Gil and I said our thank-you’s to
Leon’s back. No sooner had he opened the door than he’d wheeled and was walking
swiftly down the hall, probably to the stairs that led down to the boiler room
and the custodian’s office. At least that’s what the sign said over the door to
the stairway.
We looked at each other. Now what? Wordlessly, we followed Leon
down the hall, where he did indeed open the door that led to the descending
stairs. The door was a heavy one that took awhile to close, and Gil was able to
grab it just before it closed. Again we looked at each other.
Quietly, Gil pulled the door open
a little, allowing both of us through. He used a hand to quiet the door as it
closed. I was standing in a place I’d never been before—and I’m certain Gil
never had either.
It was dim—not dark. And we glimpsed
Leon reach the bottom of the stairs and turn to the right. Gil and I—as quietly
as we could—crept down the stairs into the dungeon of the school
I realize as I write this that I’ve
not told you anything about our building—Charles Junior High School. A very old
structure, it went up about 1900, around the time they were making schools look
like solid old brick factories. (Factories? Remember them? There used to be a lot of them, back when America made lots
of things.) Charles School originally held the entire Franconia school
population, Grades 1–12. But more families moved in; Charles became too small.
So they built both a new high school and a new elementary and left the junior
high kids in the old factory.
Figures, doesn’t it? No one really
likes junior high kids anyway—so why bother giving them a new building? Stick
them in some old factory and let them out when they’ve outgrown their
craziness. That was probably the thinking. If there was any thinking.
So, our three-story building was nearly
100 years old that year I entered it as a seventh grader. There was a rumor
that the School Board was going to ask Franconia to tax itself for a new
“middle school” (whatever that is),
but I didn’t really care. By the time it got built—if it got built—I’d be gone. Up at the high school. Or somewhere
else.
Anyway, in old Charles the ceilings
were high, the wooden floors warped and wavy, the high windows leaking air—and
a lot of them didn’t even open any longer. The stairs creaked when you climbed
them, the floors shuddered when everyone got up at once to change classes, the
cafeteria smelled like bad food, the gym and locker rooms like decay, and the
basement—where Gil and I were going now—like Death. And as you may remember, I knew what death smells like. Knew it far
too well.
At the bottom of the stairs was a
hallway that ran left to right. We’d seen Leon go right, so we peeked around
the corner but didn’t find anything but another door, the sort you see that
leads to a classroom or an office. We looked left—and saw the huge boiler that
would be heating the school in the winter. It was already rumbling. Maybe Leon
figured the rain was going to cool the day?
Gil and I, still wordless, went to
the right. Crept quietly. Stopped outside the door, where was saw a sign over it:
S. T. Leon, Custodian.[i]
As we stood there staring at it, the door suddenly swung open, and Mr. Leon
(now we knew that “Leon” wasn’t his first name) was staring right back at us.
He didn’t look surprised.
“You kids are getting to be a problem,” he snarled. “Get in here!” He
gestured back towards his office. We moved like robots—frightened robots—into
Mr. Leon’s office.
[i]
Vickie’s getting cute again. One of her father’s novels (1799) was St Leon, a novel about a man who
discovers both the philosopher’s stone (which converts base metals to gold) and
the elixir of eternal youth. And, I just realized, his son’s name is Charles.
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