A LONG WALK HOME
The instant Brendan felt Mr. Greenleaf’s hand on his shoulder, the itch in his chest suddenly flared. He gasped involuntarily and clutched his chest.
Mr. Greenleaf’s face showed obvious concern. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Brendan mumbled. He forced himself to ignore the burning itch and lower his hand. He smiled weakly. “Must be allergies or something.”
Mr. Greenleaf dropped his hand from Brendan’s shoulder and the boy felt an instant lessening of the discomfort. “Where are you off to now, Brendan?”
Brendan shrugged. “Home.” Brendan instantly regretted admitting his plans. “It’s quite a long walk; through the park and across the U. of T. campus, then down into the market.” He tried to make it sound far to discourage Greenleaf from walking with him.
“Ah, the same way I happen to be going. Shall we stroll together for a while? I don’t want to cramp your style. I’m just across the park, okay?”
Brendan shrugged again. “I guess.” He didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t want to let it slip that he’d heard anything in the auditorium. Add to that the display in chemistry and the strange way he’d been feeling, he would rather not have had any company on the walk home, let alone this weird guy, but he couldn’t think of any way to get out of walking with him. He started out across the street and the substitute matched his stride.
He glanced sidelong at Greenleaf as they waited at the crosswalk for the green light. What’s the deal with this guy? To Brendan and all of the kids he knew, there were some things that just weren’t done. One of them was being seen walking around with your teacher after school. Teachers and students were supposed to move in different circles, and those circles were never meant to overlap. That was a law of nature and every high school kid respected it. But here I am breaking the Universal High School Code.
“Coming?”
The light had turned green while Brendan was musing. Mr. Greenleaf was looking back at Brendan from a few steps out into the crosswalk. His grey eyes twinkled with amusement.
After crossing busy Queen’s Park Circle, they ambled down the path that led under the trees of Queen’s Park.
“Parks…” Mr. Greenleaf broke in on his thoughts. The tone of his voice was bitter. “They always make me a little sad.”
“Sad?” Brendan looked around but didn’t see what was so sad about the green grass and stately old trees. Squirrels clustered around people sitting on blankets. The grey furry creatures begged for scraps, scrambling for crusts of bread and potato chips.
“Sad.” Mr. Greenleaf nodded. “Parks are a pale, tame version of the way the world used to be. Before the buildings and the cars and the roads, the world was green and lush, untamed and unpredictable. There were wild creatures. You never knew what might happen. It was darker and more alive. The trees and the rocks were more than objects, they had voices of their own.”
Oh my god. Brendan’s heart sank. He’s a nutcase. I’m stuck with a nutcase in the park. He quickly scanned the area to make sure that if this weirdo were to do something to him, there would be plenty of witnesses. He was relieved to see that quite a few people were taking advantage of the last warm days of the fall. People were walking dogs, couples were strolling the paths hand in hand and there were joggers and a woman with some twins in a double stroller. Brendan relaxed.
“You think I’m crazy.” Greenleaf chuckled. “I don’t mean they spoke out loud. Well, not all of them anyway. Still, they had their ways of reaching us.” He stared off into the distance for a moment as they walked along the path toward the other side of the park. Suddenly, derisively, the man growled, “Now even the poor squirrels forget their natural distrust of man. Their nature has been subverted. Now they beg for handouts instead of running and hiding from man.”
“Free bread is hard to resist,” Brendan said. They were passing a park bench where an elderly man in a baseball cap was holding crusts of bread out to the grey squirrels. The squirrels would actually scrabble up the legs of the man’s jeans and sit on his knee while they ate the bread. Most people thought it was cute, but Brendan had to admit there was something kind of pitiful about the way they begged for the food. The squirrels were fat and almost tame. 33
There was ferocity in Mr. Greenleaf’s tone that belied his cultured, elegant manner. Brendan turned his gaze on the park surrounding him and tried to imagine it as a wilderness filled with danger but couldn’t quite manage it. Granted, the squirrels could be quite vicious if you didn’t fork over a crust of bread in short order, but that hardly counted as dangerous.
“Brendan?” the teacher said suddenly. “You spell it wrong.”
“Huh?” Brendan grunted. “What do you mean, wrong?”
“In the old Irish language it is spelled B-r-e-a-n-d-a-n.”
Brendan said, “Yeah. That’s how my parents used to spell it, but when I got to school everyone kept spelling it wrong so I just changed it. Easier that way.”
“Ha,” Greenleaf snorted. “People always like things the easy way. Shortcuts. Simplification. Something is always lost when you take the easy way. When you take the shortcut, there was something you missed seeing the long way around.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Brendan mumbled. Why am I trapped walking with this crazy guy? Why didn’t I say I lived the other way and just go hide? You’re such a dumb-wad, Brendan. “Whoa!”
As the thought occurred to him, it was as though the gods of Dumbwadness reached down and knocked him off balance for a laugh. The toe of Brendan’s running shoe managed to find a dip in the path. He tipped forward, his hands going out to block his fall, the books under his arm scattering like birds. Here I go again. He resigned himself to falling on his face.
He never hit the ground. Mr. Greenleaf snared his elbow in a grip of steel, pivoted on his heel and flung Brendan around until he stood upright again facing the other way. Brendan blinked in surprise.
“How did you…?”
Mr. Greenleaf smiled smugly and offered Brendan his books, balanced in a neat stack in the man’s hand. Brendan looked around at the ground. Not a single book had fallen. Dumbly, he took his books.
“How did you do that?” he asked again. Mr. Greenleaf gave another of his little bows and laughed. “I’ve always been fast on my feet. I wasn’t always a stodgy teacher in a dusty classroom.” Greenleaf fastidiously wiped his hands on a pale green handkerchief he produced from his pocket. “People aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes they are much, much more. Sometimes, it takes a little while for them to realize their true nature. Some people aren’t even people in the traditional sense.”
Brendan stared blankly as Mr. Greenleaf tilted his head back and laughed again. “I’ve confused you, haven’t I? Never mind. Let’s just say all people are people! Some are less than they think. Some are more than they know. And some can’t even imagine what they truly are.” The teacher’s eyes caught Brendan’s and held them. He felt like a deer halfway across a highway as a truck bore down. “I have a feeling you’re one of the latter, Breandan.” Greenleaf said the last word with a strange, foreign inflection that seemed somehow to insinuate that missing “a” in a deep and affecting way. Brendan felt a wave of dizziness wash through him. All he wanted to do was break loose from the substitute’s stare.
“Yeah, right. O-okay,” he managed to stutter. “Thanks. Anyway, I gotta get going.” This guy is seriously weirding me out! “My mum is waiting for me.” Nice. Run to your mummy. What a nerd! “Have a nice day!” Brendan groaned inwardly at his awkwardness. Before he could open his mouth and utter any more inane things, he turned away from the substitute teacher and started off down the path. He could almost feel Mr. Greenleaf’s eyes on his back as he hurried away. The man was probably laughing at his lame escape.