Night Class

            By Andrew
Hudgins

            
               (posted Wednesday,
April 22)
            

            To hear the poet read
"Night Class," click .

            He'd pull a yellow
clipping from his wallet,and while you read it he stared in your face.The other
students scanned the clipping, nodded,smiled as best they could, and gave it
backto the pudgy, sweaty boy, who grinned at themexpectantly.                  
     They complained, and finallyI stopped him after class.                    
                             "Uh, Mister Kearny,maybe you shouldn't, uh, share
with your friendsabout shooting your father."                                  
         "I didn't shoot him.""You didn't?"                         "No sir, I
hit him with a bat.See, he was whipping on my mom againand whipping on me too
and then one dayI just got tired of being whipped onand I hit him with my
uncle's metal batand just kept hitting till he didn't move.I didn't mean to
kill him, just make him stop."His high voice trembled, his eyes were fixed on
mine."I got my picture in the paper." He reachedback toward his hip. "You want
to see the clipping?"

            "That clipping, Mister
Kearny, that's the problem.People get very nervous around somebodywho's killed
somebody--no matter why he killed them.Now maybe that's unfair, but if you
thinkabout it I'm sure you'll understand it's true."

            He stared down the
emptying hallat a few students heading to their cars,their late jobs, home.    
                                   "Does that make sense to you?"

            The twin fire-doors
wheezed shut behind two girls.His face deepened to a face I've cometo think of,
on other faces, as ancient, accepting.

            "That makes
sense to you, now doesn't it?"I said, a little sharply.

                                      
             "Yeah, I guess."He was whispering.                                
"Good, Peter. I'm glad.Now don't forget the paper that's due Friday."

            He pushed
his way into the stairwell. I waiteduntil I heard the outside door clank
shutbefore I followed. I wanted to be the onewhose leaving let the hall fall
into silence--silence, which I have, from talking, learned to love.But what,
when no one loved me, have I donebut talk, talk, talk until I've said, like
Peter,the thing I shouldn't say or, as tonight,until I've said exactly what
I've had to say.And as I hurtled home past dark, tires wailing,I howled with
every song on the radio,screamed some teen-age stranger's stupid words,shrieked
somebody else's rage, somebody's lovetill I could bear my own voice, and its
silence.