Slave Day

by Rob Thomas

  KEENE

  8:21 P.M. Davenport house

  I hear the bass from the car speakers coming up the street long before the honking that signals me to get outside. My family is sitting in front of the TV, and Laurence tells everyone to get on the floor, quick. “It’s either one of Keene’s new friends or a drive-by.” I’m just hoping Mom doesn’t notice the gangsta rap, window-rattling references to Glocks, pimps, bitches, and blunts.

  Of course Laurence is afraid of everything the other side of Boyz II Men. I tell my mom I’m going to the bonfire. I already told her about buying Shawn and about tomorrow’s boycott and the party I’m invited to, so she doesn’t make me explain why I’m willing to attend the bonfire.

  The car I get in used to be an Escort, but there’s not much left of Sleepy’s original vehicle. The back panel has been replaced with a giant bass cabinet. The windows are all tinted. It’s got a spoiler and these tiny wheels. Rashard and Melvin are in the back telling Mexican jokes. I don’t catch much of it, because of how loud Sleepy keeps the music, but I know it involves someone named Pedro, Pedro’s sister, and the word frijole. Whatever the punch line is, it’s got Melvin and Rashard holding on to their intestines.

  I have no idea where we’re going. “To make a point,” is what Sleepy said after school. I wonder what point they’ve already made—there’s a few cans of spray paint on the floor of the car and, on closer inspection, I discover all three of my comrades here have paint on their fingers.

  Soon enough we pull into Whataburger. Sleepy drives to the very back of the parking lot. He yells into the backseat.

  “Is this the right one?”

  “Si, señor,” answers Melvin.

  Sleepy reaches over to my side of the car and unlatches his glove box. He pulls out a bottle of black shoe polish and a small carton of eggs.

  “When words fail,” he says, handing the items to me.

  “Whose car is it?” I ask.

  “Mr. Twilley’s.”

  “What’s the point?” I ask.

  “Do you want Slave Day ended?”

  “How is egging Twilley’s car going to do that?” I say. “He can be a butthole, but he’s not the one who—”

  “I thought you told a class full of students that he was trying to keep our sister out of honor society.”

  “Yeah, but—

  “That makes him, at the very least, a symbol—”

  Then Melvin chimes in from the backseat. “I told you he was getting all friendly with Shawn Greeley after school.”

  “Man, he’s just like his little brother—wants to be white,” adds Rashard.

  Sleepy starts to take the eggs and shoe polish from my hands, but I grip them tighter. I don’t want to be white.

  BRENDAN

  8:41 P.M. Tiffany’s Probe

  Let’s see. What’s wrong with this picture? I’ve had a multiplicity of rum and Cokes. I’m driving a twenty-five-thousand-dollar car. I don’t have a license. (The only driving experience I’ve had has been in the Tempo on farm-to-market roads with Mom next to me instructing, “Stop. Look. Listen … Good … All right, hand over hand … Good.”) Add to that that I’m about to destroy all the financial records of one of Deerfield’s largest businesses. And—for my trouble—I’ve also been given the privilege of nabbing a chocolate shake for my owner.

  You know, on top of all that, there’s plenty that’s bothering me about what Mr. Delvoe—Mayor Delvoe—is asking me to do. I mean, if he’s got paper records of all the invoices and stuff, what’s he worrying for? It might take some time, but he’d be able to prove he was innocent. I guess it could just be politics. Mr. Warren says that the appearance of impropriety is sometimes as bad as impropriety itself. Could be Mr. Delvoe’s just trying to save himself some public humilification.

  I almost got snagged when I went home to pick up the modem and password-cracker software I needed. As I left the house, my parents cruised right by me. I think the tinted windows saved the day. They’d hyperventilate if they knew what I was doing. For one thing, they’ve voted against Mr. Delvoe ever since he had the park re-zoned. I’ve been more careful on my way to Whataburger, taking all the backroads I know. All I need now is to be thrown into jail. I wonder if the mayor would come to my rescue.

  When Mom has allowed me to drive the Tempo, my goal has always been just to stay between the lines and get from point A to point B. In letting me drive her car, Tiffany is effectively giving a Purina-for-life dog a slab of prime rib. I only need to think the word “fast” and my head is slammed back into the neck rest. I’m certain that if I turn on the radio—which, incidentally, looks too complicated for me to operate—I’ll get Mission Control. Coincidentally enough, the route I’ve chosen takes me by Deena’s. I creep down her street until I get right in front of her house. There I give the horn a couple sharp taps and hit the gas. Too hard. I burn rubber (do they still say “burn rubber”?) halfway down the block.

  I hear a ringing sound. My first thought is that the police are already on my trail—either that, or it’s the first warning sign test pilots get when they’re about to pass out from pulling too many G’s. On the third or fourth ring, I uncover the source; it’s a car phone. I try ignoring it, but it doesn’t stop. After fifty or so rings, I pick it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Get me some fries with that too.” It’s Tiffany.

  “Sure,” I say, but then, who knows why, I break into hysterics. I can’t help myself. This girl is out of control. Also, I start thinking about the message from Lloyd this morning. I’ll have to tell him—fries do go with that shake.

  “Whatever,” Tiffany says, before clicking off.

  As I pull into the Whataburger parking lot, somebody flashes me with his headlights. I realize I’ve been driving with mine off. It’s not pitch-black yet, but it’s too dark not to have them on. I find the light switch, and as I punch them on, they rotate up and out of the hood and shine directly onto this ugly green car in the back of the parking lot. Four people are gathered around it. I recognize Laurence Davenport’s older brother, but not the rest of them. It looks like they’re writing stuff on it. That’s a practice indigenous to popular people—shoe-polishing GO BIG BLUE! on friends’ cars or drawing a circle on a front windshield and scrawling STUD with an arrow pointing at the driver. They hang out in the Whataburger parking lot, talking, drinking beer, chasing one another around. So what’s appealing about that? Why should I want to be part of it?

  So what if I do?

  I’m not blind, though. I know it when people are nice to me because they need something—help with their homework, computer advice. But somehow, I always feel like, in those moments, I’m not invisible. That suddenly someone’s paying attention to me. Someone needs me. Who cares if Tiffany Delvoe only bought me because she was late this morning? So what if she let me beat her a few games in pool just to get me to help her dad? After I do this, there will always be a part of her that knows I exist. Maybe I’ll see her in the hall talking with her friends. I’ll walk by her, and she’ll nod. For me, maybe that’s enough.

  TOMMY

  8:41 P.M. Whataburger

  “What do you suppose he does for fun?” I ask Miguel, our shift leader.

  Miguel glances over the bun toaster. “Looks like he gets off grading papers. He’s been doing it since the dinner rush ended. I liked him better when he was cleaning the tables. Why don’t you order him to do some more of that?”

  I hand a couple shakes out the drive-through window to this kid who’s driving Tiffany Delvoe’s Probe—the guy she paid a hundred bucks for. “So, my man, hear you been bangin’ Tiff all day. These shakes nourishment? Tryin’ to work your strength back up? Better super-size ’em for a quarter more!” I wink at him and give him a big thumbs-up.

  “Uhh … uhh … uhh … I’m just getting her something to drink.”

  “A true gentleman. Give her my love, will ya?”

  “Uhh, yeah.”

  “Where you headin’? Some big
debutante ball? The Hotel No-Tell?”

  “Just the bonfire.”

  “Right!”

  I slide the window shut, but I’ve got an idea now.

  “Hey, Miguel, let me off for thirty minutes. It’s slow. You got enough people.”

  “Punch out,” he says.

  “Which one?” I say, balling up a fist and glaring at my shiftmates.

  Miguel laughs, which is why I like him better than the other shift leaders. I head out into the dining room and plop down next to Twilley. He hasn’t touched a fry since I left.

  “Ten minutes,” I say, “we’re heading to the bonfire.”

  “I should be done grading these quizzes by then.”

  “That’s a huge weight off my shoulders.” Like I care whether he’s done with his grading. Shit.

  I head back to the kitchen to punch out and grab a joe to go, but Miguel tells me I’ve got to take the trash out before I can leave. I grab the Hefty bags that have been stacked by the door and head out the big steel back door. I see Twilley’s car before I make it all the way to the Dumpster. It’s not easy to miss. It’s covered in egg again, but this time the shoe polish says something different, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

  I don’t get it.

  TIFFANY

  8:47 P.M. Delvoe study

  So I’m on the hallway phone talking to Troy. I’ve called back to explain blowing him off earlier. He’s not a major flame, but he does own Sundance CDs, and let’s just say I get a very good deal.

  “Strip pool?” he says, more intrigued than pissed.

  “Look, I was just humoring this kid we’ve got working for us. He’s harmless.”

  As I say it, a Whataburger shake appears in my peripheral vision on the stair next to my head. Brendan slogs by me and enters the study. Little boozehound forgot my fries. Daddy’s right; it’s tough to get good help these days.

  This whole evening is becoming a big pain in the ass. I’ve had to sit here for the last forty-five minutes with Daddy, carrying out Brendan’s bizarre instructions. We’ve gone through old employee records, the community calendar, and the phone book, making a list of any piece of information that might be part of Mr. Milligan’s password. This detective shit is nowhere near as interesting as they make it look on TV. We’ve put together a list of all his kids’ birthdays, his street address, his phone number, Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, wife’s maiden name, pets’ names, driver’s license number, ZIP codes he’s lived in, license plate number, favorite foods, favorite sports teams. Daddy even listed the phone number of the White Rock Motel, where he says Milligan takes his secretary for private meetings.

  Brendan’s a blur of wasted motion. The boy is energized. Rather than asking where the phone line is in the office, he gets down on his hands and knees and surveys the baseboards. Daddy and I are too entertained to ask what he’s doing. When he finds the line (about three quarters of the way around his pace lap), he connects it to the modem he’s brought back with him. He yanks wires out of the back of Daddy’s computer and plugs them back in the same ports. He asks Daddy the number of the computer line at the office, punches it in, and instructs us to cross our fingers. The modem dials, rings, then starts screaming.

  “Connectage!” says Brendan. “The computer at the office is on. It’s asking for a password.” Then he inserts a disk and begins keyboarding in all the random numbers and names off the list Daddy has handed him.

  “Are you trying all of these as passwords?” I ask, thinking this could take all night.

  “Not exactly,” says Brendan. “This program will try them all, then try them in different combinations, then try them backward, sideways—you name it. Most people aren’t dumb enough to just use their phone number or birthday or student ID number in order, but they might switch around the numbers.”

  There’s something in the way he says “student ID number” that reminds me—I need to change my password at school.

  Brendan continues typing while Daddy pours himself a bourbon. Right now, his future’s in the hands of a teenage hacker, and I would swear, Daddy’s digging the rush. He’s pacing the room, cracking his knuckles, muttering little oaths of vengeance under his breath.

  The computer, which has been clicking away, becomes silent.

  “Well?” says Daddy.

  “No go,” says Brendan, looking disappointed. He drums his fingers against the desk. Even as I’m envisioning life in a trailer home, I can’t help noticing Brendan’s hands. They’re beautiful. They look like they belong on a concert pianist or a split end or something. I wonder why I didn’t notice them before. They’re completely out of proportion with the rest of his body. The fingers are long but thin and his nails are perfectly pink and trimmed back to appropriate guy length. The boy’s not through growing.

  “Is there anything else you can think of?” Brendan asks Daddy. “A lot of people hang up their password on a little Post-it right by the computer. It’s not very smart, but they do it.”

  “The only thing the greedy bastard has hanging up in that office is a scorecard from the one and only time he beat me in a round of golf,” Daddy says. “He hung that up in there just to get my boxers in a wad.”

  “What was the score?” Brendan asks.

  Daddy launches into an epic with frequent references to the shifting winds, Mr. Milligan’s disregard for the rules of the sport, and Daddy’s own miserable putting display.

  “What was the score, Martin?” I interject. “That’s all he wants to know.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—eighty-one to eighty-seven. But why do you …,” Daddy begins, but Brendan’s already plugged the numbers in. The computer sputters and clicks.

  “We have a winner!” he says. “We’re in.”

  “The golf score? That sumbitch!” Daddy says, pounding his fist against the desk. “Erase the whole damn computer!”

  “I don’t think you want to do that, sir,” says Brendan. “It’ll be obvious. What I was thinking was that I would infect the financial records with a virus that will eat them away bit by bit. They might be able to retrieve chunks, but they could never get an overall picture.”

  “Fine idea, son,” says our father. “Glad someone here’s got his head outta his butt.”

  “I’ll need two or three blank disks to do this. Do you have any I could use?”

  “What on earth,” I begin, “do you need blank disks f—”

  “Could you get me another one of those Cokes, Tiffany? I’m feeling kind of faint,” Brendan says.

  What the hell. I’ll leave the computer stuff to the expert. I head to the bar.

  MR. TWILLEY

  9:01 P.M. Whataburger

  When I reach the bottom of the stack of quizzes I’m grading, I find Jackson’s and Wilson’s already marked with their zeros. I consider what Mr. Tristan said—that students are saying I’m giving Tamika a zero because she’s black. It’s not the first time I’ve been accused of racism. Back in ’78, both of those players were black. Star athletes who thought they could get away with anything. It seems the rest of the community agreed with them. Of all the spiteful things said of me at that time, none hurt more than the accusations that the grades were racially motivated.

  Out of curiosity, I pull Jackson’s and Wilson’s quizzes from the stack and begin checking them, question by question. As usual, Jackson has done a fine job, scoring a ninety-two. I expect to see a once-in-a-lifetime mark from Wilson as well, but as I begin grading, my assumptions are quashed. Wilson manages only a D. It’s the first quiz he’s passed this semester, but it’s by no means spectacular work. Then I find an anomaly I didn’t expect. Number 19, one of the last questions, called for only a year—Trevor has the correct answer. Tamika got it wrong.

  Still, they were talking during the quiz. And Tamika wasn’t using her cover sheet. How much easier this would have been had the answers been identical.

  It occurs to me that I haven’t seen Tommy for nearly twenty minutes and we’re closing in on the sta
rting time for the bonfire. I don’t see him in the kitchen, so I wonder if he’s waiting out in the parking lot for me. I gather my papers and clean off my table. I step out into the darkness. There with his back to me is Thomas. Beneath him is a bucket, in his hand a sponge. He’s washing my freshly vandalized car. I can still make out the BY ANY MEA …”

  I step back inside the building to wait for him.

  KEENE

  9:10 P.M. Lee High parking lot

  I get Sleepy to drop me off at school. The bonfire’s about to start, and I’ve got one thing left to do for the day. The lights are still on over at the football field, which means the JV game must still be going on. I’m not interested in the game itself, but I decide to head in that direction anyway. For the first time that I can remember, I want to be seen. People may actually notice me and say something like, “That’s the guy who had Shawn doing all that crazy stuff today.”

  As I’m crossing the parking lot, I’m thinking how glad I am that I didn’t stay home today. It’s funny how Slave Day may be my greatest day of high school.

  “Keene Davenport!”

  I turn and see Principal Gant.

  “I need to have a word with you.”

  Damn.

  “Follow me to my office,” he says.

  The campus is dark and the shadows make it look somehow frightening. I don’t think I’m ever up here at night except to pick Laurence up from debate meets and science club meetings. Mr. Gant isn’t saying a thing, and I can’t muster the energy to play stupid. Right before we get to the administration building, he stops in front of the marble sign in front of the office.

  “You know anything about this?” he says, gesturing toward the sign.

  Below where it says PRESENTED BY THE SENIORS OF 1976, in the spot where it normally says ROBERT E. LEE HIGH SCHOOL, HOME OF THE REBELS, someone has spray-painted STOP SLAVE DAY NOW!