conifer hearts 1

        They were the children of children he had taught, and they were playing a game he had not noticed before.  Using only their legs and feet, they exchanged a hackysack ball between them. He saw hook shots off insteps, slap shots off ankles. Saves by working knees and thighs.  Evidently no hands were permitted. Exchanges continued until the ball hit the ground. A winner was declared amid gales of laughter. Forthwith a new game began. The ball seemed to be made of compressed rags. It had no bounce. Nobody had to chase it far.
        A boy of about fifteen, wearing a floppy Rastafarian tam, scooted up on an X-treme Skateboard and joined the game.
        After years of witnessing playground evil, Artie Hoffman found himself astounded and amazed by this display of good sportsmanship and love of the game. Humble as it was. Indeed, these lads were the children of children he had taught. Loudly playing in the parking lot of the Mutual Aid co-operative food store not far from Victoria, British Columbia.


                                                                                         *


        One of the children he had taught was a woman of forty-two.
        Kelly Alabama.
        No one seemed to know her real name or care to know. She stood four feet ten inches. She violated his notion of symmetry. Suspended like gourds from her birdlike frame, her breasts were too large. Enormous pendulous things that sagged in defeat against her concave belly.
        When she first darkened his office doorway he saw only fleeting wrinkles in time. Like cloud shadows scudding over a meadow. She was the wraith fortold in a dream.
        "Mister Hoffman?"
        "Call me Artie. Come in."
        She wore an oversized Lynyrd Skynyrd tee-shirt. Black with Dixie Stars and Bars emblazoned across the back. A checkered flannel shirt was tied by the sleeves around her waist. Her bluejean shorts had been bleached threadbare across the buttocks. As she approached his desk her sandals clap-clapped like chalk erasers in the amber late afternoon.
        Up close he saw the first stages of crow's feet, etchings upon a pinched waxen face. And either she was balding or someone had cut her Kickapoo hair with a weed-whacker.
        "What's your name, young lady?"
        "Kelly. I was born in Alabama."
        "How did you come all this way?"
        "I would really love to tell you, Mister Artie. But right now I need your permission to join your third-grade class."
        The school was one for applied individual learning and was organized like a commune.
        She pushed an official document across his blotter.
        "I'd be honored to be your teacher, Miss Kelly from Alabama.