The Education of Jeffrey Carter

Sometime during the 1990s

“Hey, kid! Get outa’ here. Yur’ not next!”

“Hey, no takin’ butts

“I’m telling…”

“I was here! I only want to get a drink of water.”

Howard Buntzen, twice Jeffery Carter’s size, pushes him right out of the line causing him to lose his balance and fall. A crescendo wall of sound, a continuous high-pitched, gleeful, shriek of prepubescent unified voices, cruel, unforgiving and loud, filled the empty playground and could be heard in the farthest reaches of the school and beyond to the town of Barksville, Mass.

“What are you going to do about it, you little piece of shit,” Howard fires back.

It was late in the afternoon, anyway. The sun was now behind the trees and falling fast. It will be dark soon. Jeffrey decided it wasn’t worth it. He got up somewhat defeated, brushed himself off, picked up his pack and walked silently and alone toward the front gate.

A victorious Howard Buntzen, proud of his ability to control his world, turned while slightly nodding his head and holding his hands up in a street gang salute. Carefully eyeing everyone else in the line to make sure no one was going to challenge his power.

Three years later…September 1st.

Slam! The screen door closed behind the torrent as it strode like a bull through the kitchen and into the living area of the house. “Where is he? Where the Hell did you go, you little runt?”

Oh crap, he’s been drinkin’ again. A flower pot is pushed over by the foot of the stairs; the sound of breaking glass is at the bathroom leading toward his room. Oh no, he’s gunnin’ for me!

Jeffrey makes his move. He slips through the window and takes the perilous two-foot jump onto the oak tree outside. It’s like second nature to him as he’s taken that leap several times before. He’s getting used to it. He climbs down fast, his heart pounding. Just as his feet hit the ground he hears his bedroom door fly open and crash into his dresser. The lamp falls over and breaks.

Silence.

It’s too far to the fence and out to the street without being seen. Jeffrey ducks under the second floor cantilever and nestles himself against the wall of his house, bathed in the shadow of darkness.

The Bull comes to the window. Jeffery can hear him breathing, loud, wheezing, almost animal like. All of a sudden that creep Howard Buntzen doesn’t seem like such a big problem anymore. Something else breaks as he turns and slams the door closed. The tornado has left the room.

This is his cue. Jeff makes for the gate, goes through it and tears off down the darkened street as a fall drizzle begins to wet the landscape. As always he’ll be able to go back home in an hour. The whirlwind will be asleep by then. And, when he wakes up at midnight, he will sober up and go to work.

Then the world will be sweet again.

The morning light breathes new life into a lifeless world. Jeffrey feels a tender loving hand stroking his back. His eyes open very slowly. "Jeff-reeee, c’mon hon-eeee… its that t-iiiii-me…” with the final syllable of each word reaching a slightly higher note and emphasizing the final sound giving a sing song voice to the phrase. His mother continues to stroke his back as she gently talks to him waking him with a mother’s love.

“Wut time’s-it?”

“7:20, its late, c’mon we got to hurry.” Suddenly, her voice back to normal, and the motherly voice has shifted to authoritarian.

Marjorie looks around the room and examines the damage the bull had done the night before. Broken glass in the corner, his baseball cards scattered all over the room, and the top corner of his poster of Ludacris left hanging like the branch of a weeping willow gently swaying to the circulation of heat coming out of the vent in his room. She looks back at Jeffrey.

“Bob,” he says. “He was drunk again last night.”

“I know.” she says through a deep sigh” “I could smell it in our bedroom when I went to bed.”

They’ve had this conversation so many times that Jeffrey only had to give his mother that rolling eyes look and she responded. “I need him, he provides for us Jeffrey, and besides, he doesn’t do that all the time.”

Silent, Jeffrey stares at the wall not acknowledging her reasoning as he swings his skinny legs over the side of the bed. He gets up and walks out of the room. His mother looks at him, forlorn.

Marjorie is unsettled by Bob’s increasingly erratic behavior. He would never ever do anything that would really be bad. He couldn’t hurt me or Jeffery. Could he?

She continues down to the kitchen to start breakfast. “Jeffery, c’mon you’re going to be late,” she yells upstairs, a little uneasy about the whole situation. Last night was the third time Bob flew off the handle like that this summer.

He did it that one time and promised never again. Do you think he could? Naw, he loves us too much for that. And, Marjorie puts it out of her mind.

Jeffrey learns another lesson