The Phone Company

by David Jacob Knight

  But drugs had changed so much since he was a kid. Meth. Bath salts. Practically any pharmaceutical. It was all over the news, they incited violence.

  “What kind of drugs?” Steve said.

  “You know I’ve been having problems. I just don’t want to be here half the time.”

  “What kind of drugs, JJ?”

  “I don’t know. For depression.”

  “So antidepressants?” Steve said. He thought it would help, knowing. It didn’t. “Which ones? Prozac? Paxil? What?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever I could get from friends at school. Sometimes it was their parents’. Sometimes it was theirs. Different kinds. Some of it for anxiety. I don’t know.”

  “Damn it, JJ, those are prescription drugs. Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?”

  “Because you never listen.”

  “That’s not true,” Steve said, but he knew, he knew it was. He could crawl through fire for his kids, but every time they had a real emotional problem, it always somehow linked back to Janice, and that was something Steve himself hadn’t fully worked through, even after all these years. He was supposed to move on, everyone said so. But he lived in a place, they all lived in a place, that wouldn’t let them go.

  For Steve, Janice’s death was all twined up with the school shooting. Dealing with any related issue felt like losing his wife—and all those kids—all over again. And the anniversary of That Day was right around the corner.

  “You never listen and the pills helped,” JJ said. “But then, I don’t know. I kept feeling like I wanted to hurt someone. Everyone. And then that just made me want to hurt myself.”

  “JJ,” Steve said, trying to figure out how to word this. They had so much to deal with, but Steve had to focus on the immediate issues first. “Where is the gun now?”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt anyone,” JJ said.

  “I saw you on the news. You took a gun to school—Bill’s gun.”

  “Because I wanted to kill myself!”

  And there it was. If anything in Steve’s life could feel remotely similar to that plane crashing into the school, it was this. Powerful enough earthquakes could shift the axis of the earth. When that plane had hit, Steve hadn’t just fallen to the ground; his entire world had shifted and would never spin the same again. Now this, another global shift. This one, though, this one was Steve’s fault.

  “I couldn’t do it,” JJ said. “I couldn’t . . . so I took a bunch of the pills, thinking that would be easier, that’s something I could do. Then somehow, I don’t know how, I woke up at the school with the gun.”

  “I took you to school,” Steve said. Christ, I took him.

  “When I saw the plane crash, I thought the pills worked, I’ve gone to Hell. So I ran. I thought maybe I could find Mom.”

  Steve didn’t even know what to say. He opened his mouth several times, but everything he could think of sounded wrong. JJ’s issues were rooted so deeply, it would take a professional to work them out. Maybe Steve needed to see someone, too. How could he ever help his children when he was dealing with similar issues?

  “Are you at least off the drugs?” Steve asked. He could barely bring his voice above a whisper, or it would crack.

  “I’ve been talking a lot with Mrs. Keeler.”

  “What? When you were missing? She didn’t tell me. How come she didn’t—”

  “She didn’t know. She helped me. The people at the church helped me.”

  “They’re crazy—”

  “They saved me. I wanted to kill myself, and now all I want to do is live. I feel like I’ve died but I’ve gotten a second chance.”

  They pulled up to the house, and Steve parked. He sat there for a second, not sure he could move, not sure he knew how to, not with this new, unfamiliar spinning beneath his feet.

  JJ met his eyes.

  “Dad . . .” And then he said something Steve had been meaning to say this entire time. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He wrapped his arms around Steve, and Steve sat there, stunned, his breath caught in his chest, but only for a moment before he gasped and returned his son’s hug.

  “It’s okay, it’s not your fault—it’s not. None of it.” The boy’s hair, wet with tears, clung to Steve’s cheek because that was life. Messy, painful, but beautiful too, and definitely worth talking your way through.

  * * *

  His dad didn’t hear it happen, not over all the sobbing. JJ’s hand moved slowly, quietly, deftly as it sneaked the Tether out of the door compartment. His dad wouldn’t even remember putting it there, not after all this.

  The whisperer in JJ’s ear had gone quiet, now that Dad was so close, but she had helped him. She had talked JJ through this entire car ride, telling him what to say. JJ had to hand it to her: Mrs. Keeler knew everything.

  She knew Dad would end up calling her, to ask her questions, and she knew just how to convince him. Yes, she would say, JJ was off the pills. Yes, he was disarmed. And, yes, he’s perfectly ready to go back to school once it opens. He needs some normalcy, she’d say. It might do you some good, too, and Dad would agree.

  As Mrs. Keeler pointed out, anyone who had suffered what Dad had suffered these last few weeks would try to rationalize. Dad was in massive denial. And that, Mrs. Keeler knew, would work in their favor.

  CHAPTER 36

  Burnt Valley earned its name twice: once when a forest fire tore through the valley, killing the last of the Ebumnanyth; and again in the fall, when, in tribute to that historic fire, the leaves burned red, yellow, and gold before falling to ash. Even the dying evergreens spread like wildfire up the hill.

  Old growth remembered those transforming flames, but newer growth remembered only the world after. To new growth, there was no great change; there was only “normal.” But as the oldest trees know, nothing can ever be the same.

  Each year brings new leaves, new limbs, new rings of age, and perhaps scars from lightning or bears, so that nothing, from moment to moment, is ever exactly what it was. All that can truly be said after any great fire is that normalcy is only defined when the rate of change becomes cyclical, predictable, adaptable, not catastrophic.

  Monday morning when school went back into session, Steve wanted to believe things were getting back to normal. The media circus had left town, the leaves were turning toward October, and there was still that beautiful smell in the air of rain, fresh pine needles, and earth.

  The weekend had done his entire family well. Sarah had come out of her room, and even though she seemed to be texting someone all the time, same ringtone, she actually engaged with the family. JJ seemed happy, too. They ate dinner together both nights, and they even watched a movie together, curled up with Barksdale on the couch.

  Then Monday, Steve was reminded that not all things had returned to normal—Bill showed up for breakfast at Hayworth Diner. He was in uniform, at least, and freshly shaven, earwig blinking in his ear. He looked clean.

  Does he know? Steve thought. He had turned Bill into the sheriff’s office, after all. It had been a difficult decision, but in the end it had felt like the right thing. Now, though, Steve felt like a traitor.

  “Hey, buddy,” Bill said, taking his seat on the other side of the booth. He set his deputy hat on the table.

  Steve glanced at his kids in the other booth, wondering whether he should gather them up and leave. Sarah, who knew her dad had gone to the sheriff, must have felt the fear as well. She turned bright red when Bill waved at her and JJ.

  “Yeah, I know,” Bill told Steve. “Don’t sweat it. Sheriff and I worked it all out. He knows I was framed.”

  “Framed,” Steve said.

  “For the Martian.”

  “Yeah, I know what we’re talking about. What happened? Why would someone try to—”

  “It was Rat.”

  “Rat. Ray McCurdy. Are you sure?”

  “I called it,” Bill said. “I told the sheriff he was helping Marv. You know, he wasn’t too stable after losing his wife and,
uh, turns out he and Marv got into it over something, and it kind of blew up in Marv’s face, I guess.”

  “Wow,” Steve said. “Wow. So where’s . . .?”

  “Rat? Dead. He resisted arrest.”

  “Wow.” Steve remembered the McCurdys’ trashed trailer, the police tape. “Wait, how? Did you—”

  “Uh, yeah. I probably shouldn’t say any more till we’re done investigating.”

  “Oh,” Steve said. “Of course.” He sipped his coffee, troubled. “Hey, what about . . .” He glanced at JJ in the other booth and quieted down. “What about your gun?”

  “No worries,” Bill said.

  “JJ says he lost it.”

  “It’s not a big deal, Steve, seriously. We found it.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. It was at the school.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I’m starving.”

  The rest of breakfast went surprisingly well after that. Steve and Bill fell into their old groove, and Steve had even grown used to Sarah ordering his food on her Tether; he had brought cash to pay her and to leave Cathy a tip.

  “So they got you a new school, huh?” Bill asked over coffee, and Steve said yep. Twenty minutes later, he and JJ were pulling in to the new HMS.

  “Really?” Steve said, getting out and looking up at the old used car lot. The black paper had been peeled away from the huge showroom window, and a new wing had been added to the back of the building. “I thought this was supposed to be the PCo store.”

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Mary McPhail said before going inside. School buses and cars were pouring in and out, while faculty, staff, and kids lined up at the metal detectors guarding the front doors.

  “It does look pretty cool,” JJ said behind Steve. He hadn’t complained at all about the school’s new uniform policy. He looked like a little Mormon. All the kids did. Black slacks, blue dress shirts, ties.

  In line for the metal detectors, Steve studied the posters hung all around the entrance. Some were campaign posters for presidential candidate Frederick Hill.

  According to rumor and news, Hill, in a savvy PR move, had donated a generous chunk of his fortune, not to his own campaign as originally intended, but to furnish HMS with a new school. The Phone Company had overseen the work. How PCo had switched so quickly from constructing a store to building a school baffled Steve.

  He had to wonder, had they had been building the school all along, even before the crash? Had they somehow known?

  But, no, that was Marv poisoning his thoughts again. The old Martian had been doing that lately, whispering conspiracies into Steve’s ear.

  “Sir, please empty your pockets into the bin and take off your shoes.”

  Steve complied with the new security guard and walked barefoot through the metal detectors. Behind him, JJ put his Converse into his own bin.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but you can’t take these in with you.” The guard, an older gentleman missing most of his fingers on one hand, held up Steve’s two clamshell phones; he had been carrying around Janice’s phone since they no longer used it at home. He liked having it with him.

  “Sorry, Officer, uh . . .” Steve stopped himself from chuckling when he saw the guard’s nametag. “Officer Knuckles. But I saw you’re letting Tethers go through.”

  “Yes. School policy.”

  “Okay, well, what’s so different about mine? Sorry, I’m not trying to be difficult.”

  “Yours isn’t educational. I’m sorry, sir, I’m going to have to take these.”

  “No,” Steve said, “no.”

  He walked back through the metal detectors, going against the grain of the line. “Here,” he said, reaching over the bins for his shoes and his phones. “I’ll keep them in my car.”

  Once Steve made it back inside the school and was putting on his shoes, he saw JJ with a group of other uniformed kids in the lobby. They were handing JJ a backpack just like the ones they were wearing.

  “What’s going on here?” Steve said.

  “Hey! Mr. Gregory! Steve!”

  A cold, leathery hand clapped down on Steve’s shoulder, and he recognized the weird Avon smell almost immediately. “Morning, Principal Warner.”

  “You like?” he asked, making a grand sweeping gesture at the new school. He beamed at the boys, at the little Mormons with their matching backpacks. “And here we have our fine students getting ready to start their day.”

  “So we’re giving them new backpacks too?” Steve asked.

  “No, it’s a school thing now, kind of like work for credit. They go out into the community and, how do I explain this? Canvass, I guess.”

  “What’s in the backpacks?” Steve said. “It’s not for Fred Hill, is it?”

  “No, no, no, of course not. Show him, boys.”

  One of the kids unzipped his pack and pulled out a stack of brochures about The Phone Company.

  “What, you’ve got them proselytizing?” Steve said.

  Warner laughed and clapped Steve’s shoulder. “Yes, that’s a much better word! I like that! Hah!”

  Steve turned to JJ. “You’re not going. You’ve got class.”

  Warner grew kind of hushed and insistent. “No, no. Steve, you don’t understand. This is class. It’s work experience. Your son’s learning valuable salesmanship and self-confidence, see?”

  JJ beamed at his dad.

  “If he doesn’t go, it’s like skipping cla—”

 

  Steve flinched and looked around. An alarm ran through the lobby and echoed down the hall to the old showroom. It seemed to issue from everywhere, and all at once. He saw kids pulling out their Tethers, and Principal Warner pulled out his, too. There, onscreen, an animated school bell rang and rang.

  “Well, kids, better get to it.” Warner turned to Steve. “You, too, Mr. Gregory. Wouldn’t want to start the first day back with absenteeism.”

  JJ, smiling, waved goodbye to Steve, who, waving back, tried not to frown.

  “Don’t forget your meeting!” Steve called after him. “Mrs. Keeler!”

  “Yeah, I set a reminder!” JJ said. “Love you, Dad!”

  Steve watched his son and his new group of friends race out the front door to the parking lot, where they loaded up in a PCo van with a clean-cut guy in a blue jacket.

  The bell echoed away, and the voices and the noise began to filter out of the lobby as kids went to class.

  The van pulled out of the lot, and Steve went to find his classroom. If JJ seemed excited about school and, more importantly, life in general, maybe change wasn’t so terrible after all.

  * * *

  Sarah’s Tether buzzed.

  Other Tethers buzzed and dinged around the class with the same notification. Even the teacher stopped lecturing about the symbol of the Christmas tree in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and checked his phone.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Tousley, clicking his long fingernails; apparently, he played classical guitar, but he also wore little vests and had a Dutch boy haircut that he liked to tousle all the time. “Queen selection, very interesting. You know how bees do it? The virgin queens go around killing each other, stinging each other to death until there’s only one left. The victorious virgin will then be mated and become queen.”

  One of Gary Pervier’s friends raised his hand. “Mated with the king?” he asked.

  “The king wishes,” Mr. Tousley replied. The class laughed. “No, the virgin flies out to where the drones congregate, and she mates with a dozen or more of them.”

  “What a whore,” said one of the Burnt Valley Squaws.

  The class roared with laughter, but to Sarah it sounded rough, angry. She felt the other girls eyeing her; the guys too, but for different reasons.

  NV Me still rated Sarah #1 most popular, most likely to be Queen. She had risen in The Provider’s Top Twelve as well, and then there was h
er nickname, Princess. She wasn’t mated, either, not yet. Total virgin.

  The class continued to talk about Ibsen’s play, but Sarah could already feel the lethal stings. She had to admit, she was more than willing, and maybe even eager, to sting back.

  * * *

  “It’s like two gigantic computer labs and a manufacturing lab,” Steve said, pacing in the parking lot at lunch. He had come out here to use his phone. “All the kids do is punch out cell phone plates on a metal die and code apps. And the computers, they’re just laptop docks for their Tethers. There’s no way this meets even core curriculum, no way.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Casey, the union field rep, said. “And then there’s this war. Africa, the Ukraine, the Middle East, pretty much everywhere. Whole world’s gone insane.”

  “Mm-hmm, I’ve heard,” Steve said, wondering whether Casey was even listening. “Look, I would’ve bothered my building rep or stewards with this first, but I’ve tried all the way up to the chapter president. They’re all ignoring me. I go to their offices and they’re busy all of a sudden.”

  “Sure, sure. I’m just glad we’ve got a candidate like Hill who can sort this mess out.”

  “Really?” Steve said, taking the bait this time. “His education plan seems kind of, I don’t know, crap. It’s all charter schools and vouchers. You’ll lose your job for sure. He’s anti-union.”

  “Well, no, he’s moving more toward vocational tracks. Similar to Germany, I guess.”

  “I was going to say Germany. This new school, that’s sort of what it reminds me of,” Steve said. “Except all the students are working toward one job, in some factory where they’ll get cancer and jump off a roof. It’s wrong on just about every level. I plan to take it to the governor if they don’t—”

  “With all due respect, Steve, have you been under a rock? The state board, the governor—educational reform isn’t just coming, it’s here.”