Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  I hear a whirring noise behind me. I do not want to turn around. I am doing everything I can not to turn around. I am trying to keep my eyes straight ahead on the lilies and roses. But that noise behind me is getting louder. It sounds like a swarm of wasps.

  I finally give in to my own feeling of dread and I turn around.

  Facing me are several kids. I recognize them as the ones that defeated the lawn mower. They each have what is popularly known as a "weed whacker." This is a sort of mechanical golf club with a cutting edge at its base. And a blade that spins around. It is commonly used to, yes, whack weeds.

  These kids, with their whackers on HIGH, start to close in on me. Watching me with a curious mixture of hatred and glee. And love—should I write that? Hatred, glee, and love. Go figure.

  I know then that I am the weed in the garden.

  As in most horrible dreams, I wake up before the terrible whackers cut across my paralyzed throat, and to the most prosaic of settings: my miniature living room, lying scrunched up on the old smelly sofa my Uncle Phil gave me when I moved into the apartment in Washington, DC.

  I glance at my alarm clock and it is already quarter to eight. My back is sore from the uncomfortable position on the couch, and I contemplate calling in sick to work.

  But I am a teacher, after all, and Christmas break looms on the horizon. I feel a strange kind of loyalty to those rug rats I teach at Hardy Elementary School. So I turn on the Mr. Coffee machine (no jokes, please, about it being named for me, Malcolm "Cup" Coffey of Woodley Park in Our Nation's Capital). I jump in and out of the shower, throw on some clothes, and get the show on the road.

  Teachers aren't a scarce commodity in the Washington, DC, area, so it took four years to work my way into the public school system, finally ending up out in Arlington County rather than in the District itself. Last summer, I convinced the principal of Hardy Elementary, Mrs. Radisson (also more popularly known among faculty and students alike as "Mrs. Radish"), that I was the person to take over Language Arts (also known as Grammar and Reading) for the fourth through sixth grades. I never really wanted to be a teacher, but I knew when I got into it that there would be a lot of vacations and summers. Not too shabby a deal. What you don't get is good pay.

  But it's almost Christmas break, and this morning I was thinking, eleven whole days off. No lesson plans to write up, no sentences to parse, no margins to check, no themes to grade, no halls to monitor.

  No Billy Bates.

  William Scott Bates, as his report card reads.

  Or Master Bates, as he has been known to call himself.

  Get it?

  Because when I get off the subway, jog up the escalator, and shuffle out into the cool morning air to walk three blocks to school, I am not expecting that I will have such problems as Billy Bates. What would Billy have to gain by causing me problems right before Christmas vacation? Admittedly, he is probably the prototype for my lawn mower nightmares. I am not the only teacher at Hardy Elementary who feels that way, either.

  I was warned about Billy Bates my first week of teaching. "Just plain bad," Liz Jackson, the math teacher across the hall, informed me. "I've known that boy since he was five and he's always been bad."

  "Naughty?" I suggested, not yet having had any indication of the depths of his badness.

  Liz shook her head. "Too precious a word for him. In second grade he poured glue in a girl's hair and almost blinded one of the McNutt boys with a pair of scissors. Maybe that was naughty. And when he poisoned the fourth-grade science project? They were raising mice and Billy fed them rat poison. When he was caught, he said he didn't think the mice would die because it was rat poison, not mouse poison. Call him mischievous for that. But when he tried to bury Mary Alice Seidman alive, well, it was just plain bad. That's too kind a word, but it certainly describes him. Just look how the other kids treat him."

  I remarked that I hadn't noticed.

  She smiled that kind of wry half-smile that means: you ain't seen nothing yet, kiddo. "They stay away from him."

  But I learned fast enough to stay away from Billy Bates myself, more out of pity and incomprehension than anything. There's nothing a problem teacher will avoid more than a problem child. My first and biggest negative run-in with Billy Bates happened around Thanksgiving. He was in my homeroom class, and was pretty unobtrusive most of the time. He turned in his work on time and kept to himself. I was, and still am, a fairly unmotivated teacher. I think in those first months of the year I was waiting to catch fire, to suddenly find within myself some great vocational torch that would be fueled by the Arlington County public school system. It never happened. I found myself, instead, only calling on those students who would give me the least hassle, those who wrote in neat, legible rocker curves and raised their hands before I'd even finished asking the question. Until that day in November I didn't have much cause to worry about Billy Bates.

  But that afternoon I was leading my class back from the library where we were working on our First Thanksgiving projects. I had confiscated a number of rubber bands and been hit in the back of the neck with at least one spitball, but all in all it had been a quiet day.

  As we passed the hall bathroom, a few of the boys mentioned that they "gotta go." I lined the rest of the class up against the blue cinderblock wall and allowed those boys to go and do their duty. Billy Bates was among them.

  A few moments later one of the boys came out of the bathroom, still buckling his belt, and told me that Billy Bates was going to kill Eric Ownby and that I'd better get in there quick.

  I rushed into the boys' room. Two boys were holding a stall door open and when they saw me they whispered among themselves, wide-eyed, and then slipped past me as I took hold of the door. There behind the toilet stall door was Billy Bates being bad.

  Billy had one foot on Eric Ownby's back, pushing the boy's face down into the toilet bowl, flushing it, keeping him down, snickering, "I think I hear your mommy calling for you down there, Eric!"

  I pulled Billy off Eric and brought Eric's head out of the toilet. Eric was gasping, but he managed to tell me he was okay. I turned all my fury on Billy Bates. I really wanted to thrash that kid, beat some sense into him. I felt my skin turning red with anger. I took a few deep breaths. It was as if I had taken whatever wildness that had gotten loose inside me in that second and coaxed it back into its cage. Rule Number One in teaching, I had learned, is not to lose your temper in front of the kids.

  Eric Ownby was still spitting out water and had begun crying. I cleared the other boys out of the bathroom and lined them back up in the hall. I helped Eric down to the nurse's office, but before I went I said to Billy, who was still crouched against the yellow tile next to the toilet bowl, "You stay put. Bates, and if I see you've moved one muscle you're in for it big time, you hear me?" I remember thinking: Oh. God, I sound like my father. It was the best threat I could come up with on such short notice.

  When I returned from the nurse's office, Billy was still slumped down on the bathroom floor. Only now he was giggling and drooling. He told me, through the drool, that he had moved one muscle.

  That was when I noticed what his hand was doing. In his lap. His fly was unzipped and he had taken out his member, as my therapist would say, and was stroking it.

  I don't remember what kind of shocked thing I must've gasped—nothing in student teaching in college had prepared me for this moment. But Billy Bates curled his lips in a canine snarl and said, "Call me Master Bates! Masturbates! Get it get it get it?"

  Later, in the teachers' lounge, everyone had a good laugh over my inaugural trauma with Billy Bates. One teacher even quipped that I could charm the pants off my students. Another suggested we call in an exorcist for Billy, and I wondered if that might not be a good idea. But then I found out about his file, and decided to look over it to check out his past history.

  This kid has the fattest student file I've ever seen. It's about the size of your local community yellow pages. Mainly it's a listing of all
Billy Bates's offenses since the age of five. The first that caught my eye was his notorious attempt at a live burial of Mary Alice Seidman. He pushed her in a gravel pit near the playground and started to keep her head down while he filled the pit in with dirt. Luckily, one of the school bus drivers was nearby and was able to stop him before it had gotten too serious for Mary Alice (who, I might add, is no longer at Hardy Elementary). The bus driver wrote in his report:

  I asked Billy what he thought he was doing with Mary Alice. He told me in no uncertain terms that he was trying to plant her to see if she would come up again in the spring.

  Another teacher wrote:

  It was an animal's heart and she was crying because she'd already taken a bite out of it. Susan Beauchamp told me that Billy Bates was the boy who'd put it into her baloney sandwich. I confronted Billy and he admitted this. He said it was his pet guinea pig's heart and he brought it in for Show-and-Tell. When I asked him why he had put the heart in Susan's sandwich, he told me it was because she is such a pig that she should have a pig's heart, too. This kind of cruel behavior is typical of Billy Bates. Suggest expulsion.

  Many more entries like this: Billy dissected dead pregnant cats to see if the kittens were still alive, he opened all the milk cartons in the cafeteria and was caught spitting in each one, he hid in the girls' bathroom, he set fire to Annie Crowe's hair. But one entry explained it all for me:

  I saw some bruises before yesterday, but I assumed Billy had fallen down somewhere. I know how he roughhouses. But this was a long yellow and blue mark that encircled his neck. Almost like a tattoo of a necklace. I asked him what happened. He told me that his father had taken his puppy to the pound. He started crying as he told me. Billy got angry with his father and knocked a lamp over. His father undid his belt, wrapped it around Billy's neck, and started choking him. I know Billy has lied about some things, but I think he is telling the truth about this. Suggest we contact the authorities.

  I stopped reading the file then and put it back in the cabinet. From that moment on I felt pity and sadness for Billy Bates, I could even understand his badness. So I treated him as I would any other student, and he sat, quietly, through my classes for most of the fall.

  2

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  So this morning, the morning of what shall from here on in be known as "Hell Day," I don't expect a Billy Bates problem. I arrive just two minutes before the bell rings for classes to begin, duck by the front office so that Mrs. Radish doesn't see me ("Late again!"), and grab a quick cup of coffee in the teachers' lounge. I tell Lyndi Wright, the second-grade teacher, that I'm disappointed there are no doughnuts, and she flashes me a grin and suggests that if I watch her class for a few minutes before recess, she'll make a Krispy Kreme run. There's a note in my mail slot from Mrs. Radish informing me that my lesson plans have not yet found their way to her desk and to please see her immediately. I crumple the note and toss it in the circular file on the way out of the lounge.

  Then, down the hall to the classroom—thankfully, my room is as far away from the principal's office as possible. I've been daydreaming about summer a lot lately (and it's not even January!), the job interviews I will go on, how I'll visit my folks out in California in July and lie on the beach in Laguna, how I might finally apply to a graduate school; but mainly I am looking forward to sleeping in.

  Just another week. One more week. I could count the hours. The minutes. Then Christmas break—made me feel like a kid.

  3

  When I walk in the room this morning, my bulletin board is in a cat-scratched shambles. I figure Mrs. Radish has done this in her zeal to kick me off my duff. All the tacks and pins are on the floor, and the kids' papers are littered across my desk, completely covering it. I never put things like this beyond Mrs. Radish's capabilities ever since I caught her snooping through my desk and trash can (possibly looking for one of the several notes that Liz and I pass back and forth to each other across the hall).

  But then I see the words on the blackboard, and I know that even Mrs. Radish would not flip out so completely as to write them. The words make no sense.

  In fluorescent blue chalk, written about twenty times, is the phrase He says you cheat.

  I don't get it at all. I erase this cryptic message just as my homeroom files in, and in its place I write REMEMBER MARGINS! and SPELLING TEST, SECTION 11.4. Although the fifth-graders notice the tornado-hit quality of the bulletin board, no one says a word about it. We're all getting lazy and indifferent; the thought of vacation, so close (ten days away, but only eight school days), turns us into lotus-eaters.

  I don't give my homeroom their spelling test until after lunch. I forget about the mess in my classroom and the blue chalk writing on the blackboard as the day progresses. When I get the fifth-graders back around 12:30, I read perfunctorily down the list of words from the spelling book. I don't even care that the students are whispering between words—in my mind I'm in Georgetown having a beer, or wondering if I should call the good doctor about last night's weed whacker dream.

  Nina Van Huyck, one of those precocious little girls who wears makeup by the time she's ten and is purported to have kissed every boy in the fifth grade before Christmas break, collects the tests. When she gets to Billy Bates's desk to pick up his test, she lets out a little squeal. It is more an ear-piercing shriek, like fingernails scraping against a blackboard.

  I get up from my desk and glare at the two of them.

  "Make him stop," she whines. She's standing right in front of his desk so I can't tell what he's doing.

  Some of the boys seated near him start giggling, covering their mouths to hold in their snickers, and other students stare wide-eyed at Billy and gasp as if to clue me in that not only is Billy Bates being BAD, but he is also going to get CAUGHT.

  I'm thinking: please, Billy, it's only a few more days, don't have your pants around your ankles.

  But his pants are on. His shirt is on. He is completely clothed. Thank God for small favors. I step away from my desk and walk wearily back to Billy's desk. "Take your seat, Nina," I say as I approach the two of them.

  "Tell him to stop it," she says in that haughty little Daddy's princess voice, and I cringe to think I've encouraged her arrogant behavior all year just because she was willing to wash my blackboards in the afternoon.

  Billy Bates is resting his head on the top of his desk.

  "Are you all right, Billy?" I ask and reach down to feel his forehead.

  It is cool. He doesn't have the flu or the plague.

  He doesn't look up. "Go away, Mr. Coffey."

  "Excuse me, Billy?" I ask, and realize how asinine I sound.

  "I'm playing dead, see?" He lifts his head up and I see that his face is smudged with blue. I touch his chin with my fingers and the color comes off in my hand. Blue fluorescent chalk dust.

  He says you cheat, written in blue fluorescent chalk.

  "But you aren't dead, Billy."

  "He says I am. And he says you're going to be, too."

  More nervous giggling from the other kids.

  "All right, enough. Billy, put your desk in the hall and go sit there until class is over." This was my usual solution for the few times I suspected that Billy was about to get out of hand. Park it, Mister, I'd say, and he was usually content to sit out Language Arts in the hallway, just outside the door. This was a popular spot for him among my colleagues—it made up for our incompetence as instructors.

  After I help Billy with his desk, amidst muffled giggles and whispers from the surrounding peanut gallery, I go over the spelling test with the rest of the class. Then we open our workbooks to the next session.

  When class is almost over, I ask if there are any volunteers to go out to the hall and tell Billy he may return to class and line up with the rest of them. Of course, Nina Van Huyck's hand is the first up in the air.

  "All right, Nina," I nod. Students always think that when they run errands for teachers and clap erasers that th
ey are somehow part of a charmed circle. Nina is one of those.

  She goes to the door, with some trepidation since she is probably wondering if Billy will still be playing possum for her benefit. But she opens the door, looks out into the hall, turns her head back to the classroom and says, "Mr. Coffey, he isn't here. His desk is here. But he isn't."

  "Great," I whisper, and when an elementary school teacher says "great," what he is really saying is "Oh, shit."

  The bell rings, I dismiss my kids. I walk out into the corridor amidst a sea of children as they pour into and out of all the classrooms. I go across the hall and ask Liz if she'll watch my next class for about five minutes while I go off in search of Billy Bates.

  I nudge my way through the students, which is difficult to do when they only come up to your waist. It's like being mired in a bog among creepy-crawlies. I check the boys' room, the girls' room, the cafeteria, and even the principal's office. Then onto the library, and the whole way down the hall I am quizzing teachers and students: have they seen him? Finally I get the bright idea to check the playground.

  There he is, standing near the jungle gym, talking to himself. I shout, "Billy Bates, you get in here right this instant!"

  Billy stops talking, and I think he is turning around to look my way. But it's more like he's cocking his head to one side trying to hear someone better. And it's not me he's listening to.

  I march like a storm trooper onto the blacktop. Billy finally notices me. His eyebrows knit on his brow. His lips are moving but I can't hear a word. I get right up next to him. Out of the corners of my eyes I notice that the entire school seems to be lined up at the windows facing out on the playground.

  "I said get in that building right now, young man."

  He looks confused. Frightened. He crosses his arms on his chest defensively. "He says No."