Student teachers usually sit at the back, observing the real teacher for a couple of weeks. But that didn’t happen.
Early in the first week Mrs. Stanley kind of bogged down on improper fractions. We knew fractions but not improper fractions. Mrs. Stanley got her numerator all balled up with her denominator.
Mr. McLeod came to the front of the room and showed us how to convert between improper fractions and mixed numbers. He drew some pie charts. So after that, he was back and forth as needed. When he turned around from the blackboard that first day, Natalie’s hand was up.
“What is it, Natalie?” sighed Mrs. Stanley.
“This question is for Mr. McLeod,” Natalie said.
“Is it about improper fractions?”
“Certainly not. There is nothing to them,” Natalie said. “What I want to know, and I speak for the rest of the . . . troops, is do you actually intend to become a teacher, or are you going to be an actor in big-budget films? You’re trending on Twitter, and the word on the Entertainment Weekly website is that you’re scouting for an agent.”
Mrs. Stanley rubbed her forehead. We were all ears. Natalie’s phone was in her hand.
Mr. McLeod stroked his smooth chin.
“Being an actor would mean going out to Hollywood, right?”
We guessed so.
“Does anybody know where Hollywood is?”
Not specifically. Raymond Petrovich may have had a sketchy idea. His hand was halfway up. Some of us had been to Disneyland. Or was it Disney World?
Mr. McLeod was reaching around for something in his back pocket. “California is a couple of thousand miles from Chicago.” He pulled out a Cubs cap and put it on. “And from the Cubs, so I don’t think so.”
Time skipped a beat. Then we were cheering. Up on our desks, doing the wave. Our eyes stung. We yelled the place down.
You could have heard us all over school. The sixth grade next door had to hear. That may have been when the trouble started. Sixth graders don’t like anybody having a better time than they’re having. And we had the first guy teacher in the history of the school. How annoying was that?
• • •
Mr. McLeod couldn’t leave Argus at home every morning. If you didn’t give the dog a job, he’d mope and get off his feed. So he was up and down the aisles like Mr. McLeod.
He herded us every day and figured out we were to be in our seats when the bell rang. He was the shepherd. We were the sheep. He was more than a dog.
Feeding him was pretty easy. After his paw-shaking picture went viral, we got over three hundred pounds of complimentary dog food. Argus had his own FedEx deliveries straight into the classroom. We were up to here with Alpo. We drew up a schedule of who’d walk him at lunch since Mr. McLeod couldn’t leave the building without being mobbed, interviewed, or proposed to.
It was a really good week, except Friday was Argus’s last day. He’d been re-assigned to the police force of Madison, Wisconsin.
We gave him a going-away party, of course. We broke out the dog food, and there were refreshments for the troops too. Every day that Mr. McLeod was with us, people’s mothers sent pans of brownies. A ton of brownies. And the au pairs brought unusual Swedish pastries. We lived in a fog of powdered sugar.
It was a great party, as you can see on YouTube.
And the sixth graders next door no doubt heard every bark and giggle through the wall, and didn’t like it. I mean—we had our own dog and baked goods, and what did they have? Long division?
Unknown hands pushed a manila envelope under the classroom door one morning the next week. It was full of dog poop. Not Argus’s. So the sixth graders were really steamed.
Argus knew he was in transit and about to ship out. After his party was over and he’d licked his bowl clean, he herded us back into our seats. Then he made one last round of the rows, giving each one of us a nose bump. Russell Beale was asleep with his head on his desk, so Argus stuck his tongue into Russell’s ear and moved on.
We were crying by then, and Mrs. Stanley was blowing her nose. Then Argus went for his leash and carried it in his mouth over to Mr. McLeod. Now we were sobbing.
Then just before the last bell rang, the classroom door opened, and Uncle Paul walked in. Uncle Paul out of the blue. Six foot four, in the door: hand-tailored double-breasted blazer. Brass buttons. Wingtips. No tie. Designer stubble. Unauthorized, but already in the classroom. Somewhere on him was the furnace room key that Dad had given him.
“Why, Paul,” said Mrs. Stanley, who hadn’t seen him since Christmas. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I’m the backup driver,” Uncle Paul said. School was officially over. We were out of our desks again, milling around—sobbing, eating brownies. It was chaos, but Uncle Paul’s eyes met mine. “Your dad’s taken your grandpa Magill to a doctor’s appointment. Just routine.”
Then here came Argus, offering a paw. Uncle Paul shook it. That gave me time to step up and make the introductions the way Grandpa had taught me.
“Uncle Paul, this is our student teacher, Mr. McLeod.” Like Uncle Paul didn’t already know who Mr. McLeod was. North Koreans knew. But this is how you do it.
They shook hands. Big square hands. “Ed,” Mr. McLeod said.
“Paul,” Uncle Paul said.
• • •
Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod and Argus left and took me with them. Whatever Uncle Paul was driving, we weren’t spotted, and Mr. McLeod didn’t have to get under the dashboard.
We took him home for dinner that night, and how great was that? The most famous student teacher in the world was coming to my house—and his dog too.
As we turned into our driveway, Dad was just locking up the garage. Grandpa was there in his wheelchair, in the balmy evening. If you ask me, they looked like they hadn’t been anywhere all day.
No pizza that night. I ate grown-up food. Dad served it up in his lucky apron. Mom had settled at the kitchen table between Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod. The front door banged open and echoed through the house.
Holly.
“That’ll be our daughter, Holly,” Mom told Mr. McLeod. “Eleventh grade. Pretty much.”
Holly seemed to be on her phone. When wasn’t she? But wait. There were two voices, both whiney. Janie Clarkson?
Holly and Janie Clarkson bumbled into the kitchen. They both had their phones out. They may have been texting each other.
Argus loped over, checking them out. They froze.
Janie Clarkson spotted Mr. McLeod and couldn’t believe her eyes. “I’m like wow,” she said, and dropped into a chair.
It took Holly longer. If there was anybody in Illinois or the world who didn’t know who Mr. McLeod was, it’d be Holly. Listen, it’s possible.
Seeing Mom between him and Uncle Paul at the table, Holly closed her eyes. “Janie’s staying for dinner tonight, but we don’t eat whatever that is.”
Dad held up a plate. “You can’t get this in any restaurant.”
“Please,” Holly said with her eyes still closed.
• • •
That was our first Friday night with Mr. McLeod. And here’s how it ended. Dad thought Mr. McLeod might like to see the workshop over across the alley in Grandpa’s basement. We’d told him Grandpa had been the architect of the school. Dad said I should give the tour.
Argus stayed behind in the kitchen. We’d be crossing Cleo’s turf, and she didn’t allow dogs. Any dogs.
When Dad headed upstairs to put Grandpa to bed, I led Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod down to his basement.
I flipped the switch, and the whole basement lit up with hundreds of little pinpoint lights. I jumped back. There’d never been but one light down here, over Grandpa’s workbench.
We three stood there on the stairs. Lights gleamed out of dozens and dozens of miniature houses. It was like being on a plane coming in over some city—Chicago, in fact.
Because over there was the LEGO Ferris wheel we’d put together when I was in preschool. Now every little car on it was lit, and the wheel was turning. Grandpa’s grandpa had remembered riding it at the fair in 1893.
Grandpa had done a scale model of every house he’d ever designed and filed them all away on shelves. Now they were out and lit up. They stood in landscaped lots on Ping-Pong tables.
Over there was Westside School, except for the all-purpose room that was added later. Even the playground swings where Lynette had beaten up Natalie. Toy-car traffic crowded the curving streets.
There was more than you can imagine, including the great Chicago buildings Grandpa had studied: the Palmolive building. Navy Pier. And up a stretch of Lake Shore Drive, the centerpiece of the city: Wrigley Field, flying its flags. The ivy on the outside walls. The hand-operated scoreboard. It glowed like that first night game, 8/8/88.
A picture hung on the wall, draped in Christmas lights. Mr. McLeod studied it a long time. It was a young guy with mushroom hair and his shirt open with beads hanging down. The girl with him had flowers in her hair.
Hippies.
Love children.
Grandpa and Grandma.
All around us the lights of Grandpa’s life flickered on our faces. How many hours had Dad clocked down here, putting Grandpa’s life back together?
“I could have helped,” I said. “I could have been down here with Dad.”
“He’ll need you later,” Uncle Paul said.