Me,
Pedro, & The President
David
Barringer
The earthquake trapped the President in the school
bathroom.
The President had just come from the auditorium where he’d
given a talk about the importance of education. We were a pilot
school, the Lincoln T. Shipton Elementary School, and we got
federal money given to us during the previous administration.
Some of the money was going into renovation and expansion, and
the new construction meant the only good bathrooms were in the
basement. That was why after his talk the President, guided
by two Secret Servicemen, had to come down to the basement bathroom.
Dressed in the usual dark suits with those twirly pasta earphones,
the two Secret Servicemen had stood guard at the bathroom door,
one outside and one inside. I’d been so intimidated by
these guys that I couldn’t pee. I’d just stood there,
a freaked-out fifth-grader two urinals down from the President
of the United States. Then the earthquake struck, and the two
Secret Servicemen got buried under the pile of rubble that blocked
the doorway. The earthquake was the strongest I’d ever
felt, the strongest that had ever hit our elementary school.
We were trapped, me, Pedro, and the President.
“We’re gonna die!” cried Pedro.
Pedro Amaro staggered away from the urinals.
He and I were P&P, Pollock and Pedro. My name was Pollock
Bell. My grandfather’s name was Pollock, and if he were
alive, I’d’ve asked him how (or if) he ever got
over being called “Polly.” Pedro Amaro was smart
but impressionable. The shy, nervous kind of kid you figured
had asthma and a genius IQ. Pedro didn’t have either.
He was pretty normal, buzzed black hair, skinny, as agile and
inventive in the video-game world as he was clumsy and obedient
in the real world. He was a master at Vice City but never broke
his mom’s curfew. I couldn’t imagine what kind of
person I was going to be in high school let alone in life, but
Pedro understood he was guaranteed to be an engineer or doctor
and wear the same kind of clothes his mother was dressing him
in now.
“We’re not gonna die,” I said
when the tremors stopped. I had fallen against an open stall
door, held on to it like a piece of plywood winging in the wind,
and then slipped down to the floor. The floor of the boys’
bathroom: icy gross pee-puddly white tiles, grouted in a grid,
like the floor of an animal hospital. I got up without using
my hands and zipped up and brushed off quickly, as if people
were watching me on a hidden camera. That was how it was for
me in school. I was an okay student but tried not to let it
show. I assessed the situation. “Pedro,” I said.
“You’re peeing on the President.”
“Damn it, Son,” said the President,
scooting out of range and shaking his pantleg like a spider
had crawled up in it. He reached down and pinched the fabric
away from his skin. Pedro was bawling. “Ah, that’s
okay, Son. Don’t cry,” said the President. “The
President’s here with you. They know I’m down here.
They’ll get us out.”
“Yeah, Pedro, the President’s here,
for chrissakes,” I said. “You got nothing to worry
about.”
“Okay,” said Pedro. He snapped a
brown paper towel from the dispenser and wiped his nose.
The President took off his pants. He unbuckled
and dropped them and stepped out of one pantleg, hopping for
balance, and then the other. He still had his shoes on, so the
pants got tangled up as he was pulling his feet out. “We’re
all men here,” said the President, pantless. He adjusted
his white boxer shorts. They had little golden Texases on them.
He held his stained pants under the faucet and squeezed the
excess water out and then handed the bunched-up pants to Pedro.
“A little lesson in accountability,” said the President.
And then he laughed that laugh of his. “Heh heh heh.”
Pedro folded a pleat into the slacks and held
them under the blow dryer while the President lathered up his
damp calf. Was I the only one who remembered that an earthquake
had collapsed the ceiling and buried two Secret Servicemen?
There were no fingers sprouting out of the rubble. There were
no soft dry groans. This conspicuous absence of effort hung
in the bathroom air like an atmosphere of doom. I stared at
the pile of rubble and wondered whether their earphones were
keeping pebbles out of their ears. Was someone trying to radio
them? I couldn’t think of a way to get out except by clawing
at the mound of busted cinderblocks and twisted wire and crooked
plumbing. The President still had on his brown shoe and brown
sock and was cupping water to rinse the soap bubbles off his
white calf. Pedro was sublimating his fear into the chore of
doing the President’s laundry. So I climbed up the pile
and started in.
“Hey, Padre—”
“His name’s Pedro, Mr. President,”
I said, tossing a section of vent tubing off to the side.
“Okay, Pablo,” said the President.
“Just don’t let the President’s pants get
all wet. Get ‘em up there.”
“Sorry, Sir,” said Pedro. “Yes,
Sir.”
My fingers were as sore as the day we did that
wall-climbing exercise. Our gym teacher, Mr. Helmholz, had barked
at me, but I didn’t even make it as high as Pedro did.
“Polly wanna give up?” somebody had wisecracked.
Now, I was struggling against rocks that were more than I could
handle. I had to pick out the pebbles and smaller stuff underneath
to get the big rock to budge and start it rolling down the pile.
Then I’d take advantage of the momentum and push at the
rock and sometimes it’d just ram stop-solid against another
big brick. It was tedious and I was sweating and my new clothes
were getting ruined. Every mother in the school had made her
kid wear new clothes for the President’s talk. My khakis
were streaked with black oil of some kind and powdered with
fine dust and torn at the knees and the cuffs. Usually I was
paranoid that a hidden camera was revealing every wrinkle and
stain on my clothes to every girl and bully in the school. But
now I was working for our escape. My ruined clothes were proof
of uninhibited animal toughness.
And then I remembered what the President had
just said. He’d said, “Don’t let the President’s
pants get all wet.”
How would they get all wet?
I looked down. The rubble petered out just past
the steel garbage bin built into the wall near the sinks, which
was about where Pedro was straining to hold up the President’s
dark blue slacks. Around Pedro’s shoes—brand-new
black Skechers—there was a puddle of water. The water
was seeping out from under the rubble like a rising sea.
“We gotta get out of here,” I said.
Then I heard a ringing. A digital burbling. I
thought at first it was a Secret Serviceman’s cell phone
going off somewhere beneath the rubble, a sad unanswerable plea.
Then I heard the President say, “Yello.”
“You have a cell phone?” I cried
out.
“Yes, Dear, I’m fine,” the
President said into the cell phone. “In the basement bathroom.
That’s right. They’ll get us out soon, I know that.
We got little Pancho here—”
“Pedro!” I yelled.
“—going to work on a job he’s
gotta do to make up for—hey, you know that old show, Cisco
and Pancho? ‘Heeey, Seesco!’ ‘Heeey, Pahncho!’
Heh heh. That’s right. My little Pancho’s had a
misfire with his six-shooter. All down my leg. Heh heh heh.”
The President cupped his hand over the receiver to say to Pedro,
“My favorite show, Kid.”
“Never heard of it, Sir,” said Pedro.
I kept digging. “We got light!” I
yelled. A piece of rubble the size of a drink box came away
and left a hole as thin as my wrist. I scraped at it to make
it bigger.
“And we got a miniature bulldog jumping
the gun on this whole rescue effort,” the President said,
meaning me. “I don’t think this kid knows the plan,
got the program tuned in. He’s a worker, all right.”
Then, to me: “You’re not union, are you, Kid? You
woulda taken a break by now, heh heh heh!”
I wanted to be free, to gouge a hole and get
the heck out. I shirted the sweat off my face. The white cotton
button-down my mom made me wear came away black with a streak
of blood. I had a cut on my cheek.
The President was practicing a speech in the
bathroom mirror. He was moving parts of his face that didn’t
go with what he was saying. His eyebrows lifted and narrowed
ungovernably. The wrinkles around his eyes contracted and released
on their own and seemed to elude his control. He pressed a finger
to his face to iron out the involuntary expressions. Then he
said, “Yes, Dear. I’ll start with thank-you’s.
I’d like to thank the rescue workers, the firemen—what?
Hell, you’re probably right. Firefighters, paramedics,
school officials. . . .”
“Come on, Pedro,” I said. “Give
back the President’s pants, and let’s go. Help me
out.”
While the President put his pants back on, me
and Pedro scrabbled up and clawed out a decent hole, large enough
for a grownup.
“This good?” I called out.
“I’m sure it’s just fine,”
said the President, staring at his cell phone and pushing buttons
experimentally, trying to shut the thing off. “You do
the best you can.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, do you
think you can fit?”
The President looked up at us. “Through
the hole?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Well, I don’t see why not. I’ve
gotten through tighter spots. Heh heh.” He left his cell
phone on the sink and approached. “Let’s give ‘er
a go.” He lifted his arms for balance, as if he were about
to step on a tightrope, and then placed one tentative foot after
another on up the gradual incline of brick, mortar dust, and
wrinkled metal. The cell phone chirped from the sink. The President
hesitated for a moment, then shook his head and continued the
ascent.
“I’ll make sure he’s got something
to step down on,” I said to Pedro.
“Okay,” said Pedro. “And I’ll
push from behind if the President needs me to.”
“Uh, gross,” I said. “You don’t
have to do that.”
“It’s the President,” said
Pedro.
“Whatever,” I said.
“See you on the other side,” Pedro
said, saluting me.
“I gotta go,” I said. I didn’t
salute back.
Pedro shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Boys,” said the President, “this
is something you’ll remember for the rest of your lives.”
“I hope not,” said Pedro, looking
at me like I’d let him down, and right in front of the
President of the United States. He went to go hold the President’s
elbow.
“Thanks there, little Pancho,” said
the President, who then stumbled and took both of them tripping
back down the mountain of rubble.
“Well, damn that,” said the President.
I crawled into the hole. I stuck my arms out
and pedaled back against the rubble and pulled myself forward.
On the other side, the hallway was dark, as dark
as a tunnel. Fluorescent lights flickered. It was like in that
movie Titanic, dark flooded hallways snapping with electricity.
The pool was near this side of the building, and it looked like
the earthquake had cracked the bottom of it. The pool was leaking
into the hallway. I smelled chlorine. Then there was this: a
dozen classmates blinking at me, standing as still as dead kids
in a horror movie, faces dusty, cut, smudged, eyes wet with
light, their new clothes torn and hanging off in wild fashionable
strips, knee-deep in rising blue poolwater and sniffling.
“Hey,” mumbled one of the kids. “It’s
Polly. Polly’s gonna save us.”
“Ah, shit,” I said.
“Polly? His name’s Polly?”
“Yeah, like a bird.”
“What kind of bird?”
“My name’s Pollock Bell,” I
said just as the President poked his head through the hole.
“The President!” shouted the kids.
“Hey, there, Kids!” called the President.
“I guess we’re getting out of school early today,
eh? Heh heh.”
I helped the President down, and when he stepped
in the water, he said, “Aw, hell, my pants,” and
then called, “Hey, Pancho!”
I didn’t say a thing.
After Pedro slid out, all of us waded through
the water toward the other end of the hall, way opposite from
the staircase where the rescue workers were trying unsuccessfully
to break through. Our sloshing made waves that splashed against
the doors to the janitor’s closet, A/V storage, the ESL
supply room. The waves bounced back from the walls and met in
the middle of the hallway river, folding back into each other.
At the end of the hall, we worked to move some of the larger
bricks and beams out of the way. We found a space at the top
of the basement wall that was big enough for kids. We emerged
into sunlight like gophers. The President gave us boosts and
delivered a cheer after each escape, numbering us like we were
cattle straying from the herd. He seemed happy and said he loved
counting. The hole was too small for him, but the first kids
free ran to get help. The workers cut a bigger hole and pulled
the President out. His stomach scraped the top of the wall,
shredding his suit, and the workers apologized. The President
announced that clothes were not what mattered at times like
these. By evening the basement was totally flooded.
The President gave his speech in front of the
school. Behind him, the school’s roof was caved in. He
didn’t mention me or Pedro, and he had two other kids
posing on either side of him. He also didn’t mention that
funding for our school was going to be cut next year, a measure
he approved. The betrayal would dumbfound our community. Kids
would be sent to schools in other districts. Pedro and I would
be split up, and while we’d try to keep in touch, we’d
grow apart. But we didn’t know that yet. The President
thanked most everyone and mentioned the two Secret Servicemen
who gave their lives. This was the first he’d told anyone
about them, and this belated news sent a team of rescue workers
sprinting back into the school.
The President’s eyebrows were more obedient
than usual, and his wife seemed happy on TV later that night
when they showed her giving him a welcome-back hug. The Amaros
had come to our house. After I told how Pedro blow-dried the
President’s pants and Pedro told how I dug us out, we
watched TV together. My mom made roast chicken and Mrs. Amaro
brought homemade tamales. My father and Mr. Amaro could barely
drink their Coronas they were so furious that the President
didn’t mention us. Mrs. Amaro wept. She threw up her arms
and wailed as if it were me and Pedro who’d been buried
under the bathroom rubble. Pedro assured my mother that melodrama
was typical in Latin American families. Somewhat thrown and
confused myself, I was sitting on the floor off to the side.
I was feeling in general okay, not like a hero but like someone
who’d done more than he thought he could, more than he’d
asked of himself maybe his whole life. As the President hugged
his wife on TV, I thought I could read his lips, the slight
nodding of the head, the thin smile: “Heh heh heh.”
....
David Barringer's third
collection of fiction, We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things,
is now available from Word Riot Press, it includes a beautifugly
introduction by Steve Almond and artwork by Eduardo Recife.
Site: www.davidbarringer.com
Read other stories by David
Barringer:
Father's Day
Name That Quote
Medicine
