And so we smoked and talked about what difficult times were upon us, then we stayed silent, then who had how many children and whether they wanted more, then how expensive the gas was, then how many bottles one collected from dumpsters, who had how much moisture on their wall at home, that he would now go home to his folks, that I needed to go pick up the little one from school, and so on for about three cigarettes worth of time.
And then I stepped out of the way, got in the car and moved it. He pushed his moped in a semi-circle and stepped on the kick start.
“I’ll remember you”, he said when I got out, almost inaudibly through the two-beat racket of the Tomos.
“Me too” I moved my lips voicelessly.
It was time to pick up the little one. He was nearby. As I walked on foot, I looked at my steps and my shoes and thought about whether I’d turned out a fool. I was drained as if I’d been fighting, I was wondering whether I had made a mistake, I was mulling over what I had said and what I should have said to that guy, what I had done, and what I should have possibly done. From that conversation over a smoke, my thoughts were wandering off to work, off to how late I was with this one guy. A different anxiety struck me. I walked into the classroom. Inside, those kids were raising the ceiling with their noise. I barely heard the teacher out about how my son had not written anything in nature class again, how he had only stared. I saw red. He was looking at me from down below, with that guilty look of student angst. I was boiling over. Yesterday, we had argued about writing, that he had to listen, that he had to pay attention in class. We went out of thе classroom, with me hоlding his hand and walking in front of him, him dragging himself along behind me and listening as I was preaching down the stairs about how disappointed I was and angry that he was not paying attention. Just as we were leaving the school yard, I was at my angriest because he was continuing with his old ways, despite the billion promises that he would study. I squeezed his hand stronger and stronger and walked faster and faster, and he was scurrying after me and I was asking him how come the other kids had written everything down, yet only he hadn’t done any work in class, and I asked him what exactly they had been learning about in nature class.