Skipping School

SKIPPING SCHOOL
(First published in Aoife's Kiss, Online, June 2007)
by Guy Stewart

 

Jonterrius “little dog crap” had been waiting in the rain for three hours. He wanted cash to get a meal that didn’t come out of a dumpster or with a sermon. He didn’t want Joewillis to catch and kill him. He wanted to get out from under that pain. Wanted to sit and read like when he was little.

He wanted to be gone.

On the rain slick sidewalks, second shifters were going to work and first shifters were coming home. They hurried past him, their black, blue and red umbrellas fountains overhead mixed with plastic bags spread like circus tarps.  School kids in yellow slickers shed water as they passed him, blinking owlishly in the downpour. If anyone noticed him – and he knew most didn’t – all they’d see was some sopping wet street kid hunched over begging for food or money or whatever.

He watched as they scurried between red and white, candy cane striped poles on the corner of Marquette and Sixth Street. The Light Rail train crackled along its tracks but didn’t slow down as the scurriers vanished suddenly. When the train was gone, Jonterrius saw them safe and sound and scurrying on their way across the street.

He sat on a square of gray plastic. His butt was dry, but cold water soaked through the shins of his thin black pants. His feet were numb, the dirty green All Stars drenched and one big brown toe sticking through a hole. His black, tight curled African hair had been hacked close to his head with a carefully sharpened tin knife three days ago. He carried the same knife taped to his shin under the pant leg. His faded red jacket was water proof, but the rain still leaked through small rips. Across the street, an old man lay on the sidewalk, curled around a bottle wrapped in wet brown paper.

A tiny white Minnesota girl dressed in a clean, green skirt with a white top covered by a transparent slicker caught his eye. On her way to school, dark red pack slung on her back, cellphone strapped to her wrist, she almost looked like the other school kids. But from his seat, Jonterrius saw skin stretched too tight over cheekbones. Dull, dark-ringed, hungry eyes followed flattened, tarnished gold curls as she swung her head, looking for a purse or satchel to snatch. A moment later, like a sparrow hawk, her eyes locked on a heavy woman carrying a large bag.

Jonterrius stood up, taking his plastic with him, tucked it into his pants and strode to the intersection. He hunched trying to disappear, but eyes noticed him: an old legless woman in a wheelchair wearing a thick, blue coat, a man in a dark suit with sunglasses, two little boys holding hands all went suddenly alert. He knew what he looked like: young black man in raggedy pants, filthy jacket, soaking wet and moving like he was up to no good. He scared them all. Joewillis had loved it. Jonterrius – “little dog crap” – and Johnmichal hated it. Hate or love, outsiders would judge him filled with rage, boiling over with violent intent, stereotyped.

He was neither angry nor had he planned violence.

He tracked the girl as she moved in for the snatch. He stepped between the candy cane poles, skipping over the street and came out the other side. The skipgate effect seemed to make everyone freeze for an instant around him as his atoms were transported instantly across the street to the other skipgate. His foot came down just as the girl snatched the bag.

She was a pro, hugging the bag to her chest and dropping down to run like a three-legged dog between the legs of the crowd.

The woman screamed even as the man in the suit, a woman in stilettos with a blue umbrella and the drunk drew stasers. The girl saw and her free arm with the cellphone on it came up to her chest. She dropped the snatch, keying the ‘phone. She bolted for the skipgate as the stasers discharged and the drunk reached her. She vanished as she passed between the candy striped poles as did the drunk, followed by the woman in stilettos.

Three plainclothes police officers on a snatch? “What’re the bluuz up to?” Jonterrius muttered as the man and woman reappeared across the street. He frowned.

The girl did not reappear.

They scrambled around, looking for her, jumping back and forth across the street, then around the intersection. Finally, they split up, each one sprinting for a different intersection, all of them talking on tracys.

A voice at his elbow rasped, “We better get out of here. They’re mad and might come back to sweep all of us out of spite.”

Jonterrius jumped sideways, cussing. The legless woman in the wheelchair sat next to him, watching the running bluuz. He could see her smirk as she said, “Sorry I scared you, son.”

“Nothin’ scares me.” Jonterrius sprinted for the skipgate. On the other side, he turned right down the block, skipped the intersection, cut left and ran two blocks. He kept on until he was home. Panting, he stood on the edge of the failed Uptown Renewal Project. He spun around to see if anyone was watching, then slid down the packed earth sides through scraggly dried weeds and paper and other garbage until he stopped level with a concrete pipe sticking out of the ground horizontally. The good end was buried and the broken end dangled chunks of concrete laced with rebar, screened by scrubby elm saplings. He slithered into his pipe past a half-rotted cardboard box and tangled plastic wrap. The short round space wasn’t big enough for a grown man and too high up the face of the sloping hole for a little one alone. It hid him from Joewillis and any stray kiddies. It was far from homeless shelters and soup kitchens and it was in a bad neighborhood – even among bad neighborhoods. Bluuz didn’t come snooping here – the screaming and sporadic gunfire kept them away. He’d woven a screen of garbage to keep out prying eyes, snow, rain and the worst of the wind.

Settled down, the only sound tonight was him scratching an old pencil across a paper grocery bag. Squinting light filtered through heavy rainclouds and the privacy screen of garbage, he read the lead-conserving code he used, “Bluuz r ftr skpsntchrs. Skpsntchrs r stpd bt sm kn jmp whrevr they wnt nd ignr th risk. I cd tch m, do it rght bt they wnt lstn T me. I CAN tch lik Dad! I kn! Wht wll mk m lstn?” Jonterrius lowered the bag. Dad would have been horrified to read the mostly vowel-free shorthand. He’d been an English teacher at Minneapolis 3M High School. Terrorists had killed him when they took the school hostage and mostly nobody paid any attention. 3M used it as an excuse to pull out of education altogether. Mom was bluuz and tried to keep Joewillis, Jonterrius and Johnmichal together, but she died in the line and after tries at foster and family, the three of them were on the street a year later.

Jonterrius looked at his big toe and wiggled it then wrote, “Hmlss kdz gt stpdr n stpdr cz they gt no spnsrs to gt thm n2 corpschlz.” He sighed, rolled the journal around the pencil and slid back to stash it at the back of the pipe near the ceiling. He tried snoozing under his marysquilt but that didn’t work so he stowed it again, slid out of the pipe and scrambled back up to the street. By now it was getting dark under heavy clouds. Colder than before, his breath came in white puffs. He had business to attend to.

 

Twenty minutes later, he took the plastic square from his pants and sat down.

Traffic tonight was light at Marquette and South Sixth Street, but it was steady. Too early for second shift to get off, second shift partners – poorer than firsts who got prime pay and thirds who got hardship pay for working all night – held the worst of the three legislated shifts, hurried on their way. Third shift shoppers were dollarstore, always hauling bags of cheap stuff. Full price mallrats shopped first shift at the best places. Second shifters hunted bargain, but for a homeless kid, even bargain hunters were better than nothing.

There were kids mixed with the crowd, mostly with moms or dads, but there were enough loners for skipsnatchers to blend in. Jonterrius rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. His stomach growled and he had to piss. He fidgeted then froze when he saw the little Asian boy across the street. Nice jacket, nice pants, but shoe soles flopping, eyes shifting as they searched for a target. Jonterrius scowled. This one looked scared. Desperate. No obvious cellphone, Jonterrius saw him spot a target and close in.

On his feet, tucking the square in his pants, Jonterrius focused on the kid. He had a good-bad feeling about this one. He stepped through the ‘gate and popped out just as the kid grabbed the briefcase of a man in a rainbow suit. Jonterrius clicked his tongue. Kid must be starving to try a snatch like that. The kid dropped to one hand, clutching the briefcase to his chest, but it must have been heavier than normal because he fumbled it and rainbow suit almost grabbed him. Jonterrius figured out which ‘gate the kid was headed for and skipped to intercept him when the bluuz moved in.

A pair dropped their undercover by pulled stasers and caught the kid in the crossfire while everyone else cleared the sidewalk. Every muscle in the kid contracted at the same time and he went down, back arched like Charles Bell’s “Tetanus”. Jonterrius had seen the painting at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and he’d had a headache for the rest of the day. Now he felt his insides clench in sympathy. After a moment of spasms, the boy lay limp, the briefcase forgotten. The bluuz carried him to the curb to a waiting squad car and then they were gone.

The crowd started moving again as Jonterrius and the others skipped through the gate, feet shuffling, elbow-to-elbow with the shift shoppers and the increasing traffic as some started skipping to make third shift jobs early.  He reached his usual wall then slid down to a narrow alley where he pissed. He came back out and nearly tripped over the legless woman in the wheelchair. “The hell!” he exclaimed. She looked up at him, grinned then wheeled away to a spot further down the glass wall. She pulled a gold dish from alongside her thigh and set it on her lap. She winked at him and then got to work begging.

Jonterrius pulled out his gray square and sat, sliding down the wall and wrapping his arms around bony knees. His stomach threatened to digest itself, rumbling. He watched the crowd swell as early second shifters got off and early third shifters headed leisurely to work. The flickering of people skipping increased to a steady strobe. Jonterrius had always wanted to do what the golden-haired girl had pulled off; he’d been about to do what the stasered boy had tried and failed. But Joewillis ran skipsnatching rings and sellinboot services. If Jonterrius started to make a name for himself, Joewillis would find him, hunt him down and kill him. But what if Jonterrius could go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted to? He could disappear from Joewillis’ radar forever. Where had the golden-haired girl gone?

Skipgates worked by quantum displacement through non-geometric space in multiple dimensions. When you went through a skipgate, your atoms passed through a dimension other than the four you were used to – he’d heard that it was a dimension with different…dimensions than this one where fifty meters here was only a millimeter there. The gates only worked over short distances maxing out at fifteen meters. Anything beyond that for the number of skipgates in Minneapolis was supposed to require energy in amounts most nuclear reactors couldn’t produce in a whole day – just to operate the ‘gates.

He’d seen his first real ‘gate five years ago. Now they were everywhere and people used them like they’d used crossing lights before. Of course, with the technology, came skipsnatchers followed by wild claims that there was technology that would let you go farther. The whispered caveat was that while you could go far, no one knew how to predict where a person came out.

Another skipsnatcher tried to grab a bag but was stasered by another undercover bluuz. A voice at his elbow said, “Two in one night. New record I think.”

Jonterrius jumped to his feet and moved away from wheelchair woman. How’d she get so close without him noticing?

“Keep acting like that and they’ll staser you for drunk and disorderly.”

“I ain’t drunk!”

“I know you’re not, but don’t seem like they be needin’ excuses tonight.” She started rolling and he picked up his plastic and started in the other direction. She called out, “Come with me, son. I can use a hand.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I might have something you want.”

“How you know what I want?”

She shrugged, turned and started rolling herself down the sidewalk. The crowd flowed around her, not stopping, not looking, not seeing. He clicked his tongue, rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, waiting for her to turn around and beg him. She was almost to the candy cane skipgate when he sprinted to her wheelchair and followed her for a few steps. She stopped suddenly and without turning around said, “Make yourself useful or I scream the bluuz down on you.”

He grunted and took the handles. They skipped and she said, “Left.” He pushed that direction and continued to follow her directions until she said, “I figured you’d be the one.”

“What?”

“People say you wanna be a teacher like your dad.”

 “How do you know my dad?” Jonterrius cried, yanking her backwards and spinning her around.

She was smiling slightly as she faced him and replied, “I was a teacher, too.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“I ain’t got no friends.”

“‘I don’t have any friends’. Your dad would have thought your grammar atrocious.”

“How do you…” he stopped sullenly then flung, “You bluuz?”

She snorted and said, “Long, long ago, before I lost these,” she gestured to the space below the hem of her coat. She paused. “Since then, a teacher. Son, I have a proposal for you.”

Jonterrius’ gut spasmed, the words loaded for a boy who’d spent five years sellinboot and the last twelve months trying to make it work any other way. It’s why Joewillis hated his guts, wanted to kill him – lost income is all he cared about. But if that was all wheelchair woman was after...he spun and sprinted as fast as he could and was back to South Sixth and Marquette before he’d consciously thought to return. He needed a minute to think so he pulled out his plastic and sat down, wrapping his arms around his knees and putting his head down as he glanced at the corner clock. Janitors, couriers, security, couple of doctors moved in a loose crowd, heads down, skipping without seeing. He kept his head down and disappeared.

When he looked up, the crowd had changed to third shift families and drifters. Still, no one saw him. Skipsnatchers didn’t either. That’s why he saw the white kid, real young, cellphone on his wrist about to make a major mistake. Stomach cramping powerful good-bad feeling surging through him, Jonterrius was on his feet and across the street and didn’t use the ‘gate. As he watched, the ‘snatcher moved like a ferret. The target looked at Jonterrius, startled, opened his mouth as the ‘snatcher bumped him and lifted his wallet. Jonterrius dodged the grab and followed the white boy to the ‘gate, grabbing his jacket sleeve just before the kid finished tapping on his cellphone. He cried, “I gotta deal for ya! I’m a teacher, show youse how to read and write...”

The ‘snatcher punched him, grazing his shoulder then they were through the ‘gate as the undercover bluuz from the next intersection finally got there.

 

When everything reappeared around them, they weren’t far from Jonterrius’ cement pipe home.

Then he saw the boy and rolled backwards, eyes wide as the kid’s head flopped soundlessly sideways. The wallet slid from lifeless fingers. The rest of the arm and the boy’s torso were embedded in an armored electrical box on the corner of Sixteenth Avenue and Fremont, directly under the streetlight.

Jonterrius’ hand had been a hairsbreadth from the box and he shook it as the fingers tingled like they were paralyzed. He’d heard stories of people who’d had hand, fingers or a toe materialize inside a structure. It happened even with regular skipgates. They said it didn’t hurt at all – not until they had to cut it off so you could move again.

“Sad, very sad,” said a voice down the sidewalk. The legless woman rolled into the pool of light spilling down around them.

“How’d you get here?” Jonterrius exclaimed, scrambling to his feet.

“I followed you,” she said so matter-of-factly it made his insides clench with tetanus strength.

“You can’t do that!”

She shrugged. “I did.”

“How?”

She smiled then said softly, “I have a key and I know how to use it – at least to get to some places. It was just a matter of flipping through my sites before I found you.”

Jonterrius felt a blinding rage – legacy of his mother she’d passed to two of her boys. The one who didn’t have it was dead. He shouted, “Who are you?”

“I’ll answer that in a bit. Once you answer my question: I need you to help me do a job. Will you?” She lifted her chin to the kid in the box. There was no blood. No gore. A living body merged with cold metal or plastic or stone gave no fantasy cyborg of movie proportions – just cold dead meat, metal, plastic and stone. She said, “They need to learn, but I can’t reach them. You can.”

Jonterrius blinked slowly and said, “That’s how Johnmichal died, ‘cept he was runnin’ drugs for Joewillis.” Like a bad LSD flashback, he went helplessly to that night, Joewillis screaming on the cell and by the time Jonterrius got there. In a cold rage, Joewillis beat him bloody, screaming “little dog crap”! in front of their oldest brother’s slack face poking wide-eyed from a brick wall, hands limp and one foot in a holey tennis flat on the ground.

Joewillis put Jonterrius on the street, threatened to kill “little dog crap” if he so much as touched a drug but they needed to live somehow and sellinboot was the only other way. Lasted five years until Jonterrius ran away. Joewillis had been lookin’ for him ever since. Wheelchair woman was once bluuz; Joewillis was skipsnatcher, murderer, pimp big time; Jonterrius the link between them. He could see clearly what she wanted in return for the key. It had nothing to do with helping him realize his dream and everything to do with revenge.

He ran, skipping all the way home and not looking at the armored electrical box under the streetlight. By the time he got there, morning was coming. It was late April still, the worst of winter past. Jonterrius unfolded the marysquilt, propped his feet level with his eyes across the concrete pipe. Took out the grocery bag and his pencil. Light still slanted down enough for him to write, “Fr sec, thot w/c wmn wz rel. myb hlp me w/ tchn. bt dz she jst wnt 2 ctch JW? Stl bluuz? Wht wll mk skpsntchrs lrn? Myb w/c wmn hz key? Tht th way? Trd key fr lrn?” He laid his head back against cold concrete. Gray plastic under his butt kept it from freezing. Marysquilt kept the worst from his skinny limbs. He rolled the journal up with the pencil, put it away and went to sleep.

 

Jonterrius got up in the dark and figured he was hungry enough to endure a sermon today. Soup kitchen at Mary’s Place was his usual best shot. He folded the marysquilt and tucked it away, scattered some garbage and dropped out of the pipe, pissing downhill. Shinnying up the slope, he reached the sidewalk as the streetlight turned off for the day.

He was glad. He had no desire to see the kid again. He headed to the nearest skipgate and made for Seventh and Hennepin today. It was an easier place to watch people from and no one was expecting him there, but he needed change today and it was the best for that. He found a wall across from a parking ramp, took out his square of plastic, sat, curling around himself, thinking invisible thoughts. The usual crowd skipped in and out, third shift well-begun and first shifters starting to trickle out on their way. Most kids hung near City Center, lots of food, arcades and specialty shops. He’d made Joewillis a living there for five years.

A deep voice near his head said, “Lookin’ good, little dog crap.” Jonterrius started, looking up into the scarred face of his brother. “Hear you’re hanging with a new crowd and someone’s lookin’ for me.”

“I’m not…”

“Another lie and I cut,” he said a real knife in his hand on Jonterrius’ neck. “What, you think wheelchair woman wants anything to do with you little dog crap? She wants me.” He paused, pressing the knife against Jonterrius’s neck harder. “I want what she got. I want the key.”

“I don’t have it yet.”

“When you see wheelchair woman, tell her I’ll meet her. Warehouse District, industrial skipgate thirty-three in two nights.”

Jonterrius hummed from the back of his throat. Moving his head would have killed him. The knife disappeared and Joewillis jerked him to his feet, grabbing the plastic square. “Don’t deserve this, little dog crap. After this, I’ll kill you.”

“Hey!” He made a grab for the square. Joewillis cuffed him then shoved him into the wall and sprinted for the skipgate half a block away. Ears ringing, Jonterrius tried to stand, follow his brother, get the square back. Nauseated, he fell back.

Joewillis reached the gate as six bluuz stepped out, shoulder to shoulder. Joewillis bellowed obscenities, stabbing the bluuz that threw herself into his path. He staggered and the others needed no more excuse to draw their stasers, firing lightning. Regular people screamed, falling over each other to get out of the way. After the first tetanus convulsion, Joewillis fell to the ground but bluuz didn’t stop firing until the target – Joewillis – was fried. Jonterrius turned away, closed his eyes and threw up.

Wheelchair woman said near his head, “You don’t have to worry any more, son.”

Jonterrius looked up at her. It was dark now. Green, yellow, orange, blue signs painted her coat black and the metal chair danced with firefly reflections. “You used me to bait Joewillis. Bluuzwork. Mom woulda been proud if it wasn’t Joewillis dead there.”

She grunted then said, “Your momma would have cheered.”

He swallowed bile because there wasn’t anything else to puke up and whispered, “You’re the same as Joewillis. All you want is what you want.”

She grunted again then jerked her chin. “We have to go or we’ll be arrested as material witnesses.”

“Why do you care, you’re bluuz?”

“Not any more. I’m just Jane Citizen doing what your momma would have wanted. We need to go.” She spun and started rolling away from the bluuz activity.

He lurched to his feet, grabbed the handles and spun her around, shouting, “How would you know what mamma wanted?”

“How do you think I lost these?” she gestured to the space below the hem of her coat.

“How’m I supposed to know?”

“I was there the night your momma died, Jonterrius. Same night I lost my legs.”

“You let her die?” His fingers found the tin knife on his shin and he pulled it free, pressing it to her throat.

Wheelchair woman snorted then said, her voice fearless, “I was busy bleeding to death when she took a hit. Six other bluuz died with her – gang ambush. She died fast. I’m not done dying yet.”

Jonterrius leaned forward, pressing his cheek to hers but not moving the knife. He whispered, “I think you been playing the game a long, long time, wheelchair woman. Maybe even before momma died.”

“No!” she gasped, “We were friends.”

“I don’t remember you,” Jonterrius said.

“You were three. 3M corporate elementary. I talked to Joewillis and Johnmichal all the time.” She drew a long breath but it was no longer steady. She trembled as she rasped, “I loved all of you.”

“Then why’d you let Joewillis die?”

“He died the day your momma died. He was nine. He dropped from school and grew murder in the place of his heart. He was growing murder even now. Your murder. He wanted everything bluuz to die and he was almost ready to make it happen.” She paused. “Everyone he touched grew evil – except you and Johnmichal.”

Jonterrius took deep breaths, head still spinning from Joewillis slamming him against the wall. He stood up, saying, “You really got a key?”

“Yes.”

“You really gonna give it to the kids?”

“Ain’t gonna give nothin’,” she said then spun her chair around. “They have to earn it.”

“I can teach them.”

She snorted. “You’re no more a teacher than I am a track star.”

“I can do it.”

“What would you teach them? You have no classroom, no books…”

“I can teach ‘em to read and write and use public databases. I can teach ‘em to survive without skipsnatching or sellinboot. I can teach ‘em to think, learn, maybe get a real job. They’s jobs for people.”

“Why didn’t you get one of them if there’s so many?”

“Joewillis woulda found out and I couldn’t deal with him.” He jerked his chin back to the intersection. “He ain’t here no more.”

“You tried to get into the police academy and they turned you down. How can you help other kids get jobs?”

He felt his face heat up in embarrassment but he said, “They need a real incentive.” Wheelchair woman’s brows went up and Jonterrius couldn’t stop the smirk before he said, “Yeah, I know big words, too. I can even spell it if you’d like.”

“How do you propose to use the key?”

“They go to school, we give them a skipgate.”

“That’s like giving a shotgun to a baby! They’ll take the code and never come back.”

Jonterrius scowled and started pushing wheelchair woman toward the next skipgate. “Nah, it’s perfect – we don’t give ‘em enough rope to hang themselves. One gate key? Bluuz’ll stake before you can count fifteen. They’ll need at least five keys if they gonna skipsnatch. But once they start learning some of ‘em will addict – keep on and on and on.” He stopped suddenly and wheelchair woman rocked forward then looked over her shoulder as Jonterrius said, “You can sponsor them to corpschools!”

“Me?” She barked a laugh, deep and harsh but dripping glad like he’d never heard. She shook her head, “Just like your momma and dad – big dreams, lotsa guts.” She paused then continued, “But it might work. She spun slowly around, held out a pale, veined, faintly trembling hand. “Partners, then?”

Jonterrius stepped back then slowly lifted his hand to take hers. He squeezed and she squeezed back with surprising strength. An LSD flash to his hand in momma’s as she hurried through a skipgate. He grunted. She smirked and said, “Just ‘cause I look old don’t mean I can’t beat you bloody silly.”

“Skipping school,” he said suddenly. Eyebrows up, bit of a nod. “What are you, wheelchair woman?”

“Just that in public.” Without releasing her hand, Jonterrius nodded. She lowered her voice, “Between us, Rowan Martin.” He lifted his chin and let go.

“Thanks, but not what I asked. What are you, Rowan Martin?”

“Bluuz,” Jonterrius nodded, waiting. She finally added, “Lotsa things. What are you?”

Jonterrius pursed his lips then said, “Jonterrius Green, teacher. Just like my dad.” He paused, thinking then added, “That’s the only thing gonna take me from all of this – if I take others with me.”

Wheelchair woman smiled slowly and said, “No poop, Poirot.”

Jonterrius frowned, “What?”

“Name of a great fictional detective, Hercule Poirot. I’ll get you a download of one of his stories. Take your mind off your worries for a while.”

He went around to the wheelchair handles, took them, turned her around and started pushing her toward the skipgate. “I think I can live with that.”

Wheelchair woman took out her cell, punched a long series of keys. When they rolled between the candy cane striped poles, they didn’t appear across the street.