The ABCs, Part 2, Page 2

  Ding went the bell. Actually the bell went ding-dong ding-dong, dong-ding ding-dong but nobody wants to read that. So ding went the bell and I followed Takai-Sensei into the humid ruckus of Class 2B. The front row of desks consisted of Motokare and five other boys, each of whom smelled worse than the one before him. Behind them in subsequent ranks was more of the same. The class had thirty-seven students in a space meant for about twenty-five, and all of them managed to wear the standard issue school tracksuit in a different way. At least half of the students were awake, which was impressive. Two that I could see were openly reading porn. Ah, 2B. I cracked my fingers mentally and then did it physically, too.

  "Let's begin, students," said Takai-Sensei, as if he were addressing any other class. Takai-Sensei was a true egalitarian and believed in delivering the exact same lesson to every class, regardless of the class's skill in English or complete lack thereof. I voiced my part of the formalities and most of the students enthusiastically ignored us both. A few mumbled along out of sheer boredom.

  I bided my time, eyeing up my suspects as Takai-Sensei droned about the day's grammar through his bared teeth. There was Motokare, of course. Obara, the designated class fat kid who liked to throw his weight around. Komura, a long-haired delinquent reading manga with his feet up on the back of the chair of the poor kid in front of him. Yokotate, a lanky troublemaker who could be fearsomely clever when he felt like it, which was any time classwork wasn't involved. And the girls? The 2B girls did their best to appear identical, with razor-sharp bangs and blank looks of abject disinterest, and I didn't know many of their names. I couldn't count them out, though- they could have stolen the cards, especially if they'd decided to do it as a group. Jealousy of Miss Takahashi's beauty and poise- that was a believable motive.

  "Please repeat," intoned Takai-Sensei. "'Do you like playing baseball?' San, hai!"

  "Do you like playing unko?" said Motokare, and beamed. The girls rewarded him with a chorus of giggles.

  "Very good," said Takai-Sensei. I wasn't sure if he hadn't heard or just didn't care, and the odds were probably even. He turned to me. "Mr. Jackson! Please."

  I stepped forward. "Do you like fighting? San, hai," I said. "San, hai" means something like "Ready, go!" if you don't know. That is, of course, unless you're talking to 2B, in which case it means "Go ahead and ignore whatever I say next."

  "Do you like fight," a few of the boys mumbled. Takai-Sensei grinned. I went on.

  "Do you like sleeping?"

  "Do you like sleep," said a few more students. That got their attention, as "sleep" was one of the few words that both interested them and that they knew in English.

  "Very good!" said Takai-Sensei.

  "How about this," I said. "Do you like stealing?"

  The kids whose attention I had- Yokotate, Motokare, a few others- looked to Takai-Sensei, who reduced his smile by a few degrees- his version of a frown. He explained what I'd said in Japanese, and I repeated it in English.

  "Do you like steal," repeated the students. Ears were perked now; the students could tell something was up. Vocabulary words went in one ear and out the other, but boy could those kids sense conflict. They watched me.

  "Do you like stealing? Do you like stealing from innocent young teachers, the shoes of whom you are not fit to lick? Please repeat."

  They looked to Takai-Sensei again. Translation, please, was what their eyes said. "Uh, it means, do you like stealing from teachers," he answered. His smile was significantly reduced by now and even his hair seemed to wilt a bit.

  "Do you like… steal teacher," said the students. They looked back and forth between Takai-Sensei and me, all together like spectators at a tennis match, and then settled on me.

  "Well?" I locked eyes with each of the students I'd singled out as a potential subject, and with the students between them for good measure. With 37 students this took a fair bit of time, during which the classroom was silent, probably for the first time ever. In the eyes of the students I saw confusion, hostility, fear, and annoyance- but no guilt. Had I been wrong?

  "Thank you, Mr. Jackson," said Takai-Sensei, stepping forward with finality. He pushed on pointedly. For the rest of the class he didn't ask for any example sentences, or for anything else. The students kept giving me curious glances as they mumbled along, but I didn't see any looks that seemed suspicious and no kid looked like the guilt-ridden mess they ought have been had they had taken the cards. I was still considering the idea that I had been wrong when the bell rang for the end of class.

  I returned to my desk in the teachers' room and proceeded to brood. I considered the other classes and the troublemakers in them. There were a few, to be sure, but I'd been so sure that the culprit would be in 2B that I hadn't given the idea serious consideration. Had the guilty party been able to fool me? Impossible- I knew these kids better than they knew themselves. I would have seen it on their face, I was sure.

  I was thinking about how best to apply the small selection of blackmail material I had when I heard the unremarkable sound of a student pardoning himself into the teachers' room. Students are always coming in and out for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with me, so it took me a few moments to realize that this student had parked himself in front of my desk. I looked up. It was a boy from 2B with close-cropped hair and some real heavy-duty glasses. As he had never made himself an overt source of trouble in class it took me a while to remember his name. Mori-something. Morimoto. Morinaga. Morita! That was it.

  "Hello, Mr. Morita," I said. He looked at me gravely.

  "My brother," he said.

  "Yes?"

  "My brother. He… steal."

  "Did he, now. Your brother?"

  "My brother," Morita confirmed. "He steal. Teacher. Girl."

  "Your brother," I said again. It jumped into my head, then. His brother! Muritaro Morita, Kuroyama Elementary School, 5th year. The kid had a bad attitude and a buzz cut to match his brother's. Muritaro Morita. I cracked my knuckles. I remembered that this Morita, the junior high one, was called Mudataro. The family liked themed names, apparently.

  "Thank you, Mudataro," I said. He coughed politely but didn't leave.

  "Yes?"

  "Sticker, please."

  "Oh, sorry." Of course. I opened the desk drawer where I kept my stickers. I mentioned earlier that I use sheets of colorful stickers to keep little kids in line, but the dirty secret of junior high is that the teenage students love them, too. Mudatarou gleefully surveyed the stickers and selected one that featured a teddy bear pulling off its own head. Some things aren't meant to be understood. Mudataro pocketed the sticker and re-affixed his disinterested expression, and slouched away leaving me alone with my thoughts again.

  Muritaro Morita. How had he gotten the alphabet cards? I wasn't sure and it didn't matter. What mattered was that I was going to Kuroyama Elementary the following day, and I was sure to see the rotten little bugger there. Muritaro may have been a likely future 2B candidate and a little hellraiser in his own right, but after dealing with the likes of Motokare an uppity ten year old was hardly going to scare me.

  "Are everything OK, Jackson-Sensei?" It was Takai-Sensei, returned to his desk from whatever arcane teaching activities he had been doing. He looked concerned, which was a fairly incongruous expression on his grinning face.

  "Oh yes, Takai-Sensei. Everything is great."

  "Hmmm," he said. I could tell he was worried about my outburst in class, but I wasn't. I'd gotten the results I wanted, just not not in the way that I thought I would. And who knew? Maybe the kids would show a little bit of respect from here on out. I knew that Takai-Sensei would forget all about the day's performance given another week of normalcy, in any case. The status quo in Kuroyama is like a heavy futon, which means blanket if you don't know. It draped over everything, heavy and smothering, and it would take more than a little kicking to disturb it.

  I ate lunch with the students and went through the motions of the afternoon class,
but my mind was elsewhere. The kids watched me warily- word got around quickly, when there was word to get around. When the bell rang for the end of the final period I was out of there like a salaryman who's out of cigarettes.

  Muritaro Morita. I had the kid's sneering face in my mind's eye as I left the school and rode my mama-chari?home. The sky had darkened while I was at Kurochuu, and what had been a sullen sea of clouds had grown into a thick wash of darkness. The heat hung still and heavy over the town as I biked home, and even the rice fields seemed to be lying in wait. Arashi ga furu, is what the Japanese would say; a storm is coming. Yes indeed, I thought- a storm is coming.

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