The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs

by Michael Ciardi

After peeling my eyelids open, I felt an immediate sensation of cool water pooling against my right cheek. I wasn’t surprised to find myself toppled over in the lavatory’s stall, with my face partially leaning against the toilet’s base. The source of water must’ve leaked on the floor’s tiles from a wobbly plumbing fixture. Under normal conditions, I would’ve reacted in disgust to my present position, but I then remembered what I still had grappled in my hand. The gun took precedence over my reactions, and I released my grip on the weapon momentarily in order to deliberate my next move. My fingerprints already stained the gun’s metal casing. Therefore, leaving the revolver where I found it was no longer a sensible option. I wasn’t fully prepared to examine my intentions, but it was undeniable that I sought the security of confiscating this firearm by any means necessary.

  Before picking myself off the floor, I already began to formulate a strategy to stealthily remove the gun from the lavatory. After securing it, I aimed to take it out to my car. Of course, the remora for me was doing so in the midst of a school day. I already experimented with areas on my body where I could’ve concealed the piece. It was small enough to stick inside my sock, but I feared it might’ve slipped out while I walked. A reasonable alternative existed in the waistline of my pants. Due to my recent loss of weight, my shirt and slacks hanged loosely on me now. This provided a fair amount of camouflage. I elected to tuck the gun against my hip, and pull my shirt over the slight bulge it created.

  With the gun now in my possession, I cringed at the prospect of being caught by the custodian. The resilient pest had followed me everywhere in the building today, and I had no cause to presume that he had suddenly abandoned his watch on my current indiscretions. Yet, after I exited the lavatory, I saw no signs of him or anyone else who appeared intent on stopping me. The hallway was virtually empty as I hastily crossed it and ducked into the nearest stairwell. From here, I only needed to walk a few hundred feet to my car.

  The rain had started to fall more steadily again, but I couldn’t splash too quickly through the puddles forming beneath my feet without drawing attention to myself. As it was, anyone who witnessed me sauntering through a rainstorm without an umbrella or any sense of urgency might’ve scrutinized my motives. But I felt at ease once I reached my vehicle and removed the gun from my pants. Perhaps the glove compartment wasn’t the most furtive hiding place, but it served my impulsive purposes for now. After all, I had never even handled a gun in my life before today. No one would’ve believed that I had obtained one for any motive at this point.

  My nerves gradually settled while I sat behind the car’s steering wheel. Even in my haste, I don’t think I was observed by anyone of consequence. Granted, this was a trifling milestone in an otherwise miserable day, and I reserved little confidence in the likelihood that my good fortune would’ve endured for the rest of this afternoon. But at least I felt a reprieve from the torment swirling through my mind. As the raindrops pattered against my car’s windshield, I glanced at the passenger’s seat. My journal still remained unmarked within an arm’s length of me. I almost took hold of it, if to do nothing else but cradle its leather binding against my body like a child being mollified by a toy.

  If I was ever to write fluently again, however, I recognized that now would not be the time to resume my craft. Other matters distracted me. I then exited my car as covertly as I had entered it and returned to the school. A door leading into the stairwell afforded the quickest access to my classroom. It also limited the potential amount of people who’d notice me coming back into the building drenched. If I still carried any optimistic thoughts with me, they evaporated like grease bubbles on a hot skillet upon encountering my next observance.

  Standing beneath the shadow of the staircase, I noticed Emily Lee pressed awkwardly against a concrete wall. Apparently startled by my abrupt emergence into the stairwell, she fiddled with her blouse’s top two buttons. It was no mystery around our school where the majority of oversexed teenagers practiced their own peculiar brand of romance, and neither of us pretended to assign an ulterior purpose for her objective at this moment. Besides, her smeared red lipstick, which she relied upon almost as often as her continual gum-chewing, already tattled on her behavior. I might’ve walked away with only a marginal degree of shock, but her partner was still present. He attempted to remain hidden beneath the staircase’s darker crevices, but eventually stepped into view.

  Orlando Rodriquez nervously loosened his hand from around Emily’s hip and swiped his dark hair off his forehead. He didn’t utter a word to me, but whispered something into Emily’s ear before treading up the stairs. I didn’t try to delay his departure. He obviously felt some level of shame for being physically linked to Emily so soon after ending his relationship with Mona Dukes. I wondered if this was a bid for a type of tawdry revenge on his part. I couldn’t think of any other incentive for why he’d chose to keep company with Emily over Mona. Although it may have been outside the realm of my responsibility, I felt bothered by Emily’s disingenuous methods. After all, I had just witnessed her consoling Mona a short while ago.

  “This is probably none of my business,” I said, “but you sure don’t waste any time moving in for the kill on your best friend’s boyfriend, do you?”

  Emily smirked puckishly at me as she rifled through the contents of her handbag. She then blew a strawberry-sized bubble with her chewing gum and lanced it with her tongue before saying, “You’re so right, Mr. Cobbs, this isn’t any of your business.”

  “Honestly, Emily, I thought you had a little more character than what you’ve proven here today.”

  “Well, I guess that’s why they don’t pay you to judge my character,” she said. “You obviously aren’t very good at it.”

  “You wanted to steal Mona’s boyfriend away from her the whole time, didn’t you?”

  “Why does it matter to you?”

  I was accustomed to dealing with insolent attitudes, but not from this student. Admittedly, she had habits that irked me, but I never sensed any latent cruelty in her mannerisms—until now. It pained me to hear the artificiality of her voice, which registered as fake as the cerise lacquer highlighting her lips. No amount of polish or paint, however, could’ve disguised her deceitfulness from my eyes now.

  “Something just occurred to me,” I thought aloud. “You were in Casey Michaels’ car on the night Mona lost her earring. Isn’t that right?”

  Emily smirked like an incorrigible brat as she opened a compact mirror to preview her rouge and lipstick. “So what?” she remarked. “Is there a law against that?”

  “It’s pretty clear to me that you took Mona’s earring and planted it in Casey’s car for Orlando to find.”

  Emily fluttered her eyelashes at me sarcastically and remarked, “Gee, Mr. Cobbs, that’s a pretty wild accusation you’ve come up with. Now try to prove it.”

  “Isn’t it enough that I know the truth? Orlando found the earring with its clasp still attached. It couldn’t have fallen out of Mona’s ear like that.”

  Emily smiled at me glibly before returning her cosmetics to her purse. “Wow,” she muttered smugly. “And to think that most of the kids in this school, including me, had you pegged for a complete imbecile. Wouldn’t they all be shocked to know how clever you really are?”

  “I’m wise enough to know a phony when I’m staring one in the face,” I returned. “The fact is that you never really wanted to be Mona’s friend. You used her and Casey to get closer to Orlando. When you couldn’t persuade Mona to break up with him using your own wit, you decided to use her as bait.”

  “No one will ever say you’re short on creative stories, Mr. Cobbs.”

  “My creativity hasn’t anything to do with it. This tale is as old as time and you and me both know it.”

  “Either way, it doesn’t matter,” she huffed. “When it comes right down to it, you can’t prove a single word of your accusation. So don’t you see what a waste of time this is for you? Besides, don’t get all fatherly whe
n it comes to protecting Mona’s feelings. She knew I liked Orlando way before they started going out. Actually, I’m the one who deserves an apology from her.”

  “I don’t believe you, Emily.”

  Whether or not I doubted this girl’s veracity made no difference in her mind. She didn’t plan to adjust her behavior to accommodate anyone’s emotions outside of her own selfish desires. In fact, my knowledge of her lack of decency encouraged her to illustrate a vindictiveness that wouldn’t have been believed unless witnessed firsthand.

  “There’s still time for you to do the right thing,” I proposed. “You can tell Mona and Orlando the truth. And in doing so, you’ll find out if he really likes you or is just trying to get back at Mona.”

  The fake smile plastered on Emily’s lips withered into a contemptuous snarl as she pondered my suggestion. Not even the girl’s layered makeup managed to obscure the ugliness of her persona.

  “What’s done is done,” she said, snapping her strawberry flavored gum. “Orlando is my guy now. We’re going to the prom together, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop that from happening.”

  “I could intervene,” I countered, somewhat listlessly.

  Emily’s bitterness chilled the air between us now. “Oh, really? Well, I hope I don’t need to prove to you that I’m quite capable of making up stories, too, Mr. Cobbs. And being that you’re alone in a stairwell with a female student provides me with plenty of material to work with, don’t you think?”

  My powerlessness as a teacher within the system was no secret to either Emily or me. As a pawn in the classroom, I had no control over any students’ allegations, or the unjust methods in which we were judged against those who routinely lied. Her fabrications, no matter how ridiculous or unfounded, would’ve taken precedence over the blatant facts.

  “You’d ruin my reputation just to preserve your own lies?” I then asked her.

  “When you put it like that,” she tittered demonically, “you make me sound very wicked. But once you get to know me, I’m really not so cruel. Before a few minutes ago, it wouldn’t have ever crossed my mind to hurt you, Mr. Cobbs, unless you tried to hurt me first.”

  I cringed in this girl’s presence and almost felt an urge to gag from the sheer taste of her saccharine temperament. Despite her advantage in this line of discourse, I couldn’t resist a parting shot aimed at her deplorableness. “I don’t want to say that you were born ugly, Emily, but it’s evident to me that you’re doing a fine job concealing your true face from everyone. At least that explains the amount of cosmetics you put on your skin, but I guess it’s a good idea for you to keep covering up until you’re ready to deal with the real person who hides beneath the mask.”

  Emily’s voice gushed at me like a stagnant spray of water when she said, “Spoken like a true English teacher. You’re so poetic. You know, I remember some of the lessons I learned in your class this year. Wasn’t it Hamlet who said, ‘to thy own self be true’?”

  “You’re almost right,” I corrected her. “That line is from the play ‘Hamlet’, but it’s spoken by Polonius, not the Prince of Denmark.”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “Everything matters, Emily. Shakespeare intended Polonius’s character to be a doddering idiot. Therefore, much of what he said was patently ironic. In other words, of all the characters in this tragedy outside of Claudius, Polonius was perhaps the most deceitful. Anything he uttered couldn’t be taken seriously. By coincidence, you’ll be in his company before long.”

  This time I didn’t anticipate a rebuttal from Emily. As it was with most callow-minded kids on the verge of adulthood, she threw up her hands with a vulgar gesture of intolerance and turned toward the stairwell’s doors. In another instant, she bolted away en route to her next conquest. It became increasingly taxing for me to contend with egocentric teenagers, and I once naively presumed that such flaws diminished in people as they aged. But at what point does a person who’s accustomed to having everything she ever wanted respect the fragility of friendship? Moreover, how does such a person ever value the most indispensable relationships in her lifetime?

  My dire thoughts were initially directed at Emily, but it didn’t take long for my mind to streamline my wife’s image. Maybe a woman without children had more time to speculate on her own life’s shortcomings, and certainly an ample opportunity to alter her circumstances. If this was valid, then Rachel must have spent an inordinate amount of time questioning her linkage to me. It then occurred to me that she had become more restless with my failures than pleased by my accomplishments. With no other recourse to divide my recollections, I moved sluggishly toward my final class of the day.

  Chapter 48

  1:37 P.M.