In my room, think prison cell, at Juvenile Hall. I remembered mom didn’t say a single word when she picked us up at the Golden Gate Bridge. She opened the door of the car and motioned us into the back seat with a head nudge and a glare.
  Patrick gave me an elbow and mouthed, ‘Mom is mad. Really, really mad.’ I nodded. I hated the silence. I wanted her to yell. Do something. Anything.
  We were driving up Clipper Avenue she finally spoke, ‘You’re father will be home tomorrow, Collin. It will be your responsibility to tell him about this whole incident. You are the oldest, almost a man. And real men tell the truth.
    And I was going to tell my dad the truth the first time I saw him. I didn’t think he would bust a gasket. Oh, he would have frowned. Brought his eyebrows together like he did whenever he was disappointed. And tossed me the old,  ‘how-could-you-be-so-stupid look.’
  He would have warned me about the dangers of the Golden Gate Bridge. He would have brought his eyebrows together and told me how disappointed he was I had involved Patrick. But then I’m sure he would have tussled my hair, laughed and said something like, ‘Collin, you’re a Daily. You and your brother’s behavior reflect on your mother and me. Think before you act. Do not embarrass your mother, me, or the Daily name.’ My dad always brought up the Daily name. I was going to tell him. But I never got the chance.
 
    I remembered the knock on our front door. There were two uniformed police officers. I almost peed my pants. My heart started beating like a Ringo Starr drum solo. That fat rat Stearson from the Golden Gate Bridge had pressed charges. I was going to prison. Before either one of the police officers said a word I screamed, “MOM!”
    She came out of the kitchen wiping flour dough on her apron. ‘What?’  She started
to say until she saw the two police officers. “Hello. How may . . .” I heard her gasp. “Yes?” Her voice cracked. Mom already knew.
    “Mrs. Daily, there has been an accident.”
     My Mom grabbed me for balance, then she crumbled to the floor.

I

   
     At the hospital, dad and I only got to talk twice. There were plastic tubes with stuff going into him and stuff coming out. The first time I was shooed out of the room pretty fast.  But dad still had time to give me a everything's-going-to-be okay smile and a thumbs up.
     The second time I stood by his bed he slipped off his Daily family ring and slipped it over my thumb . . .'Man . . . of the family . . . now,' he whispered painfully. I stared at the ring. Two right hands, palms up.  Faith and sincerity. A lion right below. Justice. My brain was just digesting the significance of his action when a machine behind my dad's bed started binging and an alarm went off. I was ushered out of his room and never allowed back.
    My dad and I never got to speak again and our mom was never the same. Patrick was young. He didn’t get it. For several months he would climb on our couch every evening, look out the front window and ask, “Mom, when's daddy coming home?' If my mom was in earshot she'd race to another part of the house and didn’t return for a while.

     I had a fairly good vocabulary by then. Deceased wasn't a part of it. A lady named Alice Kerr in the school office told me it was more polite to say deceased than dead when asked about my father. It took me a long time to accept that he was never coming back.
It took a long time before I realized there would be no more games of catch – No more dad and me sitting at a chess board.  No more perfect bacon and cinnamon French toast.  Dad would never play the human tree again.  Patrick and I would never hang on his arms and laugh and screech like monkeys. . . It was much harder on my mother. Eventually too hard.     

 

II

    The following Wednesday I was back inhaling mildew in the office of Dr. Edward Allen Foultz.’ I didn't know about the good doctor, but I'd had a crappy week. The authorities wouldn't let Patrick leave his latest foster home and visit me, and some dork from the welfare department said I owed them two thousand one hundred and fifty-five dollars, and they wanted their money back. All of it. Right. Maybe I could open a chain of lemonade stands from my cell in Juvenile Hall. I'd like to see one person who works for welfare try to support a family of three on three hundred and eighty- dollars a month.

    “Good afternoon, Collin.” Dr. Foultz pointed to the wicker chair. A reprieve. I still wasn’t couch fodder. At least, not yet. I noticed the cushion was different. Same embroidered Siamese cat, but this time it was on its hunches staring out of a narrow, arched window at the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
    I couldn’t resist. I pointed to the cushion and looked at Foultz.
     “Your cat?”

     His entire demeanor changed. Dr. Foultz's eyes glassed over. Foultz liked this cat. “We called her Thai. As in Thailand. As in Siam and Siamese. . . She passed away last year.” He turned a framed picture toward me. An attractive woman was holding the same cat lovingly in her arms.  I decided not to ask him about the woman. . . .
    I did want to ask him about the thick, leather-bound book on his desk. The florescent yellow bookmark had moved closer to the end. But I never got the chance. Out came his folders and notebook. Foultz leaned forward, so did  his wire-rim glasses. The bristle of nose hair had been plucked. And I didn't know who the patient before me was, but Foultz ear lobe had been tugged to crimson.

    One of the best things about being a kid is that adults don't notice when you notice. I was staring at his Ubangi ear, but Foultz thought I was stalling.
    Foultz tapped the dial on his wristwatch. "Time is important, Collin." He held up his fingers. "We only have four more visits."
  “Last week you said five.” I didn’t really care. By now I was used to be lied to by adults. I just wanted  him to know I was  paying attention.
  “The Child Welfare Department has cut our sessions down to four.”
  “What else is new?”
    Foultz shrugged apologetically.
    I looked past his shoulder. On the wall, behind his desk were fourteen  ‘I-Did-This,’
certificates framed in glass. In my room, before my dad died. I had a baseball award for most spirited player. Which told a lot about my lack of athletic prowess. I had a passion for chess, maps, and big words. None of which gave certificates you could hang on your wall. Since then, I’d added two good conduct ribbons from the traffic patrol at Saint Agnes School, but that was before the fire. My dad never got to see those.

    “Time is of the essence-- ,” Foultz offered. “We should begin.”
    ‘Where should ‘We’ begin?’ I thought. The Doctor asks the kid. His question was my
carrot. Psychiatrist Edward Alan Foultz, with fourteen certificates and degrees, knew exactly where he wanted to begin.
    "You explained. . . Well, covered the Golden Gate Bridge incident. Today could we begin with the school fire?" He shot me a ‘how-about-it-kid look’ and scribbled on his note pad.
    ‘Pyromaniac,’ I thought. He’s writing pyromaniac. I knew this was coming. People were still asking about the fire. But you can’t just jump into a story about setting your grammar school on fire. There were extenuating circumstances. Even if you didn’t like your school. Which I did. . . Well, most of the time. Yeah, there were times I didn’t. Anyway, you shouldn’t  try to burn down a Catholic school. God could be involved.  Talk about your Mortal Sin count sky rocking. Ugh.

     I needed to establish facts. Defend myself. Particularly since my new best friend and I were originally accused of attempted arson. My mind raced into the past.
 

III
 

    In the seventh grade, most of the girls are taller than the boys. Carolyn Fitz-Gearld was dark, beautiful, and taller than everyone. Even most of the nuns. She hated it. That year she'd started to walk with a slump. Then Stan ‘The Man’ Halverson joined our class. Think of Sweetums on Sesame Street. Tall, towering above all the other characters on the show except Big Bird. Stan had a bulldog lower jaw with black hair follicles erupting from his chin and a thin line of hair along his upper lip. Picture that and bingo, you have a good image of Stan ‘The Man” Halverson. A seventh grader with a five o’clock shadow. More important, God finally gave Carolyn Fitz-Gearld a dancing partner.
    Stan ‘The Man.” gained the moniker almost immediately. Sister Berkman was our
seventh grade teacher, and that year she doubled as our acting principal. The second day, Stan walked into class Sister Berkman handed him a razor, some shaving cream and told him to go to the boys room and ‘take care of that stuff on your face.’
    Our class watched in awe.  Stan threw his shoulders back and sauntered out the door.
He was the first and last kid to ever have to leave our classroom room to shave.
    My mind wandered in another direction. Where did the razor and shaving cream come from? It was the first time I thought about nuns shaving. There were two of them with prominent moustaches. I knew most women shaved their legs and pits, but nuns? Did nuns shave those bits? Did God want women to shave their legs? If you’re God and that’s what you want; why give women hair on their legs in the first place?
    New to ‘The City,’ and St. Agnes, Stan was a legend by lunch time. I wasn't far away when two stuck up girls from eight grade came over to rub one of Stan's' well shaven checks.
    ‘Nicked yourself,’ one girl said. The other girl tittered.
    ‘Beat it,’ Stan motioned them away. I watched in wonder. No one in the seventh grade had ever told an eighth-grade girl to ‘beat it’.
    I don’t remember how we ended up sitting together, but we did. And we started talking about facial hair, girls, and football and by the time the bell rang we were friends. And have been ever since.
 

IV

    Sister Berkman took an instant liking to Stan. She hadn't taken the same liking to me. The first time I stepped through the door to her seventh-grade classroom she pointed to my red hair.  'Ah, ha. Mister Collin Daily the redheaded rascal.  ‘We’ll have none of your shenanigans in my classroom, ‘she pinched my cheek. ‘Will we now, Mister Daily?” She leaned closer.  'Oh, I’ve heard all about you and your antics.’
     I knew who she’d heard 'ALL' about me from. Sister Berkman was a different woman, but she wore the same habit and used the same tone. My mind raced still further back in time to Sister Mary Mercy. After one week most of our class had dubbed her Mercy the ‘Merciless’.  The exceptions were Helen Porter and Joan Lebdef. They both  really loved god, school, and nuns in general. I believe, both girls dreamed of spending their lives sleeping on wooden floors, eating gruel and abstaining from all worldly pleasures. In fifth grade, worldly pleasures were vague. A chocolate sundae! A new Captain Marvel comic book.   
    While the promise of an idyllic seventh year of education did not bode well, at least I knew I wouldn’t be getting routinely swatted for my behavior. My mother had taken care of that!

     It was about a month after I’d I almost cut off my brother Patrick’s thumb with a butcher knife ─
 

V  

    That afternoon Patrick and I had seen a movie called the Crimson Pirate, there was sword fighting, sea battles, and damsels in distress. Nine and seven-year-old boys are always looking for a dangerous deed to perform. Like trying to save a little kid crossing the street and you get hit by a bus and die . . .  It’s straight to heaven. No time in purgatory and probably a sizable mansion.
     Patrick and I were always saving imaginary damsels and slaying dragons, but playing pirate was our favorite. And it’s hard for a nine or seven-year-old to get their hands on real swashbuckling sabers. But when no one’s home and one of your chores is to clean out the dishwasher and two butcher knives are resting on the top tier next to the wine glasses . . . Suddenly my brother and I were armed and snarling like real pirates. Patrick swished his butcher knife through the air screaming, 'Avast matey.'
    With my left arm behind my back, I lunged. 'Die me hearty.' Our blades clashed.
    My brother parried. 'Arr, tis not me time to die.'
    Our blades met again and again. Patrick ducked under the kitchen table and tunneled from one side to the other.  As he emerged I leaped on a chair. 'Tis time ye meet thy maker!' I cried.
     'Okay. Okay.' Patrick started laughing. 'I give.'
    He reached out and grabbed the blade of my butcher knife. I pulled back. Error. We both stared at Patrick's thumb hanging to one side on a hinge of thumb skin. There was just the open wound for a second. You could see bone, then blood started to spurt all over. Which was the exact moment mom stepped into the kitchen with an arm load of grocery's from Mr. Baccigalupi's corner store.
     For playing with butcher knives, we were grounded for one month.  No radio, T.V., phone or friends.  Weekend were no exceptions. After two weeks, Patrick was offered an early parole, after all he'd almost lost his thumb. He didn't take it.  He spent the last two weeks right by my side. 'Hey, we're brothers,' he said. 'And you'd do the same for me.'
    I wasn't sure I if would, but I liked to I would.
    Patrick's gesture of loyalty was well received in the Daily family. Once his thumb was almost healed, our one-month sentence served and we swore never to play with butcher knives, my dad and mom called for a family meeting. This would be the second to last time my dad reminded us of our responsibility to the Daily name. And probably the catalyst that set my Mother’s Irish-blood-a-boil causing her to don boxing gloves and step into the ring for me and the Daily name.
 

VI

 
    Contrary to what was currently going on in my life, I don’t remember being a bad  kid. A bit of mischief and mayhem, sure – though nothing mean-spirited, cruel, or evil. Up until the fifth grade I really liked school. I loved learning big words,  telling jokes and kind of liked being dubbed ‘class clown.’  Although short, I’d had big hair, red, and curly.  Back in those days more than one strange woman would run her well-manicured finger through my hair – without asking - and say, ‘Oh, what I’d give to have that color or some of those curls.’
     'Talk to Lady Clairol' I thought. Adults don't get it. Kids, especially young boys, hate those comments and contact. Or, at least, this kid did. Many a night, I would kneel beside my bed and pray for baldness. I thought it would be cool. The only completely bald kid in San Francisco. Maybe with one of those Caesar hair fringes around the edge of my skull.  

    The first day of school in fifth grade was September 3. I carried the Daily name and my big red hair up the corridor to room 5. Room five was for the fifth-grade students. Room 6 was for sixth- grade students.  Etc. There’s always been a big trumpet blare for the high-quality of a of a Catholic education. But if the Catholic Church believes that a second grader cannot find their classroom unless it is branded with a big # 2 when numbers were taught in the first grade, apparently they didn’t trust their own methodology. I like to slip in one of those big words now and then.  

    Our door had a big #5 above the door jam. And in case you missed that one. About fifth graders eye-high, there was another #5 above the doorknob.

    I loved fourth grade. I loved our teacher  Ms. Katherine Felece. She wasn’t a nun. She was a normal person.  Every lunch hour,  I’d watched her dance through our school yard; blond ponytail bobbing left and right. Mahogany brown, doe-like eyes, beautiful. I wasn’t sure if I was having impure thoughts, but I wanted to marry Ms. Felece.
     I was a little shaky on impure thoughts in general. In a religion class - a 'boys-only' religion class - Father O'Malley assured all of us ‘impure thoughts’ were just like doing the real thing. In the fourth grade, I was a bit fuzzy on the ‘Real Thing.’ But even then, I suspected with Ms. Felece, I would enjoy it.

    At the end of fourth grade our entire class of fifty-two kids said a prayer. We even
crossed our hearts and hoped to die – a widespread practice among Catholic  kids. We prayed that Ms. Felece would also be our fifth-grade teacher.  
  Besides, math, and English, Ms. Felece taught us about Egypt, Greece and the Roman
Empire. On the last day of school, we give her models of the Acropolis and the Roman Coliseum different teams had secretly made out of sugar cubes. James Mills ─ Ms. Felece always called him James ─ gave her a hand drawn picture of the Goddess Athena sitting on a golden throne with a spear in one hand, and her shield in the other. Athena looked a lot like Ms. Felece. James framed the picture himself.
    We all wanted Ms. Felece to be our teacher again. I wanted her to be my teacher forever. Twice I started a list of guests for our wedding. I even included Helen Porter and Joan Lebdef if they weren’t saving souls in the jungles of central Africa.
    We never saw Ms. Felece again. Someone heard someone say she’d been spending her evenings with Satan. The same someone said she’d returned to Saint Agnes in August, before classes began, five months pregnant and without a wedding ring. I still loved her.

VII

    Before I step across the threshold into Room #5.  Before I could enjoy my gratified status of being a fifth grader. Before I sat in my new – really old desk -- complete with one boxes of extra crayons, a bright orange eraser, two number two pencils and ‘SHARPENED’ scissors, because “we were older and could be trusted with sharp-ended, honed scissors now.”  Before I  put one foot over the threshold into Room 5,  Ms. Felece’s surrogate─ Sister Mary Mercy – The Merciless seized my wrist with a strong, curved, ominous talon. ‘The ‘Red Head!’  She had beautiful grey eyes which regrettably matched her severely gray pallor. ‘Mr. Collin Daily arrives!’ She flapped out both of her elbows blocking my way into Room #5.  Her eyes scanned me from my sneakers to my hair.  ‘Mr. Daily, I want to make things clear from the start. I do not tolerate disruption or interruption in my classroom. I understand you think you have quite a sense of humor. A red headed clown. Personally, I do not like clowns. There for I don't tolerate clowns.’     Her gray eyes pierced. Zombie like. Hungry Zombie like. Hungry for a kid.  A kid with red hair.
    “ ‘You are not funny are you, Mr. Daily? You are not even amusing. I have found laughter does not contribute to one's education.  Silence is Golden. Do we understand each other?’”
    I stood there. Frozen. Merciless dropped an elbow to let some of my fourth grade ‘friends’ slip past me and silently enter Room 5.  James and Steven Mills stood behind me bravely until Sister Merciless shoved me aside and pounced forward. ‘Do either of you gentlemen have something you wish to discuss with me?’ She shot a withering look from face to face.  
    The Mills brothers shot me a what-can-we-do look and decided they wanted no part of this encounter. They scurried into Room #5.  
    My brand-new fifth-grade teacher used the opportunity to turn all her attention back to me.  ‘Mr. Daily, are you listening?’ It was a rattle snake hissssssssss.  ‘Have we reached a mutual understanding?’
    I stood blank. Terrified. She was tall. I was small. With freckles. I was neither a fifth-grade genius nor a Mensa candidate. But I got the message. She squeezed my wrist harder. It hurt. My Batman lunch pail involuntarily clanked against one knee.
    ‘I do not condone nonsense at any time in my classroom, Mr. Daily.  So, we will have
none of yours. Will we?’
    Her lips were made of a toxic form of cellophane, wrinkled, crinkled, and cackled an inch from my ear. Her last salvo left a bit of cackle-spittle on my forehead.  How could I ignore such a sweet hello? Such a warm and welcome to my fifth year of education.
    She put a thumb low on my left cheek and a forefinger a bit higher and ever so slowly brought them together. It hurt. My lips puckered open, a human largemouth bass. It hurt. ‘Do you understand me?’ She yanked my hair up and down in affirmation.
    I had a sneaky suspicion fifth grade might be more difficult than fourth. How difficult
was revealed exactly one week later when I didn’t raise my hand and shouted out the name of the largest lake in South America. The kids started to laugh. Sister Mary Merciless did not. She brought out a perforated paddle. My mind went further back in time.
 

IX

    My love for geography began the Christmas my mom and dad got me a jig-saw puzzle of the United States. I loved putting it together and taking it apart. I learned the shape of every state and memorized every state capital.
    Before my sixth birthday, my Dad gifted me a cool National Geographic Atlas. I loved it. I  memorized deserts, lakes, and bays. I traced rivers with my index finger from their source in high mountains to their ends in deltas, gulfs, and oceans.
     A Mercator projection of a circular world grew in my brain. Soon, I could draw and
recognize most of the outlines of most of the countries on the planet. Admittedly,  I was weak in math and conjugating irregular verbs, but my atlas brought me the entire world. I wanted  to swim in its lakes, canoe down rivers, leap from waterfalls, crawl across the sands of the Sahara in search of  water, scale tall mountains, scuba dive seas and oceans. Surviving it all, I would come home to lecture and write my about my adventures using new words I’d learned in my travels.
    About this same time, while I was still squealing over unexpected classroom burps and farts; I discovered that the largest lake in South America was called ‘Titicaca,’ I was in comedic heaven.  Dumbfounded.  What group of adults would name a lake . . . Titicaca?  
    ‘Titicaca’  rolled off my tongue. It echoed through my brain. I practiced saying it in the shower. And when Sister Mary Merciless pulled down a map of North America, slipped her wooden pointer out of its sheath, pointed to the Great Lakes, and asked the class which lake was the largest.  I knew the answer.  Lake Superior was the largest. Superior, duh?  I learned the HOMES trick to memorize the Great Lakes: HOMES: Huron,  Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior from my National Geographic Atlas.
    “What is the largest lake in North America?” Sister Merciless asked.
    I hadn’t raised my hand. “Lake Titicaca,” spat out my mouth. A verbal spitball. The entire class burst into laughter. Sister Mary Merciless did not. I swear her eyes turned beet red. Fangs appeared from her gums. She sped down the aisle and towered over my desk. Everyone in the class stopped breathing.
     She held up two fingers. ‘Clown!’
     I remembered she hated clowns.
     ‘You have two choices.’
     I already knew that.
     “You may visit the principal.”
     She gave me an evil grin. That would mean a short walk down the corridors of doom to the principal’s office where Father O'Malley would call my parents. They would have to stop whatever they were doing, get in the car and  come to school.  My mom and dad would be terribly disappointed, and the Daily name dishonored well into the 24th century.
      ‘Or. . .  a swat.’  The glee in Sister Merciless's voice was palatable.
     I chose the  swat over dishonoring the Daily name. I never had to chose a swat before.

X

    There were other swat victims. The most famous, without a doubt, was Alan Olivera.  He sat one desk behind me. Alan was the perfect student. He was shy. Quiet. Polite, and my romantic rival.  He was deeply in love with Ms. Felece too.  
    Two days before Halloween Alan had earned his moment of fame. For over forty minutes Alan had raised his hand and asked Sister Mary Merciless – in his soft Spanish accent – to be excused so he could use the bathroom.
    His final plea had ended with a WHACK when Sister Merciless slammed her long wooden pointer down on her desk. In her abrupt Bostonian accent, she warned, ‘Any strong man could and would control his bowels until recess!’
    Just the word ‘bowels’ would usually make our class laugh. When Merciless said bowels we cringed.  She pointed a talon toward the wall clock. Fifteen minutes to go.   

    Within hours, the name Alan Olivera’s had tidal waved through the hallways of St. Agnes School and reached heroic status. James Bond-like . . . dum, tada dum tada, dum tada dum, tada dum tada dum . . .
    Somehow, in the middle of math, Alan miraculously managed to sneak out of his seat and avoiding the Alcatraz floodlight like beams of Merciless eyes, crawl between a labyrinth of desks into our fifth-grade cloakroom where he solved his dilemma.

    During recess, I experienced my first taste of fame by association. Kids from upper and lower grades badgered me in the play yard, in the hallways and the bathroom.
    ‘Collin, did someone in your class really take a dump in your cloakroom?’
    “Yep.”
    ‘How cool is that? A real dump!’
    ‘In Merciless class? No way.’
    “Did anyone see him? Come on, Collin someone had to see him. Did you see him?”
     “Man, I’ve always wanted to do that. I mean take a shit right in a classroom.”
     “Whoa, he did it in Merciless’s classroom?  Kid’s out of his mind.”
     “Alan’s going straight to hell.”
     “No, probably just limbo.” James Mills said.  “I mean no way is that a mortal sin. When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
     Sister Merry Merciless was not Sherlock Homes, but a common garden slug could have solved the appearance of the deposit and the identity of the depositor.  Alan Olivera was the first kid to get a swat from Sister Mary Merciless.  Lake Titicaca was my first swat.  It wasn't my last.

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