Letting Them

By Ken Brimhall

An epidemic of indolence threatens to engulf a Texas high school. Two geezer teachers, Calvin Sizemore and Emir Rubio, battle to survive. They face drug abuse, gang violence, teenage pregnancy, inept administrators—but most of all, the freeloading mojo and moja students who overrun the school. When the ’jos and ’jas refuse to prep for college, Rubio and Sizemore tell them to prep for jail by working out and learning to read, but their ridicule fails, due to the school’s disgraceful state and their absurd attempts to remain coherent. The outcome is far from what they expect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Brimhall
• Release date: Aug 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476444536

Ken Brimhall

Born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, USA, Ken Brimhall is a retired teacher who recently moved to San Antonio, Texas, USA, after living thirty-one years in San Juan, Texas, USA, a small border town near McAllen. He spent his boyhood years working on the family farm, going to church and playing sports. After graduating from the University of Northern Iowa, he bummed around, and in 1976 joined the Peace Core. He has two daughters: Pegy, an Internet entrepreneur in New York City; and Rita, a nurse in San Antonio. Nearly every year he and his wife, Adela, visit her family in the Guatemalan highlands.

Book preview

Letting Them

by Ken Brimhall

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Kenneth Stewart Brimhall

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction.

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To Adela, Pegy and Rita

Table of Contents

One Year More

Monkey Business / Rubio

No Vato or Ruca Left Behind

The Lone Star

Missing Parts

Old Folks at Home / Same Ol’ Same Ol’

Histories

Undeniable Rights

No Vato or Ruca Left Behind, Part Two

Sabotage

Failure

All ’jos and ’jas

The Merits of the Case

Mojo Day

The End

Something Screamed for Air

One Year More

The 7:55 A.M. bell clanged, though it was more like an accordion melody or a fairytale lullaby. Calvin Sizemore waved good-bye to Emir Rubio, who stood behind his oak desk, but Rubio, with graying hair, a heavy moustache and large-lens glasses, wasn’t finished. He stepped out from behind his barricaded room corner to deliver a final flourish.

"Oye vato, it’s no disease, he cried to a crack high on the cement block wall or to one of the squiggly lines in the suspended ceiling tile. It’s a pestilence, a scourge!"

After shaking his head, Sizemore waved again and stepped into Six Hall, where he greeted Coach Humberto Duran in passing, the San Miguel Marauders’ massive line coach. Stepping briskly, Sizemore eyed students but peripherally, the handle of a briefcase in his right hand and a duffel bag strap resting on his left shoulder. Five feet-eleven and three-quarters, a hundred and fifty-seven pounds with light brown hair, a high forehead and pale pink skin, he wore khaki pants, brown loafers and a long-sleeve shirt. He would have blended in most anywhere, but here, fifteen miles from the border, he stood out.

So, according to Rubio, they weren’t confronting a disease; it was more like a plague. The school district had hired Rubio at mid-term the preceding year, and Sizemore and he had hit it off instantly, due primarily to their shared view that mojos overran the school. Mojos everywhere, four or more in all their classes, and marginal students, both male and female, morphing into mojos and mojas daily. Already, three weeks into the school year, the ʼjos and ʼjas had quit doing class work. Rubio had taught mojo-infested classes twenty-eight years, Sizemore twenty-three, yet it was Sizemore who was retiring early, Rubio claiming he had ten more years. They should have been counselors a decade ago with their own parking places, or at the very least preppie teachers, but they hadn’t kissed any asses. Their dignities were intact—whatever those were.

An orange bar at eye level ran down Six Hall, as it did on all the walls in Gregorio Cortez High School. The hall felt like a tunnel, converging at a checkered, orange and white square at hall’s end. As Sizemore stared at the square, thinking that was how he would make it to year’s end, by using tunnel vision, needles of anxiety pricked his nerves. He had lost his grip on his first-period class, and Ivan the Terrible was on the roster, the criminal ʼjo from last year and the year before. If Ivan checked in, Sizemore and he would continue their feud.

The year before, Ivan had incited a food fight in the cafeteria and Mr. Dorado, a vice principal, had expelled him for engineering a school break-in. Local gangs left him alone, because he was connected internationally. His skin color was darker than he liked, so on hot days he carried a small umbrella for protection against the sun. When a gang wannabe had called him a fag, the wannabe had shown up to school three days later with an arm in a sling.

The scattering of students in the hall and the others ascending a stairwell didn’t distract Sizemore, but a chubby boy and girl in matching shirts were making-out beside a computer graveyard room in a vapor of perfume and cologne. Sizemore stopped and told them to break it up; the administration prohibited love in the halls. In the open computer graveyard room, two janitors were rearranging cords, busted hard drives, keyboards with missing caps and bulky monitors. Their blue work shirts and pants seemed out-of-place. Sizemore pictured them with protective suits and lead gloves, handling the technological waste.

"Don Omar, you can have the computer in my room, Sizemore said in Spanish to the elder of the two workers. It doesn’t serve."

"Oh no, Seňor. It won’t fit," Don Omar replied.

Sizemore continued on and halted at his room’s door, the first door after the stairwell and across from a computer lab. Santiago Rico, Amalia Juanan and Narciso Tadea waited there.

Ah, I see some people can’t wait to start their work this morning, Sizemore said, inserting a key into the door knob lock.

Amalia smiled. Of course, sir, but we’re also hungry. With straight hair and a pretty smile, she carried a book, notebook and blue purse in folded arms.

Santiago and Narciso, both with clipped hair and small for their age, jockeyed for position, chomping at the bit to enter first.

Stand back. Stand back! Sizemore commanded, but when the door opened Santiago and Narciso burst like greyhounds out of the shoot to breakfast tubs in a far corner. Narciso pried one open and steam oozed out, carrying with it the heat and smell of beef tacos wrapped in aluminum foil.

Apple juice! Santiago cried, opening a second tub.

Just two of each, Sizemore said. At eight-o-five, if there’s food and drink left, you can have more.

Amalia got a taco, a half-pint of two percent milk, and sat in the third desk, second row. Aren’t you going to eat, sir? she asked.

Sizemore sat at a teacher desk below a TV monitor bolted to a wall. No, Amalia, I ate at home.

That cooler smell is really gross.

Is it? You prefer not to smell hot metal foil with your food?

Sir, why can’t we just eat in the cafeteria like we used to? They treat us like babies around here. If you ride the bus, you have to wait in cafeteria a half-hour or longer anyway.

The administration claims more people eat this way, Amalia. So it’s one hundred and ten tubs in and out of fifty-five classrooms each morning.

Students arrived, most sleepy-eyed, three carrying sixteen-ounce plastic bottles of Pepsi and five with red-orange bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Three out of five students ate the free breakfast, the rest preferring to pay for less nutrition. On a side blackboard that was actually green, Sizemore had written: Tuesday, Sept 5, 2004, English II, Mr. Sizemore, continue The Legend of Gregorio Cortez with objectives 2a, 3c and 5b written out; and on the green board in front: The Ride. List ten facts about Cortez’s ride to the border. Write a paragraph entitled, Cortez: Outlaw or Hero? A poster of Gregorio Cortez, dressed in a suit and wrap-around tie, his dark hair parted for his 1901 trial, rode high on a back wall. On each student desk lay a handout containing eleven stapled pages. When Sizemore pressed a button on a cassette player, El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez interpreted by Ramon Ayala y Los Bravos Del Norte played for two minutes, more or less as a summons to the day’s lesson.

The warning bell melody played, then the tardy bell lullaby, Sizemore standing at the door with a clipboard, shepherding students into the room. He spent ten minutes writing down names, telling late arrivals they were losing credit and cleaning up after breakfast. He had placed the last row of student desks a safe distance from the green board’s ledge, because if the row was too close the ledge filled with breakfast trash. Eighteen students were present, two absent and six tardy. Sizemore carried the breakfast tubs into the hall and returned. He got after two students sitting in row three for chucking garbage on the floor. The janitors can clean it up, one of them said. The janitors aren’t your maids, Sizemore returned. After checking, then lecturing the class about not bringing class materials, he gave paper and a golf pencil to each deficient student.

Hey, this pencil doesn’t even have an eraser, Andy Braga said, a thin lad with an air-conditioning cold who sat in the third row, fifth seat.

Then don’t make any mistakes, Sizemore said. He flipped on an overhead projector, pulled down a screen and reminded the class that for the past two days they had read and learned about the man for whom the school board had named the school. He said they would search for information about The Ride, then he and a few class members recited, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez in English, as Santiago and Narciso drank extra apple juice and as David Rueles (first row, second seat) and Jerry Melguizio (second row, second seat) drew marijuana leaves on the handout. Wendy Rangel, a peroxide blonde sitting in the back corner of the room opposite the door, talked with four other students: Diana Caravajal, Robert Gaspar, Salomón Navarro, and Yesenia Salaz. Marcelino Cordova (fifth row, first seat) tried to sleep, while Jeremiah Jonathan (J.J.) Martinez (first row, fourth seat) listened to a CD player, his long hair not quite hiding the earphone cords.

After the ballad had been recited Sizemore said, "Gregorio Cortez shot the Major Sheriff of El Carmen, Texas, in self-defense on June 12, 1901. At his trial on the charge of murder, a jury acquitted him. They did convict him, however, of stealing a sorrel mare during his attempted escape. Students, the remarkable part of this story is Cortez’s three-hundred-and-fifty-mile ride and walk to the border through brush, thorns, rivers and barbed wire. For ten days he avoided hundreds of pursuers, including many sheriffs from all over South Texas. They tried to corral him with a posse, but Cortez escaped their corrals every time, thus the corrido and the legend. Today, I want you to skim the handout and write ten facts about The Ride. Then I want you to write a paragraph about where you stand on this issue: Was Gregorio Cortez an outlaw or a hero? Make sure you back up what you write with evidence."

Sizemore surveyed the class. Who can tell me the famous quote from the story? We went over it yesterday, remember? Wendy? Wendy.

Yes, sir.

Wendy, you need to pay attention.

Sorry, sir.

J.J., take those plugs out of your ears. Arlene, can you nudge J.J.? Thank you. J.J., tune in here, please. Korn has nothing to teach you. I do.

Far out, J.J. said.

Lucy, do you remember the quote?

Lucia Moravites, a dark-skinned girl with a red streak running through stiff hair sat in the third row, first seat. She shook her head no.

Angie, how about you?

Angie Arrellano (first row, first seat), a tiny girl with a teeny-weeny voice answered, I don’t know.

I don’t know. I don’t know, Sizemore said. Students, I don’t know why so many of you answer, ‘I don’t know.’ OK, anyone. Who remembers the quote? Andrea.

"¿Puedo ir al bano?" Andrea Mandera, with long bangs and six rings on her eight fingers, sat behind Lucy.

Golly. And here I thought you were ready to answer the question. Yes, you may go if you give me a correct answer. What is the famous quote?

"No sé."

Gerardo Fina, with a recent haircut and braces on his teeth, raised his hand.

Yes, Gerardo.

‘So many manted Rangers,’ said Gregorio Cortez, ‘to catch yest vone Mexican.’

That’s right, Gerardo. Sizemore turned to the class. ‘So many mounted Rangers to catch just one Mexican.’ Why is it, students, that the person with the fewest days in the United States answers all the questions?

Nerd! Joshua Perigua (second row, fourth seat) yelled. Aaron Zamarripa (second row, fifth seat) and J.J. joined in.

Enough. Then, "¡Basta!" Sizemore cried. He breathed. Now, let’s get to work. You’ve had three days to read, ask questions and discuss. Those of you who think you can’t do the assignment, write the quote fifty times. That way, twenty years from now, you may wake up one morning and the quote will pop into your head. You will have remembered something from your high school days. After I take attendance, I’ll walk around and help anyone who’s trying.

Sizmore set the clipboard on the desk, turned on a computer and waited. Then he typed in his name and the first two letters of his pass—

Josh? Josh, what are you doing? Why are you out of—ah ha, trying to shoulder surf. It won’t do you any good, Josh. Even if you do steal the password, I’ll just replace it. Sit down, please.

Josh, a muscular student who had shaved his head despite a nasty-looking scar above his right ear, grinned. Sizemore walked him back to his desk, then took a look at the work Josh had failed to turn in the previous week.

You’re going to have to recopy that, Josh, Sizemore said.

What, this?

Yes, that. It looks like chicken scratches.

You have to accept it. I’m not going to recopy it.

I won’t accept it, Josh. Recopy it or you’ll get a zero.

I’ll get my lawyer.

And I’ll get my lawyer.

My lawyer has big muscles.

And mine has bad breath.

The voice of Vice Principal Pauline Fairbanks (alias The Corpse) cracked over the intercom: "Teachers, do not send any more students to the office for attendance rosters. Repeat. Send no more students to the office. The computers are down, but we will soon have them up. Be patient. If I see any more students in the office, the teacher who the student