I felt ill, again remembering “faint heart…” Could he be that stupid?
“Did he protest?” Mackenzie asked. “Did he say he was innocent?”
I shook my head.
“That feels relevant.” He kissed me and went off to fight crime, his step resolute. I followed, feeling as if I was dragging the deadweight of both Dustin and Heathcliff up that wind-swept moor.
*
“Did you hear?” Rosalie asked as I unlocked my classroom door. This was definitely becoming a habit. She held out a bag of candy. “Leftovers,” she said. I declined and waited. “He’s being charged with murder.”
“Mur—she died?”
Rosalie solemnly nodded.
The news hurt my head. It hurt my shoulders and my hands. It hurt everywhere. Could he have done it? Was I to blame?
“And worse—she’s—she was Phil Rinck’s aunt. He’s on a rampage about how this is the result of our sloppy teaching.”
Places that hadn’t hurt before now did. My fingernails. My earlobes.
Rosalie turned to go to her classroom, then turned back. “I told my Ronald about the ring! He had no idea, neither did his mother. We tried to figure out how we could spell Rosalie, but we couldn’t think of a gem that began with I.”
The warning bell rang, and we both turned. The real day had begun.
There was surprisingly little agita about Dustin. Most of the whispers I was able to catch were about Hallowe’en parties they weren’t supposed to have attended on a school night.
Later, on my break, it was obvious that Dustin was not a popular lad with the faculty. I knew that, but what dismayed me was how that translated into acceptance of his guilt. Without a trial, he’d been condemned by everyone in the lounge.
“Poor old soul,” the math teacher said. “May she rest in peace.”
The old soul had a name now. She’d been identified by her granddaughter, Maude Steinhardt, as Mrs. Joseph Laverty, also a Maude. Mother of five, grandmother of eight, great-grandmother of three. Also Phillip Rinck’s aunt.
“Why are we all assuming he did it?” I dared to ask.
“Because he did!” two teachers said in unison.
“It’s not like he’s denying it,” Karen, the tennis coach, said.
“Maybe now you’ll listen to me!” Rinck sounded furious, as if we’d collectively mugged his aunt. “We make it too easy for those kids, so of course—they want something, they take it! We fill their heads with nonsense. They need discipline—they need hard facts.”
I really didn’t think memorizing tariffs prevented crime, but he was making me afraid that perhaps fiction—Cervantes with me as the conduit—did lead to crime.
“It is indeed sad,” Julia Finney, the gentle Latin teacher said softly. “But there’s nothing any of us can do about it. He’s obviously a troubled young man.”
She was sweet and maybe even right, but it was painful to know that according to my fellow teachers, those mostly caring, nurturing, hard-working and sympathetic people, Dustin was guilty as charged. End of a not-made-up story. I preferred the other kind.
*
“Can we talk about it?” Wilson asked as soon as class started. She didn’t have to spell out what “it” meant. She and her clique—Hadley, Taylor and Schuyler—I thought of them as the law firm—nodded agreement. I would feel easier about gender-neutral names if ever I encountered a male student named Gloria or Tiffany.
The verdict was in here, too. However, sentencing was lighter. “He didn’t mean to do it,” was the basis of most cries for leniency. “It was an accident. I heard she had a heart attack.” And the universal lament: “It’s not fair.”
Nobody questioned his guilt.
I looked at Daphne, wondering again whether Dustin’s ill-fated stunt was meant to convince her he was a kindred soul, an outlaw despite his family’s wealth.
If that had been his motive, he’d failed miserably. She looked bored by the discussion.
Teens often feel estranged with no place on the planet that’s theirs and no sense of improvement in the foggy future. It’s generally an exaggerated or unwarranted feeling, but for Dustin, today, it was one hundred percent true.
*
The weekend of ordinary events came and went while I continued to obsess about the gorilla in the Square. Life went on, as it so annoyingly insists on doing. You want people to stop all normal functioning and pay attention full-time. Instead, even in my household, people went to the supermarket, had sushi, rode bikes by the river, saw friends, watched TV and once again failed to mark those essays. Oh, and obsessed about Dustin.
And then as always, it was Monday and again life kept going on as if nothing had happened. At least until the office sent up a note asking if I could meet with Dustin’s mother at lunchtime.
Mrs. Lambert was as elegantly dressed and soft-spoken as I’d remembered, but not surprisingly, her face was drawn with new lines and she looked fragile. “Thank you for taking this time,” she said.
We sat in students’ chairs, facing each other.
“I want you to know that no matter what, I don’t think he did it.”
She smiled, a sad, half smile. “We’re the only two people on earth. Even his father… Once they found the gorilla costume in the bathroom—”
“Here?”
She shook her head. “The public library on the other side of the Square.”
I looked dismayed and she nodded again. “I know. His secret vice—he loves the library, goes there a lot. It doesn’t fit his tough guy image.”
His vice wasn’t a secret to me. I’d seen the many books he’d borrowed, I’d read papers he’d written where he confessed his love of reading, and I’d bumped into him at the library off the Square. But that would be used against him. He’d have known they library’s layout, where to hide the gorilla suit. They’d know him, too. Would remember.
“I’m here because he said he felt you were on his side.”
“I am. Tell him that, please.”
She cleared her throat. “He thought you might talk to that girl, that Daphne. Apparently, and it was hard to get this straight, he expected to have heard from her by now, even if she couldn’t visit.” Mrs. Lambert looked agonizingly uncomfortable. “He seemed angry with her. He has enough to worry about without having his feelings hurt because of that girl, but still…well, transmitting that message is what I could do for him right now. His father didn’t want me to, doesn’t like Daphne and that ridiculous outlaw mystique. I’m not even sure they know what it means. I surely don’t.”
“What does he want me to say?”
Mrs. Lambert shrugged. “I wish I knew. He said you understood him and the situation. That was his word, the ‘situation.’ He said, ‘tell her, Faint Heart.’ Does that make sense?”
It made sense the way a mallet pounded on the top of my head would have made sense. I felt dizzy with the sense of it.
We promised to exchange any information and we went off to our separate afternoons. All I could think about was the question of where guilty lay. I’d planted a romantic, unsound idea in an adolescent’s romantic, unsound brain. What did Cervantes know about impressing a Philly Prep outlaw? For that matter, what did I? Why hadn’t I talked with Dustin, put things in perspective, after I saw his reaction to that saying?
*
Daphne shrugged and muttered that yes, she’d stay a few minutes.
I had no idea what to say to her.
She apparently had no idea what to say to me, either.
I complimented her enormous earrings, thin gold threads and emerald stones.
“They’re called chandelier earrings,” she said. “Because they look like…I guess it’s obvious why.”
I didn’t compliment the star stuck into her nostril or the ring on her lip. “Why haven’t you gotten in touch with Dustin?” I asked. “He’s your friend.”
She shrugged. “Not so much.”
“But a kind word, a phone call—if you’re allowed.
And if not, a message?”
“He’s faux.”
“Foe?”
“Fake. Faux. Wants to be an outlaw and drives his mom’s BMW. I don’t have time for that kind of—”
“He’s in jail, Daphne. Surely you could—”
“Juvenile, not real jail, and it probably won’t be a big deal. The old lady had a heart attack. I heard.” She looked around the room, anywhere but at me. I took inventory of her accessories and thought that in the James Dean vs. Bling wars, the rebel was losing and the dungaree days were numbered. The glitter was already ascendant with blue, black, pink and purple rings, bright green stones in the chandelier earrings, crimson sequined nail polish, and a necklace that echoed all those colors.
“He says he didn’t do it.”
She shrugged. “If he didn’t he’ll get off, then. Can I go now? Is that all you wanted?”
Not by a long shot, but I knew I couldn’t get through to her, so all I said was, “Think about it. A little human kindness never hurts.”
She stood up. Just then, Phil Rinck walked by my room, paused, and peered through the glass door panes. Was he checking whether I was damaging another kid with my instruction? I felt my hackles rise as I thought about his lethal combination of arrogance and ignorance. Great literature was anything but useless.
Except. Was he right? Had Cervantes and I set in motion a tragedy?
Daphne yawned and twiddled with her necklace.
“That center stone,” I said. “You know what it is?” I had a shameful desire to upset her, to break through her sullen apathy.
“I know it’s ugly.”
“Unakite. Ever hear of it?”
A head shake. “Can I go now?”
“It’s used in witchcraft to uncover deception.” Thank you Great-Aunt Clementine.
She looked as if she’d actually heard me, but it was a fleeting moment, and she then resumed her default expression of scorn. “No offense but so what? Hallowe’en’s over. Nobody believes in witches. It’s a stone, and not even pretty.”
She left the room before I could say another word.
She’d been right about one thing. That unakite was the ugly step-sister between a diamond and an amethyst. Maybe it was there to pull the colors together, the greens of the malachite and emerald at either end, but even so…
I stood very still, slowly realizing I’d had everything jumbled.
I rant through the doorway, down the wide marble stairs at top speed, coming to a skid turn at the bottom because I saw Daphne rushing toward the back of the school, toward the alley.
“Whoah!” Phil Rinck said, putting his arms out to stop me.
I pushed him away, hard enough that he staggered. The man was forever putting barriers in front of me. At faculty meetings when textbook allocations were being discussed, or assembly plans mentioned—but not this time.
“Out of my way!” I shouted, but as usual, he didn’t listen and instead followed me, and I admit, I felt some relief. What he could do to defend me—if he even would—beside spout dates, I didn’t know, but just in case Daphne had a gang of equally surly friends out back, there was comfort in numbers.
She was alone, next to a dumpster at the end of the alley. I raced toward her and grabbed her hands to stop her from pulling off her necklace. She tried to wrench away, but I held tight. “What’s the point,” I asked once I caught my breath. “I’ve seen it, could describe it and of course fish it out of a dumpster.”
She looked ready to cry. Very un-James Dean.
“Here’s the sad part. Something to mull over. You’ll have the time. A little kindness and Dustin would have covered for you forever. If you’d seen him, even for a minute, or even talked to him, you could have said he gave you the necklace or told you where it was. But you didn’t.”
She looked down at her feet. Her chandelier earrings jiggled.
“He had nothing to do with it, did he?”
“He was following me—he did that! I hated it! But he saw me taking the gorilla suit off, he saw…her…and he put it in his backpack.”
As a favor. As a way of winning her heart.
“Why’d you make that thing up about that stone?” she asked.
“I didn’t. I learned that. And look—it worked. It’s how I knew, and if that isn’t deception uncovered, what is?”
“You’re not making—”
“Your necklace. Malachite, amethyst, unakite, diamond, emerald. They spell Maude. That was her name, that old woman.”
I was aware of Rinck watching us, and I turned and made sure he’d heard. “Useful knowledge,” I said.
He backed off, and when I next glanced his way, he’d faded back into the bricks.
“It was an accident,” Daphne said, her nose reddening, her eyes tearing. “I never touched her! I didn’t want to hurt anybody! The necklace was in her bag, she wasn’t even wearing it. Those old ladies are rich, like everybody here is. They live near the Square and have old lady nannies caring for them and…”
“And what?”
“Everybody gets whatever they want. Except me. I just wanted…it was Hallowe’en. I thought it would be…” She shrugged. “Trick or treat.”
“No—mugging!”
“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even get to say anything. She looked at me and freaked.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She kind of gasped and fell down and…”
“I don’t mean why she was frightened. You were wearing a gorilla costume! I meant why did you need money? What was so desperately important?”
She looked down at her feet again. I knew I wasn’t going to appreciate her motives. I had the sense she no longer did, either. “Tats,” she finally mumbled. “My parents hate them. They said I had to pay for them myself.”
A life in exchange for tattoos. I was sorry I’d asked.
*
It should feel a lot better than it did to have restored a smidge of justice, but it didn’t feel good swapping one child’s freedom for another’s. Dustin was free to be morose as long as he liked, and that was good. But Daphne wasn’t malevolent, only another wannabe rebel, a resentful teen who didn’t think anything through. Not that that would impress a judge, although the general feeling was that she would be lightly sentenced for something akin to involuntary manslaughter. Apparently, a juvenile’s trick or treating causing someone a heart attack is a gray legal area.
As for me, there was scant joy in having figured out the puzzle. There was no triumph.
Except.
Next day in the faculty lounge, I pulled down the newspaper behind which Philip Rinck hid and I behaved in an inappropriate manner.
That is, I gloated. “Hey, Phil,” I said. “Want to reconsider what one should learn and what one shouldn’t? What’s useful and what isn’t? Funny how things turned out, wasn’t it? How about your idea that only facts matter, because the fact is an innocent kid was…”
Everyone was watching. “Let that be a lesson,” I said. I’m not cruel. I turned away.
I’ll probably eventually feel ashamed of my behavior, my need to “nyah, nyah” in the faculty lounge. But not yet.
A petty triumph, I admit, over an insignificant pompous jerk. But I bet he’d never again badmouth the products of imagination, or object to my students getting new books, or even sneer at so-called useless knowledge, at least not in my hearing.
You take your wins where you find them. I took this one and a deep breath, and finally began to grade my seniors’ essays.
Immy Goes to the Dogs
By Kaye George
I created Imogene Duckworthy out of frustration, after trying to get several projects published over the years. The concept was an Inept Detective, and to create her to entertain myself, writing something really fun to write. Immy wants to be a PI, but goes about it all wrong. Stuck in her little Texas town of Saltlick, she doesn’t have many opportunities to take on cases, but she breaks out and perseveres. She’s been called a cross betwee
n Lucille Ball and Inspector Clouseau as she follows her trusty second-hand copy of The Moron’s Compleat PI Guidebook, which gets her where she wants to go—usually. My readers tell me the books are laugh-out-loud funny and that’s the highest praise I can hope for. This short story goes into her childhood and serves as an introduction to her world.
When Imogene Duckworthy was ten years old, she solved her first case. Naturally, it had to do with animals because she loved animals. Not all of them, of course. She sure didn’t love the wild boars that ripped up the rolling Texas prairies. And not the buzzards that picked at the gooey innards that got spread across the lonely, rural roads by speeding pickups at night. But she loved cats and dogs and horses. Her mother and father had refused her pleas to have a pet, so she did the next best thing. She pet sat.
She solved that first case the summer between third and fourth grade when she was working for Mrs. Yarborough. Mrs. Yarborough’s two cocker spaniels were the only ones in Saltlick that weren’t yard dogs. They were little and cute and golden colored. Mrs. Yarborough brushed their soft fur regularly and tied bows around their ears. Sweetums wore pink ones and Tweetums wore blue.
Immy’s job was to come to the house and let them out into the fenced yard at lunch time. Mrs. Yarborough usually ran home from her job at the First Bank of Saltlick so they could do their business, but since Immy was available in the summertime, Mrs. Yarborough said she was going to take advantage of this. She had hired Immy to do other simple, easy things in the past, like run to the All Sips for a Dr. Pepper on a Saturday, or sweep the live oak leaves off her front walk in the spring and fall.
Immy thought maybe Mrs. Yarborough liked having a little girl around, since her only children were those two big galoots, uncouth twins who, in their early twenties, worked the oil rigs out in West Texas most of the time. When they were home, they rode through town in their dusty pickup tossing beer cans out the windows and whistling at every female they saw. It hardly even seemed like they were related to the refined Mrs. Yarborough. Immy’s mother, Hortense, always said that the Yarborough twins took after their father. There wasn’t any Mr. Yarborough around, so there wasn’t any way for Immy to compare them. She reckoned her mother might be right.
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