His mother is the crossing guard at Latimer Middle School and has been the crossing guard there since before he was born. He grew up running around their house wearing her neon vest, blowing her whistle. He learned to say “stop” before he learned to say “potty.” Hand up to halt. Then hand out for the wave-through. To Canton, crossing guards, especially his mother, seemed to have special powers. They were able to stop moving things. Able to slow traffic. Able to make a safe way for people to cross from one side to another. Their vests were like capes, and their whistles blew some kind of magic tone that forced drivers to hit brakes.
That’s what Canton always thought. Until a year ago when a little blue ball went bouncing off the sidewalk into the street. And a boy, the size of a big baby, named Kenzi Thompson, went running after it. Canton’s mom had turned her back just for a moment, a split second, and by the time she realized what was happening, Kenzi was charging across the crosswalk, a school bus heading right toward him. There wasn’t enough time to blow the whistle, so Canton’s mother, Ms. Post, went chasing after Kenzi, who, once he realized a bus was coming, froze in the middle of Portal Avenue. The bus hit the brakes. The scream of metal and smoke kicking up from the burning rubber filled the air as Ms. Post threw her entire body into Kenzi, knocking him forward, the bus turning just enough to avoid hitting Kenzi but not enough to avoid slightly bumping her.
But a slight bump from a bus ain’t so slight.
But a broken shoulder and a bruised hip is much better than a burial.
But the whole thing was completely devastating to Canton.
Canton always waited for his mother after school, killing time by helping Mr. Munch, the custodian, do custodial things. Actually, mostly Canton just sat around the front of the building listening to Mr. Munch complain about things like the school bathrooms.
“Why can’t y’all hit the toilet, Canton? I mean, the hole is huge and somehow y’all figure out how to get pee all over the seat. All over the floor. All over the walls. How?”
But on the day Canton’s mother was hit by a bus, the conversation about why kids throw pennies on the floor like pennies don’t spend was cut short by Jasmine Jordan and Terrence Jumper, who came running back into the school screaming about it.
“Ms. Post got hit by a school bus!” A sentence Canton never expected to hear. Never wanted to hear. And hearing it was like hearing the world’s longest whistle blow, shrill, shredding his eardrums. His skin was crawling, felt like it was changing color, from brown to yellow. School bus yellow. By the time Canton and Mr. Munch got outside, sirens were already blaring down Portal.
Ms. Post was back to work in a week. Whistle in mouth, vest strapped on, altered only by the sling holding her shoulder in place. She went back to normal. She had to. Said it was just part of the job.
But not Canton. He didn’t go back to normal.
The afternoon his mother returned to the corner to guide students across the street, Mr. Munch found Canton in the bathroom after school, sitting on the nasty tile floor in the corner. His head pressed against his knees.
“Canton, what you doing in here?” Mr. Munch asked, realizing he wasn’t actually… using the bathroom. And when Canton lifted his head up, Mr. Munch could see that he’d been crying. He could also see that Canton’s chest was pumping, heaving like it was hard for him to breathe. Like it would break open. Mr. Munch got down on the floor with him. Squatted beside him and talked him through some breathing exercises.
“Come on, Canton. Count to ten with me. One, two, three…” And then, “Now let’s go back to one. Ten, nine, eight…” And eventually Canton could breathe. Could talk. Could stand. Mr. Munch walked him outside. When they made it to the corner, where Ms. Post was working, Canton wrapped his arms around his mother and squeezed. Held her so tight that she winced, her shoulder still a sack of broken bone.
“Okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re okay,” she chanted in his ear, trying to figure out how to get him to let go so she could do her job, but also not wanting to let him go because he was also her job.
Mr. Munch patted Canton on his shoulder, but realizing there was no way this boy would let go of his mother, Mr. Munch decided he would take over for her, step into the street, stick his fingers in his mouth and whistle even louder than the whistle around Ms. Post’s neck.
He put his hand up and yelled at the cars, “I’m tellin’ y’all right now, you hit me and I’m hitting you back!” And once the traffic stopped, he yelled for all the waiting students to “get on ’cross the street.” Then he turned back toward the stopped cars and puff his chest, almost bucking, daring them to move.
* * *
The next day, Mr. Munch met Canton outside of his last class of the day, Mr. Davanzo’s social studies class. In his hand was a big push broom.
“How you feeling?”
“I’m okay.”
“Still got the jitters?”
Canton nodded, just slightly, trying to hide his embarrassment.
“Wanna take a walk with me? I wanna give you something.”
Canton and Mr. Munch sauntered the halls of the school, pushing dust, and hair that looked like dust, and coins and candy wrappers and a random sock and drawstrings and loose braids and who knows what else, as all the other students bustled around, eventually funneling through the double doors into the outside world.
Pushing. Brooming. Mr. Munch, talking.
“When my daughter, Winnie, went off to college, my wife got so nervous that she’d call Winnie every single day, multiple times a day. And whenever Winnie wouldn’t answer, Zena would just… lose it,” Mr. Munch started.
“Zena’s your wife?”
“Yeah.” Mr. Munch grinned. “Best person I ever known. Kinda gotta be to deal with a man that comes home every day smelling like bleach and urine. But she’s been through a lot. Seen a lot of the world when she was young, and it made her terrified for our daughter. Made her anxious about every step Winnie took away from us. What if something happens to her? What if she needs us? What if she’s in danger? Zena would go on and on with these kinds of questions, up all night, sick with fear all day.”
“And what you say?”
“Nothing. But what I did was buy her a dog.”
“A dog?”
“Yep.” Canton and Mr. Munch stopped at the custodian closet. The old man pushed the pile of middle school debris into the corner, then pulled out a million keys, flipping through them like pages of a book. “Not because she needed something else to care for—no dog can take the place of our baby girl—but I read this thing about emotional support animals.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, okay, first, I should clarify that my daughter called me and told me about them without my wife knowing, and then I read about them myself. Basically, it’s like having a dog to make you feel better.” Finally, he picked the right key and opened the closet door. “I mean, what’s better than a dog, right?”
They went into the custodian’s closet, which was big enough to be an office. Pictures on the wall of Mr. Munch’s wife and daughter. And the dog. A small curly-haired thing with an underbite so ugly it was cute. At least Canton thought so. But besides its cuteness, Canton kept thinking about all the things better than dogs. To him. Like ice cream. And skateboards. And maybe a girlfriend one day. Or even a girl that’s a friend. And a good joke. Oh, and video games. Then, after all that… dogs were cool.