A Slip And A Fall

Crime Fiction by Russell Guenther

Norv watched as the three boys laid their trap, making no attempt to stop them. He found it more effective to let them finish their mischievous little games and catch them afterward. They were more remorseful this way. He stood at the glass entry doors leading into the main school hall from the outdoor cafeteria until the three ne’er-do-wells walked through. They all stood stock-still when they saw him. They’d been caught.

“I see what you did there,” Norv said. “Very clever. Follow me.” The four all walked out to the lunch table to the scene of the crime. With his diminutive stature, Norv would have been indistinguishable from the seventh-grade kids if not for the goatee he wore. He took a putty knife out of the pocket of his work pants and held it out to the kid with the blond flat-top.

“Go ahead,” Norv said. The boy took the putty knife and began scraping the wad of bubblegum from the bench seat. Juicy Fruit, from the smell of it. Must have taken about five sticks of the stuff to make a blob that big. The gooey stuff removed, the kid stood and looked at him, thoroughly cowed.

“Are you gonna tell Mr. Hicks?” Vice Principal Hicks was the disciplinarian of Madison Middle School, and a referral to his office was considered certain doom by the students. A long, pregnant silence passed as the three boys nervously awaited their fate.

“No,” Norv said. “But imagine how you’d feel if you came to school in some nice new cargo shorts and sat down in that shit, fucking them all up?” Norv found if he talked like a middle school kid, they gave him more respect—contrary to the faculty’s general opinion. The more profane, the better.

“Yeah,” the kid said.

“Thanks for not giving us a referral,” one of the other kids said. Norv remembered his name was Travis.

“That’s alright,” Norv said. “Just remember what I told you. You boys better get going so you’re not late for fifth period.” The three scampered off without another word.

Norv knew most of the kids thought of him as the cool custodian, because he tried to relate to them more so than most of the adults on the staff. Most of the time, Norv had an easier time relating to the kids than the staff himself. In fact, he disliked most of the teachers at the school, and some of them he downright despised.

On the top of the list was Mr. Goerhing, the sixth-grade English/History/Math teacher. The school’s curriculum utilized several educators in the sixth-grade class as “Core” teachers, consolidating three subjects into a morning-long chunk where the students would remain under the tutelage of their assigned Core teacher, alphabetically according to each student’s last name, for what was deemed the most essential subjects. Norv knew the kids in Mr. Howard’s class didn’t mind the program. Will Howard was the fun one, always walking around the halls with a joke and a smile. Mr. Goerhing, “Rick” to the other teachers (but never to Norv), seemed keen to provide the Yin to Howard’s Yang, leaving his students wishing their last names had fallen into the “H-Z” designation, thus placing them in Mr. Howard’s adjacent classroom.

Norv wiped the edge of his putty knife on the rim of a trash can, disposing of the larger portions of the fruity gum, then made his way to the janitor’s closet. He smiled at Jeannie, one of the staffers in the receptionist’s office, and pulled out his large ring of keys, attached to a retractable chain to his belt, and unlocked the closet. He closed the door behind him and walked into the room. It was called the janitor’s closet, but it was large enough to serve as Norv’s own office, and he considered it as much. He picked up a bottle of Goo Gone from the shelf and sprayed the blade of his putty knife, wiping the remnants of chewing gum until the surface was in smooth, working order. He put the knife back into his pants pocket and collected his cleaning caddy, preparing for the after-lunch cleanup.

Stepping out of the closet he came face-to-face with Mr. Goerhing. Fifth period was Goerhing’s free period, and while untethered to his classroom he had always managed to hit Norv up for something, often making rounds near the janitor’s closet until he eventually tracked him down.

“Norv,” Goerhing said. “I need a favor.” A favor. His usual lead-in was “I need you to do something,” so him asking for a favor meant something special.

Norv almost said “OK,” but wanted to remain non-committal until he knew what he was getting into. He’d learned the hard way to choose his words carefully with the man. “What’s the trouble?” he said.

“I need to borrow your key,” Goerhing said.

“What key is that, Mr. Goerhing?”

“The key to my class,” Goerhing said, obviously irritated. It would naturally be the only key he would ask for, but Norv couldn’t help winding him up a little.

“Did you lose yours?” Norv said, managing not to say “Again?”

“No, I didn’t lose it,” Goerhing said, his agitation growing. “Look, I know where it is, I just don’t have it with me.”

“I can let you in,” Norv said. “It’s no problem.”

“I need to be in and out all afternoon,” Goerhing said. “And I don’t want to have to come track you down before my next class.”

“Leave it unlocked,” Norv said. Goerhing looked at him like he’d suggested they go streaking through the school together.

“You know I can’t do that. Come on, Norv. I’ll get it back to you after sixth period.”

“I don’t carry individual room keys, Mr. Goerhing. My key’s a master that fits all the rooms. I can’t lend it out. Why don’t you go see Ron? They’ve got spares in the maintenance office for all the rooms.”

“Then I’ll have to sign it out,” Goerhing said. Norv knew he didn’t want to embarrass himself by checking a key out. There was a thorough key control record, and Goerhing had already lost his keys twice before, once prompting a rekey of all the classrooms. Goerhing had tenure, and it was almost impossible for him to lose his job. He just didn’t want to lose face. Norv, however, would get his ass handed to him if he let keys float around, and possibly fired for losing a master key for the whole school.

“I wish I could help you out,” Norv said. “I really do.” The two men stood looking at each other at an impasse.  

“Fine,” Goerhing said. “Don’t help me. Just wait till you need a favor.” He stormed off, and Norv wondered what favor Goehring could possibly be equipped to offer him. He shrugged and went out to clean the lunch area.

After he’d wiped down the last table and had all the trash bags filled, tied, and ready to go to the dumpster, he went to the maintenance shed for a motorized cart. He hadn’t made it two steps when he heard a voice call his name.

“Norv, Hicks wants you.” It was Colin, a junior Vice Principal’s assistant. The only time he’d ever refer to the VP as Hicks was in front of Norv or the maintenance crew. Perhaps he thought he was ingratiating himself to the blue-collar stiffs this way.

“What, now?” Norv said.

“It’s what the man said. Don’t shoot, I’m just the messenger.”

“OK,” Norv said. “Just gotta wash my hands.”

        ***

Sitting in the visitor’s chair in Mr. Hicks’s office, Norv felt he had himself gotten a referral, like some twelve-year-old kid. Maybe that was the idea. Hicks sat across from him, leaning back in his captain’s chair, looking at him with steel-gray eyes under steel-gray hair. He’d left the steel-gray suit at home, opting for a navy blue, no tie today. Casual Friday for Hicks.

“This isn’t the first time, Norv.”

“Goerhing’s always had a beef with me,” he said. “I don’t know where it came from.”

“Mr. Goerhing seems to know…”  He put extra emphasis on the Mister. “He says you were very rude to him.”

“What he was asking…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hicks cut in. “You are to treat the faculty with courtesy. If what he requested wasn’t feasible, a simple and polite no would have sufficed.” Throwing the academic words at him now. Norv considered asking, however briefly, why Goehring hadn’t had the balls to be in on this little meeting, so Norv could address whatever problem he’d had directly.

“If this trouble persists, I’m afraid it will lead to further measures, possible disciplinary action.”

“Maybe if I spoke to him myself,” Norv offered. The prospect of this was a weak one, but he felt he had to put something out there.

“I don’t see how that will diffuse the matter at this juncture,” Hicks said. “It may only exacerbate the issue.” Norv was no English teacher, but he got the gist of what the man was saying, and nodded. He was right—it would only further rattle Goerhing’s cage. After a moment’s silence, Norv took it to mean he was dismissed and got out of his chair.

“I gotta go take out the trash,” he said. “Is there anything else, Mr. Hicks?”

“Just remember what I said,” Hicks said. “If you have to avoid Mr. Goerhing altogether to avoid such confrontations, then I suggest exactly that.”

“Yes, sir.”

***

The meeting with Hicks was stuck in Norv’s craw all afternoon. Avoid Mr. Goerhing altogether. Hell, the guy had practically cornered him by the janitor’s closet. How was he supposed to avoid him?

The students were all gone for the day, even the ones who were unlucky enough to be stuck in the library for Friday detention. This was Norv’s reflection time. He could buff the floors with his headphones in and be left alone. Polishing the scuffs out of the tile was therapeutic; a part of his life he could control, the tiny marks symbolizing the frustrations of the week. They would all be removed, shining and ready for a new start.

Norv was off in his own world, pulsing the machine along to his 80’s playlist, until he came to Goerhing’s classroom door. Just seeing the number 405 on the door made his blood run hot. He tried to avoid thinking about it, but the embossed characters on the door were mocking him, reminding him that no matter how much polish he used, Goerhing was one scuff mark that would keep popping back to the surface; a permanent stain that would continue to make his otherwise agreeable position at the school hell. He turned off the machine and stood with his hands on the handlebars. He decided it was time to teach the teacher a lesson of his own.

Norv pulled his keyring out, using the master key he so jealously guarded to open room 405. Just opening Goerhing’s classroom door without him being present gave him a sense of satisfaction, like he had the upper hand. He intended to keep it. Pulling the door to the hold-open position, he took the bottle of floor polish out of the caddy attachment, and a shop rag from his pants pocket. He dropped to his knees and squirted a gooey bead all over the floor of the entryway, just inside the door. He used the rag to spread the polish to a thin layer, wiping away the excess. He stood up and assessed his work. A nice two-foot wide section would be covered, slick as a bowling lane. Once Goerhing had stepped across the threshold, he’d be put in his place. As the teacher looked at the ceiling from his position on the floor, he would have no idea that the back of his shirt had already wiped the evidence clean. Brilliant. Norv was now giddy, his only regret that he wouldn’t be able to watch his play in action. After all, he was supposed to avoid the man…and that’s just what he’d do.

    ***

Monday morning Norv successfully avoided Goerhing’s wing of classrooms. Norv was summoned to the boys’ bathroom, where a toilet had backed up, and it took most of the morning mopping up the filthy water that had come dangerously close to flooding beyond the restroom door and into the main hallway. After he’d done that, he set up the yellow folding WET FLOOR sign and got ready to tackle the malfunctioning toilet. Plunging had come to no avail. This would be a job for the snake.

As Norv began running the snake down the toilet, Norv looked back as two students had come in, talking loudly. They snickered when they saw Norv engaged in his work, wrist-deep in the toilet, then went to the sinks, continuing their raucous conversation while they stared at themselves in the mirror. Norv turned back to his work. Class was in session, and these two kids had gotten a restroom pass to waste time together.

“Wonder how long we’ll have the new sub,” one boy said to the other.

“I dunno, but I don’t mind her so far,” came the other boy’s reply. “This one’s fine with me, though. Mr. Goerhing never let us out of class for anything.”

“Crazy about Mr. Goerhing. I didn’t catch the whole thing in homeroom, I came in late. What happened?”

“They found the dude dead on the floor over the weekend,” the first boy said. “They didn’t say anything else.”

“Whoah.”

The boys continued to chatter about this and that, but Norv didn’t pay attention to any of it. He dropped the plumber’s snake and stared into the toilet bowl, overcome with dizziness. Goerhing…dead? After the dizziness subsided, a cascade of thoughts rushed into his mind. First and foremost, that his childish prank had gone so horribly wrong, and now he had a man’s death on his hands. This stirred up some conflict within him. How fragile Goerhing must have been to have had something like a slip and fall kill him. And why had he been in school on the weekend? Who had found him? Would anyone find out about the floor? Would he dare tell?

After some contemplation, Norv decided the best thing, for now, would be to fix the toilet. He willingly gave the job all of his focus, working the snake in and out until he had extracted the paper towel somebody had flushed down, ten feet deep. It was a comfort to have things in life that were under his control.

While cleaning up and packing his tools in, Norv reflected upon his feelings on the event. After the initial disgust, he had come to feel a perverse sense of power. He had set a course of events that had led to something so immense, so significant, for maybe the first time ever. As far as guilt for Goerhing, well…would anybody really miss him? For the sixth grade class, he’d be a hero.

After wheeling the cart into the janitor’s closet, he went back out to the hall and about jumped out of his skin when he came face-to-face with Colin.

“Sorry,” the VP’s assistant said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“It’s alright,” Norv chuckled, shrugging off the embarrassment.

“Hicks wants a word,” Colin said.

“OK,” Norv sighed.

“Sorry,” Colin said again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Norv said. “Just the messenger.” He wondered what this could be about. With Goerhing out of the way, had somebody stepped in to take his place as Norv’s nemesis, complaining about him? Colin walked away to attend to whatever other gofer tasks Hicks had assigned him, and Norv went to the VP’s office unescorted.

He knocked on the open door, but Hicks didn’t look up from his computer.

“Have a seat,” Hicks said flatly. “Almost done here.” Norv pulled the chair across from the VP and sat down. This time, he felt more confident. He sat back and folded his hands. He was in no hurry.

“OK,” Hicks said, looking up from the screen. “I know you have had a busy morning, but I assume you’ve heard the news about Mr. Goerhing.”

“I heard,” Norv said.

“I know you two weren’t exactly friendly, so I will dispense with condolences. There’s no love lost there, I assume?” Hicks paused as if awaiting a reply. None was given. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about something somewhat related. An incident involving some floor polish. Let’s say excessive floor polish…”

Norv froze. His pulse shot up, and he felt like the floor beneath his chair had been yanked away like a magician’s tablecloth, and it would take a magic trick of his own to avoid falling through. His little trap had not been foolproof after all; Goerhing’s clothing had not wiped away the evidence. Perhaps he had used too much. It was too late to think now about what had gone wrong. He had to think about what to do next.

“You just wanted to get the last word, huh?” Hicks’s expression was a mixture of superiority and mild amusement. He swiveled in his chair and stood, his back facing Norv. If he had known, Norv wondered, what was the point of having him come into the office for a lecture, instead of just calling the police? Was Hicks playing with him, some kind of sick game? Hicks took two steps toward a filing cabinet in the corner. Maybe, with his micro-managing style, Hicks had planned on getting the confession from Norv ahead of time before involving the authorities.

Whatever the great Vice Principal of Madison Middle School had in mind, Norv had come to the rapid conclusion that he could not allow it to take place. He reached into one of the deep hip pockets of his work pants, where he always had a stash of extra garbage bags, and pulled one out. As Hicks opened a file drawer, Norv silently closed the office door behind him, ensuring the two men would have privacy. The determination came easy after he’d had time to consider his action against Goerhing, the feeling of exhilaration he’d had, and knew he could do it again, with purpose this time.

Norv drove a swift boot into the back of Hicks’s left knee, causing him to drop quickly, bouncing his forehead hard on the corner of the file drawer, and giving Norv the needed advantage over the much bigger man. As Hicks dropped further to the floor, Norv grasped the trash bag in both hands and slid it over Hicks’s head. The man’s animal instinct to resist was fierce but severely dulled by the stunning blow to the head. Norv cinched the bag at the bag of Hicks’s neck and pinned him to the floor. The VP flailed his arms blindly for purchase but found nothing to hold except the thin carpet beneath him. After thirty seconds, the fight had gone out, and Norv kept his grip until the man slackened, then went limp.

Standing up from his conquest, Norv was sweating, exhausted, and panicking. He had thought of what to do quickly enough, but not what to do after. The thing with Goerhing had been one thing, but now he had to figure his way out of this one. He pulled the garbage bag off Hicks’s head, not wanting to look at him. He stuffed the bag back into his pocket. He had no way of knowing if Hicks had shared his discovery of Norv’s crime with anyone else, or if Hicks himself had been informed by another. If it were the latter, Norv would be a dead duck. He couldn’t very well kill the entire faculty.

It didn’t matter. The important thing now was to get out of Hicks’s office quickly. It would do no good to stand around drawing conclusions. He went to the office door and opened it a tiny crack. Peering out, he saw nobody in the waiting area. He hoped nobody heard the sounds of the struggle. He stepped out of the office, closing the door behind him. It took all the self-control he could muster to walk naturally to his janitor’s closet. Along the way, he heard the bell ring. It was now passing period, and students would be pouring into the hallways. This was good; given Norv’s slight size, he could blend in with the stampede of kids, and slip away from the hall without anyone giving him a second thought.

“Hey, Norv!” Apparently, he’d been wrong. He tried to ignore the voice, but its owner could not be evaded. “Hey, wait up!” It was Mr. Howard, Goerhing’s former classroom neighbor.

“Norv, I’m glad I caught you,” Howard said. There was no getting away from him now, though Norv could think of worse people to encounter. “I just wanted to let you know…well, as sad as it is, Rick’s passing and all…much too young…I know he gave you a lot of grief, and the trick you played on him. Well, it was pretty juvenile, but I want to let you know I’ll vouch for you if Hicks comes down on you.”

Norv was dumbfounded. “How…” It was all he could manage.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter anyway, right? No harm, no foul.” Norv didn’t know how Howard worked that one out. Fatal seemed pretty harmful to Norv.

“Thanks.” Norv didn’t know what else to say.

“The guy was so high-strung, it was bound to happen sooner or later. At least he died at home.”

“At home?”

“Yeah,” Howard said, confused. “I thought everyone knew. His ex-wife came by his house on Saturday, got no answer. She went in, found him lying on the kitchen floor. Sudden cardiac arrest. They say he was dead before he hit the floor.”

---

Bio: Russell Guenther is an emerging fiction writer based in the Pacific Northwest with a collection of darkly humorous short stories, from the gritty to the fantastic. His work has been featured in The Stardust Review, The Yard: Crime Blog, and Drunk Monkeys Magazine. He is currently seeking representation for his debut novel.

Cover Photo by: Pexels/Macjoy Peñaredondo

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