Rook: Snowman Read Free

when he’s finished doing that?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll stay, maybe we won’t.”
    “You always follow your dad around?”
    “Don’t got a choice. My mom died six years ago. And traveling around, that’s his work.”
    “You must be finding the weather a little different.”
    “It’s okay in Anchorage, this time of year. But up in Yukon-Charley it gets pretty cold.”
    “Well, I hope you’ll have the opportunity to tell us all about it. How much of a chance did you get to study, up in Yukon-Charley?”
    Jack shrugged. “We had books to read. Like encyclopedias and stuff.”
    “What was the last book you read?”
    “ McGeary’s Snowmobile Maintenance .”
    “Say what ?” said Washington, with a hoot, but Jim gave him a look which meant, remember your first day, when you had to tell me what you’d been reading ?
    “How about novels, or poetry, or plays?”
    Jack shook his head. “Only this one novel, The Process , about a guy who crosses the Sahara Desert and goes out of his brain.”
    “That sounds cool. Do you still have a copy?”
    “It’s probably packed up someplace, but yes, I guess.”
    “That’s a pretty empty spot, the Sahara. Just like Yukon-Charley, I guess. Did you associate with any of the feelings in the book? I mean, the isolation, that kind of thing?”
    Jack lowered his eyes and thought for a moment. Then he raised them, and said, “You’re never alone, wherever you are.”

    Jim made a little circling gesture with his hand, to indicate that he wanted to explain himself more fully.
    “You can be right out in the snow, hundreds of miles from the nearest trading-post. Nothing but white wherever you look. White, white, white, until you’ve got stuff dancing in front of your eyes, and you’re sick of it. But you aint never alone. Never.”
    There was something in Jack’s voice that led Jim to think that learning to deal with his isolation up in Alaska must have been one of the most critical experiences in his life so far. White, white, white, until you’re sick of it . He hadn’t heard one of his students speak so vehemently about anything for a very long time. Not since Waylon Price had gone looking for his missing sister one night, and found her in a rundown house off Melrose, dead of an overdose.
    “Well,” said Jack, “you’ve come fresh into this class today but it shouldn’t take you any time to settle. Rook’s First Law is that everybody in this class has to be friends and help each other, because Rook’s Second Law states that nobody is stupider than anybody else, even though I have to admit that some people are really working on it. You’re allowed to laugh at each other’s mistakes, because that’s what it’s like in the real world outside of this classroom, everybody laughs at your mistakes, and that’s a fact of life you’re just going to have to learn to deal with.”
    Jack picked up his pen and said, “Do you want me to … describe you? Like everybody else is?”
    “Sure. This is the first time you’ve seen me. Maybe you’ll come up with something really fresh.”
    “Yeah, like you look like fresh shit,” put in Ray Krueger, and then ducked his head down, in the hope that Jim hadn’t seen him.
    “Ray,” said Jim, “I have a little chore for you. I want you to go to the men’s room and pull out a hundred sheets oftoilet tissue. I want you to write on every single one, ‘This is the only place for shit.’”
    “You’re kidding me, Mr Rook. That’s going to take me for ever.”
    “If you argue, I’ll make it ‘excrement’ instead.”
    Ray reluctantly stood up and made his way to the classroom door, accompanied by whistles and clapping and Bronx cheers. He was a skinny boy, with bleached-blond hair that flopped around in front of his eyes. He was amazing with animals, sensitive and gentle and intuitive, and he desperately wanted to be a vet. The only trouble was, his English skills were those of an eight-year-old, and he had an