Just north of Ashland, Virginia, after we had left the interstate, Antoine pulled us into a convenience store. The Sav-A-Minit. Which looked amazingly like a Git-n-Go, or a Loaf ’N Jug, or an XtraMart, not to mention the famous K collection of the Kuik-E-Mart, the Kum & Go, and the Kwik Trip. They must pay people to come up with names for these things, but they don’t pay them enough. What they should call them is the Over-Priced, or the Beer ’N Bellies, or the ever popular Krap-to-Go.
“Let me get out,” I said. “I’ll ask.”
“Nah, mon, I take care of this,” said Antoine. “You-all want anything?”
“We-all?” said Derek.
“Need to be speaking the patois down here, you want a be getting anywhere.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the patois, I was you.”
“You don’t think I can fit into this cracker town, mon?”
“Hardly.”
“Just be giving me some money,” said Antoine.
“Are you rehearsing your lines?” said Derek. “What, you going to rob the Sav-A-Minit, get away with a buck and a half?”
“Be quiet, Derek,” I said as I pulled out my wallet and handed Antoine a twenty.
“Back in flash,” said Antoine as he climbed out of the Camaro.
“They’re going to be chasing him with pitchforks and torches,” said Derek.
“You ever been out of Philly, Derek?”
“I got a cousin in Chicago.”
“You visit him?”
“Why would I want to do something like that?”
“You should maybe travel a bit, see the world, broaden your horizons.”
“My horizons, they broad enough.”
“I don’t think so. Things aren’t what you might imagine outside of the city. People are pretty much okay all over.”
“For you, maybe, with your suit and all.”
“If that’s what you think, then get one of your own. Probably cost less than those sneakers.”
“Yours, maybe. But nah, man, can you see me in a rig like that?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Because I got style,” he said.
Antoine came ambling out of the Sav-A-Minit without pitchforks and torches in his wake. He held a plastic bag loaded down with cans and junk. He climbed into the Camaro and tossed a Coke to me in the backseat and another to Derek.
“We need a keep going straight and then turn to the right,” he said. “It not so hard. John Paul Jones High School. Strange territory, hey, Derek?”
“I got my degree,” said Derek as he popped open his can. “Still, I didn’t need to show up every day to know they wasn’t nothing there they could teach me. So what we doing in a high school, bo?”
“Not we,” I said. “Just me. I’ll take care of it from here on in. You guys can head out to the park or something. I’ll call you when I need you.”
“What are you going to be doing?”
“First I thought I’d pee, seeing as sitting in the back of this car has near ruptured my bladder,” I said. “Then I’m going to start a discussion about Shakespeare.”
33
“You just can’t wander the halls of a high school willy-nilly anymore,” said Mrs. Larrup, vice principal for discipline at John Paul Jones.
When she had discovered me in the hallway on my way to the library without a pass, she hauled me off to her office. It made me feel seventeen again. And with her short gray hair and meaty forearms, Mrs. Larrup had my full attention.
“I don’t care if you are a lawyer,” she said. “In fact, that’s a strike against you in my book.”
“You’ve had a bad experience, I expect.”
“More than one lawyer has tried to tell me how to do my job. Let’s see them handle fifteen hundred teenagers and their dramas.”
“Which is precisely why I’m here. I represent a student.”
She pulled back at that, her lips setting into two sharp lines of discontent.
“A former student,” I said. “One who only has wonderful memories of John Paul Jones High School and the sterling faculty and administration that work here.”
“Really,” she said, brightening considerably.
“Yes. Her name is Julia Denniston, but that’s her married name. As a student she was Julia Crenshaw. She graduated about twelve or thirteen years ago.”
“I remember Ms. Crenshaw,” she said. “How could I forget, after what happened?”
“What are we talking about? What happened, exactly?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Carl, I’m not at liberty to disclose these things.”
“That’s all right, I’ll just ask Julia. What I’ve come for, actually, is to find someone else. A classmate, I believe. He was in the school play with her. Do you remember when they performed Romeo and Juliet?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, with a heavy sigh. “That was it. A disaster.”
“Really?”
“Sometimes, in the midst of great challenges, our students rise to the occasion. And sometimes, I’m sorry to say, they do not.”
“I’m looking for the student who played Romeo. His name was Terrence, I believe.”
“Terrence Tipton.”
“Yes, that’s it. Terrence Tipton. Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“No. None.”
“Does his family still live around here?”
“I don’t know. He had a brother who went through here before him, but Terry was the last of the Tiptons in this school, which was a relief, actually.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Franklin Tipton was just your basic troublemaker, problems with his studies, fights, drinking, the usual hardhead who is just putting in time. But Terry was a-” She stopped her reverie, looked at me with the steely gaze one gives to a student about to pick up a week’s detention, or to a lawyer asking one question too many. “I don’t think there is anything more I should say, especially since, by your own admission, you don’t represent Mr. Tipton.”
“You’re right, and you’re being quite prudent. The drama teacher who put on Julia’s play, is she still around?”
“That was Mr. Mayhew’s production. His only one, thankfully. He retired a few years ago.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“I’m not prepared to disclose that.”
“That’s fine, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”
“You’re going to find him and talk to him anyway.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll tell him you’re coming. You know, we’re very proud of our alumni. We have state senators, authors. One of our students played for a few years in the NBA. How is Julia doing?”
“Not so well,” I said.
“It was a disaster,” said Jeremiah Mayhew. “I should never have gone ahead with it. I always hated that play. Too tricky.”
“What do you mean, tricky?” I said.
“If I had to do Shakespeare, I would have done Henry IV, Part One. The fight at the end, big cheers when Prince Hal rams Hotspur through with his sword. Blood and gore and victory, that’s what the people want. But Mrs. Pincer had already decided on Romeo and Juliet. The booklets had been ordered and construction on the scenery begun. And so Romeo and Juliet it was.”
“Then what went wrong?”
“Everything,” he said. “Every damn thing. A play like that, with a romance at the core, it all depends on the chemistry. You got to have chemistry. And you can’t fake it. It’s either there or it’s not. And with those two we had it. But when you get down to it, last thing you want with kids like that is chemistry. What else could you expect but trouble?”
Jeremiah Mayhew was not what I expected of a drama teacher. He was burly and bald, he wore a T-shirt and shorts and sneakers with his sanitary socks pulled high. I was surprised there wasn’t a whistle around his neck, and I suppose he was, too. He had been the football coach at John Paul Jones High School and a health teacher at the time of Julia’s Romeo and Juliet. But he’d acted a bit in college, had made that known to the principal, and so when Mrs. Pincer, the regular drama teacher, took ill, he was recruited to take over the spring production.