Burn Scars, Eddie Generous [read full novel txt] 📗

had cleared out the door and Rusty stood by his desk, packing his bag with intentional slowness. Life in the hallway was raucous and bordered on chaotic for those first seconds after the bell. A boy shouted, “My balls, your mouth, let’s dance!” and a girl shouted back, “Get away from my sister!” Rusty smirked and closed his eyes, Christ.

The hall wasn’t the only reason for pacing his exit. Whenever he had Mr. Beaman’s general English class before lunch, he stuck around to take advantage of the man’s respectful pity.

“Remember this place being this much of a jungle?”

Rusty shook his head to this question. “Nothing’s changed, but that the old guy didn’t drop out after the first couple weeks.”

There’d always been an old guy, always. Someone like who Rusty would become, but they never stuck it out, perhaps they had better bad jobs than Rusty.

“What you’re doing is commendable.”

“Something like that.” Rusty trained his eyes on the blackboard, away from the source of the awkward compliment.

“Need some hot water?” Mr. Beaman asked then.

Carting around a backpack might’ve been the most ridiculous point of the entire to and fro of the dance. Rusty retrieved his travel mug from the bag. Inside that mug were the dry ingredients that would become coffee, just add water. Preferably boiled water, but warm would cut it in a pinch.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.” He tapped an index dinger against the screw-top lip with a sippy lip and a vent.

Mr. Beaman gave a single laugh. “Same game every time, eh?”

“I guess. Wish they had a tap downstairs, like you have.”

“Tea isn’t en vogue with too many students. Besides, they sell coffee and tea, cuts into lunch lady profits if they give away free hot water.”

“You think?” Rusty asked, not looking directly at the teacher.

“Ha, no. They run at a slight loss as it is. Lunch ladies are in the same union as the janitors.”

“Huh.”

“Yep.” Mr. Beaman gave a wave with his keys.

They started out of the room, and most of the action had settled by then as the teacher locked his door. Littering the hall in pubescent chickenpox clusters, students sat and munched pack lunches, shared earbud headphones, and poked at magazines, but not many were up and moving—dust a few moments after a UPS truck barrelled by on a gravel road. A few turned their heads as the youngish teacher and decidedly way old student walked by. The teacher’s lounge was on the same floor as the English classroom, so the trip was short, usually.

Mr. Beaman entered.

Rusty stood by the door. He looked in without being obvious about it. There were only three teachers inside. They sat around one of three round tables, busy with food and reading materials, though still managing to converse. Rusty had never had any of them, not that he recalled. Behind them, Mr. Beaman took the travel mug and opened the hot water lever on the side of the dual coffee machine, but stopped before more than a dribble fell into the cup. He glanced over his shoulder at the other teachers. None of them paid attention. He then waggled his eyebrows at Rusty, and dumped the contents of the cup in the sink and rinsed it down the drain. He grabbed a nearly-full coffee pot and filled the cup. He set it next to the usual fixins and side-eyed Rusty.

Rusty held up two fingers, flashing them twice when Mr. Beaman lifted the sugar and then the creamer. The man gave the cup a stir with a communal spoon and dropped the spoon into a cup of murky grey water. Rusty rolled against his backpack to be fully outside the doorway in case anyone was watching and cared enough to give the teacher trouble for being kind. Mr. Beaman came out and made the hand-off. Rusty screwed the lid in place as they walked.

“Thanks.”

Mr. Beaman smirked with the left side of his mouth. “I drank that instant junk in college. Horrible.”

Usually, Mr. Beaman and Rusty walked separate ways from the entry to the stairway down, but the man kept on in the same direction as Rusty, even through a set of doors on the second landing.

“I don’t mean to be…you know, nosey, but do you ever talk to your dad?”

A flush reddened Rusty’s cheeks and down his neck. “What, like at the pen?” He managed to keep his feet moving downward and the travel mug secure in his grasp while he leaned against the cold, steel railing. It was like asking about someone’s recently dead dog. Usually, nobody said much of anything about his father unless they were looking to start something, which kids did. But this was different. Rusty cleared his throat then when Mr. Beaman didn’t clarify what didn’t really need clarified anyway. “Uh, no. Not even letters or the phone. Not really interested in that.”

“Hmm.”

“Why do you wanna know?”

“Well,” Mr. Beaman didn’t continue until they reached the main floor, “I was good buds with Eric Simons. He had another boy and myself for a sleepover once,” another long pause, all the way to the door closest to where Rusty would sit and smoke his way through the lunch hour, “that night. The fire night.”

“Damn. Good. No, I mean. Yeah,” Rusty said, quaking inside. The topic had a way of shattering all but muscle memory resolve and emptied his reserve of words. He had zero notion of his family or the fire beyond his grandmother’s stories, the photos she’d had—didn’t know where those went when she died—and the newspaper article. Probably the dump. He’d really only kept a few blankets and an ash tray, knee-jerk mementos.

“Look, it’s just.” He sighed. “It was something. I don’t know,” Mr. Beaman said and reached out, but seemed to think better of letting his hand make contact with a student’s arm.

Rusty