The Field Trip Part IX - The Final Chapter

“Mr. Vancouver, if you collected all these people for revenge then why did you let the crack head go?” Ginny asks.

“That crack head was my other brother,” I say.

There are oohs and ahs from the class. Statically four in ten of these little bastard will get hooked on something during their adulthood. I’d like to be around to ooh and ah them.

“You were going to kill your brother?” Billy asks.

I smack Billy on the back of his head. “No, I wasn’t going to kill my brother. I was going to save him. He never did anything wrong. He was a victim just like me.”

“A victim of what?” Amber asks.

I look at Mr. Bunion and scowl. “Nothing…something long ago. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Did Mr. Bunion do something?” Ginny asks. “You said he was just a substitute. What did he ever do to you?”

“Mr. Bunion,” I say and point accusingly at him, “has been the janitor here for thirty years. Haven’t you Mr. Bunion?”

Mr. Bunion looks at me with his tired, red rimmed eyes and nods.

“He used to take young boys down into the furnace room…”

“Is that what happened to your brother?” Ginny asks.

I nod. The children in the room gasp.

“That’s fucked up,” the whore says. She’s got spunk and I like that. Maybe she’ll live an then again maybe she won’t.

“It is fucked up,” I say. “Mr. Bunion, I want you to go up to the chalk board and write ‘I am a pathetic piece of shit child molester,’ ten thousand times on the chalkboard.”

“Then Mr. Bunion really wasn’t a substitute?” Ginny says.

“No, he wasn’t,” I say. “Mr. Bunion, did you hear me? I asked you go up to the chalk board and write.”

“I can’t write. My hands are handcuffed behind my back.”

The old man begins to cry. Greasy tears run down his saddle bag like cheeks.

“Use your fucking teeth,” I say.

Ginny shoots up from her desk like a hydrophobic woodchuck runs from a sponge bath. “You can’t just go around and kill everyone that has done bad things to you.”

“Maybe I can’t but Peter can. Peter, I want you to shoot Mr. Bunion,” I say.

Peter reaches for his backpack and then stops.

“What are you waiting for?” I say. “Shoot him. Shoot him now!”

“I’ll shoot him,” Billy says, running towards me.

I rear back and backhand Billy hard across the face and he falls to the ground. He lies on the floor and begins to cry.

“I didn’t tell you to shoot him, Billy. I told Peter to do it. Now, shoot that piece of shit, Peter.”

Peter looks at Mr. Bunion and then to Ginny and then to me. “I uh, I don’t want to shoot him, Mr. Vancouver,” he says.

I walk over and backhand Peter hard, knocking the pistol out of his hand. Peter hits the ground and the guns squirts out of his hand.

The kids are all screaming and crying. The end is near. I walk back up to my desk and get the can of gasoline that I put there this morning and pour it over my desk.

“Stop it Mr. Vancouver you’re scaring us,” Ginny cries.

I set the can of gasoline down and remove another pistol from the pocket of my suit coat. I hold it to Mr. Bunion’s head.

“No, don’t kill him,” Ginny cries. “If he did bad things then the police will arrest him. I will tell them what he did.”

“Please don’t shoot me,” Mr. Bunion cries.

“Are you sure about that, Ginny? Child molesters are horrible people,” I say.

“Believe me I know they are but if you kill him you’re going to really screw up all these kids worse than they already are.”

“Fuck them,” I say and pushed the gun up against Mr. Bunion’s head.

CRACK!

A bullet hits me in the chest and I fall. The pressure in my chest is incredible but I still manage to pull the trigger of my pistol. Don’t fret, it’s a cigarette lighter. A flame shoots out the end and my gasoline soaked desk catches on fire.

Ginny rushes up to my side. “No, Mr. Vancouver, don’t die. You made mistakes. You were hurt but you can make things better.”

I see Billy standing behind her with the gun in his hand. I knew he had it in him.

“Ginny, I need you to get everyone out of the classroom.”

I hand her the keys to the handcuffs so she can release what remains of the city dwellers I rounded up earlier in the day. I really had nothing against the Korean store owner either. I had really gone in the store to buy cigarettes and got a little overzealous.

“Ginny, get everyone out except Mr. Bunion. He stays here with me. Hurry now. There is a bomb set to go off in two minutes.”

“But you’ll die, Mr. Vancouver,” Ginny says.

“Everyone dies, Ginny. Now go, hurry. You can save them.”

“Get out, get out,” Ginny cries. “Everyone out.”

The children are running out of the room as the flames quickly spread. I see Peter standing there staring at me. He takes the backpack filled with the various guns and devices we’ve used throughout the day and throws them onto my burning desk, turns and walks out the door.

I smile. That kid’s going to be all right.

Ginny runs gallantly about the room gathering the other students. My little Florence Nightingale. I know she’ll be a big shot someday.

When everyone has cleared the room she hurries to the door but pauses there in the doorway before she leaves. The flames soon become too much to bear and she is gone. All my students are safe and I’ve saved three of them which is more than most teachers can say. Oh, yeah and I’m leaving you the reader a final note. It is in the mail and will arrive in your mailbox in two days. Please, read it. Goodbye…for now.

* * *

Dear Reader,

I bet right about now you’re feeling bad for Mr. Bunion or then again maybe you’re not. Maybe you figure a child molester deserves to burn to death and well, you might be right about that. I’m not going to argue that point but I am going to tell you that Mr. Bunion is not a child molester and he’s not dead and either am I. I was wearing a bullet proof vest when Billy shot me and you see Mr. Bunion is a good friend of mine. Obviously we didn’t burn to death and were long gone before the bomb we planted went off, erasing our tracks. You see we’d built a trap door under my desk and easily escaped into the basement and out a tunnel we’d dug which led to the cornfield and a waiting SUV. We were actually a couple miles down Interstate 81 when the bomb went off. Everything went down according to plan, according to our plan.

So how did this all start? Let me tell you. You see, after my wife left me for that jockey I would often stay late at school grading papers and drinking whiskey mixed with Diet Coke. It wasn’t long before Mr. Bunion and I--being the only two in the building—began to share drinks and the stories of how our lives had gone wrong. After months of stewing in our own regrets it occurred to us both, one night after finishing off two fifths of Jameson, that we should take revenge on those that had fucked up our lives. Why not? We reasoned. We had nothing to lose. So we came up with the plan that you have just read about.

I guess you’re also wondering why I chose the students I did to be part of our little revenge scheme and I will tell you why. I chose Peter because he came from a bad home and had propensity for violence. By the time he was sixteen he would have been in jail, probably for life or maybe dead. I saw something good underneath his coarsened exterior though and I knew that if I gave him purpose and then made him make a final choice, to either join the dark side and commit his life to crime or do the right thing that he would chose the latter. He had to because I forced his hand in the face of the one thing that mattered most to him…Ginny. That’s right, he had a secret crush on her. One day I found after school I leafed through his notebook and it was filled with poems of his unrequited love for her. Unwittingly, Ginny saved Peter from a life of crime.

I chose Ginny to join in my revenge plot because Peter had a crush on her and also because Ginny was molested by her neighbor several years ago. She’s tried to commit suicide several times during the school year and I knew it was only a matter of time before she succeeded. On the outside she was obnoxious and a know-it-all, on the inside she was slowly dying. I needed for that strong girl to emerge again and she did. Ginny is going to make it. I will be sorely disappointed if she becomes a Republican.

I chose Billy because I saw a kid that just wasn’t making it in the world. I needed to get his ass in gear. If Billy wouldn’t have made that final decision to shoot me, if he hadn’t finally stood up in the face of danger then he never would. Billy will one day be a success and I’d like to think like any good teacher that I played a part in this success. Good luck Billy and forget about the marble penis it’s in police custody.

So, that is that. Mr. Bunion and I are probably drinking cold beer on a warm beach surrounded by beautiful women about now. Don’t come looking for us because you’ll never find us. A word of caution though, if you were someone that once fucked Mr. Bunion over you’d better go into hiding because sometime, somewhere Mr. Bunion and I will come back to revenge those that fouled up his life and we will succeed.

Sincerely,

Mr. Vancouver

P.S. My brother is well and in rehab outside Philadelphia. Mr. Bunion and I rounded him up before we took off. They tell me he’s doing well. Stop by and see him if you have the time. I know he’s going to make it, the Vancouvers are survivors….