The Education of Ali Waly and Pious Jaius: Book 1, Every Way the Wind Blows.

“Always his mind on the future, never on where he was, what he was doing....” Master Yoda

“All hands, Battle stations!” roared the captain into the com. “Raise shields, and get those weapons hot.” The crew rushed to their stations as the concussions of energy volleys hit the hull of the ship…

“Wow Jaius, I didn’t know you were Dumbo’s Brother.” said Stephen Pennington in mock wonder as he flicked Jaius’s earlobe. “Will you take me flying some time.” Jeers and laughter exploded from around him. The flicking of his earlobe had apparently knocked out his air pod and pulled him out of the revelry of watching his favorite movie on his iPhone. The flicking continued and soon someone else took up flicking the other ear as well. You see Jaius had some very large ears that ended in some very large and detached earlobes. This created a very tempting target for those who had the need to flick something. He dreamed many times of just turning around and letting Stephen have it. A good pop right in the face, or to toss him or Pete into a locker. The other pair of flicking fingers belonged to Steve’s best friend Peter. Jaius had heard on a T.V. Show once that all you had to do was throw an elbow once, and the person harassing you would back off. He’d have done it by now if he didn’t have wet noodles for arms, or the worst hand eye coordination in the world. He had thought for one brief moment when he heard that he'd be riding another bus home, that he might finally be rid of his tormentors. This hope was dashed when he got on this new bus and saw Stephen and Mandy sitting together, the only vacant seat left on the bus right in front of them.

Jaius just picked up the air pod from the seat and put it back in, it was such a practiced motion by now that he did it without thinking. “Gates opening from every side sir! We’re about to be overrun.” “Calm yourself corporal, we’ll be far away from here before they can lock on.” Jaius found that if he lost himself enough in the imaginary world of T.V. and movies that he could ignore the flicking, for the most part anyway.

He tried to lose himself in the movie, but memories came flooding back to him and the constant thud-thud of the fingers rang against his ear lobes. He used to live in Pittsburgh PA. They lived in a row house near the University. Jaius had grown up with a bunch of kids from the neighborhood and went to school with them all and they had all gotten along really good. He had grown up in the Roman Catholic church. His whole family was Irish Catholic, all his friends were Catholic, and he had thought for a long time that everyone in the world was Catholic. He had these books that gave descriptions of all the Catholic Saints and he would read them constantly. Jaius always wanted to be one of the Catholic Saints because they were the only ones who didn’t have to go to purgatory, or worse yet Hell. He always tried his hardest to sit still and do everything the way everyone else did at Mass. Stand, sit, kneel, repeat. He had memorized the Apostles Creed and the Act of Contrition. He had a collection of statues of the saints in his room and would pray to them nightly. When he received the Sacrament of Penance he went to the confessional as many times a week as his parents would take him. When he was eight, he was old enough to train to be an altar boy and so he took the first sign up for it right after his birthday. After the first training he had come home and told his family he wanted to be a priest when he grew up. He reasoned that since a lot of more recent Catholic saints were priests and nuns that that would give him a better chance at it. His older sister Jennifer, who they called Sis, because his mom's name was Jennifer too, was like his best friend until that day that he declared his intention to be a priest, then for some reason unknown to him she began to hate him. It was like night and day though with his little sister Anne who was a few years younger than him. They had a great relationship, which had been a great help to him once they moved. At the end of his Fifth grade year his whole life got turned upside down. His Dad got a new job and so they needed to move. They moved out to Eastern PA, a city called Black Canyon and that is where his hardships began. All his friends were now four and a half hours away. They kept in touch through social media, but that had grown somewhat cold in the two years since they moved.

His Parents had enrolled him in a new Catholic School called St. Pious the X. They had gotten there with one more week of school to go. His old school had finished for the summer, but it seemed like St. Pious finished a week after his. So he went to the school on a Monday to spend the day there and get acclimated. He had gone to the office that Monday morning and met the Principle, Father James, and the Priest had summoned a boy from the 6th grade to show him around. That Boy's name was Steven Pennington. Everything seemed to be going okay at first, but after about the first hour Steven started talking about a fly that was buzzing around them. Throughout the day other of Steven's friends would say the same thing, or something else about a fly, or make a buzzing sound. Jaius kept looking around for the fly they were talking about, but he could never see it. They had a pop-quiz in one of the classes and the Teacher let him take it also. He had already had this material the year before so he got a 100%, while everyone else got in the high 70's. It might have been okay if the teacher had not announced this fact to the class. This news didn't seem to go over too well with the others.

Some of the other kids would ask him if he drank, or smoked, vaped, or ever stole anything and he would shake his head and say that he never did because he wanted to be a saint. They all laughed at that, but he didn't for some reason think they were laughing at him. At the end of the day he asked Steven who he should check with to be an alter server at the weekly mass that all the students attended that was held in the church next to the School. Steven busted out laughing and shook his head and looked at him and said, I don't know Pious Jaius but you should probably be more worried about your fly then being an alter boy.” He said laughing and pointing at his pants zipper. All the other kids laughed too, and too late he realized what all the fly questions had been about all day, his pants zipper had been down the entire day. He was mortified. He was crying the whole ride home. He begged his parents to send him the public school, but they told him no. He pleaded with them to get his hair dyed, or wear a fake beard, or get plastic surgery, but each idea was shot down.

Sis laughed hysterically when she found out what had happened. The only one who sided with him was Anne. She tried to get mom and dad to send him to another school, but she got the same answer. He prayed every chance that he got to every statue he had in his room that all the kids would forget what happened to him that day. On the first day of school, however, every kid in the school knew about Pious Jaius and his open fly. That's when the bullying began. Steven sat at the popular kids table that was run by some Queen, and so they all made fun of him constantly. Which continued into the next year when some girl named Keri Bellows became Queen and continued his torment.

Something on the bus had changed, which brought him back to the present. Usually, the flicking lasted till he got home, but it was the sudden cessation that made him look up. All the kids around him were staring at the back of the bus. He knew he should just sit there and enjoy the few moments of respite, but instead, morbid curiosity got the better of him and so he pulled out the air pods and peaked around the corner of the seat.

He could see two girls sitting in the second seat from the back, one of them had chestnut colored hair and the other was blonde. Trudi Bellows and the girl with the chestnut hair were holding onto the blonde haired girl. Keri Bellows was kneeling up on the back seat of the bus reading from a book. Something about a Knight. “Knights are cool.” thought Jaius as his mind immediately wandered to Knights and wanting to be one someday. What pulled him back to what was going on around him was some kid across from him shouting out. “Ali and Jaius sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage…” And he groaned inwardly. Alianna Oakson must be on this bus. Apparently she had run afoul of the Bellows twins again, and drug him down with her. Like he didn’t have enough reasons for people to be picking on him, now she went and turned Keri Bellows eye on him.

All of a sudden the girl with the chestnut hair, took her hands off the blonde girl, who he now assumed was Alianna. She placed her hands over her mouth. Then the bus slowed and stopped somewhat suddenly and made Trudi let go of Alianna. A moment later Jaius saw Alianna running down the aisle toward him. He quickly sat back in his seat and watched her run out the door and away down the block. As he watched her, he noticed the next stop was just down the street. His stop was still two more away, but something had made her run off the bus. He barely knew her, in fact all he knew was that she got the same treatment as he did. They must’ve done something really bad to her to make her run like that. Maybe he could help her out, be her knight in armor. Making a decision, which was a rare occasion for him, he grabbed the strap of his bag and got ready to mingle in with the kids leaving on the next stop. The bus slowed again, and he let one and then two kids pass and then quick jumped in front of a short sixth grade girl who yelled “Hey!” But he ignored her and hurried toward the door. He jumped down the last step to the curb and waited till the bus moved onward and started to head back the way he had come. As he walked by a large bush, he saw something stuck in the branches. He stopped to investigate it. It was a page from a book, page 92 to be exact. It was wrinkled but he could still read it. It looked like a scene about a knight and a damsel in distress kissing. “Bleh!” he thought to himself. “Don’t people know that the human mouth is one of the dirtiest, most bacteria ridden places in existence.” He thought to himself.

Among other things he was a plethora of useless knowledge. Many years of watching Jeopardy, and playing trivial pursuit, and watching every movie under the sun, had given him quite the arsenal of useless knowledge. He folded up the page and placed it in his pack. He then headed back down the street to where Alianna had gotten off the bus. In the years to come he’d often wonder what had made him get off the bus at that stop, on that day.

He hurried back toward the stop she got off at, hoping to catch up to her. As he neared the green house on the corner he saw her standing on the sidewalk where it passed over a gently rolling creek. She was leaning against the guard railing clutching something to her chest, Her head was bowed and her shoulders were shaking.

“She can’t be laughing.” As he got closer, he could see she was crying. Suddenly he didn’t know what to do. She was really crying. They didn’t know each other that well, and he might freak her out more. He was a crappy knight in armor. Faced with the more normal for him bondage of indecision he jumped into a bush and sat there cowering, his damsel in distress standing twenty feet away getting more distressed. An hour passed and he grew angrier with himself. Then his pocket buzzed. He jumped and almost yelped till he remembered he had his iPhone in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw he had a text. He saw it was from his older sister.

“Where are You?” He groaned and texted her back.

“Walking home with a friend.”

“Friend! What friend? You don’t have any friends. Get home now!” He sighed heavily and started making his way out of the bush. Before he could get out though the strongest wind he had ever felt in his life blew past him. It was so strong it knocked him back into the bush. When he finally got disentangled from the branches inside, he heard tires screech and turned to see a silver minivan come to a halt. A woman jumped out and ran toward Alianna throwing her arms around her. A minute later she was scolding her. “Mothers!” He mumbled under his breath.

He crouched behind the bush and watched them talk, and then walk around picking up pieces of paper that were scattered on the road and the yards of the houses around them. Then they got into the van and drove away. He emerged from behind the bush and moved over to where she had been standing to watch the van disappear down the road. Once it was gone, he looked at the creek that flowed out of the pipe that ran under the road, and on down a forested tunnel. The branches of the trees on either side forming a canopy. It snaked left and right for about thirty yards and then turned out of sight. He knew that the creek eventually flowed behind some houses, his being one such house, but right then something tugged him. The certainty that this was the same creek that flowed behind his house lessened until it seemed an alien body of water to him, something he had never seen before or knew where it went. Something seemed to be drawing him forward, an uncontrollable need to follow this creek to wherever it led him. Just as he was starting to walk down toward the bank of the creek his pocket buzzed again. He took out his phone and saw another text from his sister. “If you are not home in fifteen minutes I’m going to call Mom at work and you know what happened the last time I did that.” He texted her back. “How could I forget! It was yesterday when I wouldn’t let you watch your show. She’s eventually going to start getting on your case if you keep bugging her at work.”

He snickered to himself, that would shut her up. A minute later his phone buzzed again. This time she had sent a picture text. It said “GET HOME NOW, OR ELSE! “ He looked at the pic. and saw that it was of his sister holding a brick over his PlayStation IV. Jaius shook his head as he began to run, back the way he came. “Sisters, Mothers, damsels in distress. Heh! Women! Not sure why Captain Kirk spends so much time with them. She wouldn’t really do it, would she? Her and her friends play it too, and if she broke it, she won’t be able to use it.” He had a feeling though that this time that wasn’t processing in his sister’s mind right now. He abandoned all thought of women and concentrated on running.

He stood huffing two blocks away, hands resting on his knees, trying to keep himself from throwing up. “Let her bust it.” he wheezed. Maybe if she did drop the brick, it would force him to take up running. After a few more minutes in that position, he straightened up and started walking, a bit shakily, toward his house. He cut through the woods that separated the street he was on from his backyard. It was a small copse of trees, not more than 500 yards, but once you got 100 feet in, all you could see were trees and underbrush. There must not have been any cars going by too closely because all he could hear were the sounds of some birds and the wind whipping through the trees. It was a strong wind, one that he had taken notice of over the past few years while walking home. Twice a year it blew. once in the spring and once in the fall. It blew through his hair, and he could smell it, warmth, if the smell of warmth could be quantified then this would be it. The warmth of summer, of hotdogs roasting on the grill or the flowers in full bloom. He liked this one more then the other, the one that blew in the fall. That one carried the smell of cold on it. It is the smell of ice, that biting smell that tweaked the inside of your nose.

He watched it blow deeper in the copse. As he stared after it, the copse in the direction he was looking seemed thicker than he remembered. In fact, it seemed larger, more overwhelming. The wind pulled at him, drew him on after it. Enticing him with every gust to travel along with it. He began to walk slowly after it but moving ever faster as the wind seemed to push him along the way it wanted him to go. As he walked further away from his house, he seemed to get a sense that he wasn’t just putting yards between him and his house, but miles. Something started to seem different to him he couldn’t place the change, but the feeling became stronger and stronger with each step he took. Odd smells started to waft toward him. Manure, wood smoke, rust. Old, earthy smells like on his grandfather’s dairy farm. Suddenly he heard his name being called from behind him.

“Jaius! Jaius, where are you!” came the shrill cry of his younger sister Anne. He spun around and as soon as he was looking back the way he came the wind stopped and the copse seemed to return to normal and his shoulders slumped with a dreadful feeling of loss. He turned in time to see her come around the corner.

“There you are Jaius, sissy is major pissed at you, what have you been doing?” She said with her hands on her hips, tapping her foot impatiently. Trying to look commanding even though she was three years younger than him. He clenched his fist as his face became slightly red. He had to endure everyone else talking down to him every day, he wasn’t going to take it from the one person who should have some respect for him. He walked briskly toward her and when he got to her, he pushed her out of his way. “None of your business”. He started to walk away but then heard a splash behind him and a shriek. He turned around to see Anne sitting unceremoniously on the ground in a puddle of water that had been hidden by the underbrush. He felt a stab of guilt as he saw her sitting there, tears starting to leak from her eyes.

“Anne I’m sorry.. I didn’t mean to…” He reached out his hand to help her up. She slapped it away.

“Keep your sorrys jerk! I’m telling sissy.” She said through gritted teeth. She stalked past him furiously swiping at her eyes.

Guilt roiled inside him. Anne was usually the only person that was decent to him, and she hated him for now, he hoped it was only for now. The guilt slowly turned into anger. How come everyone but him had a high horse from which to talk down from. Whenever he felt wronged and took some action to redress it, it always got turned around as to make him the bad guy. He lashed out with his foot to kick a stone. Unfortunately, a large part of the stone was buried in the ground. He yelled out in pain. He stomped off back toward his house.

When he got there Jenifer, his older sister, was standing on the deck waiting for him.

“Who do you think you are. You lag around instead of coming home. You lie to me about hanging out with a friend, when everyone knows fully well that you have none! And then you push Anne into a pool of water when all she was doing was coming to find you because she was worried about you. God only knows why she would be, but she was. She kept calling you a jerk as she ran up to her room, and I couldn’t agree more. You’re lucky that Dad has to work late tonight or else he’d strap you till you couldn’t sit for a week. Don’t worry though I’ll make sure he knows tomorrow. Maybe if you go up to your room and let me have the T.V. all night I might forget this happened. Not sure how you’re going to get Anne to forget though.” She said with a victorious smile on her face. He started past her, then paused.

“Fine!” he said and then stalked up to his room. He’s taken her deals before, sometimes she even honored them, sometimes. He walked glumly up the stairs toward his room. Halfway there he paused in front of Anne’s door. Guilt warred inside him with the indignation that he had felt earlier. He stood there unsure whether to walk away or knock on the door. The decision was taken from him as the door swung open and Anne came stalking out. She took one look at him and shut the door behind her.

“Sissy may have given you a deal, but you won’t get one from me. Just wait till Dad gets home, Jerkus!” She said as she stormed past him and down the steps.

“All this over a little puddle of water!” Jaius kicked the wall next to the door and heard a crunching noise from his big toe. He clenched his fists as he hobbled into his room, which was right across from Anne’s. Sis’s room was the next one down on the right, it was the largest beside the master bedroom, and of course, because she was the oldest, it was hers by right. His parent’s room was at the end of the hall just past Sis’s. He shut the door behind him, perhaps a bit harder than he should have. His room wasn’t much more than a lime green 10 x 10 box. He tossed his bag down on the ground and turned on the TV. He switched on his Playstation and popped in Call of Duty, he really needed to blow something up right now.

Hours disappeared as he sat there wasting enemy soldiers, the violence had become nothing to him after years of desensitization. He started hearing a knocking sound, he eventually realized it was his door. He paused the game and opened it. Anne was standing there with a malicious smile on her face. “Mom’s home.” That was all she said before turning on her heal and skipping down the hall. He stared after her, watching her ponytail bob up and down as she skipped, it seemed to be mocking him. Slowly the stern face of his mother appeared over that bouncing knot of hair, as his sister descended the steps. His mother sighed heavily and then came up the steps and walked toward his room.

“Jaius, why on Earth would you push your sister into a puddle?”

His mind processed the outcomes to a few of the responses that flowed through his head on their way to his mouth. “I had a bad day and didn’t like how she was speaking to me. I didn’t think it…” His mother grabbed his arm and brought him in closer to her face. “It doesn’t matter how bad of a day that you had young man, she is your little sister who idolizes you. How could you be so mean to her. Now, go apologize to her and then you can wait in your father’s study till he gets home.” The fear on his face must have shown through because he saw a slight struggle erupt just under the parental mask his mother had put up. She did not relent, however, but let go of him and took a step back, allowing him to pass by her to the downstairs. He stared at her for a few moments, hoping that his pleading eyes would pierce through her resolve. Standing firm, she thrust out her arm and pointed down the steps. Defeated, her slumps his shoulders and went to find Anne. She was sitting on the floor playing with Barbie and Ken dolls.

“Anne… I’m sorry that I pushed you down. It wasn’t right of me to take my bad day out on you.” She didn’t look up at him, but merely continued to play. He began to turn a bit red with frustration, and was turning to walk back upstairs when Anne made the dolls face each other and she began to talk.

“My goodness Ken, did you hear what Jerkus did this time? His sweet, innocent, sister Anne was really worried about him, because he was late getting home from school. So, she went out to find him, and when she finally did, guess how he thanked her for her concern?” “Did he give her a nice big hug and make her some Ice cream when they got home?” She said in a deeper voice. “No Ken, he pushed her down into a cold puddle of water.” “No! Wow he really is a Jerkus.” The last part was practically catapulted after him as he stomped back up the steps.

He stalked past his mother as she stood in the kitchen and proceeded to his fathers study and shut the door. The study was dim and had the prevalent odor of brandy and cigar. It had one whole wall that was covered from floor to ceiling with books. Jaius had a Kindle Fire in his room, but he didn’t use it very often. If he couldn’t play it on the iPhone or watch it on T.V. then it wasn’t worth his time. Reading was just too much work for him. A lot of times he would forget what he just read or have to read the same sentence three times to figure out what it was trying to say. He didn’t have such problems with movies. He had a knack for pulling the meaning out of the plot, and really understanding the characters, he could even usually predict the ending. But since he had nothing to do at this moment, except wait to be executed, he started reading the spines of the books. Treasure Island, 20,000 League’s under the sea, Sherlock Holmes. “Hrm, that one might be interesting.” The movie was far better than he thought it would be. Iron Man did a great job playing Holmes. He picked up the book and opened it to the first page. As he was reading page three his mind began to wander away from violins and pipes, and back to the movie that he had been watching on the bus. Within a few more words he had not retained, he dropped the book from his hands and whipped out his iPhone and connected to Netflix. He put in his air pods and shut the rest of the world out. Before the end of the movie, the rest of the world came barging in as the double doors to the study opened and a large shadow stood in the doorway.

Hours later he lay on his side on his bed. The strapping that he had gotten from his Dad had made it impossible to lay on his backside. He clutched at a small blue blanket that had been his since he was born. He felt alone, his Dad wasn't mean to him, he's seen him take his belt to both of his sisters before, it had just been one of those days. He didn't have any friends here to hang out with after school or blow off steam with. He kept up with some of his friends from Pittsburgh on social media, but it just wasn't the same. You couldn't talk about the things that bothered you on Facebook, even on Facebook messenger, someone might hack your account and then billions of people would know your troubles.

Tears started to fall from his eyes as that horrible first day that he went to St Pious, the one where his fly had been down the whole day, came flooding back to him. He suddenly had the sensation that he wasn't alone in the room, he sat bolt upright on his bed, still clutching the blanket. Anne stood in the doorway in her nightgown. He glanced at the clock, which said 2am. “only six more hours till D time, another day at the dungeon, she got me in trouble tonight and now she is going to suck away more of my freedom from that Hell!” Anger started to well inside him and he turned back to her. He was about to shout her out of his room, when his eyes adjusted to the light from the hall and he saw tears in her eyes. All the anger left him, and he swung his legs over the side of the bed and patted the spot next to him. There were a few moments of an audible silence, then the subtle noise of feet on his rug, and then Anne was sitting next to him. She stared at his TV screen as if watching something, even though the screen was off.

“Hey” she said sheepishly.

“Hey” he said back. “what’s wrong”

“I had a bad dream; I can't get back to sleep.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “I'm sorry I got you in trouble.”

“I'm sorry I pushed you down.” He said as he laid his head on Her’s. “I had a lot of kids picking on me today, and I took it out on you.”

“That’s why I was so mad, a kid in my class was talking bad about you so I shoved him down. I got in trouble, Dad took his belt to me tonight too.” She took a deep breath. “My dream was about all the kids in my class making fun of me.” She looked up at him with new tears starting to form. “How do you stand it?”

His heart sunk inside him. His sister was in fifth grade, and kids in her class were making fun of him, it was an entirely different school. He pushed that thought down till tomorrow and turned his attention back to her. “I have no Idea. It gets harder and harder every year.”

She gave him a big hug. “I love ya Jaius, you can hang out with me and my friends if you want to.”

He hugged her back, but he had a mental picture of his palm hitting his forehead.

“Great, I can hang out with three ten year old girls, that will make life at the dungeon so much better.”

After an hour Anne had fallen asleep on his bean-bag-chair. When he finally got to bed, he had a dream too. It began with the smells of manure, wood smoke, and rust