Smiths' Meat is Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

Allison’s, and she whispered, as loud as breathing out, “Yikes.” A bulging, Marty Feldman-like quality to her expression filled me with an amusing ease. And heightened by the potential catastrophe, the significance of sharing a secret with her was not lost on me then.
    But, oh, will the crossroads never end? I mused. At hand was the setup of a rare, legend-making scenario of the sort that can transform the remainder of a teacher’s tenure into hell on earth. Certainly there were teachers who deserved it, but Kirkwood wasn’t one of them.
    McManus, the steak-faced jarhead sitting next to me, took a hard look toward the bloody mess flapping against her nylons (he could smell the blood), then straight ahead at the chalkboard. Either he had an epiphany of some kind, resulting in an act of low-level compassion, or he was just so fucking thick, he lost his grip on what had momentarily, tenuously and miraculously occupied his mind. He made no motion for a long minute, then just slid lower in his seat and went back to the important work of drawing sombreros on the photos of people in the Spanish book.
    After class, Allison hurried to the front of the room and, placing her hand on Kirkwood’s forearm, whispered something in her ear.
    * * *
    This kid Paul wasn’t really in any grade. He had cystic fibrosis and missed about eighty percent of school. Everyone said he was supposed to be a genius, though no one I knew actually knew him. Kids protected themselves from the inexplicable mindfuck that comes with knowing a dying kid by cloaking the tragic reality of Paul’s condition in some kind of super-genius/loner mystery: “Yeah, I guess he’s sick or something. But he’s so smart he hardly ever comes to school, the lucky bastard.”
    When he was well enough to show up, he had a private teacher and took all of his classes in the library so he wouldn’t risk overexerting himself by moving around too much. He didn’t have to wear a uniform like the rest of us. He was known by little more than his disease. Already a ghost.
    During a convulsive nor’easter of an asthma attack brought on by allergies from the north and bronchitis from the south, I collapsed onto—and nearly crushed—the tiny card catalogue in the pathetically underfunded library. The entire Dewey Decimal System was throwninto complete chaos as the maple drawers spilled onto the carpet, and reference cards scattered like money from a blown safe.
    The librarian was a deacon (in other words a priest wannabe) who resembled a comically diminutive Charles Nelson Riley. He was a horrible little Hitler of a Napoleon. He knew everyone called him Little Big Man behind his back. He also knew we sometimes covered our mouths and coughed, “Little Big Man, Little Big Man,” to his face. But he was bitter for other reasons that ran deep and were known only to him. And on this occasion my asthma attack was genuine.
    “What did you just call me? What did you just call me? I order you to repeat what you just called me!” He was snarling. As I struggled for breath I frantically patted my pockets to locate my inhaler. But before I could grab it, Little Big Man got hold of my arm and started trying to shake some of God’s good sense back into me.
    “I’ll teach you some respect, you moron!” he hissed, dragging me toward to door. As he pulled me through the petrified forest of furniture legs and human legs, kicking up reference cards that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades, the eye of my coughing fit was passing directly overhead. I thought I was going to dry heave at his feet. Instead I threw up on his shoes, which had an instantly calming effect both of us. Outside of a groan or two from the weak of stomach, the library (which wasa classroom littered—in every sense of the word—with McCarthy era books) was quiet.
    Then Paul, the kid with cystic fibrosis, started in with some wheezy, plangent, high-pitched laughter, like a castrato soloist singing through a