A Knight Of The Word

He spoke to her softly, and she did not reply. He came right up behind her and spoke again, and she did not turn.

When finally he touched her, she still did not turn, but she began to speak. It was as if he had turned on a tape recorder. Her voice was a dull, empty monotone, and her story was one that quite obviously she had told before. She related it to him without caring whether he heard her or not, giving vent to a need that was self-contained and personal and without meaningful connection to him. He was her audience, but his presence served only to trigger a release of words she would have spoken to anyone.

He was my youngest child, she said. My boy, Teddy. He was six years old. We had enrolled him in kindergarten the year before, and now he was finishing first grade. He was so sweet. He had blend hair and blue eyes, and he was always smiling. He could change the light in a room just by walking into it. l loved him so much. Bert and I both worked, and we made pretty good money, but it was still a stretch to send him here. But it was such a good school, and we wanted him to have the best. He was very bright. He could have been anything, if he had lived.

There was another boy in the school who was a little older, Aaron Pilkington. His father was very successful, very wealthy. Some men decided to kidnap him and make his father pay them money to get him bark. They were stupid men, not even bright enough to know the best way to kidnap someone. They tried to take him out of the school. They just walked right in and tried to take him. On April Fools’ Day, can you imagine that? I wonder if they knew. They just walked in and tried to take him. Bur they couldn’t find him. They weren’t even sure which room he was in, which class he attended, who his teacher was, anything. They had a picture, and they thought that would tie enough. But a picture doesn’t always help.

Children in a picture often tend to look alike. So they Couldn’t find him, and the police were called, and they surrounded the school, and the men took a teacher and her class hostage because they were afraid and they didn’t know what else to do, I suppose.

My son was a student in that class.

The police tried to get the men to release the teacher and the children, but the men wouldn’t agree to the terms the police offered and the police wouldn’t agree to the terms the men offered, and the whole thing just fell to pieces. The men grew desperate and erratic. One of them kept talking to someone who wasn’t there, asking, What should he do, what should be do? They killed the teacher. The police decided they couldn’t wait any loner, that the children were in too much danger. The men had moved the children to the auditorium where they held their assemblies and performed their plays. They had them all seated in the first two rows, all in a line facing the stage. When the police broke in, they started shooting. They just... started shooting. Everywhere. The children....

She never looked at him as she spoke. She never acknowledged his presence. She was inaccessible to him, lost in the past, reliving the horror of those moments. She kept her gaze fixed on the school, unwavering.

I was there, she said, her voice unchanging, toneless and empty. I was a room mother helping out that day. There was going to be a birthday party at the end of recess. When the shooting began, I tried to reach him. I threw myself... His name was Teddy. Theodore, but we called him Teddy, because he was just a little boy. Teddy...

Then she went silent, stared at the school a moment longer, turned, and walked off down the broken sidewalk. She seemed to know where she was going, but he could not discern her purpose. He watched after her a moment, then looked at the school.

In his mind, he could hear the sounds of gunfire and children screaming.