Absentee List_An Old Horse Mystery

by Elskan Triumph

  “My girl...” he muttered to himself.

  “Excuse me?” Jones removed an earpiece from one of his ears.

  “Nothing. I’m just thinking...” Mr. Jones looked at Jones, his body becoming more erect. Still in the chair by the door, he leaned towards Jones’s desk. “Do you believe in God? Or sin?”

  “I believe in forgiveness.”

  “That is easy to say, but hard to do,” the father replied.

  “Not as hard as you might think.”

  “Says a man who hasn’t been wronged.”

  “I became a teacher because I believe in learning from mistakes.”

  “And if the person doesn’t think they’ve made a mistake?”

  “You must have been talking with Horse.” Jones laughed, and took off his headphones. Pushing the computer screen aside he said, “Parents needing a seat is a hazard of having the room next to his, especially during parent conference week. Sometimes I feel like a post-traumatic stress counselor.”

  “I’m sorry...”

  “No...” He let out a chuckle. “I’m joking. More like a bartender. I’ve thought of offering shots.”

  “He did nothing wrong,” the father conceded, looking at the floor.

  “Then forgiveness is easy.”

  “It’s my daughter...”

  “And Horse told you the what’s-what about her,” Jones said, slowly shaking his head in feigned sympathy.

  “Something like that. Except, he did nothing.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “No,” the father conceded. “Our children. We have hopes. Then... Reality.”

  “Is that what Horse told you?” Jones asked, projecting his own battles with Horse onto this one.

  “Reality. No. No, he’s a mirror. Perhaps a magnifying glass.”

  “I think it’s abusive,” Jones said, bluntly.

  “What?”

  “All of this supposed truth. What does Horse know about reality? The real world? You can’t look at a twelve-year-old and talk about reality.” Jones then affects a sarcastic tone, “He tells it like it is. He’s blunt. A straight shooter.” Then, returning to his normal distain, he summed up. “He’s a cynic.”

  “The truth...”

  “...Will set you free? They’re twelve. They need to dream.”

  “I don’t think...”

  “Don’t let him tell you,” Jones continued, now angry, “that your daughter is anything less than wonderful.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “But... With Horse, there’s always a but... If she only worked harder. If you would do something. Push. Harder.”

  “I don’t see the problem with that.”

  “No?” Sympathy gone, Jones looked straight at Mr. Tomlinson and bluntly stated, “These kids get torn down enough. In seventh grade they need someone telling them they measure up.”

  “My daughter was pregnant.”

  Silence.

  Jones does not move, but speaks first.

  “Oh. I didn’t...”

  “She’s seventeen. She was Horse’s student before you came here.”

  “I see.” Deflated.

  “She got an abortion.”

  Now Jones asks, in a hushed voice, “Did Horse...”

  “No.” Tomlinson seems wake from his stupor, the old anger rising, but this time at Jones. “He... didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything. That’s the problem.”

  Jones stopped.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “He did not do anything.”

  “Have you spoken to Mr. Wells about any of this?”

  “Mr. Wells is well aware of the situation. He’s an old friend of the family. In fact, he made sure Amanda got Horse after her mother passed away.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that...”

  “Thank you.” Again, Mr. Tomlinson’s body deflated. “It was a long time ago. Amanda, my daughter, fell apart. She was wild before, but... Mr. Wells took charge. I couldn’t and she got Horse and now she’s looking at Columbia.”

  “It sounds like a good thing Mr. Wells did.”

  “Yes. He did a lot for us.”

  Then the two sat there, silent.

  The white square of light coming from the overhead projector is devoid of words.

  No poem.

  Jones stands in front of his class, half in the light and half in the dark. In his hand is a brown paper sandwich bag .

  “…. So, the Dada poet Tristan Tzara would cut up words from the newspaper and throw them into a paper bag.”

  He holds the paper bag above his head.

  “He would then pull words out one after another. That, he said, was the poem.”

  From the bag Jones proceeds in pulling some words. He writes them on the overhead.

  CRIMINAL

  FRAUD

  PUBLIC

  VIEWPOINT

  LEAD.

  “Meaning…” He leaves a dramatic pause. “Nonsense.”

  He looks into the darkness. The projector’s light in his eyes, he cannot see them, but hears silence.

  “Does it matter?” he asks.

  CHAPTER 13

  Horse had out the overhead projector again, the first stanza of Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, make much of Time” on the wall.

  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

  Old Time is still a-flying:

  And this same flower that smiles to-day

  To-morrow will be dying.

  “This is a poem about youth, and time, and how you think.” He points to a dark- haired girl sitting in the front row, her teeth too big and sticking out. “Sitting there in seventh grade, you think it is eternity—this lesson, this poem, is an eternity—until you can drive and not have to listen to your parents. Then, suddenly, you’re old and standing in front of a bunch of seventh graders teaching a poem.” A pause, a few students recognizing he’s speaking of himself; those few release a nervous chuckle. Horse smiles. “Who would have thought it. Yuck. What happened? We talked about that.”

  The old man walks close to the projected poem.

  “But focus on the second line: Old Time is still a-flying. Old Time. This is a play about the fleeting nature of youth. Is Herrick saying that time itself belongs to the old? Or is ‘Old’ simply a title, like Old Mr. Horse. Old Time? Whatever.”

  Then, he walked past the overhead projector, through the students in rows, and to the back of the room.

  “Jacob,” he said like a jab. A boy in the third row turned his head to the back of the room. He could see only the darkness, as the contrast between the projection and the rest of the room was so great. “Can you tell me why a word might be capitalized?”

  For a moment, the boy stutters. Then replies. “The start of a sentence?”

  “Is this the start of a sentence?”

  “No.”

  “So what else could it be?”

  “A proper noun?” he replied, more question than anything else.

  “Yes.” Horse moves through the students and back to the front of the screen. “Something is happening. Perhaps Time is an entity, like Bob or Sally. The point is that Time capital ‘T’ is used in both the title and the poem, and it could be just that the crazy punctuation they used back in the seventeenth century is not the friend of the young. It is not of youth. It’s something, though. At best it is a gadfly zipping about on some cosmic flying surfboard—that’s what I picture when I read that line. At worst, Time is an unforgiving weather front that ages all rosebuds and youth that fall into its path. A killjoy.

  “Gather ye rosebuds while-ye-may... And this same flower that smiles today... Tomorrow will be dying.”

  “Hello, Mr. Boch. I’m Dan, Peter’s father.”

  Standing at the open door to his house, Horse noticed a light freezing rain in the darkness. The snow would have a thick crust in the morning. Peter was standing behind the old teacher. He had heard the voice coming from the cold and the darkness and drifted towards it.


  Horse stood between the boy and the man.

  The man claiming to be Dan could see him standing there.

  Standing there afraid.

  Wondering.

  “Hi, Peter,” he said, in a soft voice as if coaxing a cat from under a couch.

  The boy said nothing.

  Horse turned his body, slightly, without turning his feet. He glanced back. The child seemed unsure and Horse felt uneasy. This was not the reaction of the boy in the photos that were in the living room taken on a fishing trip.

  Not love.

  This was fear.

  “Peter,” Horse said, in a voice meant to both calm and command him to stay put.

  Nothing.

  No response.

  ‘Yes,’ Horse thought. Fear.

  “Peter,” Dan said, again.

  “So…” Horse took a breath and then invited Dan in. Peter moved back a step so this man—Dan, his father—could pass by. His back was against the wall as this stranger passed. The teacher walked down the hallway and the man followed until both found themselves in the kitchen. Peter stood apart, outside in the family room looking in.

  “Tea?”

  “Please.” His voice was soft, an affected politeness.

  From the man’s reaction Horse picked up that Dan never drank tea. Horse found from calming hundreds of upset and furious parents that most broke into three groups—tea, coffee, or nothing. Those who drank tea asked about your tea—the selection, or something to hint they wanted to know what the choices were. Often, they were full of compliments about one of the blends. Horse’s own parents had used Red Rose (‘Godawful,’ Horse always thought, even as a boy) but they always asked guests if it was okay. Tea drinkers expected it; a common politeness. It was, Horse had decided, a social contract.

  Dan did not ask. He was being polite is accepting the offer.

  Filling the kettle and putting it on, Horse did not say a word. The three stood silent while the kettle warmed up.

  “So, you’ve been gone.” Horse said, filling the silence.

  “Yes.”

  “And, you’re back.”

  “I am. I’m here for Peter.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Then Horse said, “No.”

  Dan smirked the smirk of an asshole; someone used to having his way and if he didn’t get his way the threats would start. Horse had a few parents like this every year, demanding better grades or for him to drop a suspension; the parent would come real close to him with nervous energy while speaking in a lower voice. The effect was like facing a coiled snake, but Horse always waved it off.

  The smirk was usually the start.

  Horse could tell Dan was holding back a smart comment.

  “He’s my son.”

  “I’m sure.”

  The kettle began to lightly rattle; it was close enough to boiling to steep tea made for someone you wanted gone. Horse turned his back to Dan and put a tea bag into each of the two cups.

  “You also left him. Social services gave him to me. Call them.”

  “I will.”

  Horse turned around.

  “The fact is, I don’t know who the hell you are.”

  “I understand.” His voice was clipped.

  “When they say he’s yours and you’re fit to raise him, he’ll go.”

  The kettle was just about to whistle when Horse picked it off the stove.

  “I see.”

  The tea poured, Horse turned and watched him. Dan looked at Horse, and then around the kitchen. The man’s confidence seemed to falter. Peter stood in the background, but Dan didn’t look for him.

  No hug.

  No question.

  Dan was here to collect his son.

  “You didn’t say where you were.”

  The voice was demanding, surprising both Dan and the boy. Although not physically imposing, the old man straightened his back. Horse’s eyes narrowed as he waited for Dan to answer.

  “I got lost.”

  ‘He’s a good bluffer,’ Horse thought.

  Dan was looking him straight in the eye, and his voice never waivered.

  A liar.

  Dan is used to lying. A lot.

  “Lost?”

  “In the snow. Before it. On a job.”

  He offered no other specifics. The three stood there until it was clear no more was forthcoming; Horse daring for more and Dan refusing to rise to the bait. Peter watched with wide eyes, absently picking the cuticle on his right thumb.

  “You left a ten-year-old boy alone right before a snowstorm?”

  “You’re going to lecture me on how to raise my son?”

  “I’m easy,” Horse replied. “Wait for social services. They’ll have more questions.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Horse was at his desk correcting.

  Now that Peter had been returned to his father, Horse had had more time to assign work and correct. The students had noticed an increase in both homework and comments, an unwelcome change as the snow melted and kids got squirrely. While he was bent over a horrible paper about Rosie the Riveter, Amanda meekly entered the room.

  “Mr. Horse.”

  “As I told your father, I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.” He didn’t look up, but kept writing comments. “There are lawyers and they get angry when we don’t allow them to generate fees.”

  “I guess I wanted to see how you were...”

  “I have a student that refuses to take notes.”

  “I hated taking notes.”

  “Who likes taking notes?” He stopped writing. “But they help with the learning. Look at this kid.” Horse motions to the paper in front of him. “He refuses to take notes. He tries to memorize whatever we do, and fails. The same with writing. It’s like he’s a steam engine puffing the boilers up before hitting the rails. But school moves too fast, and by the time he leaves the roundhouse the job no longer needs to be done.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Fail him.”

  “You won’t help him?”

  “He’s making a choice. My mentor, years ago, told me: If a kid doesn’t have a choice to fail, they don’t have a choice to succeed.”

  “So you hope he’ll just make the right choice?”

  “Well, he needs glasses, too. His mother won’t buy him a new pair and the boy refuses to wear them even if she did buy them. So, he can’t see the board and he can’t see his reading book.”

  “That’s crazy.” Her response was perfunctory, as required by small talk etiquette.

  Horse picked up on this and replied with an equally light remark. “What can anyone do?”

  “Talk to him.”

  Horse screwed up his face and said, sarcastically, “That’ll work.”

  “Make him wear the glasses.”

  “You can’t make kids to anything.” Horse fiddled with some papers, then went back to correcting and trying to ignore Amanda.

  “I just want to apologize...”

  “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  He did not look up.

  “This has become so much more than I thought...”

  “Is that what you told the child’s father?” His face did not betray an attempt at humor.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “But it seems to be your pattern.” This time he looked up. “That’s okay; you’re a child.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “Are you a child or an adult?” Horse put down his pen, looked at her and leaned back in his chair. His voice had an edge. “That’s really what all of this is about. It’s not about abortion or sex, but if little Amanda is her daddy’s little girl or a big adult who has the right to make adult decisions.”

  “That’s not fair... I don’t want to discuss this. Anyway, I just came here to say that I was sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “Still...”

  “I wish you well, Amanda.”

  She hesitated at th
e door.

  “I got into Columbia. Early admission.”

  “They don’t have a mothers’ dorm, do they?”

  “No.”

  “But that’s not an issue anymore, is it?”

  “No.” Amanda stood in the doorway, looking at her hands. In a smaller voice she said, “That’s not why I did it.”

  Horse continued to lean back in his chair and just look at her. Finally, he said, “They have a great health center, so you can use preventive measures in the future.”

  After a moment she screamed at him, “You were supposed to stop me!”

  “I was supposed to sanction your decision,” he replied, calmly.

  “I came to you...”

  “To make the decision.”

  “Yes. To make the decision.”

  “And I didn’t.”

  “No, you did not! I made it!”

  “You made it.”

  “Yes! I made that decision!”

  “It’s tough, making decisions. They tend to have consequences.”

  That was it. The two stood their ground—Horse sitting, her in the doorway. Finally, she broke down. “I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” she screamed, to herself more than anyone.

  While she broke down into tears, Horse looked beyond her, deep into thought. It was then he realized what he had missed the first night Dan had come for Peter.

  “You didn’t want it,” Horse said to Dan.

  Horse felt the need to do something. To force the moment to its crisis, as Prufrock struggles to do in the old teachers’ favorite Eliot poem. ‘His failure was inaction,’ Horse thought as he approached the door.

  It was late. Another night of misty freezing rain fell on the area.

  The sun was down, although the sky was still alive to the west. Without the porch light, the front stoop seemed separate from the house. Some darkness made its way down the dark hallway and escaped through the front door, but very little. Horse was standing on the stoop of the Johnson house holding a single-use plastic grocery bag that had Grand Union stamped on the side, and from its condition had been used a few times since. Now crumpled and looking flimsier than ever, the bag had some clothes Horse was claiming were Peter’s. In fact, they were taken from Grace Union’s lost-and-found; it was an excuse to come over. In the darkness, none of it mattered.