By now, most of the school’s fifteen-hundred kids seemed to be in the cafeteria, and the place was so jammed that I could hardly move. A few feet away, I saw Augie in the middle of another fight. I managed to get over there just as a big heavyset kid wearing blue overalls pushed past Augie to get at another kid. Augie grabbed the big kid around his waist and lifted him up and swung him around. Two boys wearing black T-shirts and silver medallions around their necks tried to squeeze by me to get at the kid Augie had. When I took hold of one boy’s arm, he turned and threw a punch at me, which I dodged and then twisted his arm so that he went down in front of his buddy, who tripped and went down himself.
Glancing around, I saw more security guards, probably part of the mobile security force the board deploys when something big breaks out in a school. This was definitely something big, much worse than anything I’d encountered when I was teaching.
Something bounced off my head, and when I turned around, the stocky black woman who’d checked me into the school earlier was doing her best to separate two tall boys who were throwing punches at each other over her head. I forced my way through the crowd and elbowed one of the boys out of the way. I assumed T. Watkins dealt with the other boy, but I wasn’t sure, because at that moment, a whole wall of kids knocked me over, along with everyone else in their path. As I got back to my feet, I realized that the school’s fire alarm was ringing, probably had been for a while. I also saw what had moved all those kids. City cops, some in riot gear. The cavalry had arrived.
I counted at least twenty cops, mostly city but some county, too. They had formed a phalanx and were sweeping across the cafeteria, pushing everyone towards the exits. Slowly, the place began to empty. I stepped between two of the cops and helped push. By the time we got out of the cafeteria and through the front hallway, more reinforcements were on the scene. I saw lots more cops, including at least three K-9 teams, and maybe two dozen firefighters. When we got outside, I saw that the building was ringed by police cars, school security vehicles, fire trucks, ambulances, and, of course, the satellite hook-up vans of every TV and radio station in town. After all, this was breaking news. Completing the picture, two helicopters hovered overhead. Most of the kids had scattered, except for a few who I now saw handcuffed and kneeling on the ramp leading to the parking lot, kept in place by two of the K-9 units.
I had no idea how long the whole thing had lasted. I glanced at my wrist to check the time and discovered that my watch was gone. I also noticed that my shirt was ripped and had blood on it, and one of my loafers had a big gouge on the toe. In addition, my Save the Children tie appeared to have a tear in it. And I was breathing hard.
Augie suddenly appeared beside me. His clothes were in worse shape than mine, and he had a trickle of blood down one side of his face.
“Jesus, Aug,” I said, “a simple welcome-back party in the faculty room would have sufficed. You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble. And incidentally, you’re bleeding.”
“Makes two of us,” he said as he pointed at my head.
I reached up and felt blood where I’d been hit by whatever-it-was back in the cafeteria.
“C’mon,” Augie said, “let’s go find one of the paramedics. Since they’re here, we might as well make use of their services. Oh, by the way, the kid who was jumped by those other three in the cafeteria?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anthony.”
Chapter 10
About two hours later, Augie and I were sitting in his office, feet up on his desk, drinking some really bad coffee. I was on my second cup, Augie his third. He’d just come back from a meeting in the school library with the board’s chief of security, two board members, some parent reps and various other school administrators.
“So,” I said, “what’s the casualty count?”
“Couple dozen kids treated here, nothing too serious, mostly just scrapes and bruises. Four kids, Anthony and three others, were taken to Oakland General. Anthony’s got a possible concussion, one girl has a broken arm, another girl lost some teeth, and the fourth kid” . . . Augie stopped and glanced at a slip on paper on his desk . . . “a boy, is missing the tip of his left ear.”
“You know,” I said, “suddenly I don’t feel quite so bad about losing my watch. The board’ll replace it anyway, right? It was a Rolex.”
Augie grinned and said, “It was a Timex, and maybe you’d
