But she got up.
Mouse groaned and leaned forward. “Easy, you goin’ in?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess.” All the problems from the day before were quickly settling back into my mind.
“Mind if I sleep in your bed awhile?”
“Go on.”
He got up and staggered toward the hallway.
Before he was gone I called after him, “Raymond.”
“Yeah?”
“You told Sanchez that you didn’t know that man, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But did you know’im?”
“I seen’im. Up at the school.”
“Beginnin’ of the semester?”
“Uh-huh, yeah. He was wit’ Mr. Langdon down in the wood shop.”
“What they do there?”
“I’ont know, man. Wasn’t none’a my business.”
He went off toward the toilet. While he was there I got clean clothes out of my bedroom closet. When Mouse sacked out I took a shower and shaved. It was almost eight o’clock by the time I was finished. It would be the first time that I’d ever been late for work.
Pharaoh had to stay with us for at least one more day. I wouldn’t have been able to bear my daughter’s tears that morning. I left the house with them romping around the living room, having the time of their lives.
I went to the external lot of the lower campus first. Her car wasn’t there. I looked into C2. A tall white man, a substitute teacher, was guiding the students through their algebra.
I drove around to the main campus then, wondering how much longer I’d be able to hold on to my job.
THE OLEANDER BUSHES along the front of the old school were decorated with white flags. T-shirts, handkerchiefs, corners torn from old sheets. They were hung from branches and spread out over the grass.
Glue sniffers’ rags. Boys, and some girls, crawled behind the bushes in the middle of the night with airplane model glue. They emptied the metal tubes into cloth and breathed deeply, almost eating the poison. Afterwards they staggered out into the streets, grinning like idiots. A few months of glue and half their brains were eaten away.
Every morning Mr. Burns came out and collected the rags for the trash. It was all we could do.
I CAME INTO THE MAIN HALL of the administration building. Students were moving around, heading toward their first-period classes.
“Mr. Langdon,” I called down the crowded corridor. “Mr. Langdon.”
Casper Langdon turned around quickly, as if my voice had grabbed his shoulder and yanked. A teenager bounced off of his great paunch and went crashing into a bank of lockers.
Langdon ignored the boy and called, a little too loudly, “Mr. Rawlins?”
He was a man who was used to people running away, not calling out to him.
Small-headed and bald, he had an enormous body that was almost perfectly round. He had no nose to speak of and hardly any lips. He breathed through his open mouth and resembled a great albino turtle in overalls.
“Hi, Mr. Langdon. How are you today?”
“Oh, okay I guess.” He opened his eyes very wide and then squinted. Mr. Langdon was nearsighted but he was too vain to wear his glasses. “You know, with all this stuff about people getting killed, right here on the school grounds. What’s this world coming to?”
“Yeah, well,” I said. “You don’t get any guarantees in this life.”
Langdon gasped twice and worked his eyes at me. “Did the police talk to you yet?”
“Not yet. I expect that Sanchez’ll get to me today.”
“Sanchez? Is that his name? I hope he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“Why not?” I tried to make the question as pointed as possible without seeming to know anything.
“I’m no good around authority figures. They make me so nervous.”
“Well, do you know anything? I mean, something about what happened?”
“No, I don’t.”
Like hell.
“Then you don’t have a thing to worry about, Mr. Langdon. Not a thing.” I slapped him on his shoulder. He winced and winked and tried to laugh.
“Did you want something, Mr. Rawlins?”
“No. Why?” I asked innocently.
