Imagine My Surprise! (26)

In which Stoli gets the dirt on Franks and crew.

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26. First Grade

Imagine my surprise when I found myself in first grade! Again! The first time was Del Roble Elementary School in San Jose. Ms. Otani. Very nice, as I recall. Big black bun on her head, always smiling. This time around it was a lady named Gina, at a place called Village Elementary, a few blocks down from our house. I don’t remember Gina’s last name because it’s been a few years and kids don’t use their teacher’s last name to identify them in school anymore. No more Ms. Otani or Mr. Friesen, or what-have-you. It’s passé. Now it’s Gina or Ron, or what-have-you. The role of teachers has been equalized. It’s first-name-basis now.

First day of school and Louisiana and I walked down the block, the late August sun already breaking down what remained of the morning coolness. I wore a version of what I’d worn for the last forty years or so: jeans, t-shirt and black Chuck Taylor hightops. The t-shirt had a baby Yoda on it giving a peace sign. In my little backpack there was lunch, a water bottle, a pad of paper, pens, The Crying of Lot 49 and a cheap flip-phone that I talked the parents into buying me recently. A flip-phone was all I could get because A: You’re too young for a smartphone!, and B: We don’t have that kind of money! Are you crazy?

Lou wore white jean shorts, red sandals, and a salmon-striped boat-neck tee. And yellow cat-eye sunglasses. Always on parade.

Across the street from the school, we had the talk.

“Keenan.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Don’t frighten the children.”

“Mom.”

“Actually, the children will be fine. Don’t frighten the grown-ups. Keep your mouth shut unless you’re called on, but for Chrissake don’t raise your hand.”

“Don’t raise my hand? What am I even here for?”

“That’s a good question. And the answer to that is so that I can start setting up the books for John and you don’t get in my way by telling me how I should set up the books for John.”

“So, I’m going to school so you can get me out of your hair?”

She knelt to my level and dropped her sunglasses. “Keenan, most parents embrace the notion that school is just daycare with learning. Otherwise, we’d get nothing done.”

“Great.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, I just want us to appear normal, Keen. Now let’s go meet this Gina lady.”

“School is a parental conspiracy.”

As we crossed the street to the school she casually pleaded, “Please don’t make Gina insane, Keenan.”

~~•~~

Gina’s 1st grade classroom door said “Gina’s 1st Grade!” in tilted block letters, alternately purple, red, blue, yellow, green, repeating. It was Room 8. Louisiana knocked sharply three times, a little too hard. I looked up at her.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

We heard approaching footfalls on the linoleum and the door swung open.

“Hello?” The woman who answered the door was a pale figure, towering, with a freckled face.

“Hi,” Lou said, “I’m Louise and this is Keenan.” I elicited a half-shrug and half-smile.

“Oh! Hi, Louise and Keenan! I’m Gina. Welcome to school! Come on in — we’ve still got a few minutes before first bell. Sorry I couldn’t meet with you sooner.”

Louise?

We sat down at a low crafts table, all three of us in kid chairs, which looked comical for my mother, but somehow natural for Gina. The room was a kaleidoscope of colorful die-cut cardboard numbers, letters, animal pictures, place names, and planets all hanging by strings from the ceiling, stapled to the wall, or taped to the window. Gone were the days of the chalkboard; it was now all white board and dry-erase markers.

Gina glanced into a manila folder. “Lydia said that Keenan has special needs and has been approved for an extra library period and extended learning for language with Mr. Luber at the contained learning center.”

An alarm went off in my head. “What do you mean by — ” Sensing my alarm, Lou cut me off and finished my sentence, patting my leg.

“When you say ‘extended learning for language’ at a ‘contained learning center’ what exactly do you mean exactly?”

Gina cocked her head, strategizing on just how to choose her words. “Well…the contained learning center for language is the portable classroom where Spenser — Mr. Luber — teaches English and writing to children with special needs. Each period, he teaches a different group. The ASD group is the last of the day.” Gina’s eyes flitted up to the wall clock behind us. She said in a slightly more confidential voice, catching my eye, “Sometimes language needs for children on the autistic spectrum require tutelage outside the classroom so as not to distract the other kids.”

“I see.” I could hear the breath tight in Lou’s throat. I knew it wasn’t so much that she was getting upset; it was that she was concerned about how I was taking it.

Gina continued casually, as though she was explaining the behavior of a captive breed of, say, chimpanzee. “Kids with autism can usually handle math, and they can memorize a list of planet names, but language and communication can sometimes be elusive. Some children with autism are very verbal, just not in a very linear way. Do you like planets, Keenan?” Eyes flicked across the wall clock.

“Yes, Gina,” I said in my puny 5-year-old’s voice. “Planets are lovely.”

“Keenan.”

“It’s okay, Mom.” Gina’s gaze bounced between me and Lou. I had to give Gina the full monty, as it were. “You see, Gina, my mom was asking about the — what’d you call it? The Contained Learning Center? — she was asking about it because I think she has misgivings about its capacity to educate so-called spectrum kids (your term) in a direction not less advanced than grade level but more advanced.”

There was a painfully leaden pause. I had never unleashed my full adult articulation to an actual adult, except to Stoli. But the arrogant and careless way Gina had referred to children with autism had made me, only nominally a child with autism, angry, and thus arrogant and careless in suit.

“Wow,” Gina managed.

And that’s when the bell rang. This provided a segue opportunity for Gina. “Well, I figured you were somehow gifted, Keenan, skipping a grade at five. I didn’t mean to talk down to you. I apologize. I’ll talk to Spenser and make sure he’s ready for a kid like you.” She winked at me, and I’m not entirely sure ‘kid like you’ was meant in a friendly way, seeing as I just tore into her.

“Okay,” I said.

“Thanks for coming in, Louise. We’ll make Keenan feel right at home.”

“Great.”

The second bell rang. “Let’s go outside and meet the class, Keenan,” she said, standing and crossing to the door ahead of us.

As we stood to follow, I needled my mom, hissing, “Louise?”

She donned her sunglasses. “What can I say — sometimes I’m a Louise.”

~~•~~

The working relationship between my folks and Stoli (John, to them, of course) had grown very solid. Trust was implicit and explicit in both directions. The advantage to this is that he had become ‘my favorite uncle’ who would pick me up from school every now and then when he would visit from San Francisco, to give my mom a break as she worked on the brewery financials. He’d pick me up and we’d go for ice cream on our way home.

One day in October he picked me up from school and I unloaded to him on our way to the ice cream shop.

“So, this thing with Spenser has taken a curious turn,” I said to him as he piloted us away from the school in his SUV. Spenser was the special education teacher in the Contained Learning Center.

“Ah, yes. ‘Spenser-with-an-S’. Do tell,” Stoli replied.

“Spenser-with-an-S,” I affirmed.

I checked out Stoli; he was looking slick and shiny in new jeans and a green sweater over a collared pale-yellow shirt. He asked, “Is Spenser-with-an-S still mistreating your, um, classmates?”

“Well, not when I’m in the room. Not after that first week. But today I come in and he’s already working with Patrick with some flash cards.”

“Patrick is the red-haired kid who has some sign language? Sweet kid, likes to hug?”

“That’s the guy,” I continued. “Patrick hugs once, only once, and will not play with you unless it’s drawing, and you have your side and he has his side. In the back of the portable, Alexandra is setting up rows of Lego by color, headphones on. That’s her jam until she has her time with Spenser.”

He turned the SUV into the strip mall parking lot in which the ice cream shop existed.

“So he up and says, ‘Keenan, why are you even here?’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ And he says, ‘Why are you here? I’m pretty sure you aren’t on the spectrum at all.’”

Stoli parked the car in a slot in front of the ice cream place. “Whoa,” he said as he shut off the engine.

“Right? This is a little surprising, but I managed a ‘Why would you say that? I was tested?’ He says, ‘C’mon, Keenan. I mean, the only thing spectrumy about you is that you’re kind of like a savant, and you like to be alone, but really, I could put your brain in an adult’s body and you’d just be like my Uncle Harry. The district just parked you here, didn’t they?’”

“Holy shit!” Stoli exclaimed.

“Yeah. And all I could say was, ‘Well, you figured it out, Spenser. I’m part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the school district and a team of Stanford psychologists to hide me in a portable classroom in Campbell, California.’”

Stoli chuckled. “Funny.”

I nodded at the shop. “Shall we get our ice cream?”

So, we got our ice creams. Stoli is a strawberry ice cream fan. Only one I’ve ever met. We sat at a lone table outside where no one was within earshot.

“So, Spenser-with-an-S has your number — what did you say?” Stoli asked.

“I said to him, ‘Look, Spenser, I may sound older than I am, but I’m still five and don’t get along with other kids. And I’m a lot for a 1st grade teacher to handle,’ Spenser said, ‘Got that right.’ And I ended the little speech with a sort of rhetorical shrug and a ‘so here I am.”

“When did all this happen?”

My ice cream had melted because I’d been too busy talking. I drank it out of the cup and chewed the cookie dough chunks. “Right before you picked me up.”

“Oh, man.” Stoli looked at his watch. “We should go. I got some info for you.”

“Awesome. Thanks for the ice cream.”

As we headed toward my house, Stoli got quiet and handed me a bluetooth flash drive and explained, “It’s a bluetooth flash drive and you just — ”

“Yeah,” I stopped him. “I know what to do.”

“Of course.”

After my lively tale about the special ed teacher, it seemed I’d used up all the good humor and we were stuck with an odd silence. “What is it, John?” Calling him by his actual name always meant I was serious. He looked pained.

“Well, I called up that investigator pal of mine. He helped me dig up information on the names you gave me and he, well …”

“Yes?”

“He found a lot. A lot, a lot. These are some bad dudes that you were hanging out with.”

“Yes, they were, Stoli.”

“And, well …”

I knew where this was going — I’d been expecting it. “Spill it.”

“You don’t come out looking so hot yourself.”

“No shit.”

“You were a drug dealer and a junkie.”

“I told you I was.”

“You said you ‘ran a tight little outfit’ but got into your own supply.”

“Same thing.”

“Please, Keenan.”

“Look, I dealt drugs for five years and I was a heroin junkie for that last year.” I paused, weighing the inevitable. I was going to have to tell him everything but it couldn’t be right now — it’d take too long. “I made a wrong turn at some point.” I weighed my words. “Much like you, I had a reaction to a highly stressful period in my life, but instead of becoming lost on the streets, I became morally lost and wound up in a dark world of bullshit. It’s a little embarrassing.”

“This guy who killed you — did he work for you? Was it a turf war or something? Don’t get me wrong. While I’m grateful, I have to ask: What did I get myself into? Was that money you gave me drug money that someone is going to miss? Or has been missing?” Stoli was getting that panicky tone in his voice that I’d grown to recognize.

“Hey…slow down. It’s not like that. That money you dug up was inherited from a friend. Yes, he was a drug dealer, but it was cash legally inherited by K.S. Houston, via legal probate. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I buried it in a hole. Even by that time, I was a little confused.”

“What about these guys — Frank O’Donnell? Bart Montgomery, Dolores Velasquez, Steve Hightower — ”

“Poins,” I said. “You memorized their names?”

“Poins — and August Williams. I’ve read a lot of police reports. Those are on the flash drive.” He paused. “You were never caught, though. No police record. You had a DUI in college.”

“Your man is thorough.”

“Yes, he is.” He had calmed down. “This Dolores-person, though.”

“Dolly,” I corrected. “No one called her Dolores. What about her?”

“She ended up doing a little time after you died. Possession. That’s how we found out about your checkered past.”

I was getting uncomfortable. I hadn’t counted on anybody investigating me. “How did your guy — ”

“My guy interviewed her while gathering material on a book about washed up Gen-X writers.”

“Oh, God. That was really his cover?”

“I told you he’s good.”

Stoli pulled over about a block from my house and turned off the engine. He looked down at me, illegally strapped into the front passenger seat. I stared up at him — me, this former drug-dealer in the body of a five-year-old to this former special forces sniper-cum-business man.

He said: “Look, I don’t care about all the illegal shit: drug taking and dealing and criminal behavior. I spent over a decade on the streets, all over the Bay Area, drugging and drinking and whoring and stealing and lying and being generally psychotic, and I turned over a new leaf and got my shit together. All because of you. Your death cured me … what about you? Did it cure you of … what?”

“Moral corruption.”

“Yeah? Are you changed now? There are two big questions we need to ponder, Keenan. Before I ask them of you, I want you to know that I am still all in, one hundred percent. We are going to find this son of a bitch, and, well, serve justice, I guess. I’m in. I’m not backing out because of the heaping shit of gray area I just discovered about your highly compromised past.”

“That’s a relief,” I said. My little brain was mush at that point. I’d been hiding from this conversation with Stoli for a long time, I just hadn’t known it. Hell, I’d been avoiding really thinking about it myself.

“Question one: did … did you do something…bad? Did you … um, did you deserve to die?”

I looked down at my tiny hands. What a reality check! I hadn’t been called to the mat by anyone in my entire young five-year life. It was about time. Stoli was truly my friend. I knew it for sure at that moment. He was literally the only real friend I had, which was funny and sad. I looked up at him.

I said, “I did plenty of bad stuff. Illegal stuff. I was mean to people. Very rarely resorted to violence.” I looked at Stoli when I said, “I’ve never killed someone or had someone killed.” It was his turn to look away. I continued with resolve: “No. I didn’t deserve to be murdered. Dying is a different thing. If I deserved to die, it was for more philosophical reasons, like how useless things shouldn’t exist, that sort of thing. But no, I honestly believe that I didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

He studied my eyes.

“Good.” He paused and breathed a relieved breath. He reached over and used his thumb to wipe a tear from the edge of my eye.

He composed himself and continued. “Okay — now, I’m really confused. By all accounts, you were overdosed by a guy named August Williams. He went to prison.”

I shook my head. “Naw. That was a setup. Franks gave me a zipper of works with bad dope inside. As a birthday present. Total asshole move, as I’d just gotten clean. I’ve read the reports on August, and from what I can sort out, he found me dead at my house, got caught with his supply and did the time…probably to cover everyone’s ass. And probably to save himself from an early death.”

“Funny you should say that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cuz, he died in prison. Shivved about six months in.”

Fuck me. I crushed my eyes closed, and said, “Goddamn them. He was just a green little punk. He was a rookie. Fucking Franks. Fucking Poins.”

“Oh, man. You think they had him done in lockup?”

“Yeah. That would be Poins, taking care of loose ends.”

“So, that gives me a little context for my next question: what are we going to do when we catch up with these guys? Shoot ’em? Get them arrested? Tell them that The Ghost of Junkie Past has come to get his due? You’re going to be the dog that catches the car — then what?”

“I…” I was bereft is what I was. I’d had ideas, of course, but they all seemed stupid now. “I haven’t worked it out.”

“That’s actually good. It’s okay. We’ll work that out together. That’s actually really good news.” Stoli made a long wheezing hooting noise that seemed to say, Oh, we are in for some weird adventures ahead.

He re-buckled up and started the car. “Now let’s get home. You’ll find a shit-ton of interesting stuff on that drive, by the way. Make sure you have some privacy.”

“You got it,” I assured him. We seemed to have reached a critical inflection point.

Eyes on the road, he said, “Also, you have some ice cream on your chin.”