I Will Bring Anything For Three, With A Dusty Smile And A Loaded Gun, You Ask Me Again, What's In It For Me? Well Thanks And Tell Me Come Undone

--"October, First Account", Be Your Own PET

Before I went to St. Rita's for 2nd Grade, I went to Bethany. It was a vastly different place. It was a different time, younger, more lawless. The same laws that applied to other, more civilized schools, just didn't apply there. For instance, whereas in most schools the faculty were the law of the land, at Bethany's there were wantonly weak comparitively. Sure, for the benefit of the parents and guardians, they held titles like Principal or Teacher, but down in the dirt fields and blacktop everyone knew who really ran things, the students, the kindergarten through sixth grade students.

Being in first grade, I had a whole year to got inducted into the way the system worked.

I knew who to go for when I was in need of a juicebox. I'm not talking about the swill that my parents tried to pass off as satisfactory; I'm talking about the good stuff. I'm talking about the stuff they reserved for the highest cubby hole and, even then, only for his oldest, most trustworthy friends. His name was Dennis, and the handlebar mustache the shade of this side of midnight let everyone know that he was not a man to be trifled with.

I also was on good terms with the girl, Linda, who ran the local jungle gym. For blocks around, the neighborhood boys would flock to get a gander at Linda and her cute friends. Her prices were fair; for one cupcake you could have a girl of your own for all of recess--double for lunch. I cannot even tell you how many afternoons I wasted with company the good Lord wouldn't want me keeping.

Yet, along with the finest wares or services being at your every disposal, our den of inequity came with a heavy price. It hadn't been so bad in the early years, Kindergarten. Back then, a man could walk across the playground without crossing his fingers. It used to be that everyone kept to their own kind and no trouble ever brewed between the various outfits that operated the school. It used to be that an unspoken truce governed the land and no one was keen to breaking what had become a life of luxury and debauchery. That was before the troubles began.

When poor Reggie had his unfortunate accident on the track by himself at the start of P.E., I knew the good life was about to come to a close. They never quite found out what happened. All the teachers ever found of him was the gym shorts that had been ripped into two. "He's gone missing," they cried. "He's ran home," another person shouted. But I knew the truth. I knew that there would be no seeing Reggie again. He'd been the first casualty, the first shot in a battle nobody had seen coming in a war that had been brewing for at least five semesters.

I knew what most people didn't, that Dennis had a select group of students that protected his interests. Not only would they purloin the local supermarkets and relatives for the hard-to-find beverage boxes; they also provided muscle to an organization that had its hands in many pockets. For you see, the apple juice trade was only a means to an end. What Dennis really yearned for was to become undisputed ruler of the roost, the universally-hailed overseer of everything that went down at Bethany's. So the coffers he filled everyday with the allowances of foolish young boys and girls was turned right around into paying off various school officials to make sure his agendas were forwarded. The no tests for months ending in "R"? Yeah, that was his idea. That idea alone won him the respect and the loyalty of a great deal of the student body. Dennis and his cronies soon had practically every teacher in his pocket to the degree that all it took was a call from Dennis and school literally would be shut down for the day.

And what did this illustrious and all-powerful group call themselves? The Squirrels, of course.

But every group needs an enemy, and The Squirrels were no different. The Beavers, they say, had their beginnings in the fact that Linda used to work for Dennis--some even said the two had even been nap buddies once upon a time. But, whatever the case, she had eventually come to hate him with every inch of her being. She too had a thriving business. While Dennis ran the administration and the day-to-day illicit activites at Bethany's, everyone came to Linda when it came to social cache. Not only did she have every single cute, non-cootie infected, girl in her employ, but she also had access to information, gleaned from a much older (and seasoned) sister, that she used to great effect to push her own agendas forward. And everyone knew the kind of information that she had access to was more tantalizing than a new bike or a summer vacation; hers was the information that our parents thought we were too young to know--about playing doctor, spin the bottle, truth or dare, skinny-dipping, and other strange terms that we had never come across. While Dennis had been busy stashing faculty away with monetary rewards, Linda had slowly been bedazzling all the boys, including the sixth grade and fifth grade boys, the finest of us all, into surely doing her bidding, which, didn't sit well at all with her rival. "Those damn Beavers are going to be my ruination," I had heard him remark on more than one occasion.

Yes, what happened was a long time coming. I had the perfect vantage point with which to witness it all. Being a first grader, I was still considered a neophyte, but not a complete plebian. I had access to locations that the older students, the students who had already chosen allegiances, didn't. I made fast friends with both crowds, each side wooing me to their cause with a deliberateness usually only reserved for class presidents. I wasn't the smartest student nor the most popular. I didn't come from any sort of wealth or prestige. Nope, the only quality I could see that had warmed them to my reception into their fold was the fact that I had a gift for storytelling. Every victor needs a scribe, and they recognized that overt maneuvers weren't going to win them as many converts as a subtle game of propoganda.

So, yeah, I played both sides. I wrote stories chronicling Dennis' latest feat in taming the dogged Mr. Crenshaw and forcing Principal Henry to call him master. I even covered the lavish soirees Dennis hosted, along with all the Squirrels, the parties that lasted from first period until well after the afterschool care kids had gone home. I also wrote stories about every new debutante that Linda had befriended and had for auction that very afternoon. I wrote profiles on all the girls and how they felt like they were only doing their part to keep up school morale. "After all," one had remarked in an interview I had conducted, "it's hard for all of us here, at school. We only want to make it easier and funner to while away the time spent in this godforsaken hellhole."

Reggie's only fault, if he could only be considered at fault, was that he had once been loyal to Dennis. Once Reggie had been Dennis' bigger customer, his trusted confidante. Many days I would pony up to the benches by the foursquare courts where Dennis had set up his juice saloon and see Reggie patting Dennis on the back telling him what a great guy he was. The two of them looked to be the best of chums.

Then Reggie had to go and fall in love with Margaret, the new girl and the Beavers' newest recruit. From the moment he first saw her skipping rope by Linda's jungle gym, he was a goner. Soon his days came to be spent farther and farther away from Dennis and closer and closer to Margaret. Linda was professional on the outside, but on the inside she confided in me that she was ecstatic. Not only had she gained some leverage on Dennis, but she had also managed to discover an unwilling informant as well.

Soon Reggie had gone from carrying one, maybe two, cupcakes with him to giving Linda entire packs merely for the privelege of sitting next to Margaret all day. At first, Margaret was a tad hesitant. She had only just arrived at Bethany's. She really hadn't meant to get into offering up her time business. She had been young and foolish. Also, like I said, Linda could be a very persuasive businesswoman. Before she knew it, Margaret had agreed to give herself to whoever wanted her for snacks. At first, she resisted Reggie as being just like her other customers, only interested in her for her good looks and forced conversation. Soon, as he began to meet her everyday for lunch and the two of them really got to talking, she realized that he really liked her. Not just liked her, but liked her, liked her. And that was something she really hadn't expected.

Margaret decided she needed to quit the business, which Linda would have none of. She refused to let go of Margaret even stooping to the point of refusing Reggie's payments and offering Margaret to other, less worthy, patrons. Every day he was resigned to watching the girl of his dreams at nap time making time with others that didn't deserve her. Then, as everyone returned to their classes, he would watch Margaret go into the girls' bathroom crying.

Sure, she would come out looking as wholesome as ever, but she had surely come to the realization that Linda was not her friend. Linda was only using her friendship as a rouse to get what she really wanted, the undying loyalty of the student body. At that point Reggie would have done anything to spend time with Margaret, including selling out his former buddy, Dennis. In fact, after a few days of this treatment, he even offered Linda anything she wanted if she would consent to allow Margaret to see him again.

But Linda wanted more. Linda wanted Reggie to not only take down Dennis personally, but she wanted dirt on taking all of The Squirrels down. She knew that if she cut off the head, someone else would only take his place. She needed to end it all. She needed to end all of them. Reggie would not consent.

Reggie was heartbroken. What could be done? Where could he turn? There was only one place he could turn. He turned back to Dennis. At first, Dennis was more than slightly angry at him. The incident in front of the hopscotch court where Reggie was not only hung out the window, a whole six feet from the ground, but also made to sit in timeout for a whole schoolday, proved that Dennis' wrath was beyond measure. Eventually, though, Dennis figured out that Reggie could be used as a double agent. And so Reggie was sent back to Linda's camp with explicit instructions to bring her down and to bring all of the Beavers down.

The next day we found the remains of Reggie's shorts on the field. Eight minutes later all hell broke loose. Someone just shouted into all the classrooms that they had taken Reggie down. The next thing we knew, Dennis screamed "Squirrels on me. Follow my lead." Then we watched as he stormed out in the middle of the lecture into Linda's class and began to pummel her mercilessly.

"This is for the Squirrel you took down today," he said.

It was Margaret who came to Linda's defense surprisingly. Unfortunately, Dennis' ire was blind. Normally, he wouldn't have struck a girl other than Linda, but Reggie had been a long-time friend and this was the last straw for him.

"You don't understand," Margaret said, laying crumpled on her side.

It was pandemonium. Brother was fighting sister. Cousin was fighting cousin. Everywhere you walked you could hear the shouts of "Squirrel!" and "Beaver!" being echoed throughout the whole school. This was not merely the largest school fight ever at Bethany. This was the largest school fight ever. Even I was caught up in the conflict. I remember standing on the carousel, pinning an unfortunate kindergartner, watching his head sticking out from the bars as the ground inches below seemingly spun around. "Fucking say it!" I told him. "Which side do you belong to?" "Beavers," he would answer. "Wrong. Which side do you work for?" I asked again. "Squirrels?" he then replied. "Wrong again," I said. I didn't even know which side I was working for. All I knew was this violence had to stop. I had counted sixty-seven students in the nurse's office, all before lunch, and the body count was only increasing.

Nobody went back to class. They just kept fighting in the fields and playground. It was eerie. Nobody knew why exactly they were fighting, but the tensions had come to such a boil and both parties had been instilling so much hatred for one another that the violence seeped like sewage. It would not be tamed. It could not be tamed. It continued until well after the last bell had rung.

Finally, it claimed its second victim. Margaret was errantly struck in the head with a tetherball, which had split open a gash the size of a grapefruit in her head. Soon, an ambulance was summoned to her aid and she was taken away. Then and only then did hostilities cease. All told, we had caused hundreds of dollars in damages. All the classrooms were wrecked. Every single member of the faculty had vanished without a trace, went home to get away from the idiocy that was the student body.

Eventually, Dennis was sent away to Juvenille Hall and Linda was sent to boarding school. They broke up The Squirrels and The Beavers. They had to burn the whole school down and just never bothered to rebuild. Not it just sits there, a ghost school to remind all those who still live near it of the folly of allowing recklessness to be the law of the land.

As per our plan, myself, Reggie, and Margaret all got transferred to St. Rita's. He was never really hurt. We had come up with the idea that something needed to be done to clean up the hive of scum and villainy that had been our former school. Not only that, but the two of them needed a new beginning outside the influence of their former friends. We thought it was for the best, ridding ourselves of the entire school wholesale. I, for one, was sad to see it go, but it had to be done. God help us, we had no choice. I knew if I stayed at Bethany, it would eventually sink its hooks into me and that, frankly, was enough for a first-grader to contemplate. I didn't want to be in my rocker, sitting in sixth grade, looking back at my elementary school life and regretting every decision I ever made. I wanted to look back with pride at something accomplished. But mostly I wanted the tyranny of students with power to be at an end.

Now when people ask what happened at Bethany, either when they see the remains or hear about all the students who moved away, I just tell them one simple thing.

"The Squirrels and The Beavers happened, that's what." Then I cry uncontrollably and give thanks that I'm still alive to tell the tale.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers