Trench Pilgrim Eclesiastic Prisoner Cabbot, Soldier for Trench Crusade

On the cusp of summer, we had another substitute teacher. The morning went pretty much as expected, he handed out the worksheets. The class did not behave well. After lunchtime, he turned off all the lights in the classroom and sat cross-legged right on top of the teacher's desk. Illuminated by what little light could sneak past the vinyl pull-down blinds, he told us about guard duty in the bamboo forest. “You get so jumpy,” he whispers, “you shoot anything that moves. Leaf falls? you shoot it.”“One time,” he confesses, regret and pride warring behind his eyes, “It was just me and him. He had a gun and I only had a knife. But I'm still here and he's not.” We were transfixed, transported through time and space by plain, bleak words to the grim reality of a loss that still haunted the minds of truck drivers and bank managers, written in hard stares and military tattoos. Before or since, I never saw a class behave so well for a substitute teacher. Not even for Ms. Goldberg, who'd pick you