Bayou Da Vinci

By David Pierson

  The main character in this story is Wally Zeringue, a brilliant but crazy English teacher who has been nicknamed "Bayou Da Vinci" by his students. In class, the unconventional Mr. Zeringue leads his student apostles in the study of a wide range of literary texts (everything from Dr. Seuss to Shakespeare). Mr. Zeringue's unique insights and lines of inquiry often challenge the students' (and the readers') superficial preconceptions of our modern world.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Clothesline Stories Publishing
• Release date: Nov 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386982234

David Pierson

July 12, 1948 – December 10, 2019 David Pierson was a resident of New Orleans and a professional writer who published more than two million words. David started as a reporter for a weekly newspaper and moved on to become editor for numerous business publications.  For ten years he wrote, edited and published Child Care Review, a national publication for child care center owners and directors, and served as ghost writer and editor for others in the non-fiction field.  He was experienced in research, both scholarly and investigative, and his surveys and findings have been referenced not just in national publications but also in The Congressional Record.  He also sold a screenplay, Eliminating Deadwood, and a three-act comedy, The Resurrection Man. Finally he decided to move away from the business publication field because he wanted to devote more time to his true passion, writing.  So David returned to the classroom. David was an experienced public speaker and was interviewed numerous times on television, radio and newspaper.  He spoke nationally in many different venues. As a teacher, he was always on stage, and his students will tell you what they like best about his classes was his story-telling. In New Orleans David was the face of chess.  That is because he founded the Louisiana Scholastic Chess League in 1985, the longest-running scholastic chess league in the country, and has taught the game to more than four thousand children.  Many of these children have progressed, winning city, state, regional and national championships.  Chess Life magazine featured his achievements in one of its issues. Other books by David Pierson “And Lead Us Not” “Bayou Da Vinci” Also scheduled for release December 10, 2020 “Death Cues”

Book preview

1

‘I thought they found the body’

When Wally Zeringue (pronounced ZUR-ANG) heard police sirens outside his classroom window, he went immediately into his act. At least, that was what his students thought, that it was all an act.

His body stiffened. He stopped lecturing in mid-sentence and listened intently as the wail of sirens grew louder. As they drew nearer, he sidled closer and closer to the door, stepping out into the hallway until, finally, he heard the sirens fade away.

He came back in the room where his ninth graders, all sitting quietly, looked up in astonishment at their English teacher. What? he said, as if their silence was an unspoken question.

Then one student asked what all of them wanted to ask. Why did you stop and go for the door?

In a voice that maybe someone in the front row might almost have heard, Wally mumbled his answer: I thought they had found the body.

***

Bayou Da Vinci was the nickname students gave to their English teacher, and maybe that was fitting because Wally Zeringue taught them the classics. He explained Homer, Sophocles, Dante and Shakespeare in a way that was comprehensible even for those who had read only Dr. Seuss.

The school where he taught, Sarpy High School, was known simply as Sarpy School because all grades, kindergarten through twelfth, were on one campus.

Wally taught ninth- through twelfth-grade English, directed a school play in the winter, supervised the students’ on-line school newspaper and coached the chess team.

And while his students and their parents loved him, there remained always a question about the man. Was his act just an act, an in-class, on-stage persona? Or was there maybe something else about the man that was best left unsaid?

He had served in the U.S. Army, was drafted during the Vietnam War and often waxed fondly to his students about the time in basic training when he was finally permitted to throw a live grenade. Kissing the pineapple, he called it.

Sometimes on darker days he would talk about his evil identical twin brother. Everyone in town knew Wally didn’t have a twin brother. He had a brother, yes, Willie; but everyone in Sarpy knew him, and he was five years younger than Wally.

One thing everyone agreed on was that Wally inspired his students. In fact, the day before the first day of the new school year, when Wally was preparing his classroom, a former student stopped by to inform his old teacher that he had sold a screenplay that was in pre-production.

"It’s called Bayou Da Vinci, the young man gushed, and it’s about you, an English teacher who, by day, rambles on and on about the genius and wisdom of Shakespeare and then, at night, is a serial killer!

Would you like to read it and tell me what you think?

***

Wally Zeringue always welcomed his freshmen the same way on the first day of school. Socrates was executed for corrupting the youth, he told them. I should, at least, be locked up.

And the ninth graders, having heard already from their parents and older students about their wonderful English teacher, laughed, thinking this was part of his act.

They didn’t know he really felt this way. But quickly, very quickly, they would learn.

God! How he loved this! Every year, fresh fish, young, innocent minds for him to corrupt!

He tried to imagine the thrill the snake must have felt as it offered Eve the forbidden fruit, the tingle of anticipation that must have been coursing through the veins of that old, wrinkled, wretched witch as she offered Snow White the juicy red poisoned apple.

People don’t know, he thought, they have no idea about the kick that comes from watching young faces as you corrupt their innocent little minds!

Mr. Zeringue, said one girl in the front row, you look excited. Is it because it’s the first day of school and you get to teach us?

You’re half-right, said the old man with a sly smile. "It is the first day of school.

Then he removed from his brown lunch bag a big red apple, which he polished on his shirt. Knowledge, he said, is best when it’s forbidden.

2

‘Don’t say drugs are bad until you’ve tried them’

A knock on the door and in, like room service, came Dr. Seuss. Thirty copies of Green Eggs and Ham rolled in on a book cart by an intern for the school librarian.

Mr. Zeringue assigned reading parts for Sam-I-Am and the grouch, and the class of ninth graders giggled like they were three again and it was being read to them by their mothers.

When it was over and the grouch realized he liked green eggs and ham, Mr. Zeringue perched himself on top his desk.

There, on the desk, was a blue baseball cap with the initial Z.

And what, he asked, putting on the cap, is the moral of this story?

The hands shot up. Three, no, five, ten, fifteen . . . In the end, every student’s hand was up. Some waved their hands as if to say, Call on me!

Then someone came up with the idea to raise both hands, and several others did the same.

Finally, Mr. Z called on a student, who proudly told him the moral: Don’t say you don’t like something until you’ve tried it.

Another student, feeling the need to expand on what the girl had said, added his own explanation. The grouch said he didn’t like green eggs and ham until he tried them. Then he saw he liked them.

That’s right, echoed a third.

I get it, said Mr. Z. Don’t say no, don’t reject something until you actually try it?

Every head nodded, and the girl Mr. Z had called on initially, spoke apparently for the entire class. Yes, that’s it. Don’t say you don’t like something until you try it.

Still seated on the top his desk, Mr. Z picked up his apple and leaned forward. In other words, he said, with a wry, twisted smile, in other words, holding out his apple in the palm of his hand, in other words, don’t say drugs are bad for you until you’ve tried them a few times?

What?

He breathed on his apple, polished it on his sleeve and held it out again. In other words, don’t say pre-marital sex is wrong until you’ve tried it a few times?

This second Don’t elicited snickers from two or three of the boys, but most of students spoke out in opposition. That’s not what it means! You got it wrong! That’s not what it’s saying!

Mr. Z remained obtuse. But that’s what you all said it means? You just told me: Don’t say you don’t like something until you actually try it?

But it’s not talking about that! insisted one girl.

Mr. Z set down the apple on his desk. All right. All right. Then answer just one question for me: If someone offered you eggs that were green and ham that was green, would you eat them?

***

There is something people don’t notice, something they overlook, when they read the Bible, that is, who asks the first question?

Mr. Z picked up the apple on his desk and, like the snake, surveyed the faces in his classroom.