Mrs. Herrera promised to institute the punishment they had discussed, and to keep him home until after the weekend. But she was crying again when Neil left, and he knew she did not have the strength to follow through.

# # #

Jesse’s blowup and informal suspension came on Wednesday. That night Neil and Carmen went out to dinner. They no longer went on formal dates. Their relationship had progressed beyond that, and now they spent all their spare time together. That night, she asked him if he had given any thought to Valentine’s Day. He had not. She said that the sixth graders were still young enough that they would miss having a holiday celebration, and since he was their main teacher, it would be up to him to provide one.

Neil shook his head. “Carmen, if there is anything high school did not teach me, its how to give a Valentine’s Day party for little kids.”

“So don’t give one,” Carmen laughed. “Get Stephanie Hagstrom and Lisa Cobb and their mothers to head a committees for your two classes, then stand back. You won’t have to do a thing.”

For the next two days, Neil’s afternoon class moved as smoothly as a well oiled bearing. It was amazing what the absence of one child could do. When Saturday rolled around, Carmen took Neil for a ride without giving him a hint of their destination. She had packed a picnic basket, and she set a course that circled northward across the river, then eastward toward Riverbank.

It was February eleventh. In the midwest, there was a foot of new snow on the ground, but spring had come to California. Almost overnight, the almond orchards had come to full blossom. Everywhere Carmen took him, the trees were covered with pure white flowers, and already the wind was shaking the first of them free to cover the ground like a fragrant snowfall.

They stopped half a mile up a dirt orchard road. Carmen spread a blanket under the trees, in a patch of sunlight. It was just too chilly to be quite comfortable, so after they ate they put the food away and wrapped the blanket around them as they waited out the day, encircled by ten thousand acres of flowers.

# # #

On Valentine’s Day, things started out as smoothly as Carmen had predicted. Janice Hagstrom had things completely under control. She gave him the first two periods for regular work and took over the last period completely. She even had games to keep the children busy after the cards had been exchanged, the cookies and ice cream had been demolished, and they were flying around the ceiling with their veins a-clog with sugar.

At noon, Jesse Herrera came back, quiet again. Neil hoped that his mother had kept her end of the bargain, and that her efforts would be rewarded. He had his doubts about both, but the two work periods went well enough.

Judith Cobb came in as the children were streaming out for their last break of the day, and snagged Ramon, Mickey, and Jason to carry in refreshments. Lisa slipped into her mother’s arms briefly, then led her up to Neil. She introduced her politely, with a formality that has to be taught, and Neil shook hands. Then Mrs. Cobb set about arranging the party and Lisa stayed by Neil’s side for a moment. “She’s pretty, isn’t she,” Lisa said.

“Yes, quite.”

“She wears too much make-up though.” more tomorrow

As a class in literature, it had been a great success, and those who could already read had advanced far in their understanding. But those who could not read — and that was nearly half of his class — had only learned what those two books could tell them. They had made no progress toward becoming independent readers. They were no closer to being able to take a book from the library shelf and get from it what it had for them. They could understand it if someone read it to them, yes; but they could not read.

Neil thought, Damn you, Anne Marie Chang!

# # #

Jesse Herrera made it through the last half of January without raising Neil’s ire, but it was a chancy thing. Neil had to invent all kinds of in-class punishments to take the place of the regular discipline system. Now he realized what had been wrong with his decision to champion the boy. By giving him “one more chance”, he had chosen to punish himself. Jesse had used up his “one more chance” within the first week of January, and he used it up again twenty times that month. Yet each infraction was small — a paper wad here, a little shove there, a snotty comment to someone else. Neil could not bring himself to expel Jesse for one paper wad, even if it was the last action in a long series of actions. By taking Jesse on after he had already run the gamut of the normal discipline system, Neil had put himself in a no-win situation.

So it went into February. In the general atmosphere of seriousness with which the teachers and students alike approached the CAT test, Jesse had held it together for three days. When the testing was over, he went on a brief orgy of misbehavior. Neil physically carried him to the back of the room — which was quite illegal, but he was committed now to extraordinary measures — and forced him to stay there, isolated by direst threats. He called the boy’s mother, and when the day was over, he personally drove him home.

When they arrived, Mrs. Herrera was red eyed from crying. She sent Jesse to his room while they talked, and it was not a pleasant interview. Mrs. Herrera had told the counsellor of her husband’s violent last years, and the counsellor had begun to work from that angle. But he had also told Mrs. Herrera that she was making a bad situation worse by her lack of discipline.

“The boy was abused,” the counsellor had said, “but that is in the past. It is the present we have to worry about, and in the present his problem is that he doesn’t know what the limits of acceptable behavior are.” His father had “disciplined” him for everything, and now his mother was refusing to discipline him for anything. The boy simply did not know what was expected of him.

And it was getting late in Jesse’s life to teach him. At eleven, he was already much formed. If they did not get to him now, they never would.

Neil explained what Jesse had done that day, and Mrs. Herrera broke down. That was not encouraging; if she could not control herself, how could she ever hope to control Jesse? They discussed her options. Some punishment was essential, but she could not spank him. Even if she could have brought herself to strike the boy, his father’s last days had hardened him against that kind of punishment. more tomorrow

Losses

The rest of January slid by. Neil watched Lisa Cobb closely, but he could find nothing to account for the intensity of her story. Or, rather, of her stories, for he finally remembered that he had seen its like before in what she had written at Halloween. Jesse Herrera returned to class, subdued once again, and Neil never told Bill that he had sent the boy home.

The tragedy in Stockton stayed with Neil and the other teachers. It made them jumpy for weeks, and even later they retained an increased awareness of the potential disasters that hang poised over every human being, every day of his life. 

The children forgot it in three days. Then it was work, baseball, friends and enemies, chatting and bickering; their lives fell quickly back into normal patterns. Chances were that if you could ask them about the tragedy a year later, they would have a hard time remembering it at all.

The new horror on their personal horizon was scheduled for three days beginning on February sixth. CAT, the California Achievement Test, is given every year to every child in the state. It is a measurement of their progress and a means of assessing what changes the schools need to make if that progress is not satisfactory. It is an extensive test, in many parts, lasting several hours and given over several days.

It was the test Oscar Teixeira had deliberately failed the year before.

Oscar had done fairly well this year. It was not really something Neil could take credit for; it was simply that an eleven year old boy could not hold out against the pressure of John Teixeira’s displeasure. He turned in all of his papers in all of his classes and the work was always satisfactory, even if it was rarely up to the standards Oscar should have been able to achieve. As the CAT test approached, Neil caught Oscar alone crossing the playground and asked, “Are you going to do your best on the CAT this year?”

Oscar flashed him an embarrassed grin and said, “Yes,” then ran on to his play.

There was a bond of friendship between Neil and Oscar now. Neil could trace it to the day Oscar had left his room in tears, but he could not analyze its origin. It seemed that Neil had done something for Oscar that day which had given him new strength, but try as he might, Neil could not quite figure out what. That is the way of teaching; if a teacher does his best, he will have some good results, but not with all students and not always the result he anticipates.

# # #

It was a grueling test for Neil’s students. The whole school geared up for it, and every teacher participated. Neil tested his morning students; Tom Wright tested the students Neil normally had in the afternoon, and the other teachers divided up the seventh and eighth graders. The students spent a solid two hours a day in testing until it was all over.

It would be two months before the results of the tests came back, but Neil could read some of the results for himself already on the faces of his students. Those who were poor readers showed the sad, hang-dog expression of people who have been completely out of their element. They knew how poorly they had done, and once again their confidence had been bruised.

Neil had actually enjoyed his last month of teaching reading. They had gotten through two novels for children, and all of the students, except possibly Brandy and Sabrina, had understood all of the concepts and most of the subtleties. more Monday

“No.”

“Mrs. Herrera, the way Jesse act’s in class . . . “

“What?”

“It’s probably just the way he remembers his father acting during those last two years. It’s up to you to talk to the counselor and stop him before he destroys himself.”

“I can’t.”

“Mrs. Herrera, you managed to tell me.”

Silence.

“Please. For Jesus’ sake.”

He could barely hear her as she said, “I’ll try.”

# # #

Neil was still thinking about the Herreras when Lisa Cobb came to him before school the next morning and asked, “Did you read my paper?”

After the Stockton incident, Neil had told each student to write about what made him feel most threatened. He said, “Sorry, Lisa, I was so busy last night that I didn’t correct anything. I’ll get to them tonight.”

“Oh,” she said, “I was just worried because I didn’t write what you asked for. I don’t have anything that makes me feel threatened, so I made up a story about a girl who did. Is that all right?”

Neil smiled. “Isn’t there anything you are afraid of? The dark; tight places; Freddie Kruger?”

Lisa said, “No, nothing,” but she couldn’t look at Neil when she said it.

# # #

That night Neil read Lisa’s story first. It said:

There was a girl named Julie who lived alone with her mother. They were just like best friends, and every time Julie’s mother went shopping or to a ball game or did anything fun, she always took Julie with her.

Then one day a stranger came to Julie’s house. Julie’s mother let him in and fed him because he seemed to be hungry. Then he went away, but he came back, and later he came back again. Every time he came back, Julie begged her mother not too let him in, but she said he was all right and “A nice guy!” and she would always let him in. But Julie didn’t like the way he looked at her.

Then one day the guy said “I like it here. I don’t think I’ll go home” So he stayed all night in the kitchen while Julie lay awake and wondered what he was doing. That night she thought she heard him walking around outside her bedroom but in the morning he was gone and she was glad.

Now she and her mother are all right and Julie is happy again, sort of, but she wonders if he will come back and if he does will her mother let him in again.

Julie didn’t like him cause he yelled at her a lot.

Neil set the story aside. It was profoundly disturbing. Many of the images came right out of prime time television, but Lisa had invested those images with a personal energy that was like a cry for help. He was further troubled by knowing that he had had this feeling before in connection with Lisa, but he could not remember when. more tomorrow

“So Jesus has always lived here.”

“Always. Always in the same room. Before he was born, Miguel and I set it up as a nursery, and when he was five we redecorated it for him.”

In the quiet house, an old fashioned clock chimed eleven times. Neil could see the ghost of Miguel Herrera walking about behind his wife’s eyes, but the picture would not come clear. Not yet.

“Miguel must have liked having a son, to go to that much trouble.”

“He loved him,” Mrs. Herrera said, and the ghost became more cloudy still. She meant it. Right or wrong, she believed what she said, so what was the truth? “He couldn’t wait to go to the nursery when he got home. He loved that boy more than anything.”

Neil sat in silent confusion. He remembered her words in Bill Campbell’s office and they were at odds with what she was saying now. She had said,  All Jesus remembers of his father is how he punished him. I don’t want Jesus to remember me that way.

Neil quoted those words to her.

“That was later,” she said. “That was after Miguel got sick.”

“Was he an alcoholic?”

“No, never!”

“What did your husband die from?”

“Cancer.”

Neil finally got a glimmer of understanding. He asked, “Was it a brain tumor?”

Mrs. Herrera nodded.

“And did his behavior change after he got sick?”

She nodded again. Then she suddenly grabbed Neil’s arm as if she had betrayed her husband’s memory and whispered hoarsely, “But it wasn’t his fault!”

Neil took her hand in his and said, “No, Mrs. Herrera, I’m sure it wasn’t his fault. A man who has a something growing inside his head will sometimes do strange things. Things that aren’t like the person he really is.”

In Neil’s imagination, the whole pitiful scene was clear. Miguel Herrera, upstanding, honorable, hard working, had established himself in business first, then had married a woman some years younger than himself. He had moved her directly into the home he had provided for her and there she bore him a child. A child he had loved and cherished. It would have been a just reward for labor and self-sacrifice. And then fate, through disease, had torn it all away from him. 

It was not enough for Miguel Herrera simply to die. The malignancy inside his head had twisted his mind, and in the frustration at the coming end to all he had planned, he had struck out at the ones he loved most.

Neil’s voice almost failed him as he asked, “How long was your husband — very ill?”

“Nearly two years.”

“How old was Jesus when his father died?”

“Seven.”

“So Jesus’s father was — not acting like himself — from the time Jesse was five until he was seven; and then he died.”

She nodded mutely.

“Mrs. Herrera, you have to understand what this means. Those two years are probably the only memories that Jesse has of his father.”

Mrs. Herrera rolled her head up to stare Neil in the face.  She whispered, “Don’t you think I know that!”

“You can’t let him go on like this.”

“I’ve told him what his father was really like. He just won’t listen.”

“Have you told your counselor what you just told me?”

“No.”

“You must. You have to. If you don’t, he can’t help you. You have to let him know about Jesse and his father or there is no use in going to him.” more tomorrow

She motioned him to the sofa and sat in an armchair facing him. He asked, “Is Jesus around?”

“He was already in bed when you called. Do you need him? I would rather let him sleep.”

“No, just the opposite. I was hoping we could talk freely without worrying about whether or not he could hear us.”

“His bedroom is at the back of the house and his door is closed. He’ll never know you were here, unless I tell him.”

It was almost as if she wanted to make sure that Jesse never knew Neil had come into their house. There was no doubt something to be learned from that, but Neil had not come to attend to subtleties. He was here for crude facts.

“Mrs. Herrera, I told you what Jesus did today. His behavior was more than thoughtless or mischievous. The boy is full of hatred. If I am going to help him, I have to understand why. If I can’t, there is no use in having him come back to my class.”

It seemed that Mrs. Herrera had spent the time since he called rallying her resources. She asked sharply, “How did Jesus get home from school? Nobody called me.”

“He walked.”

“He walked! You mean you just sent him away without . . .”

“Oh, shut up!” Neil shouted, then cut back the volume immediately. His outburst stopped them both. He had not realized how close to the edge he was. She burst into tears. “Mrs. Herrera,” he continued, “you have to stop dancing around the problem. How Jesus got home isn’t important now. He has a real problem and if you can’t solve it while he is eleven, how are you going to handle him when he is sixteen?”

Mrs. Herrera wiped her face and slid back in her chair, as if to get as far from Neil as she could.

And, with the cold clarity of inspiration, he knew what had been happening.

To test his sudden understanding, he stood up and moved abruptly toward her. She cowered back into her chair. He stepped back and said, “So that is how it was?”

“I don’t know what you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean, Mrs. Herrera. I’ve seen that reaction twice before, on Jesus. Either you beat him, or his father used to beat him and he never got over it. You just told me which.”

“Miguel never beat anybody!”

“No?”

“No!”

“Then why did you cringe? Why does Jesse cringe?”

“It’s you, that’s why.”

“No,” Neil replied softly, “it isn’t me. I won’t take the blame for this. No one else cringes from me.”

He sat down again and waited for Mrs. Herrera to regain her composure. Then he said, “Tell me about your husband.”

“Miguel didn’t beat me.”

Suddenly, Neil was struck by the falseness of his position. He had no business here cross-examining this woman. If she was a battered wife caught up in a pattern of denial, that was simply none of his business. And how could he be so sure that he had hit the right answer. He was no psychologist.

Yet, now that he had forced himself upon her in the name of saving Jesse from himself, he was committed to stay the course.

“Just tell me about him. How long were you married?”

“Eight years.”

“Did you live here, in this house?”

“Yes.” Her voice was still suspicious, but as she began to talk, she could not stop herself. “We moved here right after we were married. Miguel was ten years older than me, and he had already established himself in real estate before we got married. That’s how he found this house. He looked for one that was a really good deal while he was selling houses to other people. He had bought this one and furnished it before we were married.” more tomorrow

“Of course, you are right.” Neil gnawed on a knuckle for a moment before continuing, “Still, don’t you ever wonder what might become of the kids you teach?”

“Sure.”

“What would it feel like twenty or thirty years from now if one of our kids discovered a cure for a some disease, or won a Nobel Prize — or became a serial killer. Gandhi and Hitler both had parents, and both had teachers. How did they feel, I wonder? Were they proud of what they had done, or were they ashamed? Did they try to hog some of the credit, or shoulder some of the blame?”

Carmen said, “What have you done to bring on this preoccupation with guilt?”

There it was — his opportunity. He would never have a better time to tell her about Alice Hamilton’s false accusations, and get rid of the barrier he had built between them.

She sat, waiting, in faded jeans and a sweater, with her feet tucked up beneath her. Lean and lovely, warm, dark, vibrantly alive, hair a frizzled cloud around her head, and her eyes a brown he could drown in. Waiting.

He asked himself, Do you love her?

He reached out his hand and she took it in hers, running her thumb down his palm. He felt his heart turn over within him at the nearness of her. I have never lain with her, nor even held her naked breasts in my hands, but already I love her more than I loved Lynn, whom I lived with and would have married.

Yet Lynn had betrayed him in his time of need, and he feared to try Carmen’s loyalty for fear that he would lose her too. And so the moment passed.

# # #

Neil drove home and rummaged through his desk until he found Mrs. Herrera’s phone number. She answered on the fifth ring, sounding tired and distracted. He said, “I need to see you tonight.”

“Tonight? You can’t be serious.”

“I have never been more serious. What did Jesse tell you about today?”

“Jesus didn’t tell my anything,” she replied in a sharp, defensive voice.

“He didn’t tell you that I sent him home five minutes after he got there for pretending he was Patrick Purdy and mock-killing half the students on the playground?”

There was silence on the other end for so long that Neil had begun to think Mrs. Herrera had hung up. Finally he heard faint sobs that went on for a long time. Then a very weak voice said, “What can I do?”

“I’m coming over.”

“No! I can’t. I can’t talk to you now.”

“Mrs. Herrera you have only two choices. Talk to me now, and really talk. Don’t give me some run around, but actually tell me what you know about Jesse’s problems. Or start looking for another school tomorrow, because if we can’t get this settled right now, Jesse is not coming back to my room.”

She agreed.

He arrived at her house twenty minutes later. It was larger and in a nicer neighborhood than Neil had expected. Mrs. Herrera would certainly have a hard time paying for such a house on one salary, so it probably dated from before her husband’s death.

She met him at the door and led him into the living room. The furniture was well built and stylish. It had been expensive once, but now it was shabby. It was clean and neat; there were no toys underfoot to give evidence that a child lived there. more Monday

Neil reached down and took Jesse by the back of the shirt and lifted him a foot off the ground. Slowly, the boy unkinked until he could put his feet on the ground again. Neil let go and Jesse stood facing him; fear and hatred were at war in his face, and hatred was winning out. Neil did not care. He said, “Jesse, go home! Don’t come back until I call for you.”

Jesse stood up to him for one more moment, then turned tail and ran, across the campus, across the parking lot, and down the street toward his house.

# # #

You don’t do things that way. You don’t grab a student by the arms. You don’t yell at a student until he cowers at your feet. You don’t pick him up off the ground. You don’t send him off campus on his own. If he must be sent home, you do it through channels, with documentation, and you make the parent come in to get him. The law requires it, and self-preservation requires it. Parents will sue schools and teachers if they are provoked.

Above all, you do not lose your temper.

Neil sat in his room after school, cataloging his failings and feeling low. For a person who had come here to prove himself, he was not doing very well. For a person who had “saved” Jesse from expulsion, he was doing even worse.

Yet he had learned a lot about self-preservation during the last year.  If something like this had happened at his previous school, he would have gone to Dr. Watkins with his problems and asked his advice. This time he kept the incident to himself. He did not even tell Bill Campbell that Jesse had left campus. There was a bare chance that he could salvage the situation; if not, then would be the time to confess.

First, there was one hard question to face. Why did he want to salvage the situation? Because he still believed that Jesse was worth the effort, or just to keep from having to admit his failings? If he was only trying to cover himself, then he had better let the boy go. Maybe in some other school he could make a new start.

In the last analysis, what Neil had to do now hinged on one question: could the boy be saved? And Neil did not know the answer.

# # #

He sought out Carmen at her apartment. “First of all,” Neil said after he had outlined the problem, “did I overreact to what Jesse did? He is only eleven years old. Maybe his was just a natural, stupid reaction to the incident in Stockton.”

Carmen shook her head. “If I had seen him do that, I would have written him up, and that would have been the end of him. I wouldn’t tolerate that from any student.”

“Of course his behavior wasn’t acceptable. I’m not asking that. I’m asking what it means. Is he growing up to be another Patrick Purdy?”

“Oh, Neil, how could we ever know that? Stop trying to play God. You just have to teach them and do the best you can to help them, and then let them become what they become.” more tomorrow

As it turned out, he didn’t have to say very much. Less than half of them were aware of what had happened, and few of them were very interested. They were talking about it when they came in from the busses; those who had seen the news were telling those who had not. But it had come to them through the plastic reality of the television. It was no more real than a drug bust, famine in Ethiopia, or oil spills. Or Miami Vice. It was just another part of the endless effluvium of human suffering that washed about them every day; with marvelous sanity, most of them remained unmoved.

A few of them were affected. Tanya Michelson looked as if she had been crying when she came in and stayed unnaturally quiet all day. Lisa Cobb jumped at every sound. Oscar Teixeira had been thinking hard about what it all meant. He went straight to the fact that the children who had died had all been Asian. With a clarity of thought all out of proportion to his age, he made the connection to the celebration of Martin Luther King Day just before the shooting. Of course he did not speak of irony — not at eleven years old — but he did recognize the juxtaposition.

At noon, Bill Campbell called a special teachers’ meeting to discuss campus security. He stressed that any stranger seen on campus was to be approached immediately and asked his business, and referred to the office if there was any question about why he was there. “This isn’t anything new,” Bill said. “It has been school board policy for about ten years, ever since parents kidnapping their own children became a problem. In light of what happened in Stockton, we have to be even more careful.”

Jesse Herrera came on campus for his afternoon class with Neil just before the final noon recess bell rang. He dropped his book bag outside Neil’s door and slid along the wall of the building. When the bell rang he leaped out, shouting out the sound of gunfire, and pantomimed firing across the playground.

Neil saw him, and his temper exploded. He was a hundred feet away when Jesse “fired”. He covered the distance at a run, grabbed the boy by both arms, and jerked him off the ground as he skidded to a stop.

Then he blew his ears back.

He screamed out how stupid he was being, how insensitive to the suffering of the students who had been wounded, and how disrespectful to the memories of those who had died. Later, Neil could not remember the exact words he had used, but they were loud. All the student on the playground froze in their tracks until Neil finished, then rushed on to class looking back over their shoulders.

Jesse folded up like a rag doll. He buried his head beneath his hands to ward off blows that never fell. Neil stood over him, breathing in gasps as he tried to control his anger. He had never felt more like striking a child. The pathetic cowering that would normally have defused his anger, only made it worse. more tomorrow

Since the American Navy had accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner the previous summer there had been talk of terrorist reprisals, and American schools were one of the targets being threatened. If that was the case, and the school which had already been struck was so close . . .

Neil found himself searching the playground with his eyes, and at the time it did not seem melodramatic. He said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t say anything to your students, but be on the alert. Join Tom and me out front when the busses come to pick them up. It’s late enough in the afternoon that we probably won’t have any parents coming in to pick up their children because they heard it. If some parent comes in, get their child out of the classroom without a fuss. If we can manage it, I want to get these kids home with their parents before they hear about it.”

Bill went on to pass the word and Neil returned to his classroom. Bill’s words “a bunch of dead and wounded” rang in his head as he sat down and looked at his kids. Little Randi Nguyen with her boundless energy; Rabindranath who was calm and bright and utterly without a sense of humor; Lisa Cobb with her erratic behavior and terrible puns; even Jesse Herrera. Dead or wounded . . .; he had to shake his head to drive the vision away.

The bell for the last break of the day caught him by surprise and he jumped. Somebody laughed, then hid his laughter. The students all rushed for the door. Neil was on his feet in an instant and out the door to pace the playground in paranoid fear. All of the other teachers were out, exchanging worried glances and saying nothing.

When the busses came, a phalanx of teachers was there to protect their students from an enemy who never appeared.

# # #

Neil drove to the mall after school and went to a department store where he had seen racks of televisions on display. He had no TV himself and he did not want to watch this with Carmen. He could either watch it alone, or in the anonymity of a public place, but not with someone he loved. He arrived at the store just in time to see the whole bloody scene on the news. All normal business had stopped in the store as clerks and customers stood riveted by the horror of it.

A second channel picked it up and Neil watched again. His fascination was like a private shame. He hated the newsman for the way he shoved his microphone into a child’s face to ask her how she had felt, but he could not turn away.

The next morning the Modesto Bee devoted five full pages to the tragedy. Neil, who did not subscribe, went out early to buy a copy and read it all. Five dead. Thirty wounded. That would be half of the kids he taught. And all the rest, the other three hundred students, would never feel safe again. Like a rape, it would tear them out of their childhoods and plunge them into a mad, adult world long before their time.

What would he say to his own students today? more tomorrow