit with the boy described in the folder.” “Well, don’t let him fool you,” Jerry interrupted. “Remember the fires, remember the thefts. Those weren’t accidents. Those were planned destructive acts.” I nodded. “I’ll remember. But why? Why did Luke do those things? And how can we help him not do them?” Jerry shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Remember he spent six months at the clinic without making any progress and he was a year younger then and supposedly more reachable.” “Listen,” I said, “I know he can be reached. Sure, he’s reticent and suspicious, but you give him half an opening and he’s off and running. My God, Jerry, he can walk, he can talk, he can even read. Maybe he doesn’t use what he’s got, but maybe he’s never seen anyone use words effectively, so he hasn’t bothered to try. If his mother’s ‘guarded’ and his father’s not there, maybe he’s never learned that you don’t have to set fires to show how you feel. Maybe he’s never had anyone he could trust.” I stopped abruptly, realizing I had been speaking with too much emotion. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound off.” Jerry smiled. “Don’t worry about it. Maybe that’s one thing nobody’s tried. Just caring about the kid.” I collected all the tests carefully and put them back in Luke’s folder. I would return to them many times in the next months, remembering, studying, searching for clues that would help me reach Luke. But usually it was not until I was with him that I had a real feel for what we should do that day. Lisa Eckhardt made my times with Luke successful. She was far from a model teacher; she might not be able to keep thirty seven-year-olds in perfect order; she might yell and scream in frustration; she might not always be sensitive to an individual child’s problem; but she loved the kids and set me up for success with Luke, and I blessed her for it. Each time I arrived in her second grade she would great me with “Hello, Mary. Okay, Luke. No more work for you for a while. You get to go with Mary now.” And Luke came with increasing eagerness as his classmates shouted, “That’s not fair, Miss Eckhardt! Luke went last time.” “He always gets to go.” “When’s it gonna be my turn?” How smart of you, Lisa. Finally, Luke had something that the others wanted, even if it was only an out from work. Chapter 7 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) I arrived at school one Tuesday in March and even though it was still cold, the sun was so bright that the air seemed warm, and as I walked up the gray stone steps, I knew it was ridiculous to stay inside on a day like this. Luke and I had been working together for several weeks, gradually building rapport, but we had not moved outside of School 23. It was time to expand our world. Mrs. Karras gave immediate permission for Luke and me to go out for a walk. The groans and complaints from the other second graders were louder than ever as I told Luke to bring his jacket. “Hey, Mary. I wanna go. Why don’t you ever take me?” A small bevy of second graders crowded around us. I smiled down at them and then at Lisa. Thanks to her, we at least didn’t have to worry about stigma. Down the hall and out the door. The white dog set up his uproar, throwing himself against the fence, as if to tear holes in the wire links. Luke picked up a small stone and threw it at the dog. Instinctively, my hand went out and pulled his hand down so that the stone fell short and landed on the sidewalk. Luke looked up at me inquiringly. “It must be hard to be fenced in like that,” I said. “Ah, Luke. That’s the first time I’ve touched you. I wouldn’t have planned it like that. Never mind. Let it go.” I jogged out into the sunlight. Luke ran beside me. I didn’t know the town very well. Where should we go? What would be the right thing to do? Easy. Ask Luke. “Where’ll we go, Luke? We have forty minutes.” Luke knew. “The doughnut shop,” he said without hesitation. I nodded. “Okay, you show me.” Luke quickened his pace so that he was slightly in the lead. Down the side street to one that was a little wider, but still quiet in the early morning. A grocer was piling grapefruit and oranges in the front window of his store and he waved to Luke as we went by. Luke waved back and I thought, this is what I need. A feel of Luke’s world. He slowed down as we went by the five-and-ten. Was this the one where he had stolen jewelry and toys? Probably. He stopped and stared at a red fire engine. I moved away a little and studied a sale of wicker baskets. Nobody likes to be rushed when they’re window-shopping. In a few minutes Luke was back, nosing around like a small puppy, his body urging me down the street. We waited for a light at the corner and then stopped in front of a shabby-looking movie theater. Luke read the coming attractions out loud to me. “Godzilla and the Hairy Monster; Big Foot and Dracula.” “Scary,” I said. “Yup. I saw Big Foot. His foot’s as big as that whole building.” Luke pointed to the bar and grill we were passing. “He could step on you and just like that you’d be dead.” I shook my head. “I don’t think I’d like that.” “It’s okay, it’s just a movie.” We rounded a corner and there was Dunkin’ Donuts. Luke stood close to the window and inspected everything going on inside, his breath making steamy patches on the window. “See,” he said, pointing to the waitresses in their white uniforms, the shiny steel coffee maker, the rows and rows of doughnuts lining the wall. “Let’s go in,” I said. Luke hesitated. He obviously hadn’t planned on this, but he followed me through the door – Counter or table? Counter. Better view of the doughnuts. Luke and I sat silently admiring them. A waitress swished a wet rag in front of us. “What’ll it be?” she asked. Should I go first? Had Luke ever ordered? “Do you have a menu?” I asked. That would give us a little time. “A menu? Uh – yeah, I guess so.” She was back in a minute and handed me a pink and white cardboard menu. “Thank you.” I spread it out between Luke and myself. We read in silence the information inside. TETE HEARTY WESTERN (two eggs any style, bacon, hash browns, and muffins), THE PICK ME UP (tomato juice, one egg, cottage cheese), THE CONTINENTAL (orange juice, Danish, and coffee). “Where are the doughnuts?” Luke whispered. “There I guess.” I pointed to the bottom. DONUTS – 35?. “Oh,” was all he said, but I could hear disappointment behind his voice. Suddenly I remembered Howard Johnson’s, and how I had loved hearing the flavors of ice cream. I looked at the waitress. “Could you tell us what kind of doughnuts you have?” “Cinnamon, sugared, raised, potato, chocolate, jelly, cheese, or plain.” It was wonderful. Almost like a litany. I wished she’d do it again. “Cinnamon, chocolate, raspberry …” I said, making the mistakes easily, purposely. “Cinnamon, sugar, raised, potato, chocolate, jelly, cheese, or plain.” Wonderful, wonderful. I looked at Luke. He was smiling. I had never seen him smile before. “Jelly for me,” I said, “and coffee.” “Me too,” said Luke. “Two jellies. Two coffees. Be right back.” Luke poured two containers of cream and four spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and held it between his two hands. Nutrition experts would have a stroke, but sometimes there are more important things than too much sugar. It was nice, sitting there in the sunlight, sipping our coffee, nibbling at our doughnuts, and licking jelly from our fingers. I wished we could have stayed all morning, but the wall clock said 10:00. We had already used up thirty-five minutes and I wanted to be back on time so we could get out again. On the last block before school, Luke stopped beside a telephone pole and dug deep in his pocket. He brought up his fist closed tight. He looked up at me and then opened his hand. A shiny gold shell lay in the center of his palm. My stomach lurched. A bullet shell? But Luke was talking to me. “See? I got it at the factory and shined it. You can see your face if you want.” “The factory?” I asked. “Yup. The lipstick factory. I go by it on my way home. I got a secret place there.” An empty lipstick tube. Not a bullet after all. But I still couldn’t find my voice. Luke touched me this time. He put his hand into mine and turned it upside down. “It’s a secret place. But you can keep this one if you won’t tell. I got more. Look. See if you can see your face.” I peered at the gleaming shell, and sure enough, there I was, distorted and oval around the empty tube. “Thank you,” I said. “It’s nice. Lucky, too. I can tell.” “Yup,” said Luke. “It’s luckier than anything.” Chapter 8 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) March meant midterms at college. Background of Mathematics II. Not too bad. We were studying probability. Current Methods of Teaching Mentally Challenged Adolescents was easy. A take-home exam, plus an interview with someone who was willing to hire a mentally challenged person. I interviewed Cal. He had several people, good people, in his plant with IQ’s in the seventies. Counseling and Guidance. Even easier. Lunch with Norm Foster to report on the Special Education Independent Study Project. My project, of course, was Luke. Reading practicum. The exam read, “Discuss causes of reading disability in four categories.” I knew those. I even knew five. Meeps: mental, emotional, educational, physical and social. But Statistics and Orientation to Psychological Testing was not so easy. We had spent an inordinately long time on bell curves and standard deviation. The curve I understood. Its normal distribution curve did seem normal It seemed right that there would probably be more average people than other kinds. Professor Frye said that a random sample of a thousand people in Times Square yielded 68.26 percent (2/3) with IQ’s between 85 and 115. However, the curve wasn’t always normal; sometimes it skewed to the right, sometimes it skewed to the left. Then beware the mean and trust only the median. Worst of all was ?. This simple little sign stood for standard deviation, and Professor Frye was determined that we all be able to figure out standard deviations mathematically, although there are perfectly good charts in the test manuals that are readily available. But day after day we memorized the formula and did the computations. If I did them carefully, two or three pages of numbers and many minutes later it was possible to arrive at the measure of the variability of a group of scores independent of the mean. Where was Ian Michaels? And what did all this have to do with helping Luke? My head steamed like an overheated teakettle. I wrote everything on index cards and laid them on the floors through our apartment. Then I walked through my carpet of cards picking up the ones I thought I knew, piling them on the dining room table, then picking up the others and studying them once again. The steaming in my head turned out to be mostly due to the flu, and I staggered from bed to exams and back to bed again. I called School 23 Monday morning to explain to Mrs. Karras that I was ill and couldn’t come until Friday. Mrs. Karras was out, but her secretary said she would relay the message to Lisa, Luke, and Mrs. Karras. I finished my last exam on Thursday afternoon. My temperature was down, and on impulse I drove to School 23. John Hudson was in the music room with Vernon when I arrived. They were playing catch with a tennis ball over the piano. Hud said, “Christ. I’m glad it’s you. Come on in.” Hud and I hardly ever saw each other anymore. Our schedules at the school were on different days and our group meetings were dwindling. Vernon pegged a hard ball at Hud’s stomach. Hud dug it out with his left and sent it looping back. “Nice,” I said to Hud. “You know him?” Vernon asked. “Yes,” I said. “Kin he bat? He say he bat as good as he throw. That true?” “I don’t know.” “Hey, Vernon,” Hud said, “come on, man. You gotta have faith.” Vernon threw the ball hard, harder than ever. “We’ll see, man. We’ll see …” he said. Hud grinned. “What do you think, Mary? Am I convincing?” “I believe you,” I said. “I’ll leave you two. I just came down to see Luke for a minute.” John pocketed the ball. “They didn’t tell you?” “Tell me what?” “Vernon, set up the checkerboard, will you? I’ll be with you in a minute.” Hud came over and stood close to me. “Luke’s not here.” “Why? Where is he?” My stomach plummeted down. “They can’t find him. At least the probation officer can’t, although they think he comes home at night and his mother just doesn’t let on.” “Why?” I asked again, not understanding. “Why would he do that?” Hud shrugged. “Because of the fire, I guess.” I sat down, suddenly nauseated, remnants of the flu rolling in my head and stomach. “You know about the fire, don’t you?” Hud asked. I shook my head. “Oh, Christ. I’m sorry. Tuesday afternoon some cosmetic factory caught on fire. No one was hurt, but they lost a back storage shed. The police are sure it was set by kids, but they can’t prove it. They got one kid, Wendell Higgins, who had been involved in a lot of other fires and grilled him. (He’s on our waiting list, too, I hear.) According to him, he didn’t have anything to do with it. It was all Luke.” “What does Luke say?” “That’s just it. Nobody can find Luke.” Vernon began pitching the checkers in our direction. I got up. “Thanks, Hud. I’ll talk to you later.” “Listen, Mary. I can stay when Vernon goes back to class. If I can help …” Again I nodded my thanks and headed for the office. The door to Mrs. Karras’s office was closed. I looked inquiringly at the secretary, who smiled sympathetically. “She’s in conference, one of the board members. Probably be awhile.” I nodded and asked for the file keys. Brauer, Lucas. I lifted out his folder, but there was nothing new except absence slips for Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday, and Thursday. I put it back and handed the key to the secretary. “Have you heard how much damage there was at the fire?” “Not much. Didn’t really amount to a lot. Just a storage shed for extra lipstick tubes, from what I heard. Fire Department got there fast. Kept it under control.” “Do you know where the factory is? Is it close by?” My face felt as if it were frozen. Lipstick tubes. “Sure. It’s right over on Jefferson. Just three blocks down. We could see the fire from the steps.” “The steps? Oh, yes. The front steps.” It was all like a bad dream. I headed for the door. “Tell Mrs. Karras –” I stopped suddenly. “She did get my message – I mean, Luke – uh, Miss Eckhardt knew why I haven’t been in this week, didn’t they?” A look of confusion passed briefly over the secretary’s pleasant face. “Not in? Let’s see, you’re Shirley, aren’t you? Let me see, here in my notes …” I didn’t wait for her to finish. Obviously, the secretary had been confused. Nobody had gotten my message. Nobody knew I was home sick. Luke must have thought I just hadn’t bothered to show up. One more person in his life he couldn’t count on. I walked across the street to my car. Not really thinking yet, just ordering my stomach to be still. I drove straight ahead. There it was, Jefferson. I parked my car and got out and walked down the street. Most of the buildings were empty, or else the windows were covered with grimy sheets concealing whatever went on behind them. The factory was immediately recognizable. There was an unpleasant acrid smell and then the sight of burned grass and piles of blackened tubes. Automatically I touched the outside of my front jeans pocket. I could feel the tube that Luke had given me for luck. I had carried it to each exam. I looked at my watch. Three-fifteen. Nothing to do now. I felt better, though. The walk had cleared my head and I went back to the car to wait. By four o’clock the last of the school kids had passed. At four-thirty the factory whistle blew and a dozen or so workers poured out. A few minutes later, what were evidently secretaries or bookkeepers or office personnel left and the plant seemed empty. I waited a few more minutes and then opened the car door and walked back toward the factory. It was quiet and in the dark, late winter afternoon, the ancient street lights were the only illumination. I walked without hesitation to the back of the factory and nudged the charred piles of metal with the toe of my boot, waiting, listening. Luke wasn’t here. I knew that, but somebody was. I walked in close to the building, leaning against the old bricks, invisible against the wall. A small, dark figure scurried past. Good. Not the police. Not Luke either, though. Maybe Higgins. Judas Higgins. The one who had ratted on Luke. I went out to the metal pile, once again stirring the empty tubes with my foot to make enough noise so whoever was there would listen. “Give Luke a message,” I said to the darkness. “Tell him to be at the doughnut place at ten tomorrow morning.” Not a sound. Not good enough. Think of something more. Ah! “Tell him I will give him two dollars to give to the person who brings him the message.” I went back to the side of the building and waited. There he goes! The same small figure scurried even faster across the back of the lot, this time not stopping by the piles of tubes. Chapter 9 (#u042f5711-346d-5f23-a1b5-d9f6af79f374) I was parked outside the Dunkin’ Donuts by 9:45. March had turned lamblike and April continued soft and warm, with white woolly clouds tumbling across the blue sky. I rolled the car window down and waited. I had surprised myself the night before. We had finished dinner before I mentioned the fire or Luke to Cal. I had even thought, for a little while, that I might not tell him at all. Cal, of course, knew nothing of what had occurred and attributed my silence to weariness or exams or the flu. I didn’t understand yet what had happened myself. I wanted to talk to Luke before I tried to explain it to someone else. In the end, I told Cal, briefly, almost abruptly. He listened, asking only for facts, not interpretations. He didn’t even remind me of what I knew, that it had been foolish to wander alone in the back of a factory after dark. Unexpectedly, I slept soundly, deep in a dream that I could not remember. When I woke, the last residue of the flu was gone and I was ravenous and wide awake. Now every inch of my body was alert. Where was Luke? Ten o’clock. He should be here. A small dark head appeared in the open window. “Luke say gimme the two dollars.” “Who are you?” “Wendell Higgins.” “You’re the one who said Luke lit the fire, is that right?” “No. I never said nuthin’.” “Listen, Wendell. If you know where Luke is, you go tell him to get himself down here right away. No money till Luke shows up.” “I dunno if I kin find Luke,” Wendell Higgins whined. “Well, you just try, Wendell. I’ll wait till twelve.” Wendell was instantly gone. He moved so fast I hadn’t seen him arrive or disappear; with Wendell he was either there or not there. At eleven-thirty he was back. Alone. “Luke’s skeered to come here.” “No two dollars then. Sorry.” “You know the park? Luke’ll come there.” “Okay. Get in. You can show me the park.” We drove for about a mile with Wendell Higgins crouched, wary and intent beside me. “Cops don’t come near here in the A.M. Stop here. I’ll get him.” Within five minutes Wendell was back. Luke walked behind him, his face expressionless. He was so small. Seven and a half. My own son at almost that age was tying knots for a cub scout badge, and Luke was dodging the police. “Hello, Luke,” I said, trying to keep my face as expressionless as his. I took out my wallet. “Here’s the two dollars I said you could give to Wendell.” Luke passed the bills to Wendell and once again Wendell Higgins was instantly out of sight. Luke looked nervously around him. “Will you get in, Luke?” I asked. Luke quickly stepped into the car and closed the door behind him, obviously glad to be out of view. I started the car and drove without any particular thought as to direction. Because it was the route I took most often, I headed back toward college. Luke huddled close to the door on his side of the car, but at least he had come to meet me. That was a beginning. I had no plan of what I would do or what I would say to Luke. I concentrated my entire energy on trying to feel what he was feeling, trying to listen with the “third ear.” I let the car drive itself. Suddenly Luke sat up straight, leaning forward, peering intently out the front window. I, too, strained forward trying to see what he saw, but there was nothing. Only the road cutting through the hills on the way to State. Even the trees were bare, except for the pines. I could feel Luke looking at me. I kept driving, looking straight ahead. Give him time. He’s almost ready. Don’t look at him now; that will make it harder. “How’d you know about the mountain?” Luke whispered the question. What did he mean? What mountain? The hills? These hills must seem very big when you’re as small as Luke. And then I knew. This is where he had been. This was his hiding place. Was this also where he had set that large fire last fall? I drove until I found a flat place where I could pull off the road. After I’d parked I turned toward Luke. “Are you okay?” I asked. “I’m sorry about this week. I was sick and couldn’t drive down. I called school and explained, but somehow the secretary got mixed up –” Luke nodded, barely listening, intent on something beyond the car. “Let’s walk awhile,” I said. There were evidently no answers to be found inside my old convertible. Luke was instantly out of the car, running down the way we had just come. I followed as fast as I could. About a quarter mile back he jogged off the road onto a small path, turning once to look back at me. The ground began to rise almost immediately. Within ten minutes we were on steep rocky ground. Another ten and I was panting. I pulled off my sweater and tied it around my waist. Luke obviously had a destination in mind. This was no casual stroll. We were almost to the top when the water tower came in sight. I remembered now seeing it from a distance, a large blue-gray metal tank ballooning against the sky, supported by thin splayed legs. Strange that it had been out of sight as we walked toward it. Luke climbed in underneath the water tower and sat down. I hesitated and then sat next to him, feeling the chill dampness of the earth seep into my jeans almost immediately. There was no board or blanket. Luke would have been very cold if he had stayed here any length of time; there must be some other type of shelter. I looked upward. The metal legs that supported the water tank had small cross bars, not visible from a distance, but up close you could see they formed a ladderlike structure. Luke had brought me only partway. I stood and began to climb up the water tank. Three quarters of the way up the four legs were joined by a kind of platform; someone had put a piece of plywood over the metal grids. I crawled out on the board and caught my breath at the sight of Falls City spreading out beneath me. The great falls that had once provided power for the silk mills tumbled and spat foam high against the sky; old, intricate, elegant church spires pierced the smoke puffs of the factories. From here the decay and squalor were not visible, and the city glowed with a luminous dreamy beauty. It was also possible to see beyond Falls City; the highways leading in and out were clearly visible. How had Luke found this place? It was obvious that Luke was not going to climb up and join me, so I climbed back down and sat beside him on the cold ground beneath the water tower. “It’s nice,” I said. “And a good lookout. You can see when anyone’s coming.” Luke sat expressionless beside me. How had he learned to keep his face so still? There was nothing in his eyes at all. Was that because he felt nothing, or because he’d learned to cover it so well? I rubbed my thumb across the moss that grew under the water tower and tried to feel what Luke was feeling. What would it be like to be seven years old and have only a water tower for comfort? Luke spoke suddenly, interrupting my thoughts. “My father brought me here. My real father,” he added quickly. “I don’t know about your father.” Luke shrugged. “I don’t see him much anymore. Mom and him are divorced and he’s got a new wife now. She’s got three kids.” We sat without talking again. What was there to say? I watched Luke’s small, handsome face for some opening, but it remained closed and immutable. His round brown eyes stared straight ahead, never flickering; his arms were wrapped tight around his knees. After a long time he turned to me and said, as if he couldn’t bear to keep it inside any longer. “This is where he used to shoot up.” “Shoot up?” Why couldn’t I do better than echo his words? But Luke barely noticed. Now that he’d begun, the rest tumbled out in a torrent. “He’d stay here, underneath, see, and I’d go up there to the seat and watch out. I’d call back and tell him if there were copper cars or anything and when it was okay I’d call down and he’d get out his stuff and make a little fire and get it all ready – and then he’d do it.” For the first time, Luke’s face changed, crumpled more than changed, and his teeth began to chatter. “I stayed up there on top watching out – and anyway, I didn’t like to watch the needle.” I nodded. My own body was trembling. What a way to live. How old would Luke have been then? Five? Six? “We’d stay till it was almost morning, till it got light; then he’d take me back to the project so I’d be there before Mom and Alice and Frank woke up.” Well, at least I understood one thing. My face had no expression now, either. It’s a lot easier not to cry that way. “Your mom didn’t know you stayed out here?” I asked. Somehow we could talk under the water tank. There was a feeling of safety and it took less effort to find the words. I didn’t feel as if I was intruding when I asked the question. “Mom’s sick a lot,” Luke said. “She doesn’t shoot up.” He sat up straight and looked me in the eye. “Honest,” he said. “She never does. She drinks some and smokes stuff and she gets sick. She throws up a lot, but she doesn’t ever shoot up.” “Who cooks? Who takes care of your little brother and sister?” Wrong. Luke turned away, defenses back in place. “She does,” he said. “Most of the time.” I stood up, or partway up, and crawled out from under the water tower. I stretched, my body cramped from sitting and emotion. I looked at my watch. Four o’clock. Inadequacy and urgency churned inside my stomach. There were less than two hours of daylight left and I had just begun to understand a little of Luke’s problems; I wasn’t even close to any solutions, but he couldn’t stay out here alone much longer, and his home, what there was of it, was far away. I walked around the water tower trying to think. How was I going to help Luke? I climbed up to the platform, searching for clues, but the enormity of the problem was even greater there. Down in Falls City, in its schools, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of children like Luke and behind them was a society of poverty, ignorance, and neglect spawning new Lukes nightly. I climbed back down and was glad to see that Luke had come out from under the tower and was sitting on a ledge of rock to one side of it. I sat beside him, feeling the warmth the rock had accumulated from the sun, remembering the fire at the factory. This is what we had come to talk about. I couldn’t think of a subtle way to begin, but I knew I had to ask. “Did you start the fire at the factory, Luke?” He shook his head. I waited, but that was all. “Were you there?” I was insisting. I knew it. I also knew it was a risk, but I had to do it. This time Luke nodded. “Why? What were you doing in a shed behind the lipstick factory?” “I wasn’t in it. I was just by it.” “All right. Beside it. Why, Luke? What happened?” “I don’t know.” Luke scratched at the flat rock where we were sitting with a smaller stone. He hunched his shoulders. “I didn’t feel like goin’ back to school. You didn’t even come like you said and anyway, ’member I told you I had a secret place?” “Yes,” I nodded. “You told me that when you gave me the lipstick tube. I was sick, Luke. I’m sorry.” I took the tube out of my pocket and held it in my hand. Maybe it would bring us luck. “That was the place. I had a little dugout place beside that shed and I kept things there. Some of the tubes I found, a ring my dad gave me … special things.” I nodded. There was probably no place in the project apartment that was safe from the explorations of his small brother and sister. I remembered a little cedar chest complete with brass hinges, a lock, and key that my grandmother had given me, a place for secret things. “Now they’re all gone,” Luke said. “I sent Wendell back to look, but he says they musta gotten burned up.” “What’s Wendell got to do with this?” “He came there while I was looking at my things. Wendell’s always following everybody. Then he –” Luke stopped abruptly. “Luke,” I said. “It’s important that you tell me what really happened. Wendell told the police you set the fire.” Luke looked at me, his face still without expression. “I never did. Wendell done it his own self. I just went there ’cause I wanted to look at my things. The men all started work again at one o’clock, so no one was out by the shed. But then Wendell came and said he had something to show me, something that would make me feel real good. And he got out matches and a spoon and then he made a fire …” Luke’s voice cracked, but he kept on, “and then he got out a needle, sorta like the one my dad used to have, and I yelled at him. “I couldn’t help it and then I ran and I guess I made too much noise ’cause Wendell ran, too. And then the fire kept burning – and it got bigger and it got up into that ole wood and next thing I knew, the whole shed was burning.” I nodded silently, seeing it clearly – the small fire feeding on the grass, licking the dry wood of the shed. Luke chattered on. “We got out of there fast. Me and Wendell. I just kept runnin’ till I got here. Nobody ever caught my dad here and I knew they wouldn’t catch me. I lost ole Wendell on the way, but it doesn’t matter. Wendell’s not scared of nuthin’!” “Luke,” I said, “there are papers in your file at school that say you’ve set a lot of fires. Is that true?” Luke scratched with the stone. “Maybe some little ones. Leaves in the street.” “Why?” I asked, still pushing, still risking, needing to know. Luke tossed the stone over toward the water tower and it clanked against one of the metal legs. “Don’t know. I just like to watch ’em. They’re pretty, all red and blue and orange, dancin’ around.” “How about the big fire on the mountain last fall? Did you set that?” Luke smiled – and I hated the smile. “That one was real pretty. Red, yellow, orange, lickin’ away, eating up the ole grass, runnin’ all by its own self.” Luke paused. There was no guilt or repentance in his voice, only admiration for the fire. “It kept on gettin’ bigger and bigger and then began going down into town and the pines all started too – and it was taller than me.” Luke stopped and laughed out loud. He had forgotten about me in his excitement of remembering the fire and was just talking out loud, not to anyone in particular. “Then the cops began to come, blowin’ their sirens and then the fire truck, but they couldn’t put it out – they couldn’t catch that ole fire, it just kept goin’.” His voice sounded hard and cruel, not like Luke’s at all. “Were you alone?” I asked. “Why?” Instantly alert. “Why do you want to know?” Luke was aware of me again. The outsider. “Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.” Why had I thought that I could reach through seven years of fires and drugs and neglect and touch a child? But Luke wasn’t done. “I got away,” he said with pride. “The cops were all stretched out and lined up searching for us – me,” he corrected himself. “But I just started running and took an ole belly whopper right through the middle and came out on the other side. My shirt was burning like anything and I knew I couldn’t get those little buttons undone. So know what I did? I just lay down in the dirt and rolled and rolled and it went out.” I put Luke’s lipstick tube back in my pocket. Now it was my turn to sit staring out at the sky without talking. I could see why there were waiting lists at schools, why clinics couldn’t get through, why teachers gave up. It was too much. These delinquents, or whatever label you used, weren’t born out of an acute crisis, but out of a chronic, unending sickness in cities. Urgency departed, replaced by sorrow. I decided to attribute the churning in my stomach to hunger. Neither Luke nor I had eaten for a long while. “Listen, Luke,” I said. “I’m going to go get us something to eat. Want to come?” He shook his head as I had known he would. He had already made the trip off the mountain once today. “Okay. I won’t be long,” I promised. Down the hill, back to my car, but not back to Falls City. If Luke was watching from his water tower, as I was sure he was, I didn’t want him worrying about what I was doing in Falls City. Instead, I drove on toward the college and stopped at a roadside stand and bought sandwiches and soda. On the drive back, textbook phrases echoed in my head. “Socially maladjusted … character disorder … sociopathic behavior; destructive, immature, impulsive, manipulative – with a disregard for the needs and feelings of others. A deficit of conscience and judgment; inability to feel guilt and shame.” I knew the words; I’d read all the descriptive phrases at night school years before. Luke would be considered a classic case, who, as he grew older, would continue to steal, destroy and even perhaps sometime to kill. He was a product of his society, and even I knew I couldn’t change a society. I forced my thoughts away from Luke, back to the road. Where was the place I’d parked? Everything looked different from this direction. There was the water tower. I strained to see if I could see a figure beneath the tank, but none was visible. Panic never arrives slowly for me. Now it hit – wham! Suppose I couldn’t find the place, the path. Suppose Luke waited and then decided that I wasn’t coming back, that I had let him down again? I’d gone too far. I was sure of it. I was getting much too close to Falls City now. Damn, damn! Turn the car around. You’ll recognize the spot from this side. I drove back up the hill slowly, slowly searching the side of the road for the same place I’d pulled off with Luke. If I could find that spot, I thought I could cut back to the path. Things are easier to remember on foot. Luke! I’d almost missed him. I slammed on the brakes and backed up. Luke stood up and came out from behind a small bush. I jammed the car into some low evergreens and took the paper bag of sandwiches and soda back to where Luke waited. Luke cared! He’d even come to help. Remember the days in school, the doughnuts, the lipstick tube. Don’t sell him short. “That path’s hard to see when you don’t know it,” Luke said, forgiving me. “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.” Four-thirty now. Time was running out. The sun turned molten red and began to descend into the city. The sky above the sunset changed from blue to gray. Luke ate two sandwiches without speaking, washing down mouthfuls with gulps of soda. Then unexpectedly, he said, “Sometimes, after my dad was finished … underneath, he’d put out the fire and then come up on the platform and sit with me. And sometimes he would stay awake awhile and when the stars came out, he’d tell me their names.” Luke had his arms wrapped around his knees so he had to turn his whole body to look at me. “He knew all the names. Big Dipper. Little Dipper. Orion. Cassy Pee’s Chair.” There was pride in Luke’s small voice. I concentrated on the sky, trying to remain objective, to remember the textbook, to realize what a small percentage of success socially maladjusted kids had, but my heart was thump-thumping for some undefined reason. I watched a small cloud form above the sun, an odd shape, reminiscent of something. “Luke, look,” I said. “See that cloud? It looks like an amoeba.” Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/mary-maccracken/city-kid/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.