Chapter 17: The Horse Bite

The first day of school found Cookie starting out in Mr. Fay's math class. He was a stocky, gruff-looking man with short, thinning, salt-and-pepper hair and (Cookie thought) menacing grey eyes under thick eyebrows.

Her desk was in the first row and three seats down from the front. Kathy Grimes was in this class and sat one desk in front of her. John Madison was in this class too.

"Okay," the teacher said, writing his name on the board with a squeaky piece of chalk. "I'm your math teacher, Mr. Fay. We are going to have a great year together and get along just fine if you follow my rules. My rules are simple ... I'm in charge and you're not. Do what I tell you to do and we'll have no trouble. Don't do what I tell you and we'll have big trouble ... for you. You decide."

He stepped to the front of his desk now and his eyes flashed to each student as he said, "I am not going to take any crap from any of you and that's how it's gonna' be. I know bullshit when I see it and I'm the biggest, meanest bull-shitter you're ever gonna' meet. I'll tell you one thing right now ... you can't bullshit the bullshitter."

The students didn't seem to like Mr. Fay's authoritarian attitude and there was a low muttering in the room as he turned his large frame and walked back to the chair behind his desk.

"Hey," he said, hearing the grumbling, "I'm not such a bad guy ... really. In fact, if you look up on the board, you'll see an equation that I've written up there. Every year I tell my classes that, if any one of you thinks they can solve that equation, and actually goes up and does it, they'll receive an A, in my class, for the entire year."

Cookie looked up at what he had written there and studied it, for a few moments, as he continued to speak. Then, making up her mind, her hand went up.

"Excuse me?" Mr. Fay said, noticing her. "Do you dare to interrupt me when I'm speaking?"

"I'm sorry, sir," she told him. "It's just that I think I can solve that equation."

"And just who are you?"

"Cookie Mullins, sir."

Mr. Fay's eyes seemed to widen and he smiled now but it was more of a sneer, showing his two uneven rows of brownish teeth. "Ah. Miss Mullins. I've heard about you. In fact I requested to have you in my class. I was wondering when we'd have an encounter and here it is already. Sure," he said to her, "you may go up there and solve that equation, in front of the whole class, for me ... if you can."

Cookie, in her white blouse and blue-plaid skirt, stood and walked to the blackboard where she picked up a piece of chalk and just looked up at the equation for almost a full minute.

"Well?" Mr. Fay barked. "I don't see you doing anything. Can you solve it, or not?"

After a few moments more, Cookie looked to him and said, "No, sir. I can't solve this."

Mr. Fay grinned widely at her and folded his hands together. "I didn't think so. Nobody of your grade level has ever solved it. Now go sit down and shut up."

"There is no solving this, Mr. Fay," Cookie spoke up, in spite of that fact that she had been dismissed.

"And just why, pray tell, is that?"

"Because you've written it wrong, sir, see?" And cookie took the eraser and removed an m from above a line and substituted a d for it. "You've written this as matter squared but it's supposed to be distance over matter squared. If you write the equation correctly..." and she made the corrections on the board, for him, as she spoke, " ... the answer to your equation is F."

Mr. Fay just stood there for many long moments, just staring at her with his mouth open and nothing coming out. There were a few snickers from the class and then some actual laughter before he finally said, in a voice brimming with extreme, restrained anger, "Put the chalk down and go to your seat, Miss Mullins."

"Yes, sir," she said, setting the chalk back on the ledge and then returning to her desk where she smoothed her skirt to the backs of her thighs as she sat in her chair.

Mr. Fay seemed to just stew and simmer for a time more before he swallowed hard and walked slowly over to stand behind Cookie's seat and then he placed his hands softly to her shoulders and combed her soft, straw-blonde hair, with his fingers, for a moment.

"This, class, is a case of someone who thinks they've put one over on feeble old Mr. Fay and made a chump out of him. Miss Mullins here has messed with the bull but she's going to find that, when you mess with the bull, you get the horns."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Fay," Cookie said from her seat, feeling his large hands tighten on her shoulders. "You said that..."

"Don't tell me what I said," he told her, "I'll tell you what I said."

And Cookie now felt his strong fingers grip her shoulder muscles, at either side of her neck, and start to squeeze her there tightly.

"Does that hurt, Miss Mullins?" he asked her calmly.

"Yes," she said as she hunched a bit, in her chair, from the pain.

"Good. This is the horse bite," he explained, looking around the room at the others in the class, "and nobody wants the horse bite."

He squeezed harder now, his hands like vices at either side of her neck, causing Cookie to wiggle in her chair from the excruciating stinging sensation at her shoulders.

"Just cry out or scream when this hurts too much," he told her, "and the horse will stop biting and the pain will stop."

"Oh, she won't scream," John Madison said, matter-of-factly, from two rows over.