A Paradigm of Coats

A PARADIGM OF COATS

by Steve Nagy

The children's coats came in all shapes, sizes, and hue, and Ruth Booker knew one thing -- God was here.

He was here in the windbreakers, pullovers, jackets, and sweatshirts. He was here in the greens and blues favored by the boys and the pinks and purples favored by the girls, colors running in rainbow arcs as the children (who came in just as many shades) moved across the playground from slides to carousel to swings to basketball court. He was here even in little Samuel Adams, who was the most stubborn kindergartener Ruth had met in her many years as playground monitor at Wines Elementary.

"Hi my name is Sam Adams and my dad says I got a good head on my shoulders," the boy said in a rush one chilly September morning as the children answered the school bell's clarion call and streamed outside for recess.

Outspoken children were the bread and butter of schools today, what with so many families where both parents worked, not like when Ruth was growing up and her Momma stayed home and took care of her and her siblings. Parents now placed their children in day care and preschool and let strangers raise them, so they came under Ruth's watchful eye already grouped in packs, as much feral as social, and she watched for leaders like little Samuel Adams, stones around which the stream of life churned and rippled. Stones she could move and so redirect those around them.

"Did he now?" Ruth wore a wide smile, showing off large white teeth, bright like pristine marshmallows in a face as warm as a cup of hot chocolate. "Did he give you your name as well?"

The pale little boy enthusiastically nodded his tow-haired head, all three feet plus-and-nothing of him bobbing like a dry cattail. "Yes he did, yes he did." His brown freckles and blue eyes were the brightest colors about him -- his light tan jacket, khaki pants, and white crewneck shirt melting into a ghostly whole. "My mom says I got my name cuz a president had it."

Ruth laughed. "I'm sure she did," she replied. "But I also know she would want your coat zipped. You'll catch cold."

Here in the northwest quarter of Ann Arbor, a bedroom community and college town nestled atop the Huron River, rugged hills marched away from downtown in steadily higher ranks, leaving the school open to the crisp blue sky until only fall-stripped trees blunted the wind. The school sat on a knoll, bracketed by an older neighborhood on the south and west and a newer development on the east. A long line of children were filing past Ruth, some skittish yearlings from Samuel's class, but mostly first and second graders who knew Ruth's routines and came with coats unbuttoned and unzipped, arms angled out straight, waiting for her to button and zip (and Velcro and knot and clip) before they ran onto the playground.

Samuel smiled and shook his head. "I like the flapping." He raised his arms in imitation of the other children, spun in a tight figure eight, crisp muslin snapping in the breeze. He pursed his lips and made buzzing sounds. As he moved or caught his breath, the volume of this engine would Doppler louder or softer.

Ruth liked thinking of herself as a river stone as well. She had no children she could call her own -- God didn't bless her that way -- but He did give her patience and understanding, and the physical presence of a mighty rock; she liked to believe that, if she had been born a boy, her Momma would've named her Peter. She stood more than six foot tall, weighed a respectable two hundred and change (muscle and suet, courtesy of her hard-working Poppy, who sweated his life away in the Rust Belt steel mills). She towered above the children, but believed her smile spoke volumes about her intentions and temperament. The children here at Wines showed her respect, they called her Mrs. Booker, and this unofficial queue by the back entrance was a symbolic, and proper, acknowledgement of her years of influence.

A child letting their coat flap in the wind, though, was unacceptable.

Ruth reached out and snagged his outstretched arm when one of his loops brought him near. He banked to a stop before her, unresisting, face already flushed and sweaty, grinning from ear to ear. He kept his arms out, but let Ruth grab the ends of his jacket and zip it shut. As soon as she finished, he turned away, engine buzzing again.

That distraction resolved, Ruth quickly ran through the rest of her queue, and could stand back to watch the children play. One or two yearlings hovered nearby before venturing off with new friends. Some older boys (and one or two girls) came and asked her opinion about a rock or leaf they had found near the wooded area that lay between the fenced playground and the highway at the bottom of the knoll. Another group brought her their disputes and problems, and abided by her judgment. Most rushed about with an energy their teachers rarely saw in class, which was another point at which Ruth tried to make her presence felt.

Samuel was a force unto himself.

He didn't slow down in all the time Ruth watched him. He held his arms out, keeping his hands flat like a plane's wings, and rotated them to dip and turn. Once, he went up the metal straight slide when no one was on it, and she thought he would fall or hurt himself on the safety bar across the top, but he twisted around at the last moment and came down the slide faster than he started. He never seemed to run, legs swinging back and forth in an easy youthful rhythm. Before recess finished, his coat had worked itself free of its zipper and begun flapping.

"Samuel Adams, come over here right now," she called, and was pleased when he did. "You had me worried there a bit with all your flying about."

"I'm sorry but I just love to fly."

"Well, I don't want you falling down, young man." His white sneakers had some mud on them and grass stains painted the hem of his khakis, but not as much as Ruth might expect after all his "flying" through the playground. An earthy smell clung to Samuel, a good smell of exertion.

"I never fall," he said.

Then the bell rang and the children were streaming back inside the school before she could close his coat again.

The rest of the week was much the same, except Samuel started play flying earlier and earlier. As Ruth worked her line, zipping and buttoning by rote, she kept one eye on his antics, waiting for the moment when his maneuvers brought him near enough to catch. She made sure the zipper was secure, but it worked loose earlier each day until she found herself following him around the playground. By the time recess ended, she felt exhausted.

It wasn't until the following week that other children, in ones or twos, started flying with him, likely encouraged because their arms were already out in a wing shape. Samuel identified the individual maneuvers -- Immelman, Chandelle, Cuban, and Tailslide -- revealing his intensity when she asked why he turned one way or another, zipping and closing each flyer's coat as they talked.

Exhausted, she finally approached Samuel's teacher. Ruth couldn't remember the younger woman's name. It didn't matter. What did was Samuel as a stone in the Wines stream. Teachers came and went as quickly as their students, which was one reason Ruth felt she had become a fixture at the school. Even the principals were primarily faceless administrators with goals more bureaucratic than educational.

"I don't know how you keep pace with that rascal," Ruth said, standing where the blacktop ended before the large grassy field.

"What's he doing?" asked the younger woman.

"Some children won't stay in line," Ruth said. "I can't keep their coats zipped and it's getting colder."

Illustrating her point, Samuel rushed past, just out of reach with his arms swept back, four other kindergarteners in tow as his wingmen.

"I don't know what to tell you," the other woman said. "He's a handful, but he's sweet."

Ruth shook her head, captured a straggling flyer, and buttoned down the little girl's flapping wings (a flimsy purple windbreaker that barely guarded her against the windy chill). As soon as Ruth let her go, the girl was off again, brown pigtails making up for the secured coat as she chased after Samuel. "If they keep acting like this--"

"What could happen? I think you're taking this too seriously, Mrs. Booker."

Ruth wasn't sure she appreciated someone lecturing about her concerns. It wasn't that she'd spent enough time working with children to know her opinions usually proved right. Samuel's activity exhausted her; she felt worn down like a river stone. As it worked out, Samuel didn't make her wait long.

Moments after her conversation with his teacher, he circled past with one of his formations, four children spread out in a V-pattern behind his lead, two girls from his class on his left and right, two boys from a higher grade next, all their coats flapping. All moved with his languid grace, his effortless lope, each turn made in perfect unison, left right left right, so they seemed one organism.

Ruth noticed these four children wore clothes similar in color to what Samuel had on today: stonewashed blue jeans, black and red cotton button-down shirts, and white sneakers; seen either as a flock of grounded aviators or one creature of variegated plumage, the synchronicity visible in their movements was breathtaking and, at times, frightening. Especially when Ruth focused her attention on the other dozen Samuel had drafted into his air force. His coordination extended to their flights. They moved in three even but separate ranks of four, and each appeared grouped by coat color. Blues, greens, and yellows, but brighter and sharper than such simple shades could convey, more akin to a collection of sapphires, lush spring flora, and the warmth from a liquid summer sun; sapphires and flora and sun that imitated the weightless beauty found when leaving the earth behind.

Ruth called Samuel, but he swung away from her toward the metal straight slide, hit it as he reached his fastest speed, didn't slow for the incline, leaped so that with one step he was on the slide and the next he was pushing off the safety bar -- and kept climbing.

His coat flapped with rhythms of flight: beating at the crisp clear air and giving Samuel a speed double or triple what he had achieved at ground level; then locking into a scalloped airfoil, letting him glide or turn or dive depending on how close he moved his arms to his body. He was a sprite, a hummingbird, darting here and there, and all Ruth could do was watch and repeat his name in a soft whisper.

Almost everyone on the playground had stopped and fallen silent at Samuel's takeoff. Except for his air force. Those children continued to execute aerial maneuvers on the ground. Ruth moved toward the straight slide, and then the school bell rang, a sharp brassy intrusion on the spell woven by their gawking at the impossibility of this six-year-old boy who was flying overhead. Everyone began talking at once -- the children screamed with excitement, laughed in joyous shouts; Samuel's teacher called for him to come down, voice calm, as if flight was normal and one more thing for which he needed instruction.

Samuel flew through it all. Until, one by one, his fliers joined him in the air. Several used the slide, imitating Samuel's climb and takeoff from the safety bar, cheered by the grounded students. Others simply lifted off, earthbound and then not, spiraling into the air, higher and higher as the coats they wore formed wings.

"What ... what's happening out here?" This year's faceless principal stood beside Ruth and Samuel's teacher, surrounded by a handful of teachers and office personnel. "Can someone tell me what those children are doing?"

She wasn't sure how to respond to such a ludicrous question when the answer was ludicrous itself. Samuel and his air force cut through the blue sky above, an aerial phenomenon powered by his imagination, his love of flight, breaking down what should have been impossible into manageable pieces ... wearing down river stones until they were pebbles.

Ruth laughed. The principal stared at her, angry, missing the situation's humor and beauty. Samuel flew because that's what he wanted. Wines Elementary was not a school any longer.

It was a hangar.

Ruth stuck her arms out at her sides and started running back and forth around the playground. She could already feel her heavy down coat loosening its buttons, straining to flap free in the wind.

Pit Sylph was created by Keith Thompson and originally graced the cover of Lenox Avenue #7.