A Passing Breeze

He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens;

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart.

--Psalm 78

Fort is making an eighty-twenty sandwich. Eighty per cent nutritious to twenty percent delicious, something Trudy should eat, now that she’s pregnant. Except she never takes a bag lunch. There’s plenty of sliced Cheesey but just one piece of true salami left. He likes a real meat sandwich with mayonnaise and mustard, himself. If it’s just the plant-based cheese he leaves off the mustard, but it’s still barely edible. He hears Trudy coming down the stairs. “I can make you a—”

She’s dressed up, a black jacket flecked with deep red over a cream blouse, her bangle bracelets clinking as she roots around in her bag. Doesn’t she want to give her body the same care, on the inside, for the baby? Has she already decided to have it removed? She checks her phone, puts it back in her pocket, click-clacks to the coat rack. Putting on her coat she looks at him. “Hm?”

He studies his sandwich in progress, tries to think how to make it look appealing to her. Add greens?

“Not for me, thanks.” She pats her other pocket for her key. “Lunch meeting.”

He squints, trying to remember what she told him about today.

“Something to do with director?” She blinks big-eyed, expectant.

“Oh, right,” he says, and brightens for her. “Good luck.”

She comes back into the kitchen, cups his right buttock, dashes a stealthy finger between his legs. “Thanks.” Does she mean for the good wishes, or for sex, in which case, for last night, or tonight? Or just for right now, letting her touch him so startlingly while he’s trying to decide what to do about the salami?

The tires crunch the gravel as she backs out of the garage. She’ll probably get it, the director of something-or-other, her boss is rooting for her. Fort knows she’ll be happy, directing things. More money. Does he care about that, money? This sandwich is not making itself. The puny slice of salami looks good. She might want it when she gets home. A snack. She never snacks. But she might today, celebrate herself. He puts the lid back on the mustard and opens the jar of mayonnaise. With a butter knife he spreads mayonnaise out to the four corners, smooths it, uses the edge to remove noodles of excess from the crust, wipes the blade on the rim of the jar. The top Cheesey slice comes off the stack in pieces that he reconstructs on top of the bread like a puzzle, and he adds another slice in the same way. The surface is smooth, as though the top slice had not crumbled. He peers closely at the strata of the remaining stack of Cheesey, jerks his head at the light scent of summer sneakers never washed, slowly pries the top slice that still comes off in three pieces, and adds them willy-nilly over the other two. Pressing the second piece of bread on top, he wraps the sandwich in a piece of waxy cloth, folding sharp the corners.

He read somewhere it is supposed to be brain food, this cheese substitute. The real thing, not so much, and bad for blood vessels. Doesn’t matter, he never gets it, so expensive, and this stuff is fine, if you eat it fast enough. And he figures his brain could use a boost. Like a highlighter—he raises his index finger and makes a loop in the air before licking the mayonnaise from it—something to draw a line around his thoughts, such as they are, corral them together so he can say, this is what I think.

She doesn’t care what goes on in my head, Fort thought of his partner. He could harbor lustful thoughts for his students, as long as he does not post about it, or something worse—it is no big deal to her. “I look to you for certain things,” she told him once. They were play-fighting, it was after they had had her parents over for dinner, back when they lived in Wastewatertown. He went a little too far with them, but he was sick of the woman’s complacency. Trudy’s mother, so sure of her great contribution to the Boston performing arts scene with her admin job, so sure of the devotion of her husband, so sure of her daughter’s good choice in picking Fort for her partner. It filled him with dread to remember just how far he had gone with her. “So, did you ever have any disasters?” he had asked. “Any performances that the audience hated? Like, I know that Buto is a respected maestro, but what about other guys?” He could feel Trudy stiffen, sneaking peaks at her mom. But that woman. She admitted to “slightly lower than usual” box office one summer, but that was it. Her armor had held against his sorry arrow. Even so, a challenge like that, however weak, was not one of the things his partner looked to him for.

That night, after her parents left, leaving the couple with one of Trudy’s dad’s signature cakes—poking Fort’s righteous sugar industry disdain—that night they had some off-brand silent sex. No teasing talk, just him taking what he wanted from her, for a change, and leaving her hanging. Just this once, he didn’t care, which surprised him.

Maybe he did care, since he had not forgotten that night. He had pretended to fall asleep. One evening and two disappointments, her not getting her “certain things” from him. Next day they were back to normal, life goes on. Recalling that episode made him remember something a celebrity had said about choosing their partner. They knew they wanted to be with him because they wanted to know what he thought. Like, they had to know. Well, thought Fort, at least we laugh together.

Fort is startled at the sound of his new message alert tone. Trudy wants him to look for a delivery this afternoon. <what delivery?> “and don’t forget to order wine for thksg.” Should he get white, goes with turkey? Red, in case her dad makes ham too? The guy always makes both. So, both. Or just two bottles of white, and some cochineal extract. When her mom says, “This is the best red wine I’ve had in a long time! Who’s your sommelier?” Such fun.

He thinks he forgot to put on deodorant, but wants to take some stairs when he gets to his building, decides it should be all right. He remembers his hair usually looks pointy in the back, he will have to fine tune it when he gets to school. He checks that his hold-all contains the unappetizing sandwich and bottle. In the car he tunes the radio to a discussion, the people chuckling like they are besties. He presses the record button on his phone, places it in the dashboard holder.

“So, peanut, a new day begins. I’ve spent the morning thinking up how to prank my soon-to-be-wife’s mom, your grandmother. Cheesey or no, my brain’s beyond hope. Public radio tells me what I think. The drive from Redstone to my school is about fifteen minutes, but I wish it was longer when they have a good interview going. Like this morning. The woman with that low, cool voice that just kills me is interviewing a political science professor from UMass. They’re so upbeat, and not just because it’s Election Day—they’re so sure of President Greer’s re-election, a second term for the country’s nineteenth woman president. Oh, not since the election of 2028 has a man been elected—I thought it’d been longer than that. Yes, your daddy is fallible. Don’t tell my students, they need to keep thinking Mr. Bullrider is amazing, all the shit he knows. Whoops, sorry. Anyway, today’s news on cabinet appointments might make a good discussion topic for my freshmen. I don’t want to listen to the list of names they’re hashing over for Treasury, Health and Human Services, State, it’s just so much guess work. I’ll wait for the hard news. But here they go: how would a woman be judged for HHS, since the position requires not just creativity and experience but empathy, a trait that everybody thinks is men’s thing? We are after all the ones who take care of the children, naturals at nursing, counseling, teaching, and we understand the needs of families. I’ve been a teacher for going on eight years, and I still feel like a newcomer. Will I ever actually know what I’m doing? At least I’m nurturing the young people, though, right? What does that even mean? I help them be all that’s locked up inside them? Who can say they’ve done that? What, then? I keep them from killing themselves? Depressing. Which brings me to last Thursday.

“Wait.

“Bunch of kids in the park, on one of those carousel jobs. Motor must be out, the girls are pushing it. They look like middle schoolers. They should be in class, but maybe they’re homeschooled, except where are the parents? Fifteen girls pushing one boy on the merry-go-round. He’s naked from the waist down. One of the girls has his shorts, she’s waving them over her head. Now another girl grabs them and stretches them against her hips. Where are his jeans or pants? It’s not that warm. One of the girls grabs at the boy’s crotch like it’s a lollipop as he goes around. He’s got one hand pressed there and the other holding a railing, one scared son of a—.

“Yeah-yeah, keep your shirt on. Where’d you get that horn, ass-wipe? After-market shit, they should tax it, noise pollution.

“I’ll just pull over here a sec. Ah, there’s an adult.”

The sight of a man jogging toward the bunch of girls interrupts his message to his future baby. He presses pause, pockets his phone, yells out his window, “What’s going on?”

He cannot tell if he heard him, the running guy. He’s saying something to the girls. His dog, its coat a sleek, shimmering black, is barking its head off at them. The girls ignore him.

Fort gets out and trots over to the guy. “You need a hand?”

The guy plants his feet, pulls the merry-go-round to a stop, and stands by the boy and the girls. Fort likes the guy’s hair, it’s red except for the ends dyed brunette.

“Tank top! Tank top!” shout the girls.

The running guy towers above them, turns to look some message to the boy. A little girl at the back of the crowd elbows the girl next to her. Pretty soon they’re all looking at the man who does not acknowledge them. One of them whispers to the bully, the girl directly in front of the boy.

Tank Top braces himself, bobs his chin at her and says, “I know you are but—”

“What am I!” the girls shout back.

The bully darts her hand to the boy’s crotch, he slaps at it. She reaches up and yanks down the strap of his undershirt.

Fort really wants to hit the girl, which makes him feel panicked. Never one to strike anyone, not since middle school, anyway, and never targeting a female, he cannot silence the social wisdom that he, like all men, is needlessly violent. That his first impulse is to ball up his fist does not help.

Just as Fort blasts out a breath, the boy bats away the girl’s hand, as though the man commands the boy. The youngster stands his ground, swells his chest with a couple of deep breaths, his eyes on the girl. He steps down from the merry-go-round. “Why you so stupid?” he says.

The bully glances to her left, then right, and her two deputies surround the boy.

He checks out the deputies, a twitch of his eyelids the only sign of his pressured nerves. “Don’t worry,” he says, “your father still love you.”

The bully’s nostrils flare as she fixes Tank Top.

“He want keep you home, teach you cook. Home girl.”

In a near-whisper the bully says, “Shut up.”

He takes a step closer to her. “You hear? He call you. Your pops call you, daddy girl. Time to go.” He lets his hands fall from his naked crotch. “Oh? Don’t know where is home? Feel bad for you, man.”

The crowd of girls fidgets, like something’s going to happen any second. They check the running guy, but he stands still as ever, arms crossed. They look at Fort.

The boy holds out his palm to the bully, crimps his fingers for her to hand it over.

The bully kicks gravel at him, dusting his ankles, turns her back and power walks toward the far corner of the park, her slim ankles wobbling in low-cut Plasti-Canvas sneakers. Her deputies and the other girls trot behind. A piece of dark blue fabric flies up like a wounded bird, falling to the dirt behind them.

“Where’s your adults?” shouts the guy after the girls. He goes to pick up the boy’s boxer shorts.

“Only in Redstone, right?” Fort says to the guy, trying to look sheepish in case he’s from here, too. “That was close. If this happened where I teach, I’d have to send that girl in for counseling and maybe suspension.”

“Ah,” he says, handing the boxer shorts to the boy. “Kids.”

The boy is shaking as he pulls them on, from the chill or from the abuse, but he stays near the guy.

“You know him?” Fort says to the guy.

He shakes his head. Gently he says, “What’s your name, bud?”

The boy straightens the straps of his under shirt, smooths the front. “Tang,” he says, bowing his head.

“I’m Oak.” He puts out his hand, but the boy does not shake it. “Where’s home?”

Fort wants to drive the kid but he really needs to get going. This is not his kid.

“Can’t work, no good,” says the boy. “Drop him, not strong. Weak, can’t work.”

There’s not an ounce of fat on him, but he’s a muscular thirteen, maybe fourteen. Mostly clear skin, still tanned from summer, and nice, thick black hair. Doesn’t look sick. Could use a bath.

“It’s all right,” says the guy, Oak. “I’ll take you home.”

“You sure?” Fort tries to sound ready to help out. Maybe he really should. He’s somebody’s kid.

“I live near here, got a trucky.” Oak takes a couple steps back toward the houses where he ran in from. The boy is looking over at the road, the busy intersection at the end of the park.

“Where you from, bud?” Fort asks him. When the boy does not answer, he says, more loudly than he intends, “Tang?”

The boy lifts one shoulder. “Bus?”

“O.K.” Oak shrugs to Fort, says, “I’ll walk him over.” He starts toward the road. The boy does not move. Oak says to him, “That O.K? I’ll stay with you till you’re on your way, or I’ll push off, it’s up to you.”

Fort wants to keep watching them, make sure everything’s cool but he is going to be late as it is. The two of them and the leashed dog, sedately trotting, walk out of the park. The kid’s wearing just an under shirt with those boxer shorts, no phone, no nothing. How can he take a bus? He should let the guy drive him home. But if he was running away? Police station. Fort guesses the kid wouldn’t want to go, he’s probably an illegal, Chinese, a lot of them come down from Québec. That guy seems good to Fort. Should be alright.

He gets back in his car, figures there are just enough charging towers between here and the charger in his classroom, and resumes the recording for his future baby.

“I can’t see any sign of that pack of girls, the playground’s empty now. Whatever that was, bad scene averted. Thanks to that guy. But that’s what we do, peanut, let the kids do their thing and step in when their thing’s f—lucked up. So when should I step in, when it’s adults vs. kid?

“Like last week. There I was, in the faculty lounge, at least my body was. My nurturing skills not so much. They were trashing a student—one of my favorites, I won’t lie—and I just let them. O.K., this is where you put your hands over your ears.”

He touches Pause again, takes a moment to place himself in the faculty lounge during a lunch period a few days ago. The smell of the place, the small room with chairs placed in an oval with a gap for the counter where the oven and refrigerator sit, its reheated food smells fog up his mental picture of Astrid, a teacher in another department. A darling of the principal, Astrid can do no wrong. He shakes his head, annoyed that thoughts of this woman are in any way connected with his favorite student whom he failed to defend on this occasion, a week ago.

“She says she’s reading,” Astrid said, her lips not hiding the wad of stinking tuna sandwich behind her teeth. “When I’m talking, she should be listening.”

“Multi-task. Some people good at that,” said Mr. Ha, who then cringed knowing what her rejoinder would be.

“She can’t be reading.” Astrid said that word with disgust. “She’ll have, like, twenty apps open. How can she be reading all that and still hear what I’m saying?” She poked out her chin, swallowed and looked around at them all, sitting there trying to enjoy their half hour away from the kids. “Am I right?” she crowed, a gob of mayo’ed tuna sticking to one of her canine teeth.

Fort’s sandwich was bubbling in his stomach, threatening to retreat up and out. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop looking at Astrid’s balloon thighs, her knobby, blunt hands inflated with fat making dimples at the knuckles, the crease made by her head resting on her shoulders, the whole horror show that was this woman that he just could not turn his head from. She was just a wrong one, to him. He could not believe she had sex.

McMike cleared his throat. “She’s just one of those kids.”

Fort felt a thrill of battle advantage, that McMike, his closest work friend, would get this kid like he does. Except that day.

“I can always count on Susannah,” continued McMike, “to be the one student who’ll always need an Incomplete. For being a complete app freeze.”

Astrid laughed, expelling a fleck of tuna onto the toe of her shoe that for a second Fort thought had come from his discouraged sigh. “What are you looking at?” Her voice was like a bot with a blown-out speaker, jangly and harsh.

Fort’s eyes flicked from her disgraced shoe to the poster above her left shoulder of China’s Great Wall packed solid with tourists. He figured he probably would not be chosen to lead the student group there this year, or ever. It is supposed to be a lottery. Astrid’s been very lucky.

“Fort?” She pressed yellow teeth against her lower lip. “Fortie-fort-fort?”

“Ooh!” McMike balled up the rest of his sandwich in its paper wrapping. “Con-call in two minutes.”

“Parent?” Fort asked.

“Thank god, no, but next one I get I’ll be sure to send to you. ‘You’ll like Mr. Bullrider, he’s much cuter than me.’” He gave Fort side-eye and air-cupped his head, then winked. “Nah, just School-to-College. See how bad it’ll be this year.”

Fort did his panic face, as funding was precarious for the program meant to move promising students into the higher ed pipeline.

“Oh, it’s still on. It’s just the quotas, they’ll be lower.” McMike heaved himself up, lifted his pants at the waist to shake flat his codpiece. “All the more incentive for us to graduate omnificent kids!”

Astrid blew out a sigh through pursed lips, sans detritus this time. “Where humanly possible.”

As everybody got up and put away their lunch bags Fort stayed put pretending to look at his tablet. But it was the girl’s face he was thinking about. Susannah. Her big, shining eyes, as though she had just dreamed up an idea that sent her off into some happy field that held everything a school could never give her. Had no one else ever seen this in her? What did they see, in any of their students? Trouble, annoyance, extra work, that’s all he heard from them.

His ragged sigh feels oddly good, like a purge of at least some of that annoying faculty lounge memory. He touches Record on his phone.

“All right, now, peanut, still a good ten minutes’ drive to go. I work with these people, honey. Who are they? They don’t know me, either. Me. Just your daddy driving in for another crazy day with his co-workers. I’ll be there in five, let’s hear some music. I like not knowing what they’ll play, it’s a nice change from setting my bud with a playlist I’m getting kind of sick of. Plus I get to hear the latest, which is how I discovered my new favorite song. Yes! By sheer mind power—Bullrider, you are amazing—that’s what’s playing! A stand-out heart-plucking melody with rap elements using synthetic band and real voices. The words are about male empowerment, but really it’s the tune that gets me going. We seat dance, we switch on wipers, we check our right—shimmy those shoulders—driverless lane’s clear, exit now. Ah-oww! Ah-oww!

“Redstone, you hard-ass stud, I love you, but it’s nice to leave behind your six-lane roads and your busy intersections with two sets of traffic lights, one for cars and one for cycles, lined with shopping strips. Hello, Cowmeadow, with your twentieth-century-era suburban quiet and order, your antique houses set on deep lawns well back from the road like judges, your handful of stores and businesses built to look like colonial meetinghouses. Empty now, your sidewalks will soon be filled with students walking to school. Short buses will round up the small number that live more than three kilometers from the school or just can’t make the trip. You have every reason to be proud, Cowmeadow, of your principal export, your very fit kids. And talented. Sometimes Susannah has this expression. Far away, yeah, but more than that. She’s somewhere else, she’s completely there, seeing and feeling some alternate world. And she wants to tell people about it. Not in the curriculum. That’s what they hate about kids like her. Whoops, sorry for the h-word, forget I said that, Daughter. Or Son, I have no preference, you know that. I’ll teach you. I won’t let her hurt you. What am I saying? We’ll keep you safe.”

A slip of the tongue that means nothing, neither of them intends to hurt anyone. They will have a baby that would consume all their care in a perfect, harmless world. But even this world has built-in slack to permit mistakes. Unintended, sure, but if you can see it coming, is it still an innocent mistake? The minute Fort feels this has to be true, his shoulders toss in a shiver, as though to shake off its imminent test.