I applied a similar logic to the existence of a water fountain in school. At age six, I’d never seen one before. A classmate explained that the schoolhouse had a big well under it to supply the water. His thick accent stretched the word “well” to sound like “whale.” My understanding was that living in the earth beneath the school was a whale the size of the one that swallowed Jonah. When its blowhole spewed, pipes captured the water and ran it to the drinking fountain. One day during lunch break, I tried to crawl under the school and look for the whale. The principal caught me and I dutifully explained my mission. He was amused, telling me I had a big imagination for such a little fellow. A few years later I understood why my classmate had been so excited by plumbing. His family had no water at their house. One of his chores was to draw water from a well and haul it home.
After school I walked a creek, then climbed the dirt road to a shortcut path through the heavy woods. For the first few years I rushed home. Mom met me at the back door with a hug and a snack. My brother and sisters were overjoyed by my return, as if they’d feared I was gone for good.
My memory of fourth grade is very strong, perhaps because I began writing and drawing in earnest then. From that year I have four short stories and two essays. It was also the first year I began keeping a daily journal, small, with a psychedelic design on the cover appropriate to the year 1968. Possibly the act of documenting my perceptions enabled my memory to retain greater clarity. Maybe my interest in the world increased, or my senses reached a new plateau, or the compulsion to observe was born. In any case, it was the earliest period from which I can remember long sections of my life, as if the act of recollection itself had become a narrative.
On the first day of fourth grade, the teacher distributed textbooks to use throughout the year. I read them all in a week and spent the next nine months reading books, drawing pictures, and writing stories. Teachers often reprimanded me for “disturbing my neighbors,” which seemed an odd term, something people on the hill did with rifles and dogs.
The school lacked specialized instruction for children with developmental disabilities. The principal put them in the classroom that was appropriate to their level. The term used for them was “retarded” and included autism, Downs syndrome, products of incest and poor prenatal diet. In fourth grade we had such a boy named Carson, who had been held back so often he was gripped by advanced puberty. Bigger and stronger than the rest of us, he spoke in a series of unintelligible lisping grunts. He couldn’t read or write. Due to his impulsive behavior, Carson’s desk sat in a corner at the front of the classroom. No one dared touch it. A favorite prank was to trip someone, forcing the victim to grab Carson’s desk for support, thereby receiving a quick transmission of cooties. Carson seldom attended school.
When frustrated, angry, or merely irritated, teachers beat students with wooden paddles. Strangely, our fourth-grade teacher didn’t believe in hitting children. Her punishments included staying in the classroom during lunch recess or sitting in Carson’s seat for half an hour. One day I made three paper airplanes, each smaller than the other, and lodged them within the crease that formed the fuselage of the largest craft. My idea was to send them aloft together and re-create the three stages of a rocket launch. Instead, I was caught by the teacher at the very moment of throwing the planes. She banished me to Carson’s desk for the rest of the year.
I placed a textbook on the seat as a sanitizing device, fearful that some aspect of Carson would be contagious. I sat with rigid posture. The desktop held a patina of hieroglyphs representing years of student boredom—names and initials gouged into the wood, blackened by grime and pencil, shellacked over, then cobwebbed again with another generation’s imprint. By the end of the following day, I appreciated the benefits of my new situation. The desk sat beside the door, allowing me to be last in the room and first out. I faced the blackboard with my back to the class, providing a personal space and privacy that was absent at home. For the first time I came to love school.
During winter, icicles glittered on the cliffs. Low branches dumped snow on me as I walked to school. Warm weather finally arrived. Pink and white dogwoods dotted the hills. Forsythia bushes bloomed bright yellow. Carson came to school. The teacher ordered me back to my original spot. I locked my ankles around the wooden legs of Carson’s desk, gripped the seat, and reminded her that she’d ordered me to sit there until the end of the year. Exasperated by my defiance, she sent Carson to my seat. Within half an hour someone provoked him into an unruly act. The teacher made him stand. She pushed my former desk to the other corner in the front of the room and told Carson to sit there. Our class finished the spring semester with the smartest kid and the dumbest kid sitting in opposite corners, yin and yang, each of us in the other’s seats. Combined, we made a single average student.