WHAT'S LEFT BEHIND

I kid you not—this is the inside of my mother’s one-room schoolhouse on the east side of Kinde, Michigan. The original school piano sits among the ruins; layer upon layer of dust covers the keys; and a few wooden chairs stand on table tops, one final act in a routine day of learning.

Not too far away, between Bad Axe and Filion, another one-room schoolhouse thrives. In fact, some parents will tell you they like the smaller atmosphere, that it’s much more personal than those larger schools, the teacher can’t help but be accessible to the families.

I suppose this kind of arrangement works rather well for most, but I can’t help but think that there are teachers out there who, regardless of the student population, find one or two students to pick on on a regular basis.

I am no different.

One such student transferred out of our facility today. He had been in my class for approximately two years, and for whatever reasons I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t stop the practical jokes. Perhaps it had something to do with his mild temperament, or his sleeping in class, or that I had his younger brother some ten years earlier. We seldom talked about him, about how he beat Evander Holifield in an amateur boxing match, but his name did come up in conversation.

“You related to Ricky?” I asked when we first met.

“What if I am?” he answered.

The resemblance was certainly there. “Ricky worked the bag all the time at Ryan Correctional,” I said. “It’s too bad what happened.” He never went into detail, how his younger brother started boxing again after his parole, how his comeback at The Palace in Auburn Hills turned out to be fairly successful. None of it really mattered. Poor Ricky couldn’t break his drug addiction, couldn’t get that monkey off his back, not until he took his own life. His older brother just shook his head. Now, he too is gone. But those practical jokes will last a lifetime.

“Remember how you poured bottled water on his desk, then woke him up and accused him of drooling in his sleep?” one inmate reminds me. “This student,” he tells the guy sitting next to him “ran to the bathroom to get some paper towel. He actually thought it was his spit.”