All-Day Breakfast (3 page)

Back in September they'd giggled until they'd spilled their peppermint tea, telling me how Reid had his Ph.D. in Biology but instead of lecturing at Harvard he'd parked his ass back in his hometown to teach high school like a sucker. I could've told them that, similarly, I'd started my master's in biochem—planning to delve into stem cell research on, not surprisingly, Parkinson's disease—but switched to education in order to earn an imminent-baby-supporting income somewhat sooner. But then Grey and Dreaper would've pointed out that if I'd only stayed in medical research I could've bought and sold Hoover ten times over. I massaged my irate earlobe.

“Help, Doctor Reid!” Dreaper waggled his hands. “I swallowed a roofing nail!”

“I don't feel this Congo mess will carry on much longer.” Mahinda licked a fingertip and commenced rearranging his canasta hand. “You see it with the Tamil Tigers at home, or the IRA, the PLO in those other places, if these rebel movements cannot renounce violence they eventually go down in flames.”

“Bullshit,” said Dreaper, setting his cards down to reposition his belt under his gut. “These M23 guys we're fighting now, they were the Congo Army, then they quit for better money from the Rwandan guy! They've got a million guns, a million guys with nothing else to do, and we're scrambling around trying to keep them from raping their own women! And that's a noble cause, I'm not going to complain about that, but that's not a job for a human being! We're getting torn to pieces by these M23 guys circling around at night, we—”

“Infrared goggles,” offered Cam. “See anything in the dark.”

“Tried that, remember?” Grey cupped his hands behind his head, displaying damp armpits. “That infantry platoon killed those endangered goddamn anteaters.”

“Isn't it the LRA we're fighting?” I asked.

“That's the trouble over there,” Cam said earnestly, dragging the back of his hand beneath his chin. “Can't say who exactly we're engaging. Boys just keep coming home with their lips cut off.”

We all went quiet, the soles of our shoes squeaking absently on the tile. The women on the couches were laughing at yet another story about that kid with Asperger's.

“So the ball hits the
bottom
of the rim,” gasped Melissa Jordan, ponytail swaying, “knocks his glasses
clean
off, and then he's
so
mad, he makes these fists and—”

“What we need in Africa,” Dreaper said, “is cyborgs. Enhanced humans.”

“With jetpacks on,” Cam intoned.

“Robots.” Dreaper frowned at his cards again. “Just program them, ‘Kill bad guys.' Our men and women can come home, go back to farming, selling cars.”

“My point exactly.” Mahinda winked. “The criminals will lay down their arms in the face of superior technology.”

“What time's the assembly?” called Ange Helms, our clunky-heeled-shoe home ec teacher. But passable ankles, Mahinda had once muttered.

“Not 'til 11:15,” said Cam. “But I might bring him through some classes if he's here early. Coming over from McCook.”

“What assembly?” I asked.

“It's not on your watch, don't worry about it.” Cam raised his prodigious eyebrows. “But, say, Giller, want to swing by Sunday and watch some Steelers? Jacksonville, right? What a joke.”

“Sorry, I'll have to pass,” I said. “But thanks.”

“Ah! Already spoken for. I'll have to be quicker next time!”

I shuffled over to the empty coffee machine and dumped the soggy filter in the trash. We didn't have a single plan for Sunday, but I didn't want to be burdened with a lot of friends if and when we moved to another town. And I liked to send the kids downstairs to play Wii on Sundays while I watched the games, so I could jot the stats down on my own. All last season, stretched on the bed beside me, scarf around her head, Lydia had rooted for Cincinnati just to be obstreperous, and, boy, their receivers had had hands like feet, right from Week One. They really had looked sick.

At 8:45 we
stood outside the cafeteria exit, the eleventh-grade boys in long shorts and girls in crop tops even though it was cold for October, possible snow smelling raw in my nostrils. Jordie, Devon and Todd had called in absent so that left me with fifteen for the field trip, and no sign of my parent volunteers.

I did another head count but the skater kids were playing leapfrog or something so I got twenty the first time, then twelve. Couldn't blame the skater kids if they kept warm. I watched through the shrubs for anything yellow that might swing into the parking lot. This would be
my
first visit to a plastics factory too, and I was holding onto the thinnest hope that I might be able to teach something.
Well, we all thought the chemicals pouring into those moulds smelled evil and must slowly be killing the world, sure, so you can all quit going to the dollar store to buy Frisbees and sunglasses, all right? We won't know for a thousand years exactly how that crap will pervert nature at the most fundamental level.
Kids will happily scrawl “pervert” in their notebooks regardless of context.

“Hey, hey, Megan.” Clint, all in denim, leaned past my elbow. “What up, girl?”

“Come
onnnnn
, make it come!” moaned Megan Avery in her sequinned-butterfly cardigan. “Did you know we're missing appliqué in home ec today?”

“Teachers don't run the buses,” I said, then noticed the kids wandering across the parking lot toward the swaying magnolias—they enjoyed many noon-hour cigarettes in there at their campfire ring overlooking a trickling culvert—so I squared my shoulders for the day's first authoritarian holler.

“So I'm
not
ridiculously late!” called a svelte woman in a black tracksuit, skipping across from a green Taurus wagon. “Oh, Megan! Which teacher is this?”

“It's Mr. Giller,” said Megan. “Dr. Reid's off sick.”

“Bowel resection. I'm Pete Giller, his substitute.” Jesus, had she thought Kirsten McAvoy would be the sub? “Glad you're joining us today, Mrs. Avery.”

I put my hand out to shake, all hearty and businesslike, but she just grasped my fingertips while performing a disturbing little curtsey.

“I heard that he wasn't having surgery
at all
,” she whispered, “but that the poor dear was spending his stress leave in California!”

“That's where the best ones go,” said Clint.

“I don't think that's the case, ma'am,” I said. “I heard from him this morning.”

“Are you really wearing that jacket to Velouria?” asked Franny.

I instinctively checked the top button. “Why?”

“It's just, you know, you've got a clipboard and a corduroy sport jacket. You look
exactly
like a teacher on a field trip.”

“But that's—”

“But didn't you ever want to be something more?”

“Okay, all right. I like the panda sweater, by the way.”

“It's worth fifty bucks on eBay!” She smoothed it down over her belly. “And the best coaches are in the stands, my dad says. His raunchy ideas are culinary. Be that as it may, Gillbrick, you could use a little shaking up.”

“It's not really Mr. Gillbrick, is it?” Mrs. Avery asked Megan.

“I say Gill-
brick
,” Franny announced, “because the guy is
solid
.”

“Sorry to interrupt. It's like almost nine.” This was blond Harv Saunders, an up-and-comer on the varsity basketball team. “Is the trip definitely
today
?”

Wide-eyed Mrs. Avery tilted her head like she was deciding which puppy she wanted, though she was only reading her watch. Then like Zeus's cloud mercifully descending in some old Greek play—I'd read half a dozen at UC Denver, after all—a long yellow rectangle flashed past on the other side of the shrubs.

“Okey-dokey.” Mrs. Avery nimbly clapped her hands. “Let's get a line started right here, everybody!”

With a hiss of pneumatics the bus's door flopped open and the driver scowled down—a skinny guy in blue coveralls, his red beard trimmed into a gigantic rectangle. I let the kids climb on, putting yet another pencil mark beside each name as its owner hunched by. Skater kids at the back of the line crushed cigarette butts under their sneakers. I waved a hand in front of my nose at the nicotine stink, and Harv, headphones around his neck, must've thought I'd meant it for him.

“Oh, I just smell like that,” he said, putting his nose to the shoulder of his blue hoodie. “Our whole house smells 'cause of my dad.”

“Climb aboard, Harv,” I said. “My dad was the same.”

Amber and Grace flashed me slick fake smiles as they filed by. They wore the same skull-patterned hoodies but blond Amber had scooped on more eyeliner. The Avery women hung back by the trash can—they formed an interesting contrast, scientifically speaking, in that the mom possessed a wizened sort of Disney cuteness while Megan was homely as a shelving unit.

“My dad's running late but he said he'd be here for sure,” said Shawn, pushing long bangs out of his eyes as he climbed up.

“It would've been great to have him,” I said, “but we can't wait.”

“His dad's got problems.” Eric arched his brows and ran fingers through his prodigious mullet. “Gets stuck taking these
huge
dumps.”

“Shut up, man,” said Shawn.

“Okay,
now
go ahead,” Mrs. Avery said, nudging Megan forward.

“You go first! I don't want you to look at my bum.”

“You'd rather look at
mine
?”

Megan nodded earnestly. “It's nice!”

Her mother kissed her cheek before sashaying up the steps. Moms of the world are universally adored while the dads sit home on the toilet.

The inside of the bus smelled like bubble gum and feet. The Averys had taken the first bench on the left so I swung in behind the driver.

“What time's your tour?” he rasped over his shoulder.

“Ten o'clock,” I said. “It's an hour to Velouria?”

“I'll vaporize some fuel,” he said, slamming the door shut even as the bus lurched over the first speed bump.

“It'll be
so
nice if we get there on time,” said Mrs. Avery. “It is so
tough
to schedule around two jobs, but it's so worth it when you have a child, sir, you'll see.”

“Why would you think I don't have kids?”

“Did you sub here last year? I don't remember.”

We took the last speed bump before squealing onto Casement toward Highway 33. I twisted in my seat and took yet another head count. Three seats back Grace reached around the cloud of staticky hair to tug out Franny's earbuds, trying to be funny, but one of the cords snapped in two—Franny's face went red, her bracelets clanking.

“Well, Mrs. Avery,” I muttered, “last year I was teaching in Wahoo.”

“Please. Colleen.” A hand to her heart. “And my nieces are in Wahoo! Oh, but the youngest graduated the year before last. You would've remembered her, she's
big
.”

“That's so sweet!” called one of the girls, with an enthusiasm so rare for an eleventh-grader that I had to turn and see who it'd been: Franny blinked back a grateful mistiness while she clamped blue headphones to either side of her head. Their owner, Harv, slid back into his seat behind the Averys.

An asymmetrical grin cut across Mama Colleen's cheek. “Mind if I ask why you left Wahoo?”

“Well, the sub lists aren't too extensive in either place, but here there's an extra dollar an hour.”

Which was bullshit—Hoover actually paid worse. But we'd needed the change, and there'd been a cop named Holt in Wahoo who liked to walk down North Chestnut with his fists on his hips, and his ten-year-old son liked to knock kids onto the schoolyard gravel and say, “Aw, sorry,” and I said the son ought to be suspended but the administrators just stared from behind their potted spider plants. I'd been covering the tail end of a mat leave. I caught the tough kid passing a note that said
jason is a faggit
and told him to stay after school, then once he was alone in the classroom I deadbolted him in and went to the staff room to pour myself a coffee. By the time the custodian let him out the tough kid had peed himself for dramatic effect, but it turned out the administrators must've been on my side all along because they said they wouldn't even phone the district provided I took my name off the sub list. I got things
done
by myself, see that? My Lydia had been dead a month so my thinking at the time had been crystal clear, forever sliding coins into the wrong parking meter.

“Oh, I see,” Colleen said. “I'm only picking your brain because my sister always complains how Wahoo smells like a sewage plant. Their house is right next to the sewage plant.”

Anyone who says
pick your brain
can't really be visualizing it.

“No, smell never bothered us, though I have to wonder with any of those operations what the discharge is going to do in the long run.”

“Oh, my,” she said, massaging her temples. “
I
worry what it's doing
right now
.”

“Harv, hey!” Eric yelled from the back. “Isn't that your dad?”

Where Casement joined the highway, a blond man in a dress shirt was stapling a sheet of magenta paper to a telephone pole. The bus blew by him, ruffling his hair.

“Yeah,” said Harv, “he, uh—”

“Is he, like, looking for work?” Eric asked.

“Shut it, Eric!” Franny yelled, holding a blue headphone out from her ear.

Harv looked across at me and smiled sheepishly.

Five years before
I was born, Pvt. William R. Giller waded through the gray mud of the Mekong Delta—8,500 miles, the atlas says, from Nebraska—trying to flush Communist insurgents in cone-shaped hats and indigo pyjamas out from villages of supposedly democratically inclined farmers who also wore cone-shaped hats and indigo pyjamas. Discharged back to Knudsen, NE, Dad pushed a broom in the flour mill until I came along, when Aggregate Grains of Pawnee County burnt to the ground in ten minutes and he subsisted on the disability payments he received for his smoke-damaged lungs.