The Janitor's Boy Read online

  Mrs. Lambert had returned, and from the back of the room she said, “Thanks a lot, John.”

  John Rankin nodded and said, “All in a day’s work.”

  Mrs. Lambert said, “All right, back to your seats, everyone. Show’s over.” The kids began moving toward their desks.

  As John the janitor pushed the rolling bucket toward the door he glanced up and saw Jack. His face broke into a big smile.

  And then he said it: “Hi, son.”

  Jack mumbled, “Hi,” and then looked down, pretending to search for something in his notebook.

  As his dad walked out into the hallway that Monday afternoon Jack felt like a giant letter had been branded on his forehead—L, for Loser.

  Jack sat down, his ears burning red.

  It was Kirk who struck first.

  Kirk Dorfmann was a walking fashion ad. From shoes to cap he was a billboard of logos and trademarks—all the very latest clothes, all very expensive. Kirk grinned and leaned across the aisle toward Jack. In a voice loud enough for most of the class to hear he said, “Hey, does Daddy let you push the big broom sometimes, Jackie? Oh, I forgot—you have to get a special permit to drive one of those things. Nice outfit he’s wearing today. Your dad looks great in green polyester.”

  It had been a long time since Jack had punched anyone. In his mind an iron fist formed, and he could feel it slamming into Kirk’s soft, fleshy smirk. Jack could feel the teeth behind the lips giving way as he followed through with his full weight.

  But before thought could become action, Mrs. Lambert slipped between the two boys. Her eyes flashed, and she said, “Kirk, I’ll see you after class.”

  Mrs. Lambert moved back into the math lesson, and it seemed like things had returned to normal.

  But they hadn’t, not for Jack.

  Jack sat smoldering through the rest of the class. His jaw ached from gritting his teeth. He ignored Mrs. Lambert and passed the last fifteen minutes imagining how he’d get back at Kirk. He knew Kirk would never fight him. Jack had a reputation in that department. Just let me get him alone down by the locker room, thought Jack. I’ll mop the floor with him! Jack said those words to himself and immediately got even angrier that he would choose that particular way to describe winning a fight.

  When class ended, Jack hoped for a clean getaway, but the door clogged up with chatting girls, and the hallway was jammed with seventh graders coming back from their lunch period. Kirk went up to Mrs. Lambert’s desk, and Jack edged toward the door and got in front of Marla Jenkins and Sue Driscoll. He wanted to be far enough away to be able to pretend he couldn’t hear what Mrs. Lambert said to Kirk. It was just a scolding anyway, stuff about respect for others. Jack was still ten feet from the doorway when Kirk rejoined his buddy, Luke Karnes.

  Luke was one of Kirk’s trendy little group. Luke looked as if he followed Kirk around the Mall of America, taking notes on exactly what Kirk bought and how he put his fashion costumes together. Tall, thin, and long-legged, Luke was always a step or two behind Kirk, always trying to catch up, always trying to impress him. Luke started talking to Kirk, pretending that Jack couldn’t hear him.

  “Hey, Kirk, must take a lot of talent to clean up a bunch of puke, huh? Sure wish I could learn how to do that.”

  Kirk said, “Well, just forget about it, Luke. It’s a gift, y’know? And you have to go to a special janitor’s college and take a course in vomit wiping before you can even try it. Only a few special people ever learn how to do it right—and it’s passed on with pride from father to son.” Kirk paused, then in a voice dripping with sarcasm he said, “I sure wish my dad was a janitor!”

  “Yeah,” said Luke, “me, too!”

  Jack kept his eyes straight ahead, his lips pressed together. Marla and Sue giggled as Kirk and Luke finished their little routine, and if Mrs. Lambert heard what they’d said, she pretended she hadn’t.

  Jack finally made it into the hallway. He bolted left toward his locker. As he got to the corner he glanced over his shoulder at Kirk and Luke, his eyes flashing with hatred. It was the wrong moment to look backward.

  John Rankin had just rinsed his mop and refilled the rolling bucket at the utility closet in the fifth-grade hall. At the exact moment Jack was rounding the corner at an angry run, his dad was coming the other way with the bucket.

  The collision was spectacular. The bucket didn’t tip all the way over, but the force of Jack’s impact knocked the mop out onto the floor with a clatter that made everyone in the hallway turn and stare. Jack lost his footing in the water that sloshed onto the floor. His math book and papers went flying, and Jack skidded to a stop against the lockers, sitting in a puddle.

  Led by Kirk and Luke, the hallway erupted into laughter and clapping.

  John rushed over to his son. “You all right, Jack?” He tried to take Jack by the elbow and help him up. Jack jerked his arm away, not even looking at his dad. Ignoring the wet worksheets and his scattered homework papers, Jack scrambled to his feet, grabbed his math book, stepped around his dad, and hurried down the hall. The laughter died out amid the normal sounds of a few hundred kids passing classes. Jack jerked open his locker, grabbed his social studies book, kicked the door shut, and headed downstairs.

  Six minutes later Jack was sitting on a stool in the art room at a worktable by himself. He pounded and pushed at the lump of reddish clay in front of him, both fists clenched.

  Jack stared at the clay, replaying his humiliation again and again. Inside him a firestorm roared and hissed. It was impossible to keep it in.

  So all of Jack’s churning anger shot straight up through the art-room ceiling, a flaming tornado of hurt and embarrassment.

  It hurtled through the halls of the old high school, smacking into lockers, crashing down stairwells, vaporizing doors and windows and walls.

  And when his anger had reached maximum force and speed, it needed a target.

  Kirk? A major annoyance, but hardly worth a full attack.

  Luke? A total dweeb—not even on the radar screen.

  Like a guided missile packed with deadly resentment, Jack’s anger homed in on the ultimate target, the true cause of his problems, and at last it burst into hot crimson fragments above the unsuspecting head of John the janitor.

  The sizzling chunks of Jack’s burning rage stuck to his father—like gobs of well-chewed watermelon bubble gum.

  Chapter 4

  The Sweet SmeLL of VictoRy

  Sitting in English class with his heart pounding away, Jack reviewed the mission.

  Just five minutes ago he had delivered a crushing blow to the enemy, a major assault—gummage in the first degree.

  His music-room attack was undetected, the weapon was untraceable, and the result was unbelievably messy.

  The only flaw was that Jack would not be able to watch his dad’s face when he saw that desk. If only I could be there, he thought. I could point at the desk and say, “Okay, Janitor John—janitor this!” Or maybe I’d say, “Go ahead, work your magic, Tidy Guy. You decided to go and become Mr. Clean—so here’s a little present from your number one fan!”

  Jack grinned, savoring the imagined moment.

  “Well, Jack? What is it?”

  Uh-oh—battle stations. It was Mrs. Carroll in a lime green pantsuit, bearing down from the front left flank. Artillery fire had already begun.

  Jack straightened up in his chair, frantically scrolling through that tiny part of his brain that had been tracking the teacher, trying to recall her last two or three droning sentences. Something about parts of speech, something about—and in a flash he knew, like instant replay in his head. With the sweetest smile he could manage he said, “It’s a preposition, right?”

  Mrs. Carroll glared at him and edged a little closer. She’d been watching him from the corner of her eye for the past thirty seconds, and she could have sworn Jack Rankin was completely zoned out. Daydreaming was her pet peeve, and this was the fifth time she had tried—and failed—to catch Jack at it. Pursing
her lips, she said, “Yes, the word across is a preposition.” Her eyes narrowed and she edged half a step nearer. Mrs. Carroll reminded Jack of a green lizard getting ready to flip its tongue out to snap up a fly. She said, “Now, use it in a sentence.”

  The sentence that popped into Jack’s head was, “The English teacher darted across the ceiling like a chameleon,” but what he said was, “The fisherman paddled his canoe across the lake.”

  Lizard Woman glared at Jack an extra second or two. She wanted to be sure he got the message that he had almost been a very dead fly.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s fine.” Whirling away, she instantly settled on a new victim. “Jessie, in the sentence Jack just made up, what word is the object of the preposition?”

  Surviving a direct hit from the reptile patrol was a little scary, so Jack assigned another tenth of his mind to the unpleasant job of watching out for Mrs. Carroll.

  Glancing at the clock, Jack saw he had another thirty minutes of eighth period to go. With an inward smile he went back to his own thoughts, replaying his secret victory again and again—and Jack especially enjoyed thinking about that desk, sitting there like a sweet, sticky time bomb in the back row of the music room.

  Chapter 5

  SchooL Justice

  Mr. Pike reported the ruined desk to the office over the music-room intercom at the start of eighth period. Mr. Ackerby dropped what he was doing and hurried upstairs to take a look. He liked detective work, especially when the trail was fresh. The vice principal was on the case.

  Looking at the desk with Mr. Pike, Mr. Ackerby shook his head. Then, just to be polite, he asked, “So, Dave, got any suspects for me?” Mr. Pike seemed like he was always in his own wacky little music zone, so Mr. Ackerby didn’t expect him to be much help.

  “Absolutely,” said Mr. Pike. “Got it all figured out.”

  Mr. Ackerby’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” Like Jack, Mr. Ackerby didn’t understand that a good choral director notices everything.

  Mr. Pike nodded and said, “Clear as a bell. I’ve got fifty-six kids in that seventh-period class, and three on the absence list today, so fifty-three were here. I make the kids fill the room from front to back, and there are fifty-one chairs in the first four rows. I always look up to see who’s late when the bell rings, and today Kerry Loomis and Jack Rankin were almost tardy. They had to be the only kids sitting in the last row today. I wouldn’t think either of them would do this, but they were back there. I’m sure of that.”

  As he returned to the office Mr. Ackerby revised his opinion of Mr. Pike. Then he looked up the class schedules for Loomis, Kerry, and Rankin, Jack.

  Five minutes later Mr. Ackerby had a quick conversation with the Loomis girl in the hallway outside her social studies class. Mr. Ackerby could tell she was innocent.

  So it had to be the Rankin boy.

  Someone was about to learn that there is no such thing as the perfect crime—especially at school. And he was going to learn it the hard way.

  About twenty minutes into eighth period Mr. Ackerby appeared at the doorway of Jack’s English class. He said, “Excuse me, Mrs. Carroll—I need to have a word with Jack Rankin.”

  Jack knew.

  He knew why Mr. Ackerby wanted to talk with him.

  As if in a fog, Jack got up from his desk and walked through the silent room, his face chalky white, his mouth dry.

  One look and Mr. Ackerby was sure he had his man.

  Mr. Ackerby closed the door to the classroom and glared down into Jack’s pale face. Jack couldn’t look him in the eye. Without raising his voice, Mr. Ackerby said, “Jack, I’d like you to walk down to the music room and bring a folding desk back to my office for me.”

  Jack gulped. Weakly, lamely, hopelessly, he asked, “Which desk?”

  Mr. Ackerby’s eyes flashed, and he said, “Hold out your hands.”

  Jack raised his hands up to about his waist, and Mr. Ackerby said, “Higher, and palms up.” Leaning forward, Mr. Ackerby sniffed the left hand, and then the right one.

  Watermelon.

  Pointing at Jack’s right hand, he said, “Bring me the desk that smells like that.”

  It was a long way to the music room. Jack was tempted to dash down the stairway and out the door and just keep running and running. But he knew he couldn’t.

  Mr. Pike was rehearsing with the seventh-grade chorus. He looked up from his music stand when Jack came in. He shook his head and gave Jack a frown, but he didn’t miss a beat. Jack grabbed the desk and made his way awkwardly back out the door.

  As he walked to the office Jack’s mind filled with images of the horrors to come. By the time he arrived at Mr. Ackerby’s doorway, the desk seemed to weigh about three hundred pounds.

  Mr. Ackerby was sitting on a bookcase by the window in his office, waiting. Pointing with a stubby index finger, he showed where he wanted the desk and motioned Jack into a chair. Then he walked over and tipped the folding desk onto its side so they could both get a good look at the incredible mess on the bottom. The office filled up with the heavy scent of the gum.

  Mr. Ackerby shook his head. “Look at that! Unbelievable! What in the world could you have been thinking? Tell me, Jack. What were you thinking?”

  Mr. Ackerby had not had time to read Jack’s school record, so he didn’t know that Jack was a pretty good student and had never been in any real trouble at the elementary school.

  At this moment all Mr. Ackerby knew was that this kid in blue jeans and a black T-shirt had worked pretty hard to destroy a desk. And whenever he caught someone damaging property, Mr. Ackerby didn’t have to pretend to be angry. It was the real thing.

  Jack looked steadily at the man’s brown necktie and tried not to flinch. Jack could smell the man’s shampoo, his shaving cream, his aftershave lotion, the ham-and-mustard sandwich he had eaten for lunch, and the mint he was sucking on.

  Jack was angry at his dad, and he was angry at himself, and he hated the way things were spinning out of control. He clenched his jaw and worked very hard to keep his eyes from filling with tears.

  Jack had been asked a question, and Mr. Ackerby didn’t like waiting. He leaned forward and spoke even louder. “I demand an answer, young man. Look at this mess! What were you thinking?”

  Jack glanced at the desk, then into Mr. Ackerby’s squinty eyes, and then back to his ugly necktie. Jack couldn’t quite explain that question to himself, not clearly, and there was no way he was going to open up and try to explain all his feelings to this guy.

  So Jack said, “I don’t know. I just. . . I just did it.”

  As if he could not believe what he was hearing, Mr. Ackerby bent his face down close to Jack’s and repeated, “You ‘just did it’? Well, you know what, buddy boy? You’re going to just UN-did it!”

  He turned on his heel, and after a couple of quick steps sat down at his desk with a thump. Mr. Ackerby grabbed a pen and began writing a note on a stationery pad. He finished it, ripped it off, sealed it in an envelope, and began writing again. He said, “I’m sending a note home to your parents, and I’ll be putting a memo in your permanent file. And starting today, you can cancel all your after-school plans.”

  Mr. Ackerby ripped the second piece of paper off the notepad, sealed it in another envelope, then stood up and walked over to Jack. Handing him the first envelope, he said, “This is for you to take home to your parents. Get it signed, bring it back tomorrow.”

  Turning around, he nudged the desk with the toe of his brown shoe. “You take this ruined desk down to the janitor’s workshop in the basement by the boys gym. Then get back to your class.” Mr. Ackerby paused, and handed Jack the second envelope. “Immediately after school you go back to the workshop and you hand this envelope to the chief custodian, and you tell him that you have volunteered for after-school gum patrol—an hour a day—for the next three weeks. Now get going.”

  School justice, exactly the way Mr. Ackerby liked it—swift and certain.

  As Jack lugged t
he smelly desk through the empty hallways and then down the stairs into the workshop, he was praying no one would be there—and no one was. He set the desk in the middle of the room and ran back up the stairs. He got to his English class just as the bell was ringing. He copied the assignment off the board, picked up his books, and went to social studies.

  All during ninth period Jack fretted and worried. He wondered how much his dad would yell at him. He wondered if his mom would ground him. He wondered if something like this in his file would keep him from playing football when he got to high school. And he wondered if Mr. Ackerby had any idea that “the chief custodian” was his dad.

  Jack felt stupid for getting caught, and even worse, now he’d have to be the junior janitor for three whole weeks. There was no way out. If anyone in the school hadn’t figured out that John the janitor was his dad, they wouldn’t be left out of the secret for long.

  And of course, there was only one person to blame for the whole mess. Jack clenched his teeth and pressed his lips together, barely containing an urge to spit. And he thought, Thanks again, Dad.

  Chapter 6

  RepoRtinG foR Duty

  People said Jack looked like his dad, and he hated it. They said it often enough that Jack guessed it was true. Sure, he could see that they both had straight brown hair parted near the middle, and the same thick eyebrows that almost touched above the same deep-set brown eyes. Jack was a little taller than about half the other fifth-grade kids. He guessed he was on track to end up about the same height as his dad, just under six feet, and he already had the same strong arms and broad shoulders. Even Jack’s real name was the same—John Philip Rankin Jr.

  But the likeness went deeper than that, deeper than Jack liked to admit. It was more than the lines cut by a strong chin or a straight nose, more than a certain smile or a way of walking or a pattern of speech.