An Absence of Principal Read Online Free Page A

“This isn’t good. Not at all.”
    What kinda name is Cootie? , Doggett wondered to himself. At that moment, the man named Cootie suddenly materialized outside Doggett’s driver-side window. Doggett couldn’t look up and see his face, but he saw the raggedy Knicks jersey he had on and noticed the pistol tucked inside his belt.
     
     
    Doggett jumped out of his car and gave a good look to the low life who would soon be his temporary business partner. The two of them sized up each other for several seconds before moving past the small talk. Doggett had seen the man’s face somewhere before. He didn’t know from where, but he was definitely familiar.
    “What’s up, my friend?” the principal asked his new deliveryman. He thought maybe if he was chatty it might lessen the tension of the moment.
    “You got it, old man?” Cootie responded brusquely, sniffing, wiping at his nose and constantly looking from side to side to make sure no one was listening in on or watching their conversation.
    Doggett’s attempt at chattiness did not lessen the tension. In fact the young man was rather rude, Doggett thought, and so he decided to change his mood.
    “Watch your mouth, kid. Not here to be friends,” Doggett scrambled to be a hard ass. “Forty-eight hours from now, I’m back. You’re back. I want it all. Tell me again what we agreed on, boy?”
    “Sixty. That’s what you told me.”
    “Sixty thousand, yeah. Not a dime less, you got it?”
    “Back off, old man. Ain’t my first time. I’ll be here.”
    Doggett handed Cootie the two kilos, which filled an old box that had held 16 pints of Jim Beam in its first incarnation.
    “Damn straight you’ll be here, boy. Seven Saturday night. Come with it all. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”
    Cootie was apparently tired of the lecture and tugged at his waistband to remind Doggett the man with the gun is always the man in charge.
    “Hey old man, I seen you somewhere before. Where I seen you?”
    “You crazy, boy,” Doggett said.
    “Nah, man, I never forget a face — “
    Before Cootie could finish, Doggett had climbed into his car, slammed the door and sped away, leaving the red-eyed, low-life in his rear view mirror.
    Two corners away, Tony Nail sat in his car, a silver Honda, a few year’s older than Doggett’s but similar in body style. The headlights didn’t work half the time, the tires were bald and he had to manually turn his blinker off. Oh, and a taillight was frequently out because of a short. But Tony never placed any added emphasis on having an extravagant and elegant ride. If it got him to where his ministry was needed, he was good with that. And on this night, as he figured his checkbook after filling up with gas, he glanced up to see what looked like Principal Doggett’s silver Honda screaming toward him just off Front Street near downtown.
    Nail leaned across the passenger seat hoping he would be able to shield himself if there was an impact. Seconds later he heard the car zoom by.
    Nail hurried off Front Street behind the Royal Delite. He first saw a group of boys in their early 20s congregated outside the building. They were all talking about the crazed old man that had just sped away.
    “What up, boys?” Nail asked, hoping for any sort of info they could tell him.
    “Some crazy dude just here. Old man. Looked familiar. Somebody I knew, maybe when I was a kid,” one of them said. “You see that guy? We thought it was you first because his car and yours look just alike.”
    There was little else any of them offered about what had just happened. One of the boys said Cootie left just after the old man did. Nail knew Cootie was one of the town’s most brazen dealers. He did the math. It sure seemed to him like his principal had begun a second job. One maybe more lucrative than public education administration.

Friday was the one day a year when teachers and staff returned just long enough to box up the school year and file it and their personal