It was, nonetheless, a gladhearted gathering there in the cafeteria, at least until Mr. Holgren came down to make some brooding remarks about Thanksgiving, probably having to do with privation and death. He’d certainly picked the right career, had Mr. Holgren; his every feature spoke of resentment and annoyance and, to people under five feet tall, of physical danger. His poor face looked always festering with some imminent parasitical hatch. Nothing could quiet a happy crowd of kids like Mr. Holgren’s unannounced appearance—he loved superintending; he was made for it. So when he marched in that morning with a determined grin on his face, we froze. Boys and girls recognize sinister as handily as dogs do. Here it was. My best guess now is he’d got it in his head to try “relating” to us—but when he produced a paper pilgrim’s hat from behind his back and put it on his own head, I think we all nearly bolted. I had a nightmare once in which the Devil entered my room and opened my closet and started trying on my clothes. This was similar. Mr. Holgren stood there with his mouth grinning and his eyes in some sort of torment and the pilgrim hat—well, I’d actually thought those handmade hats were pretty neat until the superintendent donned his. Suddenly they seemed repulsive, and I reached up and took mine off.

Then Mr. Holgren said his few words. I’ve forgotten them—doesn’t matter—no doubt he thought we were all spellbound and that he was giving Miss Karlen and the other teachers present a fine lesson in captivating schoolchildren. What had my attention, though, was something I hadn’t noticed before. I’d been so transfixed by Mr. Holgren’s strange manner, I hadn’t seen the neatly scripted letters near the squared-off top of his hat. Very small capitals in white chalk, easy to miss but really quite readable: SHOOT ME! they said, in letters so smoothly drafted Miss Karlen herself might’ve written them.

Well, I saw that and wanted to laugh. Not just wanted to—I tell you that laugh was down in my stomach, like bad beef; it meant to come out. Desperately I strove for placid thoughts; which meant, of course, not looking at Mr. Holgren’s hat. Not thinking those words. And yet they called, like a summons, like a hissed invitation, SHOOT ME!, calling to the laugh inside my belly. You want torture? A giggle crept up the old esophagus; I swallowed it down. My eyeballs watered. The worst of it was I seemed to be the only kid who’d noticed. Either that or everyone else had iron control, a terrible thought. I looked around; glazed faces everywhere. No one else had seen! Oh, but that moment was a lonesome place. Mr. Holgren talked on; I molared the inside of my cheek; the laugh stayed put but I felt it down there, accruing strength. Goodness, it made me nervous. I chanced a look at Mr. Holgren. SHOOT ME!, plain as day! I swallowed about twelve times. Then Peter Emerson leaned over to my ear. “Bang,” he whispered. I knew defeat. Through mouthplastered hands the laugh ripped forth—hoo- hoo-ha-ha-wha-wha-wha—a ruddy bray that condemned me to the stares of aghast pilgrims and who knew what violent repercussions at the hands of Mr. Holgren. I laughed so hard my sight went dark. I laid my forehead down on the table to sob. Did anyone laugh with me? Who knows? I do remember it felt solitary, as the wave rolled off, and I remember looking up through tears to see the glaring superintendent, death in a hat, SHOOT ME! still writ upon his mighty crown, and I remember wishing I could arrange to be shot at that moment and have it done with.

It occurs to me now that I have no idea what became of Superintendent Holgren. Is he somewhere alive yet, a distressed old man in suspendered baggies, fixing his nightly suppers from tin cans, fearing his own reflection? Or did his conscience take pity and kill him early on, as Swede suggested might be just?

Well. He didn’t kill me, though I don’t doubt his intention; it was his very eagerness to reach me that wrecked his day, because he started for me, all right, but was so anxious about it he clipped his thigh rounding the table. Do you remember how tippy those milk bottles were? Struck by more than a sidelong glance they’d whirl and spill. Mr. Holgren took that corner in the meat of the thigh, and half a dozen of the little soldiers leapt from the tabletop and burst wondrously at our feet. That froze Mr. Holgren, and just as he was about to do some real superintending, too. The cafeteria was silent except for the contents of one tipped bottle streaming off the table to the floor—a lonely bathroom sound. Beside me Peter Emerson, feeling left out because his bottle had stopped just short of the edge, moved his elbow furtively. The bottle tipped, sailed out, exploded. “Aww,” Peter said aloud. He was the happiest kid I ever knew.

And then, as would happen, Dad appeared. Instinctively I feared for him, for a curse seemed hovering in that room. And I’ll admit I feared for myself as well. I owned a bit of rotten pride in those days that recoiled at the sight of Dad in coveralls. It didn’t seem fair, you understand. I knew Dad was the smartest, best-hearted, most capable man in any room he occupied, knew too that he was beloved by God, that whatever he touched was apt to prosper, sometimes in mighty and inexplicable style. To see him therefore in janitor clothes seemed to me the result of a strange and discomforting arithmetic. How could it be that his boss was a man like Mr. Holgren—whom Swede called Chester the Fester on account of his face—a man who treated Dad with feudal contempt? Who talked about scouring Dad’s teeth?

And this bothered me, too: Dad would come into a room, pushing his broom, and always some dumb kid would turn to me and smirk. Janitor’s kid. Mop jockey. Cleaned up any good puke lately? I’m sorry if you thought better of me, but the fact is I spent whole hours imagining alarming humiliations for those kids—big dumb kids, always, with effortless all-star lungs. Oh, yes, and hours spent thus were not bitter but passed like joyous dreams, in which Bethany Orchard always chanced along to see the dumb kids at their most abject. It’s true. No grudge ever had a better nurse.

But Dad was in his usual fine humor that day in the cafeteria, diagnosing the breakage, catching my eye and Peter’s as we watched from our benches and sending us a wink. His face betrayed delight, for he’d entered at the moment of Chester’s fabulous lurch. It took him perhaps twenty seconds to gauge the damage, unlock a supply closet, and set to work with a ragmop and bucket, and in that time Mr. Holgren saw before him an opportunity to set an example. To superintentend. To scour. As Dad knelt for broken glass Holgren stepped up next to him so that Dad was working around his knees. He looked slavelike down there, bending for bits of bottle as Holgren stood, hands on hips, dissatisfied as Legree. I could barely watch. Behind me Miss Karlen encouraged the class to finish our gingerbread, but the kids sat bewitched. Something horrible was happening. I looked at Mr. Holgren, whose hat was now off. He was looking back at me, holding my eye, for I’d done him an outrage. At his feet Dad worked patiently, tossing shards onto a tray, finally standing and finishing up with the mop, using the rinse bucket so the whole stretch of floor was a continent of shine and good health.

Mr. Holgren said, “Land, we have to talk.”

Dad looked at his boss, surprised by some alteration in his voice.

“There’ve been complaints,” the superintendent said.

Miss Karlen said softly, “Children, we must go now—” and guess what Holgren did. He held up one hand for silence, not taking his eyes off Dad. He wanted everyone there.

“All right,” Dad said.

“Last week, when you were cleaning up your little mess down the basement, two people reported you stumbling around down there. Talking out loud to yourself. Two different people came to me and said so.”

Dad said nothing. I didn’t know what Holgren was getting at, saying next, “This isn’t the first time. I’ve seen it myself. Come down to the boiler room and I hear you chattering away.” He spoke with quiet reason, as if Dad were some disturbed child—oh, how I wanted to kill Holgren! I wanted him dead and his grave unkept! “Jeremiah,” he said, his voice a disapproving murmur, “I’m aware you passed clean out a couple of weeks ago. In public,” Holgren said. “In church,” he added most sadly, deeply concerned for the ruined dignity of the employee before him. “Don’t you think your problem is getting out of hand?” he said.

I entered here into some sort of shock, for I understood three things at once: first, that Superintendent Holgren was accusing my father of drunkenness, a charge so preposterous that God would surely flatten him before our waiting eyes. I also understood that word of the sensational Johnny Latt service had spread, and how people will apply the unkindest parts of themselves to any heard intelligence. And I understood, with my soul turning sour, that Dad would not defend himself within our hearing. I do not doubt that Holgren understood this also.

Miss Karlen began quietly rallying us children to leave, in spite of the fine example being set by the administrator; Miss Karlen’s slender face was a dark displeased red, for which I ever after gave her the devotion of an ally. As we clattered up our trays I heard Holgren demand Dad’s explanation; I saw Dad lean down and voice a soft reply. At this the superintendent made the most fitful transformation—his neck compressed into his shoulders, his hands clawed and shrunk upward into his sleeves, he stamped his foot like the maladjusted. He was Mr. Hyde! He roared a few words, and Dad became a former janitor.

Most boys, I am guessing, have never watched outright as their father was stripped of his livelihood, and I don’t want to pound it too hard, but the cruelty of that moment still impresses me. I left my milling classmates and headed for Dad, where he stood in rapt surprise facing Holgren. I hadn’t in mind to say anything, and indeed I didn’t; for as I approached Dad lifted his hand, sudden as a windshift, touched Holgren’s face and pulled away. It was the oddest little slap you ever saw. Holgren quailed back a step, hunching defensively, but Dad turned and walked off; and the superintendent stood with his fingers strangely awonder over his chin, cheeks, and forehead. Then I saw that his bedeviled complexion—that face set always at a rolling boil—had changed. I saw instead skin of a healthy tan, a hale blush spread over cheekbones that suddenly held definition; above his eyes the shine of constant seepage had vanished, and light lay at rest upon his brow.

Listen: There are easier things than witnessing a miracle of God. For his part, Mr. Holgren didn’t know what to make of it; he looked horrified; the new peace in his hide didn’t sink deep; he covered his face from view and slunk from the cafeteria.

I knew what had happened, though. I knew exactly what to make of it, and it made me mad enough to spit.

What business had Dad in healing that man?

What right had Holgren to cross paths with the Great God Almighty?

The injustice took my breath away, truly it did. I felt a great hand close against my lungs and Miss Karlen escorted me gasping to the nurse’s office, where Mrs. Buelah plugged in her teapot and made a steam tent from a bolt of tan canvas.

When Dad came to take me home—having boxed up the contents of his single drawer in the boiler room—I wouldn’t go with him. I stayed on Mrs. Buelah’s couch. Dad lifted a corner of the canvas and peeked under.

“Looks like I’m getting a little vacation,” he said.

I nodded.

“I’m sorry you saw that.”

His getting fired, he meant, not the other thing.

“How about we go home.”

But I shook my head. I just couldn’t go with him. Nor could I tell him it wasn’t his public mistreatment that stole my breath and blocked my tongue; it was something too mean to explain. It was the fact that Chester the Fester, the worst man I’d ever seen, even worse in his way than Israel Finch, got a whole new face to look out of and didn’t even know to be grateful; while I, my father’s son, had to be still and resolute and breathe steam to stay alive.