One day, at Amerusa School, a little girl named Violet fell down and scraped her knee. It hurt lots and blood was pouring out. Violet called out to her teacher “Help me Mr. Baner, I’ve fallen and hurt my knee. Can you fix it?”
Mr. Baner was a mean old man – he didn’t like the kids very much, especially kids like Violet who came from the Southern part of town. He asked Violet “Will your Mommy and Daddy’s bosses give the doctor money to fix your knee?” Violet was sad. She replied “My Mommy can’t find a job and my Daddy’s boss won’t give us money for doctors. Can you help me?” She started to cry.
Mr. Baner made a snorting noise and said “Well, if your Mommy and Daddy’s bosses won’t give the doctor money to fix your knee, they’ll have to give him money themselves.” Violet cried even more. “My Mommy and Daddy don’t have much money. Sometimes we don’t have enough for food and my little brother needs lots of medicine for his Asthma and we have to take care of our cousins because their Mommy and Daddy died. Can you help me?”She was still bleeding and her crying had turned to sobbing.
Mean old Mr.Baner said, as he walked away, “Your parents should have thought of all those things before they had you and your brother. Tell them to talk to the Magic Invisible Guy – he’ll wave his index finger and your knee will be as good as new.” Then he was gone leaving Violet bleeding and sobbing in the school yard.
The new head teacher saw what was happening from his office window. He was sad and said to another teacher “Why are the mean old teachers, like Mr. Baner, making it so hard for me to bring a doctor to school who will fix scraped knees and bad tummies for free? Why do they think that will be a bad thing. Kanuckton School has a free doctor and the students and teachers there say it’s really good. But Mr. Baner and his friends say we don’t want to have bad doctors like they have in Kanuckton. What can we do to change Mr. Baner’s mind?”
Just then, the Amerusa School security guard knocked on the new head teacher’s door. He told the new head teacher that he had heard that the sick, old man with the dirty, smelly beard was planning another raid. One of the security guard’s friends had gone to the neighbouring village, where the sick, old man with the dirty, smelly beard lived in his trailer at the edge of town, and pretended to be friends with some of the boys from the village. They told him about the stolen pick up trucks and the piles of rocks and the plan to drive through Amerusa throwing the rocks through shop windows and ripping up the flowers from the town square and, maybe, running over more people trying to cross the street. This was terrible!
The new head teacher called a secret meeting with some of the teachers and the boss of the Parent Teacher Association and the boss of the town and the security guard. They talked about how they could stop this terrible thing from happening. After they talked and talked and talked, they decided that they would have to sneak into the neighbouring village, when it was dark, and catch the sick, old man with the dirty, smelly beard before he could put his evil plan into action.
Meanwhile, Violet limped home with her bleeding scraped knee and, when she got there, her Mommy did her best to stop the bleeding and make Violet feel better. She did her best but Violet still walked with a limp and couldn’t understand why Mr. Baner didn’t want to help her.
While Violet was sobbing herself to sleep, mean Mr. Baner was in his big house in the Northern part of town, with his beautiful family, eating a yummy meal and watching Shrill O’Liarly shout from their enormous television (the television covered almost the whole wall in their living room). Mr. Baner turned to Mrs. Baner and said “The Magic Invisible Guy has truly blessed us. We have a wonderful life. I have to make sure that the horrible new head teacher with the black clothes doesn’t spoil things.” She nodded wisely. And Shrill continued to shout.
TO BE CONTINUED
david chaulk 