The Essay A Novel

by The Essay (retail) (epub)

  “Yeah. She teaches ninth- and tenth-grade English. She doesn’t like me very much.”

  Edgel’s brows arched. “She was a piece of work, that one. I don’t think she cares much for me, either.”

  Given Edgel’s checkered history at East Vinton High School, that didn’t surprise me.

  After admiring the medal for several minutes, rubbing the surface with the tip of his thumb, Edgel set it on the edge of the table between us and neatly arranged the ribbon under the medal. He tapped the thick nail of his index finger on the table next to the medal and said, “Jimmy Lee, this is important.” He used the same digit to point at the varsity letter on my jacket. “That right there, your football award, that’s nice, but it ain’t important. Okay? But this . . .” He pointed back to the medal. “. . . this is important.” He picked up the medal and dangled it six inches in front of my face. “It’s important, because it’s a ticket. You understand?”

  I did. Perfectly.

  “A ticket to where?” Dad snorted from the far end of the table.

  “A ticket off Red Dog Road,” Edgel said.

  The Farnsworth brothers extended their arms, toasting me with their Pabst Blue Ribbons, and Luke said, “H-h-hear, hear.”

  Chapter Seven

  M

  ost of the teachers at East Vinton High School thought Miss Singletary had a big chip on her shoulder. As a student at the school, she was quiet and reserved. When she returned to her alma mater as an English teacher, her colleagues and the administration expected her to be the same Amanda Singletary who had spent her free time in the library and was president of the Future Homemakers of America.

  Much to their surprise, and in some cases, dismay, a totally different Amanda Singletary emerged from college. The mousy girl who dutifully obeyed all authority figures had turned into an outspoken, opinionated hellcat. Most annoying to her employer was the vociferousness of her belief that the East Vinton Local School District did a poor job of preparing its students for college and a life outside of Vinton County. The school district, she contended, expected too little of its students and set the bar for graduation far too low.

  The caste system still lived in the hills of Vinton County. With few exceptions, we understood our predetermined lot in life. If you dared to dream, you dreamt in silence, keeping those fantasies to yourself, lest they die upon the derisive laughter of classmates. There were those few of whom you believed success was a certainty. No one doubted that Roy Otto, our handsome class president, the quarterback, straight-A student, and the lead in the senior musical, Li’l Abner, would graduate from college and someday make a million dollars in business. Or, that Lindsey Morgan, by virtue of her beauty and money, would someday dance on stage in New York in front of thousands of people. To those select few, success seemed plausible. But those dreams were beyond most of us.

  We lived in a community where for years the girls graduated, got married, and pregnant. The boys, whether or not they bothered to finish school, went to work in the coal mines, timber operations, or paper mills.

  The East Vinton Local School District was formed in 1946 with the consolidation of four small, extremely poor school districts— Brown Township, Moonville Local, Wilkesville Village, and Zaleski Village. Together they created East Vinton, a slightly larger, but still extremely poor school district. The former Moonville Local School, a two-story, coal-heated building built in 1903, became East Vinton High School. It was not pretty or sleek, but it was solid, built from sorrel-colored bricks fired on the property. Millions of footfalls had worn trough-like grooves in the gray and white marble steps leading to the two front doors, which were ten feet tall and so heavy that skinny girls needed both hands and a foot brace to pull them open. Students referred to the school as “the sweat shop” because it had no air conditioning, making the late spring and early fall days stifling, and the custodians never managed to regulate the heat pouring out of the coal furnace, causing teachers to open windows in the dead of winter. A few years after the school opened, a new gymnasium and a wing to house the wood and auto body shops were added to the original structure, and the people of eastern Vinton County were content. Education was not seen as a transport to greater opportunities. Rather, it was something endured to meet the requirements of a state mandate. Graduating from East Vinton High School could be assured simply by showing up on a regular basis.

  But Miss Singletary wasn’t satisfied. At a Parent-Teacher Association meeting her second year at the school, Miss Singletary addressed the crowd and said the school district was doing a poor job of preparing students to meet the challenges of life after graduation. She said, “Parents, you must demand more of the teachers. And teachers, you must demand more of our students. Otherwise, how can we expect them to achieve at their highest levels? The coal mines are closing, we have only a handful of timber mills in operation, and the paper mills are moving to the south. If we don’t get these children ready to meet the challenges of the real world, and that means preparing them for college, we are failing them.”

  Forest Brubaker, the industrial arts and auto body teacher at the school, stood and said, “Miss Singletary, I think your heart is in the right place, but most East Vinton students are not college material. When you suggest that we need to prepare them for college, you’re just setting them up for failure.”

  Red blotches broke out all over Miss Singletary’s neck, which her students recognized as Mount Singletary getting ready to blow. “Mr. Brubaker, you should have your teaching certificate revoked for making such an asinine statement,” she said to the auditorium full of teachers and parents. “We must demand more, or these kids will all end up in Vinton County, living on welfare.”

  It was not a popular stance and she had the entire community in an uproar. The Vinton County Messenger got wind of her speech and followed up with an article, which brought the school board members and the superintendent to a boil, but she never backed down. She had done her homework and had statistics showing East Vinton’s poor drop-out rate and a history of poor performance on the state’s standardized tests. For those who did graduate, a ridiculously low percentage went on to college or technical school.

  Her English and literature classes were the most difficult in the school. She constantly preached to us the need to strive for excellence. “You are capable of achieving much more than you realize,” she was fond of saying. “Geographical location needn’t be an impediment to success. Show me that you want to achieve. Prove to me that you want to succeed, and I will walk with you every step of the way.”

  She was a powerful ally.

  “Jimmy Lee, Principal Speer wants to see you in his office right away.” Abbie Winsetter was wearing a green jumper and a smug grin when she delivered the summons. The Bull Elk Club had just finished fifty minutes of running and calisthenics; I had sweated through my T-shirt and drops of perspiration were falling in rapid succession from the tip of my nose, forming a small pool on the gym floor. “All right,” I said.

  “He said right now.”

  “I heard you, Abbie. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She stood there for a long moment, squinting and looking as though she had gotten a whiff of something unpleasant, then spun on her heel and left.

  Mr. Speer had not congratulated me after I had won the Alpha & Omega essay contest the previous day and I tried to convince myself that was the reason for the summons. Perhaps he was going to slap me on the back and give me an “Atta boy, Jimmy Lee, you’ve made us proud.” Of course, I knew better. My name had been Jimmy Lee Hickam long enough to know that a call to the principal’s office was never good news.

  I swapped out of my gym clothes and, still perspiring, reported to the office. Mrs. Green, the school secretary, opened the door to Principal Speer’s office and poked her head inside. This was followed by a few seconds of inaudible conversation, and then she pushed open the door for me to enter. Principal Speer was seated at the end of a mahogany conference table that was gouged and dull
with wear. Mrs. Gloria Johanessen, the freshman-sophomore English teacher, and Ernestine Wadell of the Alpha & Omega Literary Society were seated to his right, neither of them making eye contact with me.

  “Sit down, Jimmy Lee,” Principal Speer said, nodding toward an empty chair to his left, and giving not the first indication that I was there to be congratulated. On the corner of the table near his left hand was the blue notebook that contained my essay. With great deliberateness, he picked up the notebook and held it in front of me like a prosecutor displaying a murder weapon to the jury. “We want to talk to you about your essay.”

  “Yes, sir. What about it?”

  “We have some concerns.”

  I shrugged. “What kind of concerns?”

  He nodded toward Mrs. Johanessen, who passed a manila folder to him. He pulled out a packet of stapled papers that I assumed were my transcripts. “It seems that you barely passed junior English— two C’s, two D’s, and two F’s.” He looked at me as if waiting for an explanation.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, not offering any detail.

  “And yet, you created this essay for the contest that is nearly flawless in its grammar and tells a very compelling story.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t respond. “Who wrote this?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you have help?”

  “Help? What kind of help?”

  Mrs. Johanessen asked, “Did someone else write it before the contest so that you could just recopy it?”

  Prickly chills ran up my spine and spread into my rib cage. “No.”

  A faint grin pursed her lips. “You’re perspiring a great deal, Jimmy Lee. Are you nervous?”

  “No. I just came from gym class.”

  My answer wasn’t important. It was the question she wanted Mr. Speer and Mrs. Wadell to remember. You see he’s sweating, don’t you? Liars always sweat when they get caught. Look at him. Look at the perspiration streak down his face. She folded her hands in front of her on the table and said, “Well, Jimmy Lee, doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that someone who could barely pass his junior English class suddenly wins the school’s biggest writing contest?”

  “Are you accusing me of cheating, Mrs. Johanessen?”

  “We just want to know if you had help. That’s all.”

  “Uh-huh, that would be called cheating, wouldn’t it? You’re accusing me of cheating.”

  Mrs. Wadell cleared her throat and said, “Mr. Hickam, we just want to make sure that your essay was completely your own. This is a marvelous essay, but it is imperative that it be original work. That is clearly stated in the rules of the competition.”

  Anger was replacing the timidity with which I had entered the room. I pointed at the booklet and said, “Mrs. Wadell, that is my work. No one else helped me, not one bit.”

  “Jimmy Lee, are you sure you want to go through with this?” Mrs. Johanessen asked. “The county essay competition is a lot of pressure.”

  “Pressure doesn’t bother me, Mrs. Johanessen. The only thing that bothers me is people thinking I cheated or that I’m not good enough to represent their school just because my last name is Hickam.”

  “That’s not what we meant, Mr. Hickam,” Mrs. Wadell said apologetically.

  “Maybe that’s not what you meant, ma’am, but that’s exactly what they meant. Believe me, I’ve been a Hickam long enough to know what’s going on here. Mrs. Johanessen’s upset because I won the contest and her daughter won’t get to compete in the county competition.”

  I knew I had stepped over the line with that comment. Mrs. Johanessen said nothing; she just peered at me with a hateful look. When she was angry, Mrs. Johanessen had a habit of squinting her left eye, like a hunter taking bead on a quarry, and her lips drew up in a pucker. At that moment, she was at full squint and pucker. Mrs. Wadell now had beads of sweat appearing on her upper lip and a tiny rivulet rolling down the side of her orange face. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Principal Speer said, “Given your history of poor performance in the classroom, Jimmy Lee, I’m afraid that in order for you to compete in the county competition you’re going to have to prove that this essay is your original work.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Before you arrived we agreed that you would have to write a second essay under the observation of Mrs. Johanessen and Mrs. Wadell. If you create an essay of equal quality, we’ll accept this as your original work.”

  “So, you’ve already decided that I cheated.”

  “We’re just trying to be fair,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. You’re just trying take away my award. You would never ask one of the girls to rewrite their essays.”

  “Both of the other girls passed freshman, sophomore, and junior English with near perfect scores,” Mrs. Johanessen said, the faint grin returning to her lips. She produced another blue notebook from the stack of papers in her lap and slid it across the table to me.

  Principal Speer said, “We believe this is the only way we can be fair to everyone who . . .”

  Outside of some out-of-shape linemen struggling through summer conditioning drills, I have never in my life seen a face the shade of maroon as that of Miss Amanda Singletary when at that moment she barged into Principal Speer’s office. She pushed the door with the flat of her hand and I thought it was going to come off its hinges. The warning-light red blotches scarred her neck and the muscles reaching down into her clavicle strained like bridge cables. She asked, “What is this all about?” She looked at the adults, leaning forward like a dog at the end of its leash, her knuckles digging into the mahogany table; Mrs. Johanessen and Mrs. Wadell looked at Principal Speer. Mrs. Wadell was now perspiring worse than me.

  Before he could speak, I said, “They think I cheated on my essay, and Mr. Speer said I have to write another one before they’ll let me compete in the county competition.”

  Miss Singletary’s fisted hands went to her hips and she said, “Absolutely you will not. And, since I oversee the competition, why wasn’t I consulted on this?” No one answered. I could see the muscles in Miss Singletary’s jaw working beneath the skin. She stared hard at Mrs. Johanessen and said, “Of all the . . .” She stopped, took a breath and put her hand on my shoulder. “Wait for me out in the attendance office, Jimmy Lee.”

  I scraped my books off the table and went to the attendance office just outside of the principal’s office. It was a futile attempt to shield me from the ensuing conversation; I could hear every word through the closed door. Miss Singletary said, “Mrs. Johanessen, I am outraged that you would attempt to pull a shameless stunt like this. And Mr. Speer, I’m even more outraged that you would sanction it!”

  “Miss Singletary, I would strongly suggest that you not forget that I am the principal of this school.”

  “Then I would strongly suggest that you start acting like it. I am the teacher in charge of this competition, and I will not have my authority or the integrity of the papers submitted called into question.”

  “This is a very important competition with scholarship money at stake,” Mrs. Johanessen said. “We believe that the school might be better represented if . . .”

  “If what? If we were represented by someone whose last name isn’t Hickam? Let’s see, if Jimmy Lee doesn’t go, then East Vinton’s representative would be the runner-up. Who was that? Oh wait, now I remember, it was your daughter, wasn’t it, Mrs. Johanessen?”

  Mrs. Wadell attempted to speak, but was cut off by Principal Speer, who said, “ We just think it might be better for everyone concerned if someone more appropriate represented our school.”

  “More appropriate? Did you just say, ‘more appropriate?’ Of all the unmitigated gall. I don’t give a damn what that boy looks like or what his last name is. Jimmy Lee Hickam won that contest, and he won it fair and square.”

  “I seriously doubt that,” Mrs. Johanessen sniffed.

  “Do you have proof that he cheated?”

  “I have his transcripts
from his previous English class and . . .”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  “No, I don’t have proof. I don’t think proof is required. All one needs to see that Jimmy Lee didn’t write this is a little common sense.” A faint smile creased Mrs. Johanessen’s lips.

  There was a moment of silence before Miss Singletary continued, “You better wipe that smirk off your face before I help you.”

  I wanted to stand up and cheer.

  “That will be enough of that kind of talk, Miss Singletary,” Principal Speer said.

  Mrs. Johanessen said, “His grades were abominable in my freshman and sophomore classes, and I know he struggled last year. In fact, it would appear that his passage to senior English was probably a gift. Then, miraculously, he wins the essay contest with a nearly flawless paper. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “A lot of students entering my junior English class struggle, but rather than write them off as idiots, I’m more inclined to believe it was a lack of preparation during their freshman and sophomore years.”

  The gloves were off. Miss Singletary had lunged for the jugular.

  “Again, we don’t need this kind of talk,” Principal Speer said. “Simply, we’re here to discuss the validity of Jimmy Lee’s paper and whether he should be the one to represent East Vinton in the county competition.”

  “Obviously, he should not,” Mrs. Johanessen said.

  “You’re not taking this away from him,” Miss Singletary countered. “If you try, I’ll go to the superintendent and if that doesn’t work, I’ll go to the newspapers.”

  “You are treading on dangerously thin ice,” Principal Speer said. “Are you willing to jeopardize your teaching career for this boy?”

  “It looks to me like I already have.”

  The door to Principal Speer’s office flew open, and Miss Singletary snatched me by the shoulder of my shirt and said, “Get up. To my room, now!” She pushed me down the hall to the empty classroom. She pointed to the chair just in front of her desk and I sat without comment. She paced the front of the room for several minutes until the heaving in her chest subsided, the pulse in her neck slowed and the red blotches began to fade. Finally, she said, “Jimmy Lee, I am so very sorry for what just happened. It was inexcusable.”