SOME HORROR STORIES
I believe I should avoid the temptation to gloat over any kudos I have received over the years, but I must share one more here. Probably everyone who was ever a teacher has such “warm spots.” I had resigned from Eastern Hancock and was working with a new community theater group called Hoosier Heartland Repertory Theater. I designed , constructed and decorated the set for the first show, a Neil Simon comedy. I realized that I needed something I could easily borrow from the stock of things at Eastern, so I stopped by there one summer morning, just as the high school band was coming off the football field. I tried to scoot away in time to miss them, but one girl, a sophomore by then, ran to catch up with me, and as she put her arms around me, she began to cry. “Oh, Mr. Rhoades, what are we going to do?” was all she said, but the name Julie Wilson etched itself on my memory in that moment.
Many years ago a very needy student committed suicide. This boy seemed friendless, and every day he watched from my second-story window for me to come into the school parking lot. He would then hurry to meet me on the stairs and walk me to class, sharing with me the new joke the kids were telling that morning or the latest news. I felt I should have detected his despair, and my guilt took me to his funeral, although at that time I did not know other members of his family. He had removed the food and shelves from the refrigerator and climbed in. In those days there was a catch that left him with no way out, and the inside compartment was battered by his efforts. There he lay in a pauper’s casket with a filmy cloth draped over it to make the bluish tint of his flesh less noticeable.
One always has the feeling that one should go to pay his respects, but sometimes, for a teacher, it leaves scars on both parties. I mean, what could I say to them? That I was fond of him? He always wore a suit coat and the same dingy white shirt and tie to school. He was buried in that same recognizable uniform. In later years, when I have had his brother, his sister, and much later, his nieces, I felt that if I had not gone to that place on that occasion, they would have been more comfortable in my presence.
His younger brother had come home, seen all the food on the table and opened the refrigerator door to a horrific sight. Later, when I had that boy in a junior lit class, we were to have read “The Fall of the House of Usher” in which someone was buried alive—a favorite theme with Poe. We skipped that story, although I had once, upon realizing that a very weak senior English class was not retaining the grammar we were studying, decided to make a departure from the textbook for a time. We Studied the “House of Usher,” plotted the movie by scenes, (I had learned to do that in a summer audio-visual course at Purdue) and went on location for filming them. Video cameras were just then available, but we didn’t have one yet, so we filmed with my 8mm movie camera, sent the reels off for developing, and I spliced and edited before showing it to the group. The class was small enough to travel in two cars, and they were treated like royalty at each destination, always close enough to be back in time for their next class. The film was quite a hit at the county teachers’ conference that year, and several of those students later told me that was their favorite class of all their school years.
I also realized one time, as I was beginning to read “The Tell-Tale Heart” that there was a boy in the room who had been orphaned by a case of murder/suicide, in which his father had been the shooter. When his head dropped to his desk, I hated what I was doing to this very intelligent young man. I knew that if I stopped, the kids would ask why, so I continued, but that was the most lifeless reading I ever gave of that classic story. You never know for sure what life has brought to the students who sit before you every day.
Although the circumstances were quite different, there are similarities I could compare to a situation at Carthage when I worked at the funeral home because Frank Hampton of Hampton’s Mortuary had become my best friend. In a small town there were only occasional funerals, but Frank and Marie and their boys could never leave town without someone to stay at the mortuary and answer the phone. There were not such conveniences as answering machines or answering services. We would move into their apartment above the funeral home from time to time. I learned to come at once for ambulance calls or death calls.
On one occasion Frank called and asked me to help him pick up a body from a home in town. In a flash we were on our way. The family was grieving in the adjoining room. I looked at the abandoned shell of the father of the household. Cancer of the esophagus had caused him to bleed to death, gushing blood from his mouth. His fourteen-year-old son had been alone with him, and a glance at the wastebasket filled with blood and Kleenexes brought an instant vision of the death scene. We quietly put the body on the gurney and Frank put the shroud in place. As we wheeled the gurney to the door, loud weeping swelled in the adjoining room. When I passed that boy in the halls thereafter, I knew from his face that my presence had caused him to revisit that nightmare and to be very sad.
