A Paradigm of Coats

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 John Adams, who was the most stubborn kindergartener Ruth had met in her many years as playground monitor at Wines Elementary.

“Hi my name is John Adams and my dad says I got a good head on my shoulders,” the boy said in a burst one chilly October morning as the children answered the school bell’s clarion and came 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. Now, parents 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 John Adams, stones around which the stream of life churned and rippled. Stones she could move and so influence those who flowed around them.

“He said that, did he?” Ruth wore a wide smile, showing off large white teeth 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 bobbed 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 melted 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’re going to catch cold if you don’t.”

Here in the northwest quarter of Ann Arbor, a bedroom community and college town nestled along the Huron River where rugged hills marched away from downtown in steady ranks. The school sat on a knoll, bracketed by older post-World War II ranch-style homes on both the south and west and a newer development of two-story and split-levels on the east, leaving it open to the crisp blue sky until only the fall-stripped trees blunted the wind. A long line of children were filing past Ruth, some skittish yearlings from John’s class, but mostly first and second graders who knew Ruth’s routines and came with coats unbuttoned and unzipped, arms out straight, waiting for her to button and zip (and Velcro and knot and clip) before they went onto the playground.

John 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 thought of herself as a river stone as well. She had no children she could call her own — God didn’t see fit to 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 worked his way through a handful of 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 John’s 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 reason Ruth tried to make her presence felt, tried to offer direction.

John 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, swinging his legs back and forth in an easy youthful rhythm. Before recess finished, his coat had worked itself free of its zipper and begun flapping again.

“John 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. An earthy smell clung to John, 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 John started 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 his 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. John identified the individual maneuvers — Immelman, Chandelle, Cuban, and Tailslide — when she asked why he turned one way or another, zipping and closing each flyer’s coat as they talked.

She finally approached John’s teacher. Ruth couldn’t remember the younger woman’s name. It didn’t matter. What did was John 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 and the large grassy field began.

“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, John dashed 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, which was really just 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 John. “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 just that she had spent enough time working with children to know her opinions usually proved right. John’s activity sapped her; she felt worn down.

John didn’t make her wait long.

He circled past again 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 John 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 John 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 John, 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 John 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 John’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; John’s teacher called for him to come down, voice calm, as if flight was normal and one more thing for which he needed instruction.

John flew through it all. Until, one by one, his wingmen joined him in the air. Several used the slide, imitating John’s climb and takeoff from the safety bar, cheered by the grounded students. Others simply lifted off, spiraling into the air, higher and higher as their coats acted like wings.

“What … what’s happening out here?” This year’s principal stood beside Ruth and John’s teacher, surrounded by a handful of teachers and office personnel. “Can someone tell me what those children are doing?”

Ruth wasn’t sure how to respond to such a ludicrous question when the answer was crazy by itself. John 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, scowling, plainly missing the situation’s humor and beauty. John flew because that was what he wanted to do. Wines Elementary was not a school any longer.

It was a hangar.

Ruth stuck her arms out to 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.

(originally published in Lenox Avenue, Issue 7–July/August 2005)