A Handful of Dirt

There I was, just standing there, when what I wanted to do…well, that was forbidden. But I was still contemplating it considering what they had done to me. Heck! It may not have been illegal but it sure was unforgivable. At least to me it was. Who did they think they were anyway? So I went ahead and did it; I grabbed the red leather journal that was lying on the desk and shoved it under my shirt. None of them saw me do it. Not the principal, not the Mr. Winsted and not snobby old Martin Sandston. I was too fast and they were too smug to think that a nobody like me could do it right under their up-turned noses. You might call it stealing but I call it justice. I lost something and now they’ve lost something too. I could hardly keep from laughing out loud; or at least smiling as I sat there through the rest of the insults they called instructions. I wore my most contrite face and nodded my head a lot saying, “Yes Sir,” whenever they asked if I understood.

After what seemed liked forever it was finally over and they let me leave. I took my time walking out of the office so they wouldn’t get suspicious about me rushing out of the office. Mr. Winsted even hustled me out. I heard him; he said, “Those kind always move so slow, I don’t know why we let them into the same school with our kids.” I knew he expected me to hear it because he said it louder than he needed to. They always do that kind of stuff to us but we don’t let it bother us because we know who we are and we know that our time is coming.

I took the red leather journal back to the dorms, or what they gave us to pass for dorms. The place used to be the horse barn and they had us clear out all the hay and feces, and made us paint the walls and install windows and then they brought in seven beds and four footlockers and told us they would have to serve for the ten of us. We could still smell the horse shit but we had no choice but to put up with it. We were Geomancers and they were Cyber Priests; and to them that was less than nothing. So we put up with it. But we had our victories, and me taking that journal was one of them.

When all the guys were gathered around I opened up the journal and began reading and the surprise wasn’t who the journal belonged to; we kind of expected that. It was the principal's. What really shocked us was what it said inside. It was all about us and what the plans they had for us. They were espantoso! Poor Miguel-Angel started crying, him being only twelve years old and all. I ended up having to let him sleep with me that night. So the next morning after breakfast we decided to escape. It was well worked out and we were all in agreement, on the following Friday we were to escape. We were actually pretty excited about the whole thing, we even joked about what their reaction was going to be when they realized they were going to have to do all their own scut work. We especially liked that part. And then something went wrong. The journal went missing. I knew they hadn’t come in and found it because they never set foot in our dorm, not even when Terrayne and Sande became sick and died. I checked under the crack in the floor where I’d hid the journal to make sure it wasn’t still in the dorm, but it wasn’t there. I didn’t have to think twice to know who had taken it but I performed a spell just to be sure. I took my Bolsa from the special hiding place where I kept it. It was earth from in front of the home I was born in. I’d grabbed a handful and put it in a pouch right before I left for school. Any earth would work just as well but I wanted earth that had nurtured me all my life.

I made a throw and read the pattern. I was right; it was Stoner.

I changed the escape date and plan and informed everyone except Stoner. Then I set it all in motion. When the Cyber Priests expected to catch us slipping out through the back gate after Sunday lunch they found just me waiting for them. Stoner was with them, of course. He thought he was doing us a favor; saving us from our less-enlightened selves, keeping us in the safe care of the Cyber Priests. And the Priests? They were their usual arrogant selves ordering me to return to the dorm.

“To that toilet?” I asked, “You wouldn’t even go in there when two of us was dying.”

“It is not in our nature to enter places of …”

“Of what? Dirt!?” I spat the word out the way they liked to, as if it were a curse. That idiot Stoner was looking at me like he felt sorry for me but I was the one who was feeling sorry for him. He was thoroughly brainwashed; the way they hoped we would all end up. He couldn’t even see the value of his own kind; the Geomancers, diviners, prophets.

“So where are the rest of your company?” the principal asked. I couldn’t believe it. He was asking me for information that he should have been able to find out on his own.

“Consult your “Divine Wheel,” I challenged giving him my most benign smile; the one they taught us; the way they said we should speak to them because it was pious. He couldn’t say a word, it was one of his first trainings, “I’ve already consulted my Dirt and I know what will happen from here.” I knew Stoner was onto the original plan to hide the guys under the dorm; stables. I watched as he and Mr. Winsted accessed the hiding place we’d spent the last four months creating. I watched the principal’s self-confident smile slid off his face when they opened the hole and no one was in there. And I watched as Stoner shrugged his shoulders and promised he was loyal and that the boys were really supposed to be there. I finally couldn’t take anymore.

“Stoner, why don’t you do your own consulting? Forget their Cyber-mancing and Geomance it for yourself. You know what we found in that journal.”

Mr. Winsted flicked his head in my direction then quickly to the principal, “You took the journal,” he said pointing at me accusingly.

“Yes, and I…no, we learned enough to realize we’ve learned all we’re going to learn from you and it is time to go.”

“And that’s why your brothers are gone, because you think there is no more to learn from us.” The principal said this as a fact, not a question.

“No,” I said watching Stoner throw the handful of dirt he’d scooped up from the front of the dorm, “We’re leaving because we know there is no more to learn from you.”

I picked up the duffel bag that contained the clothes I‘d arrived with and my home-Dirt. All that I would need, and turned to go. I stopped outside the gate and faced Stoner, “And what did your throw reveal?” I asked him. He looked from me to the Cyber Priests and back twice. I could see the Cyber students lining up outside the dining hall for dinner. The dining hall where we had served every meal since we’d arrived there, but had never eaten a single meal in. “They couldn’t divine the truth but I’m sure you did. Where are they?”

Stoner looked at me and let his eyes drift to the principal and Mr. Winsted as he said, “They’re at Stone Flower cave. But they can‘t be, they would have had to leave two days ago.”

I smiled and turned to face the Cyber Priests, “Like the principal’s journal said, ‘There is a lot of benefit your science could get from our ‘Geomancy’.” I watched as the principal glared at Mr. Winsted, like it was Winsted's fault what he‘d written in his own journal. “We weren’t here to learn from you, we were here for you to learn from us,” I said. Then I turned to Stoner, “Coming or staying?” He dropped his head and looked sheepishly at his meager belongings that I‘d brought along and dropped beside the gate. He came to stand in front of me and didn’t say a word, he only nodded and picked up his things.

I faced the two men who had treated me and my Brothers like the stuff we’d scraped off those stable floors. Treated us that way for close to two years, and gave them a nod of despedida (farewell). Then Stoner and I left the campus with the lawns we had mowed so beautifully the day before and never looked back.