Joint '72: ...a novel about coming of age-twice

By Michael Clark

Dub Wiggins faces a dilemma: The military boarding school where he studied for four years, and has taught for more than twenty, wants him gone – unless he toes the line for the autocratic headmaster who has ruled the institution for decades.

But Dub is a contrarian. Conforming to clichéd norms makes him physical

• Language: English
• Publisher: DeCon Arts LLC
• Release date: Nov 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732669321

Michael Clark

As Michael Clark overcame his issue with domestic violence, he felt called to share what he'd learned with others who were facing the same challenge. He took what he had learned in his career as an entrepreneur and business consultant and founded the Ananias Foundation (ananiasfoundation.org). The Ananias Foundation is a Christian-based non-profit that works to end domestic violence by providing guidance and encouragement to individuals who have been violent with their partner but want to change. Michael lives with his wonderful wife Lynn and their assortment of spoiled pets in West Des Moines, Iowa. Together they enjoy spending time with their friends and family, traveling, hiking, kayaking, and working on home projects.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Coach Lowry and I walked out of the dining hall at Burgoyne Military Academy one early fall day in 1968, when I was a thirteen-year-old freshman. We weren’t exactly walking with each other, just next to each other, when he turned to me and said what he said. I was already scared out of my socks, but to have that blockhouse of a man suddenly rest one of his brickish hands on my shoulder and speak to me, a puny little freshman, was terrifying.

Coach Lowry said, You can’t make chicken salad from chicken shit.

I was astounded by what he said, because he said it to me right out of the blue, and because I didn’t say anything to him that would have caused him to say what he said to me. And he said shit, too, a word which I had heard only enough to know it was bad.

Coach Lowry said shit, but he said it on the sly, because there were people around. So it came out of him like a shush followed by a T, with no I in the middle. I filed that away in my thirteen-year-old head with all the other stuff I had learned about how to behave properly when other people are around. Occasionally nowadays I still say shit like a shush with a T, and when I write the word, I sometimes spell it sh*t. I thank Coach Lowry for that.

But thirteen-year-old me didn’t get what Coach Lowry meant by what he said. Now, three and a half decades later, I do. That is because my family—the most recent four generations of firstborn sons, anyway—have been inextricably bound to this school, Burgoyne Academy, first as students, then as instructors. I was a student here, and now I am an instructor. I have been trying to make chicken salad for most of my life.

See, I was born in the 1950s. Nineteen and fifty-four, to be exact. Those were America’s chicken salad days. We were in this thing called The Big Sleep, and it tasted good.

We were apartment dwellers, Pa, Mother, and me, back in The Big Sleep. Pa was going to school on the GI Bill, and always working one or two jobs at the same time. Mother worked as a secretary in a university dean’s office until she married Pa. After that, she did the proper thing: She quit the dean’s office and took her new job in the mold of the officially sanctioned American Housewife, a dutiful bearer of children, and engineer of all things domestic.

Proper was big in the fifties. Despite our relative poverty, my parents were very proper people. The tomes of Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt—renowned experts on social etiquette—stood out on the family bookshelf.

Looking back, I think Pa was probably embarrassed that I didn’t call him the proper Father, or at least Dad, and Mother once scolded me for slipping up and calling her Mom, a name I had heard other kids call their mothers. Mom just wasn’t proper in our home.

Our little apartment was in suburban Washington, DC, a ground floor end-unit in a two-story red brick six-plex. It sat in the middle of five red brick six-plexes strung end to end, with automobile parking along the front of the buildings, and a narrow strip of lawn along the back.

There was a playground out in that grassy strip. It had a swing set with six swings, and a merry-go-round of the kid-powered type. There was a jungle gym that served as our fortress or rocket ship or skyscraper, depending upon the play du jour. And, there was a sandbox.

No ordinary sandbox, this. It was enormous: Four or five of us kids could have laid ourselves end to end before spanning its width. It was deep, too.

And everybody was called kid. Hey, KID! some prepubescent voice would yell, and a dozen of us on the playground would turn to see who was calling, and which of us was being called.

There was one kid who had a name, not his real name, but a nickname other than kid. He was called Hoss. He was a head taller than the next tallest kid and two heads taller than me. He was nearly as broad as he was tall. He wasn’t a bully; he was just big, and therefore automatically intimidating. The other kids did whatever he wanted to do, mostly because of his size. He was almost always out of breath. Rumor had it that Hoss accidentally sat on a kid once and killed him, but nobody dared ask him if that was true.

Inside our little apartment, there was a chart taped to the kitchen wall. The chart had a list of chores—my chores—pre-printed across its top: make my bed, brush my teeth, clean my room, wash my hands before meals, sit up straight, and so on.

Down the left side of the chart, Mother had penciled in the dates and days of the week—Sunday through Saturday, four times in succession—a full month. In amongst the chart’s crosshatched matrix of days and chores were check marks, placed there by Mother on each day that each of my chores was completed—satisfactorily completed, that is.

It was never enough to do half the job, she said. What would people say if you brushed only your lower teeth? What would people say if you came to the table with clean palms but dirty fingernails? What would people say? was always a very big question in our home. I learned that if you behaved properly, then people would have nothing bad to say about you, and that was good.

Here is what the chart on the kitchen wall was for: After a full month of satisfactorily completing my chores, Mother would mail the chore chart to Chuck Wagoneer, the guitar pickin’ TV cowboy whose cartoons and countrified American morality were religiously absorbed by thousands of children every weekday afternoon from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. on WKDC, Channel 2, broadcasting from the heart of our nation’s capital. Cowboy Chuck would personally review my chart, and if he found me worthy, I could be on his show.

Each night before bedtime Mother would call me to the kitchen to review the day’s chore performance. Early on I would forget at least one or two chores, and I would agonize over the potential loss of the opportunity to appear on TV with Cowboy Chuck Wagoneer, as a bona fide member of the Wagoneer Posse.

As the days passed—slowly, oh so slowly—I got better. I became practiced at satisfactorily completing my chores. The chart was steadily filling up with check marks. I could feel my character improving.

Then one day, I was done. With great pride I inserted the envelope containing my chore chart into the big red and blue public mailbox that stood by the parking lot outside of our apartment. I had to stand on my toes to reach the handle. On the way back to the apartment Mother said, Of course you realize that you will have to keep up with your chores now, even without the chart. I would hate to have to call Cowboy Chuck and tell him that your character has slipped. I started to protest but she cut me off with, What would people say if they knew you were five years old and couldn’t do your chores?

After what seemed like an eternity, I was on my way to the studios of WKDC in downtown Washington. I clutched the envelope containing my official, certified invitation from Cowboy Chuck Wagoneer tightly in my hand. It had come with my red Wagoneer Posse kerchief, which was now tied around my neck in the same style as Cowboy Chuck himself, with the square knot over my left shoulder. The bulk of the kerchief rested under my throat, ready to be pulled over my mouth and nose in case of a random dust storm, or a sudden need to hide my identity. My Wagoneer Posse badge, the real, shiny metal one with the star in a circle, the one that was worn only by actual members of the Wagoneer Posse, was pinned to my dark blue pullover shirt. My cowboy-style dungarees matched the color of my shirt, and I pretended that my PF Flyer high-tops were cowboy boots.

Thus attired, I had stood before the kids on the playground and announced to all that I was headed for Cowboy Chuck Wagoneer’s ranch, and that they should all watch at 3:30 to see me in the Posse. I basked momentarily in their awe, and I was most pleased to see envy in the eyes of Hoss, as if his approbation legitimized me. Then Mother called for me and we walked down the hill to the bus stop, boarded the 12:15, and headed for the city.

Cowboy Chuck’s Ranch Roundup went by in a flash. Bright lights, twenty-five raucous, wide-eyed kids, myself one of them, turned into a coordinated cheering section by Cowboy Chuck’s sidekick, a man dressed like a wizened and dusty ol’ galoot, who held up a sign that said CHEER! and danced a silly jig to keep us amused.

Cowboy Chuck was there when he needed to be in front of the camera, and disappeared instantly when he didn’t. In the shadows beyond the cameras I could see Mother sitting with several other mothers, smoking her Lucky Strikes and lounging in an area set aside just for the grown-ups.

Then Cowboy Chuck introduced the next episode of Riders of the Purple Range, a serial cliffhanger cowboy drama that formed the centerpiece of every Cowboy Chuck program. In each episode, the Riders of the Purple Range would ride all over the Wild West in search of something called the Spanish Treasure. They never seemed to find it because these other cowboys, who wore black hats and had facial hair—they were called the Diablo Gang—were always doing stuff to mess up the Riders of the Purple Range. Everybody knew that the Diablo Gang wanted to find the Spanish Treasure first, but they never spent much time looking for it because they were always too busy doing dastardly stuff to the Riders of the Purple Range.

Every episode ended with one of the Purple Range Riders getting stuck in some predicament where he was about to get killed at the hands of one of the Diablos. Then at the beginning of the next episode, the Purple Ranger would get out of his fix by displaying some feat of cowboy prowess, like being faster on the draw and shooting the gun right out of the Diablo’s hand. Then the Diablo would run away and the Purple Ranger would let him, because it wasn’t proper to shoot a man in the back, even if he did just try to kill you.

Then it was over. Cowboy Chuck wished us happy trails and lit a cigar as he walked off the set. His goofy sidekick handed each of us a brown paper bag as we streamed down from the bleachers. He matched each of us up with our respective mothers and mentioned something about on tape and delayed broadcast which I didn’t understand. Then he pointed us to a heavy steel door which deposited us directly into the parking lot behind the studio.

It wasn’t until we were on the bus that I thought to look in the bag, which was just like a smaller version of the bags Mother brought home from shopping, brown paper with heavy string handles; but mine had a picture of Cowboy Chuck’s smiling face printed on both sides, his squinty eyes peering out from under the brim of his ten-gallon Stetson.

Inside the bag I found four single-serving boxes of Post Toasties, a certificate with a fancy gold seal on it, and a cloth pouch closed at the top with a drawstring. Mother read the certificate for me. It said, Be it known to all here present and afar that the bearer of this certificate of authenticity is the true and lawful discoverer and owner of the Spanish Treasure, herewith conveyed and displayed.

The Spanish Treasure was inside the pouch: gold coins with strange human profiles on one side and spread-winged birds on the other; jewels of green and red with many facets sparkling from every angle; and the greatest prize of all—a golden ring. It had a skull’s face with a gaping, toothy mouth, and blazing emerald eyes. It mattered not to me that all of the Spanish Treasure was made of plastic. It was shiny and exotic, and it was mine.

At dinner that night, like a proper person of good character, I asked to be excused from the table to retrieve my pouch full of Spanish Treasure. I returned and set each item on the table so Pa could inspect them—all except the skull ring, that is. I put that on the middle finger of my left hand. It felt heavy.

Pa dutifully oohed and aahed over each piece of my Spanish Treasure. Then he made an announcement, or it sounded like one anyway, because his voice got boomy, and Mother reacted as if she was hearing it for the first time too: The day after tomorrow we would be moving, he said, to a new place, a place called Burgoyne, and that was why he and Mother had been putting lots of stuff in boxes for the last few days. It would be a new life, he said, and he was sure I would like the place as much as he and Mother did. Mother looked excited, so I decided that was the right look for me too, even though my Spanish Treasure seemed more important.

The next morning my skull ring woke me up early, simply by being on my finger and feeling foreign. The thought of showing off the Spanish Treasure to the kids on the playground propelled me out of bed and into the only bathroom in our little apartment, where I intended to brush my teeth before being told to. Pa was there, getting ready to shave. Of course this meant I had to shave too. I pulled the bathroom stepstool—a relic from my toilet training days—up next to Pa. I stood on it and could barely see myself in the mirror. Without me asking, he passed me the can of shaving cream. As I smeared that menthol-scented stuff on my face, I watched him twisting the handle of his double-edged safety razor to open it and expose the dulled old blade, which he removed and inserted into a slot in the back of the medicine cabinet. Then he took the dispenser of shiny new Gillette Super Blue blades and carefully thumbed the top blade out of the dispenser and into his safety razor. He twisted the razor’s handle again to close the top, and before starting his shave, he handed me my little blue razor—a bladeless toy, of course. Together we shaved.

I waited longer than usual to go outside, planning to make my grand appearance on the playground after the rest of the kids had arrived. When I could see from our living room window that all were assembled, I tied my Cowboy Chuck kerchief around my neck, pinned my Wagoneer Posse badge to my shirt, tucked my Spanish Treasure pouch under my belt, and strode forth to the playground.

It took the kids a bit to realize I was there, but I was used to that. Gradually they stopped what they were doing and looked at me. Hoss, from his perch atop the jungle gym, was the last to notice and the first to speak.

Hey kid, you’re a liar! he yelled. I turned to see if there was someone behind me, but there wasn’t. He was speaking to me.

What? I asked. Whaddaya mean? I had to squint to look up at Hoss. It was late morning and the sun burned directly behind him in the sky.

He pointed a chubby finger at me. You said you were going to be on Cowboy Chuck yesterday and you weren’t. I watched, and you weren’t. You’re a liar.

Am not, was too! I protested. I rode the bus downtown and everything.

Nah, you weren’t, said a red-haired freckled kid from the edge of the sand pit. I watched Cowboy Chuck . . . you weren’t on, and you’re a liar!

Yeah, me too kid, said the only kid on the playground who was shorter than me. I watched and you weren’t there. We all watched. You’re a liar! He was sitting in one of the swings and had turned himself around several times to wind up the chains, then let himself go into a speedy unwind, head leaned back, feet stuck out. Liar liar pants on fire . . . he started chanting as he spun, and the rest of the kids picked it up.

Liar liar pants on fire, liar liar pants on fire . . .

Am NOT! I yelled, but my rage was a whisper against a wind. This was not going as I had anticipated.

Liar liar pants on fire, liar liar pants on fire . . .

I rode the BUS! I said, pointing toward the bus stop.

Liar liar pants on fire . . .

I got the KERCHIEF! I yelled, tugging on it.

Liar liar pants on fire . . .

I got the BADGE! I shouted, thrusting my chest forward.

Liar liar pants on fire!

I GOT THE SPANISH TREASURE!

All went quiet with a pause of anticipation, as if a falling boulder had been arrested in midair, suddenly unsure of its purpose.

Yeah right, kid. It was Hoss, climbing down from his perch atop the jungle gym. What a liar, geez.

No really, look! I said, thrusting my fist forward in Hoss’ general direction, hoping that the emerald eyes of my skull ring would burn a hole in him, and show the rest of the kids that I was a proper and truthful person.

For a second there I thought it might work. Hoss was momentarily transfixed by the skull ring’s terrifying gape-mouthed expression. But that second passed, and he slouched back into his regular self.

Liar. That’s just a ring. Ain’t no treasure, he scoffed.

Oh yeah? Well, you haven’t seen the rest of it.

Slowly I let my hand move to the pouch that was tucked under my belt. Hoss just stood there and crossed his flabby arms. As I took the pouch from under my belt I strode defiantly to the center of the sandbox, forcing Hoss and the others to follow. Quietly, the rest of the kids closed in for a look.

I reached into the pouch and felt around for the biggest jewel of all, an elliptical emerald three-quarters of an inch long, almost as wide, and a half-inch deep, with facets all around. I pulled it out and held it up to the light. Some muffled oohs and aahs hissed out of a few of the kids.

I toldja, I said.

Whoa! said Hoss. Lemme see that. I handed it to him.

What else ya got in there? asked one kid, eyeing my pouch.

Yeah, let’s see the rest, said another.

In the middle of the sand pit there was no safe place to lay out my treasure for all to see and admire, so I did the next best thing. I handed one precious item to one kid, another to another kid, and so on. As I did, I felt my stock value increasing. I could see the look of awe and appreciation in each kid’s face. It was a strangely powerful feeling, knowing that I had put those looks on those faces, and they were staring wondrously at me. I dispensed my coins and gems until the pouch was empty. My newfound friends marveled at the lustrous Spanish Treasure which I had chosen to reveal to them.

Hoss held the big emerald up to the sunlight. He turned and twisted it and watched the green light twinkle and flash in its facets. Then he pocketed the gem, slapped me on the back like we had been pals forever, said, Thanks kid, and walked away—out of the sandbox, off of the playground, and down the yard toward his apartment, all before I could utter a word.

My mind was raging to cry out but my mouth would not speak—the words Give me my emerald back, you fat slob! ricocheted inside my head but could find no outlet. My lips were moving, but there was no sound.

Yeah, thanks kid, said the red-headed freckled kid, and he walked off in a different direction, carrying with him the gold coin I had handed him seconds earlier.

Then a chorus of Thanks, kid! and one after another the others walked away briskly in different directions, each carrying a piece of the Spanish Treasure. Following Hoss’ example, they didn’t look back.

Still I struggled to speak. The world spun around me as I watched them make their escapes. Finally, more like a burp than a word, it came out: NO! But it was too late. They had walked far enough away to pretend they didn’t hear me. If I went after one, the others would be gone. There I stood, in the middle of the sandbox, alone with my empty pouch.

For a moment, a hopeful thought crossed my mind. They like the treasure. They like me. Maybe they still like me, they just all had to go home for lunch.

But no, of course this could not be true. The Diablo Gang had made off with the Spanish Treasure, and they weren’t likely to bring it back on their own. Like those everywhere who wear black hats and facial hair, they had done their dirty deed, and run away from justice. Even if I had had a pistol, I couldn’t have shot them in the back. It wouldn’t have been proper.

I started walking back to my home, my feet dragging as if they had turned to stone. A knot constricted in my throat. My chin began to tremble. My world slid by me: the sandbox, the playground, the grass, the sidewalk, the honeysuckle bushes in front of our apartment, all blurred, writhing in a sea of tears. I grabbed a honeysuckle branch to steady myself. Suddenly a cramp took hold of my stomach and pitched my upper body forward. In a single massive heave I puked on my PF Flyers.

This was my first vomiting, or the first I remember, anyway. It seemed like God had his hands down my throat and was pulling my insides out. I spit and spit and spit again to get as much of the vile taste out of my mouth as I could, then let go of the honeysuckle branch and walked through our front door.

Between sobs I explained the tragedy to Mother. She asked if I gave the treasure away, and I said no. She asked if the other kids had forcibly taken it from me, and I said no. I couldn’t explain what happened. I had been lulled by the insidious warmth of acceptance, and then robbed by betrayal, but my five-year-old vocabulary was insufficient to describe the treachery of the Diablos.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room, on my bed. After an hour or so I was cried out. Gradually my shock and sadness turned to rage; and as I lay there on my back, I began to imagine bringing vengeance to my tormentors. I pictured them in all manner of torturous situations, most involving great bodily injury perpetrated by me. My amplified imagination explored new and macabre ground. I had never had such thoughts before, but I was not just enjoying it, I was reveling in it. Perhaps there was a way to shoot these villains in the back after all, especially if I could contrive a means to do it without anyone knowing it was me.

Mother came in to ask if I wanted to help her with dinner. I declined. I was quite content to relax and plot the destruction of my enemies.

Well, don’t stay in here too much longer, son. Dinner will be on in an hour or so. You should get up and do something. What would people say if they knew you were in here just lying around waiting for the cows to come home? Go back out and play for a while.

Go back out and play? How could she think that I would possibly want to go back outside, back to the scene of my humiliation? Then the room brightened, as if the sun outside the window had just slipped from behind a cloud.

I walked to the bathroom, shut the door and opened the medicine cabinet. I was looking for Pa’s dispenser of Gillette Super Blue Blades. To my delight I found two dispensers—the one that Pa had used that morning, and a second one underneath it that was still in its cellophane wrapper. I took that one and replaced the other exactly where I had found it.

Just in case Mother was listening, I flushed the toilet as if I had used it, and ran the water in the sink to fake washing my hands. Then, to fake drying them, I yanked on the hand towel a couple times to make the metal ring from which it hung let out its unmistakable squeak. Then I went outside.

I ducked behind the honeysuckle bushes. From there I could peer out at the lawn and the playground beyond. I could also peek around the corner of the building, where I could see the back porches of the apartments. There on one of the porches in the next building over was Hoss, sitting on the bottom step. With a short stick he was digging around in the dirt at his feet. There was no one else in sight.

I pulled the razor blade dispenser from my pocket, unwrapped the cellophane and stashed it between two honeysuckle branches. Just to make sure I had it right, I tried thumbing the top blade in the dispenser like Pa did, but only a little bit. It moved, and its leading edge poked just barely out of the dispenser. I had it right. I slid the blade back into place and tucked the dispenser back into my pocket. Then I peeked once more around the corner. Hoss was still on his back porch.

I walked out from behind the honeysuckle and toward the playground, and ambled back and forth a bit. Careful to avoid direct eye contact with Hoss, I could see in the distance that he had stopped digging with his stick, and he was watching me. I walked to the sandbox and knelt down in the far corner, with my back to him. I began to dig with my hands in our customary fashion—shoving the sand off to both sides as the hole deepened.

When I had gone down about a foot and a half I stopped and turned ever so slightly, just enough to see that Hoss was still on his porch, still watching. I raised both hands in the air and ceremoniously removed my one and only remaining piece of Spanish Treasure—my emerald-eyed skull ring—from the middle finger of my left hand.

With my back still to Hoss, I held the ring aloft and let the setting sun shine through the skull’s fiery eyes. Then slowly, in one continuous motion, I lowered the ring into the hole with one hand and removed the Gillette Super Blue blades from my pocket with the other.

Since my back was to Hoss, what I did next was easy. At the bottom of the hole I cupped my precious skull ring in one hand and slipped it into the front pocket of my dungarees. With the other hand I dispensed four razor blades, taking care to deposit them edges-up in the sand at the bottom of the hole. Then I swept a little sand on top of them and dispensed four more blades, edges-up, and spread them evenly around the hole—followed by a little more sand, then the last two blades, then the rest of the sand.

The dispenser of Gillette Super Blues was now empty. I shoved it back in my pocket with one hand while I smoothed the sand in front of me with the other. Then I rose and walked slowly back to my home. On the way I never once looked at Hoss, but twice I looked theatrically over my shoulder, back at the sandbox, as if I was worried about the security of what I had just buried there.

When I got to our honeysuckle bushes, I ducked behind them again and secreted the empty Gillette Super Blue dispenser in the same crook where I had left its cellophane wrapper. Then I slipped my skull ring back on my finger. My skull’s eyes flashed one last time, and I went back inside our little apartment.

Mother was pleased to see that I came home before being called, and that I once again had washed my hands for dinner, without being told. Indeed, Cowboy Chuck had strengthened my character.

The next morning our boxes were loaded into a big truck, and we drove to a new home, a bright yellow house on a towering hill. It sat directly across the biggest expanse of lawn I had ever seen from a sparkling fairyland of white stone buildings adorned with more arches and spires and turrets and stained glass windows than I could have counted, if I knew how. Behind me I left our little apartment, the playground, the sandbox, and, thankfully, all memory of the Diablos and their treachery.

But forgetfulness, while often convenient to our comfort, is not always as sturdy as one might wish. Sometimes, forgetfulness leaks. It would be more than a decade before my sandbox memories returned to me, but when they did, an innocent woman would die from them. And what did I do about that? I forgot. Again.

1

IT’S A BIG HILL

I did not ask for Burgoyne Academy, and it did not ask for me. In the same way we join the human race, my membership in the institution called Burgoyne just sort of happened: There it was, and here I am. It seems I have been at Burgoyne forever, and that is almost true. I came here at the age of five—not under my own power, of course, but at the end of my parents’ tow chain. Before that, I lived in a little apartment, in a building with other apartments, surrounded by other buildings with other apartments. One day I’m there, and then whoosh . . . I’m here.

Now, today, this moment, I am driving a school bus, but I am not a professional bus driver. I am a teacher. I teach history at Burgoyne Academy. It used to be Burgoyne Military Academy, but now, in 2004, it is not. Burgoyne is a private boarding school. It sits on a big hill, an Appalachian-style mountain, really, in Maryland. The mountain is called Maryland Heights. It towers over the Potomac River. Across the Potomac, at its intersection with the Shenandoah River, is the town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia; and on the hill above the town, known in these parts as Bolivar Heights, sits the Frieslingen School for Girls. Burgoyne and Frieslingen are connected, conjoined, jointly operated by the same Board of Trustees. When I’m not teaching history, I shuttle students between the two campuses in this old Blue Bird bus.

Frieslingen School, Harpers Ferry, Burgoyne, they are all old places—ancient, by American standards. Burgoyne was founded in 1833 by an Anglican bishop who got his start as a humble padre, praying in the service of George Washington. Frieslingen came along later. And Harpers Ferry? The town has been here since dirt.

Everything around Harpers Ferry oozes American history, and that’s what makes a history nerd like me love living here. The geography, the history, the ghosts of people whose lives intersected in these hills, on these rivers, celebrating economic booms and lamenting tragic busts, persisting through all-out war and fragile peace—there is arguably no better place from which to teach the American experience.

Maryland Heights, upon which Burgoyne sits, is one of three great prominences towering over the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. Harpers Ferry occupies a wedge of land between the Potomac and the Shenandoah. Thomas Jefferson once sat on a big flat boulder along the Shenandoah at the southern end of Harpers Ferry, and was so impressed with the view that he wrote some flowery prose about it. That prose survives today in pamphlets available to the public at the Harpers Ferry National Park Visitor Center. Nowadays, the whole town of Harpers Ferry is a national park. The rock that Jefferson sat on is still there, too. It is called Jefferson Rock. Go figure.

Harpers Ferry is famous in a few different ways, but probably most famous for the day in 1859 when a fanatical abolitionist named John Brown led a small band of men down from Maryland Heights and across the bridge over the Potomac, intending to take control of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry and procure enough guns to organize a slave revolt. Brown and his band of radical abolitionists had slept the previous night in the stables of Burgoyne Military Academy, high up on Maryland Heights.

More about that later. Right now, I have to get this damn bus up the hill.

It is a struggle to climb the school road that was slashed into the face of Maryland Heights a century ago. By the time we reach the top, I have ol’ Beulah—the bus—in her lowest gear, and we barely crest the