Defiant Heart

by Steere, Marty

  Jon held up the book so Walt could see the cover.

  “Trigonometry,” Walt grimaced. “That hurts my head just saying it.” He stepped up to the counter and leaned against it with one elbow. “Is that your toughest class?”

  “Not really. I won’t be taking this class until next year.”

  “You’re not even in the class, and you’re reading the book?” Walt asked incredulously.

  Jon laughed. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “You like to read a lot, huh?”

  “I love to read. Don’t you?”

  Walt shook his head solemnly. “Let me put it this way: Ol’ Walt has never met a book he couldn’t ignore.”

  “Don’t you like stories?”

  “I love stories.”

  “You’re missing out on so many good stories by not reading. Here,” Jon said, pulling one of the books from the stack on the counter and holding it out. “I just read this for the second time. It’s a great story.”

  Walt took the book from Jon and turned it over in his hands. “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” he read. “Hey, sort of like the boss.”

  “Well, the main character is a mayor. But it’s about a lot more than that.”

  “Got a lot of action, huh?”

  “It depends on what you mean by action. But, sure, there’s a lot that happens.”

  Walt looked again at the book with a dubious expression. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Ok. What the heck.”

  He came around the counter and placed the novel on the shelf. Glancing over Jon’s shoulder, he pointed to the sheet of paper on which Jon had transcribed Mr. Hanson’s problem. “What is that, a code?”

  “Well, sort of. Each one of these symbols has a meaning”

  Walt picked up the sheet and held it closer to the light. He turned it upside down. Then, apparently deciding it didn’t make any more sense that way, turned it back again. Finally, he returned it to the counter.

  “So, what does it say?”

  “That’s kind of what I’m trying to figure out. What I don’t understand is why or how this part,” and Jon pointed to the last line of the equation, “equals zero.”

  “Well, it’s a cinch I don’t know,” Walt said, sliding his stool over to the counter. “So what good is any of this stuff anyway?”

  “Oh, believe me, you can do a lot of things with this.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  Jon thought for a moment. “Ok, you know that big elm tree by the funeral parlor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you be able to figure out how tall it is?”

  “Oh yeah, piece o’ cake.”

  Bemused, Jon asked, “How?”

  “I’d climb it,” Walt said, as he struggled to pull himself up on his stool, “with a measuring stick.” Settling onto the seat, he gave Jon a self-satisfied look.

  “You would climb the tree,” Jon deadpanned.

  “I’ve climbed lots of trees.”

  Jon looked at Walt skeptically. “Have you climbed any lately?”

  “No.”

  John chuckled. “Well, ok. Let’s say you climbed the tree. While you were climbing the tree, I could sit at the bottom and eat my lunch.”

  “Why would you be eating your lunch?”

  “I’m just making a point. While you’re doing all that work climbing, I’m not working at all,” he said, then added, “I don’t have to be eating lunch.”

  “You could be eating lunch if you wanted to.”

  “Right. The point is this. Long after you started climbing the tree, but before you got to the top, I could stand up, pace out fifty feet from the trunk, take a reading from my protractor here,” he held up the small plastic device, “and, with a couple of calculations, I could tell you exactly how tall the tree is. It would take me all of one minute, and I would never need to leave the ground.”

  “Why fifty feet?”

  “It doesn’t have to be fifty feet. It could be sixty feet.”

  “Well, which would it be? Fifty or sixty?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Walt. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I know. I’m just havin’ fun with you,” Walt said, laughing. “Here’s the thing though,” he said, affecting a serious look and speaking with an exaggerated solemnity. “I am never, ever, in a million years, gonna wanna know how tall that tree is.” He arched his bushy eyebrows and grinned. “So, I guess I don’t need to know trigonometry now, do I?”

  Jon was about to respond when the bell above the front door tinkled, and Mary Dahlgren stepped into the store.

  #

  Mary had spent the previous half hour across the street at the diner. She’d seen no customers enter the store, so it didn’t surprise her to see Jon and Walt sitting alone at the counter.

  “Hey, Mary,” Walt called out, “haven’t seen you here in, gosh, I don’t know how long.”

  She paused, just inside the door. For the hundredth time, she asked herself just what in the world she was doing. For the hundredth time, she had no ready answer. She took a deep breath, smiled brightly, and said, “Hi. I, um, just stopped by to surprise my dad.”

  “Oh,” Walt said, “he’s not here right now.”

  She knew that. In fact, she knew exactly where he was. It was Thursday afternoon, so he would be at the city hall, going over paperwork and getting ready for the city council meeting that evening.

  “He’s not? Gee, that’s too bad.”

  She was still standing just inside the door, not having taken a step since entering. She could see that Jon was looking at her in that intense, curious way he had, with his head slightly tilted. She realized she had to do something. She stepped over to the counter and set down the books she’d been holding across her chest.

  “Hey,” Walt exclaimed immediately, “look at that. You’ve got the same trigonometry book as Jon.”

  Jon seemed to flinch at Walt’s words. The comment also struck her as odd, but she didn’t immediately focus on it. Then she cocked her head and said, “Trigonometry?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Walt, “the secret code.” He snatched the sheet of paper off the counter a fraction of a second before Jon could reach it. “See,” he said, laying it down in front of Mary. “We’re having trouble figuring out why this part equals zero,” and he punched the last line of the equation with a stubby finger.

  She looked down at the page and the familiar equation. When she looked up, Jon’s cheeks had reddened.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m having trouble with that as well.”

  There was an awkward pause. Then Jon said, slowly, looking intently at the page and avoiding eye contact, “I think it has something to do with the cosine having an even function.”

  She was about to ask him why he had the same equation that Mr. Hanson had assigned to her when what he had said caused her to stop. “Of course,” she said, “that would mean the coefficients for all of the odd powers have to equal zero.” She slipped a pencil out of her notebook. “What if you assume this,” and she made a notation on the sheet.

  Jon looked at what Mary had written and furrowed his brow in concentration. “Then,” he said thoughtfully, reaching out and rotating the page, “multiplication of the denominator and substitution of the series would yield this,” and he scribbled out a new line on the page. He turned the sheet back around and showed it to Mary, looking up at her, his hazel eyes now bright with enthusiasm.

  She felt an intense excitement. Glancing back and forth between the page and his eyes, she concluded, “And, the only possible result is zero. Oh my God, that’s it.”

  She stood there, looking at him, her heart racing. This time, he did not look away.

  Walt beamed. “Isn’t this great? Anyone want to go measure some trees?”

  The bell above the front door tinkled again, and all three of them turned to look. This time, it was Jim Dahlgren who walked through the entrance. Obviously in a hurry, he made immediately for the stairway, then he suddenly pulled up shor
t with a classic double take.

  “Mary, what are you doing here?”

  For the hundredth and first time, she had no answer to that question. “Well,” she said, after a moment, “I actually came to surprise you.”

  “But,” he said, a confused expression on his face, “today is Thursday. You know I have city council on Thursday. I only came back because I left a file in my office.”

  “Oh, today is Thursday,” she said, as though it had just dawned on her. “Of course. What am I thinking? I don’t know where my head is at,” she continued. She was speaking too rapidly, she knew, but she was unable to stop herself. She quickly gathered her books from the counter and hugged them to her chest. “It must be everything going on at school.”

  She turned toward Jon and Walt and, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, said cheerfully. “Well, it was good seeing all of you. Bye now.”

  She hurried to the door. “I’ll see you later Dad,” she trilled, and she was gone.

  #

  On Friday morning, Jon arrived at school a few minutes early. He hurriedly parked his bike and took the front steps two at a time. For reasons he couldn’t explain even to himself, he wanted to be in Miss Tremaine’s classroom before Mary arrived.

  In the entryway at the top of the stairs, he turned left and walked quickly down the main corridor. It was lined on both sides with metal lockers bolted to the walls. As he approached his locker, he slowed. Something was out of place.

  All of the lockers were painted a gunmetal grey. This morning, though, Jon could see red at the end of the row on the right. The color stood out starkly against the drab uniformity of the lockers. It wasn’t until he was within a few feet of the end of the hall, however, that he realized what he was seeing. With a sudden intake of breath, his stomach constricted, and bile rose in the back of his throat, bitter, almost metallic tasting.

  Across the face of his locker in large block letters, someone had painted the word “JEW.” The paint had run, and there were long scarlet trails extending from the bottom of the word almost to the floor in a macabre suggestion of blood.

  “What the hell?” said a loud voice behind him, and he turned to see Mr. Mabry, the school janitor. The man was wearing a pair of overalls, and he had a broom in one hand and a dustpan in the other. Jon had seen him around the school a couple of times.

  “You do that?” Mr. Mabry asked. Then, without waiting for a reply, he said, “No, ‘course not. Wouldn’t be standin’ here if you did.”

  With the handle of the broom, he pointed. “That your locker?”

  Jon nodded.

  The janitor studied the messy graffiti, mouthing the word. He then looked at Jon. “Just what I don’t need,” he said, finally. “That’s gonna take me some time to clean off.” He shook his head. “Just what I don’t need,” he repeated. Then, as if to hammer the point home, he said, loudly, “Damn,” and he turned and stalked off.

  Jon watched him leave. Returning his attention to the locker, he reached out, tentatively, gripped the handle and opened the door. A foul odor assaulted him.

  Someone had urinated in his locker.

  He stood there a moment longer, gathering his wits. Then, wrinkling his nose against the smell, he leaned forward and peered at the shelf that ran across the width of the locker. His books were still sitting where he had left them the afternoon before. He had nothing hanging on the two hooks below the shelf, and, because it was Friday, his gym shoes that might otherwise have been sitting at the bottom of the locker were back at his grandmother’s house.

  He took a breath, held it, and reached into the locker, putting his hands around the books and pulling them out. Awkwardly, he arranged them, large to small, bottom to top, and he placed them under one arm. He took one last look at the locker. Then, leaving the door open, he turned and trudged heavily down the corridor in the direction of his first class.

  At the door to Miss Tremaine’s class, he paused. He could see there were just a few students in the room. Mary was not one of them. All of the students who had arrived before him were sitting at their desks with the exception of one of the eleventh grade girls, who was standing beside the teacher’s desk, hunched over, her finger on the page of an open book. She and Miss Tremaine were studying the book intently.

  Vernon King was sitting at his desk, his back to the entrance. He was talking to Jeff Fletcher, who occupied the desk behind him. Vernon was usually the last person through the door in the morning, so his presence in the classroom now was unusual.

  Jeff spotted Jon standing in the doorway. He tapped Vernon on the arm and inclined his head in Jon’s direction. Vernon turned quickly. As Jon stepped through the door, both Vernon and Jeff suddenly squinted their eyes and crinkled their noses.

  “Ah,” they said in tandem, drawing the word out as if holding back a sneeze. “Ah,” they repeated, a little louder and longer, each tilting his head back and contorting his face as though the coming sneeze were putting him in great distress. “Ah,” this time almost yelling. Then, together, they threw their heads forward and exclaimed, “A Jew!”

  Vernon sat back, a vicious smile on his face. Jeff made a show of wiping his nose as though it was running.

  “Goodness,” Miss Tremaine said, looking up from the book on her desk. “Are you boys coming down with colds?”

  “Oh, no, Miss Tremaine,” Vernon said. “I think there must be something in this room that doesn’t agree with us.”

  “Really?” she replied, a mixture of confusion and concern playing on her face. “Well, I don’t know what it might be.”

  “It’s ok, Miss Tremaine,” Vernon said quickly. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Yes,” Jeff said. “We can manage. But thank you, Miss Tremaine.”

  Jon walked slowly to his desk and sat down, feeling that he was being watched. When he glanced up, however, the only ones looking in his direction were Vernon and Jeff. They both had smug expressions. Vernon winked.

  Jon looked back, holding their gaze. After a long moment, Jeff looked away, but Vernon continued to stare, his expression becoming more serious. Then, after a few more seconds, he smirked and looked away as well. Only then did Jon turn his attention to the classroom door.

  A long minute passed, and then Mary entered the classroom. As she did, she gave a quick sideways glance in the direction of Jon’s desk. He felt a jolt of adrenalin, but, the instant their eyes met, she turned away. The bile began to rise again in the back of his throat.

  After a second, however, Mary pivoted, looked directly at him, and gave him the most wonderful smile he had ever seen.

  #

  “Are you going to tell me what’s up?” Sam asked.

  Mary continued staring into the distance. After a long moment, she said, “Do you think it’s possible they could be any more puerile?”

  “Puerile?”

  “Childish. Immature.”

  “Do I need to carry around a dictionary when we’re talking?”

  Mary didn’t reply. The two of them were sitting at one of the long benches in the outdoor eating area adjacent to the school cafeteria. Though it was a slightly windy, overcast day carrying the threat of rain at any moment, they’d chosen to sit outdoors, rather than in the main indoor area, which could be quite loud when full of students.

  Sam studied Mary carefully. Mary had been distracted all morning. At the outset of the day, she’d been cheerful. Her mood, however, had soured quickly. Given her most recent comment, Sam wondered if it might have something to do with the developments concerning the new boy, Jon Meyer.

  The school had been abuzz with the revelation that Jon was a Jew. To Sam, it seemed much ado about nothing. So what if the guy was Jewish? Why should that bother anyone? Apparently, however, the opportunity to engage in mischief at the expense of another had been too much for one or more of her classmates to resist. The vandalism of Jon’s locker had been shocking. And, yes, immature. But Sam knew the whole thing would blow over in a day or two. After all, who ca
res?

  Perhaps, however, it had struck a chord with Mary. She was uncharacteristically subdued. There were worry lines around her pretty blue eyes, and her usual smile was gone, lips instead tightly compressed in a contemplative frown. No, Sam thought, whatever was bothering her friend had to be really significant. It couldn’t just be Jon Meyer.

  She was about to probe further when there was a movement, and Gwenda slid onto the bench next to her.

  “I’ve got something really important,” Gwenda said, looking at Mary. When Mary did not react, Gwenda turned to Sam and gave her a quizzical look. Sam shrugged, then leaned forward and waved a hand in front of Mary’s face.

  “Hello, anybody home?”

  After a moment, Mary refocused and looked at Sam. “Hmm?”

  Sam extended an index finger and, with an exaggerated motion, pointed it at Gwenda, who was leaning forward, a look of excitement on her face. Mary looked at Gwenda.

  “You know about the dance tomorrow night, right?” Gwenda asked. It was a rhetorical question. Of course they all knew about the dance. Gwenda would be going with Billy, but Mary and Sam planned to tag along. It was the first dance of the school year, and they’d been looking forward to it.

  “Well, I just talked to Billy,” Gwenda continued, “and he told me Vernon wants to go with you. Isn’t that great!” She put an emphasis on the last word so it came out almost as a squeal.

  Mary blinked a couple of times. Finally, she said, flatly, “Oh.”

  Sam and Gwenda exchanged glances. After a moment, Sam said, “Oh? That’s your response? Gee, let’s try to contain our enthusiasm. I mean, you don’t want to be too easy. God forbid anyone gets the wrong impression.”

  Mary looked back and forth between Sam and Gwenda. Sam could see that Gwenda had a shocked expression on her face.

  Mary suddenly reached out and cupped Gwenda’s hands with hers. “Oh, Gwenda, I’m sorry. I just have a lot on my mind right now. Thank you for letting me know.”

  Her excitement returning, Gwenda asked, “So I can let Billy know you’re planning to go with Vernon.”

  “No.”

  “No?” repeated Gwenda. “Why not?”