Beau The Greatest

Most mornings I walk around my neighborhood. Each time I do I’m going to take note of something I see and use it as the prompt for a very short story.

Tuesday, 7/28. 7:40am. Neola Street, Eagle Rock. This chair, positioned to look onto the school yard of Rockdale Elementary

“There are leaders and there are helpers in this world, Beau. And I think you are going to be the greatest helper of them all. The King.”

It had been years since Gram sat him down to tell him that very important information. Beau knew it was important because she walked him into the living room, turned off the TV and sat him down on the fancy red velvety chair - the one that she sat in when important church friends came for a visit. Beau called it her throne.

“Do you hear me?” she asked.

“Why does that matter?” he asked back.

Beau was still back at the first question. He was typically behind where the conversation had moved, but Gram always knew.

“It matters because soon you will be out in the world, and I want you to know your role.”

“I am a helper.”

“No. You are the greatest helper of them all. The King.”

He repeated that exact line six months later on his very first interview.

“Wow,” the woman said. “And how do you think you’ll help the children here?” She was Cecily, and she would eventually become like a second Gram, but right now she was just the lady asking obvious questions.

“I will help them play.”

Several teachers had balked at the idea of hiring an adult on the spectrum for the school’s security staff, but Cecily ignored them all. Beau was perfectly suited to be a second set of adult eyes in the lunchroom and on the playground. Extreme focus was one of the strengths of his brain. Plus, he saw the world as the children of Rockdale Elementary did, with innocence and wonder. He would teach them that you don’t have to lose that view with height and age.

But Beau exceeded even Cecily’s expectations. He became the king of play time. He was a pirate that hid booty somewhere in the depths of the swing set. A director shooting an action movie by the sandbox. A fairy that had forgotten how to fly and needed help remembering his ways. A shooting star. A lazy elephant. A tree that could talk. And still the moment a child fell within his eye or earshot, Beau was right there, shifted from playmate to protector.

“King Beau,” she started calling him after his first full year on the job. At the start of year two the teachers made him custom Rockdale polos with that title embroidered in the corner.

Beau was the first person that Cecily thought of when she was told that Rockdale would have to shut down. The virus was spreading too quickly. Schools had become too unsafe.

By this point Beau lived alone in the home he used to share with his Gram. Cecily checked in with him daily during the first few weeks of quarantine. Beau didn’t drive so she and the teachers took turns bringing him groceries and other essentials.

He’s very down… Jean texted after her drop. Yes, I’m worried about him… Cathy echoed. He asked me why he doesn’t have energy to do anything. I didn’t know what to say… Barb added with one of those tear drop Emoji faces.

At first Cecily was too overwhelmed to add Beau to her list of problems to solve. Kids were struggling to learn. Teachers were struggling to teach. She had to figure out how to get 250 free meals to 250 different families every single day. And she had her own two kids to worry about - both Rockdale students, both showing signs of the depression that Sara, their school counselor, had warned the staff to expect. “They’ll be down…They’ll pick up on your worry…It will look like they don’t have any energy to do anything,” she explained.

“Mom, do you know where King Beau lives?” Cecily’s youngest asked at dinner one night.

“I do,” she said, “Why?”

“Because I wrote him a story about something we were playing the last time we were at school. I want to give it to him because I’m sad, so he must be sad too,” she said.

Ask any teacher and they’ll tell you that the best ideas come directly from the students. They know what they need; it’s your job as an educator to figure out how to make it happen.

Three days later Cecily had gathered ten students on the steps just off Neola Street, behind the official school yard. They couldn’t legally have students on school property, but slightly off didn’t count. Everyone wore a mask. Everyone sat on the stairs, six feet apart. And everyone had their assignment ready: a story to tell King Beau while he held court.

“I can do that,” Beau said when Cecily pitched him her idea. “But can someone with a truck drive me home and back?”

“Sure,” Cecily said. “But why?”

“I have to bring my throne.”

Cecily found Beau seated on a very old, very tattered red velvet arm chair thirty minutes before the first King Beau’s Story Court was scheduled to start.

“That is a beautiful throne,” she said.

“Thank you,” he beamed. “It was my Gram’s. It’s where you sit for very important people and very important things.”

Cecily smiled. She’d missed Beau’s steady voice. “Well Barb is happy to drive you every week in her husband’s truck so you can bring your throne.”

“No,” Beau said. “I’m going to leave it here. It should be out in the world now. In case anyone needs to feel like a king.”

Three days later Cecily found herself walking the four hilly miles from her house across town to that ratty red chair. It had been another hard day in this very hard time. Right now she didn’t need to feel like a king. She needed to feel like King Beau.