Angry Management

by Chris Crutcher

  “That’s one theory,” Trey says, “but she was crazy good. These kids were crazy bad.”

  “You want to bring me up to speed?” Dr. Conroy and Montana sit at the large table in the journalism room, working on the final touches of the layout for the paper.

  “On what?”

  “I hear you’re out of your house, living with the Chases? Is that right?”

  Montana blushes slightly. “Uh-huh.”

  “I thought you hated football players. Is this situation chaperoned?”

  “It’s chaperoned,” she says, leaving out “except when we’re fucking.”

  Dr. Conroy watches her, brow furrowed.

  “Trey’s grandma is a mother bear,” Montana says. “You don’t have a thing to worry about.”

  “Well, if I did have something to worry about, it wouldn’t be that you guys don’t use protection, would it?”

  “No, ma’am.” Finally, something she can be truthful about.

  “You make sure it stays that way.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I got the revised version of your medical marijuana article.” She holds it up. “I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I went to see Mr. Remington. The wheels are grinding again, but he is pretty upset with me. Did you add to this? It looks longer than before.”

  “A little. There’s an interview. Wait till you read it.”

  “I’ll look it over, for all the good it will do. You know what Holden will say.”

  Montana nods again. “Yup, but the faster we get their answers, the faster we get back to the school board.”

  Dr. Conroy watches her a moment more. “How much of this is about you not living at home? Is this a vendetta?”

  “A what?”

  Dr. Conroy looks toward the closed door. In a lower voice, she says, “A ‘fuck you.’”

  “No. Well, maybe a little.” She nods. “Maybe a lot.”

  “I’m not willing to put the school paper in the middle of personal business between you and your father,” Dr. Conroy says.

  “It won’t look personal, I promise. Dr. Conroy, he has to have everything his way. My mother just caves and does what he says. My foster sister has to find a new home because my dad doesn’t like to be inconvenienced; nobody ever stands up to him. Maxwell West says this, Maxwell West says that, and it just happens. He’ll talk to the rest of the school board members before he even opens this meeting. Jesus could present our case and He’d lose. I don’t expect to see my article in print, but the word will get out when the paper covers the meeting.”

  “Do you want to see your room?” Montana crouches before Tara, standing in the doorway with a paper sack filled with clothes.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s the best one,” Montana says. “It has the biggest window of all the bedrooms and a brand-new bed. Whenever you come to visit, you’ll have all your own stuff.”

  “Do you got a room?”

  “Right across the hall from yours,” Montana says. “So, like, if you get scared, you can just run over and crawl in bed with me. Like when we were at home.”

  Trey stands behind Montana, whispers in her ear: “Unless you don’t happen to be in there.”

  Montana ventriloquists back, “When she’s here I will be in there.”

  “I’m starting to hate this kid already.”

  Tara says, “Can I live here all the time?”

  “Huh-uh,” Montana says. “You have a new mom and she doesn’t want to give you up because you are so cool. But I get to baby-sit, and you can come stay here if you miss me. And you always get to come when your new mom comes over to play poker with Trey’s grandma.”

  “What’s poker?”

  Mari, now standing in the doorway, says, “That’s when your new momma comes over here to play cards and I take all her money.”

  Tara stares.

  “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll give some of it back to her so she can buy you food.”

  Montana puts a hand on Tara’s shoulder. “You know where you’re pooping, right?”

  “In the toilet.”

  “And what are you going to do when you get mad?”

  “Be a bitch.”

  Montana blushes slightly, smiles at Trey.

  He says, “Peer mentoring?”

  “We need to make sure you have a job when you’re over here,” Mari says, following Montana’s earlier advice. “Do you want a job?”

  Tara nods enthusiastically.

  “Okay,” Mari says, looking askance at Montana and Trey, “you’re in charge of population control. This is a very important job. If you see Montana and Trey kissing too much, you know, like, if it gets icky? You bug them. Make them play with you. If they won’t, scream and yell and go all off.”

  “You mean be a bitch?”

  “Exactly,” Mari says. “And if you see them sneaking to Montana’s room, which is right next to yours, be twice as much a bitch. See, my grandson and your sister think nobody pays enough attention to them around here. You’re going to change that. Is that a job you think you can do?”

  “That’s a good job,” Tara says. “I can do it.”

  “Can you cook?”

  Tara’s eyes brighten. “Yup,” she says. “I used to cook for my mom. She put drugs in her all the time. When you put drugs in you, sometimes you forget dinner.”

  “Well, I don’t put drugs in me,” Mari says, well aware she inhales drugs when the need arises. “But I need plenty of help anyway. Lord knows I’m old as sin. Think we should get some dinner started? Here, I got you this apron.” She hands Tara a red apron embroidered with a cook wearing a high chef’s hat and brandishing a rolling pin, above the caption BOSS OF YOU IN MY KITCHEN.”

  Students and citizens pour into the parking lot at the high school and stream into the cafeteria as the clock nears seven in the evening, nearly three weeks after Dr. Holden has upheld the censorship of Montana’s medical marijuana article. She might have had a better shot with the gay marriage piece, but this one covers more bases. Other than a chance meeting at a local restaurant, she hasn’t seen her father since she stomped out to live with the Chases. She has purposely avoided him in order to keep her disgust and contempt quotients as high as possible. It takes as much anger as she can muster to battle the intimidation she can’t help but feel. Maxwell West is a force. As much as she hates to admit it, she understands why her mother never stands up to him. You have to get cranked up, and her mother doesn’t have the crank. Montana does.

  Maxwell opens the meeting asking for a motion to table the reading of the minutes from the last meeting and the old business. “We have a large number of students and citizens interested in the school newspaper issue, and if there are no objections I’d like to get to that. I believe it can be cleared up rather quickly, but in the event that I’ve underestimated, I’d like everyone to get home at a decent hour. It is a school night.”

  That brings a moderate laugh.

  “Let me see if I can sum up the situation,” Maxwell says. “If I leave anything out, I’d appreciate someone filling it in. A senior student in the journalism class has written an investigative piece, or an op-ed piece, I’m not sure which, promoting the virtues of medical marijuana. In the interest of full disclosure, that student happens to be my daughter, which you already know. I don’t expect it to be germane to our discussion. Dr. Amanda Conroy, who teaches the journalism class and is also the faculty adviser to the newspaper, is advocating for Miss West. At the principal level and at the superintendent level, the decision has been made not to run the story. The school board level, this level, is the last stop. I’d like to hear from Dr. Conroy and Dr. Holden first, and then I believe we have members of the community and students who wish to speak.” Maxwell looks at Dr. Conroy and Dr. Holden, seated in the front row. “Did I miss anything?”

  “I don’t believe you did, Max,” Dr. Holden says.

  Dr. Conroy says, “No, sir.”

  “Who wants to go first?”


  The two nod at each other, hesitate. Holden says, “I’ll do the honors.” He stands, walks to the lectern and faces the sizeable crowd, speaking with no notes. “It is our job to provide our students with the best education we can. We have to provide the fundamentals and we have to take our more capable students as far on their educational journey as possible before releasing them into the world. We have state standards to meet and in this school’s case, state standards to surpass. We have to look to the needs of all the students first, and then to the needs of the community. In other words, we have a lot of people to please. It’s a juggling act. If we allow our students to print anything they please in the school newspaper, it will get ugly quick, and pretty soon many of you here tonight in support of Dr. Conroy and Montana West will be in my office screaming for the administration to get control. The school newspaper represents our school to the community, in the same way our athletic teams and our music program do. Our athletes wear coats and ties when they represent us officially, and our band and orchestra wear clean, pressed, impeccable uniforms. We’re only asking the same of the school newspaper.

  “It is the community that decides, with their votes, whether or not we can keep our nonessential programs. Quite frankly I don’t care to preside over a school district that includes only bare educational essentials because we have offended so many community members that we can’t pass a school bond issue. Miss West’s article on medical marijuana is well written, let there be no mistake. But we all know the medical marijuana issue is a thinly veiled plan to legalize marijuana so it can be used by the masses. The slipperiest of slopes. Board members have been given a copy of the article, and you will note that Miss West makes no mention of the true nature of the controversy. Given the dangerous nature of drug and alcohol use in our teenage culture today, both Mr. Remington and I felt the issue should be excluded from the list of accepted subject matter for our school paper. Our job is to teach students the process. Objectionable-content material can be addressed later, in a college or university newspaper, or in a real newspaper. As soon as Dr. Conroy has made her statements, I’ll be more than happy to answer questions.”

  Dr. Conroy replaces Holden at the podium, formally acknowledges the board and the audience.

  “Dr. Holden and I have been having this ‘discussion,’ which often appears like an argument, since I took over the school newspaper. Being a journalist by trade and by nature, I of course see this as an intellectual freedom issue. A First Amendment issue. I try to teach my students not only how to write a good article—be it objective news or editorial opinion—but how to choose what articles to write. I teach them to be topical, to attend to the issues of the day, and to follow their interests. We do live in a free country where the free flow of controversial ideas and opinions is supposed to be celebrated. In censoring Montana’s article due to content, or her earlier article on the gay marriage controversy, or her op-ed piece on teenage abortion, we censor that free flow of ideas. Simple as that. I too will be more than happy to take questions from the audience. Thank you.” Dr. Conroy returns to her seat.

  Maxwell West directs those who wish to speak to line up behind a microphone set up in the aisle. Both students and parents approach. He gives them a time limit of two minutes each.

  Students side nearly unanimously with Dr. Conroy. They live in a free country and that includes being able to say what they want. A number of adults agree. An equal number do not. They believe school should be a controlled environment, where subject material is chosen with restraint. Students are not “full-fledged citizens,” as one man puts it, and need guidance. It is the responsibility of the community and the school to provide oversight when it comes to controversial and dangerous ideas.

  All in all, most would agree it is a civil discourse, although on a couple of occasions Maxwell has to bring the gavel down hard when students boo the idea that they’re not ready to take responsibility for what they express.

  With everyone heard, Maxwell calls for a recess while the board discusses it. In fifteen minutes, the meeting is called back to order. “The board has come to a decision,” he says when all are seated. “We hire administrators because of, among other things, their capacity to make good judgments in difficult situations. We think we’ve made great hires in Mr. Remington as principal and Dr. Holden as superintendent. We also think we made a great hire in Dr. Conroy as an English and journalism teacher and as adviser to the school paper. Students come out of her classes with wonderful skills. In this case, however, we have to agree with Dr. Holden. This is not really a First Amendment issue because the cold hard truth is, if you’re not eighteen in this country, you don’t have any rights, so while it’s a point well taken, it’s not really germane.”

  Boos drown out everything after “you don’t have any rights,” but Maxwell brings down the gavel, and they finally die out. “Whether you like that or not, it’s the truth. We as administrators and school board have to make hard decisions about what keeps our kids safe, because in the end, that’s what it’s all about. We can choose to be your friends and abide by your wishes, or we can choose to be the guiding adults in your lives and risk our popularity with you. We would rather have you safe, and angry with us, than like us, and be at risk. The medical marijuana article will not be published in the school paper, and the administrators will continue to monitor what does or does not make it into that paper. I’d like to thank you all—”

  “Excuse me.” Trey Chase stands at the podium in the aisle.

  “Actually, young man, the period for community input has passed,” Maxwell says. “If you—”

  “I know, and I apologize, but I didn’t know the part about students’ rights. I just have a quick question.”

  After a moment of consideration and a perturbed sigh, Maxwell says, “Go ahead.”

  “I turned eighteen yesterday,” Trey says. “Do I have any rights?”

  “Actually, technically—”

  “Naw, man. You said people under the age of eighteen don’t have rights. I’m eighteen. A bunch of us are; you know, held back because our parents wanted us to be great jocks in our senior years, or because we didn’t put the ol’ nose to the grindstone in third grade. But there are a lot of eighteen-year-olds in this school. Do we have rights? Would it be different if I wrote that article? Hard to imagine me being part of an intellectual freedom issue, but would I have been?”

  Maxwell considers a moment. “Actually, no. You’re still part of a system that you started into as a child. You are in the care of that system, and it is a system designed for children in the technical sense of the word. A person paying child support pays until the child is out of school, even if that child turns eighteen before graduation. It’s the same principle. Until you complete the process, you are under the tutelage of that system.”

  “Are you just making shit up?” Trey says.

  “Young man! That language is totally inappropriate for this meeting.”

  “You’re right,” Trey says, hands up in surrender. “I apologize. Are you just making stuff up?”

  “No, I’m not. Now a decision has been reached, and this meeting—”

  “Excuse me.” Trey’s grandmother has slipped in behind him at the podium.

  Maxwell says, “Yes?”

  “I’m Mari Chase, this foul-mouthed teenager’s grandmother.”

  “Our meeting is—”

  “I know, I know,” Mari says. “But I’m slow like my grandson, and there’s a lot I didn’t understand until tonight. Plus, I need to apologize for his foul mouth. I apologize for that a lot. We’ve spent the evening talking law; what each of us can and can’t do legally. But we’re forgetting there’s a reason people want to be heard, and it’s the reason we have the First Amendment. It’s personal, about each of us being able to stand up for what we believe in. The First Amendment was created by real humans to address a real problem. At the time, the problem was called tyranny. This little girl wrote an article about medical marijuana. A few mom
ents ago, you said everyone knew that trying to legalize marijuana for medical purposes was the first step down the slippery slope to legalizing it for everyone, intimating that both the article and the proposed legislation are frivolous.”

  Maxwell nods, waits.

  “I have cancer. If you hold this meeting this time next year, I likely will be absent. Marijuana eases my pain considerably; it makes life tolerable, but I can’t get it without breaking the law. I could get specific about my discomfort, but I didn’t come here for sympathy. You know, you and I agree on one thing; as long as it’s a law, if I score some weed I’m going to be, and should be, arrested. But laws don’t get changed at school board meetings. Laws get changed because people use their rights to express their opinions in public in order to change the public’s opinion. Your dau—excuse me, Montana West, wrote this article because she believes that I and people like me shouldn’t have to suffer at the end of our lives, and that the law ought to protect us, just as you believe the law has to protect these kids from knowing truths that many of them are going to run into within a year.”

  Maxwell is still another moment. And another. Then, “Your point is well taken.” He nods at Trey. “As is yours. But we’ve made our ruling, and I’m afraid this meeting is over.”

  If nearly anyone in attendance were asked at what point the meeting got out of hand, they would agree, right when Maxwell West said, “This meeting is over.” Suddenly he is standing face-to-face with his adopted daughter at the podium, inches from his microphone. “You’re not getting away with this, Daddy. You have to be right! You don’t care one bit if you really are. You’ll do anything to look good. I’m out of your house, Tara is out of your house, all because it’s more important for you to be right than to be true.” The crowd falls silent as Montana’s voice echoes through the room. Maxwell reaches for the switch on the mike, but Montana snatches it away. She quotes from memory material from the article that has been successfully censored. “People in constant pain from cancer, people who will end that pain with their deaths, can’t have any comfort because control freaks like you don’t want to be tricked by a bunch of potheads into legalizing a drug that doesn’t do half the harm as the two drinks of Scotch you had tonight before you came here.”