The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

by Kia Corthron

  “The quality of mercy is not—”

  “The quality of what?”

  “Mercy.”

  “Of what?”

  “Mercy.”

  “Of what?”

  “Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!”

  Emily’s entire body is shaking. The class is silent. Mr. Schneider appears momentarily uncomfortable.

  “They’re killin Jews!”

  All turn to Cheerleader No. 2.

  “In Germany! The Axis!”

  “And where did you hear that, Miss Hanson?”

  “I heard. My mother said—”

  “There is a segregation of German Jews from German Gentiles. That’s all we know for certain. Anything else is conjecture.” Everyone stares at Mr. Schneider. He laughs. “I’m not supporting the Axis! What I’m saying is we can’t just blanket assume one hundred percent of everything going on in Germany is wrong. Who here would want colored kids coming to this school?”

  No one raises a hand.

  “Then I think we can all understand the concept and necessity of separation. Miss Hanson. You are a Jew.”

  She stands and recites. Letter perfect. Mr. Schneider smiles at the cute cheerleader. “Excellent.”

  Miss Hanson turns pink and sits. In what appears to be an afterthought, Mr. Schneider turns to Emily, who finally felt it was safe to sit as Miss Hanson had begun her speech. “Excellent, Miss Creitzer.” Then he turns to the class at large. “How’s about a little riddle?”

  “Yes!”

  “What has four legs and one arm?”

  No one knows.

  “A very happy tiger.”

  A roar of laughter, and the bell.

  “Read page 185, Sonnet 52!” A few students line up to get Mr. Schneider’s John Hancock in their yearbooks.

  I have the hang of it now and get to my last class downstairs and on the other side of the school three minutes early. After the late bell rings, Mr. Porter, a tall, bulky man in his fifties, pulls down a map. Taped over it is a nineteenth-century political cartoon. The immediate foreground image is what appears to be a combination Sambo/ape creature leisurely lying back with his legs crossed, mindless eyes in the clouds. Everyone laughs. On closer inspection, we see a hardworking white farmer chopping wood, another pushing a plow as he comes home to his family. In the other corner, a sketch of the U.S. Capitol Building with this etched into it:

  FREEDOM

  AND

  NO WORK.

  and the headline over the entire drawing:

  THE FREEDMAN'S BUREAU!

  AN AGENCY TO KEEP THE NEGRO IN IDLENESS

  AT THE EXPENSE OF THE WHITE MAN.

  TWICE VETOED BY THE PRESIDENT, AND MADE A LAW BY CONGRESS

  SUPPORT CONGRESS & YOU SUPPORT THE NEGRO

  SUSTAIN THE PRESIDENT & YOU SUPPORT THE WHITE MAN.

  “Welcome to Reconstruction,” says Mr. Porter, and the class cracks up again.

  From there on out, things are less entertaining with the instructor lecturing and writing notes on the board that the students copy. He quickly skims over Reconstruction, which he intermittently refers to as the “Hard Times”—the postwar decade and a half reconfiguring the Confederacy which meant, among other things, some former slaves and free coloreds were elected to government seats—and moves on to the Gilded Age, which he seems markedly more enthusiastic about. He speaks of economic prosperity and of America’s new wealth and capitalist leadership in the world, of Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and Carnegie and Morgan, the better students shaking their hands to bring life back to them before resuming the rapid note taking, and near the end of the hour a sudden thought crosses Mr. Porter’s mind. “Who coined the term ‘Gilded Age’?”

  Silence. Students search their notes but the answer is not there. Tentatively, I raise my hand.

  “Ah! An eighth-grade visitor thinks he has the answer. Mr. . . . ?”

  “Randall.”

  “Mr. Randall!”

  “Well, Evans. Randall Evans.”

  “Mr. Randall Evans!” The class giggles. “Can you tell the class who coined the term ‘The Gilded Age’?”

  “Mark Twain.”

  “Correct! I guess you come from a pretty smart grammar school.”

  “No, I read it on my own.” Some students now turn to look at me, the attitude behind their expressions unclear.

  “You read it on your own?” Mr. Porter is clearly rubbing me in their faces. Usually this would mortify me, but today I kind of like it.

  “It was the title of the book Mr. Twain wrote with Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. They were being sarcastic about the ostentation of the era.” With the last sentence Mr. Porter is suddenly no longer smiling. He stares at me openmouthed, as do several of the students, and the bell rings. I smile and exit. Dismissal.

  I wanna run! On the steps outside the school I see my boys, Bradley and William John and Nathan and Jay Andrew. I wave. “See yaw next year!” Somebody besides Henry Lee. Variety!

  I wait until all the students are out, all the buses gone, quiet. I run. I gotta run! Around the even wing and the odd, around the auditorium and the gym. When I fly by the field, I see Emily in the distance alone, sitting on the bleachers, her books on the seat beside her. She clutches her yearbook. I do another lap, and these are big laps, each a good quarter-mile, and I’m running fast, and when I come back around she’s still there. I get faster, faster, earlier I’d snickered at those poor dolts in PE doing sprints while me and my boys sat laying down our aces, but now I could beat em all! Faster! When I come around again, Emily still clutches her yearbook, but this time she’s sobbing, her whole body heaving. Why’s she crying? Oh she must’ve glimpsed her own picture in the yearbook. Haha! My boys’d love it if I told that one! Oh boo hoo, Emily. I pass her faster, faster.

  On the next lap I slow down. I didn’t even buy a damn yearbook this spring, waste of money. After last year’s went into the garbage, along with all the clever sentiments from my classmates.

  Randall Evans, walking museum,

  Such a smidge we barely see him

  His dummy brother’s his only friend

  Though his sister’s rack’s a dividend.

  When I see Emily around the bend I’ll say something to her. How much I liked her quality of mercy. I wonder if at Roger’s school the kids get mean in yearbooks. Can colored schools afford yearbooks? Walking slow now, I turn the curve, I’ll talk to Emily. But Emily’s gone.

  I know tomorrow will be regular. Margaret Laherty’ll be the same, Suzanne Willetts. We’ll all be back home at Prayer Ridge School, and Margaret and Suzanne’ll be happy and grateful and I’ll wanna be here.

  But tomorrow’s hours away. Today! Today I sweat and I start up fast again as the teachers exit the building, then the janitors, I sweat in the low sun running, running.

  11

  I was all primed for life to go back to normal once I returned to Prayer Ridge School following High School Visitation Day. I was not prepared for just how much more normal things could get. If I had any doubts that my wondrous seven hours at Lefferd County High was all in my imagination, that in an odd parallel reality I was the confident one and Margaret Laherty and Suzanne Willetts the awkward outcasts, the proof of my marvelous Tuesday is confirmed by the extra layer of payback cruelty Suzanne has in store for me upon our homecoming Wednesday. For the rest of the week it seems I’m having my chair pulled out from under me three or four times a day, Suzanne never the direct culprit but invariably in the vicinity and always laughing the loudest. Once she nudged Margaret Laherty, trying to get her to join in the fun, and Margaret did vaguely smile but then got up and left. On Friday I’m pushed into the mud during track and field, forcing me to take a shower, something I otherwise wouldn’t dare do. When I look down, I see someone’s put all my clothes under the water
with me, and I go to my geography exam soaking wet. I hope things might calm down over the weekend, but on Monday I’m shoved into the mud again, and I come out of the shower wrapped in my towel to discover someone has stolen all my clothes. As I bawl, Mr. Shane screams at my gym locker partner, who swears he was not the guilty party, though admits that against the rules he’d given out our padlock combination to way too many of his friends to name them all. For the rest of the day, I’m attired in an old football uniform two sizes too large, making me almost as big a laughingstock as had I’d gone to class naked. At the end of the day, I go to my hall locker, quarterback ironically carved into its wood, and find my apparel lying in front of it, filthy and torn. At home, I throw up numerous times which provides legitimate excuse for me to be absent the next day, but the day after my mother, who gathers something awful happened at school but can’t get me to speak about it, insists I go. Mercifully the worst seems to have fizzled away now, either because Mr. Shane’s fury had put the vultures on the alert or because they’d simply tired of torturing me for the present.

  On Friday comes a note during civics, last period. What could the principal want with me now?

  “Congratulations, Mr. Evans. You’ve been chosen to be class valedictorian.”

  Mr. Westerly goes on to explain that it had been very close between me and my debate partner Lucille, but she had blown it that time in seventh grade when she got caught after more than two weeks faking women’s troubles to get out of PE, dropping her to a C for the class, her only non-A on record and something I heard she had sobbed over. Confidentially the principal informs me, even if Lucille and I had tied he would have given the honor to me, feeling that, especially in a time of war, it would be proper to have a young man deliver the valedictory address. I stare at him, dumbfounded, as I had the impression Mr. Westerly would hold my infamous debate rebuttal against me forever. Well frankly, neither this meeting offering me the honor nor his handshake at the end of it is quite as enthusiastic as it should be, but no matter. I can’t wait to tell Ma!

  The dismissal bell rings then, and as I am gathering my books at my locker, Henry Lee comes up to me, the first time since the whole train incident almost a month ago, and casually mentions he has some sitting man from his train set he no longer needs who would probably fit well into my Sopwith pilot’s seat, I could stop by now and look at it if I wanted. I hadn’t even mentioned my yearnings for a pilot to Henry Lee! And this sudden easing into reconciliation. Well who else did he have to play with? It occurs to me for the first time that, before I arrived on the scene, Henry Lee as an only child with perpetually busy parents had no one, not even anybody at home. It didn’t take any words from Sally for her to have made clear nanny was not in her job description, and Roger. I always wondered why Henry Lee never considered that Roger might have been more friendly had Henry Lee been more respectful, or at least polite, to Roger’s mother.

  When we walk into the kitchen, Roger is at the table doing homework as usual. He looks up, obviously surprised to see me after all this time, and nearabout smiles. In the basement, Henry Lee hands me his sitting man, which turns out to be a sitting woman, wood with red lipstick and yellow hair. “Oh yeah,” he says, though I’m sure he didn’t really forget. It does look like she might fit in my plane. “Call her Amelia,” says Henry Lee. “She can do transatlantic crossins and have accidents,” then he looks away embarrassed, maybe about bringing up the accident issue which had gotten him into trouble and led to the rupture in our friendship, or maybe about his careless reference to that lady who disappeared over the Pacific four years back, or both. Henry Lee’s trying to be nice. Whether this is temporary I don’t know, but for the moment I’m glad to be here, aware now how much I’d missed my playmate the last few weeks. Still, I decide for the future I’ll keep his whiny bossiness in check, he’s going to earn my friendship. He pulls out a board game I didn’t know he had. “Chess?” He had gotten it some Christmas but no one ever taught him how to play. We sit on the floor, and I tell him rook goes straight and bishop goes diagonal and no one mentions the silent train tracks: elephant in the room.

  When I come back up the steps, I notice Roger’s bent over the same chemistry textbook used by the students at my high school visitation. He sees I’m interested and lets me flip through it.

  “How’s he study if you have his books?”

  Roger makes this secret smile. “We got a system.” In his notebook, he has worked out some pretty elaborate chemistry equations, and this not even his official homework. There’s that thing teachers say, He’s got a good head on his shoulders but he doesn’t apply himself. That’s Henry Lee. Roger has a good head and applies himself through the stratosphere.

  Earl Mattingly just doesn’t have a good head.

  “What’s the difference if you come in a little low, Evans?” the star athlete asks me. “You’re gonna pass anyway. It’s not gonna affect your grade, the standards are pass/fail.”

  “We might go to States if Earl’s on the team next year, Randall,” chimes in Margaret Laherty, sounding more and more like some housewife desperate to keep her man. Rumor has it that at the end of High School Visitation Day, Earl walked one of the freshman cheerleaders home. “But he’s gotta pass the standards!” Margaret goes on. “Won’t you please help us?”

  The last week of May, days before graduation, is “the standards,” tests you have to pass to get beyond eighth grade. It might be said that Earl’s good looks and athletic inclination have been his downfall, as they have stood in the way of any motivation to toil outside the football field, since his eminence there has charmed everyone into finding a way to make all else somehow work out. Unfortunately, the standards go directly to the state board for evaluation where nobody’s going to know or care whether you can kick a field goal from forty yards. If Earl doesn’t pass the standards, he doesn’t go on to ninth grade, and his days of secondary school athletic glory are over before they have begun. In a town where high school football is king, it’s suddenly as if our community’s entire hope for the future precariously rests on Earl’s abilities in long division. There’s a curve of some kind with the standards, but the system is complicated. All Earl knows is that the lower the highest score, the better for him.

  Friday morning, I bring in my Sopwith, put it in my locker. Amelia did fit, and after school I’ll stop by Henry Lee’s, to celebrate the last day of school except for graduation exercises and to sigh relief that the standards are over with. The halls are quiet, the rest of the school having an end-of-year party way off in the cafeteria so they won’t disturb the exam takers. I head to the test room early and pray.

  Earl Mattingly walks in and sits right next to me. He gives me a nod. It’s bad enough he and Margaret have asked me to take some humiliating fall from grace in the name of school spirit. Does he expect I will let him copy from my test? Mrs. Vaughn from home ec has been designated to moderate our exam, the thirty of us assigned to this room, and from the time she says “Go,” I keep my paper covered.

  I finish early, turning my test over to deter any wandering eyes. Cuz guess what, Earl and Margaret? I did my damn one hundred percent best.

  I lean back in my chair. When I reflect on it, it really hasn’t been such a terrible year. Sure, the daily taunts and periodic bouts of pure torment. But there was glory too, Lucille and I will forever be the first Prayer Ridge debaters. We didn’t win but it was an honor being selected, and Mr. Hickory certainly made it clear my contribution was outstanding. And then came that very flattering note from St. Mary’s addressed to Mr. Westerly saying that, as competition progressed, their team was so indebted to Prayer Ridge who had proven among their most formidable foes, and who they hoped would consider continuing this relationship into the future. When Lucille and I were called into the office for Mr. Westerly to read aloud that missive, with Mr. Hickory beaming, even the principal seemed pleased, though I imagine next year at the outset he’ll strongly advi
se the team to avoid certain subject matter. Mr. Hickory handed Lucille and me each a copy of the letter of gratitude he had typewritten himself, with the special feel of an original since we each had our own unique Mr. Hickory typographical corrections. For the first time since the debate, Lucille smiled at me.

  This was also the year of my first best friend, if you don’t count cousin friends when I was smaller, and a teenage best friend is something extraordinary if intermittently annoying. It was the year I taught my brother to communicate, to converse and to read. The year I was chosen to be valedictorian of my graduating eighth-grade class of ninety-three students. After the exams I’ll go to Mr. Westerly and to school librarian and speech advisor Mrs. Braden with my drafted oration, the culmination of much exertion over the previous two weeks since the principal gave me the good news, for any editorial suggestions that I may incorporate before graduation Wednesday. And this was the year I had a spectacular day as a preview to high school. I still don’t know for sure what the coming September will bring. I sometimes see myself walking home from the mill at fifteen, coughing up sawdust like my father. If nothing else, I can remember Visitation Day, I can say I only had one day of high school but it sure was a splendid one.

  And now I notice that my eyes, the thoughts behind them miles away, have inadvertently landed on Earl Mattingly’s exam. Earl Mattingly also has noticed, and is glaring at me, and I look from him to Mrs. Vaughn at the front, who is staring at me a bit stunned, and I turn back to Earl, where behind his piercing eyes, I detect something like pleasure.

  “I wasn’t copying! Why would I copy offa him? My marks are higher!”

  We are in the office: Earl, me, Mrs. Vaughn, Mr. Westerly.

  “All I know is I looked up an your eyes were on my paper. Weren’t that the rules? Eyes on your own paper?” Earl turns to Mrs. Vaughn.

  “Those were the rules.” She is steadfast yet not wholly confident. She has no character history on which to base her judgments. She’s the home ec teacher. She doesn’t know the boys.