The Janitor's Boy Read online

  Like his dad, Jack was mostly quiet and thoughtful. He was happy to be on his own, but he could also be friendly and quick to smile. He wasn’t shy, but when he spoke, he spoke carefully.

  There was a steadiness about Jack most of the time—unless you got on his bad side. Jack didn’t get mad easily, and neither did his dad. But when either of them did get mad, look out.

  And as Jack went to find his dad after school he was ready for the worst.

  Jack stopped on the metal stairs leading down to the shop. The shop was next to the boiler room, so it was always cozy down there during the cold months. The main boiler was running now, and the roar of the burner made the stairs tremble beneath Jack’s feet. The air coming up past him was loaded with different smells, workshop smells. The air was warm, but it didn’t seem cozy, not today.

  Jack set his face into a hard “Who cares?” sort of look. He took a deep breath and started down the stairs.

  Halfway down, Jack let out a sigh of relief. The place was empty. The folding desk was still sitting in the middle of the gray concrete floor, right where he had left it earlier. Dim afternoon sunshine from the window well on the far wall made a small patch of light on the floor. The only other light came from the lamp on his dad’s desk.

  Mr. Ackerby had told him to go to the shop after school, and here he was. Jack thought, It’s not my fault if Mr. Big-Shot Janitor is busy somewhere else. So Jack crossed the workshop to his dad’s desk and sat down.

  Jack tipped back in the old swivel chair and slowly spun it around. As he did he looked up at the bookshelves mounted on the wall behind the desk. He didn’t remember seeing them before. A row of binders on the top shelf caught his eye. Each notebook was carefully labeled. PLUMBING LOG, ROOFING SCHEDULE, GROUNDSKEEPING, BOILER MAINTENANCE, SUPPLIES & EQUIPMENT, PURCHASING, ALARM & BELL SYSTEMS, FIRE CONTROL SYSTEMS, ELECTRICAL SYSTEM—there were more than a dozen binders. The lower shelf was jammed with fat catalogs from suppliers, some of them twice as thick as the Yellow Pages.

  One catalog was labeled LEWIS BROTHERS—POWER EQUIPMENT. Jack loved tools, and he was good at making things, fixing things. His dad had got him his own toolbox for Christmas when he was seven, and he’d been gradually filling it with tools—real ones, not kids’ tools.

  Jack stood up to reach for the tool catalog when suddenly the room flooded with fluorescent light. A booming voice said, “You looking for something?”

  Jack turned around, startled, and the man halfway down the stairs saw his face. He grinned and said, “Hey, it’s Jackie boy! Look at the size of you—you must’ve picked up two inches since July! No wonder they sent you over to the high school this year.”

  Jack smiled and said, “Hi, Lou. Um . . . I’ve got to talk to my dad.”

  Lou chuckled as he came the rest of the way down to the shop. “Thought maybe you were some kid come here to check a book out of your daddy’s library.”

  Lou Carswell was a tall, slender man with short-cropped hair and stooped shoulders. He and his wife had come to Jack’s house for Sunday suppers and summer barbecues plenty of times. Lou had been working at the high school almost as long as John Rankin.

  There was a poorly focused photo on his dad’s dresser—four young guys in army uniforms. Jack knew one of them was his dad, and he was pretty sure one of them was Lou. He had never asked, but that’s how it looked.

  Lou said, “If you’re waitin’ for your dad, you got a long stretch ahead of you. He’s up on three west in the science lab, fixing a motor in the ventilator. You’d best walk up there and find him.”

  Jack said, “No . . . it’s okay. I can wait.”

  Lou shook his head and motioned toward the stairs with his thumb. “I’m not kiddin’, Jackie—he’s probably got another forty minutes of work on that unit, so just pick up and get up there to room 336 right now—go on. He’ll be glad to see you.”

  With the note from Mr. Ackerby weighing him down, Jack started the long hike to the third floor, palms sweating, mouth dry. He trudged up the stairs like a convict headed for the gallows.

  Jack could have found his way just by following his nose. He had noticed a strange electrical smell all over the school right after lunch. As he approached room 336 the sharp odor of burned wiring got stronger and stronger. Peeking in the doorway, Jack saw his dad bent over the ventilator by the windows, his left arm completely inside the casing. He was reaching for something. Vent covers and spools of wire, nuts and bolts, pliers, wrenches, and wire clippers were spread out all over the floor and the nearest lab tables.

  Taking a deep breath, Jack walked in and said, “Hi, Dad.”

  John Rankin turned his head. He smiled and said, “Hey, this is a surprise—good timing, too.” He straightened up and pulled a flashlight from his back pocket. “I dropped a nut down behind the new motor assembly, and I can’t get my hand in there to pick it up. Thought I was going to have to go all the way down to the shop and get a magnet. Here, I’m going to shine the light down from over this side, and you see if your hand can fit behind there and get it.”

  Jack thought, What makes him think that I want to get all covered with grease and dirt like he is? But Jack took a look down into the register, and then leaned way over, threaded his hand in, and came out with the nut. “Here.”

  “Great! That’s going to save me some time.” John Rankin straightened up and smiled at his son, and tossed him a rag to wipe off his hand. Looking into Jack’s face for the first time, he saw right away this wasn’t a social visit. In a quieter voice he said, “What’s on your mind, Jack?”

  Jack looked at the floor and said, “I . . . I got myself in some trouble, Dad.” And he handed his father the note from Mr. Ackerby.

  John pulled a chair out from under a lab table and sat down. He took his reading glasses from his shirt pocket and perched them on the end of his nose. Then he tore open the envelope, unfolded the paper, and started to read. Jack watched his face.

  John Rankin read two lines and then looked up sharply at Jack, his dark eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “It was you? You’re the one who messed up the desk that’s down in the shop?” Jack reddened, but he met his father’s eyes with a sullen look and nodded.

  His dad looked back to the note. It only took him another ten seconds to finish it. He put the paper back in the envelope and laid it on the scarred black lab table. He took off his glasses and tucked them into his pocket. Then he turned his head and looked out the window. A brisk wind was pushing the fallen leaves into heaps along the fence around the football field.

  John Rankin cleared his throat. “Hard to know what to make of this, son.” There was a long pause, as if he hoped Jack would offer an explanation. Jack kept silent. Then John said, “But I guess there’s time.” He tapped the envelope on the lab table. “According to this, seems like we’ve got three weeks to get to the bottom of it.”

  John stood up and walked over to the ventilator. He looked in his toolbox and picked up a wrench, squinted at it to read the size, and then turned his back to Jack, both arms down inside the cabinet again. He said, “You know that door to the right of my desk down in the shop?”

  Jack said, “Sure,” and he thought, What, does he think I’m a dummy?

  His dad continued, “Go inside and look on the shelves to the left. There’s a can of special solvent called OFFIT that’s pretty good with the fresh stuff. And you’ll need a roll of paper towels and some rubber gloves and a stiff-bladed putty knife for the hardened gum. Toss your supplies in a plastic bucket to carry ‘em around. Easier that way. And you’ll need a trash bag. The buckets and the trash bags are behind the door to the right. After that folding desk is clean and back in the music room, you can move on to the tables and chairs in the library. I’ll be checking your work, and I’ve got a feeling that Mr. Ackerby will too.”

  John turned around and tossed the wrench back into the toolbox. The metallic clatter made Jack jump. His dad said, “Any questions?”

  “No.”

  “Th
en get to it.”

  John Rankin turned back to the broken ventilator, and Jack turned and headed back to the workshop for the third time today.

  Jack felt so relieved he practically skipped down the empty stairway. His dad hadn’t even yelled at him. Maybe it was a sign, a good omen. Maybe his mom wouldn’t ground him. And maybe Ackerby would lighten up and let him off the hook after a week or so.

  Who could say? Maybe gum patrol wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  Then Jack caught himself. What, am I nuts? Gum patrol not so bad? Yeah, right.

  Chapter 7

  Gum PAtRoL

  Jack got to the shop and gathered his supplies. The folding desk was waiting for him.

  Jack turned the desk upside down on the workshop floor and bent over to take a careful look, poking here and there with his finger. His research had been right on target. Fresh watermelon Bubblicious was very sticky, very disgusting.

  Jack stood up, clenched his jaw, and gave the desk a swift kick. This was supposed to be his dad’s job. Still, Jack was smart enough to appreciate the irony of getting stuck in his own trap, so he heaved a big sigh, turned the underside of the desk toward the light, and went to work.

  Jack launched his attack with the putty knife. Big mistake. The gum was too fresh. It smeared around, covering more of the surface. It took him five minutes to clean the blade of the putty knife, and when he was done, he had to shake his hand until the tool clattered to the floor, its black plastic handle fouled with crimson.

  Then Jack crumpled up a paper towel and tried rubbing. The paper ripped to shreds. It added a layer of sticky white fiber on the goo, like grass clippings blown onto fresh road tar.

  Finally, he tried putting two layers of paper towel around the end of the putty knife. Pushing with the covered end of the blade, he was able to plow up a ridge of gum. Then he could close the paper towel around the glob and pull it off. The threads created by pulling off wads of gum fell onto the workshop floor. The mess kept spreading to a wider and wider area.

  Gob after strand after wad, Jack scraped and pulled and rubbed until, twenty minutes later, only a massive smear was left.

  Time for the solvent. Jack read the directions on the can and then poured some OFFIT onto a folded paper towel and started to rub. The gum dissolved as if by magic, staining the paper towel crimson but leaving a clean surface behind. Inch by inch, Jack rubbed and rubbed until the job was done.

  The desk was no longer sticky, gooey, or smelly, but Jack was another story. There was gum on the front and back of both hands, and bits of paper towel were stuck between his fingers. There were thin strands of gum crisscrossing his shoes and shoelaces. Both knees of his jeans had crimson spots, and there was a glob the size of a pea stuck in the hair of his right eyebrow.

  Carefully reading the OFFIT label again, Jack made sure it was safe to use the solvent on himself. In another few minutes he had got most of the gum off his hands and shoes and pants. The can said to keep the liquid away from eyes, so Jack just picked and pulled at the gum in his eyebrow until he’d got most of it out. It still felt funny, but when he looked at his face in the mirror over the utility sink, he could see only a trace of crimson. Good enough for now.

  Jack stuffed the sticky paper towels into a trash barrel by the stairs. Then he took the clean desk back to the music room, and had to find Lou to have him open the door. On the way back he stopped at his locker to get his backpack and coat, and finally ran back to the workshop to put the equipment away.

  It was 3:25, and today’s hour of gum patrol was officially over.

  Jack ran up the workshop stairs, streaked down the hallway toward the back door, and just barely got onto the last late bus. Dropping onto a squeaky seat as the bus lurched out of the parking lot, Jack was panting, but relieved.

  If he had missed this bus, it would have caused other problems. He would have had to hang out for at least another hour and ride home with his dad, something he didn’t want to do, not ever—and especially not today.

  If he had ridden home with his dad, then the other note from Mr. Ackerby would have been delivered to both his parents at once. Jack was pretty sure things would go better if his mom read the note first, all by herself.

  At least, that’s what he hoped.

  Chapter 8

  HunG JuRy

  Mrs. Rankin got home from work at four fifteen every day, so Jack was cutting it close. He ran the half block from the bus stop, let himself in, and hung up his coat and backpack in the front closet. He could tell by sniffing that his mom wasn’t home yet and that dinner hadn’t been started.

  Jack dashed into the living room and struck a quick deal with his little sister. “Listen, Lois. Don’t tell Mom I got home so late today, okay? And don’t tell her I forgot to call Mrs. Genarro. It’s worth a dollar if you keep your mouth shut, okay?”

  If Jack missed the bus, he was supposed to call their neighbor so she could keep a lookout for Lois.

  His sister didn’t take her eyes off the TV. She asked, “Is it worth a dollar fifty?” Lois was in third grade. She thought her parents made too big a deal about her life after school. But now and then it was useful to have everyone worried about her.

  Jack gritted his teeth. “Fine. A dollar fifty.” He didn’t have time to haggle, and he didn’t need another issue, not right now, not just before a trial.

  A minute later the station wagon pulled into the driveway, a door slammed at the garage on the alley, and Mom was at the kitchen door, her huge purse over one arm and a bag of groceries in the other. Jack was down the steps in no time, being helpful.

  “Thanks, Jackie. Put the ice cream in the freezer right away, would you? And the milk needs to be put away too.” His mom came up the stairs behind him, laid her coat over the back of a chair, and immediately pulled out a box of macaroni. “Put some water on to boil, will you, Jack? Use the deep saucepan.”

  “Mmmm . . . macaroni and cheese tonight?” asked Jack, reaching into the cabinet below the stove for the pan.

  His mom nodded. “Yup.” Then she added with a smile, “How’d you guess?”

  Jack grinned back. “Just a genius.”

  Things were going well. A little helpfulness, a little humor.

  Jack knew all about timing. In a case like this timing was everything. Now was the right moment, because at the first real pause in the flow his mom would ask that dreaded question, “What happened at school today?” He had to tell her before she asked, so it wouldn’t look like he had been trying to hold something back. A point for helpfulness, a point for cheerfulness, a point for being honest about bad news. Jack needed all the points he could get.

  Mrs. Rankin sat down at the table with her recipe box, looking for her old baked macaroni and cheese recipe. Jack took notice. Sitting down is good, more relaxed.

  Jack quickly slipped into the chair next to her and said, “Mom, I got in some trouble at school today. I got caught sticking gum on the bottom of a desk. I know it was wrong, and I’m being punished for it. I’ve got a note for you and Dad from the vice principal.” He handed her the note.

  One clean, smooth action. A brief introduction, a complete confession, a dash of sorrow, and a short explanation. Jack hoped his opening remarks would lessen the impact of Mr. Ackerby’s note. The man had only taken about a minute to write it—how bad could it be?

  Lois had a built-in radar for drama. The show in the kitchen was a lot better than the one on TV. She crept silently to the doorway behind her mom and peered around the corner at Jack. She made a face and shook her finger at him, as if she were saying, Naughty, naughty, naughty. Jack glared at her, but Lois stayed put, a smug little smile on her face.

  Mrs. Rankin broke the seal on the envelope. It was time for Exhibit A, the note.

  Jack thought the jury would be sympathetic to his case. He was hoping he would get time off for good behavior.

  Jack had underestimated Mr. Ackerby’s talents as a writer.

  As Mrs. Rankin scanned the
note her lips pressed together into a thin line and her eyes narrowed.

  Not good.

  Then she read Exhibit A aloud:

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Rankin:

  I’m sorry to report that your son, Jack, did his best to ruin a desk today. In a deliberate act of vandalism he completely fouled the underside of a folding desk during his music class. The quantity of bubble gum he applied can only be described as enormous. His action required forethought and planning. It seems like an angry gesture to me. Yet when I asked him why he did it, he did not answer me. I will alert our counseling staff to this incident.

  In the meantime, Jack will be required to stay after school one hour each day for the next three weeks. He will be helping our custodial staff clean gum off of furniture throughout the school.

  Please call if you wish to discuss this matter further.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Ronald Ackerby Vice Principal, Huntington Middle School

  Helen Rankin did not explode. It took some doing, but she was too smart to get angry. Not about this. Anger would be the wrong response.

  Helen wasn’t angry, because she knew something that Mr. Ackerby didn’t—at least, not yet. She knew that the “custodial staff” was headed up by Jack’s dad, John Rankin.

  She also knew her son. She knew this stunt was not about destroying property. She knew Jack hadn’t done this just for kicks.

  There was something else going on.

  Helen Rankin had seen this coming, and here it was.

  Jack was trying to get some clues from his mom’s face after she’d read the note out loud. It was a tough call. Angry? Not quite. Sad? Yes, there was some sadness. But there was a whole bunch of other stuff going on that Jack couldn’t pin down. He couldn’t tell what was going to happen.

  Helen Rankin spoke quietly, and all she said was, “Jack, I’m going to have to talk to your dad about this. You should go to your room and do homework until I call you for dinner.”