[editor's note: this version of a fictional story with many endings was completed in November of 2020. it has received no acclaim of any kind, formal or otherwise. it has not been subjected to peer review. the author is unaware of any written or verbal feedback, or even mutterings or oaths sworn while the story was open on a reader's browser. it is unknown if the story has ever been read by anyone.]
Last winter, a week before Christmas, they asked some parents to go down and clean the elementary school after the big shooting you all heard about on the news. Piedmont Elementary: the one where the guy in the baseball cap posted beforehand that he was going to exact revenge for the thing with the county, a lien. No, that wasn’t Piedmont, you’re thinking about the one where the guy worked in maintenance for the city and got fired, then went berserk. No, no, not Pierpont, that was the month before, up in Chester County. Piedmont. You’ll kick yourself when I tell you … you’ll remember … the guy was wearing that dirty yellow ballcap? He parked that Ford pick-up near that out-building behind the school?
Yeah, that’s right on TV they kept showing all the broken glass in the cafeteria. Un-huh.
Exactly, snow on the grass, with the maroon splatters, until they started blurring those out.
The lady who called from the school said not to worry, the police and tons of officials from the district had already done an initial forensic clean-up. This event on Saturday, the one she invited me to, would be more to get things spic and span so the kids would feel special, feel the support of the community, when they returned to school after Christmas break. We parents were invited to be creative, decorate the building in any way we felt appropriate, comment on any security issues we saw. Basically anything to send a message of support and safety. And of strength.
Thank God Zach finished elementary years before. I would have gone mental. Being divorced and in the city I’m not involved with the elementary school even though I live pretty close. I assume that’s why they called me to help, because I was not as directly impacted. What’s that? No, my son doesn’t have any friends there anymore, he’s up at Belleville Junior now, up where his mom lives.
The clean-up group met at the elementary on Saturday afternoon. The snow was all melted, the grass yellow-white. The trees and shrubs were bare and the school top-heavy standing in the middle of the plot. A couple classrooms had lit-up colored Christmas lights outlining the windows. Or at least they were on that night. Another time when I drove by the lights were gone for some reason.
I wore a black suit and white dress shirt to the cleaning. If someone impacted came by I wanted them to know that I knew that this was serious business. There were some tables out front with bottled waters and fruit chews. No one said anything.
Being divorced, I know the feeling of missing someone. Wanting to make sure my son’s OK. You know? To wrestle around with him, to feed him. To look into his eyes as long as he’ll let me and try to figure out what’s going on inside. Make him laugh, which is easy for me to tell you the truth. I know what he thinks is funny. Funny animals, poop, farting, it’s easy with those to make him laugh. Days go by when I don’t see him. Three days. Seven days. Eleven days went by one time.
When he’s not with me there’s a big part of me I don’t know what to do with. Like the sun spraying down on an empty parking lot. No, I’m not saying that, not at all. I don’t have any idea what it’s like to really lose one. I know that.
Principal Charisse Alma thanked us for coming. She referred to the new district initiative about support for the children, safety for the school, strength for the community. It was a multi-part initiative. Is. It’s ongoing. Then two guys in matching t-shirts and cargo pants told us our assignments and handed out supplies from the back of a big white van.
We broke out into our tasks. I was assigned Mrs. Gale’s sixth-grade classroom. Knowing the school from Zach’s days there, I found the classroom easily. Little desks. Little colored chairs. Red and green holiday decor everywhere. As warm and as haphazard as any world created by children could hope to be. I stood there in the open doorway. There was a veil of memory and sorrow that stopped me from entering.
So on one wall it says in there, in this sixth grade room, “TREAT OTHERS AS YOU WANT TO BE TREATED!” spelled from little candy canes. Paper Christmas trees and Menorahs and snowflakes hanging from the ceiling. A rug made of green and blue and orange carpet stitched together. Thirty winter cottages done in water color. Thirty coat hooks with names above. Robbie. Sanya. Flora. Thomas. And so on. Thirty little cupboards for their things. Two giant beanbags. I fell to my knees. I gasped for air.
After a while I went in with my bucket. With a warm, wet, soapy rag I cleansed each desktop. The rag made a squishy sound. I swabbed the desk undersides. I slowly washed the legs of each desk. In one desk there was a partially unwrapped Hershey’s Kiss. Some used Kleenex in another. The snot was dry. In another desk was a purple notebook with the name “Jessie” erased into the cover. I wrote “Thank You! We Love You! From, the Parents,” on thirty pieces of paper, tore them out, and put a paper on each desk.
I wiped the teacher’s desk, the countertop and the utility sink, all thirty cupboards inside and out. I cleaned everything in sight. Something was missing. I went to the chalkboard. I thought about how nearly everything good that Zach learned either came from his mom or me or from the school. I took a big piece of pink chalk, and wrote HOLINESS TO THE LORD on the chalkboard. This is a saying from my Mormon upbringing. These words are attached to the exterior of sacred Mormon buildings known as temples, buildings where it is believed that God Himself can dwell if He so chooses. If you ask me, God does not really visit Mormon temples, but there’s a good chance He visits elementary schools after shootings and cries huge god tears.
I looked around again. I had to do more. Away from the door, on the far side of the classroom, were two windows looking out into the front parking lot. I taped some black construction paper over the windows. I moved a bookshelf in front of each window. I moved all the desks from the middle to the two sides of the room, and turned the desks on their sides to make a fort. I dragged the teacher’s desk to five feet from the front door so that any shooter would have to go over that first.
An announcement came over the public address system. The voice said we were invited to go around and see what other parents were doing. I walked over towards the cafeteria because it scared me to go that way. Because it scared me to go that way is the reason I went that way.
The cafeteria inside was all white and tan and bright. The windows had been replaced. The sun shone through in big distorted rectangles onto the lunch tables. This is where everything had happened. I walked around, seeing everything, touching everything, smelling everything. I touched the bricks in the walls, the tops of tables, the foodcarts, the garbage cans. I went into the kitchen, assembled an imaginary meal, sat down at a table. Tried every table. Stood in the corners. Imagined everything. I let myself out onto the playground, pretended to be hiding behind the softball backstop. Found all the hiding spots. All of them.
The cafeteria door had locked from the inside. I pulled at it, knocked. I returned to the front of the school. The sky was dark now. The white van was gone. Everyone was gone. The front doors were locked. My coat was locked inside, in Mrs. Gale’s sixth-grade classroom. It was a thick warm coat with a thick canvas sort-of hide. Not the kind of coat a kid would wear, but real warm. I liked the idea of it being there, and leaving it there, just in case some kid forgot his he could borrow mine to play in the snow or even walk home in it if his parents forgot him after school on a snowy day.
I got in my car and turned on the engine. I had the thought to drive up and over and say hi to Zach. It was only eleven minutes. But I’d made that drive a hundred times to find him not there. Probably him with a group playing basketball. No doubt. No doubt yes, basketball.
I liked to think of him playing hoops with other boys near his house. He was getting tall. I texted him, his mom. Five minutes. Ten. Nothing. I dialed Zach. It rang and rang and rang. When it went to voicemail, I said that next time I saw him I wanted to enable GPS tracking on his phone so I would always know where he was, living or dead, but not that I meant it like that, and I didn’t mean to scare him, but anyway that I loved him and was proud of him, and to give me a call. I drove out of there slow and past a Chevron back to the city and eventually in a roundabout way back to the place I call home.
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