It seemed it was time to try earning my spurs.
"I like to be called Mr. Shorty, Potter," I said evenly, thrusting my hands into my pockets and smiling at him. "Always be polite; courtesy costs nothing, and you never know when it will pay off."
"How the hell do you know who I am?"
"I'm psychic; that's why they let me in here."
"What did you do to your head? Somebody mistake you for a football?"
"My clipper slipped while I was cutting my toenails."
"Fuck you, shorty."
"Thank you very much, Dane. Fuck you, too."
That got a laugh out of the others in the class, which I was beginning to sense was on my side. However, the way I figured it, I was being paid to try to reach and teach all the kids who came into my classroom, not just the ones who didn't give me any trouble. Dane Potter had lobbed a few verbal darts at me, and found that I wasn't that easy a target to hit. Now he was really cranky. I knew hospital procedure, and knew that nobody was likely to play patty-cake with Dane Potter-least of all the burly cottage worker assigned to accompany him throughout the school day. If Potter exploded, which he now seemed very close to doing, he'd be perfunctorily taken down and dragged off to the crisis room-a small, windowless room not much bigger than a closet, where Potter would be restrained until he either calmed down or had to be given a shot and sent back to his cottage to sleep it off. All I had to do was goad him a bit more and he would be gone and out of my hair; but that wouldn't solve my long-range problem with him, assuming I was invited back, and it wouldn't make me feel very good to know I had taken the easy way out of a situation by manipulating a very sick kid. Something else was called for.
"Why the hell do they send us a dwarf teacher?!" a now very distraught Dane Potter shouted.
"Hey, Dane," I said quietly, casually moving across the room to lean against a radiator running beneath a bank of thick, Plexiglas windows, "maybe it's because I'm a crazy dwarf. I actually want to be here teaching you crazy kids. That must make me crazy, right?"
That got another round of appreciative laughter from the other six kids-and just the trace of a smile from the cottage worker.
"Right on, Frederickson," a pretty girl with ugly, puckered scars on her wrists called from the back of the room. "Come on, Dane, give the guy a break. He seems okay."
"Shut up, bitch, or I'll give you a break!" Dane Potter shouted at the girl who had spoken. His fists clenched and unclenched on top of his desk. "And I'll break this fucking dwarf if I ever get the chance!"
It was time to get Dane Potter's attention-and the attention of all the other Dane Potters I was certain to meet at the children's hospital. If I couldn't do that, I thought, I might as well quit; the somewhat less than refined teaching technique I planned to employ might well get me fired, but I didn't intend to quit.
"Dane, my good man," I said with a sigh, "let me tell you a little about myself-if you'll pardon the pun. I used to be a star performer-a tumbler of sorts-with the circus. I also happen to hold a black belt in karate. Not bad for a dwarf, huh?"
"You're full of shit, shorty."
I'd never been much into breaking bricks or boards, since the force I could generate was limited by my stature; the skills I'd parlayed into a black belt were based on quickness of movement and surprise; my moves were designed for self-defense, not showboating. Still, I understood the mechanics of force breaking, and what I wanted to do seemed worth a try.
"Let me show you some of my shit, Dane," I said, then abruptly turned around and did a back handspring in the narrow aisle between the desks and the blackboard. My second back handspring gave me additional height and momentum, and on the third I did a half twist in the air and came down with both feet precisely in the center of the top of the desk at which Dane Potter was sitting.
I was perfectly happy with my performance, which I hoped would impress Potter and calm him down, but as luck would have it I landed perfectly, with maximum force at a critical point; there was a sharp crack, and the desk split very nicely down the center, with me landing on my feet between the halves, inches away from the boy's ashen, open-mouthed face.
"Damn, I missed that last flip," I said as I stepped back to the blackboard. "Sorry about your desk, Dane. I must be out of practice."
Dane Potter's eyes went even wider, and he jumped sideways, virtually into the arms of the big cottage worker. The other students stared at me in shock for a few moments, then began to whoop and applaud. Even the cottage worker began to laugh as he slapped-none too gently-his charge on the back.
"What do you say, Dane?" I continued, stepping up to him and holding out my hand. "How about letting me try to teach you guys something in the twenty minutes we've got left?"
Potter didn't shake my hand-but he remained silent and still, which was fine with me. I spent the rest of the period talking about my years with the Statler Brothers Circus, and the time I had talked a hairy friend of mine-a three-hundred-pound Bengal tiger-back into his cage after he'd escaped.
Word that there was indeed a crazy dwarf in the building who could do super back handsprings and break desks spread almost instantly through the small student population, and my next class-suicidal elementary age children-entered the room, accompanied by a teacher aide, very tentatively, eyes wide. By special request, I did one back handspring, performed a few simple coin tricks I'd picked up from a stockbroker friend of mine whose hobby was performing as a mime in Washington Square Park on weekends, then settled the four children down to what I thought was a pretty fair lesson on American Indians of the northeast. I rewarded them for their good behavior and attentiveness with another back handspring, this one with a half twist. Afterward, the teacher aide told me she'd never seen them quieter or more attentive.
Veil was right, I thought; teaching at RCPC certainly wasn't like lecturing or giving seminars at the university. In many ways, this was more rewarding. A reasonably bright, motivated university student will learn what he or she has to learn, and most good students will learn despite what bad teachers may do to them. Not these kids. Working with emotionally disturbed kids-or any handicapped kids, for that matter-an individual teacher could have an enormous impact. The singer, not the song; that was what I was learning on my first day at RCPC. I was having a good time, and it helped to keep my mind off Garth and my troubles with Slycke.