Dead And Buried by Corey Mitchell

were a couple of people that would often antagonizeuntil they could get him to react and then they would step back,” Debbie remembered. “It would look like he was the one doing the picking, or being the antagonizer, and then he would get in trouble and they would go laugh in the corner.”
    Debbie Rogers and Anthony Poelstra recalled seeing bruises on Rex. At different times they both noticed that Rex had big scrapes on his arms. Neither was sure if they were the normal scrapes and bumps of a young boy. Debbie Rogers had suspicions, however, about the black eyes that Rex occasionallysported.
    Dorothy Thompson, Northside Bonner County School’s principal, remembered that Rex made several visits to her office.It was not for disciplinary reasons, as may be expected.
    “He seemed to be a lonesome boy for attention from adults,” Thompson recalled. “He would come in, and our secretary,who had been there several years, so she knew him well, and he would come there and stand at the desk and just kind of want to talk to her. She would encourage him and so he was in the office very often.”
    Other than hiding out in Principal Thompson’s office for company, Rex did not fit in anywhere. His dad berated him and beat him at home. His classmates taunted him at school. Only one person became his friend. Jimmy Maddox. Unfortunately,Jimmy would only attend Northside for a couple of years, but when the two were together, they stuck together. As outsiders, they had to.
    Principal Thompson recalled a specific incident where Rex and Jimmy stuck together. One gorgeous spring day Rex left Northside Elementary but did not take the bus home like he normally did. Instead, he decided to run away from home. The following day, when Rex did not show up for class, Mrs. Thompson called his father, but no one answered. She incorrectlyassumed that Rex was with his father, so she did not press the issue.
    When Rex failed to show up to school the next day, his classmates started to worry. All of the students began to talk about Rex. As the buzz built in the classroom, Jimmy Maddoxspoke up and asked, “Mrs. Thompson, if I tell you where Rex is, you won’t tell that I told on him, will you?”
    Principal Thompson calmly stated, “No, I don’t have to tell who told me, but I need to know where Rex is.” She was also concerned because she had received a couple of phone calls from Allan Krebs and they were not of the expected nature. According to Thompson, she never saw Allan Krebs at any of Rex’s school functions and never once at a parent-teacher meeting. The only time she ever heard from him was when Rex had gotten in trouble. He would always blame the school for Rex’s transgressions.
    This day was no different. Allan Krebs called earlier that morning and accused Principal Thompson of hiding his son from him. He was determined to go find Rex and bring his butt back home. He told her that he had a pack of dogs and was going to conduct a search-and-rescue mission for his son. And he was not happy that he had to spend his time with such a venture.
    Thompson acted quickly. She believed that Allan Krebs might harm his own son if he found Rex first. She intervened. She confirmed with Jimmy that Rex was one-and-a-quarter mile up Old Creek Road east of the school. He was hiding under a large, overturned tree root. It was cold, so she jumped in her car. She was going to get to Rex before Allan Krebs did.
    “I knew where I was supposed to go,” Principal Thompson detailed the retrieval. “It was an old rugged road. I was going very slowly and I did see movement out there.” She had spottedRex but did not want to scare him away.
    “I didn’t go out after him because there was a ditch there and a fence [between them]. And I spoke to him and he spoke right back. He said, ‘I don’t want to go back.’
    “I said, ‘Rex, there’s two things you have to think about.’ ” The first was for him to go back to school. The second, and apparently more