City Kid
From the author of international bestsellers A Circle of Children and Lovey comes an inspiring true story of a gifted teacher’s determination to understand the ‘rotten’ city kid everyone has given up on.Sitting quiet and withdrawn at a battered school desk, Luke had the looks of a shy angel – and a past that special needs teacher Mary MacCracken could barely believe.Already Luke had been picked up 24 times by the police. He’d set over a dozen major fires, and had a staggering record of thefts. No adult could reach him, no teacher could control him, and no policeman could cow him. All this – and Luke was only seven and a half years old.Trying to help Luke was Mary MacCracken’s job – and a seemingly impossible challenge. This is the remarkable story of how the impossible came true.
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This book recounts the essence of my experience and in that sense is a true story. However, it is not intended as a literal account and it is not to be taken as a portrayal of any living person. All names of individuals, places or institutions are fictitious.
HarperElement
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First published in Great Britain by Little, Brown & Company, Inc, 1981
This updated edition published by HarperElement 2014
Copyright © 1981, 2014 by Mary Burnham MacCraken 2014
Mary MacCracken asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Cover photograph © Diane Kerpan/Arcangel Images (posed by model)
Mary MacCracken asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007555161
Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007555178
Version 2014-07-22
Contents
“Luke,” I said, “why do you like to start fires?” “Don’t know,” Luke said. “Just like to watch ’em. They’re pretty, all red and blue and orange, dancin’ around.”
“The big fire last fall? Did you set that?”
Luke smiled – and I hated that smile. “That one was real pretty. It kept on gettin’ bigger and bigger ’til it was taller than me.” Luke paused. There was no guilt or repentance in his voice, only admiration for the fire. “The cops came, then the fire trucks, but they couldn’t put it out – it just kept goin’.”
His voice sounded hard and cruel, not like Luke’s at all.
There was a fire burning within this seven-and-a-half-year-old boy – a fire that would destroy him if a dedicated but near-despairing teacher couldn’t find what fueled it and how to put it out.
“Which one is Luke?” I whispered.
“There, next to my desk,” Lisa answered. “The one not working, of course. He doesn’t even answer when his name is called. Listen, I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.”
Lisa walked to the front of the classroom to continue the math lesson I’d interrupted. I sat on a radiator cover and studied Luke.
I couldn’t believe it. When they had told us at college that we’d be working with children who were socially maladjusted juvenile delinquents, I conjured up images of burly kids with bulging muscles and perpetual sneers. And now here was this little boy in second grade who couldn’t be more than seven years old.
I peered at him intently, saying his name under my breath, “Lucas Brauer, Lucas Brauer,” trying to make him real. He shifted slightly in his seat and I could see that his brown hair curved around his cheeks, so that from this angle he looked almost like a girl.
There must be some mistake, I thought. How could this child have a record of twenty-four arrests for arson, theft, and truancy? I shook my head. Something was wrong somewhere.
But if something was wrong, something was also right. For the first time in months, I felt the beginnings of the familiar, soaring, ridiculous excitement that came with teaching – a feeling I’d almost forgotten since I’d become a student at the state teachers’ college.
I had entered in September, full of hope and determination. By February I was full of disillusionment. In fact, until that day when I found Luke, I wasn’t sure I could make it through one year, much less two.
So now I memorized him – the scruffy sneakers half the size of mine, the faded jeans torn at the knees, a plaid shirt with one button missing, and each inch of his small profile. I could help Luke, now that I’d found him. I knew I could, and he would help me, too. He would make me remember there was some reason for the endless empty courses, the meaningless assignments, and the foolish terror of exams.
I had known it wouldn’t be easy, going back to college at age forty-four. In 1970 the movement for continuing education had not yet become popular and ninety-nine percent of the members of the junior class at Union State College were under twenty years old. They walked the campus in pairs or clumps, ate in noisy groups at the student union, shouted cheerfully at one another over the blare of rock that poured from speakers mounted in the ceiling. I walked alone, ate my cheese and apple in my old convertible, and tried to learn to be heard over the sounds of the Grateful Dead.
