A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room

by Dave St. John

  A presence so tangible, he’d smelled her hair. Gone in an instant, the feeling of her hand on his skin he would keep. He could feel it now.

  Her last morning she’d been in a hurry, as she was every day of her life. Making tea, she slammed the pan down on the stove, spilled water sizzling on hot iron. “The boat needs oil and there you sit! I’ll be late again!” To his shame, he had teased her about being in a hurry to die.

  “And why in the name of all that’s holy do we have to live way to hell and gone? Why can’t we live on a street like normal people? With garbage collection, and electricity that doesn’t go out every time a leaf falls, and neighbors, and children for Nikki to play with?” After five years, he’d learned when to back off Nettled, he went out to add the oil. By the dock he found a peahen, back torn open by an owl the night before. He held the animal in his lap on the porch stairs, knowing he’d have to wring its neck, and not willing to do it just yet. The wound was too much to heal on its own. Way too much. As much as he hated to do it, there was nothing else to do.

  Patti came out dressed and ready, Nikki in tow, and seeing him sitting, opened her mouth, ready to explode. When she saw the wounded bird, she sent Nikki in to play, running a finger softly down the bird’s green neck. “Poor baby, what happened to you, huh?”

  “I’ll put her down,” he said.

  She looked at her watch, sighed, eyes shut, tension draining from her. “No, you won’t. Bring her in.” The phone cradled at her neck, she tied an apron over her best suit. An illness in the family, she said. They’d have to put it off for an hour.

  He held the bird in a towel on the chest freezer, and with a curved needle and cotton thread, she sewed back the skin, sealing it in place over the exposed muscle. Watching her as she worked, he could only marvel. God, what a woman she was. On the far bank, she’d held him for a long moment. “I was lying, I’m glad we live here. I wouldn’t change anything, you know that. See you tonight.” He lifted Nikki into her seat and buckled her in. Excited about the trip, she squeezed his neck hard before he shut the door and watched them pull up the hill to the highway.

  Less than an hour later he got the call from the state police.

  He went to Eugene to see them, holding their cold hands one last time. To make sure.

  To know.

  Just to know.

  • • •

  The clock chimed, it was time to go.

  O’Connel ran a hand along the old dog’s head and down her bony back. Filling a milk jug with hot water at the tap, he sat down to put on his shoes. The old bitch, face to the door, did a stiff-jointed jig, eager to squat on the gravel.

  “Oh, knock it off. You really think I might forget to let you out? Is that it?” Sweeping up his jacket and case, he swatted her bony rump, setting her hind end wagging. When he opened the door she nosed through, knocking the screen door back as she went.

  Dawn outlined firs against gray sky. A low mist hung heavy over the river, cold wind raising cat’s paws on dark water. It never failed to move him, this place, just as it had the first time he’d seen it. , that’s what it was—a fierce kind of beauty that took your breath. There was no other way to describe it. A beauty without mercy. Without pity. The river, the steep slopes beyond would likely kill him as not. Either way it meant nothing.

  It was a cold place, a hard place, a place he loved. That’s why he hadn’t sold out, but stayed on alone years after he should have left the empty house and its ghosts behind.

  A pair of shovelers, wingtips skimming water, passed low and fast, spreading ripples marking their passing. A mated pair, they rode each other’s wake in turn, spelling the other at point as they wheeled, following the river. He watched them round the bend out of sight past a stand of big leaf maple, leaves singed jonquil by frost.

  The boat rocked under him. Waves sloshed under the wooden hull passing on to slap a hard mud bank. On the third turn of a tired starter the old Chevy straight six roared, the stink of exhaust mixing with tangerine—tomcat odor of fir.

  He rubbed Sonny softly under the chin. The dog yawned, whining, baring worn yellow teeth.

  This was his favorite part. Setting the milk jug in the bilge, he pushed away from the dock with a foot, shoved the throttle forward viciously. The motor coughed and roared. Sluggishly, the old boat picked up speed. Left behind on the dock, Sonny followed with sad eyes. Exhaust out of his face, he could smell the sea, less than ten miles down river.

  With five hundred yards of river to cross, he seldom went in a beeline. He loved the feel of the old boat in a turn. The way she lay over, hull cutting in. Humming to himself, he cranked the wheel over and back, tilting the boat until she began to slip. Ears burning with cold, he ducked below the cracked windscreen to escape the wind.

  At the other side, he killed the engine. His wake caught up and gave him a gentle shove as he let the current carry him down to the dock. This one was even worse than the one he’d left. The railing hung from a single nail, trailing in the water. Fixing it was something he never seemed to do, no matter how many times he swore he would. No time for it. He dipped his hand in and brought it out aching, water beading on the leather sleeve. It’d be a crying shame to die in water as cold as this. Water so cold it robbed a man’s breath.

  A man could die in it with his head well above the water, unable to fill his lungs. Tonight he would tack up a new railing at last, he promised, all the time knowing he wouldn’t. Once home, he’d not venture back out in the cold.

  He tied up and got his jug. The warm water burned as it brought feeling back to his fingers. Up the mud track, frozen hard, to the waiting Landcruiser, white paint twenty years faded to rust. He drizzled steaming water over the frozen windscreen, glass pinging as it warmed. Wrenching open the door, he slid over icy vinyl, choked the engine, and with a prayer, turned the key.

  On the last spasm of a cold-weakened battery, the engine caught.

  Frigid dry valves tapped angrily. Oil reached the head and they quieted.

  O’Connel ran a hand over the cracked dash with affection. He promised himself he would buy a new battery today, then smiled at his second lie of the morning.

  Why keep going through the motions like he did? Eating. Sleeping.

  Crossing the river. So much trouble for what? Habit, that’s all it was, all that kept him going. It would be so much easier just not to get out of bed at all. So much easier to take a walk up the mountain— he, Sonny, a .357.

  He let the brake ratchet in under the dash. Not today. Today he had classes waiting.

  • • •

  Six-thirty Tuesday morning the school was empty, the halls quiet.

  This time of peaceful half-light was when Solange had always gotten most of her preparation done. She missed the urgency of it, missed knowing that in little more than an hour children would pour into her classroom to wash away educational theory like sand castles before an incoming tide.

  Mounting the stairs, she smiled. For a beginning teacher this testing of method engendered thinly veneered terror. That she didn’t miss.

  What had he said? She remembered now. “Without the kids, why bother?” The same thought had nagged her every day since the day she’d quit the classroom. And somehow it didn’t help to know he felt the same.

  At the foot of the second flight, a large, dark man hailed her.

  Built like a Sumo wrestler, he smiled broadly, taking her small hand in his larger one. She remembered Genaro from her years at Elk River.

  School handyman, pouch of tools sagging from his belt, he kept the aging building from falling to pieces around them.

  Genaro paced her up the empty staircase. “Is it true that you’re here to let Dai go?” he said, concern shading his round face.

  “I’m here to observe, that’s all,” she said, a partial truth.

  “Yeah, I know what that means.” He shook his head, sighed, barrel chest deflating. “Well, I know you got to do your job same way we all do.” He hesitated as they made the sec
ond floor landing, checking to see they were alone. “You got a minute? Could I tell you something?” She set her bag on the rail. “Go ahead.”

  “I’ve been the scout leader here for twenty years. One day after school, I was cleaning Dai’s room, and we was talking about wrestling and such, and we got into an arm wrestling match. Oh, it was friendly all right, but a few of my scouts, his students, were around waiting for our meeting, and so it was a mite bit serious, too. I thought I’d beat him easy enough, outweighing him like I do.” He rubbed a meaty face with his big hand, white teeth bright against dark skin. “But I’ll be danged if he doesn’t have some wings on him! “We sat there, both of us giving it everything we had, the boys cheering us on. Remember, now, these were his students. He was just starting out a new teacher, back then. He didn’t have the tough reputation back then that he has now. Those boys tested him every day, and they were no angels. You got to know he wanted to show them what he could do. You know how it is.” She knew.

  He nodded, face close to hers. “Well, I couldn’t budge him, and he couldn’t move me. We just looked each other in the eye, arms shaking like twigs in a wind. Nobody took a rest, we never let up.

  This went on and on! Well, after a while, I felt him give my wrist a twist, just testing, you know, to see what I had left. And, I’ll tell you, the truth was, I didn’t have much.” He laughed, a full, round, laugh that made her smile. “I was just about done, and he knew it, too. The kids were egging us on, and I knew then and there he was going to put me down right in front of my boys.” They rounded the third floor banister and he stopped, leaning on the rail to catch his breath. “But he didn’t. He called for a draw.

  We got up and shook hands, and as far as my scouts knew, we’d tied. But he knew. And I knew.” He paused, looking timidly up at her, and then at the floor, stooping to scrape up a wad of gum from the tread with a putty knife. She waited while he put away the knife, tossing the gum in the trash, his movements those of a big cat.

  “We never talk about it, but that day on we been friends. After he lost his wife and kid, I went up to his room after school and shook his hand. Didn’t say nothing. What can you say, anyhow? I just wanted you to know that—to know what kind of man he is, that’s all.” He went back down the stairs, leaving her alone in the silent hall.

  She found O’Connel at his desk, marking papers by the dim light from the windows.

  “You want the lights on, or you want to be in the dark?” she said.

  He didn’t look up. “Leave them off”

  “Can you see what you’re doing?”

  “They’re going to let him play.” of course they were. She wished he hadn’t brought it up. “I know.”

  “Well, it stinks.” She turned, hiding a smile, to take a desk near the back of the room. There was something thrilling about him getting this bothered about it. When she had her face the way she wanted, she turned back. “You knew I wouldn’t press charges.”

  “I guess I did.” He got up, rolling sleeves up thick forearms.

  “They say sports build character, but all I see are young men taught to be coarse and vicious, then being fawned over for their brutality.

  How can you expect to teach a kid to skirt the rules to hurt the other team, and not have it spill over onto everybody else? Wagner knows he can do whatever feels good, and nothing’s going to happen to him. The kid’s barely scraping along with a D average. If we had any standards at all—”

  “Okay, okay, will you just drop it? I’ll live!” The last thing she wanted to hear was this. It was too close to what she had been thinking herself Wincing at the pain in her chest, she squeezed out of the desk to drop a stack of letters in front of him.

  “You’ve been busy.” He leafed through them. ““Insubordination to a member of the board… Failure to include closure in a lesson… Departing from assertive discipline guidelines… Manhandling a student… Sending a sleeping student to the infirmary… Departing from district curriculum.” He paused, puzzled. “Who did I manhandle?”

  “Wagner, you threw him against the wall pretty hard.”

  “Oh, so you were even on the job out there flat on your back, huh?” He laughed, not believing. “Beautiful, just beautiful.”

  She returned his look. “Just doing my job.”

  “Not bad for the first day.” He tossed the stack into the bottom drawer, kicked it shut. “ I’d better watch myself, or I could be in some real trouble.”

  She watched him, not understanding. How could a man who loved teaching as much as this one not care about being forced to quit? “You’re not worried?”

  “Nah. I’ve got a plan”.

  She frowned. “A plan, what kind of plan?” He went to the counter where an electric kettle whistled. “Tea?”

  “Sure.”

  “You see, you’re going to be so impressed with my competence, you’re going to tear them up.” She looked at him doubtfully. “I am.”

  “Sure. Sugar?” He held a cube poised over the thick mug.

  “Two, no milk.” Could he believe it? He didn’t look stupid. “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.” He shrugged. “We’ll see.” She looked down at the math papers on his desk. Each paper had either a check, a number three, two, or one. There were no corrections. “What do these mean?”

  “The check’s full credit, or an A, a three’s a B and like that, get it? A paper that’s half done I give a two, or half credit, and one that’s less than that I give a one or a zero. I stole the idea from Karl.” Curious, she frowned, looking up to catch him watching her. “I don’t see you’ve made any corrections.”

  “I don’t. We correct them in class. That way if anybody has any questions, they can ask them right there with their papers in front of them. I learned a long time ago not to waste my time correcting papers that would never be looked at again. My first year, I spent all my nights correcting papers, and when I gave them back, most of them were crumpled into balls and in the air, on their way to the trash before I’d taken a step away from the desk. They may not have learned anything from that, but I sure as hell did. I grade on effort now; if they try it, if they turn it in, I give them full credit. My classes are a pushover. I still have to fail a quarter of them. What does that tell you?” He brought her tea, and they stood by the radiator in front of the windows. The sky looked angry, ominous. Across the valley, mist lay in the hollows of the hills.

  The radiators hissed and moaned in the quiet room.

  “Lot of water up there,” he said.

  He wasn’t getting away with discussing the weather. She’d fired a lot of teachers, but never had one react this way. For some reason it bugged her.

  Because she believed in what she did, she always made sure.

  Teachers singled out because of politics or personality she wouldn’t touch. Those lacking class management skills she secured the help they needed. A tired few, nearing retirement, she found an undemanding niche to wait out the year. Some, for whatever reason, no longer cared about anything but their salary; these she went after with widely known ferocity. Now a man who obviously cared so much acted as if he didn’t—it didn’t make any kind of sense.

  “Why are you hanging yourself this way? You can teach, why not go with the flow? Just a little?”

  Eyes on the hills, he smiled. “Hey now, better watch yourself— that sounded suspiciously close to a compliment.” He blew over his steaming tea. “I played the game, but I didn’t like it. I did it because I had to—I had a family. Then one day I didn’t anymore, so I just thought, why bother, you know?”

  She scalded her tongue on her tea, set it roughly on the desk behind her, sending it sloshing over the rim of the mug. He was so frustrating. “You know this isn’t a game. Those letters are for real. In two days, the board will terminate you.”

  He cradled the cup in his hands, warming them, answering in little more than a whisper. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? Maybe what? Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter how good y
ou are, how dedicated, how right. You won’t get another job, not in a classroom, not in this district, not ever.”

  Curious, he turned to look at her. “Does that matter? to you, I mean?”

  She felt an icicle stab her chest, but held his gaze, looking him hard in the face. “It can’t—it can’t matter to me.” She went back to her briefcase and fighting to keep her hands steady, found a schedule. “And what about this? You’ve got Spanish, Physical Science, History, Basic Math, PE, AP Lit, and Geometry—that’s seven preps, and no prep period. And you’re always on the move between rooms. What kind of schedule is that?”

  “They thought they could get me to quit.” He shook his head. “I’m still here. Oh, and here’s another letter for you—there’s a faculty meeting today after school I’ll be missing.” She slammed the notebook back in her case. “Why? It’s just a faculty meeting. You’ve been to hundreds.” It didn’t make sense. “Why make my job so easy?”

  The bell rang and he shrugged. “You want to see why I stopped going? All right, but you better bring your laptop. You’ll need it.” Before she could ask him why, the room filled with noisy tenth graders. They sat down under his watchful eye, and at the bell began looking up the vocabulary words listed on the board.

  One boy kept talking.

  O’Connel asked him to get to work.

  He kept it up.

  Looking bored, O’Connel put a paper on the boy’s desk. “Give me— ‘I’ll do my best every day’ twenty times quietly, please. If you write quietly, it’s over.” As O’Connel turned away, the boy flicked the paper off the desk with a nail, smiling over his shoulder, proud of himself Several boys in the back were enjoying the show while not yet willing themselves to be a part of it. They wrote, but didn’t miss a thing.

  O’Connel went back to the front lab table and wrote out a referral.

  Tearing off the pink copy, he placed the first three carbonless sheets on the edge of the lab table.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Dodson. Come back tomorrow, and we’ll try it again.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said, writing, now.