The Dogs of Littlefield Page 9

  11.

  Snow was falling again and although it was mid-morning it looked like late afternoon. The sky was a muffled gray and tree trunks stood out darkly against the snow, patches of lichen glowing an unearthly green against the damp bark. Already the roofs of Littlefield wore snowy bonnets, fringed by icicles, and in the village berms of snow rose halfway up the poles of parking meters, and it was only the eighth of December.

  Inside Duncklee Middle School, seventh-graders in Ms Manookian’s social studies class watched the snow fall prettily outside their classroom windows and wondered if the buses would be late and whether school would be called off for tomorrow. The storm was expected to continue into the evening and through the night, with accumulations up to nine inches.

  ‘It’s always snowing these days,’ said a child at the windows.

  ‘Just like a snow globe,’ said somebody else, for the second time.

  The children enjoyed imagining another snow day, and thinking about the video games they would play and the possibility of sledding; yet even they began to worry about the roads, having heard their parents complain about dreadful conditions, and to wonder about the weight of snow on rooftops and how much more snow their own houses could hold before there was danger of collapse. For children the threat of peril is exciting, particularly when it comes to natural disasters; but the children of Littlefield had seen so much snow in the past few weeks that they had begun to fear something was out of balance in the universe. Then again, it was dark this time of year, the days getting shorter and shorter, which naturally made everyone a little uneasy.

  Julia Downing was sitting in her newly assigned seat in the fourth row, looking over her homework in B Block. She liked to start every class by checking to make sure her homework was arranged neatly in her folders, which she had labeled with her label-maker. Each morning she woke up half an hour before her parents to arrange her folders, brush her hair and change her mind several times about the outfit she had laid out the night before. If there were a few minutes left before breakfast, she wrote in her journal, in which she kept a popularity record of the seventh grade. The top-ten list shifted every day. As of last night, Amelia Epstein was top girl and Anthony Rabb was top boy. Julia reckoned her own numerical placement at seventy-three out of the top one hundred.

  While waiting for class to start, she took out her half-completed ‘Survey of Littlefield’, Ms Manookian’s assignment for Friday. Writing a survey of Littlefield did not strike Julia as the kind of social studies project that would prepare her for high school and college. Shouldn’t they be studying important places, like Philadelphia? Ms Manookian was new this year and probably didn’t know she was supposed to be teaching them things that actually mattered. If you were a historian surveying Littlefield today, read the assignment sheet, what would you notice and record for future generations?

  Julia frowned at the lined paper she had just taken out of her folder.

  Littlefield: the Present

  23 banks, 7 nail salons, 12 hair salons, 3 electrolysis salons, 4 test preparation services, 9 jewelry stores, 6 dog groomers, 3 drugstores, 17 dentists, 7 orthodontists, 1,146 psychotherapists, 679 psychiatrists, 1 bagel shop, 1 bakery, 6 coffee shops, 2 Chinese restaurants, 3 pizza parlors, 1 ice-cream parlor, 1 party-supplies shop, 4 liquor stores, 4 yoga studios, 1 Chinese-Baptist church, 1 Catholic church, 1 Episcopal church, 3 synagogues.

  ‘I grant you poetic license,’ Ms Manookian had said in class last week when she assigned the survey. ‘Go wild!’

  Hannah said that Ms Manookian was a man, poetic license or not, and that a couple of months ago she’d said something in D Block about having surgery that almost got her fired. Julia’s mother, who overheard this remark while she was driving the soccer carpool right before Halloween, said that there was nothing wrong with being transgendered. Hannah said, ‘I didn’t say there was,’ then stared out of the window for the rest of the car ride home while Julia’s mother went on about the importance of recognizing the truth about yourself, and then started talking about a book she’d just read about a blind boy who wanted to be a professional baseball player. Julia rolled her eyes at Hannah and mouthed what a loser, but Hannah ignored her. Hannah was still mad that Julia’s mother had nixed the skirt part of their supermodels costume, though Julia had secretly been relieved. Her legs looked too skinny in skirts.

  Julia guessed she was doing the assignment incorrectly because she had not gone wild but instead looked through the business pages of the telephone book.

  As she considered the problem of going wild she thought of Freckles the cat, now missing from Littlefield forever. ‘1 park,’ she added to her list in pencil. ‘1 woods, with coyotes, skunks & bears’. She was fairly sure there weren’t any bears in the woods, but her pencil eraser was almost gone, and made smudges when she used it, and anyway poetic license, she reminded herself.

  A few nights ago she’d heard her parents talking in their bedroom after they thought she’d gone to bed. It wasn’t that she was eavesdropping, just sometimes she liked to sit on the hall carpet with her back against their door when she couldn’t sleep. She and Hannah once watched a scary movie about children who discovered their parents were dead and had been replaced by androids, programmed to say they weren’t androids when questioned; but whenever the children weren’t there, the android-parents went silent and stood around like statues. Feeling the vibrations of her parents’ voices through their bedroom door was like an old lullaby, though one night she woke up on the hallway floor, face pressed against the carpet, and had to creep back to her bed in the dark.

  Her mother said, ‘I saw one in the Fischmans’ backyard and again one night when –’

  Julia’s father said something. Then her mother said in a low voice, ‘There’s more and more of them.’

  Now in class Julia added an insert sign before the word ‘coyotes’ and wrote ‘a lot of’ above it.

  Standing at the blackboard, Ms Manookian began B Block by saying she was going to read aloud from the Globe’s ‘This Day in History’ column, which she sometimes did to take up class time and give kids a chance to settle down and spit out their gum and hide their cell phones in their laps. She also sometimes read editorials from the Gazette; last week she read one about the dog that got poisoned right before Thanksgiving. ‘Woof, woof,’ said Albert Chang when Ms Manookian was done reading and half the boys started barking. ‘It’s not funny,’ Hannah had yelled at them. ‘What if it had been your dog?’ Hannah was popular, so the boys stopped barking. If Julia had said the same thing they would have been howling.

  Today she figured Ms Manookian was reading the Globe to impress Mr Anderman, the principal, who was observing the class along with the black lady who was living in the Fischmans’ carriage house, whom Ms Manookian had introduced, embarrassingly, as ‘the esteemed Dr Watkins from Chicago’. Dr Watkins smiled and waved from her chair at the back of the classroom. She was wearing a green turban and an orange dress. Mr Anderman sat beside her in his red bow tie and tweedy jacket, with his arms crossed under a world map and a poster of Gandhi tacked to the white cinderblock wall.

  Parents must have been complaining again about Ms Manookian being disorganized. Last week they were supposed to be learning about taxation without representation. Instead Ms Manookian told a long story about when she was a child and her mother took quarters from her piggy bank to help pay for Sunday night ice cream, but Ms Manookian never got to choose the flavor. Then Brian Hobika raised his hand and wanted to know what flavor of ice cream Ms Manookian’s mother chose, which led to a discussion about the best ice-cream flavors and why parents tend to like disgusting flavors like pistachio while kids like regular flavors like chocolate chip and cookie dough. It got kind of interesting, actually. But still, they were supposed to be talking about the American Revolution.

  ‘ “Today is December 8th,” ’ Ms Manookian read aloud from the front of the classroom. ‘ “The 342nd day of the year.” ’

  Albert Chang b
egan flipping a pen back and forth on his desk. Ms Manookian looked at him over the tops of her pink paisley reading glasses. Then she resumed reading.

  ‘ “On this day in 1776, General George Washington’s army crossed the Delaware River from New Jersey into Pennsylvania, in retreat from the British.

  ‘ “In 1863, President Lincoln announced his plan for the reconstruction of the South.

  ‘ “In 1941, the United States entered World War II, as Congress declared war on Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.” ’

  She paused again, this time for dramatic effect.

  ‘ “In 1982, a man demanding an end to nuclear weapons held the Washington Monument hostage, threatening to blow it up with explosives he claimed were inside a van. After a ten-hour standoff, Norman D. Mayer was shot to death by police; it turned out there were no explosives.” ’

  Ms Manookian flashed her big white teeth. Julia groaned silently. A teachable moment had appeared. Ms Manookian would now ask them a bunch of questions (showing off for Mr Anderman) to try to get them to connect George Washington crossing the Delaware in the wrong direction with Norman D. Mayer holding the Washington Monument hostage. Then a lesson plan would magically emerge. It would look as if Ms Manookian had known all along that George Washington and Norman D. Mayer had done something on the same day and had been waiting for Tuesday December 8th to present this coincidence to the class, when Julia would bet a hundred bucks that Ms Manookian hadn’t thought of it until five minutes ago.

  Outside the classroom window hung heavy swags of telephone wires, exposed-looking now that the leaves were gone.

  ‘So, class,’ said Ms Manookian in her gargly voice, ‘what’s interesting about this day in history?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Did anyone notice that several important Americans are listed today?’ Ms Manookian looked fixedly out at the class. ‘Can anyone tell me who they were?’

  ‘Lincoln,’ shouted Brian Hobika from his front-row desk.

  Julia saw Mr Anderman uncross his arms and reach up to adjust his aviator glasses.

  Brian had to sit in the front row because he had Issues. He was wearing his T-shirt inside out and backwards again, the tag in front. He had dark circles under his eyes. Hannah’s mother had told Julia’s mother that Brian’s parents insisted that Brian did not need Ritalin, that he was only enthusiastic.

  ‘Lincoln, Lincoln,’ he chanted now, bouncing in his chair.

  ‘Brian, please raise your hand and wait for me to call on you. Yes, President Lincoln was one. Who else, can anybody tell me?’

  Hannah raised her hand from two rows in front of Julia. Ms Manookian had moved their seats because they talked too much – or Hannah talked too much – when they sat together.

  ‘George Washington. Our first president.’

  ‘Very good. Thank you, Hannah.’

  Hannah straightened the notebook on her desk. Julia wished she had a BB gun to shoot into the back of Hannah’s ear. Hannah always thought she knew everything. Hannah was the one chosen to be in the geography bee last week. Hannah got to have a cell phone, while Julia’s mother said cell phones for children were silly. Hannah was the star of the middle school chorus and got to have first pick of which boy in their grade was ‘hers’ and of course chose Anthony Rabb. Now she had decided to be a vegetarian and kept saying her lunch was more nutritious and better for the planet. Hannah was number seven on the top-ten list. Brian wasn’t even in the top two hundred.

  Mr Anderman was leaning forward, elbows on the desk of his desk chair, chin propped on his fists. Beside him, Dr Watkins was smiling at Ms Manookian and taking notes on a pad.

  Ms Manookian smiled back. ‘But there was one more American mentioned, right at the very end of the passage I just read.’

  The class stared at her blankly.

  ‘Norman D. Mayer? Who tried to hold the Washington Monument hostage? Can anyone think of a connection between George Washington and Norman D. Mayer?’

  Hannah raised her hand again. Ms Manookian peered around the room to see if someone else might have an answer.

  ‘Yes, Hannah?’

  ‘The Washington Monument was built to honor George Washington.’

  ‘Very good. And what did George Washington do that we honor him with a monument?’

  ‘He’s on the one-dollar bill!’ shrieked Brian Hobika.

  Under the poster of Gandhi, Mr Anderman adjusted his aviator glasses again.

  Julia sighed. She almost never raised her hand, but now, for reasons she did not fully understand, but which involved a stirring of sympathy for Ms Manookian, because she had an Adam’s apple and was new this year, and also involved the possibility that Ms Manookian might report something favorable about Julia to her mother next week during parent–teacher conferences – she slowly raised her hand.

  ‘Julia?’

  ‘George Washington led the American Army in the Revolution against the British.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ Ms Manookian beamed.

  ‘And Norman said he was going to blow up his monument.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Ms Manookian looked at her encouragingly. ‘And how else might they be connected?’

  ‘They both tried to kill people,’ said Albert Chang, flipping his pen excitedly.

  ‘No,’ said Julia, then stopped, realizing too late that she was in for it now because she’d have to correct stupid fat Albert Chang, and then lunch would be hell, Albert telling everyone she’d made him look dumb, breathing on her sandwich, asking if she wanted to trade bites. I gotta big bologna.

  Stupid class, stupid Ms Manookian, stupid entire universe.

  ‘Yes, Julia?’

  She took a breath. ‘Norman threatened to blow up the monument because he didn’t want people to be killed. He was against nuclear weapons.’

  ‘Very good. So, Julia, do you see any other connection between George Washington and Norman D. Mayer?’

  Outside the classroom the world looked absolutely still, except for the sky-colored snow falling again in great flakes. She was aware of the whole class watching her, especially Anthony Rabb, slouched in his seat by the windows, wearing his Red Sox jersey. Narrow green eyes, angelic blond curls, soft brutal mouth. Beautiful and ruthless, an expert sniper, picking off anyone who showed signs of intelligence.

  ‘Norman was a loser freak who hated America,’ said Albert Chang.

  ‘And George Washington loved America!’ Amelia Epstein swished her ponytail.

  ‘Class!’ Ms Manookian patted the air with her palms. ‘I’m glad that you’re so interested in this subject, but people must raise their hands if they want to speak. This is a democracy.’ She gave Mr Anderman and Dr Watkins an aren’t-kids-something look. ‘Now, Julia was in the middle of answering my question. Julia, what were you going to say?’

  Julia was staring at her desk, trying to decide if it would be better to cut her losses and not answer at all, when from the windows came a sibilant whisper:

  ‘Julia’s a loser freak.’

  Several girls giggled.

  ‘Downer Downing.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Ms Manookian glared toward the windows. ‘Julia?’

  But Julia was not there.

  Millions of microscopic fragments of Julia now lay, invisibly, on the speckled beige linoleum tiles of the classroom floor. What was left in her chair was a phantom Julia, which she had learned to project at these moments, by sheer force of will, until she could reassemble herself, a process that would take days, even weeks, and was never entirely successful. Atomic particles of Julia could be found in many classrooms, in fact, on the playground, on the soccer field, in her oboe teacher’s studio, even on the kitchen floor of her own home. They made a faint gritty sound when trodden upon, almost imperceptible except in moments when there was no other ambient noise.

  The classroom wall clock was very loud. Tick tick tick. Like the imaginary explosives inside Norman D. Mayer’s van as he faced a battalion of police cars beneath the Washington Mo
nument. Outside the second-floor classroom windows the snow had stopped, revealing a bulging gray sky impaled on black twigs.

  ‘So does anyone see any other connection between George Washington and Norman D. Mayer?’ Ms Manookian’s voice was unnaturally fluty. ‘Nobody?’

  Nobody.

  ‘Well, all right. They were both in their own way revolutionaries. Quite interesting when you think about it. Okay, class. Let’s open our textbooks to page 243, and look at the section on early drafts of the Declaration of Independence.’

  Julia peered through her hair to see that Albert had raised his hand.

  ‘Albert?’

  Albert winched himself around in his seat to face the back of the classroom. He was wearing a green T-shirt printed with a skull surrounded by flowers. ‘I was just wondering. I mean, if Norman and George Washington were both, like, revolutionaries, do you think they were both right?’

  ‘Explain what you’re getting at?’ said Ms Manookian.

  ‘I mean –’ Albert was frowning at the back wall – ‘was Norman more kind of like someone like Gandhi? Or more kind of like that person who poisoned that dog?’

  Ms Manookian clasped her large hands and knuckled them against her lips, gazing for a long time over the tops of her reading glasses. ‘What a good question, Albert,’ she said at last, her voice reluctant, unsteady, the sound of a teacher who didn’t have an answer ready and was stalling for time. Julia shivered.

  But the very next instant a deafening clamor filled the room, a sound like ten thousand marbles shaken inside a huge tin drum. A sound that had become all too familiar in Duncklee Middle School over the last few months. Mr Anderman sprang to his feet. The children clapped their hands to their ears. Someone had pulled the fire alarm again.