by Rob Thomas
Someone knocks on my door. This is a rare occurrence. I take care of all my clerical duties—roll sheets, excuse notes, field trip forms—promptly. I’ve even gone so far as to hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door handle. If you’re not steadfast, you end up with reporters from the school newspaper knocking on your door to interview students, mothers asking you to give Junior his lunch money, even peers strolling in hoping to borrow chalk. It’s a wonder some teachers get anything done. Maybe they don’t.
I open the door prepared to give whoever’s on the other side a piece of my mind, but it turns out to be William Gant, our principal. I taught him back in ’62. He’s been my boss for the last eight years.
“Mr. Twilley, I’m sorry to interrupt your class.”
“Yes?” I say, hoping this will be quick.
“I thought I ought to tell you that one of the hall monitors just discovered your car’s been vandalized out in the faculty lot.”
“Did you catch the kids who did it?”
“No,” Gant says. “I was hoping you might have some ideas.”
This is the fourth time this has happened since the beginning of last year, so I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m just hoping that one day they might actually catch one of the little hooligans and hang him.
“I’ll give you a list of the students who failed the first six weeks, and I’ll highlight the names of the students who I think it might be.” I pause, then look at Gant. “It won’t do much good, will it?”
“Probably not—not without a witness.”
“What did they do to the car?”
“Eggs, shoe polish. They slashed one of the tires.” Gant’s walkie-talkie crackles. Someone needs him in the office. “Look, Mr. Twilley, why don’t you give me the keys, and I’ll have the auto shop kids clean it, detail it, and change out that spare. If you want, we can even trade parking spaces. My spot is right up by the office. No one will mess with your car there.”
I hand him the keys to my car. “You can have them clean it, but you keep your own parking space. I won’t let them intimidate me, William.”
Gant takes the key from my hand, shrugs, and heads back toward the office. I step back toward my door, but I glance in its window before entering, and plain as the nose on my face, Trevor Wilson is leaning over the back of Tamika Jackson, copying off her quiz.
I enter the room purposefully, walk right up to the desk of Tamika, then Trevor. From each I confiscate the quiz. Realizing that I now have the attention of the entire class, I return to my desk, withdraw my red pen, and make a grand sweeping motion that can only mean a zero.
Tamika stands unsteadily, holding on to her desk. “Mr. Twilley,” she says, “what are you doing?”
Her voice is shaky, and she has begun tearing up.
“The penalty for cheating is a zero and documentation of the incident that goes in your permanent record,” I say evenly.
“But I wasn’t cheating!” She begins sobbing.
“Collusion is a type of cheating. You were letting Trevor copy your work.”
“No I wasn’t. He was just whispering something to me.”
“Since when is talking allowed during tests? Also, why weren’t you using your cover sheet? Either of these, on their own, could be construed as cheating.”
At this point, Tamika covers her face with her hands and somehow makes it to the door. I consider stopping her but decide it’s probably best if she visits the lavatory and freshens up, collects her wits. I really am shocked by her behavior this morning. She’s normally one of my best students. As the door bangs closed, a few of the students surrounding Trevor begin giggling. No doubt reacting to some comment from the young scholar. It doesn’t matter. As Dr. Samuel Johnson has said, “I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.”
“Pass your quizzes to the front of the room and take out your text. Let’s begin.”
KEENE
10:51 A.M. Second period, trigonometry
The thing about Coach Preppernau is even though he’s a coach, he’s the smartest, toughest math teacher in the school. I mean you’ve gotta have it together to even think about taking one of his classes, but Shawn’s reduced him to his minion, sitting at the podium drawing up plays with King Dunk. The man who won’t let us turn in homework in anything other than #2 pencil, but he’ll let Shawn hotdog on the court like he’s a Harlem Globetrotter. Coach looks up from his play diagramming and tells us to work on the odd-numbered problems—the ones with the answers in the back of the book—for the remainder of class. Busywork. Hell with that, I start on the evens. I’ll just tell him I got confused. Least this way he’ll have to be the one who grades them.
Good thing I’m able to stand up to guys like Shawn Greeley. Like when he got in my face before class. I had to back him down, show him he wasn’t going to push me around like one of his usual butt-kissing hangers-on.
It was the only battle I won, though. I wasn’t making much of a point by having him carry my book to class. It was tough to tell who was leading whom. I felt like I was in one of those stupid “Family Circus” cartoons where a dotted line shows how come it takes Billy thirty minutes to get home from across the street. Face it. Shawn led me. I was the one getting an education—Greeley’s ABCs of running a campus with nothing but buttery charm and a sweet J. I should consider myself lucky he didn’t take us down by the home-ec wing to kiss the babies in the Family Planning Center. If I don’t do something about it, Shawn’s going to make Slave Day look as harmless as the NAACP.
Whatever else I care to say about Mom, she knows me better than I know myself sometimes. She knew I would have been happy to write my letter, sit at home all day, then blame everyone who didn’t join the boycott for not changing the system. She probably just thought I was being lazy, copping out. Dad may talk the talk in the family, but it was Mom who came down to my junior high and “had words” with the teacher who tried to tell us Malcolm X was a black supremacist who believed in killing white people.
Speaking of Malcolm, what would he do in my position? I have this poster hanging above my bed of Stokely Carmichael and Bobby Seale and these other Black Panthers holding assault rifles. The caption underneath comes from something Malcolm X once said, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
And there it is. My answer. By Any Means Necessary.
I finish the last of my even-numbered problems and take the piece of notebook paper up to the front of the classroom, where Coach and Star powwow in X&O bliss. (Apparently, they don’t make Shawn go to class anymore.) I ask permission to go to the nurse’s office. I take the grunt I receive in response as a yes.
TOMMY
10:52 A.M. Second period, drama
Twilley’s gonna need some serious training. Vocal training first. Needs to learn to speak from his diaphragm. That head voice of his was hardly heard when he heralded my arrival to drama class. He’s probably used to speaking in his classroom, where he never has to raise his voice, but in this zoo, volume’s key. He’ll get more chances to introduce me, though. To keep him on his toes, I’m gonna change my title each time. Here at the door he announced me as “His most royal person, the Prince of Tides, the Count of Monte Cristo, Lord Thomas Orin Parks.” Miss Amenny is the only one who really paid any attention, though.
“Orin?” she said.
“Top o’ the line,” I answered, but I don’t think she caught it. See, my initials spell TOP. Momma said she did that on purpose, sorta for luck. I’ve always hoped someone would pick up on it. It’d be a better nickname than Trailer, but what kiss-ass lets you pick your own nickname?
Most of the students in the class are working crew for our fall production of Tom Jones. It’s my first time to have the lead, and as reward, I don’t have to build sets. I usually help anyway. Need to. After all, you know how many thespians it takes to nail two two-by-fours together? The answer’s six. No shit. Folks in this class—guys and girls—are handier putting on eyeliner than swinging a hammer.
Way I got into drama in the first place is pretty funny. My sophomore year in English class, we were sent down to the auditorium to watch them do To Kill a Mockingbird. The bozo they had playing Atticus kept forgetting his lines, so I would shout out suggestions every time his brain locked up. Suggestions like “Scout, pull my finger” or “Let’s go toilet-paper that weirdo neighbor’s house.” The play sucked, but I was getting big laughs, at least until Miss Amenny had me removed from the auditorium. She met me down at the VP’s office and gave me her lecture on theater etiquette. I told her I’d pay better attention if her actors could remember their lines.
“You think you could do better?” she asked.
So here I am.
Not everyone’s so happy about it. Rainy Anderson threatened to quit the show if I got the lead. She’s been in drama since her freshman year, and she’s been getting the female lead since she was a sophomore. Rainy wanted Gil Peyton to get the Tom Jones role. She says it’s because I don’t have any respect for the theater, but I know it’s really because she has to kiss me, and we don’t exactly run in the same social circles. I’ve already plotted my revenge. On closing night she’s gonna get my tongue about halfway down to her lungs.
We don’t really do any rehearsing during the class period—too many cast members have different drama periods—so the only stuff that gets done is set work. Since I don’t have to do any of it, I borrow Miss A.’s keys and open up the costume shop. I love this place. The room is supposedly organized chronologically, starting with animal skins and ending with these butt-ugly tinfoil spaceman getups. In Tom Jones I get to wear some of the flashest shit in here—black capes, black leather riding boots, white gloves—but best of all, a stovepipe hat. I’d just as soon dress in costume every day. You would too if your personal wardrobe was limited to three or four pairs of Wranglers and a dozen promotional T-shirts in assorted sizes. (I got three Marlboro shirts from when they offered them for sending in ten proofs of purchase. Marlboro’s Momma’s brand.)
I’m browsing the aisles, picking out costumes with potential, when Miss Amenny walks in.
“What are those for, Tommy?” she asks.
“Do you know where I can get a ricksha?”
“A what?”
I try to explain. “A ricksha—one of those gook taxis. You know, they’re pulled by a peasant instead of a horse.”
“Gook is an offensive word, Trailer.” She’s so subtle.
“Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these—it’s all gook to me.”
“Tommy!”
“Sorry, Miss A. Too many afternoon John Wayne movies during my latch-key years. Sands of Iwo Jima, Operation Pacific—that’s where I learned history.”
“I think I see why you failed Mr. Twilley’s class, now,” Miss Amenny says.
The worst part about failing the class—even worse than having to repeat it this year—was that it kept me out of Much Ado About Nothing. I only had a small role, Dogberry, but it was the best role in the play.
“I failed the class because the man’s a psychopath.”
Miss Amenny gets this sly look on her face. “So he expected you to study, huh?”
“… and do book reports … and read about a quarter million pages a night, and then, just for good measure, do a fifteen-page research paper. If that isn’t enough, the man’s an A-hole. He cuts you no slack.”
“Tommy!”
“Well, he is.”
“I won’t let you talk that way. I started teaching the same year as Marcus, and he was the sweetest, most professional colleague you could ask for.”
“You’ve been here as long as Mr. History?”
She nods. I can’t believe it. The man’s a fossil. Miss Amenny still shows up at the high school dances, and, from what I hear, brings her boogie shoes. She does all these old-fashioned dances to whatever the latest hits are, dragging the male teachers—especially the young coaches—out on the floor with her. Sure, Miss A.’s got some wrinkles, and she always calls herself “that white-haired old lady,” but I never would’ve guessed she’s anywhere near Twilley’s age.
“He’s not even sixty, Tommy.”
“And you?”
“I’m twenty-nine.” Miss A. flutters her eyelashes and pats the back of her hair. She makes me laugh. I pick up an Indian headdress and pull a toga off a hanger.
“Do we still have that crown, the one with the gold leaves that we used in Julius Caesar?” I ask. She digs through a box at the end of the aisle and pulls it out. She flings it at me like a Frisbee. I place it on my head. It’s good to be the king.
TIFFANY
11:02 A.M. Passing period, social studies hallway
Brian’s waiting for me after class. He looks like a puppy dog. It’d be funny to wing a ball down the hallway and see if he’d fetch it. God, last period I didn’t even notice that he followed us all the way to class.
“Hey, Brian,” I say.
He mumbles something into his chest, or with this specimen, whatever you’d call the space between his neck and belly.
“What?”
“It’s Brendan,” he says.
“What’s Brendan?”
“I’m Brendan. That’s my name. Not Brian.”
“Yeah, well, Brendan. Why don’t you go ahead and take the day off. Now that I think about it, I don’t really need a slave. It was sort of an impulse buy.”
Brendan looks crushed. He just stands there while the herd thunders by. Behind him I notice Shawn Greeley picking cotton balls off the floor. He’s singing something, but I can’t quite make it out.
“Why don’t you have me do something? There’s no sense in having a slave if you’re not gonna make him do anything,” Brendan pleads.
I take a look at the boy. My first instinct is to take him shopping. He’s wearing Keds, for chrissakes, Wal-Mart jeans, and a digital watch that I’d bet tells him the time on Planet Vulcan. I don’t even want to talk about the student council jersey that poofs out and overlaps six inches below his beltline. Funny. His hair isn’t bad. All bangs. He could play keyboards for one of those Manchester acid-house bands. Average sophomore complexion, though his pimple cream is starting to flake on him. All things considered, it could be worse. I take out a pen and tell Brendan to hand me his textbook. I jot down my locker number. The only reason I can remember it is that it’s 666. No shit. I see that cheerleader Trinni Rea raise her eyebrows at me from across the hall, like she thinks I’m handing out my phone number to this youngster. Fuck it. I grab both Brendan’s shoulders, pull him next to me, and whisper my combination to him. I put my lips right next to his ears and exhale heavily as I do it. I wink at Trinni at the same time, like, “Bitch, we’ll see if you can steal my man.”
“Get my government book and meet me …”
“I know where your next class is,” Brendan says, his eyes glazed, his smile dreamy.
“Creepy,” I tell him.
SHAWN
11:02 A.M. Passing period, social studies hallway
The way Keene looked at me when he ordered me to do this, you’d’ve thought he was gonna explode with pride, like he was Christopher Columbus and somebody had just shouted “Land, ho!” I know what Fat Boy was hopin’—that I’d back down in some way, or that I wouldn’t do what he said. That I’d suddenly start talkin’ like Dikembe Mutombo and say, “My ebony brother, thank you for showing me that what I was taking was the path of darkness.” Or some shit like that.
Ain’t happening, though.
“De camptown ladies sing dis song,” I chirp. The song is my own idea. I smile right up at Keene like I’m a happy child at work. Try all he like, the boy can’t manipulate me. He drops cotton balls every few feet down the social studies wing hallway, and I shuffle up behind him and pick ’em off the ground and toss ’em into the paper bag he handed me.
“Doodah. Doodah.”
I think he wanted this to be his own little exhibition. He was hopin’ to draw a crowd and deliver some message about the
suffering of our ancestors, but I’ve stolen the show. I’m getting the big laughs, not the massa. I got an old Negro trudge goin’, and whenever Keene says, “Mind your work,” I make my eyes big and white, like black folks’ in those old movies where everything seemed to scare the shit out of ’em. Stump Milton and his Hat buddy Carl are laughin’ like a couple Ed McMahons.
As we’re makin’ our way down the hall, people back up against the lockers and howl. Whites, blacks—makes no difference. What’s Keene thinkin’ now? Maybe it’ll cross his mind that the civil rights movement ended twenty years ago. When we make it to the intersection where the social studies and art wings meet—probably the most crowded hallway in the school—Keene starts dropping a bundle of the cotton balls.
“Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.”
And my constituency? They laugh. Slave Day—it’s good clean fun.
BRENDAN
11:04 A.M. Passing period, senior hallway
No one saw. I’d be legendary right now if one single person I know had been there to see Tiffany Delvoe practically lick my ear. I try not to jog as I make my way to her locker. I’ve been imagining what I might find in there: desperate-sounding letters from Chris O’Donnell, modeling requests from Italian fashion magazines, uncashed inheritance checks, a dead body. Who knows? I may never forget her combination. Her tongue was like a branding iron searing the numbers directly onto my cerebral cortex. I’m nervous—Pant, pant—as I reach her locker and spin the dial of the combination lock.
I’m dismalated by the actual contents. All her textbooks. None of them covered like they’re supposed to be. I pick up the government book Tiffany asked for. As I slide it out, I notice a photo taped to the inside of the door. In other students’ lockers this is normal. I mean I can count at least three sophomores I know of who have Tiffany’s yearbook photo hanging next to their Cindy Crawfords. You just wouldn’t expect it in Tiffany’s. But this isn’t a teen mag pinup of some superhunk. It’s an actual photograph. The shot is blurrified with that fuzzy 1970s color, but you can see an older man with a little girl. They’re both bundled up, and the girl is wearing a hood. I guess it must be Tiffany. Maybe her grandfather there with her. The little girl is holding a big gift-wrapped box, and she’s got this hungus smile on her face. The kind of smile that it’s easier to make when you’re little and you don’t know about death camps in Bosnia or what really goes on at the dog pound. I guess I’ve been standing there for a little bit when the warning bell goes off. I take off for the government wing.
