The Patty Stamper

Irene Stamper had been mad for as long as anyone in Pampa, and for sure any student at Washington grade school could remember. She was short, hobbit short, and spreading. Gravity was enhancing the swish as she waddled down the hallway for the teacher's lounge every morning to growl about the ridiculous pay, but this paid dividends to those wanting to sneak out prior to her arrival.

 Her four foot pear shaped frame kept her grounded, but oh how she hated this country's wind. The ever present tempest to this God forsaken flatland. The wind that had spawned generations of dust bowlers, now raising their kids to eat, act and run like pack dogs. The wind. Oh yes, the wind that had driven Morris off to a sailor's life on the open seas.

Curse Morris Stamper, that Swedish sleaze who'd harpooned Irene's heart, then drug her away from her beloved Minnesota, her family, her respected teaching job, only to jump a.w.o.l. with Gerald "Patty" Pasteau two years into their wedlock. Patty and " The Stamp" had bolted to Califonia's sexual freedom and honeymooned aboard the "Marlin Monroe" shrimper out of San Francisco's fisherman's wharf. How precious. They'd never looked back.

Now, twenty two years and eighty pounds later, Irene sashayed down the halls at glacier speed towards tenure. Her wardrobe, aside from the electric tape holding her black wing tipped glasses together, was sadly the same as when she'd left Minneapolis. Sexual frustration, the wool, the heat, her graying, tightly wound auburn hair bun, all added to the mix and kept Irene on the edge.

So when the cosmos, being of jovial nature one fall morning in 1959, intervened, and fused Irene's menopausal flashes, slipping glasses and aching overstressed elastic with the arrival of her new fourth grade class and a full moon, the heavens darkened a titch. The nine year olds bounced and screamed with 'first day' energy as they filled her classroom, oblivious to the lunar influenced crack in time they were about to bare witness.

****

The class clowns were at a fever pitch while their audience clapped and yelled with delight when Irene entered through the rear door, undetected. Her varicose veins pumped wildly as she watched the paper airplanes and spit balls soar amid shrieks. Tiny beads of sweat formed on her receding brow as images of Morris and Patty flashed across her brain with every roar of laughter. The heat steamed in as the sun leaned down and burned through the windows. Irene's eye and cheek jerked a tick

She stealthily moved across the back wall, behind the chaos, then up the far window wall, away from their attention, quietly arriving, mostly undetected, at the front of the room. Irene wisked a sweaty string of hair out of her eyes and gripped the edge of her massive desk with white knuckles and guided her key to the lower locked drawer. A devilish smirk formed with half closed eyelids as she turned the lock and slid the drawer open, revealing her scepter of power. Twenty eight inches of thick, stained, hickory wood with a sanded handle for traction and four quarter sized holes of hell, drilled with perfection. Her notorious weapon of discipline, the "The Patty Stamp".

As she rose and turned to the class, she cleared her throat and then groaned. The noise evaporated and silence blanketed the room. Not a breath was drawn, nobody moved. All eyes hypnotised in horror at this small tank with a weapon of death attached.

Little Bradford Barnes was stuffed butt first into the trash basket next to the front classroom door. He was frozen in time now, along with his floor show assistants, Dean and Woody. They'd been abetting Bradford's attempt to hide. But now? Their "jack-in-the-box" scare plan for this mean little teacher they'd heard about was but a very distant memory. Dean and Woody both backed slowly to the wall transfixed on the monster in front of them.

Bradford's tiny feet and enlarged eyes and half head were all that was visible atop the can. He blinked once and swallowed hard. Trapped. He was but a few feet from the desk and now the focus of Irene's laser glare.

The blood vanished from the little boys faces. It bolted at sonic speed to the lowest and farthest body part it could find. The bullet train of drainage left them dizzy without thoughts. An escape to anywhere but here might formulate, if they could just get away from this terrible, terrible evil now pointed directly at them. They seemed to be caught in some kind of worm hole, simultaneously ashen, weak and paralyzed.

"Soo, what are your names?" Irene asked with a playful rhythm as she tilted her head.

All thoughts stopped. They were now deer. Standing in the road. Waiting to die.

Little Bradford slipped into a conference with himself. His thoughts jammed, there was no right answer. How could there be? What in God's name is she going to do, kill us? My mouth won't move, how is that possible? What did she say? What's a name? What is my name? I don't know. Where am I? Could be a dream? Yes, that's it, it's all just a bad..

"I SAID! What are your names!?"

No, not a dream. Holy cow, what is that? Who is this? Maybe it's another one of those scary things you just think of.. llike Mama said. Could be. Maybe, maybe I'm dead.. I can't seem to move. Why won't it just..

"I'm.. eh, Dean ma'am.. Eh, Dean Whitehead.. ma'am."

Bradford whipped his head left to this new soothing sound. Yes. Yes! It's Dean. My friend Dean! I remember now..

"And!" her voice boomed and rose along with her bushy eyebrows.

Oh God. My name.. She wants my name! I've got to say my name! I have to speak now. Ok, ok. Say something! She's going to beat me to death with that. What is that? If I don't..

"Woody. Eh, Woodrow Kirpatrick ma'am."

Bradford snapped his startled head right now with his eyes bulging in an effort to escape from his head and join his blood to a safer life, far far away from this. That's Woody! Yes, my friend Woody! Oh thank God, surely this is..

"YOU!" she shouted.

Eyes front and center into the jaws of death.

"In   the   trash   can." Every word echoing in super slow motion.

Nope. Nothing. Total void, no thoughts. Bradford's mind was racing, but the wheels just spun away. If this could just wait for a..

"Get out of the trash and come here." she ordered.

Not a movement had been made by 28 nine year olds with the exception of Bradford's head, which bobbled on a spasmodic swivel to whatever direction the voices came from now.