QUINN
Tennessee whiskey is the best way to go after you’ve had a long day or when your moral compass won’t let you eat or sleep. Some people take their Tennessee whiskey with ice but I don’t care for watered down liquor...watered down.…yeah watered down, that’s how it all ended, in the water.
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His name was Quinn Pascua and he was the most beautiful, chubby, rascal of a six-year-old boy if there ever was one. The records said that in school his teachers would get into trouble sometimes for spoiling him or allowing him special privileges where there were not supposed to be any. All the children were supposed to be treated equally but with his squeaky voice, natural smile and deep-set eyes, Quinn always seemed to get his way. What was strange were Quinn’s parents, they were very reserved and soft-spoken and didn’t seem to want to socialize whenever they dropped him off or picked him up. He was never allowed on field trips nor was he allowed to participate in extra activities such as the winter Christmas show or May Day. When there were projects which involved foods or take home snacks, his parents would always leave those behind and never take them. One afternoon, when Quinn’s father arrived to get Quinn, he didn’t see me kneeling on the other side of the cubby holes as I cleaned them out. Quinn was excited about the kite he had made for his project and held it up for his father to see. It was quickly snatched from Quinn’s hands and torn to bits and tossed in the wastebasket. Quinn's eyes began to tear up and his father warned him, “Go, cry so I can fuckin’ punch you!”
He grabbed his son by the arm and walked out, I immediately reported the incident to the other teachers and each one confessed that on different occasions they had seen either Quinn’s father or mother do the same thing. It was like they were determined to dash whatever happiness it was that Quinn would experience. We went to the director of the school with our concern and we were told that unless we see clear physical evidence that Quinn is being abused, we are to stay out of it, otherwise, we ourselves could be fired.One morning Quinn’s parents showed up without Quinn and cleared out his cubby hole and bagged everything up and then went to the director's office. The parents told the director that a new job had come up and that they were leaving town, that was all. The director asked Quinn’s folks if they would like to bring him back to say goodbye to his classmates and teachers? They made no reply and left the office.
The next day school was called out due to a terrible rainstorm that would last for three days, in three days time that rain storm did a lot of damage and it also flooded over the old Kapalama canal. On the fourth day after the storm abated and the weather was completely clear, Quinn Pascua’s body was found floating face down in the stagnating waters of the canal near Honolulu Community College. His parents were never found, there was no trace of them whatsoever, the address they gave the school was real, except it wasn’t theirs. It was as if they never existed except for the task of taking Quinn to and from school. I’ll never understand it.
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Tennessee whiskey helps to ease the pain and calm the nerves and the fear; I caught a glimpse of them purely by accident as I was standing in my room and putting my shirt on. The wind blew my bedroom curtain aside ever so slight and I saw them, Quinn’s parents. They were standing just on the other side of the fence of my front yard. It was strange of course, but I went outside that day to see what it was that they wanted and of course, my heart was pounding. I called the police and until they arrived, my purpose was to confront Quinn’s folks and raise holy hell, but when I got there they were gone. The police only half believed what I said and it's not because they’re trained to be skeptics but it’s because the word was put out that these people just up and disappeared. I described to the officers what they were wearing and then the realization of who I was dawned on them, “You were Quinn’s teacher, we saw you on the news!”
The officers chalked up my experience as a hallucination brought on by guilt... guilt my ass. I know what I saw because I saw it plain as day. But as the days went on I began to see Quinn in my classroom, in the adjoining bathroom that our class and the class next door shared. I would catch glimpses of him at lunchtime with that rascal smile on his face and those twinkling eyes of his. If he was feeling any pain it wasn’t obvious to me but at the same time it was upsetting and it scared the shit out of me, but he was also my barometer. The second his face changed and he stopped smiling, that’s when I knew that his parents were around and I was always correct. Now, as I throw back another shot of that good old Tennessee whiskey, I look around my place for what I need and there is he is, Quinn. Somehow his ghost decided that he’d follow me home one day but it turned out to be a good thing because whenever that frown casts itself on his face, that’s how I will know that his strange parents are lingering somewhere outside the perimeter of my yard. I may have lost Quinn as a student but I have certainly gained his presence as a guardian.
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