The Five Pearls by Barry James Hickey Page B

wearing.
“Thanks, Mrs. Powell, but the tie doesn’t cut it.”
“You say something young man?” asked the eager wife.
“Just talking to myself.”
“I do it all the time,” the old man said. “Been married forty-five years and she don’t hear a word I say.”
John gave the old couple a friendly smile. If Kathy were still alive, he’d be married twenty-two years. Katherine. He thought about her every day even though she died over fifteen years ago.
“You folks have a great day. And many more years together.”
“Why, thank you kind sir,” the old man nodded.
“We have many mountains to climb,” the wife reminded her husband.
“Avoid the wet clay,” John said.
He climbed back in his vehicle and drove along curving Mesa Road back towards the heart of town. There were occasional views of Colorado Springs spread before him from hilly vantage points. Mrs. Powell had given him a brief history of the area over a hearty lunch of green pea soup with ham hocks and fresh-baked bread the other day.
Located on an arid plateau, Colorado Springs had been established in 1872. With a population of twelve hundred and three hundred houses it was almost completely devoid of trees back then.
Without irrigation, only cactus, yucca, and native grasses survived in the thin, parched topsoil.
As the city began growing, so did the trees. But trees needed the resource of precious water. Within a month of the town’s founding, water flowed through an open canal from a dammed creek a few miles west.
With water available, city founder General Palmer shipped in six hundred cottonwood trees to line downtown and residential streets and parkways. The city hired a man to plant the trees and paid him ten cents a hole.
Besides street trees and new residential lawns and gardens, the water fed four small city lakes, irrigated parks, the courthouse lawn, the first cemetery, orchards and parkways. It was a great idea for a new city. The trees kept the air cleaner and made a stunning visual difference.
In its first annual city government meeting, twelve hundred trees, mostly elder and cottonwood, were counted. Today, there were over a hundred thousand trees and thirty different species, especially Norway and silver maple, American elm, green ash, and American linden.
Mrs. Powell had been very thorough in her history of the city.
Battle drove the last mile along a tree-lined boulevard and arrived at the old high school. Dozens of teenagers were dancing down the steps of the school when he pulled to the curb by the main entrance. It was the end of their school day. He slid out from behind the driver’s seat, locked the car and entered the building. A tired teacher in her late thirties was roaming the main hall, barking orders to departing kids.
“Let’s remember to wash our school shirt, Keith!” she said to a nervous skinny boy in a wrinkled shirt. “Shelby, let’s leave the flip-flops at home tomorrow! James, do not under any circumstance, do not bring your snapping turtle to science class tomorrow!”
Battle pulled a handwritten note from his pocket and approached. “I’m looking for Mrs. Weed.”
“Our mighty principal?” the woman asked without taking her eyes off antsy students wriggling past her for the exits. “Last office on the right.”
John thanked her and went to the office. The door was open. Inside, at a large gray metal desk sat Mrs. Weed, a savvy political survivor of school bureaucracies. She was buried in paperwork. John guessed her to be in her fifties. He knocked on the doorjamb and she looked up.
“Mr. Battle?” she presumed.
“Mrs. Weed?”
“Please, come in.” She offered him a seat facing her desk.
    They small-talked about the weather and as Hogan predicted, his past successes as a teacher before he handed her his resume. Suddenly, the interview turned into a cat and mouse game. He sat and waited, controlling his urge to flee as Mrs. Weed read his teaching resume. Fortunately for him, Battle did a practice