The Worst of Times

Words: 2913

                Charlie Palmer was finished with another day of teaching at Springville High. He was not looking forward to getting back home. For weeks, Charlie had felt something rotten growing inside him. He did not know what it was, but Charlie could not ignore the anxiety. Charlie’s doctor told him that he was probably under too much stress, and that he should try to have healthier habits.

                Mr. Adkins, the new gym teacher, had told him that exercise was a great way to help with stress. Charlie wished he was more like Mr. Adkins, but he never had the makings of an athlete. Charlie had only jogged four times since he saw the doctor three weeks ago. He had hoped exercise would help him clear his mind. Instead, he found a new reason to hate coming home and his swollen knees felt bruised somewhere deep inside.

. . .

                Charlie bought a house as soon as he could afford it after his mother passed away five years ago. Being her only child, she loved him dearly and Charlie was left with what seemed like a fortune. Charlie’s mother had always wanted to see him start a family and live the American dream. Charlie wanted to see that too, but he hadn’t found the right woman yet. He figured a big two-story house would be the next best thing. He had also heard that buying a home was a good investment. Charlie spent his mother’s whole fortune on the house. The next year, the market crashed, and Springville made budget cuts to the school district. Charlie’s salary was lowered and his small poetry club lost the tiny sum of cash they got each year to pay for bus rides. Thankfully though, the football team was still able to afford new uniforms that year.

. . .

                The first thing Charlie saw when he got back home was his cat Winston next to his new running shoes. Winston was wearing the same judgmental expression he had worn for the last nine years he had lived with Charlie. Charlie knew that if Winston could speak, he would tell him he hated living in this big, empty house. Winston’s hunched posture and silent disappointment often reminded Charlie of his father.

. . .

                Charlie took off his tie, dress shirt, khakis, and his loafers. He looked at himself in the mirror while standing in his boxers. Charlie’s pear shape reminded him of his mother and Winston was scowling at him in the reflection. Charlie put on his new running shoes and the elastic strap to keep his glasses from slipping off. When he walked outside to jog, a heavy rain started.

. . .

                After a few minutes, Charlie’s shoes were completely soaked through, but he did not stop running. This was the hardest it had rained on Springville in months. Charlie imagined himself running through this downpour as some unstoppable force of nature. Mr. Adkins had been in the Marines before he was a teacher. Charlie thought that a Marine wouldn’t be slowed down by rain like this. They were amphibious, after all.

                Before he had completed his first mile, the pain in Charlie’s knees was unbearable. He had heard that you couldn’t gain anything without pain, though, so he kept on running. When he reached the halfway point of his normal route, he started to hear thunder and see lightning.

                The first crack of thunder startled Charlie enough to make him lose his step, and he was embarrassed for himself. He didn’t think Mr. Adkins would be afraid of weather like this. He imagined the lightning as enemy fire in his own private battlefield and continued running. The next thing he knew, he could see his lonely house at the end of the street. Charlie started to run in a full sprint now, wanting to end strong and get out of the storm. His knees felt like they were going to explode, and his lungs were on fire. Charlie’s strides began to look more like a shuffle as he struggled to lift his feet off the ground. When he passed his neighbor’s house, the toe on one of Charlie’s new running shoes hit a crack in the sidewalk. Charlie went flying and skinned both of his hands before crashing on his face.

                Charlie felt more embarrassment than pain. He told a concerned neighbor that he was fine. But when he walked back inside his empty house, he could see that the rain dripping off his soaked body was mixed with drops of dark red blood.

. . .

                The next day, the lives of everyone who lived in Springville would be changed forever. Charlie woke up before dawn with Winston curled up sleeping at his feet. As Charlie stirred, Winston looked at him with disdain for disturbing his rest. Moments later, Charlie was startled by his alarm clock as it beeped loudly on his nightstand.

                Charlie had almost forgotten about his fall on the sidewalk until he saw his reflection in his bathroom mirror. There was a nasty scab that had formed a crescent shape up his chin to the side of his face. The palms of Charlie’s hands singed with pain when he grasped his Spinmaster toothbrush and his electric razor. Charlie did his best to shave around the scabby crescent moon before getting dressed in his usual baggy khaki pants and his shirt and tie.

                Charlie got to Springville High early enough that not many people noticed his face before he walked into his classroom. There he awaited his first class, a group of sophomores who never hesitated to give Charlie a hard time. The class was remedial English. It consisted of children who had all been failed in one way or another. Whether it was distracted parents, mental disorders, or just bad luck, they had all been dealt a bad hand of cards in life. Charlie was picked to for this class because all the other teachers in the department refused to accept the position.

                The first student to enter the class was Donna Bradley. Her bad attitude and her habit of smoking cigarettes in the school parking lot made all the popular girls despise her. Shortly behind her, more troubled students entered the room. It was only minutes after the morning bell rang when the jokes about the scabby crescent on Charlie’s face started. At first, they were giggles and side comments from the back of the room, until Donna Bradley raised her hand. Charlie called on her, knowing the question was not about last night’s homework.

                “Mr. Palmer, what’s wrong with your face!?”, she smirked as she asked.

                Before Charlie could answer, the class erupted in laughter. Some boys suggested that he had been beat up by his girlfriend. This hurt Charlie because he hadn’t had a date in years. As the children’s mean laughter rose in a crescendo to fill the room, Charlie’s eyes began to fill with tears until they ran down his face and hit the floor like raindrops.

                The faces of the children looked like fiends and their laughter echoed in his skull in painful reverberations. Charlie fell back into his office chair, exhausted. He hid his face in his folded arms and heaved as he cried into his particle board desk.

                The laughter of the class ceased at the sound of an explosion in the hallway. Charlie startled and he stopped crying immediately, as if someone had turned off a faucet. Another explosion in the hallway, this time followed by the unmistakable click-clack of a shotgun and the screams of horrified teenagers. A girl ran past the open door of Charlie’s class, her white shirt was polka-dotted with blood. She wasn’t crying or screaming, just sprinting with her eyes wide open.

                Charlie thought of Mr. Adkins. He was a Marine. He would do something. Charlie did not know that Mr. Adkins had ran in a panic out of his morning gym class after he heard the first shot. He was hiding in the tiny janitor’s closet, huddled behind a shelf of cleaning products while his students fended for their own.

                More shots rang out in the hallway. Each one followed by a click-clack but just a few less screams. Charlie’s students were frozen with terror. Some hid under their desks while others looked in the hallway through the door’s tiny window. More students came running after the girl with the bloodstained shirt, all of them in a panic. As a group of three boys passed Charlie’s door, they were cut down by a blast from the shotgun. Donna Bradley screamed from within the classroom, and the students at the doorway all doubled back and hid in the corner, seeking what safety they could.

                Charlie’s terror began to change into a deep, deep sadness. It was a sadness like he had never felt before. It was as if all the bad moments in his life flashed before his eyes, ending with the atrocity he was witnessing before him. Charlie felt like he did not want to live in a world where things like this could happen. Charlie did not want to be around anymore.

                Almost involuntarily, Charlie rose from his desk and walked into the hall between the shooter and the three boys bleeding on the floor. Only a few feet before him, was Danny Quinn. He was supposed to be in Charlie’s class this morning, but instead he brought a shotgun to school. They locked eyes, and Charlie stretched out his palms in front of him. He said, with eyes full of tears,

                “Shoot me, Danny.”

                Danny stood there, his hands quivering around the shotgun as he pointed it towards Charlie. He looked at the bodies of the three boys behind his teacher and began to cry as well. His grip on the shotgun loosened and it clanged off the floor as he fell to his knees. Danny held his face in his hands as he doubled over, sobbing.

                Charlie wrapped his arms around the crying boy and did not say a word. They sat there in a ball together, both sharing heaving wet sobs.

.  .  .

                Charlie found himself in the Springville High parking lot engulfed in a whirlwind of police lights and ambulances. He was sitting in the back of an ambulance and a paramedic was explaining to him that he was in shock. Charlie sipped instant coffee out of a Styrofoam cup as he stared into the horizon, answering the medic’s questions as best as he could. All around him, students and teachers stood together in huddled groups, some of them crying but most of them in a state of disbelief at what had just happened to their school.

                Donna Bradley was talking to a police officer when she pointed at Charlie. Charlie could read her lips as she made out the words “Hero.”

. . .

                By noon, the media had descended on Springville. Before the press release, the chief of police asked Charlie if he wanted to talk to the news.

                “I don’t think I should.”

                “Word is that you stopped the shooter, Charlie.”

                “I . . . That’s not what happened. I’m sorry.”

                “Don’t be sorry Charlie! People are calling you a hero.”

                A hero? Charlie didn’t fell like a hero at all.

                “No, I can’t. I didn’t do anything heroic.”

                “Well, would you at least stand up there with me? The press is going to want to get a photo of you either way, Charlie. You and the shooter were the only ones in the school when we arrived.”

                “Okay. For a photo. I guess that would be okay.”

                The chief smiled as he gave Charlie a heavy pat on the back. It was the first honest smile Charlie had seen all day.

. . .

                The chief of police gave a dry speech about the tragedy as cameras flashed and snapped all around him. Charlie was too distracted with stage fright to pay much attention to anything he said. At the end, he grasped Charlie’s hand and raised it in the air and proclaimed “. . . and it all could have been much, much, worse if it wasn’t for this man here! Our town’s hero, Charlie Palmer!”

                The crowd erupted in cheers and the cameras snapped and flashed in a flurry. The smile on Charlie’s face stretched so wide it hurt the scab on the side of his face. By the next day, Charlie’s damaged smile would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

. . .

                Charlie’s joy would be short lived. By the time he got back to his empty house and the chaos of the press release had worn off, his mind was filled with the horrors of the day. The girl with the bloodstained shirt, the boys bleeding on the floor, and the screams of the students as they ran down the hall. They all stuck with him. It was as if he had trapped in that single moment of time, unable to think or imagine anything else.

. . .

                The horrors played over and over again in his head as Charlie tried to drift off to sleep. Winston curled up next to him on his bed and he purred as Charlie petted him. As Charlie’s wet eyes began to close from exhaustion, he could barely hear Winston say, “Do not worry. Everything is going to be alright, Charlie.”

. . .

                The next morning, Charlie woke up to a message on his phone that school would be cancelled. Charlie was glad, he didn’t think he could handle another day in that class. He wanted to distract himself from the images of yesterday, but he found that he couldn’t focus on anything. When he tried to read a book, his mind drifted away. He tried to make food but couldn’t remember where he was at. His phone started ringing constantly. He had no urge to speak to any person right now. He shut it off and returned to his bed. Charlie laid there and held his bruised knees close. He was trying to give himself a hug.

. . .

                Charlie laid there in his sad, lonely ball. He felt like whatever rotten thing had been growing inside him had finally taken hold of his entire body and he would lay here like this forever.

                Winston sat next to him and said, “The problem with you humans is that you focus too much on the bad times in life.”

                Charlie heard him and laid there awestruck. “Winston?”

                “My name is Omari, Charlie.”

                “Omari?”

                “Yes, it means high born in my language.”

                “But you’re a cat?”

                “Yes, and much more Charlie. My race hails from the stars. We have served and guided your people since the earliest of times. Your people used to worship us, building great monuments of granite in our honor.”

                “You’re talking about Egypt?”

                “Yes Charlie. You are very quick.”

                Charlie was just as surprised at the fact that Winston gave him a compliment, than he was surprised with him talking at all in the first place.

                “Am I going crazy, Winston?”

                “I think so Charlie, but I am real.”

                “Why are you talking to me just now after all these years?”

                “I was sent here to give you a message, Charlie. The time has not been right until now.”

                “Please tell me it’s a good message, Winston.”

                “It is a good message. You need to focus on the good times Charlie. This is a lesson that could be learned by your entire race. Too often, your people focus on the bad and the tragic. Just look at the reporters! They would have never noticed Springville if it wasn’t for the horrors that occurred here yesterday. You spend too much time worrying about what has happened and cannot be changed.”

                “I guess you’re right.”

                “I am always right, Charlie. It is part of what makes me high born.”

                “How can I focus on the good, though, when there is such horror in the world?”

                “I can help you with that.”

                “Please. Please, Winston. Help me.”

                “Just close your eyes, Charlie.”

                Charlie closed his eyes tightly, squeezing out the last few, tiny tears.

. . .

                Winston placed his little paw upon Charlie’s forehead. Charlie’s mind was filled with nothing but the happiest of memories. Not only of his past, but his future as well. He was overwhelmed with the sense that he could change none of this. His path had been set since before his birth, and he was living his life like a feather caught in the wind.

                He remembered his sixth birthday when his mom bought him a bicycle. Oh, how he loved riding that bike.

                He remembered his dad taking him to the museum when he was ten years old and how exciting it was to learn about history from his father.

                He remembered that a movie would be made on TV about him, and how proud his father was seeing his son be portrayed as a hero. Charlie never could bring himself to watch the film.

                Finally, he remembered being old with his wife. He remembered sitting with her on a bench by a river, their wrinkled hands clasped together as they watched the sun go down and their grandchildren play in the field. He remembered this was the happiest moment in his entire life.