Chapter 1: Mr. Freedley
I’ve got a boy in the seventh grade and it’s my duty as a taxpayer.
Mr. Freedley’s
Chapter 1 of Sex in the 7th Grade
It was early December and already Cecil was a week late getting next year’s budget to the superintendent. He was at school by six a.m. hoping for an hour of uninterrupted work — when he got a call from Mr. Freedley, father of Ronnie, a seventh grader.
Cecil had never met the man, and in fact couldn’t even picture his son, although he knew the boy’s name well from having seen it so many times when compiling the new class schedule over the summer. Most of the seventh graders that the principal had gotten to know over the first three months of school were those who were sent to the office as trouble makers.
“I must speak with you privately,” Mr. Freedley began in a polite yet firm tone. “The sooner the better.”
“About Ronnie?” Cecil asked.
“No, nothing to do with my boy. But I can’t go into it on the phone. How soon can we meet?”
“Well, soon, of course, but I’m quite busy today. What about tomorrow?”
“No, this can’t wait.” Freedley was getting irritated. “I must see you today. This morning if possible.”
“Okay,” Cecil conceded “Come over right now. I’ll be in my office.”
Cecil checked his watch. Six-thirty. He ran his finger down his staff phone list and dialed Fred Blanchard. The guidance man knew nothing about any problems involving Ronnie Freedley.
Next Cecil called nurse Leslie Cramer. Her husband answered. She was in the shower; he’d have her call back.
Cecil went out to the secretary’s desk where he checked on seventh grade home room assignments. Ronnie Freedley was in Ginny Jones’s homeroom. No sense calling Ginny. She lived over an hour’s drive from the school and would already be en route.
Cecil looked for Ronnie’s name in the most recent listings for after school detention. No “Freedley” there.
Nurse Cramer called. She said Ronnie was having a good year as far as she knew. Had been to her office only once for a bad raspberry he had gotten when sliding in a kickball game. She had met Mrs. Freedley on parents’ night, but had never seen the boy’s father.
Cecil looked out the window over the playground. To the east there was a pink glow to the morning sky where several of the White Mountains were already covered with snow. Cecil remembered looking at a pink morning sky when he was just a first grader, standing on a playground talking with another first grader, a girl named Betsy, a skinny little thing wearing glasses; He had wanted to be close to her ever since kindergarten. To be close? Yes. Even in the first grade.
Cecil couldn’t remember a single word of what his first grade teacher had taught him, but he remembered well what Betsy taught him about the weather standing on the playground that morning in 1945: She had said red sky in the morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailors delight. He remembered that as if it were yesterday; but now he was looking at the White Mountains where snow was more likely than rain. There’s a storm on the way, Cecil thought. Maybe Mr. Freedley isn’t coming in to talk about Ronnie after all.
At about 7:30, Mr. Freedley appeared at the door of the outer office. He was a small man with a small head except for his large ears that stuck straight out and which appeared even bigger because of his short haircut. He wore extra thick glasses that magnified his eyes. As he showed Mr. Freedley into his office, Cecil remembered a Kafka story he had read in college, about a man who woke up one morning to find himself transformed into a beetle.
Cecil pointed to a chair as he shut his office door and pulled the curtain across the outer office window. Before sitting down, the strange little man looked around the office as if checking to see if they were alone. Maybe he thinks the place is bugged, Cecil thought, amused.
“Did you tell anyone I was coming?” Mr. Freedley asked.
“No, well, actually I spoke with the nurse and the guidance counselor — to see how Ronnie was doing.”
“But this has nothing to do with Ronnie, I already told you.”
“I know. I just wanted to give you a report. I guess Ronnie’s doing great.”
“Mr. Dunn, I wonder if you have any idea about what’s been going on at this school.” Freedley paused. Cecil just opened his hands as if to say well, go on.
“I have information that you should have.”
Cecil started to reach for a piece of paper then thought better of it.
“All this must be off the record, do you understand?” Freedley stood up and moved the curtain aside with one finger, peering into the outer office. “Can they hear us?”
“No,” Cecil said, “not if we talk like this.”
“Okay, what I’m telling you came from a reliable source, an eighth grade boy, whose name I will not divulge.” Freedley was wearing a large woolen sweater and as he spoke he slid his hands into the sleeves and began scratching both arms until he reached the elbows all the while looking straight at the principal through his thick glasses. He looked as if he had an infant or a loaf of bread that he was fiddling with under his sweater. Cecil stifled an impulse to laugh. He was glad the curtain was pulled.
“It’s dirty,” Freedley continued, “and I’m not comfortable talking with you about it. But I’ve got a boy in the seventh grade and it’s my duty as a taxpayer.”
“Well, what is it, Mr. Freedley?” The expression “I’m all ears” darted through Cecil’s head, but his self-serving humor was fast fading. Dear god, Cecil thought, I hope this doesn’t involve any of the new teachers. He was already dealing with a firestorm surrounding one of his recently hired male teachers who had danced with an eighth grade girl at the Halloween Hop.
Freedley cut to the chase. “It happened in the shower room, after one of the basketball games. Last week, or maybe it was the week before. There were two eighth grade boys. They just finished taking showers. What they did was to make this seventh grader get on his knees and, well, you know, they made him do the unnatural act on them.”
“Are you sure?”
“On my mother’s life. I can’t give you names, but I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t the god’s truth.”
Cecil asked if it would be okay to take notes. Freedley said yes as long as he didn’t name names.
“You say it was an eighth grade boy who told you?”
“Yes.”
“And it happened here at this school after a basketball game?”
“Yes, in the shower room. After basketball. Or it might have been after gym class. Anyway, all the other kids had finished showering and were leaving the locker room.”
“You’re positive?”
“Mr. Dunn, the boy who told me. I can tell you. He was one of the two who made the seventh grader do it.”
“How did you find out?”
“See, I’m supervisor of St. Mary’s Junior Boys Club. He’s in the club. I guess he was feeling guilty because he stayed after our meeting on Sunday. That’s when he told me.”
“You’re sure he was talking about this school?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Freedley, have you ever seen the shower rooms here?”
“Yes, of course, I went here. Twenty… twenty-two years ago. Let’s see, nineteen-fifty-one, fifty-two and fifty-three. Coach Davis was the coach then. He took the strap to you if you didn’t shower, so all us boys showered; you betcha!, I can remember that shower room.”
Cecil got up and tapped Mr. Freedley on the shoulder. “I want to show you something.” The principal went through the outer office where several teachers were checking their mail boxes. Mr. Freedley followed him into the hallway and down the stairs to the basement where Cecil unlocked a door which had “BOYS’ GYM” printed on the cloudy break-proof glass embedded with what looked like chicken wire.
They proceeded down a short narrow sweaty smelling corridor lined with small lockers and narrow benches to another door next to the gym: this one had “Coach Green” printed on the window.
“This, Mr. Freedley,” Cecil announced as he opened the door and flipped on the light, “is the boys’ shower room.” The little man stood in the doorway staring.
On the further side of Coach Green’s office, beyond his big wooden desk and two huge metal cabinets, there was huge sliding door, half open, with the word “STORAGE” printed over it. In the big space behind the door all kinds of athletic equipment and boxes were piled to the ceiling.
Cecil pointed: “Look there, that’s where you showered, Mr. Freedley. Remember?” The principal then pointed to several hooks on the wall behind Coach Green’s desk. “Those are the old hooks that you probably used for your towel.”
“And look at this,” Cecil pulled a big cardboard box from the bottom shelf of a cabinet. He flipped open the top. It was full of tiny cakes of yellowing Ivory soap. Most new. Some used. All yellowing with age. He held up one of the used pieces. “Maybe this was yours,” he laughed.
Still standing in the doorway to the corridor, Mr. Freedly was stone-faced as he took off his glasses and began cleaning them with his handkerchief.
Cecil was amazed to see how small and true his dark eyes looked and how soft and gentle his face looked without those glasses. Where the thick rims had rested upon the ridge of his nose and over his cheeks there were reddish marks that reminded Cecil of the stretchy diaper marks he had seen so often when powdering his baby boy’s bum and legs.
Mr. Freedley looked so very small as he stood in that doorway that for a moment Cecil saw him as a little boy with those big ears sticking out, about to go into the shower. Clutching his towel. Afraid. And in that moment Cecil saw something of himself. As a boy. Afraid. Also not wanting to hang his towel on that hook.
Freedley put his glasses back on.
“You’re saying it didn’t happen here?”
“That’s right. It couldn’t have.”
Cecil stepped out of Coach Brown’s office and pointed down the corridor. “The boys change into their suits for gym and for home games here. Most of them don’t even take off their underwear. The girls have the same set-up on the other side. So, it couldn’t have happened here, Mr. Freedley. That’s the long and short of it.”
“Do the boys take showers at the Recreation Center?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. They do at the high school.”
“No, it was eighth graders. I’m sure.”
“You know who they are?”
“Well, no, I just know the eighth grader who told me. He didn’t want to rat on his friend.”
“Did he say who the seventh grader was?”
“No. He didn’t say.”
Cecil flipped off the light and closed the door. They started walking back down the corridor. Then Freedley stopped.
“Mr. Dunn,” he spoke in his deepest most serious voice as he again began scratching his arms and elbows under his sweater, “do I look like the kind of person who would make up a story like this?”
“No,” Cecil lied.
“Then what you’re saying is that I’m telling you the truth, right?”
“Yes.” Cecil lied again. “But it’s possible that what you heard, or what somebody told you, might not be the truth.”
“But what you’re telling me is that I’m telling you the truth, right? I’m not lying.”
“Well, look,” Cecil continued walking, “Nobody said you’re lying. I’m not saying that; I’m just saying that it didn’t happen here. You saw for yourself. There’s no shower; there hasn’t been one there for years. So, whatever happened, it didn’t happen here.”
They started back up the stairs. Cecil wondered if Freedley was spreading this rumor all over town.
“You won’t tell anyone why I was here?” Freedley implored, still scratching his arms..
“No,” Cecil lied again. “I won’t tell a soul.”
As they approached the top of the stairs, two seventh grade girls were starting down.
Cecil stopped them. “Where are you girls headed?”
“The cafeteria,” one said. “To see Gert,” the other chimed in.
Being a cold morning, Gert would be giving the kids hot chocolate and peanut butter crackers.
“Okay this time,” Cecil said, “but the rule is to use the door from the playground on the seventh grade side. Got it?”
“Yes, Mr. Dunn. Thanks!” they chirped as they raced on down the stairs.
• • •
As soon as Freedley was out of the school, Cecil went looking for Leslie Cramer. He found the nurse at the end of the first floor corridor talking with Ginny Jones. Leslie was asking how Ronnie Freedley was getting along in her homeroom. Ginny said he was having a great year. He was popular with the other kids, and would probably end up on the honor roll.
Ginny smelled as she always did early in the day. Nobody knew what it was, but it was potent. It seemed to be in her hair. She had a thick stream of silky blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail that fell down her back and over her very well proportioned bottom.
Rumor had it that her scent was from something she and her husband smoked, probably something illegal or, Cecil wondered, maybe it was just something they rubbed on themselves. He liked to think it was the latter, but whatever it was, while explaining in some detail about Mr. Freedley’s visit, Cecil did his best, to breathe in as much of Ginny as he could.
Back to table of contents and introduction of Sex in the 7th Grade
