by Owen Thomas
“I’m going to listen to music back here. Okay Bro?”
“Hmm? Okay Ben. We’ll go get some food in just a minute.”
Ben rummages through his backpack. The front doors to the building opens and I see Ken Phillips step out into the broken sunlight. He slings a jacket over his shoulder and puts on those same damn sunglasses, iridescent blue and yellow, and too big for his little face. Because the Wilson High colors are blue and yellow, Ken likes to wear his shades at all of the games and assemblies. They make him look less like a cool teacher than a mutant fruit fly. Ken looks my way but shows no sign of recognition.
CeeCee has taken a seat on an upper tier of the bleachers, as far away from the other humans as is physically possible without tumbling off the edge onto the turf. The boys are slowly making their way off the field towards the parking lot. They take turns kicking the guy with the bag of footballs in the ass. He swings the bag at their heads and they duck and laugh.
The girls are not far behind. They show no interest in kicking the one with the bag of pompoms, who appears to be dishing serious gossip. Four of them walk slowly, shoulder-to-shoulder as if surgically joined, hunched in conversation. They come apart all at once in laughter and then rejoin for more.
Two of the girls have stayed behind. They sit on the bottom tier seats bent over their laps, heads together like they are plotting insurrection. One of the girls, the one in short hair, looks up at Caitlin. The other girl, the one who looks a little heavier than the average high school cheerleader, like I have any fucking idea, maintains her forward focus, doing whatever she’s doing, hunched forward behind her curtain of brown locks. Eventually, short hair resumes her conspiratorial posture. Cait takes no interest in them. She is waiting; looking at everything and nothing. If Carmen’s not here then this is all a colossal waste of time. I send Cait a telepathic message: We’ve missed her. Let’s just move on before I’m arrested for stalking cheerleaders and second-degree lurking.
She is not receiving telepathy. She leans back on her elbows and crosses her legs. What in the hell is she waiting for? She pulls something out of her pocket and is working with her hands. She’s smoking. Smoking? No. Yes, definitely smoking. Smoking what?
It is a long moment before I can comprehend what is happening. She’s actually smoking a joint on school property in broad daylight. I don’t know which makes me angrier, the stupidity of bringing narcotics onto school property and lighting up in front of the cheerleading squad, or lying to me that she didn’t have any pot when she came over to the house knowing damn well the extent of my desperation for herbal distraction.
I try some seriously emphatic telepathy that should have blown out the windshield. I want to march out to the field and drag her back to the van by the hair, but I don’t dare. With my luck that’s precisely when she will get busted. SWAT teams will repel out of the trees, surrounding us and our sweet cloud of guilty association.
I reach in my pocket for my cell phone, resolving to call her rather than dragging her back by the hair. I will tell her that the keys are in the ignition and that if she is not back in sixty seconds I will drive off and not look back.
I have forgotten my phone back at the house. I go back to watching and screaming at her in my head, helpless.
The girls half turn, looking up at her. No doubt they can smell. Cait ignores them.
“Hey David?”
…
“Hey Bro?”
“Yeah, Ben.”
“When are we going to Safari Hut?”
The rest of the kids are dispersing through the parking lot, disappearing into various cars. The kid with the bag of footballs goes into the school. One of the two girls stands up, her back to me.
“Bro?”
“Soon, man.”
“Will we go tonight?”
“Yes. You just listen to your music. I’ll tell you.”
“Okay, Bro.”
The girl turns and heads across the field. She shouts something to two of the other girls exiting the parking lot in a white pickup. She hurries to catch them. A door opens and closes and they are gone.
The last girl on the bleachers is standing. She slings a black backpack over her shoulder and walks a few steps out onto the field. She stops. She turns and walks back to the bleachers, directly below Cait, who puts her joint hand behind her back. They speak, Cait leaning down towards the girl. The girl looks over her shoulder towards the parking lot and back up at Cait. She climbs the bleachers and sits. Cait takes another hit.
I want to scream; send up a smoke signal; use the horn to tap out whatever is Morse Code for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I seriously consider instructing Ben to lock the doors and sit tight as I get out and wander as close as I can to school property in the hopes that she will see me and respond to frantic arm waving.
There is a sudden, sharp authoritative knock at my window. I seize with an instant panic followed by an adrenal flooding that should be reserved for warfare and bear attacks. This is why I do not carry guns. Were I packing heat, there is no doubt in my mind that once I regain bowel control, I would simply start shooting.
Mark Shepherd, in all of his surfer dude glory, is beaming at me. I take a breath and lower the window.
“Dude,” he exclaims. “I thought that was you. I’m walkin’ over to the park for a little Frizbee Freestyle action and I look over and there’s Dapper Dave sittin’ in a fuckin’ ambulance. This thing yours?”
He grips the doorframe in admiration. “Sun-roof too,” he says. “Sweet.”
He is the same six-foot something, golden skinned, white-toothed, yellow-maned god that he has always been. He wears a small conch shell on a leather thong that dangles off his neck. His shirt, which is half un-tucked and open to the sternum, is a dusted rose color with a big, disco-vintage collar. Somehow, on Shepp, the look is natural and masculinity-enhancing. It’s a wonder all guys don’t dress like this. Of course, if I ever dressed like this I’d beat myself up.
The conch swings back and forth on its thong, in and out of the window, right at eye level. I want to yank it. Hard. So that Shepp’s forehead might be rapidly and unexpectedly introduced to the window frame.
“No. Belongs to a friend of mine.” She’s right over there, I almost tell him, trying to get herself arrested.
“I’ve been calling you.”
“You have?”
“Yesterday and today.”
“Oh. I’m house sitting for my folks.”
“That explains it. Thought maybe you were pissed or something.”
“Me? Pissed? Why would I be pissed?”
I ask this without any conscious intent to sound snotty. But since my most recent memory of Shepp is the one in which he is wining and dining my girlfriend as I am handcuffed out on the sidewalk like some dinner theater version of Cops, it is my unconscious self that has commandeered my tone.
“No idea, Dude. Just thought…” he shrugs and looks around. “Just thought maybe you were angry that you got canned and I didn’t. I know I told you I didn’t think you would lose your job. I was so pissed when I found out. Sorry, man. I feel like shit.”
He is sincere. He lets the words hang in the widow with the shell. I glance back at Ben, who is still reclining and sound proof.
“It’s not your fault,” I hear myself say.
“It’s way fucked up.”
“Yeah. It is that. But it’s not like you did anything to fire me. Besides, technically, I didn’t get fired for Billy Rocks.”
“I know, but still. That shit’s harsh.”
“You know?” I ask.
“About the classroom stuff? The Christopher Columbus thing? Yeah. Yeah.” Shepp nods his head in a slow bobbing rhythm, looking around at the school like he is scanning the ocean, keeping his eye out for a good wave. “People talk, Dave. You know.”
“What people?”
“Bunch of parents are pissed off. They complain. They talk to their kids. The kids talk to each other. You di
sappear. Robertson lets the news slip accidentally-on-purpose. Teachers talk. Come on, man. That can’t surprise you. There’s no secrets in there.”
He is right, of course. I have no business being surprised that my life has become a cautionary tale in the teacher’s lounge and fodder for the lunchroom gossip mill. And yet, I have somehow managed to delude myself that I had been cleanly excised from B.J. Wilson High School and that life would simply proceed as if I had never been there. But the excision, as it turned out, has been messy. There are still bits of me everywhere. There is a lot to talk about.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know. But that really sucks, Shepp.”
“Oh, it’s total bullshit, Dave. Couple of us, well, no, more than a couple… we talked about all going to have a real serious talk with Robertson about academic freedom. I mean we were going to read the fucker the riot act.”
I know he is full of shit. He has forgotten telling me all about the Intelligent Design pamphlet that Robertson puts in his mail slot every fall. Academic freedom my ass. Shepp is not reading anybody the riot act. Certainly not Robertson.
“Who else?”
“Me, Roger, Suzanne, Phil…”
“Phil Knox? Really?”
“Phil Barnes.”
“Oh. Yeah. That makes more sense I guess.”
“Phil was really hot. He talked about threatening to resign. Not that he would.”
“And?”
“It was talk. We were pissed off. For you. You know, and in principle. But …” He is looking for that wave again. Everything above his chin disappears above the window. I wait and watch the shell swinging.
“I think we just started wondering what good it would really do except risk our own jobs. We all need the money. And Robertson would never have listened anyway. Union’s not helping on this one, so he’d know we were all alone. Then we’d have targets on our backs and it wouldn’t have changed your situation one bit. So, fuck man …”
I nod, stealing a glance back out towards the football field. Cait and the girl are now both leaning back on their elbows getting stoned, sun on their faces. Cait laughs.
“But I’ll be battin’ for you at the hearing.”
“What?” My attention snaps back into focus.
“The discipline hearing. Next week.”
“Yeah?”
“The district is calling me as a witness,” he says. I blink.
“What?”
“That’s why I was trying to call you, but then I figured you knew anyway.”
“I … no. They’re calling you?”
“Yeah. Freaked me out a little, too. I started wondering if maybe I needed a lawyer. I got up with Mae ‘cause I knew she worked for some good lawyers.”
“You met with Mae? Chang?”
“Yeah. I was really wiggin’ out. I was going to call you, but I figured you were pissed and had your own problems. I was feeling guilty and I wanted to stay out of your hair. So I called Mae. I met her after work and we walked over to Savannah’s. I bought her a drink. I told her I needed some advice for my sister about looking for paralegal work, but that was just an excuse. Eventually I told her what was going on. I asked her if she thought she could hook me up with one of the guys in her office for some legal advice. She thought I was over-reacting. She was probably right. I feel better about it now. She didn’t tell you any of this?”
I shook my head. “She told me about the sister thing.”
“Attorney-client. She probably can’t tell anybody because she works for the firm. She wouldn’t say shit about what you’re doing so I figured you’ve lawyered up too.”
“You’ve hired them?”
“Not really. She set up a meeting with this short little prick of a lawyer. Daryl Slotnick. What a douche this guy is. Took one look at me and knew I’d never be able to pay his bill. Two hundred bucks for a half-hour meeting. We should’a gone to law school, Dave. He makes more in one afternoon than I make all month.”
I wait for him to continue but the story has stalled. He’s looking around like he is about to tell me something about the weather.
“Well, what’d he say?”
“Oh. He thought I should just show up, answer the questions, tell the truth, be done with it. So fuck it. That’s what I’m doing.”
“The district… wants you… to testify… at my disciplinary hearing.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Oh, that’s no mystery. I had this cluster of kids in my science lab cutting up one day and they were going on and on about how you were talking a bunch of shit about George Bush and taking up for the Iraqis and calling Jesus a Muslim…”
“What?”
“I know. It’s all shit, Dave. Don’t let it get you. Anyway, I’d had enough of these little shits and so I marched them down to Robertson’s office. He did his little song and dance for them about respecting authority,” Shepp gives the international gesture for jerking off and rolls his eyes. “That afternoon he shows up in my room and gives me the third-degree about what I’d heard them saying and how it had disrupted the class. Two days later I get a phone call from some lawyer for the district.”
“Did he ask anything about Brittany?”
“Kline? No. Nothing. They don’t care about that crap. That’s all bullshit and they all know it, man. You still worried about her? Let that go, Dave. She’ll show up. Probably pregnant with some punk’s kid. I told Robertson you didn’t have shit to do with Kline and he brushed the whole thing off. He said he thinks you’re a bad seed but that you’re not a criminal. The hearing’s not going to be about her. Fuck her. The hearing is all about these pissed off parents and the shit they think you’re saying in class.”
“Shepp, they suspended me for Billy Rocks.”
“To investigate. And what do they have?”
“Me at a bar with students, for one thing.”
“Dave, you didn’t take them to the bar. You had no idea. Neither did I.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? Think I’d still be drawing a paycheck if that was the problem?”
“No. I guess not.”
“Trust me. It’s not Brittany and it’s not Billy Rocks. It’s the parents you’ve got to worry about. That’s what Daryl Slotnick thinks too, only I won’t charge you two hundred bucks to tell you. I got your back, Dude.”
“Yeah?”
“Hell yeah. They want to call me, they can call me. But I’m gonna give ‘em a piece of my mind about all of this. You can’t fire a teacher for this shit, Dave.”
He says it like he is trying to persuade me; like I need convincing.
“Now we’re all looking over our shoulders. Goddamned Nazi’s. When do they start burning books? This is a place of learning. As far as I’m concerned, Dave,” Shepp leans down so his face is even with mine, including me in his cloud of patchouli. The ladies must love kissing this man, with the hair and the lips and the eyes. I almost want to kiss him. “You’re one of the good guys. You should have your lawyer get up with Phil. Phil, Roger, Suzanne. All of ‘em. Seriously, man. They’ll all lay it down for you. Let’s turn this fucking witch hunt on its ear.”
Shepp straitens and sticks his fist in the window for a bump. So I bump.
I do not tell him that I am unrepresented; that I have reached my quota for lawyer-client relationships with Lonnie Lumkin who will be containing his legal talents to keeping me out of jail when the real Law & Order shit starts; shit for which the disciplinary hearing is but a silly, inconsequential prelude. I do not tell him that I have decided not to waste my money on lawyers for a hearing that is ultimately irrelevant to my fate since even if I were able to defeat the gaggle of irrationally irate parents and convince the district that I am not using its classroom to espouse Satanism, my career will be over anyway as soon as I am convicted of possession with intent to distribute, or as soon as my face appears on the front page of the Dispatch next to a larger photo of Brittany Kline playing the violin.
“So what ar
e you doin’ here man? You wanna come to the park? Flip some disc?”
“No. Waiting for a friend.” I gesture vaguely in the direction of the school. “I wasn’t really interested in going in.”
Shepp laughs. “No doubt, Dude. Keep your distance.” He tries to crane his neck around to look into the back of the vanbulance.
“Pretty sweet ride, Dave. Lots of horizontal space, if you know what I mean. Is this a man or a woman you’re waiting on?”
“Fuck you.”
He laughs and punches me in the arm. “Later, Dude. Keep your chin up about all this shit, okay? You’ll come through fine. I’ll see you at the hearing.”
He is gone as suddenly as he had appeared. In his wake I am left feeling unsettled.
I look out at the field. The girl is standing now. Hands in her pockets. Backpack over one shoulder. She is talking down to Cait, who is still smoking. My anger is still there. But as much as I want to resume marveling at Cait’s stupidity, I cannot keep my mind off Shepp. I feel strangely … buoyed. Like I have been lifted a little, on an imperceptible tide, untraceable and with no direction, everywhere at once.
But why? What could possibly have changed in the past five minutes? Is it the knowledge that Mark Shepherd has my back? That he is going to take the stand at my hearing and sing my praises and take my side? Is it the knowledge that there exists a coalition of my colleagues who have cared enough to meet and to whisper and to plan to storm Principle Robertson’s office and who, even if discretion has recently proven to be the better part of valor, have remained righteously indignant on my behalf?
Or is it the knowledge of Shepp’s assessment, supported by his conversation with Robertson and a school district lawyer, that no one really cares about trying to connect me to Brittany’s disappearance and that, at least as far as the school district is concerned, this is really just about a bunch of chapped parents? Is it Shepp’s assessment that I’ll come through just fine? That there is nothing so dire about this whole situation that should preclude shrugging off all concerns and going to the park to flip a little disc?
The girl has turned and is carefully stepping her way down the bleachers to the field below. Cait watches her go, waiting for God-knows-what.
