“This is a difficult situation,” she said. “Bluefield's dad is due any minute and he is not happy with you, Tom.”
“He should be coming down hard on his asshole son,” I said.
“Probably,” Carolyn said. “He wants to meet with you. I'd like to be present.”
I agreed.
Â
Mr. Bluefield's first comment was “Why is this man still in this school? He attacked my boy. Dan's got a broken wrist. He'll be in a cast for weeks.”
“He attempted to rape one of our teachers yesterday,” Carolyn said. “We consider that a serious charge.”
“He didn't touch her. It's his word against hers. She's probably some slutâ”
Carolyn cut him off, “As long as you are in this office, in my presence, Mr. Bluefield, you will confine yourself to proper language.”
“We're all grownups here,” he said. “You've heard these words before.”
“Whether I've heard them or even said them, this is a professional meeting and you will control what you say,” Carolyn said.
Bluefield looked frustrated and ready to argue some more. Carolyn said, “What can we help you with, Mr. Bluefield?”
He considered Carolyn's comments. The father and son had the same thin, wiry, tightly muscled frame, but Mr. Bluefield might have had the beginning of a paunch. He had pale blond hair, a bushy mustache, and a ponytail. He hadn't saved this morning. He wore tight, faded blue jeans and a flannel shirt.
Bluefield pointed at me. “I want him fired.”
“Mr. Mason is not going to be fired,” Carolyn spoke firmly and decisively.
“You're backing him up in child abuse.”
Carolyn laughed. “Your son is over six feet tall, and when he isn't suspended or on probation he's one of the top wrestlers in the school. If he'd had any ambition or self-control, he could probably have won at the state level. Child abuse is a frivolous charge. I agreed to this meeting so we could work out what to do about Dan. He will not be permitted back in the school. The student teacher and Mr. Mason may press charges.”
Bluefield hardly looked abashed at all. He blustered for a while about teachers always picking on his kid, at intervals mixing in remarks about the unfairness of the police.
Finally Carolyn stopped him. “Mr. Bluefield, why did you want to meet with Mr. Mason?”
“To pound the shit out of him.”
Carolyn sighed. “Then there is no further purpose in continuing this meeting.” She got Bluefield out of the office and returned.
She sat back at the desk. “Your presence is going to be disruptive, Tom,” she said.
“How so?” Kurt asked. He'd sat quietly during the entire exchange with Bluefield.
“Kids, teachers, secretariesâeverybody is going to be asking questions. The Bluefield incident alone would be cause enough for talk. The murder is going to cause even more chaos. Are you sure you want to go ahead with teaching today?”
I shrugged. “I don't see why not. People are going to ask questions whether I come back today or in a week.”
Kurt asked, “Has the practice teacher been interviewed by school personnel?”
“I talked to her myself,” Carolyn said, and shook her head. “She wasn't particularly articulate. She may not press charges. I was bluffing with Bluefield earlier. She's frightened. Not the first woman traumatized by an attack.”
“Tom is in the clear, like the police said last night?” Kurt asked.
“Pretty much, but it won't be that simple,” the superintendent said. “The murder and the attack together add extra dimensions to the situation. Board members have questions. We've already had calls from parents asking that their children be taken out of Mr. Mason's classes.”
“You're going to let the stupid and ignorant people run this school?” Kurt asked. “Your obligation is to protect your staff.”
“And I will. I'm just giving you information and a different perspective. Some of them are saying that Tom is a threat to the students.”
Kurt said, “Don't be absurd. Either they bring some charges or they forget it. We're not going to be part of a witch-hunt by loony parents.”
Carolyn agreed, then said, “At any rate, Bluefield is suspended for the moment. I'm going to recommend expulsion to the board. We'll see what happens. Also, we had reporters around last night, and more today. They won't be allowed in the school. We haven't and won't give them your name, Tom, or anybody else's.”
We left.
By noon the lines waiting to see the counselors from the crisis-intervention team stretched throughout the old section of Grover Cleveland and doubled back through the main hallway of the new section.
I caught up with Meg outside the library.
“This is madness,” she said as two girls walked by sobbing hysterically. “Have you seen Donna?”
I shook my head.
She grabbed my good arm and dragged me through the
library to her office. “You won't believe what's happening. I know for a fact that those two sobbing in the hallway just now had never talked to Jones. Never knew him except as a man who spoke once a year at the opening assembly. Grief and woe are totally out of control, with kids who didn't even know the man. I think these kids are taking advantage of the situation and this crisis team.” She snorted. “Those hypocrites are using Jones's death as an excuse to get out of class. It makes me sick. The way these kids are acting makes a mockery of genuine sorrow.”
“Grief can do strange things,” I said. “Maybe they're sorry for the loss.”
“Maybe.” Meg didn't sound convinced. “I know what they should do. Cry with the genuinely grieving and send the sobbing hypocrites packing.” Abruptly she switched topics. “Do you have any idea who might have killed Jones?”
“At the moment I'm prime suspect number one.”
“Redundant but true,” she said. “Since we know you didn't do it, who did?”
“That's what Scott asked me last night. I don't like being a murder suspect. I may have been set up. Maybe even by Dan Bluefield in some way. I'm going to do some checking, see who was around last night, see who had a grudge against Jones.”
“I don't know what kind of list you'll come up with,” Meg said. “He was a competent administrator and intended to make sure the school maintained high standards. His very competence could have been a threat to some people.”
“I know.”
Meg said, “I'll try and revive the old grapevine and see what I can find out.”
I thanked her and left.
I knew who I wanted to find, and I knew where he'd be.
Â
Al Welman was one of the oldest members of the faculty. He ate at a desk in the English department office every day. I knew what he would be wearing. It was Wednesday and
every Wednesday since I'd taught at Grover Cleveland, and I'd been told since long before then, he'd worn his brown cardigan sweater, brown corduroy pants, brown shoes, brown socks, tan shirt, and black tie. Each day's outfit included some outward affectation: an umbrella, a beret, a scarf, a six-inch-wide smile button, a rose in his lapel.
Since it was Wednesday, he'd be eating a tuna-fish sandwich with mustard and no mayonnaise. He'd have a red pen stuck behind his left ear and a stack of papers in front of him. After he was through with them, the student essays he graded would bleed red ink. He ate and graded at the same time. All of us English teachers have tricks to wade through the stacks of papers. The trash can, when no one else is looking, is the English teacher's greatest friend. Welman graded every single paper the kids turned in, taking the concept of dedication to the point of madness.
Welman had hated Robert Jones with an incredible passion and as a creature of habit would have been in the school grading papers during the time the murder was committed. I wanted to find out what he knew.
I found him in the predicted position.
One of the last things Jones had done as principal was announce that he would be revising every English teacher's schedule at the beginning of the next semester. This may not compare with other upheavals in history, like the Russian Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, but to the English department at Grover Cleveland High School, he might as well have announced World War III.
The head of the department, at three meetings last school year, two meetings this summer, and one meeting a week ago, reassured us that as little disruption would occur as possible. Teachers get into ruts. Some of us teach the same thing for years and are quite content. We feel we've paid our dues and earned those classes of bright seniors and other less fractious students, and here was Robert Jones, after one year and one month on the job, ordering the restructuring of the entire department.
I attended the meetings between Jones and the department head because I'm the union's building representative. I was there to prevent Jones from screwing with the union contract. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything he did that violated it. I had no real objection to the changes he wanted, other than the minor annoyance of revising lesson plans, something I don't find to be traumatic.
In private meetings with the head of the department, Jones used Al Welman as his example of the need for change. Al was too poor to retire and had only a meager pension to look forward to. By common consent, he got the easiest assignments in the department. The last couple of years he'd had trouble with even these. Most of the rest of us tried to take some of the burden off him. The quarterly paperwork for his homeroom got done on a rotating basis by other staff members. We quietly had schedule changes for the few discipline problems he had in his classrooms. Still, he'd become less and less effective in his teaching every year.
Al and I had met with Jones numerous times. They had arguments and once even a shouting match. It got so that Al wouldn't say hello to Jones in the hallway without me, as union rep, being present.
Yet, I couldn't deny the reason of Robert Jones's argument. He wanted the best education possible for the kids at Grover Cleveland, and they weren't getting it from Welman. I thought Jones could have been kinder in the way he went about his work, but perhaps there isn't a way to tell someone who's been working the same job for forty years that he isn't any good anymore.
I thought Jones reached the point of being inhumane and cruel when he told Welman that he had to teach an “out-of-license” biology class. They can do that in Illinois. As long as you teach at least half of your classes in your major area, they can assign you to anything else for the rest of the day.
I knew trying to teach biology would destroy Al, but I didn't lose my temper until Jones made a sneering crack
about how “we all have to be willing to change.” I hadn't raised my voice, but I let him know in no uncertain terms how unfair he was being. Didn't have the slightest effect.
After one of these meetings Jones had asked me to stay after for a minute.
He remained seated as I stood near the door. “You know, I'm making these decisions in the best interest of the students. He can't make it anymore.”
I remembered gazing at Jones silently as he threatened to be in Welman's classroom as often as possible to observe the old man.
This is one of the administrators' tricks when they don't like a teacher. They come into your class and observe you. Formal observations happen to teachers depending on the school district's policies and the union contract. The observation then leads to evaluation. Numerous and constant observations are a good way to unnerve any insecure teacher, and even a competent person doesn't dance with joy at the prospect of an administrator hanging around the classroom constantly.
“What harm is he doing?” I'd asked.
“You know as well as I what harm. These kids deserve the best education. He isn't giving it to them. I was brought in to improve this school. I'm going to do it.”
This statement put it mildly. Rumor among the teachers was that he'd been told to “go into that high school and clean it up, especially the deadwood among the faculty.” For the first year his effect had been minimal. To start the second year, he'd put his program of change into high gear.
Despite Welman's dislike for Jones, I didn't see him as a murderer, but his name was high on my list of people to talk to. Driven to desperation, even Al might try anything.
Welman greeted me effusively. “Heard you beat up that snotty Bluefield kid. It's about time that little shit got what was coming to him.” He sipped from a cup of tea. The back corner of the desk he sat at held a one-burner warmer that
always had a pot of water ready to be heated up for his favorite beverage.
With his age-mottled hand he set the teacup down, and picked up half of his tuna sandwich and took an enormous bite. Al was a little over six feet tall, with wisps of white hair greased down and pulled straight back from his forehead. I watched him chew for a moment. With his mouth half full he said softly, “I'm glad Jones is dead. I hated him. He had no right to harass me that way. I've given the best years of my life to this school and he wanted to throw me out like last year's trash. I hated him when he was alive and I still hate him.”