Gettin’ Merry

by CATHY L. CLAMP; FRANCIS RAY; BEVERLY JENKINS; MONICA JACKSON; GERI GUILLAUME

Kirby whistled shrilly through two fingertips. “Whoa! Hold it! Do you think we could tone down the testosterone fest for just a minute?”

  Eddie Lee and I stared at her. Grudgingly I indicated that he should take a seat. “Coffee?” I offered through clenched teeth.

  “Naw,” Eddie Lee declined, and then added with forced civility, “Thanks just the same.”

  “What started all of this?” Kirby wanted to know.

  “You did,” Eddie Lee and I said in unison.

  “Excuse me? I started this?”

  “You insulted my son. Called him an ignorant redneck.”

  Kirby shook her head in confusion. “I don’t think I know your son, Eddie Lee.”

  “Jerry Lee Pickard. And you knew him well enough to call him stupid.”

  “I would never insult another student, especially not a son of yours!”

  “Why? Because we ‘go way back’?” He sneered.

  “Call it a respect for the past, if you want. But I didn’t insult your son.”

  “So now you’re callin’ him a liar, too?”

  “No, of course not! There’s obviously some kind of mistake. Maybe your son just misunderstood me.” Kirby looked to me for support.

  “I don’t think so. He’s got witnesses. You stood right up there in front of his whole class, looked dead at him, and called him that name. My son ain’t ignorant and he ain’t a liar. If he said that’s what you did, then I believe him. I’m here to serve notice that I’m going to make such a big stink here in Calhoun County about what you so-called education professionals have done that you two will never work in this state again. You hear me, gal?”

  Gal?! Kirby mouthed. She folded her arms tightly, grasping her forearms as if she was trying to physically keep herself from choking him. “I thought I told you back in the tenth grade that if you ever called me gal again, I was going to knock your head off.”

  Eddie Lee shifted uneasily, looked over at me. I raised my hands in professed helplessness, feigned neutrality. This was between the two of them.

  “I want you to listen very, very carefully, Eddie Lee Pickard. I’m not denying that I said some pretty harsh words on Friday. We all did. But that was part of an experiment. If I happened to be looking at your son at the time, then I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.”

  “What did you intend to do?”

  “Did you see that Kwanzaa display when you came in?”

  “How could I miss it?” Eddie snapped. “It’s sitting up there, big and bright as day, telling the world how enlightened we are. And the way you’re setting us back generations by setting the kids at each other’s throats again.”

  “I am not setting this school back,” Kirby said tightly. “I was trying to demonstrate some of the principles of Kwanzaa.”

  “What you called my son had nothing to do with religion, Kirby Kayin.”

  “And neither does Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa is about community, building relationships, mutual respect. I was trying to show the students that you can build up alliances, friendships, with words just as quickly as you can tear them down. Now do you understand?”

  “That’s a crazy way to run a classroom. Then again, you always was an odd bird, weren’t you, gal?”

  “There you go with that gal business again,” Kirby said. She turned to me, her expression impish. “Do you think it would be in the interest of self-determination, Mr. Barrett, if I told Mr. Pickard in exact words where to go?”

  “I can take a hint,” Eddie Lee grumbled. He blew out a deep breath, rubbed his stubbled jaw. “I shoulda known the preacher’s kid wouldn’t stir up that kinda trouble.”

  “I dunno, Eddie Lee,” I teased. “They say that preachers’ kids are the worst.” It was the closest I’d ever come to responding to Eddie Lee in a way that didn’t involve clenched fists.

  Eddie Lee sensed the change in me immediately. As Kirby held out her hand, gestured toward the door, Eddie Lee noticed the ring on her finger. His blue eyes widened, met mine, and offered silent congratulations. But his tone was still gruff.

  “You two ain’t foolin’ me. I know where all of these warm fuzzies, love, peace, and happiness are coming from.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘congratulations,’ ” Kirby said, graciously inclining her head.

  “I can’t say that I like everything that’s going on here, folks. All the changes. It’s not natural for things to happen so fast around here. But I think your hearts are in the right place.”

  Truer words never spoken. With Kirby beside me again, my heart was exactly where it should be.

  “Should I walk you out, Mr. Pickard?” I offered, making a move toward the door.

  “Don’t bother. It’s not like I don’t know the way.” Eddie pulled the door closed behind him.

  “And to think it only took you five years to get out,” I quipped under my breath, and suffered the sting of Kirby’s pinch.

  “Ow! What did you do that for?”

  “Because like it or not, he’s a parent and a taxpayer. People like him are keeping this school open.”

  “Let’s face it, Kirby. Eddie Lee isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. How he managed to get a girl to listen long enough to him to pop out five babies is a mystery to me!”

  “You are absolutely awful!” Kirby tried to be severe but wound up laughing instead. “Do your parents know how badly you talk about them?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about the parents but us. We should have been parents by now, Kirby. You know that? Happily married with a whole busload of kids. Enough to fill up that monster SUV of yours.”

  “We’re starting late. That just means we’ll have to keep trying until we catch up to the rest of Calhoun County.” Kirby wrapped her arms around my neck, pressed her body against mine.

  “I told a student of mine today to slow down when I caught him in a lip lock with another student.”

  “Very sound advice.” She nodded once, agreeably.

  “Not for me,” I said, snorting in derision.

  “Classic case of ’do as I say, not as I do.’ Yes, sir. I’d say that you were ready for parenthood.”

  “Then let the wedding bells ring!”

  I’d timed it almost perfectly. The school bell sounded at that moment, signaling the change of classes.

  “I guess we’ll have to put those baby-making plans on hold for now,” Kirby sighed, pulling away from me. “I’ve got a conference scheduled with Zane this period. I met with Brian and Rayford yesterday.”

  But I held on to her hand before she could completely pull away. “Speaking of plans on hold,” I said, a clumsy attempt to gauge her feelings after several discussions about our future plans.

  “My flight is scheduled for January thirtieth,” she reminded me, reading my mind. “I’ll only be gone for a little while, Bear. Just long enough for the school to find another counselor.”

  “I don’t know if I want you to be gone that long, Kirby. Who knows how long that will take?” I didn’t mean to complain. It was just that it seemed as though I’d just gotten her back and now she was off again.

  “I just can’t abandon them, Bear. I made a commitment,” Kirby said firmly. “Besides, the tickets aren’t refundable.”

  “And I made a commitment to you,” I assured her. “I told you, I just want to be where you are.”

  She opened her mouth to go over topics we’d already discussed, but I placed my finger lightly against her lips. “What I really want to know is who is your travel agent that got you such sucky expensive tickets? I’ll bet you’re flying economy class, too.”

  She nodded, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “Not me, darlin’,” I said smugly. “First class all the way.”

  “Something you want to tell me, Bear?”

  “Oh . . .” I drew the word out. “Only that I know that Norah is capable enough to cover for me for a while. I’m taking a leave of absence.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you’re going with
me?” Kirby said incredulously. “To Soweto?”

  Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pulled out two first-class tickets.

  Kirby squealed and leaped into my arms. “I can’t believe that you’d do that for me!”

  “Then you still have a lot to learn about me, Kirby.”

  “I never thought you’d let me go the first time. Shocked me senseless when you did.” For a moment, her tone reflected her pain. “Why did you do it, Bear? Why did you let me leave here?”

  “I was the one who was senseless,” I said, caressing her cheek. “Maybe I should have given the dull tool award to myself? I thought I was doing the right thing, being the supportive partner. You were so excited when you found out that you’d been hired. How could I compete with an opportunity like that?”

  “But you didn’t even put up an argument. I thought maybe you didn’t care if I left. I thought maybe you were getting tired of me. That our relationship had played itself out.”

  “No . . . Good Lord, no!” I hope my expression conveyed as much horror at the thought as my tone. “All I wanted was to make you happy.”

  “There are other ways of making a woman happy, Bear,” she replied, coyly lowering her lashes at me.

  “I’m learning, darlin’. And getting smarter every day.”

  “Come with me, then.” She grasped my hand and pulled me toward the door. “You might want to sit in on this meeting with the boys. If what I’ve discovered is true, you might find it very enlightening.”

  Zane Donovan sat, his lanky frame draped loosely in the guest chair in Kirby’s interim office, gnawing on his thumbnail. It was nearly bitten down to the quick.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Kirby apologized as she took a seat behind the desk. I pulled up a chair but moved it to the corner of the room. This was Kirby’s office. Her show. I was an observer, a supporter.

  “No biggie,” Zane said, his knee bouncing nervously. His baggy jeans flapped.

  “Can I get you something, Zane? Juice?” Kirby offered. Prozac or Xanax was in my head and on the tip of my tongue to suggest, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Naw. I’m cool.”

  “All right then,” she continued conversationally. She sat forward in her seat, her forearms resting on the desk in a posture of open communication. I recognized that posture from the on-line course on developing people skills.

  “I see that you signed up to talk to me. Anything in particular you want to talk about?”

  He glanced over at me. “I thought these talks were supposed to be confidential.” He still wasn’t quite sure that I was really on his side, since I was the one who had signed the suspension authorization.

  “They will be,” she assured him. “Mr. Barrett is here to help me on points of school policy that I may not be familiar with. In case you have any questions. Do you have any questions, Zane?”

  “No . . . not really . . . I mean, like, not so much a question, as like . . . uh . . . something I think I should say. Or confess. Do you think I need to get a lawyer or something?”

  “Something tells me that if you thought that was true, you wouldn’t be talking to me, you’d be talking to the police, Zane, and your parents would be with you.”

  “My parents,” he muttered. I could hear the disgust in his voice as he huffed, folded his arms, and leaned even more insolently in his chair. My impulse was to make him sit up, to show some respect. But I didn’t. I held back. Something in Kirby’s expression let me know that she was on the verge of some kind of breakthrough, and I didn’t want to disrupt the flow.

  “They wouldn’t do anything, even if I did do something . . . which I didn’t . . . not illegal, that is . . . unless littering is illegal.”

  “Littering?” Kirby shook her head, uncomprehending.

  “I never meant things to get this crazy. I just wanted to make my parents get me out of this hillbilly town. Get me back home.”

  “California?” Kirby clarified.

  “Yeah,” he said sullenly.

  “What did you do?” I couldn’t help but ask. Kirby shot me a look, but Zane didn’t seem to notice.

  “Those flyers,” he said, his tone muffled by the thumbnail he kept clenched between his teeth. “I made them up. I wasn’t going to really pass them out. Just show them to my ’rents, you know. Make them think like, ‘hey, maybe moving here wasn’t such a genius idea.’ I thought I’d stuffed them in my locker, and the next thing I know, somebody’s making like these bogus copies and they’re all over the school. And then the next I know, these dudes are talking race riot. Totally out of my control.”

  I knew how hard it must have been for Kirby to keep her face neutral, sympathetic. It was hard enough for me and I wasn’t looking directly at him. So many emotions crossed my mind that I could barely begin to fathom them. Anger at the senseless threats of violence, incredulity at how easy it was to stir up old pains, sympathy for Zane. Did he hate it here so much that he would pull a stunt like this?

  “Did you tell your parents that you’re not happy here, Zane?” Kirby asked.

  “Duh! Only about a million times. But they love it here. Says it takes them back to the simpler times. I just tried to show them that you can’t just pick up and move to a new place and expect everybody to be cool with that. Dude, that was so uncool! They didn’t even ask me if I wanted to move. Just packed up my gear and hauled me off to Gomerville.”

  “I understand that you’re feeling a little on the outside, Zane. I’ve been there myself. High school is hard enough without the pressure of being the new kid. But there are ways of dealing with your feelings. Constructive ways. If you help me, I’ll help you.”

  “Help you? How can I help you?”

  “Well,” Kirby said, now folding her hands. “Brian Chalmers and Rayford Vaughn are going to help me finish putting up the seasonal displays. We still have Hanukkah and Christmas to put up, plus a host of others that other students have been kind enough to clue me in on. It would be a great help to me if you helped me research some of those other traditions and build displays for them.”

  “I get it. This is like my community service punishment for the stink I’ve caused.”

  “No. Don’t think of it like that. It’s completely voluntary. Just like I told Brian and Rayford. You’re free to refuse. But I think if you spend as much time getting involved in the school as trying to duck it, you’ll feel better about being here.”

  “I doubt it,” he mumbled.

  “Give it some thought, would you? And let me know by the end of the day?”

  “Yeah . . . I’ll let you know.”

  “Is that all you wanted to say?” Kirby prompted him.

  “For now. But I could come back, huh, Ms. Kayin? If I needed to?”

  “This door is always open, Zane. Come by anytime.”

  Epilogue

  He couldn’t talk his way out of it this time—not like the innocent sneeze that literally set the school ablaze or the misguided flyers that mysteriously disappeared from his locker. This time, Zane Donovan was caught deliberately defacing school property. It had started out as a simple prank. Sneaking into the boys’ back locker to smoke. So much for his asthma and allergies.

  It took me a while to get to the bottom of what happened. Between my investigating, Mayron’s connections, and Kirby’s reestablished status as the sympathetic, listening ear, it wasn’t hard to piece the puzzle together.

  When one of the other boys announced that Mayron was making his way toward the locker room, Zane had tried to extinguish the butt. Anyone ever tell him that you can’t smother a cigarette in a stack of bleach-soaked towels? Guess not.

  By the time the antiquated sprinkler system kicked in, half the boys’ locker room had thousands of dollars in smoke and water damage. An early Christmas present for the boys. No PE for them for the last two weeks before school was let out for the Christmas break.

  “You know,” Kirby remarked to me over our shared lunch of chicken salad and fresh fruit the day after the i
ncident. “This would be the perfect time to put into practice the principle of Nia. Don’t you think, Bear?”

  I was going through the files of all of the boys who had been near Zane the day the fire started. Almost the entire boys’ PE class.

  “Cheap labor.” I chuckled. “I can handle that.”

  “Then you’ll let me set it up with their parents as our unique brand of community service?”

  “Have at it. I just wish that Zane would be around to participate.”

  “At least he finally got his wish. He got out of this school.”

  “Half a wish. He’ll be in a monitored facility for a while. It would have been a lot easier on him if he’d gotten with the program.”

  “Now he’ll be reprogrammed,” Kirby said glumly. “Head filled with boot camp harshness or mood-altering drugs. I feel sorry for him.”

  “Don’t kick yourself, darlin’,” I encouraged her. “You did the best you could. You of all people know that every kid can’t be saved. Brian and Rayford are doing just fine. Two out of three is not bad odds.”

  “They aren’t odds or statistics. They’re kids. And I won’t rest until I rescue everyone that needs rescuing.”

  “You sound like Mrs. Adair.”

  “Oh, is she back from her honeymoon yet?”

  “Nope. I got a postcard from her from Maui. They’ve extended the trip. I think they got a touch of island fever. Between you and me, I don’t think she’s coming back.”

  “That’s too bad. I think the students really liked her.”

  “You want something real to be upset about? It’s just too bad that they didn’t set fire to the whole gym. Burn that racist mascot right up.”

  “You know you don’t mean that, Bear.” Kirby looked askance at me. She reached over and plucked a strawberry from my plate. Watching her nibble on the fruit, knowing that she could do the same to me, put me in a much better frame of mind.

  “No, of course not,” I agreed.

  Like it or not, with all of its faults, this was our school. It was the only one we had. It was what we made of it. And I chose to use whatever means necessary to make it a better place—with a little help from a bunch of teenage boys, that is.