crumble walk

food, water, indoor plumbing
people I pass
along the highway
not speaking

my

language but nodding just the same,
and in the morning sun
a pick up is a pick up,
no matter who's

driving, crumbling red brick wall.
the world, children.

Sebastião Salgado

The Lady from Shang-Shang: Kilmanjaro, Chapter One

Each and every morning Estelle poured olive oil over the top of her head, leaned forward and allowed it to drip down off her bangs. As soon as the oil formed a good sized puddle on the rest room floor, she dragged a pinky down the middle of it all, uncovered one eye and examined herself in the booger-smeared bathroom mirror.

She whispered, “Well that’s fittingly self-deprecating, don’t you think Estelle?” Straight away she replied, “No, it’s not. That greasy black waterfall is only half self-deprecating.”

Estelle let her hair fall back in place and remained silent, not asking the obvious follow up question: 'If my black waterfall is only half self-deprecating, then what about the other half?'

When she emerged from the rest room after her very first olive oiling, Lester leered at her and sputtered, “You look like the Lady from Shang Shang or something, Estelle.”

“Guess that means you’d be trapped in a hall of mirrors, doesn’t it, Lester?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Estelle.”

“I know you don’t, Lester.”

Estelle knew a few things Lester didn't. For one, her olive oiled bangs covered two galaxy shaped clusters of maroon freckles on either cheek that Lester never paid much mind. Because of these distinctive marks, an old hag living two houses down from Estelle's childhood home called her “the little witch” and spat betel juice onto the ground whenever the girl walked past her front porch on the way to school. The woman became obsessed with Estelle's freckles, in fact, and each morning took to waiting by her mailbox in order to follow the child to and from school and shake a knarled finger in her direction, crossing and recrossing herself, sputtering curse after curse after curse. A devout Pentecostal, the woman felt bound to the task: Any form of display was an abomination, and in Estelle's case, those freckle clusters glowed a less-than-God-like orange, a pigmentation, clearly, from hell.

“Something’s not right with the child. She carries the sign," the crone announced to members of her congregation. After that, one might have thought an agitated pack of coyotes had been turned loose inside the little church. Many took to the ground, writhing on their backs as if being electrocuted, speaking in voices seldom heard since ancient astronauts roamed the Earth.

By age seven, Estelle had decided to live the life of a rebel on top of what was already naturally ‘not right’ about her. 

Living the life of a rebel signified different things to different people, of course. For Estelle, it meant wielding a teaspoon of magic every now and then, whenever it struck her fancy.

As it happened, the old lady was killed by a dump truck which, for no apparent reason, careened up onto the sidewalk. The hag had been in a particularly foul mood that day, hurling vehement curses and punctuating them with her dark blood flecked spittle. More significantly, Estelle's art teacher, Ms. Pledgefeather, had shown her class how to make collage for the first time. Estelle had been beside herself with that realm of possibility and on her way home, had been in no mood for the old woman’s rants, brown-staining an otherwise wonderful day with unfounded negativity. She slammed her front door, rushed upstairs and commenced snipping pictures out of magazines, knowing right away she had discovered a hidden garden within herself.

The hag planted herself in front of the girl’s house and insisted on pointing her knobby cudgel upward toward Estelle's bedroom window, continuing her wet invective. Estelle yanked the blind down at the exact instant a truck jumped the curb and pinned the woman against the sturdy black tarred telephone pole in front of the house. He severed legs released onto the sidewalk making a dull percussion heard by Mrs. Stillsbury next door were likened the sound to a butcher's delivery of ham hocks onto the back porch: Thump, thump.

Despite the woman being divided in half, the truck's engine had managed to cauterize all major blood vessels allowing her time to raise a knarled finger one final time and point in the direction of Estelle, now peeking out from behind the blind, head filled with a myriad of ideas for both cut and paste as well as photo manipulation techniques.

The day Estelle found the red horned rims sitting on the bar top was what some people might call a game changer. She continued to apply the olive oil to her bangs but stopped her whispering inquiry. The red horned rims had cinched the look: Self-deprecation had been gobbled up by its opposite: The astute fashion statement. Whoever left the glasses on the bar top that night and where that person might have acquired horned rims that exquisite was anybody’s guess; there’d been too much of the usual yelling and screaming, beer mugs shattering and so forth to narrow down who that person might have been. The bottom line was, for Estelle, the red horned rims were a gift from some anonymous drunken angel who had swooped down from Heaven on a rope, like Tarzan, King of the Apes, and placed the specs by the Schlitz tap for her to find.

She’d been mopping up a puddle of urine at the base of a bar stool when she spotted the glasses and right away recognized their potential. She threw a crumbled napkin over the top like a secret agent at Checkpoint Charlie, sliver of microfilm embedded in her rear molar. Certainly, the last thing she wanted to do was call that asshole Lester's attention to her find. He’d have 'confiscated' the glasses on the spot.

Lester had been counting money, straightening crumbled one dollar bills out on the side of his dented and rusty cash register, like he always did that time of day. Estelle slipped the prize into her apron pocket and made a bee-line for the rest room, twirling once half way there. She'd seen Sissy Spacek twirl in Coal Miner’s Daughter so any time she felt that rare semblance of hope, she twirled.

She’d been mopping up a puddle of urine at the base of a bar stool when she spotted the glasses and right away recognized their potential. She threw a crumbled napkin over them like some secret agent at Checkpoint Charlie, sliver of microfilm embedded in a rear molar. Certainly, the last thing Estelle wanted to do at this point was call Lester's attention to the find. He would have 'confiscated' the glasses on the spot.

Stepping inside the silver fish ridden rest room and locking the flimsy door behind her, she right away clamped the glasses over her heavily olive-oil laden hair. They stuck fast: Red against black. Perfect. She uncovered an eye and peered closely at her reflection in the cracked mirror between the smudges of grimy fingerprints. The whole experience was not unlike a visit to the Louvre itself; as if she'd flown all the way to Paris, France, was met at the airport by the dead General Charles De Gaulle, only to have him plant a warm welcoming smacker on both her cheeks while bequeathing the Légion d'Honneur.

What a find, those red horned rims had been! They turned out to be more than a little something for her to clutch, a sturdy branch growing out the side of that sheer cliff face to which she'd been clinging all these years, ever since Lester had swiped her wand. The horned rims represented not just small case hope but Hope with a capital H. And Hope with a capital H was exactly what Estelle needed to stow in her apron pocket as opposed to small case hope; for example, the small case hope that baby Jesus will be waiting for you at the pearly gates and hand over a triple scoop ice cream cone.

Estelle needed those glasses along with the Hope with a capital H they brought to her because of what Lester had done. She couldn’t leave the bar for one. Her wand and its magic had been dictated the terms. Although she didn’t care so much about that, the real tragedy was being unable to express herself, to show anybody who mattered what she looked like in those new horn rims, how they contrasted perfectly against her trademark waterfall of oily black hair. Although if you pressed Estelle, she would admit there were the regulars, the piss-in-your-pants sterno-drinkers staggering in and out of Lester's bar every evening. But they wouldn’t have cared if she showed up in a burlap sack with undies on her head.

Estelle wanted to make her fashion statement at the mall, not inside some dingy old beer hall squat down on the deserted outskirts of a factory town. Going to the mall with her glasses was ALL she wanted to do, that, and collage. Her needs were modest.

Lester didn't let her. He could have, conceivably, as he was in possession of the wand. The magic would have technically allowed him to, according to ancient rules and all that. Lester didn't because, as Estelle put it, always in a whisper: 

“Lester was one big Asshole, an Asshole with a capital A.”

Year after year Estelle had stayed within the confines of the shabby bar, the wand hidden somewhere inside. She lived there twenty-four seven and slept upstairs in the crawl space, dreaming of her mall days, when she'd been free to wander the stores, levels one, two and three, visit the craft shop, taking both up and down escalators while wearing the mod styles of the time; not those billowing brown and black one-piece shit-ass ankle length smocks Lester brought back from the Salvation Army store.

Estelle was forced to keep her deep dark secrets locked up and played the good church mouse whenever Lester was skulking around. Estelle was biding her time. Lester was in for a surprise, and a big one at that, not one of those clapping your hands together goody goose egg types of surprises either.

In her frustration, Estelle imagined herself pulling out her hair follicles one by one, neurotically, as they termed it in Lester’s Encyclopedia of Mental Illness, just about her favorite book of all time, although she’d never admit that to him. Even though she imagined pulling her hair out, Estelle would never actually yank a single follicle; only real hair pulling nuts did that, not the intensely frustrated and imaginative people of her ilk. In Lester's book hair pulling madness was called Trichotillomania. Estelle loved ten-dollar words like Trichotillomania and murmured them whenever Lester was out of earshot, sometimes in a tiny high-pitched voice. She'd every now and then murmur a ten-dollar word and at the same time fire off an imaginary pistol, pointing an index finger at Lester's head, flexing her thumb back and forth, and making the "Pih-chew, pih-chew" sound.

What Estelle did accomplish was to remain proactive. She used the spine of Lester's book to scrape at the mortar between the bricks of her prison cell, scraping day after day, week after week, digging deeper in order to form an escape tunnel in her head, the book's spine equivalent of a toothbrush or teaspoon back in the day when prisons were places you could escape from in that way, that is, if you were patient. Her digging with the book's spine, of course, was metaphoric. Estelle only had metaphors to dig with, no real teaspoons or toothbrushes. She would have dug with a bobby pin if she could have. The sad reality was Estelle couldn’t dig out of her prison in reality without coming back into possession of the wand that Leseter hid.

Lester hid it and hid it good. Estelle had to make the most of living with Lester in his dead-end toilet bowl of a bar.

"Fuck that shit-ass Lester," she'd whisper, grip her lids and roll up her eyes so only the whites showed. She couldn't see the effect in the dingy bathroom mirror but flipped them up anyway, imagining someone looking at her when she did.

Estelle would have to remain an apparition to her fans. Even if she had somehow managed to get outside the bar and make her way over to the mall, they wouldn't have been able to see her anyway. She needed her wand, in order to be seen. In those glorious mall days, she carried it with her at all times. The magic contained within brought with it fans who’d say things like, "tres cool" or “boss.” She’d swing her little purse around and smack her gum. Now her only fans were the drunks at Lester's Place. She felt herself to be merely an apparition to them, an apparition in the throes of their deliria. She essentially didn't exist.

'Possibly they share some kind of collective tremens,' she conjectured in front of the heavily marred mirror, biting her fingernails. Yet being an apparition within someone else’s delirium might not be all that bad of a thing. In fact, she’d turned inward during the years she’d been holed up in the bar and if anything found she didn’t need the mall any longer, all that adulation. She began to take the art of her collage making more seriously, that inner place she went to in order to make them all the while comforted to know that Lester had it coming and had it coming good.

Jane Simmonds

My eyes are fine now. I’ve had both done. Miracle. No, don’t take off your clothes. Lay down. Don’t blink. Just like that. Done. They put a big black light over my head. Over. I can see perfectly. Jane Simmonds is nearly blind because she went to someone who does everything. You have to go to someone who does nothing but cataracts all week. I told her. She didn’t listen. She went to somebody who does everything. You have to look at each and every office and that’s how I found mine. I asked and asked. I met a woman in his waiting room and I told her, do you know how many offices I’ve been to before this one? Twelve. She said, do you know how many offices I’ve been to? Seventeen.

Jane didn’t listen and she’s nearly blind. She IS blind. They blinded her because she didn’t listen.

Then she got the wrong sized artificial knee. Same thing. She went to the hospital downtown instead of the one I told her to go to. They put in a size too big. Hell on earth. Gave her a six instead of a five.

She was so upset that she signed up for a retreat. I told her DO NOT sign up for a retreat, they’ll brainwash you. She signed up anyway and not only did they brain wash her but tried to empty her bank account. They had her chanting mmmm mmmm mmmm then turned around and wanted her to sign. As sweet as can be then turned on her. Nightmare. Tried to take her for everything she was worth. Three months before she came back from childhood. They forced her to do parent child dialogues, you see; had her pretending she was eight. She didn’t come back. Horrible. Here she was seventy-five, thinking that she was eight. They had her trapped in childhood and that’s exactly where they wanted her, childhood, because they could get her money that way.

For weeks this went on. Weeks. She wore her hair in locks like Shirley Temple and it was so embarrassing to be with her but who else was going to help? No one else: Me.

Dear God in heaven. I’d take her to the bank and she would stand there in line shaking her locks from side to side then try to skip but she couldn’t because they had put in a number six knee instead of a number five. She would begin to fall and I would have to hold her up. Me. Eighty. Then she’d go outside, put a finger in her mouth and stand there in the street looking at some doll in a window, not paying attention to the cars. One day she stepped right out in front of a bus. Driver threw his hands up just like this.

After she got better, I told her about the dentist who did my teeth. Jane’s teeth were bonded. I had the same thing after my teeth were bonded; developed a sizzling s. I would call her up and say,

You need to re-contour the back side of your crowns, Jane.

Didn’t listen. She was narcissistic, you see, so she wouldn’t admit to having a sizzling s. Her psychiatrist made her that way. He was arrested right in the middle of Park Avenue. Jane had been walking to her appointment and there he was, standing smack in the middle of 71st and Park with an erection. She didn’t know what to do, just stood there. When he saw her, he came at her with his erection. The police showed up and had to shock him. She had already paid him thousands and thousands. Ruined her. She became a narcissist after that and had the biggest sizzling s I’ve ever heard but still can’t admit it.

What did you shay?

Jane, you have a lisp, I tell her.

Lishp? She can’t say lisp because of all her bonding. What did you shay I had?

Bonding, Jane. And a lisp.

Jeshush.

You can call her up. She’ll talk to you if you don’t believe me.

What do you want me to shay?

You say it wrong, Jane. It’s not show, it’s so.

I didn’t shay that. Sho what elsh is new?

Jane will never admit to having a sizzling s. Uh huh, never. Doesn’t listen, but we’ve been the best of friends for years and years.

The Wife's Request of the Tomb Maker

A lesser known squandering cousin of Tutankhamen was embalmed with an erection wrapped in papyrus. The hieroglyphics reluctantly inscribed on the door of his shrine described the royal penis driving a chariot through the gates of death while straddled by an angry Sekhmet wearing sun hat and holding the ankh of life. She protected him, he thought, from Montu, who considered infidelity an abomination. The tomb maker had been instructed that Sekhmet’s breasts were to remain buoyant and sweaty for all eternity, that her head be tilted backwards and her two lion’s claw hands be digging into his chest. The man’s wife, buried next to him, arms crossed conventionally, had privately requested of the same tomb maker that her own eternal fingers be curled inward and embedded deeply within her chest wall.  To assure this posture, before her passing, the wife delivered one thousand jars of beer to the tomb maker's mud brick home.

Mr. Pinsler's Locker

Mr. Pinsler placed the stick of chalk on the blackboard’s lip using two fingers in such a way the fleshy pads contacted wood surface first, making very little sound, inaudible to most students in the room. As he turned to face the class, a ray of light passed through the thick dirty window and lay across his cheeks for an instant. 

"Dough," Weltzein, a student seated toward the back, murmured.

Mr. Pinsler slid his high backed wooden chair over no more than three inches, twisted his body and sat, laying both palms flat on his desk either side the stack of papers he earlier had aligned with considerable care.

While standing in front of the blackboard moments before, Mr. Pinsler had completed another near perfect circle using his pre-cut piece of chalk. He had gone about the circle’s  labeling while discussing its assigned definitions in a voice not overbearing but sufficiently loud so as not to strain the ears of the children in attendance. He employed his usual neutral tone without over  or under emphasizing any one aspect of exposition. Students were required to commit all the mentioned terms to memory, regardless of relative importance.

Every Sunday evening, seated at dining room table, Mr. Pinsler opened a new box of chalk. Using sturdy vice, precision rule, and fine toothed jig saw, he cleaved each piece to measure, within a sixteenth, two inches in length. He always placed a tea towel between table top and jaw of vice, assuring the table surface remained unmarred; the towel also made for less wobble. On Monday morning, after commanding the class to silence, Mr. Pinsler, in precisely the same order each time, unsnapped his briefcase, transferred the ten freshly hewn pieces of chalk into desk drawer, then aligned, in order, pencils, pens, and papers. After securing the briefcase, he lowered it to the floor just one side of his left foot and nudged it forward until becoming flush with the desk leg.

Mr. Pinsler consistently drew near perfect circles on the blackboard, creating the first one of the week no later than class’s end on Tuesday; although more often right after first bell Monday morning.

His near perfect circle demonstrations served to emphasize perseverance in practice and reminded students of his prowess as master and that one day, providing considerable effort was exercised over time, they too might approximate that level of skill, or not. The students remained still as a church congregation whenever Mr. Pinsler turned his back to complete the motion; even the class bully Pratt remained poised to a degree. The mathematics instructor’s arm appeared to disarticulate at his elbow in the course of travel, mimicking a compass motion yet was imbued with a cavalier, even aggressive, aspect.

On one occasion, over a glass of sherry, Mr. Pinsler shared with Ms. Poisson, the French instructess: “As Evil Kineval soars his motorcycle over a line of school buses, in near perfect trajectory of travel, remaining poised mid-flight, I too feel, Ms. Poisson, my execution of a near perfect circle sets a powerful example.”

“Oh, indeed you do, Monsieur Pinsler," she said and they had touched glasses.

Mr. Pinsler, a man of apparent high propriety, took their relationship no farther, despite the fact Ms. Poisson had applied a false mole to one cheek.

As Mr. Pinsler sat in front of the class that morning, a fly landed on the rim of his spectacles, and crawled onto the inner surface of one lens. In reaching the center, it began to clean itself. After a few moments, the fly scurried back and forth, seemingly for not reason whatsoever and thereby captured the attention of each and every student. Its wings nearly brushed Mr. Pinsler’s corneal surface several times as it performed several abrupt direction changes. The fly finally walked confidently over to the edge of the frame, around and across the outer lens surface, and came to its opposite edge whereupon it stopped, cleaned itself one final time and scampered back onto the inner surface. Mr. Pinsler observed the insect’s activity, unblinking, his eyes turned inward. The class, in turn, observed Mr. Pinsler.

"Freak," Pratt, the class bully, murmured. 

On that day, Mr. Pinsler wore, as he normally did, his meticulously buttoned sweater, brown as a paper bag, his jacket, a hue of corrugated cardboard and his walnut brown slacks, under which he had strapped his chesnut brown support hose. A pair of beaver brown shoes had been polished to a uniform luster. Their color, in particular, had been carefully sought through review of numerous department store catalogs: Mr. Pinsler was acutely aware that Beaver and brown were related etymologically, or nearly so.

After the fly departed, the students slumped back into their seats; a general release of tension was felt. The Brownian motion of student activity recommenced.

“Weltzein,” Pratt hissed and yanked the hair of the boy seated to his front.

“Pratt!” Weltzein jolted backward, inhaling through gritted teeth.

“Weltzein to the front,” Mr. Pinsler stated flatly and stood. In that posture, the frays of his sweater became apparent, shone upon by that same single beam of morning light which had captured his yeast like countenance. He had worn these same articles of clothing since attending his English boarding school in capacity of student and Master both, the latter position he accepted immediately upon University graduation. Mr. Pinsler ultimately relocated to the States due to some vague issue and assumed his present stewardship.

As Weiltzein minced down the classroom aisle, all heads turned as if coupled to a mechanical actuator. Mr. Pinsler gripped Weltzein’s hair and lifted him into the air. The boy grimaced, his shoulders rising as he attempted to maintain contact with the floor.

“No talking!” Mr. Pinsler shouted into Weltzein’s ear and lowered him. The bell rang. Pinsler removed his briefcase from under the desk, unsnapped the locks, placed papers in the front-most compartment, pens in the middle, pencils in the rear. He pressed the briefcase closed, tapped it twice, locked his desk drawer and walked out of the classroom, already one minute late for his library proctorship, a responsibility which would last the entire next hour.

Due to scheduling oversight, no instructor would arrive in the home room for another fifteen minutes. The children arose and began flinging themselves around the room like autumn leaves buffeted by unpredictable gusts of wind; all of them, that is, except for Weltzein, who continued to rub his head, standing beside Mr. Pinsler’s desk.

A spit ball stuck to the side of Jiminez’s head. He, in turn, punched Luchars in the arm as hard as he could wile O’Connor crept around the corner into the teacher’s alcove, entered the bathroom, unrolled a measure of toilet paper, ran the wad under the faucet, re-emerged and pelted the transfixed Weltzein on the side of his neck. Pratt, the bully, observed O’Connor and ran around the corner, intending to repeat the same gesture. He slowed, noticing the padlock on Mr. Pinsler’s locker had been left unfastened in the professor’s hurry to leave. Pratt jumped into the air and kicked the handle upward, sending the padlock clattering across the floor. The locker door careened against the adjacent steel cabinet causing a jarring vibration.

“Pinsler.” Pratt snorted, studying two glass quart-sized orange juice jars sitting side by side on the locker floor. Their labels had been removed. Both were sealed with original Tropicana lids and each jar filled to the top with the same brown liquid. Pratt carried both jars into the classroom, placed them on the floor in front of the blackboard and unscrewed the top of one. Pratt scowled, waved his hand in front of his face, and shrieked:

“Pinsler’s dook jars!”

The children gathered and began flinching and gyrating. With everyone’s attention fixated on the dook jars, Weltzein wandered into the teacher’s alcove and stood in front of Mr. Pinsler’s now open locker. He examined the plywood board at the rear, displaced slightly to one side. Darkness was visible beyond the gap between the wood’s edge and the locker’s metal sidewall. Weltzein glanced over the locker’s top at the thin plaster wall, painted dour green, the wall which separated the staff alcove from the classroom. The darkness in the gap appeared to recede much farther than the few inch thickness of the wall. Weltzein moved his hand forward and inserted his fingers into the space beyond and wiggled them. Satisfied, Weltzein pushed his hand inward a little farther, then farther still until his whole arm was immersed within the unknown humor, all the way up to his shoulder. All attention in the classroom was focused upon the two glass jars, leaving Weltzein to his own devices.

As it happened, Mr. Pinsler had been collecting his feces in glass orange juice jars since he had been a boy at boarding school, even joining societies of like minded individuals.

With his arm fully extended, Weltzein felt his hand at least should be well within the classroom space next door yet he saw no light not desks nor students within the gap between wood and metal, only the vague twinkling of light, like stars in the night sky. As he felt no resistance and perceived no real danger, Weltzein yanked the plywood board out, turned sideways, and stepped into the darkness. He disappeared completely. A moment later, Weltzein stepped back into the alcove and brushed himself off.

Mr. Pinsler rushed into the classroom, having remembered in arriving at his library post that he had not secured his locker's padlock. Pulling up abruptly, he stared at the two jars around which the tornado of children careened. He swiveled to examine his wide open locker door in the alcove and attempted to clap both hands together forcibly. Each hand ended up missing the other almost entirely, resulting in a faint scuff.

“Seats! Every child in their assigned seat!” Mr. Pinsler bellowed.

Weltzein had already been seated, staring straight ahead calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary were transpiring.

Like a mother hen, Mr. Pinsler recapped both jars and carried them gently into the alcove.

“There will be serious repercussions,” he called over his shoulder as he placed them back down on the floor of the locker.

With Pinsler occupied, Pratt yanked the back of Weltzein’s hair again and hissed, “Weltzein.” Welztzein remained still, staring ahead at one of Mr. Pinsler’s near perfect circles on the blackboard.

Mr. Pinsler, in the meanwhile, was standing in front of his locker, studying the sheet of plywood leaning to one side. Darkness was no longer present in the rear, only the locker’s scuffed steel panel, where a large magazine center fold had been taped. The photograph showed a man standing over a glass jar releasing a torrent of loose stool . The pin up was Mr. Pinsler himself, taken some years previously. Pinsler fumbled with the plywood sheet, hammering it in place with his fist. He adjusted the two orange juice jars to previous orientation, closed the door, and fastened the padlock securely. He angrily strode back into the classroom and in a rumbling voice asked,

“Who has been in my locker?”

Pratt called out: “Weltzein. Weltzein found your jars, Mr. Pinsler, and opened them up in front of the class.”

“Is this true? Weltzein?”

The students looked at one another and a few wagged their heads up and down.

“I saw Weltzein holding your dook jar, Mr. Pinsler.” Jiminez said.

“Weltzein,” Pratt hissed.

“What you saw was NOT. . . a dook jar,” Mr. Pinsler spoke with jaws tensing. In the fluorescent lighting at the classroom’s edge, his complexion appeared even doughier than before. He spoke more quietly: “You were mistaken.”

The students remained silent.

“Weltzein. Were you in my locker?”

“I was.”

“Front!”

Weltzein arose and walked down the aisle yet did not stop and turn as had been customary to receive his punishment but proceeded straight to the board and picked up one of Mr. Pinsler’s pre-cut pieces of chalk.

“Weltzein? I did not specify the black board nor did I instruct you to touch the chalk.” Pinsler turned toward the class. “Did I specify the blackboard or instruct Weltzein to touch the chalk?”

“No, Mr. Pinsler,” half the class replied.

“Weltzein, you are already facing near certain expulsion.” Mr. Pinsler spoke in a clear monotone.

Weltzein drew a perfect circle just underneath Mr. Pinsler’s near perfect circle. The class could clearly see the difference: Mr. Pinsler’s circle was askew compared to Weltzein’s.

“Weltzein, what are you doing?”

Weltzein drew another perfect circle, then another then another, all without any effort whatsoever. He turned and addressed the class: “Mr. Pinsler keeps jars of his own shit in his school locker because he is obsessively compelled to do so. He allows Pratt to get away with his bullying because Pratt’s father went to the same boarding school as he and shares his fetish for shitting into jars.”

At that moment, the principle of the school burst into the classroom accompanied by a police officer.

“Mr. Prinsler, we need you to open your locker. Atop my desk a few minutes ago was placed an envelope containing several highly disturbing photographs. Parents have apparently received the same packet of images and are congregating in the school lobby as we speak.”

There was a burst of walkie-talkie static as Weltzein placed the chalk back onto the blackboard’s lip, making a distinctive tic on the surface of the wood.