Confessions from the Principal's Chair Page 3

  Chapter 2

  There wasn't much talk between Rendi and me after we got in our box-filled van. I stared hard into the mirror outside my window until Denver, the Mile-High City, disappeared. Back when I was a little kid when we left a place, I was always sort of excited. Now I was just scared and really mad! I had my backpack on the floor in the front with me. We hadn't been away from Denver long before I pulled my bag up and started rummaging through it.

  "What are you looking for, sweetie?" Rendi said all light and friendly like she didn't know I was furious with her.

  "Paper." My voice was as cold as I could make it.

  "Good," she said. "I think it would be a good idea if you kept a journal as we travel, sort of record our adventures and your feelings."

  My idea had been to start a letter, one to send in the snail mail to the Six-Pack minus one. I thought I could send it to Katie, and write on the envelope that she should take it to school, open it, and read it all together. I tried not to think about how there would be a new member. She wouldn't be interested in my letter. Deep down I wasn't sure Ivory would be interested either.

  I took out a big pad of yellow paper. We all used that kind of paper for notes we wrote in class. A yellow pad was the most important thing we carried. We couldn't send each other a text message in class because our school had a rule against cell phones in class. If a teacher saw one, the phone could be taken away from the kid and never returned. Not even one of the Six-Pack could risk losing a cell. Yet, here I was in this prison of a van without one. Rendi had taken mine away from me, saying we'd be changing our service in Oklahoma anyway. I didn't start a letter, though. Rendi's idea came to my mind. I wasn't about to start some gooney journal about traveling around looking for some dumpy little town to live in, but I sure could write about how I felt. "PLEASE HELP ME! I'M BEING KIDNAPPED!" I wrote it in big letters, over and over across the page until it was filled up. I pushed down hard with the pen as I made the letters, and I liked the feeling.

  On the second page, I started in on Rendi. "Who is this woman?" I wrote. "She claims to be my mother, but I have never seen her in my life. She is so strange to me. My mother would never treat me this way. What has this woman done with my mother? I miss my mother. We used to talk over everything. I remember how she would say that she would never try to run my life the way her parents had tried to run hers. My mother thought I was smart and could think for myself. I wonder if I will ever see her again. I loved my mother like she loved me, but now I am this woman's prisoner."

  Most of the way through Kansas I wrote on my yellow pad. Even when I just repeated the same thing, I liked doing it. When we stopped to eat, I would carry the pad with me and put it on the table between Rendi and me. I wanted her to read it. Moving was a done deal, but at least I wanted her to feel bad about the agony she was putting me through.

  She never even glanced at the writing. Once I pushed it over closer to her plate than mine, but she didn't look at it. "I would never read your journal, Bird," she said like she didn't know I wanted her to read it. "I would never invade your privacy that way. That's the kind of thing my mother used to do to me when I was young."

  I jerked back the pad. "Did your mother ever drag you away from your friends and take you to some foreign country to go to school?"

  Rendi shook her head. "No, she did not, but I would have loved it if she had. Oklahoma is not a foreign country, Bird. I wish I could afford to fly us to some other country, so you could be exposed to a completely new culture, but I can't. I think you will learn something, though, from small-town life. I think you will like living in Oklahoma. New experiences make you grow inside."

  "Yeah," I said. "Getting that tooth filled last month was a new experience. I know it made me grow."

  Rendi didn't say anything, and I pulled a book out of my bag. It was one that should have gone back to the school library. I forgot that it was in my bag when Rendi went up to school to give back the textbooks and check me out. I guess they would have known about the book because of the computer and everything, but Ivory had picked it up for me and carried it out of the library without checking it out.

  Mrs. Evans, our librarian, had told me when I saw it on the counter that I couldn't have the book because there was a waiting list for it, but when she went to stop a fight between two boys and take them to the office, Ivory stuck the book in her bag. "You'll have it read before she starts to look for it," she had said. I could have read it in one evening because I do love to read and won't put a book down until it's finished even if I have to let my homework go. I like Mrs. Evans, and I was going to take the book back that same day without telling Ivory, but I didn't get a chance to before we got called to the office. The book looked good, but I was too upset over what was happening to be able to read. Let me tell you, that has never happened before.

  "Oh, that's a library book. We'll have to mail it back to them," Rendi said. "I hate that we took it, but at least you will have something to read."

  "I can't read," I said. "It makes me sick." (That wasn't exactly the truth, but I liked the sound of it.) "Never happened before, but I guess this is the most sickening trip I've ever been on." I turned my head away from her and stared out at the flat countryside. I would never have admitted it to Rendi, but I liked the openness of the land and sky. It felt real strange to be in the car with Rendi and be so quiet. We used to talk a lot. I thought it must seem strange to her too, and I figured it was bound to make her feel bad. Well, good! I wouldn't talk to her for the rest of my life unless I had to. This time I'd keep my vow, like some kind of monk or something who lived in a monastery and never spoke a word. I didn't utter another sound even when we finally stopped for the night just before we got to the line between Kansas and Oklahoma.

  "This place look all right to you?" Rendi asked when she pulled off the interstate highway and stopped at a motel. I only grunted, and I was proud of not saying a word all evening. The next morning we were back on the road again. We hadn't been in Oklahoma long before I saw a sign saying it was one hundred miles to Oklahoma City. I wondered about Tulsa because that's where my grandparents live, but I didn't ask Rendi. Monks don't break their vows that quickly.

  When we saw a sign that said, "Ponca City—Exit One Mile," Rendi announced that she had been to that town once to visit a college friend whose family lived there. "There's a wonderful statue there called Pioneer Woman," she said. "I want to see it again, and I think you will love it."

  I didn't even grunt. After we got off the interstate highway, we had to drive twenty-two miles to get to the town called Ponca City. Rendi chattered all the way, telling me how Ponca was the name of an Indian tribe. I didn't listen much, but I couldn't help liking the land, all open and sort of pulling you in to it. I didn't tell Rendi that I noticed anything good.

  It was truly impossible, though, not to act interested when we stopped at the statue. Rendi just got out of the car without saying anything at all to me. I could see it, this really gigantic woman with a Bible under her arm. She's got on a sunbonnet, and she is walking, and she has her son by the hand. I didn't want to get out, but I actually swear to you that this woman called to me, like practically by name.

  So I had to get out and walk over there. The deal is, I've looked at lots of works of art with Rendi. It's this thing that I've learned from her to love. She knew that statue would soften me up. "My great-grandmother was a pioneer in this state," she said, "like that woman, and you know what, Bird, we are like that." She pointed with her head to a nearby museum building with the words "I see no boundaries" written in big letters across its top. "You and I, we see no boundaries."

  I guess I might as well tell you that the whole Pioneer Woman thing got to me. I stared up at her, and it was like I was seeing my great-great-grandmother, and I understood how she felt walking across that flat, open land. "She's beautiful," I whispered. It wasn't much talk, but I had just broken my vow. I knew if I stayed, I might end up going over to stand by Rendi, maybe even lean ag
ainst her. I stomped back to the van, mad, mostly at myself. Rendi stayed awhile with the woman, then joined me.

  "What a thrill that lady must have been for the sculptor," she said when she got back into the van. I knew she was thinking about her work. It had been a few months since she had done a special project, and I knew she was hoping one would come along. I didn't say anything. We didn't go back to the interstate. We just followed a small highway that went through Ponca City.

  Pretty soon I saw a sign that would have made me laugh if I had been in a better mood. It said, "Prairie Dog Town fifteen miles."

  Rendi saw the sign too, and she said, "Oh, good. Let's go there."

  Since I had broken my vow of silence already, I thought I might as well express my disgust. "You want to see some dog that lives on the prairie? Don't expect me to get out of the car this time, no way, and I really mean it."

  "Prairie dogs aren't real dogs," Rendi said. "They are members of the rodent family, sort of like squirrels, except they live in groups in holes they make in the ground. People call their holes prairie dog towns, but this Prairie Dog Town is the name of a little town for people. I've heard of it, but I've never driven through it. It might be the kind of place we're looking for."

  "Rendi!" I screamed, and I do mean screamed. "You aren't thinking we might like to really live there? Surely you wouldn't live in a place called Prairie Dog Town! I'd be embarrassed to send any of my friends a letter with that return address."

  "We won't stay unless we both like it," she said. "But what could be the harm in looking?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "If it amuses you," I said, real snotty like. She won't go, I told myself, but she did. It was true. I did not know the woman who drove this car and claimed to be my mother.

  No one at my school in Denver would have believed Prairie Dog Town, Oklahoma, even existed. I knew better than to expect a mall, but this place was like something from a century ago. There was hardly a business district, just a little town square with a few buildings around it. I saw some little dumpy cafe, a hardware store, a grocery store, and one big sign that said "Feed and Seed."

  "There's not even a Big-Mart," I said, then I thought of something that I knew would end the possibility of living in Prairie Dog Town. "Rendi," I said, "this place doesn't even have a library or a book store."

  Rendi put her eyebrows together, thinking. "You know Ponca City isn't far, and they will have a nice-sized library. Blackwell isn't far either," she said. "And I just remembered that when I went home with that friend from college we saw a nice play in Ponca City. It would be easy for me to drive you there."

  I put my face in my hands. "You promised we wouldn't stay unless we both liked it," I reminded her.

  "Oh, we won't, but let's just go back to that cafe and have lunch, maybe drive around a little after. You might like it better than you think."

  "When pigs fly," I said.

  We stopped in front of City Café. Crazy name I thought. How could anyone call this place a city? I would have liked to refuse to get out, but I was too hungry. The mother I once knew would have carried out food to me. This new woman, though, was not likely to do that. The thought made me remember my yellow pad. I bent down to where I had stashed it behind my backpack and got it, planning to take it in with me. Maybe I would change my mind and make some notes about Prairie Dog Town, Oklahoma. It might give me something funny to e-mail my friends about.

  A woman stuck her head out of the kitchen when we came in. "Just put yourself anywhere that suits you," she said. "We aren't too busy today."

  I looked around. Not too busy seemed like a real understatement to me. There were about six booths in the place, and only one of them had anyone in it. A dark-haired girl who looked a little older than me was putting food on a table in front of three gray-haired women.

  I thought Rendi would head for the empty booth on the other side of the room, but she settled in right behind the old ladies. I wanted to die. What if she should start talking to the women all folksy-like? I could just imagine her telling them that we might decide to settle down in Prairie Dog Town, and they would be sure to make a joke about how the middle school needed a new little prairie dog. I had no intention of joining the rodent family.

  The girl came over and handed us menus. She was chewing gum and making a popping sound with it. Rendi ordered a chicken sandwich and some lemonade. "I'll take a burger," I said without even looking, "and a latte." Of course, I knew they wouldn't have a latte. But I thought it would be funny to order one, like I expected that they served them all the time.

  "What's a latte?" the girl asked between pops of her gum, and I laughed out loud.

  "You mean you've never even heard of a latte?" I was truly surprised. I was about to say she must have lived in a prairie dog hole her whole life, but Rendi didn't give me a chance.

  "A latte is coffee with steamed milk," she said, "but never mind. Just bring my daughter lemonade too."

  I looked out the window at nothing until our food came. The gum chewer slammed down my plate in front of me. Rendi smiled at her, and I knew she would leave the girl a big tip because she thought I had been rude.

  We were about to pay when suddenly a tall, skinny man in a policeman's uniform and a huge white hat burst through the door. With his hand on the gun at his side, he stationed himself by the door and moved his head very slowly from one side to the other, searching the cafe like a gunfighter about to meet his enemy. I could almost hear the music from the old western movies I had seen. It was a minute before I noticed the yellow pad under his arm. A funny feeling started in my stomach. That pad looked just like the one I had been writing on, but didn't all those yellow pads look alike? What had I done with mine? I hadn't brought it in like I had planned. It must still be in the van.

  I was standing beside a window near the cash register, and I moved the white curtain to see our van. There it was, doors closed just the way we had left them. Then I remembered! The pad had been in my lap when we stopped. I had taken it off my lap and laid it back on the floor or somewhere before I opened the door to get out, hadn't I?

  The man came slowly toward us. "Hello, Barney." It was the woman in the kitchen, and her voice came from a window behind the cash register.

  "I've asked you to quit calling me that, Judy. My name is Clyde," said the man. "You ought not be calling me any first name, let alone one that is meant to poke fun at me. I am the sheriff, and I think I deserve a little respect."

  "Don't get your panties in a wad," said the voice. "I mean, hello, Sheriff Walters. Just settle yourself someplace. I'll get that piece of coconut meringue pie I saved you from earlier."

  "Can't," the sheriff said real sharp and quick. "I'm here on official business." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman come out of the kitchen, but mostly I was watching the sheriff, who was walking straight toward us.

  The dark-haired gum chewer behind the cash register quit moving her hand with our money toward the drawer. The sheriff stopped right in front of us. "You two get out of that blue van?" He used his head to motion back toward where our car stood outside.

  "Yes, officer," said my mother, "we did. Is there a problem?"

  The sheriff started to draw his gun, but it seemed to be stuck in the holster. When he moved his left hand to pull at the holster, the yellow pad fell to the floor near my feet. I looked down to read my message, "PLEASE HELP ME! I AM BEING KIDNAPPED!"

  By the time I looked up, Barney, or whatever his name was, had his gun out and it was pointed directly at my mother. "You are under arrest for kidnapping," he said. One of the older women screamed. "Hush, Aunt Margaret," said the sheriff, and he started to pull at the pair of handcuffs he had attached to his belt. He launched into his speech about my mother's rights too, all the time pulling at the handcuffs. Rendi tried to say something, but he waved his gun at her. "You let me have my say," he told her, and he went back to the beginning of his speech and started over with "You have the right . . ."

  I wanted
to laugh, but I didn't think the sheriff or Rendi would see the humor in what was happening. I opened my mouth to explain that I wasn't being kidnapped, but the sheriff started talking to the waitress. "Angie," he said, "you come over here and get these handcuffs loose and put them on this low-life woman."

  "Now wait a minute, Barney," said the woman named Judy who was now beside us in her apron and smelling like fried chicken. "Tell me what's going on here."

  The sheriff stomped his foot. "You be careful, Judy Richardson, or I'll haul you in for disrespect to an officer of the law. We've got a desperate woman right here m Prairie Dog Town. I can only thank the good Lord I intercepted her before she got totally away with this poor child."

  Angie had the handcuffs off of the sheriff's belt by then, and she was moving toward Rendi. "Hold your hands out, woman." He waved his gun, and Rendi put out her hands. "Be careful, Angie, this woman is violent."

  I made up my mind then to tell the truth. I mean, I was mad at Rendi, but low-life and violent were going a bit too far. "Sheriff, sir," I said. "This is my mother. I wrote all that stuff about being kidnapped because I was mad at her."

  The sheriff gave me a long look and made a sort of snorting kind of doubtful grunt. "You poor little thing. You've started siding with your captor. Not uncommon in kidnapping cases. In the law business, we call it the Stocking syndrome. I just saw a special about it on TV."

  "Stockholm," said Judy. "It's Stockholm syndrome, Clyde, named for a city in Sweden where a famous kidnapping took place. I saw that same special."

  The sheriff sighed. "Don't make no real difference what you call it, now does it, Judy? The point is that this pitiful little girl has been kidnapped and got her mind taken over by the scum that done it."

  "Bird," said my mother, "tell this man the truth."

  I looked at my mother for a long minute, and I started to wonder what they did with kids who had been kidnapped. "Sheriff," I said. "Will you send me back to Denver? I don't know what happened to my mother, but I've got a friend there named Katie Morford, and I am pretty sure her parents would take me in if you explain that my mother can't be found."