Warren Murphy: Mugger Blood

Before Shockley could move, Remo's hand flashed out and ripped a foot-square hole in the steel screen. Shockley's hands groped out, grasping for his .357 Magnum but it wasn't there. It was in the crazy white man's hands, and as Shockley watched in horror, Remo snapped off the barrel just behind the cylinder. He looked at the useless weapon, then tossed both parts onto the desk in front of Shockley.

"There," he said.

Shockley's face was screwed up in anguish as if someone had just squirted ammonia into his nostrils.

"Why you do that?" he whined.

"Just write it off as another indigenous ethnic experience in racist white America," Remo said. "That's a book title. It's yours for free."

Shockley picked up both parts of the pistol and looked at them. Remo thought he was going to cry.

"You shouldna done dat," Shockley said and turned bloodhound eyes on Remo.

Remo shrugged.

"What I go do now?" Shockley asked.

"Write another book. Call it Racism on the Rampage."

"You shouldna done dat ting," Shockley said. "I gots de parents conference all dis appernoon and now whats I gonna do wif no gun?"

"Stop hiding behind that screen like a goddam fireplace log and come out and talk to the parents. Maybe they'll tell you that they'd like their kids to learn to read and write. So long."

Remo walked to the door. He stopped and turned as he heard Shockley mumbling.

"Deys gonna get me. Deys gonna get me. Oh, lawdy, deys gonna get me and me wiffen no gun."

"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said.

When Remo went to collect Tyrone Walker, he wasn't sure if he had walked into Room 127 or the sixth annual reunion celebration of the Manson Family.

There were twenty-seven black teenagers in the classroom, a limit set by state law because a larger class would have disrupted the learning experience. A half dozen sat round a windowsill in the far corner, passing a hand-rolled cigarette from hand to hand. The room reeked with the deep bitter smell of marijuana. Three tall youths amused themselves by throwing switchblade knives at a picture of Martin Luther King that was Scotch-taped to one of the pecan-paneled walls of the classroom. Most of the students lounged at and on desks, their feet up on other desks, listening to transistor radios that blared forth the top four songs on the week's hit parade, "Love is Stoned," "Stone in Love," "In Love I'm Stoned," and "Don't Stone My Love." The din in the classroom sounded like a half dozen symphony orchestras warming up at the same time. In a bus.

Three very pregnant girls stood by a side wall, talking to each other, giggling and drinking wine from a small pint bottle of muscatel. Remo looked around for Tyrone and found him sleeping across two desks.

Remo drew a few glances from some of the students who then dismissed him with contempt and disdain by turning away.

At the head of the classroom, seated at a desk, bent over a pile of papers, was an iron-haired woman wearing a small-size version of a man's wrist watch and a severe black dress. There was a little nameplate screwed into the teacher's desk. It read Miss Feldman.

The teacher did not look up and Remo stood alongside her desk, watching what she was doing.

She had a stack of sheets of lined paper in front of her. On the top of each sheet was rubber-stamped the name of a student. Most of the papers she looked at were blank, except for the rubber-stamped name. On the blank papers, Miss Feldman marked a neat 90 percent in the upper right hand corner.

An occasional sheet would have some scratched pencil scrawls on it. Those Miss Feldman marked 99 percent with three lines under the score for emphasis and carefully glued a gold star to the top center of the sheet.

She went through a dozen sheets before she realized someone was standing at her desk. She looked up, startled, then relaxed when she saw Remo. "What are you doing?" he asked. She smiled at him but said nothing. "What are you doing?" Remo repeated. Miss Feldman continued to smile. No wonder, Remo thought. The teacher was simple. Maybe brain damaged. Then he saw the reason. There were tufts of cotton stuck into Miss Feldman's ears.

Remo reached down and yanked them out. She winced as the rock and roar of the classroom assaulted her eardrums.

"I asked what are you doing?"

"Marking test papers."

"A blank is a 90, a scratch is a 99 with a gold star?" Remo said.

"You must reward effort," Miss Feldman said. She ducked as a book came whizzing by her head, thrown from the back of the room.

"What kind of test?" Remo asked.

"Basic tools of language art," said Miss Feldman.

"Which means?"

"The alphabet."

"You tested them on the alphabet. And most of them turned in blank pages? And they get 90s?"

Miss Feldman smiled. She looked over her shoulder as if someone could sneak up behind her in the three inches she had left between her back and the wall.

"How long have you done this kind of work?" Remo said.

"I've been a teacher for thirty years."

"You've never been a teacher," Remo said. And she hadn't. A teacher was Sister Mary Margaret who knew that while the road to hell was paved with good intentions, the road to heaven was paved with good deeds, hard work, discipline, and a demand for excellence from each student. She had worked in the Newark Orphanage where Remo had grown up and whenever he thought of her, he could almost feel the bruises her ruler raps on the knuckles had given him when she felt he was not trying hard enough.

"What do you make here?" Remo asked.

"Twenty-one thousand, three hundred, and twelve dollars," Miss Feldman answered. Sister Mary Margaret had never seen a hundred dollars at one time in her whole life.

"Why don't you try teaching these kids?" Remo asked.

"You're from the community school board?" Miss Feldman said suspiciously.

"No."

"The central school board?"

"No."

"The financial control board?"

"No."

"The state superintendent's office?"

"No."

"The federal office of education?"

"No. I'm not from nobody. I'm just from me. And I'm wondering why you don't teach these kids anything."

"Just from you?"

"Yes."

"Well, Mister Just-from-You, I've been in this school for eight years. The first week I was here, they tried to rape me three times. The first marking period, I failed two-thirds of the class and the tires were slashed on my car. The second marking period, I failed six kids and my car was set on fire. Next marking period, more failures, and my dog's throat was cut in my apartment while I slept. Then the parents picketed the school, protesting my racist, antiblack attitudes.

"The school board, those paragons of backbone, suspended me for three months. When I came back, I brought a bag of gold stars with me. I haven't had any trouble since and I'm retiring next year. What would you have expected me to do?"

"You could teach," Remo said.

"The essential difference between trying to teach this class and trying to teach a gravel pit is that you can't get raped by a gravel pit," Miss Feldman said. "Rocks don't carry knives."

She looked down at the papers in front of her. One paper had five neat rows of five letters each. Twenty-five letters. Miss Feldman marked it 100 percent with four gold stars.

"The valedictorian?" Remo asked.

"Yes. She always has trouble with the W's."

"If you tried to teach, could they learn?" Remo asked.

"Not by the time they reach me," Miss Feldman said. "This is a senior class. If they're illiterate when they get here, they stay illiterate. They could be taught in the early grades though. If everybody would just realize that giving a failing mark to a black kid doesn't mean that you're a racist who wants to go back to slaveholding. But they have to do it in the early grades."