The playground of Davison Elementary School was full of life. The kids ran, slid, yelled, and jumped under the morning sun, releasing the un-expendable energy of youth. Dust rose from the hard gravel and dirt that composed the yard, wafting in thin clouds blown away by the fall wind.
The school had long ago abandoned the notion that it could have grass in the yard. If it wasn’t killed by the hundreds of stomping feet, or the lack of funds to maintain it, the hardness of city life itself seemed to do it in eventually.
The kids played within a high steel fence. DO NOT CLIMB signs hung about ten feet below the top, and there were still remnants of the razor wire that had been atop the enclosure. It was an experiment that was desperate and had failed when everyone involved realized it made the school look like a miniature prison.
Cars and trucks roared by on the freeway just in front of the school, the muted engine noise a hard background to the day. Slow-moving vehicles drifted down Jos Campau Avenue to the east, their occupants eyeing the playground then moving on.
The school security officer who watched the kids glanced at the cars as they slowed, then sped up, moving on. These cars and their occupants had been the catalysts for the razor-wire experiment. The men inside them always looking for opportunities to sell corruption and poison to the innocent. The school was in a once proud, blue-collar land, which was crumbling each day as the exodus of families, the influence of drugs and criminality, encroached from all sides.
The morning bell rang loudly as the day began. As it cut through the joy of playtime, a collective sound of disappointment rose from the kids. The doors to the school swung open. Teachers and guards beckoned the kids inside.
The students filed in as a police cruiser pulled up to the front of the school. Immediately, everyone stopped to look, to see where it was going. Neither the siren nor the cherry lights were on, so there was no great urgency. Still, a cop car in this area usually meant trouble.
All eyes watched as the car slowed, stopping in front of the building. This was an elementary school, but trouble had come before. Any minute, the doors would fly open, and the officers would get out, guns at the ready.
But no one got out of the cruiser. The blue-and-white patrol car just sat there, DETROIT POLICE emblazoned on the door.
The cop in the front seat talked to someone who could not be seen. Then he opened the door and got out.
The cop was a big man. To the kids, he seemed to be a giant. His dark blue uniform sparkled with silver buttons and a badge that caught the sunlight. Under his policeman’s cap they could see the edges of his hair.
The cop moved to the passenger side of the cruiser and opened the door. Out stepped a little boy. The man walked the kid to the front of the school. The kid tried to keep up with his father’s big strides, but he had to hurry to do it.
The eyes of everyone were on the cop and the kid as they made their way to the front office. The cop was indeed huge among the little kids who strained to look up at him. The pair cut a path through the student body and teachers as they went inside the main office. Another bell rang, and the classrooms filled up.
The cop and the boy came out a few minutes later, now accompanied by an assistant principal. She escorted them to a classroom on the corner of the first floor. They went inside and talked to the teacher, who was just about to start class.
The teacher looked alarmed as they spoke in whispers and the cop handed her a paper. The teacher examined it, then smiled at the little boy.
“Well, first day?” she asked.
The little boy nodded. The teacher pointed him to a seat, and he took it, settling into the hard, wooden desk.
The cop clapped his son on the shoulders. A gesture that seemed to be meant for a boy much older. The little boy smiled as his father left the room.
The teacher’s face took on a concerned look after the cop was gone. She welcomed her new student and asked the class to do the same. They did, with cautious and tentative voices.
The teacher started the day’s lesson, writing something on the board. She glanced at her pupils and focused on the cop’s son sitting in the middle of the class, the only white face in a sea of black students.