by Rob Thomas
“What the …?” Clint says.
Students have blocked the sidewalk by the flagpole, and they’re laughing. I’m too short, though, to see what they’re laughing at. Clint’s not in the mood to wait for the mob to clear out. He grabs my hand.
“Come on,” he says.
He starts pushing people to the side, clearing out a path for me to follow. When I clear the final line of people, I can see what everyone’s enjoying so much. Shawn Greeley is making some kind of speech. I sort of want to stay and listen—Shawn is so funny—but Clint doesn’t even slow down.
“Where do you want to go for lunch?” Clint asks as he pulls out our English books and hands them both to me. “Keeping in mind that I’m pretty much tapped, that is.”
“I don’t care,” I say because I know it’s a trick question. We’re going to Bonanza. It’s Thursday—All You Can Eat Chicken-Fried Steak Day.
We begin the walk to our English class. “How ’bout Bonanza?”
“Fine.”
Then this thought pops into my mind. If I were dating Damien, where would I be eating lunch today? Would I have a say in it? A real say? Antonio’s at the Falls, maybe? That Chinese place he always goes to—Hunan Beings? Or maybe he’d make a picnic. That would be so him. When he was dating that freshman on yearbook staff last year, Elaine Something, he was always doing little things for her: leaving flowers in her locker, giving her rides everywhere. Then she goes and dumps him. D.’s always getting dumped. Just once I wish he’d do the dumping. He’s always asking me for advice about girls. “What do y’all like?” he wants to know, like I’m the ideal person to ask. I don’t think girls or, for that matter, anyone really knows what they want. Look at me. I’m evil! Check the evidence: I dropped Peter Blackstock, one of the nicest, smartest guys in school, because I heard rumors that Clint liked me; I’m thinking about picnicking with Damien while I’m walking with Clint to class; I didn’t even destroy Damien’s note like he asked …
“… is that what you want?”
I’m snagged. “Huh?”
“I said, Is that what you want?”
“What was the question?”
Clint takes his seat as we enter our English class. “Forget it,” he says.
MR. TWILLEY
12:02 P.M. Fourth period, teacher’s lounge
I’m afraid Thomas Parks might be on drugs. After gleefully harassing me all morning, he barely spoke to me between classes this hour. He wasn’t in costume, either. He just walked beside me and kept staring at me. It was all so unnerving. It’s not until his cohorts in auto shop started hooting that he felt a need to make me perform. Just as well. You know what they say, “Idle hands, devil’s workshop.”
I pour myself a cup of coffee and take a seat at the conference table in the middle of the faculty lounge. Virginia Mills is knitting on one of the couches and Lucy Berry is running answer sheets through the Scantron machine. I take out my red pen and the quizzes from my previous two classes.
“Marcus, Marcus, Marcus,” Mrs. Berry says, “get with the program. You spend way too much time grading papers. I tell you. This machine here—it’s saved my life. I don’t know how I ever taught without one.”
The machine clacks and spits out another graded test.
“I just can’t figure out how to get one to grade an essay question,” I say.
“You are too much,” Mrs. Berry says. “Such the masochist.”
Mrs. Mills joins the conversation without looking up from her knitting.
“He sure must be a masochist to volunteer for Slave Day. Marcus, what were you thinking?” She continues without waiting for an answer. “And you see what happens, you get sold to Trailer Parks.”
Mrs. Berry picks up where Mrs. Mills leaves off.
“The entire year I had Parks in class I had nightmares. I dreamed I was lecturing during my teacher evaluation—Gant sitting in the back of the room—and Tommy kept interrupting. Asking if we could fingerpaint ‘like we usually do.’ Breaking into a coughing fit every time I said the word ‘objective.’ Asking me, ‘Is this going to be on the test?’ after everything I said. Worst of all, he kept calling me ‘Loose.’ And I would say, ‘That’s Lucy! I mean … uh … Mrs. Berry.’
“The day I actually got evaluated, Tommy was absent, but I was so nervous that I botched my lesson plan anyway.”
Mrs. Mills takes the baton.
“It’s an outrage that administrators even have the nerve to evaluate us. Who do they think they are? They sit over in their ivory tower, thinking of new ways to make a mess of the schedule, new ways to make school easier for our poor deprived children, new ways to put the burden on us instead of them. I’ll tell you what. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, if they think they can …”
But I have heard her a thousand times, so I tune her out. I remember when I never had the time to visit the teachers lounge. Very little, after all, gets accomplished here. A lot of fist shaking, primarily. About our lousy administration. About our lousy kids. Esther always refused to come in here. “I got into teaching to work with kids, not to talk bad about them behind their backs,” she’d say.
“Oh, Marcus, has Leonardo Tristan found you yet? He’s looking for you,” Mrs. Berry says, interrupting Mrs. Mills’s tirade.
“Whatever for?”
“It seems you caught one of his kids cheating this morning. You know they get kicked out of the honor society if they’re caught cheating?”
“Yes, well …”
“Well, Tamika Jackson showed up in his classroom during third period bawling, claiming that she wasn’t cheating and that you hate her.”
“I don’t hate Tamika. She’s one of my better students. I admit I’m disappointed that …”
“She’s one of the few minority students in the NHS. Tristan is worried that she’ll …”
“It just goes to show you,” Mrs. Mills interjects, “that the quality of kids is declining. Honor society used to mean something. These kids today.” She throws up her arms rather than risk describing youth in the ’90s.
“Anyway,” Berry says, “he wants to ask you if she can get off with a warning, since she’s never been in trouble and since she wasn’t really the one doing the cheating.”
“Allowing a student to cheat is the same as cheating,” I begin.
“I know. I know. You don’t have to convince me. I’m just saying Tristan wants to talk to you.”
“Put your foot down on this one, Marcus,” Mills adds. “We can’t keep lowering our expectations.”
“I’m aware of that, Virginia.”
Berry shuffles her graded quizzes and exits. Mills returns to her knitting. Finally I can continue grading.
SHAWN
12:07 P.M. Fourth period, art
I’m Coach Preppernau’s aide this period. Mostly means I walk around or shoot in the gym. I’m headin’ in that direction as I walk by the door to the art class. Humphrey waves me in. Spread out in front of him is a watercolor painting of his Rottweiler, Biscuit. The man can paint. Gonna major in art in college.
“We gotta talk,” says Hump.
When we were in junior high I used to get Humphrey his girlfriends for him. He’d have half the good-lookin’ ladies in school dyin’ to be with him (the half who didn’t want me), but he’d never ask ’em out. Could never get the words outta his mouth. So Humphrey would tell me who he liked and I’d get ’em together. He’s gotten a little better since, but not much. Good thing is, he doesn’t have to talk much. Call plays, ’bout it. Thing about Hump, when he does talk, he’s usually got something to say. Nobody’s got less bullshit than my man; whereas I talk so much shit on the court I don’t even know what I’m sayin’ half the time.
So when Humphrey sets down his brush, I got my ears on.
“I’m thinkin’ ’bout quittin’ the football team,” he says.
I crack up. “Fuck you, boy. I thought you had something serious to tell me.” I punch his shoulder. (His non-throwing
arm.)
“I’m serious,” he says. And from the look on his face—and because I know that Humphrey Brown has never told a joke in his life—I’m sure he is.
BRENDAN
12:14 P.M. Fourth period, Tiffany’s Probe
Brendan, what are you thinking?
You’re not thinking—that’s what Mom and Dad would say. Dr. and Dr. Young. They’re both professors up at Central: Mom in physics, Dad in math. They’re big into rational thought. I don’t think they’d quite understand skipping a history quiz to motor up to Austin in the middle of a school day. Maybe Dad would understand if he saw my company. Then again, probably not. And what was I thinking, giving Tiffany that access code? Showing off? That’s the sort of thing that gets the Secret Service on your butt. It was a pretty safe number. It’s the one phone repairmen use to check lines, but if Tiffany remembers it and starts using it all the time, I could be woefully bustified.
Deerfield is hurtling by my window. The road to the highway takes us right through the heart of Little Matamoros, Deerfield’s barrio. Rows of old pastel pink- and teal-colored houses fly by. Skinny mongrel dogs pace their tiny fenced-in dirt patches, and multitudinous hanging plants turn front porches into virtual gardens of Babylon. As we speed along, I think I can imagine how Russian serfs felt when they watched the royal family’s carriage pass through their fields. I understand now why they picked up their hammers and sickles. Tiffany rolls down all the windows electronically. I get a mouthful of her hair. I’m not complaining; it smells … I don’t know … expensive.
“Hey, Scraps, what sort of car do you drive?” says Tiffany.
Scraps? What does she mean, Scraps? I think of my mom’s ’89 Tempo in the driveway at home. My parents say I can drive it when I turn sixteen next year.
“Uh, I don’t drive yet.”
Tiffany makes a fake disappointed face and snaps her fingers.
“Shucks,” she says.
Tiffany accelerates as she enters the highway. I lean over and check the speedometer as she merges. She’s doing seventy-five with all indications pointing to greater speeds to come. I notice that I’m the only one in the car buckled up. What the heck. I’m a wildman. I click the release.
TOMMY
12:21 P.M. Fourth period, auto shop
Okay, before you start thinking I’m some slacker grease monkey, this is how I ended up in auto shop: I forgot to turn in my elective choice sheet, and when the deadline passed, Mr. McCormack, my counselor, just took the matter into his own hands and chose for me. Auto shop was no shocker. After all, he keeps calling me into his office to give me pamphlets from trade schools and junior colleges. Last time it was for a refrigeration school in Tulsa.
“How’s the fine arts doctoral program there?” I asked him.
“Ha-ha,” he said, and I don’t mean that he laughed. I mean he said “Ha-ha.”
“You are one funny kid,” he said. Then he looked me over. Maybe expecting another “joke” before tacking on, “… but it’s time you get serious about your continuing education.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m on the managerial fast track at Whataburger. Next month they’re going to train me on the shake machine.”
McCormack didn’t get this joke.
“Well, congratulations, Tommy! Maybe a career in the service industry would suit you.”
But auto shop isn’t all that bad. I don’t have to study for it. Just change the oil in the principal’s Beemer every blue moon. I’m making an A, and if you’ve seen my grades, you know how rare that is.
Anyway, I wasn’t making Twilley perform as we were walking out to the shop building, but I noticed all the guys looking at me like, “So, funny man, make us laugh.” All I could think of were those yearbook photos, so I told Twilley he had to carry me piggyback.
He stared at me for a few seconds, then turned around and crouched. I hopped aboard. Now, I ain’t no huge dude. Like I said, I ain’t even as big as Twilley, but that didn’t stop the old man from creaking with every step he took. Sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies. Plus, he was breathing hard after a few steps. Ain’t hard to please the auto shop boys, though. They yee-hawed and high-fived. He dropped me as we passed under the garage doors; I whispered my new titles to him. He put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he panted.
Ladies?
“The man who put the spark in plugs, the over in drive, Mr. Goodwrench himself, Tommy Parks.”
One or two people clapped. The others stopped paying attention the second Twilley set me down. After Twilley left, the class jacked around for a while before Mr. Radakovich slammed his eighteen-inch “board of education” down on one of the workbenches—his usual way of getting our attention.
“All right, you wastes of sperm, I wanna see elbows and assholes rest o’ this period. I need this car washed and detailed, plus the flat changed out. Pronto. Capisce?”
Wow. Trilingual. Radakovich was in charge of a motor pool in the army, and his leadership style didn’t change much when he started molding the minds of America’s next generation of grease monkeys. Works, though. We’ve been elbows and assholes since the minute he issued the command. I notice right off that the Buick in question is Twilley’s. Guess it’s the TWILLEY IS A DICK shoe-polished across the back windshield. The antenna’s been busted, but when I check it out closer, I see it’s rusted. Someone did that a long time ago. Twilley’s just never bothered to fix it. There’s bits of eggshell starting to stick to the paint job. I can’t believe that I’m having to clean this up on a day where Twilley’s my slave. I get out the Shop-Vac. I’m the only one in class who’s mastered this piece of high-tech equipment. I open the ashtray, secretly hoping that I’ll find the remnants of a roach. Hot damn, I’d have fun with that! No such luck. His ashtray looks like it’s never even been opened. Not even gum wrappers or loose change. Man, I don’t smoke, but my ashtray in the pickup is like a black hole. Losing lottery tickets, bottle caps, two-year-old french fries. I keep every worthless thing in the world in that ashtray.
Some student papers are stuck in a history book on the front seat. I thumb though the first few: C, F, C, D–. So this guy was the students’ favorite teacher twenty years ago. How did that happen? Is there something about getting old that makes you mean? I wonder what I’ll be like when I’m his age. Still stuck in Deerfield. Still working the drive-through.
“Whataburger. Whaddya want? Turn that crap you call music down so I can hear ya! Speak up! SPEAK UP! No, you can’t get guacamole on that. Why? ’Cuz I just told you you can’t. That’s why! When I was your age, we didn’t even have guacamole. You didn’t hear us complaining.”
Can’t imagine it. That ain’t happening to me. To hell with Twilley. I don’t care what he won twenty years ago. I bought myself a slave. This kid’s gloves are coming off.
KEENE
12:24 P.M. Fourth period, government
Today’s lesson in Mr. Warren’s class—how politics affect us personally. He asks the class if anyone has any examples from their own lives, but he’s met with a wave of anti-intellectualism.
“I can’t even vote,” hyucks a Skoal-dipping pundit.
Then Eron Davis, who had a brother killed by friendly fire during the Gulf War, says, “Politics don’t mean jack to me. Don’t never change nothing.”
This gets me to wondering about two things: Does a triple negative retain the statement’s original intent; and, if Eron is willing to let his government send his brother halfway around the globe to die, what hope do I have of getting people to care about Slave Day?
“I know a lot of you can’t vote yet,” Mr. Warren says, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not affected by politics.” He tells us how, when he was in high school, the government decided that if you didn’t register for the draft, you couldn’t receive any financial aid for college. “That put me in a tough position. I didn’t believe the draft was constitutional, but I needed that money to go to sch
ool.”
Charity Mathews raises her hand and asks, “What did you do?” The rest of us were quite willing to go to our graves without thinking twice about it.
“I sold out,” says Mr. Warren. “I registered. I’m not real proud of that, but I justified it at the time by saying I would become a lawyer and help people fight their way around it.”
Charity speaks up again. “But I thought you were an entertainment lawyer.”
Mr. Warren grins sheepishly. “Things worked out a little differently than I planned them.”
Still unable to get the class to chime in with their own brushes with politics, Mr. Warren asks us what we think the legal drinking age should be. Students start shouting numbers ranging from four to sixteen.
“But who gets the final decision what the drinking age is going to be?” Mr. Warren asks.
The class decides the state legislature is responsible for that. “Well, then,” Mr. Warren says, “politics do affect your lives.”
After that, everyone decides some political blunder has ruined their lives. Trinni Rea tells us the tragic tale about her brother not being able to get into UT law school because he’s white and male. “Now how’s that fair?” she says. Poor baby.
Next, some surfer wanna-be complains about the re-zoning at Rio Vista Park. “I lost my lifeguarding job when they closed the pool.”
I consider how these tragedies would play at a high school in South Central Los Angeles. Mr. Warren humors them, anyway, then he calls on me. I ignore the groans.
“Keene, what’s your example?”
“You know, I didn’t want to believe this at first, but it’s hard not to now,” I begin. “I’ve heard that Mr. Twilley’s trying to get Tamika Jackson kicked out of NHS. Supposedly for cheating. Now she’s already the only black girl in the whole group. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on there.”