Free Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins Page A

daffodil shit?"
    Barb laughed like hell, along with everybody else.
    Then she said fine, we could sing whatever we wished, provided Shake and me got up in front of the class with her and helped lead the room.
    We got up there and proceeded to lead the class in what we thought was the funniest song we'd ever heard.
    What we sang was, "Down, Down, Down with R. E. Turner." R. E. Turner was the principal, naturally.
    The song went:
    Down, down, down with R. E. Turner.
    He's a dirty horse manure,
    Horseshit!
    They forgot to pull the chain,
    Consequently, he'll remain —
    Til they disinfect the Fort Worth city sewers.
    I don't recall how many times we sang it, or how far down the corridor anybody could hear it. But R. E. Turner heard it and when we finished it the last time, he appeared in the doorway of our room.
    Seems like the three of us sat in R. E. Turner's office for about an hour before Big Ed got there.
    Mr. Turner just sat there boiling and looking at some papers on his desk. We tried to sit quietly and not look at each other because we knew we'd giggle if we did.
    At one point, Mr. Turner told Barbara Jane, "Young lady, I hope you realize that this may cost you the state spelling championship."
    Shake blurted out, "Aw, gee. Not that. Anything but that."
    And Barbara Jane bit her lip to keep from breaking up.
    Mr. Turner told me, "It's not really your fault, Puckett. You've always been easily led."
    When Big Ed came in, he insisted that we be allowed to stay in Mr. Turner's office and listen to their conversation.
    "I don't have anything to say that I can't say in front of anybody in this great world. That's what it's like to be totally honest," said Big Ed.
    Mr. Turner nodded.
    Big Ed said, "Now, R. E., let's you and me try to remember our younger days when we got into scrapes of one kind or another. Thank God there was somebody around to help us out. That's my mission here. I'm here to stand by my daughter and these two young men that Mrs. Bookman and I know to be fine, clean, honest young men."
    Mr. Turner said he appreciated Big Ed's concern.
    "Now, R. E., I know that your immediate impulse is to expel these youngsters and teach them a lesson. But let's think about that for a minute."
    Big Ed leaned forward and said, "You know what that would accomplish? You'd lose a possible state spelling champion, and I know for sure you'd lose the city junior high track and field championship next week."
    Mr. Turner said those things weren't so important.
    Mr. Turner said what we had done was so bad that we ought to be kicked out for the rest of the semester and made to take the high seventh over again.
    Big Ed cleared his throat.
    "Now, R. E.," he said. "I think you ought to give some consideration to the fact that if we kick these fine youngsters out for the rest of the semester, they'll fall behind the other kids, and the next thing we know, they'll drop out of school altogether and get involved in dope and start hanging around with undesirables like some of these unfortunates you've been busing in here."
    Mr. Turner didn't say anything.
    "Now, R. E., you just give some consideration to your own youth," said Big Ed.
    Mr. Turner said he had never done anything like we did.
    Big Ed then said, "Well, R. E., why don't you give some goddamn consideration to who the hell I am?"
    Mr. Turner said we'd be out for three days. That was the best he could do, and Big Ed marched out like a winner.
    Big Ed decided to drive all of us over to his house on Bookman Lane, which was Barbara Jane's old home before Big Ed built the new one on River Crest's tenth fairway, which he made the club sell him, even though it left River Crest with a seventeen-hole golf course.
    The drive was fairly quiet until Big Ed said, "Well, Barbara Jane, could you tell me just what you think of these two punks here who got you into all this?"
    Barbara Jane said, "Mostly Dad, I think they're pretty rotten singers."
    Big Ed fumed the rest of the way.
    When we got there,