Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille (29 page)

Salas had been dumbfounded. He thought, But you should see how far they’ve come! You should have seen them two hours ago!

“Can I see your lesson plans?” Salas asked.

Mrs. Hatcher pushed them toward him. She’d written little in individual days. This week, for example, included the Chicago Fire, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the Alaska Gold Rush. Hatcher had written “1850-1900” and drawn an arrow through the week.

“Not very detailed,” said Salas.

Mrs. Hatcher laughed. “Detail’s in the head, Mr. Salas. I know what to cover.”

“But I don’t see your learning objectives. You haven’t written the standards you’re teaching. You don’t write them on the board either. I’m supposed to be able to ask any student in your class the learning objective for the day’s lesson, and they should be able to tell me. That’s best practice.”

“Did you ask them this week?”

“Uh, no, but you never stated an objective. They wouldn’t know it.”

Mrs. Hatcher picked up her lesson plan book. “The goal is always the same, Mr. Salas. When they leave my room, they know a little more history than when they came in, and they want to find out more.”

“It’s hardly measurable.” Salas felt miserable. This wasn’t how he’d planned this meeting. He was on the defensive, while Mrs. Hatcher seemed confident and self assured.

“Come in tomorrow. Ask the kids at the beginning and the end. You might find it interesting.”

“What’s the lesson?”

“It’s a good one. The wizard of Menlo Park. Did you know, at the same time Custer made his fatal pursuit at Bighorn, Thomas Edison was working on the idea that would become the phonograph? History is seeing connections. Little Big Horn occurs in 1876, the same year H.G. Wells, the guy who wrote
The Time Machine
turned ten. H. G. Wells dies in 1946, the year after the atomic bomb. Albert Einstein will be born in 1879. So, three years after Custer’s men have to use their single-shot carbines as clubs because they can’t clear jams from their guns fast enough, the man who gives us the math for the nuclear age comes into the world. Einstein died in 1955. I was a year old in 1955. Einstein, a man who lived when I lived could have talked to people who remembered Little Big Horn. History’s a big story, Mr. Salas, but it’s not incoherent. Everything touches everything. That’s the lesson.”

Salas checked on the lunch detention kids after Mrs. Hatcher left his office. Theodore Remmick had taken a seat in the back, where he read quietly. He had propped the book up on the desk. At first, Salas thought it was a Japanese anime so many kids liked. A bright cartoon image splashed across the book’s cover, but when Salas took another step closer, he could see the title:
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871
. The illustration showed a fireman handling a fire hose. He looked panicked.

Principal Wahr met Salas in the hallway outside the detention room. His words echoed in the empty hallway. “Persigo’s in your half of the alphabet, right?”

“Yes, I meant to talk to you about him.”

“No need. He turned in his resignation. Some nonsense: lawyers, kids fighting in the locker room, and no respect. He’s going to finish the year, but he’s done. One less evaluation on your plate. Phys Ed averages 54 kids a class. We’ll replace him, but we still need to eliminate a position. Put your action plan on my desk Monday. I don’t want to be messing with staffing while graduation is coming up. Here are the forms you’ll need.” He handed Salas a multi-page packet. “Have you observed the other teachers I suggested?”

“This afternoon, if I’m not interrupted.”

But the drama teacher reported someone had stolen her purse from her desk, so Salas spent the time going over surveillance footage with the campus police officer. After two hours, they noticed the teacher didn’t have her purse when she came into the building from the parking lot.

He only had time to get to Hatcher’s class as the bell rang. Students left her room more slowly than they did most classes, and they had the somewhat dazed expression he now recognized.

“I’m going to the library,” said a boy wearing a rock band sweat shirt. “What else did Edison do?”

“Had you ever heard of Tesla?” said his friend. He rubbed his hand through his hair as if to quell static electricity. “Or Henry Ford?”

They both blinked at the lights in the ceiling like they’d never seen them before.

At home that afternoon, Salas studied the teacher release form packet. Since the state had eliminated teacher tenure several years earlier, all he needed to remove a teacher was documented malfeasance, which he’d compiled during the week. He’d complete his third observation tomorrow, during the class’s weekend meeting.

According to the evaluation sheet, he’d written damning truths. By observable standards, her teaching failed. She didn’t provide learning outcomes. She didn’t follow departmental or district procedures. She ignored “best practice,” and lectured instead. Wahr had been right.

Salas tapped his pen against the papers, then looked out the window, a little sick to his stomach. The afternoon sun slanted across his front yard. He recognized the 5:00 light, the last light Custer and his men saw. Their heavy fighting started maybe an hour earlier, and as the sun beat down, the men were overrun. He remembered Custer, unhorsed, among the remaining soldiers atop a low rise. No cover. No place to run.

Salas couldn’t remember Hatcher talking. He remembered the battle itself. He’d been there. He remembered holding an empty revolver, and he remembered a terrible sadness as men fell, but he wasn’t scared. The world grew peaceful at the end, beneath the shouts and gunfire and screaming horses. He became calm when he realized the long fight was over and he didn’t need to be scared anymore.

And he remembered, too, riding away, back to the village, triumphant. A warrior among thousands, a warrior to make his ancestors and sons proud.

On Saturday, Salas walked across the parking lot toward the students. They’d parked their cars near the school, and were now in the graveled overflow parking, far from the building. He heard someone laugh, and they chattered among themselves.

Mrs. Hatcher and Mrs. Leanny, both wearing overalls, were helping the students arrange display boards on the ground. When he reached the crowd’s edge, he could see the boards laid out in grids, like city streets, complete with small structures glued to their surface.

“Hi, Mr. Salas,” said Theodore Remmick. He wore a ball cap backwards, clearing all the hair from his face. “I’m not going to bring it into the school.” He held up the propane torch from earlier in the week. “I’m the fire marshall.”

“What’s the project?” Salas said.

“We need your equipment at the south end, Sean,” said Mrs. Hatcher. “When we’re ready, start the generator and fan. Theodore will tell you when. Careful you don’t step on West 18
^th
.”

“I saw so little,” said the girl Salas had sat behind his first day in Hatcher’s class. Today she wore a bikini top and cutoff jeans. “So much smoke. It choked me.” She rubbed her throat unconsciously. “I didn’t picture the scope . . .” She waved at the miniature city.

She stepped to the side, and now Salas could see the entire display.

Mrs. Leanny joined him. “Each board represents a half mile, so it’s 12 boards long and 3 boards wide. There’s 34 kids in the class. Two boards short. Hatcher and I got to do one too.”

Theodore Remmick crouched at the south end, then fired up his torch. A couple kids pointed cell phone cameras. “It’s near 9:00 a.m., Sunday, October 10 in a city of 335,000 people. In two days, 100,00 will be homeless. The fire starts in the O’Leary’s barn.” He let the flame wash over a tiny building, which caught fire immediately. Several students gasped.

“I saw the fire coming,” said a boy holding a camera, but he stopped filming. His hand fell to his side, and his focus drifted. “I was walking home from church with my daughter. At Beach and DeKoven, I smelled burning wood. Smoke rushed up the street. We ran and ran to the Polk Street Bridge to cross the river.”

Tiny flames blackened the board’s end, crisping the miniscule buildings. The students had labeled the streets. Salas recognized them from the lists in Hatcher’s classroom: DeKoven, Meagher, Catherine, Barber. The Chicago River, a blue ribbon, meandered the diorama’s length. He saw the bridge at Polk Street.

“Turn on the fan,” said Theodore Remmick.

Salas stepped back. The students leaned forward intensely. Talk ceased. Someone sobbed. The box fan pushed the fire across the display. In a few minutes, six scale miles caught fire and burned. Stores, offices, warehouses, homes, bridges, schools and hospitals. When the fire reached the far end, Theodore intoned, “On Monday evening, the winds died. Cut the wind, Sean.” The fan rattled to a stop. “And it began to rain.”

Students pulled out squirt guns. They were silent at first, and the water streams hissed when they hit the board, but soon they laughed as they put out the fire, squirting each other just as often as soaking the burned city.

“I want to know more about fire fighting,” said a girl. “What did they learn from this?”

“Did they change the fire codes?” said another.

“How long did it take them to rebuild?”

“Did the mayor get blamed?”

“Did other cities have fires?”

“How much did it cost?”

When Salas left, they were still talking, asking questions, eager to learn. Eager to share what they knew.

Mrs. Hatcher didn’t give a lecture. She hardly spoke, Salas thought in wonder. She never taught at all, but it was the best lesson he’d ever seen.

On Monday, Salas handed his recommendations to Principal Wahr. The bald-headed man studied the one-page report silently. Salas let his gaze wander around the room. Organizational charts covered the walls: arrows pointing to boxes, boxes containing names, names associated to duties. It all seemed impersonal. Standards. Goals. Wahr had framed the school’s mission: “To lead all students to reach their individual potential by rigorously pursuing and evaluating achievement of high academic and ethical standards in a disciplined, nurturing environment.”

Wahr cleared his throat. “This plan cuts your position. You cut your own job.”

Salas took a deep breath. “Coach Persigo turned in his retirement papers. Leanny is willing to do the extra work to save a teaching slot, and I think it’s time I went back to the classroom. P.E. is where I belong.”

Wahr looked baffled. “What about Hatcher? What are your recommendations?”

“You said your son will be going to school here next year, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I need to keep an eye on him. Hates school right now.”

Salas tried to picture Principal Wahr’s boy. Maybe Wahr’s son resembled Salas when he was in school. Maybe he acted indifferent and lazy, just as Salas had.

“Put him in Hatcher’s U.S. History class.”

“Really.” The disbelief reverberated in Wahr’s voice. “She’ll lecture him into a coma.”

“I don’t think so.”

Salas remembered the day’s end at Greasy Grass. A desperate people, for a moment, triumphed, but it was a “last stand” for both sides, a proof you fight even when the campaign looks lost. He closed his eyes to see an image that had returned to him since he’d sat in Hatcher’s room. The sun set on a swell in the land they would later call Custer Hill. A growing dusk, filled with velvety shade covered the grass and brush until the details disappeared. No bodies visible now. No dead horses. No broken lances. No battle remnants. Just the stars and the rolling hills and a treeless horizon. The wind pressed his back. A coyote yipped in the distance, and the village dogs yapped in return.

He had lost friends, warriors all, but the enemy had lost many more. They would sing songs about today. They would tell stories to the childrens’ childrens’ children so no one would forget. The victory at Greasy Grass would join the great tales told back to back, the unbroken voice of people speaking.

It had become history.

What happened in Hatcher’s room? Hypnotism, magic, time travel?

Salas rubbed the goosebumps off his arms and faced Principal Wahr.

“You won’t be sorry your son is in Hatcher’s class,” he said. “She’s exemplary.”

Far
from
the
Emerald Isle

D
ragging a pack full of equipment behind her, Anise Delaney crawled her way between the slick inner wall of
The Redeemer
and the rough textured outer shell. Not only was she tall, but her shoulders were broad. A rugby player’s build wasn’t the best choice for this errand. She envied Sierra’s slight figure who was following. Anise’s back scraped against the metal again, and she opened her mouth in exclamation, but bit the sound short. Something moved in the claustrophobic darkness just beyond her headlamp. She held her breath until it moved closer into the light. It was just a maintenance bot scuttling away on its regular rounds.

She relaxed and said over her shoulder, “By all my calculations, we should be dead.” Her light illuminated the squeezed path before her like a broad but very low mineshaft. The air smelled stale and metallic. She thought about gremlins, dwarves and tommyknockers. And leprechauns. Her grandmother had a few stories about them. This would be the kind of place they would like, walking unseen below the ark-ship crew’s world, causing trouble. She grinned at the idea, but only for an instant; the interior of the gray hull absorbed light, accepted no shadows, and it hurt her hands to crawl on it. Next time I’ll bring gloves and knee pads, she thought.

Sierra, a few feet back, grunted in acknowledgment. “But we’re not dead. That doesn’t mean there was anything extraordinary.”

Anise checked a monitor mounted on her wrist. They were close to where her calculations said there should be an impact crack. “There you go again. I told you from the beginning that they made a mistake when they crewed these ships. We’re homogeneous. All this scientific expertise creates blind spots. We assume everything has a rational explanation and that’s not sensible. Sucks the wonder out of living. Weird things have happened on this ship. Strange sounds behind the walls. Tools moved. Meals missing. Remember when Yatmaso lost his glasses? Couldn’t find them for a week, and there they were, in the middle of his desk. ” She scooted forward ten more feet. Naturally the stressed area would be exactly between two of the access panels. “It’s like that rainbow on the day we took off. I see it as a sign, and when I point it out to you, you give me a lecture on light and refraction. They made sure there was racial and ethnic diversity, but not much diversity of thought. We don’t even have an acupuncturist on board.”