I met David on a job interview of sorts in 1985. He scared me to death, and was most likely responsible for me getting the job. But first, a little context.
It was the summer of 1985 and I had just arrived in Jamaica to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer. During the two-month pre-service training, I was told that my assignment (teaching in a teacher's college) was no longer available and that they needed to find me a new placement. With no success after a few weeks, they let me travel up to Montego Bay to search for something myself. Within a few days, I had found three opportunities: Teaching adults how to read at night, working at an SOS Children's Village every other weekend helping establish a Boy Scout Troup, and teaching all subjects to group of boys at the Fairmont Boys' Home three days a week. It was at my job interview at Fairmont that David and my paths first crossed.
Through my canvassing, I had learned of a small orphanage on the edge of town that needed a temporary teacher - the primary teacher was just about to go on maternity leave. Fairmont Boys' home was an old converted guest house overlooking the bay and airport (I chuckle to think that in this more modern society, the place would be worth millions and never ceded to a group of wayward boys). There was a primary building with a great room with three sides facing the bay. Joining the building for two stories were verandas that now connected rooms for the boys. It was a small but tidy place. I made my way upstairs to the headmaster's office where I met a very pleasant and capable man, Mr. Bromfield. We chatted for a bit and he let me know what he was looking for - someone to teach 17 boys, ages 7-17 in a one-room class, boys who were "too spirited to appreciate the benefits of a traditional education." It was in the midst of me trying to navigate the subtle admonition layered in the headmaster's stiff British English that we heard the scream.
Instinctively, I jumped up and headed down the second-floor deck to the end room that served as the classroom. Bolting inside, I saw the frightened teacher I would soon be replacing looking across the room. I followed her eyes to the other side of the room where I saw a young boy stabbing at an older and larger boy with a makeshift knife. I could see small blood stains on the older boy's shirt that were from a few shallow puncture wounds. I rushed towards them and tackled the older boy, putting myself between the two of them. Mr. Bromfield was right behind me and gently took care of the now sobbing smaller child.
I got the job and started a month later. The two boys, Nigel and David, had become linked to me and Nigel would end up suffering from my attention. David was the older boy, 17 at that time. Nigel was probably 8 or 9 years old. I tried hard to help each child, they both needed such wildly different support and guidance. Nigel needed affection and attention and I still have no idea what David needed. When I did praise or reward Nigel, David would punish him later. This two-part act would escalate to the point where I was almost afraid to deal with Nigel. Everything I tried to teach, reach, support, cajole, or stifle David's anger and violence with failed. I was trying to create a solution to help both boys, and was only making things worse.
After nine months or so, I still had not given up on David, but everything came to a head one day and we ended up making a fragile truce that held for the next year-and-a-half. He had hit Nigel that day and I was far more stern in my rebuke than normal. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into a hallway. At that moment, he yelled "motherfucker" at me. I tightened my grip on his arm and told him that I had just learned my mother was dying of cancer and I wasn't going to allow him or any other man to insult her. For a short moment (and the only such moment I witnessed in two years), I saw a softness in David's eyes. It wasn't there long and he dropped his head and mumbled some form of "ok." In that instant, for the first time, I wondered how David had become an "orphan," whether through death or abandonment. I wondered if he had ever been hugged. I told him I also cared about him as much as I did Nigel, but I couldn't allow him to continue to strike the smaller, helpless boy. Again, David muttered compliance. This moment did not bring us any closer, it only gave Nigel a reprieve from David's anger.
I never saw a friendly smile from David, before or after our chat in that hallway. We didn't become closer, nor did we interact more than necessary. I did make sure I acknowledged him and didn't ignore him. A great weight had been lifted off my shoulders now that Nigel was safer. I never thought about thanking David for stopping what I thought he never should have done. I was wrong in that posture, dead wrong. I should have thanked him for doing something for me. I should have been grateful.
I wasn't at Fairmont much my second year as the regular teacher returned from maternity leave. I ended up doing activities and physical education for the boys once or twice a week, activities that David was usually excluded from due to some recent transgression. I did stay close to Nigel who always greeted me with a loving and bashful smile. I would jostle him a bit and we would get to our activity for the day. I never hugged Nigel. I wish I had.
Over the intervening 30+ years, I thought about both boys often, hoping one found love and that the other remained alive. A few years ago, I googled David's name and by chance, happened upon a short, obscure notice in the Radio Jamaica News. David, who had been in and out of prison since leaving Fairmont, had been killed in a gunfight in Montego Bay. There was no obituary or any other notifications.
Epilogue
I have know of David's death for several years now. I never was able to track down Nigel and can only pray over him. Last night, I was re-reading Alan Paton's collection of short stories, Tales from a Trouble Land with a different lens. Alan Paton was a white South-African who wrote elegantly about the horrors of Apartheid and the lives it destroyed. Some know of his most famous book, Cry, the Beloved Country. I had forgotten, though, that Alan Paton had been a headmaster for many years at boy's reformatory school for indigenous children in Soweto. In some of his short stories, he recounts his successes and failures reaching those troubled boys. He wrote about their struggles far more eloquently than I do of David. But I sense a responsible form of humility in his writing that I do hope I share. I hope I did what I could for David and Nigel, and I hope that what I am concerned with about my experiences is more about them than some sort of pity I generate for my own failures.
