Little People

LITTLE PEOPLE/Jonathan Pitts KENNY RIDES THE HORSE, a sophomore in my tenth-grade Language Arts class, does not know how to write but loves to draw. When I assign an in-class writing exercise on the subject of Truth—What Is Truth?—he grins, waves his hand and asks for a large sheet of white drawing paper. I think I understand his tone of anxious urgency, as if, were he not to have drawing paper very soon, he would more than likely self-destruct. "Mr. Pitts," he says, clearing his throat and unzipping his pencil case, which causes the rest of the class to stop their gossiping and look up from their magazines or biology texts or sleep. He waves and points to the bookcase behind my desk. "I think I'll be needing some of the big white paper." "Fine, Kenny," I say. "You bet." Kenny and I have become good friends, in the way that a white teacher can be friends with an Indian student, whatever way that may be. Neither one of us is comfortable here, in the school, except, seemingly , when we're together. Kenny and I are slow learners. Most days I have trouble believing I know anything; the cloud of unknowing billows out around me in proportion to the triviality of the subject matter. This is a good thing, I remind myself. Together, Kenny and I don't feel stupid. We seem to share a purpose. Some days our friendship feels deeper, so that after school, when the last locker has banged shut, I am relived to see Kenny standing before my desk, smiling. He usually brings a few plastic Star Wars figurines he has casually ripped off from the Wal-Mart in Billings and stuffed inside the huge cargo pockets of his bright orange Denver Broncos parka. I have fantasized about doing this myself, about how good it would feel to finally bring home the 658-piece Lego Millennium Falcon my son so patiently admires. With Kenny's help, I could slit open the box and take the model out of the store piece by piece, all 658 of them, fancy-dancing past the cashiers in invisible hyperspeed. "Today was a sad day," Kenny says. "I felt myself getting angry at people. I felt myself angry at my mom. She partied with her friends all night. She asked me things, like if I wanted to get high too. This is Anakin Skywalker, Mr. Pitts," he says as he carefully sets the little blond plastic boy on my desk. "He looks like Leonardo Di Caprio from Titanic, only smaller." The Missouri Review · 79 "It's good to know why you're angry, Kenny," I say. "Most of the time we don't know, and that's what can really mess us up. But it's also important to know, or just to be aware of, when you're angry. It forces us to keep cooler when we might just, you know, make some trouble for ourselves." "This is Qui-Gon Jinn," Kenny says as he sets another figurine next to Anakin. "I heard someone stole your Star Wars video, Mr. Pitts," he says. I took my son's video to class to kill time during semester exams. Someone walked away with it, Tm certain, during Crow Language class, which uses my room fifth period, while I sit in the library grading papers. This has been a major ethical dilemma for me because I think the thief is a Crow, a wild illiterate named Washington McCormick who dictates alcoholic sonnets to his teaching aides. Tm pissed at Washington not only because he ripped me off but because he's talented . He couldn't care less about poetry. I've been walking around alternately full of rage at Washington or ironically admiring him to the point of secretly cheering the robbery. How else could he get his hands on a Star Wars video? Then I imagine him and his friends getting stoned while watching the film and replacing the soundtrack with a Snoop Doggy Dogg CD. And I think of my son Jackson, who looks a bit like Anakin, howling down the universe for his...