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Excerpt from Book:
Midmorning and raining outside and the children
have just finished their snack. The clear-eyed
sons and daughters of farmers and mill workers.
Mrs. Padykula instructs them to return to their
desks. She claps her hands three times, and her
students settle down for the most part.
I want to get your minds ready for the day with
a simple art assignment, she says.
Some of the children groan, especially the boys.
Take out a single sheet of paper and a pencil
and draw, she says with a fast snap of her
fingers to regain their attention. You have
fifteen minutes. Go.
Nobody bothers to ask, Draw what. They all know
the answer. Take what’s in your mind and spill
it on the page. Mrs. Padykula provides the same
exact guidance for writing assignments, also to
the bafflement of her third-grade students, as
well as their parents.
Lily Baskin looks out the window for
inspiration. William Contois balances his number
two pencil on his upper lip to get a laugh. A
few kids whisper. Junior Beauchamp, though, puts
his head down and his arms in a semi-circle
around his piece of paper like to guard it.
Furiously is the word the teacher uses to
describe the way he was approaching the
assignment later to the cop.
Here’s a boy that usually sleeps through class,
she says. His home life leaves a lot to be
desired. He’s on the free food program here you
know.
All right, the cop says, already bored with the
family history. So, you approached the
perpetrator.
He’s just a child.
And you approached him.
Well, yes, all eyes were on him, and he was
completely oblivious to the rest of us in the
room. But not in the usual way. I walked over to
his desk to have a look.
And what did you see.
I mean, it was lovely, and I told him so. He had
captured the scene so perfectly; it was a
garden. I had no idea he had this ability.
Nobody did. And I was trying to encourage him.
Is that when he stabbed the Contois boy, the cop
says.
William said something first, I won’t repeat it,
and when I asked him to sit back down and mind
his manners, Junior, well, he got up and he did
what he did.
The cop checks his notes. According to one
eyewitness, he says, William called Junior a
fucking food stamp faggot and then Junior stuck
his pencil into William’s thigh.
These aren’t perpetrators and eyewitnesses; they
are just children.
All right. And then this child who had a moment
ago buried his writing utensil into another
child’s leg all the way up to the goddamn
eraser, excuse my French, this budding young
artist as you describe him, he jumped out the
window and run off.
Well, yes, that about sums it up. Mrs. Padykula
looks out the window.
And where did he go exactly, the cop says,
losing his patience again.
He lives just on the other side of those train
tracks, she says. So, I imagine he went home.
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