dredged up uncomfortable recollections of doing laps around the track or running up and down the stairs as punishment. He could recall how his leg muscles burned, and how his lungs ached.
Those sadists.
*
He slipped out of the cab and slung a heavy duffel bag over his right shoulder by the strap and walked toward the high school building. The chain-link fence gate wasn’t locked—it never was during football season because players couldn’t be expected to wait for someone to unlock it before running through.
He chose a route between the fence and the cavernous back of the stadium itself. He kept in the shadows and moved from pillar to pillar. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he could read the crude hand-lettered posters that were hung on the interior walls:
Hawk Power!
Bag the Bengals!
Red and Black—On the Attack!
He snorted and rolled his eyes. The cheerleaders who made the signs hadn’t come up with an original thought or slogan in the years since he’d been there. Obviously, they’d be hosting the Helena Bengals on Friday.
The smells from the stadium were still the same as well: stale popcorn, spilled soft drinks, sweat, athletic tape. It jerked him back to a place he didn’t want to go.
He remembered being told once that the sense of a familiar smell—called olfaction—could trigger intense recollections. It was true. He felt as if he was being jerked back in time.
He cursed and picked up his pace. As far as he was concerned, he couldn’t get away from the stadium fast enough.
*
There were two vehicles in the teacher’s parking lot, but no lights on from inside the building. He puzzled over that for a moment, then thought: Of course. The cars belonged to coaches or advisors who had accompanied a team or group out of town. They’d left their cars for when they got back.
*
The truck driver paused behind a spruce and surveyed the exterior brick wall of the auto shop. The broken camera still hung by its wires above the closed garage door. They hadn’t even removed it yet. Typical.
He lowered the bag to the ground and grasped the door handle and tugged hard to the side. He heard the click and the door released.
After raising it two feet, he got on his hands and knees and crawled under it, then pulled the duffel bag inside behind him. He stepped on a steel rail and pushed the bottom of the door down within an inch of the concrete floor.
He turned and took in the room. Again, he was assaulted with familiar odors. Oil, gasoline, diesel fuel. There was a masking antiseptic sheen of floor-cleaning agent over the top of it, but the basic gearhead smells were still there.
That, he liked. At least some of the students were still learning something practical. It would only be a matter of time before the auto shop was replaced with a meditation room or multicultural studies area or overall safe space, he reckoned.
The shop was dimly lit by a row of amber emergency lights just below the high ceiling. It wasn’t enough light to throw shadows but it was enough to see where he was going. He had no need for the headlamp he’d brought along.
A half-ton Toyota pickup with its hood up was in one of the bays, and a tricked-out Dodge Challenger was in another. He walked between them toward the heavy metal door that led to the main building.
*
It wasn’t like he even needed the emergency lights or his head-lamp. He could have found his way down the hallways and wings with his eyes closed. He impressed himself with his perfect recall of the layout of the building with its banks of lockers and closed classroom doors.
And it was all the same. These people never changed. The teachers who thought they were cool and edgy taped slogans and cartoons on the outside of their doors. The display cases were filled with forgotten trophies and team photos. On the brick walls were posters boasting of “Hawk Pride” and bulletin boards covered with politically correct bullshit about suicide prevention and how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
The central hub of the building was the library, and he could see it in the distance long before he got there. The windows glowed light blue from the monitors of a bank of computers within. There had been a few of them before, mostly clunky beige PCs, but now the interior looked like Mission Control at NASA.
Those students could really update their Facebook profiles now,