Marvin Marner was a runt of a kid.  His sandy hair was always a mess.  Freckles covered his face.  His top front teeth poked from his lips in a slight bucktooth fashion.  But his eyes sparkled like the sun in the ripples of a river’s waters.

    Even at that Marvin might not have stuck out as much as he did.  Marvin Marvelous, as some of the female teachers who didn’t teach him called him, at age ten had a solid reputation.  His reputation wasn’t that of a choirboy.  No, Marvin was solidly in first place when it came to trouble. He was the kid who could boast the most visits to the principal’s office by a long shot.

    Now it so happened one day that I decided to poke my head into a few classrooms earlier in the morning than was my custom.  The day teased us with bright sunshine.  Every kid and half the principals in the world would have rather been outside on this day than in the confines of a school.  I was aiming to go to the three portable classrooms dutifully lined up along the far side of the adventure playground.
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    The clock above the nurses’ station desk had long swept past one.  For the first time of the nightshift, the nurses on the ward sat down to complete their records.  “I can’t remember when we’ve had this much activity in one night,” Emma Bromberg, one of the nurses, said with a sigh.

    “Everybody but Benjamin’s buzzed tonight,” the head nurse added.

    “Poor Benjamin,” Emma lamented softly.  “I wish he’d buzz.  She turned her pretty face away from her coworkers to hide tears swelling in her blue eyes.  Silently she sobbed.

    Down the hall, in a semiprivate room, two patients lay hooked up to heart monitors.  Eighteen-year-old Benjamin Landner lay on the bed nearest the window.  A dim beam of light from the hallway showed him lying beneath the covers as if frozen.  Only part of his bandaged face and one arm were visible.  A cast covered his right arm.  Strapped in traction it rose from his side as if raised in a farewell salute.   

    In the room’s near darkness, the white of the cast covering the arm from shoulder to wrist stood out ghost-like.  Life-giving fluids dripped through a tube to Benjamin’s exposed hand from a nearly empty intravenous pouch hanging suspended from a stainless-steel stand placed, like a watchful guard, at the head of the bed.  It had stood there silently since Benjamin had been wheeled into the room more than five weeks earlier, after nine hours of emergency surgery.  He had remained in a coma since the accident.  Unlike the emergency room’s frantic activity, Benjamin’s night drifted on as slowly as the ping – ping – ping of his heart monitor.
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   To a teacher all children are special, but there are some that remain in your heart and mind for ever.  For me one of those unforgettable children is Charlie.

   The first time I saw Charlie was on the first day of school many years ago.  It was the first year of this new elementary school’s existence.  I had decided to welcome the 156 students we had enrolled as they entered the school at midmorning that early September day. The sun shone brightly.  Eagles circled above me, and I heard wavelets lap against the shore a short distance across the way.  All seemed well with the world. 

   After greeting a group of excited grade five and six students, I watched a short little guy trudge along the road to the school with a friend.  He wore an old winter coat several sizes too big for him.  His blue jeans were baggy, too long in the legs, and there were no laces in the running shoes he wore.  He did not lift his head when I greeted the pair, mumbled an almost inaudible, “Hi,” and passed from my sight and into the school through the open door.  It was the first time I saw Charlie. 

   The students would only be with us for half a day on that first day, and before they left I wanted to see them in their seats.  Stopping in each classroom for a few moments after lunch, I noticed that Charlie was in our grade two class.  He sat next to the youngster with whom he had arrived.  His head was bowed for the minutes I was in his room.  With the passing of days we crossed paths several times, but Charlie never stopped for long when I initiated a conversation.  Whenever I saw him he was always with his friend and one other boy from his village.  I had few opportunities to get to know him more closely since he didn’t seem to want to talk.  My visits to his classroom were usually short, and his teacher had not needed to send him to my office to show off his work or for any misdeed he had committed.
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   “Here’s to the Pioneers!” Soupy Murdock screamed above the jubilation in the dressing room.  Sweat poured down the sides of his face.  He hoisted an open can of Pepsi to his lips, tilted his head to the ceiling and gulped down all the contents of the can making his Adam’s apple rise and fall with each swallow until he had drained the contents of the can.

   “Wow! If you could only put the pucks into the net like that, Soupy,” Brady Bower teased him laughing.  Suds from a cool one decorated his roughed-up mustache.

    Grinning, Randy Pockman called out, “Yea, Soupy makes every goalies look good.”

   Near him stocky Rob Corkingdale raised the ice bucket from the floor intending to empty it over the team’s grinning goalie who had shed his equipment and danced around in the dressing room in his soaking-wet longjohns.  He had his back turned to Rob and was hitting a couple of his other defensemen on the back with his blocker in a gesture of congratulations.  “We kicked,” he hollered. The rest of his words froze to the ice cubes that poured over his bald head. 

The Pioneers were the new kids on the block.  With an average age of forty- seven they were neither the youngest nor the oldest team in the tournament, but it was the team’s first multi-game competition.  And against all expectations the Pioneers had just won their semifinal game. 

   The noise, well wishing and pranks being played out in the dressing room continued unabated until Kenny Long, who had flipped in the winning goal with two minutes left in the game while he lay sprawled out on the ice with the opposition’s goalie draped all over him, happened to pipe up and call out in his raspy voice, “Yea boys, bring on the Old Puckers!
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“Oh, papa,” Erica thought with a heavy heart.  This is how I always want to remember you.”  She had taken the framed eight by ten photograph from the top of the piano and held it in her lap.  Her eyes, moist with tears, held on to the handsome face of the individual in the picture.  His winning smile spoke of energy and strength.  In the eyes sparkled warmth and intelligence.  It was a picture of a handsome man vibrantly alive.  The aura surrounding the person gave the impression of one who loved life.  Erica let the fingers of her right hand gently stroking across the black curly hair of the man in the photo.  “Justin has inherited your black curls, dad,” she whispered barely audibly.  “Matter of fact he looks a lot like you, papa.  He has your blue eyes and strong chin.  It’s like the same sculptor who formed your features chiseled your likeness into his little face.”  Erica Lawton loved the picture of her father in his white naval officer’s uniform.  Fresh out of elementary school, she had started her first year at Midland High when the photograph was taken.  Slowly she placed the frame back where it had stood for the last six years, ever since Jim and she had moved into the house.  Justin was only a month old when they decided that their small bungalow did not provide enough room for them to think of having another child.

Erica, still sitting on the piano bench, closed her eyes.  The figure of her father, all six feet three of it, smiled at her.  Her parents had moved around the world for several years to allow her father to pursue his naval career without long absences from his wife, but after several moves their desire to start a family became more important and in their mid thirties they settled down in one place. 

Her father had only been home for a few days from a four months long tour of duty, she recalled, when the picture was taken.  He had insisted to help supervise at her first high school dance that night after his meeting with some of the brass.  Even though the officers of his ship had planned a night out together to follow that meeting, he wanted to be with his little angel.  In her mind she saw him smiling at her huddled at the edge of the dance floor with her girl friends.  She saw again how he entered the auditorium, hurried to her mother’s side, greeted her with a kiss then looked for her in the semi dark gymnasium.  Erica’s mother had brought her friends and her to the school in their van, but long before the dance ended, all her friends had asked her to make sure her dad would drive them home.  Not only did each of her friends dance with him, but also the high school senior girls came in small groups and asked her to introduce them to him.
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