Fishbowl

By: David H
(© 2011 by the author)
Editor: Ken King

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

 Chapter 6 

Several weeks after Elias’s return from New York went by without incident.  Therapy sessions were going great; his art classes were actually fun.  He couldn’t help but smile when ‘his kids’ saw the beauty in their own accomplishments.  A few of his kids in art therapy were showing real promise, not just as patients but as artists in their own rights. 

On a blissful Friday evening as he was leaving work, he met Ashton and Shaun for dinner before heading home to get a few things done for the coming week.  All in all, it was to be a relaxing weekend, filled with more nothingness than planned activities.  The next night, after everything was over and done with, after watching two movies on pay-per-view and eating a half a carton of chocolate ice cream, Elias, fat and happy, showered and climbed into his bed.

For several hours, he peacefully slept, dreaming of future travels.  The vacation had been such an eye opener for him that he couldn’t wait until he had time to do more traveling.  He and Jenny had been planning a trip to Atlanta and another to New Orleans, both of which were within driving distance from Birmingham.

At three o’clock, his work phone came shrilly to life.  A Nextel device only active with walkie-talkie service began to loudly sound on the table beside Elias’s bed.  “ALL COUNSELORS!  CODE 12!  REPORT TO CAMPUS!  THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”  He came out of his trance as counselors began to respond to the call as they were to do when one of several codes were called to the school.

“Thompson reporting en route,” he said as he climbed from the bed before jumping up, quickly throwing on some clothes, and slipping on a pair of flip flops.

With flashers on, he drove quickly up highway 119 to Alabaster and then climbed onto the interstate.  He was stopped by a state trooper, but once he showed his credentials and explained the situation, the officer escorted him until he got off the interstate and headed back toward the school.  With his flashers still going, Elias pulled to the gate that was standing open and quickly drove right in.  Arriving at the parking lot in front of the Admin Building, the place was lit up like a Christmas tree with the blue and red lights of numerous police cars and ambulances.  Assigned spaces didn’t matter at that point, so he pulled into the first available one and headed toward the front of the Admin Building.

“Thompson on campus,” he spoke into the Nextel phone, following the other counselors’ leads.

“Thompson!” Dr. Owens called.  “Boys Dorm, Room 208,” she said, having called no one else out of the usual protocol for the code.  As fast as he could, Elias got to the building and ran up the stairs to the second floor. 

“Elias!” she responded after he called her name.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Somehow, Scott Riggins got some drugs onto campus,” she told him succinctly, her entire being filled with emotions ranging from sadness to anger.  Elias could see the flashing range of emotion in her eyes; he could hear it in her voice.  She was but a breath away from starting to tremble.

“OK,” he responded, trying to keep a clear mind, though it had already started to race.  Images of his past, painful memories of a time he wished he could forget, were running through his head, the emotions coming in such quick waves Elias could not sort them out.

“His roommate, Lyle Harris, somehow found his stash among some shaving supplies.  Being that Lyle is still struggling with his addictions, he couldn’t help himself and took a single stamp of LSD and put it on his tongue.  It was…” she said as she wiped her eyes beneath her glasses.  “It was bad,” she managed to say as Elias took her into a hug.  He knew for a fact that in the years she’d been there, some contraband had managed to get onto to campus, but it was never drugs or alcohol.  The worst they’d ever found was a pack of Newports in the room of a 17-year old student years before even Elias arrived there.

“OK.  So we need to figure out how Scott got them then,” Elias said as he put on a cap that he’d not worn in a long time, that of an underage junkie. 

“He told me and the police that they were his,” Dr. Owens told him after pulling away.  She said a silent ‘thank you’ for the hug with her eyes.  “He feels guilty, he says, because he never meant for anyone to get hurt.”

“And you believe him?”

“Yes,” she answered quickly.  Her faith in the students of that school was immeasurable, and that’s why they’d always had such a high success rate.  Some called it naïveté, and some called it lunacy, but no one could argue with the fact that 85% of her students went on to lead clean lives after being there for even a short time.

The two of them turned a moment later and walked toward the room as she continued to explain the situation.  Two policemen were outside the room, checking credentials as Dr. Owens had instructed them to do.  Inside were two more officers hovering over Scott as he sat in the chair, waiting for him to respond to questions Peggy was asking him.

“This is Elias Thompson, one of our counselors,” Dr. Owens introduced him to the officers, one of whom was holding a sheet of LSD stamps.  He’d never done that drug, but the sheet looked oddly familiar.  There were several rows of stamps, each row a different color.  Two of the stamps were missing.

“May I?” Elias asked the cop, reaching out his hand to take the baggie in which the stamps had been placed.  Looking at the sheet, the logo on each of them was far too familiar.

As he looked at the sheet, as he stared at the logo printed in various colors, as he struggled to keep his composure, a flood of memories came to his mind.  He remembered being on the streets.  He remembered peddling things with that same logo at various bars around town with Giovanni.  He remembered what it felt like to be high, and while it was a good feeling at the time, it always came with a price.  That price, he was well aware, was still affecting him.  He couldn’t go anywhere without first taking a thorough visual assessment of things; he avoided others.  He had no hopes of having a normal sex life because of all that he’d been forced to do for protection and for a fix.  He didn’t trust anyone completely, not Dr. Owens, Caleb, or even Jenny, even though he tried desperately to do so.  He didn’t go to the doctor, even when he needed it, because he couldn’t stand the thought of a needle, the way it would pierce his skin, the way the venom would feel as it began coursing through his body.  His teeth were messed up, and he looked a good ten years older than he should.  He still had scars on his body from where he’d been burned by cigarette butts for not bringing back enough money and from where a john once tried to stab him for not being able to completely swallow a load.  He, thankfully, hadn’t contracted HIV during his time on the streets, but upon arriving at the school he had to be treated for a host of other STDs, all of which were curable.  The fear that he experienced when it was a possibility that he did, though, came straight to the front of his mind along with everything else.

What seemed like an eternity to him was only a few seconds.  His hands started to shake as he finally became really, truly, positively angry at the man who had been the result of all of it.  After getting a good look at the stamps, he handed the baggie back to the officer.

“Dr. Owens?” he asked.

“Yes?” she asked, trusting that he knew what he was doing, both as a counselor and as a former junkie street kid himself.

“Can I have five minutes?” he asked confidently.

“Yes…” she said as she and Peggy walked out.

“Officers…” he said as he turned to them.  Reluctantly, they followed the others out and shut the door behind them.

“So how is Giovanni doing these days?” Elias asked as he put his hands into his pockets and watched for Scott’s reaction.

“What?  Who?”

“The guy you got the shit from… It has his mark…”

“I don’t know…” Scott tried to lie, but his voice was beginning to crack and his heart was starting to pound in his chest.  His face became flush as he tried to figure out how the man they all called Mr. T. knew who his dealer, his protector, his pimp was.  For Scott, all of the memories, the pain, everything was still fresh on his mind. 

“I’ll make you a deal…” Elias told him.  “If you tell the police where you got these and you tell Dr. Owens how you got them onto the campus, I will talk to Dr. Owens about letting you stay here.”  There was no response, “Or… I will tell them who’s responsible for having you peddle this stuff around campus, and you’ll go to jail as an adult, as a drug dealer.”  Pulling his phone out of his pocket and looking at the time, Elias said, “I’ll give you two minutes to decide.”

“I can’t…” he said.

“Why not?” Elias asked, trying not to let his anger come through his voice.

“Because…” Scott stammered as he stood from the chair and began pacing nervously.

“You gotta do better than that,” Elias told him, knowing from first hand experience that the truth would set him free, as the old saying went.

“Because he told me that… that if I did… that he would kill me.  He said that’s what he did to the last kid that got sent here,” Scott answered.

“When did he say this happened?”

“About ten years ago,” Scott answered him.

Elias smiled.  “Are you sober right now?”  Scott simply shook his head, and it all became clear.  “Why not?”

“Because Lyle and I both took a hit,” Scott said.  “I didn’t know he was gonna get hurt.  I swear,” Scott started to cry.  “I was just doing what he told me to do…” he bawled.

“What did Lyle give you in exchange for the hit?” Elias asked.

“His new kicks, the ones he bought at the store a couple of weeks ago…” he said.

“Get them…” Elias said as Scott reached under his bed and grabbed them, holding them in his hand.

“Listen,” Elias said.  “I’m gonna tell you something, and I need to know that you’re paying attention.  OK?”

“OK…” he answered, but he couldn’t look at Elias.

“Look at me,” Elias instructed as Scott complied.  “Giovanni Taylor is a small man.  He didn’t kill the last person that was his that was sent here.  I… am that person.”  Scott looked at him in wonder and amazement.  Mr. T. was a therapist, a counselor, and a teacher, but he was also cool.  He knew that Mr. T. had been a student there at one point, but he didn’t know any of the details of it.  “Despite what he might have told you, while you are here, he cannot hurt you.  Nothing can hurt you except what you let hurt you.”

“You’ll talk to Dr. Owens for me?” Scott asked.

“I will…” Elias promised as Scott nodded that he was ready.  “Dr. Owens,” he called after turning and walking to the door, opening it only enough to summon her inside.  As she walked in, he stood beside Scott.  “Dr. Owens, Scott is ready to tell the police everything… everything…”

“I’m assuming there’s a condition,” she stood, her fingers interlaced in front of her.

“I told Scott that I would ask you, on his behalf, if he could remain in the school’s custody on the condition that he told the police what happened, how it happened, and… with whom it happened.”

Dr. Owens thought she recognized the image on the stamps, but she wasn’t completely sure.  In reviewing Elias’s case file before, though, she recalled him mentioning Ulysses S. Grant’s picture as he described what was on the little baggies of coke, heroin, and several other drugs that he’d been forced to sell.  Her suspicions were confirmed, of course, by the look in Elias’s eyes.

“If the police are fine with it, but!” she noted, looking directly at Scott.  “You are to be confined to this room.  You are to have no interaction, except with staff, and during meal times, you will be escorted to the cafeteria by a member of the staff.  Should you have to leave for any circumstance, a member of the staff must be with you.  If I see you without one, you will go straight to jail, and I will not protect you.  Is that clear?”

“Yes ma’am,” Scott agreed.  “For how long?”

“I’ll let you know,” Dr. Owens told him, looking at Elias.  She turned to the door and summoned the officers in.

Scott told them everything.  He told them about Giovanni, about the threats, about the abuse that happened at his hands.  He confessed things that, even to that day, Elias couldn’t imagine telling another soul.  Scott cried, profusely.  He begged them to forgive him; he implored them to believe that he never intended to hurt Lyle.  After they had all they needed, Dr. Owens and Elias made the proposal to them.  Since it was a juvenile, in the care of the school, they agreed, but they still had to go to downtown Birmingham for booking. 

******************** 

When the sun began to rise the next morning, Elias found himself with Dr. Owens standing in the lobby of the Jefferson County Criminal Justice Building.  While she was able to sit on a sofa in the lobby, patiently waiting for the news that was coming, Elias found himself with too much raw energy to just sit there and go on as if nothing were going on.

The thing was, Elias knew all too well what that kid was going through.  He had, more than likely, already been photographed by the police.  He’d been fingerprinted, and finally, he was probably sitting in a room talking to an investigator.  Elias hoped that Scott had more courage than he’d had, for when it was him on the other side of those steel doors he couldn’t give up Giovanni; of course, at the time, he was also higher than a kite and barely knew the world was still spinning.

He remembered sitting in a small room, with only one barred window and a two-way mirror.  He was wearing an orange suit, and his hands were held close together on the table by handcuffs that were itchy and uncomfortable.  They were tight, very tight.  He wanted to sleep, but it was too hot in that room.  He’d gotten used to sleeping in the cold, under bridges or in doorways of public buildings, huddled close to others to share what little warmth was being generated by their bodies.  He wasn’t used to being in a space where the temperature was controlled, at least he hadn’t been in a very long time from his perspective.

He recalled a man who came in with two bottles of water and some crackers that had been purchased from a vending machine.  He and Elias talked for a little while, but Elias didn’t know anything about school or sports.  He could barely read, so there was nothing that he could speak about in the regular world.  The would he knew about revolved around drugs, around hustling, around stealing; he knew about turning tricks, but he didn’t know anything about what a normal 14-year old should know.  Then the man asked him the million dollar question: “Do you like comic books?”

That’s when the man realized that Elias was a victim of circumstance; Elias loved talking about super heroes.  He described in the most vivid detail the central character, a man who could had such powerful powers that he could easily defeat evil.  He didn’t have a name.

“What would you name him, if you could name him something?” the man asked a younger Elias.

“I don’t know.  He’s just everything.”

“Everything you wish you could be?” the man asked.

Elias looked down at his bound wrists, and then at the crackers and the water that the man had offered him before.  He took the crackers in his cuffed hands and opened the wrapper, taking one of them out and pulling it toward his mouth.  He took only tiny bites so as not to waste a single morsel of the salty cracker or the sweet peanut butter.

“If I were him,” Elias told the man, “kids wouldn’t have parents that were crack whores, and they would never have to go into foster homes.  He’d be able to take care of everybody, all at once.”

Snapping back into the moment at the sound of a door opening on one end of the lobby, with its polished wooden walls and marble flooring, Elias finally stopped pacing and turned his attention toward the man walking toward him.  Dr. Owens also stood and walked over to Elias, since it appeared that’s where he was walking.

“Is Scott OK?” Dr. Owens asked.

“He is.  He is asking to speak to ‘Mr. T.,’” the officer said.

“That’s me,” Elias said.

“You’re one of the counselors at the school?” the man asked, puzzled a little bit and feeling as though he knew Elias.

“Yes sir.”

“You look familiar.”

“What’s your name?” Elias asked.

“Daniel Skinner,” the guy asked.

Turning to Dr. Owens, “This is the officer that arrested me before I came to the school.”

“And you’re a counselor now?” he asked.

“Yes sir.  Art therapy is my specialty.”

“The super hero kid!” he remembered.

“Yes sir.”

“Well, let me show you back,” the officer said with a smile, knowing that at least one kid had made it off the streets and to a good place.

Down the hallway, every square inch of it was familiar.  At the end of the hallway, in the very same room that he’d sat in so long before, the man opened the door and allowed Elias to enter as he showed Dr. Owens into the observation room.

“How are you holding up, Scott?” Elias asked.

“Mr. T.,  I did it,” Scott said.

“You did what?”

“I told them about Giovanni, and where to find him.”

“You’ve done a good thing.”

“I don’t know…”

“Listen… you weren’t the first kid he did this to,” Elias quietly reminded him, “but you are, more than likely, going to be the last.  You’ve done what even Super E couldn’t do.”

Scott smiled.  “Do you think they would let me draw or something?”

“Maybe,” Elias asked.

“Who’s Super E?” the officer asked Dr. Owens, who smiled.

“That is what Elias named his super hero,” she answered with a smile on her face.

“Good…” Officer Skinner said as he gathered a couple of pencils and some blank paper and took them into the room. 

******************** 

As Elias and Scott drew together, working through things that were on both their minds, the police were surrounding a small house just off Oporto-Madrid Boulevard in East Lake, one of Birmingham’s eastern neighborhoods.  The SWAT team, careful not to wake up any neighbors, sneaked up on the house and launched tear gas into windows on all sides.  As people, innocents who had just gotten caught up in it all, ran out of the house, police started rounding them up.  When Giovanni ran out, holding something over his mouth, he had a pistol in his hand.  All of the officers that had surrounded the house immediately aimed their weapons at the small space between his eyes, the red lights of their laser targeting devices pointed with deadly accuracy at the same place.  As he looked up and realized there was no point in trying to fight, Giovanni dropped the pistol onto the ground and thrust his hands into the air.  Following the instructions of the law enforcement agents, Giovanni stepped off the porch, coughed, and lowered himself onto the ground, his hands locked behind his head.

To be continued...

Posted: 10/14/11