Educational Experience

Part III--Chapter 28

Prom night ends--almost--with an bang. And a whimper.  A decision must be made, but...is it the right one? And will our boy really be able to do what needs to be done?

Of COURSE I'm not going to tell you! Read on and see:

I hoisted 200 something pounds of Lakesha into the air and ran us back away from the scene of the crash. Only the crash didn't actually happen.

The cars all managed to make sharp turns, kicking up a haboob of dust we couldn't see anything through. But we could hear tires screeching and engines roaring, and inside the hall everybody was running for the exits.

"What the hell's goin' on?!" Lakesha asked me. She was clinging to my arm without any hesitation by then, watching all these cars full of kids bumping over the cactuses and rocks and ruts out there, trying to get away from the cop cars chasing right after them.

And then this one cop came running up to me yelling, "Shut it down! Shut it down! Tell those guys—"

"We've got it," some other guy yelled—that assistant principal that had such a crush on Wyatt, actually. He ran up behind the cop with his two way radio by his ear looking past the cop and dead at me.

"You go back inside," he said to me.

"He wanted me to ask the—"

"I want you back inside! Go!" he bellowed at me.

And the old Lakesha barked, "Damn! Boy jus' tryin'a help!"

But Mr. AP gave me a look that had so many emotions in it I couldn't read them all at once. And then some of the male teachers ran up and started yammering at him, so he ran off after them, barking orders into his radio.

This little blonde woman took off toward him, too—his wife. I knew it as soon as I saw her. And instead of paying attention to the riot going on all around me, I stood there watching her for a minute.

I could see their whole marriage in her. No, really. She was that kind of cute, sort of housewifey woman you saw with a couple of even cuter kids running up and down the aisles of grocery stores. The kind you know is married to some nice guy who's proud to work hard all day so she can stay home and chase those kids around.

But I also knew, as soon as I saw her, why he wanted Wyatt. First off, Wyatt's not cute. She's beautiful. As beautiful as that desert they were tearing to pieces out there. Wild and scary and unknowable.

And she keeps shape shifting on you. For real, she's like a dust devil. How they never go where you think they're going. And can whirl right over you, too, before you know it. Spin your world around and leave you there trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Only you can't figure her out. Because Wyatt is like one of those poems you have to switch your mind off to understand. The AP's wife was like those Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "How Do I Love Thee," poems that say everything right out. Heart glued to sleeve.

So her husband couldn't read somebody like Wyatt. But I could see why he wanted to try. And I felt for him, out there trying to corral those kids and cars. That was his life. Forever chasing after stuff he couldn't handle for reasons he couldn't understand.

See, his life was choking him like all that dust out there--that's where all that anger came from. Cause cute gets old. Loses its charm. But deep beauty, the wild kind that keeps changing and fascinating you all the time, that can feed your soul forever. And the tiny taste he'd had had messed his mind up.