The Sub

Mr. Porter's eleventh-grade classroom was absent half a dozen students when Fourth Period History was supposed to begin at twelve thirty-five. That was normal. Aside from the students who were at home sick, you could always count on potheads like Kerry Busby or Ranjit Chand to show up a few minutes late, red-eyed and silent, slinking to their desks like adolescent geriatrics (or, in Mason Marr's case, surprisingly ambulatory, considering the thirty-four fluid ounces of Commander Vodka he regularly drank over lunch on an empty stomach). Anything longer than five minutes, however, and Mr. Porter would lock the door for the rest of the period, passive-aggressively damning tardy students to No-Hall-Pass Purgatory. In other schools, or with other teachers, such an act might be akin to anarchy, but Mr. Porter (James to colleagues, Jimmy to friends) wasn't like other teachers, and Lattimore High was unlike any school.

James Porter didn't demand respect; he didn't need to. It was given to him automatically, almost supernaturally. Picture Bobby Knight without the insane outbursts and you'd have a near facsimile of James Porter, right down to the gray hair, ruddy cheeks, and prodigious gut. The man was like a cocked handgun in the hands of a tweaking meth addict, except that nothing set James Porter off.

Well, almost nothing. Porter coached the Lattimore Jaybirds, the varsity girls' basketball team, and there was one instance -- and one instance only, as far as everyone in Clarkson County can recall -- when he lost his cool: the time Janey Reardon double dribbled on the final play of the Jaybirds-Flares regional semi-finals, the Jays down a single point with fourteen seconds on the clock. James Porter was a strict coach, but he always diluted his criticism with a measure of kindness, an almost Zen-level control. Not so on that night. What James Porter did was walk onto the court and slap Janey Reardon so hard in the face that the sound echoed throughout the gymnasium. Janey first fell to the floor, then threw her hands to her blazing cheek, her legs pumping backward in agony and the heels of her sneakers frantically trying to dig into the hardwood. James Porter stormed off the court, washed his face in the girls' locker room, grabbed a fifth of Wild Turkey from the bed of his pickup, and drank it sitting on the gravel parking lot outside the eerily silent gym. The next morning he drove to the Reardon house out on South Bend, apologized to Janey and her folks, then drove to Lattimore High and handed in his resignation.

Wouldn't you know it, James Porter was asked to return the following Monday. The kids, the faculty...hell, everyone in Clarkson loved him too much to see him go. When word got out that Porter had accepted the school's offer, Janey Reardon herself sat at the breakfast table with tears of happiness streaming down her cheeks, the left one as red as a candy apple.

Which made it all the weirder that Mr. Porter (Coach Porter to Kelly Olsen and Hetty Greer) wasn't in class when twelve thirty-five turned to twelve-forty, then to twelve forty-five. A pall fell over the classroom, each student nervously awaiting Mr. Porter's entrance. Finally, at twelve fifty-three, Braydon Goines stood up, whispering to his deskmate, Angie Sommers, "Fuck this, I'm going to go find out where Mister P is."

He was stopped in front of the classroom door -- held open by a wooden wedge at the bottom, feebly fighting the cylinder close piston at the top, losing badly -- by a rotund Asian man with Fuller Brush-bristle hair and a pink nose.

"Sit down, turdburger," the man said in a calm, fey voice. Then: "OR I WILL HAVE YOUR BALLS!"

Braydon Goines did, skittering back to his desk like a soaking-wet Shih Tzu in a downpour. The other students held their eyes on the man, whom they assumed insane. Because if he wasn't, they were. It was either or.

This day couldn't get any weirder if it started raining dildos, thought Stacie Frank, immediately wondering whether the plural of "dildo" should be spelled with an S or an ES. Jeff Clemons, studiously examining his Terry Brooks Sword of Shannara novel for continuity errors, looked up to see a fat man toss a leather briefcase onto Mr. Porter's desk with a resounding thump. Emile Lansky, sitting in the front row, quickly caught wind of the behemoth's breath, a mixture of mint leaves and what he could only identify as scrotum sweat.

"My name," the substitute teacher addressed his gaping-jawed class, "is Kenny Chen. It's so nice to meet yeww!"

"Hell's bells," Archie DuMont snickered, "this subbie's as faggy as a rubber sword."

Two seconds. That's all it took. In one second Archie D was laughing uproariously, the next he was sprawled on the floor, blood spouting from his bottom lip like a sanguine irrigation outlet.

Kenny Chen was not done.

"C'mon, you fuckers! This will be the greatest day in ma la-eef! You, want some? You, sloe-eyes? You there, with the purple backpack?"

Silence.

Somewhat sated, Kenny Chen sauntered back behind the desk, comfortable in knowing that, for now, those assholes, those babies, were under control.

"Mr. Porter is sick today, and I will be your substitute teacher," he spoke once more, calmly, as though no ruckus had occurred. "Fuck with me again, however --"

And that's when Kenny Chen's words were interrupted by an explosion, a big one. Chris Marconi's grenade exploded in his locker, blowing the right wing of Lattimore High's second floor to hell and high water and igniting the chemistry lab below it.

As the students ran in panic from Mr. Porter's classroom, Kenny Chen remained calm while intoning, "I expect your homework to be on my desk tomorrow, at nine o'clock, you heathen cork sockers. If it's not, I'm going to tell your mothers."

"NO CARTOONS!" he cackled as the last of the remaining student body fled.

Then he laughed harder, a full belly laugh that made him shake in his chair like an epileptic colossus.

Then black.