Adults didn’t understand shit. If they suspended Ashley or gave her detention or something, Cody would take ten times as much revenge on me.
Within the hour, I knew just how serious it was. Miss Mullins and Mr. Flowers might not have told me anything, but you couldn’t keep something like that a secret for long. Word spread instantly via text message that both Billy and Ashley had been suspended for three days.
I was screwed. While I couldn’t blame Miss Mullins—she’d done what she thought was the right thing—there was no question in my mind that this was going to make things very difficult for me.
I continued through the next couple of hours expecting the attack to come at any second. Something humiliating or possibly painful. I sat in my classes, not hearing a word, not taking notes, unable to think of anything but how they were going to get their revenge.
But it ended up not being me at all.
Between fifth and sixth periods I usually cut through the courtyard, at least if the weather was nice. It cut several minutes off the time it took me to get to class and sometimes made for a pleasant breath of fresh air before my final class of the day. The added bonus was most days I ran into Hayley there and we would stop for a minute or two and talk.
This day was different.
On the edge of the courtyard, just out of sight of the windows of the main office, a small crowd of students had gathered. I didn’t know most of them, but I did recognize Cody’s bulk in the crowd. What were they surrounding? What were they looking at?
It was stupid, foolhardy. But I had to know. I walked that way, pretending to mind my own business and not notice them.
As soon as I was in clear earshot, I knew I needed to get away. The crowd was taunting someone. Cody’s vomit-worthy voice blared out the words, “She’s so broke I bet her dad whores her out at night.”
That comment caused the group to erupt in a chorus of laughter, two of the girls clutching each other as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
I need to get out of here now. Or I was going to be the next target. I started to turn away, but then I heard Hayley’s voice.
“Just leave me alone, you assholes.” She sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
I didn’t think, not even for a second. I stooped down and dug a small rock out of the lawn. I spent enough time skipping rocks with Dad and Brenna in the mountains that I knew I was a damn good shot. The rock sailed in a perfect spin that would have skipped four or five times had I thrown it on the river. Instead it whacked Cody Hendricks right on the back of the head.
Cody staggered forward, and let out a scream. “Motherfucker! What the fuck was that?” His hand flew to the back of his head, and he spun around looking for his assailant. His eyes fixed on me.
It was too late to pretend. I cried out, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, you big, fat fucking slob?”
Immediately I heard the voice of twenty or more teenagers say, “Oooooh…”
For a fraction of a second my eyes fell on Hayley, who gaped in shock. Then they went back to the biggest source of danger. Cody Hendricks, who looked as mad as a nest of wasps.
“FRRRREEEEEAAAKKKKK!” He barreled toward me as he screamed the word out. I spun and ran as fast as I could, my feet digging into the damp soil of the courtyard. As soon as I ran, I knew I was in full view of the main office, but I didn’t know if anyone in there was looking. I wasn’t taking any chances. I ran like one of the NASCAR racers at Talladega. I ran like I’d never run before. I ran like my life depended on it. At the end of the courtyard I reached the breezeway between the main building and the gym. I shot across the breezeway, scanning for an open door.
One of the doors to the gym was open. I sprinted, praying that one of the coaches would be in sight inside. Immediately the cool air inside the gym enveloped me. I didn’t slow down, but I heard Cody scream, “I’m gonna kill you, freeeeaakkkk!”
I was running too fast to make sense of my surroundings. I blew past a man—Mr. Flowers, I realized too late—who was standing in the middle of the floor holding a microphone. There were loud gasps as I ran by him and then tripped over something, I don’t know what it was, but I scrambled up and started to run again before someone grabbed me.
Behind me, Cody charged into the gym, bellowing, his face bright red with venom. “Motherfucker! I’ll killlllll you!” he screamed.
He ran directly into Mr. Flowers, who spun and knocked Cody to the ground. “You ain’t killing nobody.”
The gym exploded into the voices of a hundred students speculating, gesturing and gawking at the scene on the floor.
I stopped struggling, seeing that Cody was no longer chasing. A crowd of students who had followed me and Cody through the courtyard was at the door of the gym, but they started to melt away.
“All y’all stay right there!” That shout came from one of the assistant coaches.
All at once my brain took in the scene. One set of bleachers was pulled out, with maybe two hundred freshmen or sophomores sitting on them. One of the coaches and Mr. Flowers had been speaking to an assembly when I came charging in, interrupting it.
I swallowed. I had a feeling I was in trouble.
Cole
When the assistant principal finished telling the story, I looked back and forth between him, Sam’s counselor, and Sam.
“So what’s the bottom line?” I asked.
I had been home no more than fifteen minutes when the phone call came, and I drove back to this side of town to the high school. I was having some difficulty imagining the scenario that had been described to me: a large crowd of students bullying a girl, and Sam coming to the rescue by attacking the biggest kid in the school?
The assistant principal looked profoundly uncomfortable. “Sir … the thing is, as much as I admire your son for standing up for that girl, I can’t condone him throwing a rock at another student or starting a fight. Our penalty for fighting is a three-day suspension. Normally the student would get zeros for any work missed during the suspension, but in this case we’ll waive that. Sam will be able to make up the work. And, we’re going to reduce it to one day. But this is the only time. If it happens again, the penalties will be much more severe.”
To the vice principal’s left, Sam’s counselor closed her eyes in apparent relief. When she opened them, I saw Sam mouth at her, “Thank you.”
I sighed. Erin would be furious, of course. But I could talk her through that. I raised my eyebrows. “Is there anything else?”
The vice principal shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Mr. Roberts, here’s my card if you ever have any questions.” The counselor handed me a business card as she said the words. I looked down at it. Patricia Mullins.
I didn’t really have any, but it would be good to have her information. Plus … there was something in her expression that led me to think she wanted me to call.
“Let’s go, Sam.”
Sam hadn’t said a word through the entire discussion. He threw his backpack over his shoulder and followed me out of the building. We walked to my car in what felt like an awkward silence. When we got in, he sat down beside me, and twisted around, tossing his backpack on the back seat. “Am I grounded?”
Is he grounded? That never even occurred to me. I took a deep breath, trying to decide what was the appropriate fatherly thing to say. Should I tell Sam that violence was wrong, and he should have gone and found a teacher to intervene? That seemed like the responsible thing to do.
But then I thought of Dakota crying in the back room last night because a grown-up version of a bully had been treating her like dirt. I thought of my aunt screaming as Uncle Bill punched her in the face.
I shook my head. “No. You’re not grounded. Instead, I think I’m going to take you out for ice cream. You still like ice cream? I can never tell anything with teenagers.”
Sam’s eyes widened, and a smile spread on his face. A beautiful smile. “You’re not mad?”
I l
ooked over my glasses at my son. “I’m giving you a stern lecture right now that violence is wrong, and you should find an adult when you see something like that. That said … Sam, I’m very proud of you.”
Sam blinked his eyes rapidly and looked away. Then he said in a voice almost too quiet to hear, “Thank you.”
I looked at my watch. It was almost 2:15. “School’s almost out. You want to bring your girlfriend?”
Sam blushed. “Hayley’s not my girlfriend.”
I grinned. Blushing was a good sign, I decided. It reflected—what—some level of innocence? When I was sixteen I was so angry at the world, I couldn’t imagine myself blushing back then.
“Have it your way, kid. Anyway, do you want to bring your friend?” I made air quotes at the word friend.
Sam gave me a wry expression. “Can I? I’ll text her right now.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I wanted to meet the elusive Hayley, and in truth I was more likely to find out details of what happened by listening in on their conversation than asking questions. Sam was a teenager, after all. I pulled to the side and waited. It took just a minute to get a response. Sam looked up with a rare smile on his face and said, “She says she can come, but she has to be home by four to do her chores. Can we give her a ride home?”
“Yeah, of course.” I checked traffic then pulled the car out into a U-turn and headed back to the high school. I found the pick-up lane, and parked the car behind a newish grey Dodge minivan sporting a series of bumper stickers. One bore the question, Where will you go when you die? On one side of the bumper sticker were pretty clouds, on the other side were flames and a comical-looking devil waving what appeared to be a bullwhip. That was subtle. Another one said in, PRO-LIFE. The window sported a National Rifle Association membership sticker. Seeing the bumper stickers made me tired. I’d been an active Republican most of my adult life, much to Erin’s irritation, but in the absence of Brenna, it all seemed like so much bullshit.
It wasn’t really relevant to me anymore anyway. Thanks to the felony conviction, I’d lost my right to vote.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
Sam’s voice cracked a little when he said Dad. He was so small for his age, but it sounded like his voice was starting to change.
“Didn’t you have work today?”
I nodded, debating on how much to tell Sam. He had so much uncertainty in his life, he didn’t really need to be worrying about whether or not I had a job. I looked over at him. He was still so young.
In the end, I decided that Sam had pretty much gone past the bullshit stage of life. All lying would do would be to make him distrust me.
“To be honest, I kind of got suspended today too.”
Sam gaped. I continued. “Last night some asshole was harassing one of my waitresses … racist stuff. It was pretty ugly, and I kicked him out of the restaurant and told him not to come back.”
“Whoa. That’s legit. But why are you in trouble? Isn’t that the right thing to do?”
I exhaled. “It is, unless the person you kicked out turns out to be the mayor. My boss is pretty pissed.”
Sam gave me a stare for a long time. I couldn’t tell if it was disbelief or astonishment or admiration. Finally he said, “Mayor Prichard? That’s Ashley’s dad.”
Ashley wasn’t a familiar name. “A friend of yours?”
Sam shook his head and gave a bitter sort of chuckle. “Hardly. She’s the one who sent out that awful picture. She got suspended this morning because of it.”
Huh. That was unexpected. A selfish part of me tried to calculate how much that might have an impact on my job situation. I tried to push that to the side.
Students were now streaming out of the building. The school day must be over. It quickly became apparent that there was a semi-uniform. The boys almost all had crew cuts, T-shirts bearing mostly corporate logos, and they all wore baggy khaki shorts. The girls either wore skirts that were too short, or white T-shirts and blue jeans with flannel shirts carefully tied around their waists.
“It seems like they all dress the same.”
“Morons.” Sam’s judgment was quick.
“You don’t ever get the urge to run with the pack? Follow the same kind of fashions as your friends?”
Sam shakes his head. “I hate flannel anyway.”
Weird, the boys weren’t wearing flannel. I didn’t have time to give it any more thought, because Sam gave an excited wave to a girl who was approaching the car.
She was about five foot three with golden-red hair and extremely pale skin with freckles, lots and lots of freckles. She wore a threadbare blue dress. She got in the backseat of the car, slamming the door shut behind her, and immediately said, “Hi, I’m Hayley.”
I twisted around in my seat and offered my hand, which she shook. “Cole Roberts.”
When she shook my hand, I noticed that her wrist was badly bruised with what looked like handprints.
As if someone had grabbed her wrist and twisted and squeezed. I’d seen that before, on my aunt.
I made a mental note to ask Sam about it later; I didn’t want to make Hayley uncomfortable.
I drove toward the Baskin-Robbins as Sam twisted around in his seat to face Hayley. The two of them immediately began gossiping and laughing as they ran through a succession of stories about people I didn’t know. I kept my ears open for clues about my son’s life. Most of it I didn’t understand, but I did catch the frank admiration in Hayley’s voice when she said, “I can’t believe you went after Cody like that.”
Sam smiled. “I know, right? Did you see his face? I thought he was going to kill me.”
“I did too,” she said quietly.
There was no mistaking it. That girl was falling hard for Sam. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him, and it was clear she noticed nothing else about her surroundings.
Sam, for his part, seemed oblivious.
Over ice cream—Sam had butter pecan and Hayley had mint chocolate chip—I asked Hayley some strategic questions. I learned that she’d only recently moved from Birmingham and in with her father. I didn’t ask, and she didn’t say, why she wasn’t living with her mom anymore. Custody changes could be messy, and I didn’t want to be intrusive. I asked what her dad did—construction—and how she liked Oxford.
At that question, her eyes shifted over at Sam. “I like it okay.”
It was painful, seeing how oblivious Sam was to Hayley’s longing gaze. Intentional? Who knew. Maybe he just didn’t want to blow a good friendship. He’d had few friends in Virginia, and since we’d moved here, even less (none, if I was honest). It was clear that she adored him.
Back in the car, Hayley gave me directions to her neighborhood. I guess it wasn’t much of a surprise, given how threadbare her clothes were, that she lived in a run-down trailer park on the edge of Oxford. Four rows of rusted single-wides crowded about two acres of land. Overgrown weeds peeked out through cracks in the pavement. She grew quiet as we pulled into the neighborhood, her only words directions to the fourth trailer on the left.
I came to a stop in front of the rickety-looking building. It was raised on cinderblocks, with no skirting to hide it, and a simple wood and steel staircase leading up to the door. The side of the trailer was clearly old, with marks of rust and other damage apparent.
“Oh no,” she whispered as we came to a stop. I glanced over at my shoulder and followed her gaze to the ancient Dodge Charger parked near the trailer. The right front fender and the hood were grey with primer paint, and fabric from the underside of the roof hung down into the interior.
I didn’t know what was wrong. But that became clear enough when a man came bursting out of the house just as she stepped out of the car. He was in his forties maybe, or fifties. It was hard to tell—he had the sunken cheeks of a man missing a lot of teeth, and his skin was rough. Heavy smoker, probably. His shirt bore a confederate flag, waving above the head of a nearly nude woman with stars covering her nipples. What
a charmer. This must be her father.
“Where the hell have you been?” the man shouted.
“I—I—” she stammered.
I swung my door open and stepped out. “Sir? I’m Cole Roberts.”
The man swung toward me, rage in his eyes. “You been messing with my daughter? I’ll have your—”
“No,” I responded in a firm tone, not sure what I was going to say.
Sam burst out, “Sir, Hayley was helping me with my calculus homework and we missed the bus. My dad offered her a ride.”
I didn’t condone lying. But in this case? I just nodded, verifying Sam’s lie.
The old man frowned, his eyes darting back and forth between my son and the girl. “Get inside,” he spit at her.
She nodded, her eyes watering, and ran inside.
“I guess ain’t no harm done,” the man said, seeming to moderate his tone.
I suspected otherwise. I had the feeling this guy could do a lot of harm, especially to that kid. This whole scene reminded me so much of my aunt and uncle I wanted to be sick.
I didn’t really have time to think any more about it though. She was gone, into the house, and the man was standing there, staring at us, waiting for us to leave.
I let out a breath, my shoulders sagging, and said, “Come on, Sam.”
Moments later, we were on the road, heading back home. Both of us were silent for a long time. But finally, as we crossed over the interstate headed south, he said, “Dad? Can I ask you a question? If … if I knew that someone was being hurt. By their parents. But they’d made me promise not to tell. What would be the right thing to do?”
I didn’t answer right away. It was obvious what he was getting at.
“Is Hayley’s dad hurting her?”
He didn’t respond at first. But finally his head jerked in a nod. “Yeah,” he whispered. “She comes into school bruised sometimes. But she made me promise not to say anything.”
I needed to be very careful how I answered this. The knee-jerk reaction of course, was to say, you should always tell. Domestic violence wasn’t something to fool around with. I’d seen how serious it could get, when I watched my uncle beating the crap out of his wife and son.
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