Steve chuckled and Mary sat back.
“Tonight,” Principal Warner said, “we’re inviting you to take a look into the future of technology, the future of education. The PCo is an integral part of that future. So without much ado, I’d like to introduce to you a representative of The Phone Company. Harcum Middle School, please welcome Graham Fenstermacher!”
As the crowd cheered, Steve noticed JJ looking back toward the metal doors. The Disney girl from Language Arts, Anastasia’s little sister, Meg, shut the door behind her as quietly as possible, then looked to the stands.
She seemed to lock eyes with JJ for a moment, and JJ kind of shrugged. Meg ended up leaning against the wall like everyone else who’d shown up late.
Steve suppressed a smile as he turned back to the presentation. It was good to see his son interested in a smart one. He felt kind of bad for stealing Meg’s seat.
“Hello, Cracked Rock!” Graham said as he took to the floor. The entire gym shook when the crowd returned his greeting.
Steve didn’t join in. He was too busy staring at Graham. Bluetooth earpiece, neatly layered haircut, blond, blue eyes, slick suit. And tall. Probably as tall as the man who’d appeared at the cemetery in place of Harcum’s angel.
Except now he wore a red pocket square.
The school had fitted Graham with a lapel mic, and he’d been holding his hands behind his back this whole time. Now he brought out his right hand, and Steve sat forward.
“You are here,” Graham said, holding up an old black telephone receiver. The cord spiraled around behind his back. “You’re living in the past. But you want to be there,” he added, pointing the receiver at some indeterminable point ahead of himself. “Not in the present with everyone else, but in the future.”
He started walking forward, only to be jerked back. His left hand was wrenched out of hiding as the old rotary telephone base pulled taut at the end of its line.
“Ah, but your past is holding you back.” Graham threw the whole phone. The bells inside it clanged as the base struck the polished floor beneath the basketball hoop. “You need to forget your past.”
Forget our pasts? Steve thought. He couldn’t wait to nail Graham with a question about the graveyard. And USconn. These people didn’t need to forget, they needed it fresh in their minds.
“PCo is here to help you move forward,” Graham said. “But first, a little about our own past.” He began to walk, engaging the crowd from inside the three-point line, hands once again folded behind his back. “We used to call ourselves The Phone Company, and we’ve been involved in telephony since the beginning.” He reached into his sleeve and began to pull. Out came a loose bundle of thick, black cords, their ends all wriggling this way and that so that he looked like some sort of octopus.
“Cables,” Graham said, offering the end of one cable to Principal Warner. The principal held onto it, and it kept spooling out of Graham’s sleeve as he walked to the bleachers and offered another end to a seventh grader sitting on the bottom riser. “Copper, aluminum, fiber optics.” Graham walked to the stands on the other side. “We are the black lines overhead. We are the lines underground. The wires that come into your house, into your living rooms, into your bedrooms.” He offered another cable, and another, spreading his web throughout the crowd. “Every time you pick up a phone—a landline, a cell phone—it all at some point travels through our lines.”
He ended up back by the basketball hoop, standing at the nexus of cables splaying out from him to different points in the gym. “We are the infrastructure of telephony. We are what connects you. We interconnect you. When you reach out and touch someone, we touch them, too.”
With a tug, Graham pulled all the cables out of the hands of his audience, and the black things slithered away across the floor, reeling back into his sleeve.
“Wow,” Mary McPhail whispered into Steve’s ear. He nodded, brows raised. Graham must have had a great tailor; his suit didn’t bulge in the slightest, despite the bulk he was obviously schlepping around.
“Flash-forward to today,” Graham said, continuing to walk. “We are PCo. And we want to show you that it all connects.” He picked up the black rotary phone, unplugged it, and took a few steps beyond the free-throw line, toward the center circle of the court. “We want to introduce you to the future.”
Graham held up the old phone, smiling, never blinking, engaging the crowd—then stooped down and smashed the phone against the floor again and again until the black case cracked and pieces started to fly.
Steve glanced at the people sitting next to him. He even craned around to consult Mary McPhail. They all looked on with wonder as Graham stomped on the phone with his black leather shoes, once, twice, three times, bells clanging with each stamp, until finally he had reduced the base to a pile of wires, plastic shards, rotary dial, and bells lying there on the floor.
Graham scooped up some of the pieces and stood, closing his hand over the debris. He looked to the crowd, and with a flourish, the pieces vanished and something else appeared in his hand. Something sleek and black. A touchscreen that caught the light.
“This,” he said, “is the PCo Tether, the smartest phone in the world. I—”
The lights went out. Steve could actually hear them powering down, like an engine. A murmur shot through the crowd, and the principal shouted, “Everyone, please stay calm!”
That’s when the fire alarms started to ring and flash, and panic broke out.
CHAPTER 7
Bill peered over his steering wheel, over all the cars at HMS on the hill. He liked citadels. Fact was, Bill liked anything to do with strategy. He liked the fact that chess had castles. But for Bill, it was always the citadel.
That’s what HMS was.
Just huge walls up on a hill.
On the school flag was the Noble Miner.
But why was it that each time Bill mounted this paved drive, he felt like the invading force?
Cars lined the slope up to the elevation of the middle school. Bill tried to identify any strange vehicles, or any registered to known offenders. A few of the license plates he’d memorized.
There was Mr. Disney’s, Mrs. Anderson’s, Mr. Hill’s. He didn’t see any McCurdys, or the creepy red work truck that didn’t belong to anyone. But there was the van registered to Cathy at the diner. Bill recognized the rust patch in the shape of a heart.
So what that told Bill was the townspeople had shown up last. Cars belonging to school employees would be parked in the center of it all. That’s what that told Bill.
But where was the getaway car?
Where was the driver?
A man in a black sweater, ski mask, and black pants and shoes came dodging between Cathy’s van and the line cook’s Camaro.
“Shit!”
Bill braked.
His jeep barely missed the masked figure, who did an awkward twirl away from the winch and guard, followed by an equally awkward prance across the road.
With a final fawn-legged leap over a low wooden fence, the runner fled across a field toward the shrub-choked hills.
Bill engaged his parking brake and reached for the door. Another deputy, Caruthers, ran by, already in hot pursuit.
“The school!” Caruthers shouted at Bill, waving him away as he dashed toward the fence.
Bill’s eyes shot back to HMS on the hill. Flaming arrows, boiling oil, and other hot things were once used along citadel walls. Bill saw smoke and wondered, What the hell?
Deputy Caruthers, so busy waving him that way, nearly ran into the wooden fence. He recovered nicely, then fell flat on his face in the taller grass. Caruthers got up and continued the chase.
“Shit,” Bill said again.
He kept climbing the hill toward the citadel and the smoke.
* * *
The fire alarms flashed across the polished floor of the court, and an automated recording boomed over the loudspeakers. Principal Warner yelled into the mic for everyone to please remain calm.
&n
bsp; “JJ!” Steve said over the din, reaching for his son, squinting and nauseous in the panicked, overhead blinking of the lights. He knew immediately when he saw JJ that his son was having a seizure.
“What the hell!” Richard Clement cried out. Steve knew the poor boy had never seen this, his friend spasming on the floor and choking on his own tongue. It hadn’t happened in years. All Steve could do was cushion JJ’s head and try to keep his son from kicking people off the stairs ahead of him.
And just as other concerned citizens, parents, and weirdos were standing, shouting, and looking around in the blinking confusion, just as Steve pieced together what the automated recording was saying—
—the alarm stopped and the lights snapped back on.
The entire gym fell silent.
“There’s a saying,” Graham began, and Steve looked to the basketball court where the PCo rep had smashed the phone. But the rep wasn’t there. And JJ was fine. No seizure. Steve hadn’t even moved to help him.
“They say any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Graham said, excusing his way down the far bleachers.
The people there parted for him, looking as confused as Steve felt. He had no clue how Graham had pulled off this trick, this transported man. He had no clue how JJ could be fine when, seconds ago, he’d been beating the back of his head against a metal riser.
Graham Fenstermacher’s leather shoe clopped as he stepped down onto the gymnasium floor, still holding up the sleek little phone, still smiling, always smiling.
“That was only a drill. Brought to you by the PCo Tether.” Graham waggled the phone, which gave a wink in the steady light. “It’s not technology.”
* * *
Bill pulled up to HMS in his jeep. The sprinklers in the lawn were popping up and down, shooting off errant jets of water. All the exterior lights of the school, including the sodiums in the parking lot, blinked on and off.
He could hear the loudspeaker booming inside the building, and he remembered That Day, the screams and the whispers, the echoing.
Suddenly it all stopped, it all stilled.
Over by the back doors of the gym, Bill saw the tour bus and the source of the smoke. He parked his jeep, drew his gun, and ran over to help.
* * *
To a standing ovation, Graham and several assistants handed out new Tethers, already activated. Every student and school employee received his or her own phone. Steve took his, and the camera lens stared at him with its little black fish eye.
When someone from the exuberant crowd cried out, “No contract?” Graham shot them a wink and said, very flippantly, “It’s magic!”
With that, he said goodnight and bowed out, back to whatever carnival he’d crawled out from.
Principal Warner took the floor and managed to get everyone calmed down enough to listen up. He talked about how the school would be incorporating this new magic.
Steve sat there with a look of perpetual disgust. He couldn’t believe it. Everyone loved it. He looked down at his Tether and didn’t know whether to throw it or turn it on.
“And I’m happy to announce that we’re lifting the school’s No Cell Phone policy,” the principal was saying. “We’ll be delivering all of our updated textbooks, all on our brand-new Tethers, courtesy of PCo. And we’ll also be implementing their mobile learning platform in many of our classes as well. It’s all OER, people, all educational Creative Commons content, absolutely free.”
Steve couldn’t stop shaking his head. Apparently, HMS had enrolled in a federally funded pilot program, one of a thousand schools to which PCo had donated phones. The feds and Department of Labor had apparently augmented the whole program with a grant. And the strangest thing was Steve hadn’t heard a word about it before today. Just like the public hadn’t heard about moving the graveyard.
“So,” Principal Warner said, “the Tether will not only improve the education of our children, it will ensure their safety. This school, more than most, knows the importance of safety in no-gun zones.”
Steve’s hand shot up in the air. Principal Warner looked his way, but quickly averted his eyes and kept talking.
“Excuse me,” Steve said.
Warner held out a hand. “Please, if you have any questions, we’ll take them at the—”
“No,” Steve said, standing up. “Now.”
* * *
A tall blond man in a white dress shirt and black chauffeur’s cap stood next to the tour bus, staring at a burnt rag on the ground. He’d sprayed it with a fire extinguisher from the bus. White powder smothered it and stained the pavement all around.
“What happened here?” Bill asked, gun trained at the pavement. Over the smoke and the alkaline air of sodium bicarbonate, he could smell petrol.
“I caught him lighting the rag,” the chauffeur said, pointing at the gas tank door. The little hatch hung open and black soot stained the panel above it, ringed with white-powder stains from the extinguisher.
“Did you get a good look?” Bill asked.
The chauffeur’s blue eyes had glazed semi-gray with shock. “No. He had a mask. He ran that way.”
Bill nodded and looked back down the paved drive. After almost hitting the man in the mask, Bill had spotted that creepy red pickup from the dump, parallel-parked beside the road, trapped between a rock and a half-ton truck.
The bed of the truck was empty except for Barksdale sitting there, ears perked.
From here on the hill, Bill couldn’t see the truck or his deputy. No masked lunatic, either. No Barksdale.
“My name’s Graham, by the way.” The chauffeur offered his gloved hand.
Bill shook with him, but his eyes went to the gym. “They all right in there?”
The chauffeur blinked. “Who?”
Bill nodded and started toward the doors.
He could already hear the shouting.
* * *
“I want to know who made this decision,” Steve said. “Why weren’t the teachers consulted?”
“Mr. Gregory, please—”
“Are you saying we’re all getting updated textbooks?”
Many of the faculty applauded. It wasn’t the kind of reaction Steve wanted.
“Yes, yes,” he shouted over the clapping. “I agree that’d be wonderful, but right at the beginning of the school year? My entire curriculum is based on my texts. Sure, they’re old books, they need updating, I totally agree with that, but . . .”
“Amen,” Mary McPhail muttered behind him.
“But do we even get a choice in selecting the new texts? I mean, I don’t want the government dictating openly-licensed content to me simply because they’re pulling the strings of this whole thing.”
Another mutter behind him: “Good point.”
Principal Warner kept patting the air with his hand as if telling Steve to sit down. “Mr. Gregory, those are great questions. I think you’ll agree they’re better suited to a different venue, don’t you think?”
“You could have just consulted the faculty in the first place. All these questions could already be answered.”
“We did consult faculty,” Warner replied.
“Yeah?” Steve held up his hands in a giant shrug. “Who?”
This time, Mary McPhail cleared her throat and wouldn’t meet Steve’s eyes when he shot her a look.
“A committee of teachers was involved,” Warner boomed through the loudspeaker. “But that’s irrelevant. You could’ve come to the meeting with the board, it’s been approved.”
“Okay,” Steve said. “So, what if I refuse to teach out of the new book?”
Warner sighed. He tried to do it away from the mic, but everyone still heard it. “If you’re seriously concerned about it, Steve, why don’t you come to my office and we can determine what to do with you? What do you say?” Warner turned sharply to the other bleachers. “Now—”
Steve wasn’t finished with him, despite the subtle threat.
“If we really wanted to improve education and safety, why didn’t we pass the levies? I mean, no one here thought an extra property tax was worth the protection it would’ve afforded our kids? We could’ve had metal detectors, with extra security to staff them.”
A few people booed at that. “Talk about an invasion of privacy!” one of the mill workers shouted.
Steve waved them down. “I know, I know. You’re all afraid of an Orwellian state. So is Marvin the Martian.”
That got a few chuckles from his colleagues and a few scattered townspeople.
“I’m just saying. That levy would’ve created at least two jobs under the sheriff’s office. And it would’ve kept our kids safe. But how’d we vote instead?”
“What do you know about keeping our kids safe?” someone from the other bleachers called out. Steve recognized the voice. Kelli Anderson. “You weren’t even there that day, what do you know?”
Steve tried not to pause too long, tried not to let the question hang there.
That Day.
He had been trying to avoid this. Every time someone evoked the town euphemism, things quickly devolved into rants and tears and sometimes fights.
The wounds of the town had never really healed to scars. They had just grown infected and tended to pus up any time someone poked or prodded. If you didn’t lose a kid, they resented you, envied you. If you worked for the sheriff’s office, they blamed you. And if you worked for the school, they wished you had died, too. This was what Bill referred to as the Pitchfork Mafia.
Steve understood them, forgave them. Some of those kids from That Day had been in his class. He’d known quite a few of them since they were little. At least three of them had come to Sarah’s slumber parties. Mr. Diehl, Steve’s substitute, had taken three bullets to the chest.
The Phone Company Page 8
