Futile Efforts by Tom Piccirilli Page B

school, and yet in some fashion they did.   They never turned in their last homework assignments, never did their final laps in the gym.   In a way, they graduated with bizarre honors.
    The fat kid with the kettle drum disappeared on stage during the Christmas concert.   One minute he's banging along to Brahms' " Wiegenlied ," and the next his wide ass just isn't there anymore.   You were playing second trumpet, staring out of the corner of your eye when you watched him go.   Nobody else seemed to notice.   Later they said he died of leukemia.   Died of Hodgkin's.   Told everybody he got brain damage from the crash out on Route 287, where Bobby Hale flipped his van and hit a tree.   Four others dead, one paralyzed, and two walked away with bruises and plenty of psychological damage.   One survivor tried suicide six months later claiming rats lived in her belly.
    Maybe they were right.   Btu the skin of that drum just couldn't take the goddamn pounding anymore.
    So now you're walking past the science labs, where you cut open worms, frogs, a piglet, a cow's eye, and the starving Portuguese orphans who came on the black truck that backed right up to the gym doors.   Hustled them out while the lunch ladies and substitute teachers squawked into megaphones, " Nao toque nas paredes limpas .   Nos estaremos alimentando-lhe muito peixe logo ."
    Don't touch the clean walls.   We will be feeding you much fish shortly.
    You see all the brown faces with bad teeth breaking into hideous grins.
    " A festa de St. Peter comecara dentro da hora .   Coloque mas tabelas e tenha uma sesta ate que esteja hora de comer ."
    The Feast of St. Peter will begin within the hour.   Lay down on the tables and have a nap until it is time to eat.
    You're in front of your old locker, wondering if the combination will still work.   If the pages you cut from the newspapers and magazines are still taped up inside.   You touch the cold metal and a sob breaks inside your chest.
    "You all right?" someone asks.
    Christ, you nearly leap through the top of your own skull.   You turn and stare.   She could be any of the girls who refused to go out with you back then when it mattered most.   She smiles warmly and it sends an electrical thrill knifing through your guts.   No more than fifteen, has a studious appearance to her–glasses, ponytail, a skirt and tie as if she was at private school, which she's not.   It throws you for a second.   She gives a melancholy grin and asks, "You lost?"
    "Sorry.   This your locker?"
    "Yeah."
    "Used to be mine about twenty years back.   I was remembering a little."
    "About a locker?"
    "More or less."
    "Okay," she acquiesces, still waiting.   You want to ask her if the fat kid with the kettle drum ever wanders around in the middle of the day.   If the eviscerated Portugese orphans crawl down the halls holding the flaps of their stomachs together with dirty hands crying, " Eu acredito que se encontraram me.   Nao ha muitos peixes aqui ."
    I believe they have lied to me.   There is not much fish here.
    She's got poison sumac rashes around her knuckles and you almost get homesick looking at them.   Perhaps you'll meet again another two decades from now, both of you roaming about the school, staring at this same locker while some child looks up into mad, sentimental faces.
    "I'm gonna be late for class."
    "Oh.   Excuse me," you say, flitting aside.
    "Thanks a lot."
    There's an extra glint in her eye as if she's trying to decide whether to do something or not.   She's on the edge but can't quite make up her mind.   Maybe bring you in for show and tell.   Or give you the name of a good therapist.   Or slam you out of your socks with a harrowing lie.   Scream rape.   Or offer herself up for a cockeyed kick, a power trip, something disgusting to tell her girlfriends about later, get everybody laughing–his belly was so big and white as a sheet.   His dick was out and maybe four inches long when I finally