Eyes first -- eyes in front, so always eyes first -- and they see and know the cinder blocks, the blind cinder blocks. Yet they also know the 27 pairs of eyes seated around the room. Those eyes dance, and all they've seen and know is much and muchly hidden.
Ears. What had they heard today? The long soft roar -- soft roar? Yes, soft -- of the air ducts. When all the mouths are closed, that constant abyss opens to his ears. And empty student words. They are full of desire -- for attention, control, refuge -- but often hollow of all else.
Mr. Page smiled at these thoughts and especially at his own hollow chest. A man without a chest.
Heads down just now. A few red eyes. A throat is cleared. Some Fruit Loops taken from a bag make a horrid noise followed by crunching. Fingers slide across a book's insides.
The year Mr. Page's students were born was his first as an undergrad. That fall brought the escape from one life to another -- an unfettering. The glacier-like closing in of circumstances. That feeling had frozen him and threatened his very life.
Family? Loving.
Body? Healthy (though puny).
Mind? Divided.
Spirit? Crushed. Somehow.
The soft roar was back.
A sneeze. Eyes down, mostly. One boy just spread out over the hard floor. His hood is up: sleep will come soon.
They're quiet today. Just when he could use more noise to silence his own loud thoughts -- but no, they whisper and keep their heads down.
Two girls try to get a shy boy's attention. That's interesting, but it doesn't last. Not long enough for Mr. Page to be sufficiently distracted.
That fall so long ago, and the swift years afterward, they came up at him unexpectedly. A wide open campus, light everywhere, massive cottonwoods that snowed each spring, and the weight that he carried when he was supposedly freed. Past anxieties, buried, yanked from shallow graves.
And then more light upon a horizon opened to him by a certain speech written before he was born: he read the small talk in one sitting -- not for credit, never did the credit taste as sweet as this -- and then the burden had been bearable.
For a time.
It came back upon him now, a whole tenth grader's lifespan later, and his sophomores only reminded him of the ineptitude that lodged itself within. It was a soft roar, but constant. A drill in his chest.
A couple girls laughed, tried to hold it in. The bell. Of course they all waited for the bell to move.
The ventilator grill blew down on his ears -- in them, then on them.
Constant. It would be constant.
Thoughts of the 27 chests in front of him added to and compounded the hollowing. There were days when knowledge of their homes, their breakfasts, their wooden minds, their brittle hair and nails, their masked phrases, their masks -- all of it -- could lift him out and away from his own screaming pit.
Not today.
It was this old piece of his own writing from years ago that had started his confession. An unfinished, unclear gathering of sensations:
Sound came, sound receded; came, receded. And these were the sounds: lapping water, snapping wave, lapping water, cry of bird, cry of bird, lapping water, cry of woman.
And then nothing, nothing but weight of liquid motion, nothing -- but the lapping, lapping water, snapping wave, cry, cry of bird and cry of woman.
And there at the water's surface, under but not under, hearing and then not hearing, a set of eyes all-seeing, mind all-searching.
A splash. A lightning quiver of a movement.
Gone.
But the lapping -- lapping water, snapping wave, cry, cry, cry -- on and on moving with the motion of the pull of earth, of moon, all, all, all is lapping, lapping, all is cry, moan, all is waiting.
And Mr. Page's own sounds came. They pressed up through the pitch bubbling close to his lungs. They scorched his throat, and, until he let his lips part and quiver, they told of his end: a silent fall through a soft and unmoving night.
Ears. What had they heard today? The long soft roar -- soft roar? Yes, soft -- of the air ducts. When all the mouths are closed, that constant abyss opens to his ears. And empty student words. They are full of desire -- for attention, control, refuge -- but often hollow of all else.
Mr. Page smiled at these thoughts and especially at his own hollow chest. A man without a chest.
Heads down just now. A few red eyes. A throat is cleared. Some Fruit Loops taken from a bag make a horrid noise followed by crunching. Fingers slide across a book's insides.
The year Mr. Page's students were born was his first as an undergrad. That fall brought the escape from one life to another -- an unfettering. The glacier-like closing in of circumstances. That feeling had frozen him and threatened his very life.
Family? Loving.
Body? Healthy (though puny).
Mind? Divided.
Spirit? Crushed. Somehow.
The soft roar was back.
A sneeze. Eyes down, mostly. One boy just spread out over the hard floor. His hood is up: sleep will come soon.
They're quiet today. Just when he could use more noise to silence his own loud thoughts -- but no, they whisper and keep their heads down.
Two girls try to get a shy boy's attention. That's interesting, but it doesn't last. Not long enough for Mr. Page to be sufficiently distracted.
That fall so long ago, and the swift years afterward, they came up at him unexpectedly. A wide open campus, light everywhere, massive cottonwoods that snowed each spring, and the weight that he carried when he was supposedly freed. Past anxieties, buried, yanked from shallow graves.
And then more light upon a horizon opened to him by a certain speech written before he was born: he read the small talk in one sitting -- not for credit, never did the credit taste as sweet as this -- and then the burden had been bearable.
For a time.
It came back upon him now, a whole tenth grader's lifespan later, and his sophomores only reminded him of the ineptitude that lodged itself within. It was a soft roar, but constant. A drill in his chest.
A couple girls laughed, tried to hold it in. The bell. Of course they all waited for the bell to move.
The ventilator grill blew down on his ears -- in them, then on them.
Constant. It would be constant.
Thoughts of the 27 chests in front of him added to and compounded the hollowing. There were days when knowledge of their homes, their breakfasts, their wooden minds, their brittle hair and nails, their masked phrases, their masks -- all of it -- could lift him out and away from his own screaming pit.
Not today.
It was this old piece of his own writing from years ago that had started his confession. An unfinished, unclear gathering of sensations:
Sound came, sound receded; came, receded. And these were the sounds: lapping water, snapping wave, lapping water, cry of bird, cry of bird, lapping water, cry of woman.
And then nothing, nothing but weight of liquid motion, nothing -- but the lapping, lapping water, snapping wave, cry, cry of bird and cry of woman.
And there at the water's surface, under but not under, hearing and then not hearing, a set of eyes all-seeing, mind all-searching.
A splash. A lightning quiver of a movement.
Gone.
But the lapping -- lapping water, snapping wave, cry, cry, cry -- on and on moving with the motion of the pull of earth, of moon, all, all, all is lapping, lapping, all is cry, moan, all is waiting.
And Mr. Page's own sounds came. They pressed up through the pitch bubbling close to his lungs. They scorched his throat, and, until he let his lips part and quiver, they told of his end: a silent fall through a soft and unmoving night.
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