If I had said, ‘I need to do number 2,” which was taking a shit, well that was different, and I could have left art class.  Well that would be a lie, and I didn’t want to lie to anyone.  I was mostly a truth teller about the bathroom, and all I did there.

I didn’t need to pee, piss, or shit, but somehow I knew to leave the classroom.  No little voice came to me and said, ‘Leave quickly, because something terrible is happening.’  No it was something I just knew inside my whole body.  Using my father’s words for the feeling, ‘I’ve fuckin got to get out of here now’.  I didn’t say that because that would be swearing and that was not allowed in Mrs. Crafty’s first grade.  I had been talked to once for saying the word ‘fuck’ and so I learned not to say that here.  It was an adult word, not for boys my age.

I needed to leave the classroom right away, and so I just got up from my cat drawing.  Somehow I knew to leave the classroom.  That time I didn’t have a clear understanding of why I left.  It was not a sight or sound, it was just I knew I needed to get out.

I went out of the classroom door, not toward the playing field where big kids were playing, but just out in the yard — away from the dangerous building.  You were always required to ask to leave, but then they would say, ‘No!’  I know what they would say, so I just left.

This pretty girl teacher Patty, an in training, teacher, came after me.  She was someone like I could like to marry if I was old enough.  She had big breasts, nice big ones.  Also I liked her blond hair, boys like blonds.  It says that on TV, and it’s true.  I was glad she was going to live along with me.  All the others were just going to die.

“Richard you know your not to come out here during art!” She said, and I didn’t reply, just stood there and looked up at her, and wondered what it would be like to fuck a girl like that?  She was big for me, but I would grow.

“I saw the kitty cat picture Richard,” she said, “and it was very good.  You’re a natural artist.  You shaded it just right, most kids just do the lines, you captured the cat.  Please come back in the room, and finish the cat, or Mrs. Crafty will be upset with me.”  She had tried loud at first, and then she got soft and reasoned with me, but she didn’t know that the ceiling would crash and the light fixtures would stick children like swords and puncture their hearts.  She didn’t know.

“It’s dangerous in there.”  I said.

“How?” she replied.

I didn’t move, and she looked at me and said, “Come back in for Patty, please Richard.”

“The ceiling is going to fall Patty and then the kids who are not screaming for their mother’s, will be dead.  They will be as dead as Molly.”

“Whose Molly?”

“My old cat.  That’s why I’m drawing Molly today I knew another crush was coming.  A car flattened her.”

“This is a new school building Richard.”

“The ceiling is going to fall.  And you would be as dead as Mrs. Crafty if I had not saved you, by keeping you out of danger.   I like you Patty.  I think your very pretty, like an angel.  I don’t want you to die.  I would like to marry you someday.”

“Your sweet Richard and I do like you, and the building is going to last and last.  I think you should go back in and draw a sunset.  Do you like watching the sun go down?”

“No I never see that because I go to bed early so my mother and dad can fuck.”

“Mrs Crafty got on you for saying that word Richard.  It’s not allowed in school, and I know you remember.”

“Mrs Crafty is going to be dead in a few minutes Patty.  You could go pull the fire thingie on the wall, there is still some time before a wall will fall and crush Mrs. Crafty, and the children will be stuck with the ceiling light fixtures like swords, that will stick inside their bodies.  You could stop it Pattie.  I can’t reach up that high to pull the fire alarm device.”

There were big kids, all boys with caps on, playing baseball and I stood there watching the game and Patty watched the game.  “You could go tell Mrs. Finnie our principal, she’s fairly nice, maybe she could tell all the kids and teachers to leave the building Pattie.  But she won’t do anything to stop it.  She would think like you, ‘It’s a new building.’ “

“When’s it going to happen?”

“Soon, and I’m saving your life Patty.  That’s because I love you, and Mrs Crafty is soon no more.  I will need a new teacher, and you will have to finish your internship in a different school.  I hope I see you again Patty, and I hope you will stay in touch so we can get married.”

Patty just stood there.  One boy at bat hit a line run and the ball came toward us just as I said, “It’s too late to warn them now Patty.”  There was a loud noise and the building we had been in crumbled like a cookie.  Some of it went down into the ground.  The earth shook like thunder does the air, and Pattie and I both crouched down.  The doors were no longer doors, the windows were not windows, some places the roof met the floor.

At first there was screaming and one of the baseball boys ran to the big children building to get help.  It was fifteen minutes later when loads of big fire engines began arriving.  by then all around me were the baseball boys.  The screams got lower as the fire engines came.  Most of the kids inside were already dead.  Mary my special friend who kissed me at lunch, and that broke a rule was crushed like Molly.  I should have made her leave. 

Patty sobbed, and hugged me, and she smelled like roses and bathroom powder like mother used.  I wondered if she was crying about someone in our class or the boy she ate lunch with in the lunchroom.  I think he was Josh.  He was in Mrs. Frosties class, as her intern.  The girls said they both went to the University of Florida together.  Well he wouldn’t marry Patty, and that was one more reason I could get her.

Parents began arriving after the fire trucks and they ran into the building roof and tried to pry up boards with their bare hands.  Some of them tore off their shirts and lifted things too big to lift to get to the screams.

Later a big fireman named Joe walked over to Patty and said, “I understand you and the boy were not in the building when it collapsed into the sinkhole.  You two were out here when the fire trucks arrived?” 

“This is Richard Brant and somehow he knew it was going to happen.  He told me he was out here because the building would fall.  He refused to go in.  I told him it was a new building and was safe.  He said he was saving my life, and I should pull, ‘The fire thingie’ but I wouldn’t.  He said I should warn the principal but I didn’t.”  She cried and the man wrote all of it down.  His car said ‘Ocala Fire Rescue’ on its side.  It was red like the big engines.  Some of them had their hoses off, but there was no fire.

My parents worked far away in Leesburg and Gainesville, and I rode the bus to day care, and stayed there for three hours.  All the other buses arrived for the kids buried under the school.  The kids were all  under there clutching drawings of birds, snakes and houses, that were just silly lines meant to be houses.  By the time I left there was not a sound from the art class.  Some children from other classes were put in ambulances and driven away fast, but fast didn’t do it.  when all you bones are broken, along with your head bones, well it is like Molly.

Gladys drove me to Kids Only Daycare in Ocala by myself.  She said, “What happened back there Richard.”

“Mostly people screamed, ‘God’, so maybe that’s it?  God happened.”

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Contact Ray Cates at: rcates2@cox.net   or fax him at: 1-352-629-1573

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Other stories by Ray Cates can be found with links at his story ‘Teeth’ at: http://unsightlyteeth.wordpress.com