Charles Jefferson was driven to his door by the city bus, while a busload of amazed passengers looked on. As he was getting off the bus in front of his house, Jefferson turned to the driver.
“Now that wasn’t very far out of your way, was it?”
Charles had barely set his books down, of course, when he was visited by two members of the Ridgemont Police Department. Jefferson denied the entire incident, but charges were still filed by the city bus company. He was barred from every RTD service, but that was just fine with Jefferson anyway.
The next day an office worker appeared at the door of Jefferson’s English class with an office slip. When an office worker appeared at the door it could mean anything. It could mean a telephone call, it could mean an emergency, a referral, a rich uncle who died and left you a ton of money. It could mean anything, or it could mean you.
Of all office slips, the worst was a green slip. It meant that a student was headed directly to the front office, room 409, to see Vice-Principal Ray Connors. This was serious shit. A yellow slip meant Principal Gray wanted to see you—big deal, he was retiring at the end of year—and a blue slip was a phone message. It didn’t even get you out of class.
“Okay,” said Mrs. George, the English teacher. “Oh, my goodness, it’s a green slip. Charles Jefferson, you need to go to the front office to see Mr. Connors right now. Here, take this with you.”
Jefferson rose from his seat and calmly walked the quarter mile down the halls to room 409. The halls full of white kids definitely parted when they saw him coming. He liked that. Jefferson put his head down and studied the floor tiles along the way. Light green. Dark green. Light green. Dark green.
Charles was ushered into the office of Ray Connors.
“Charles,” Connors announced, “I give up on you. I know you too well. I throw my hands up. So what we’re going to do today is take you on a little walk to meet someone new. I believe you’ve heard we have a new dean of discipline . . .”
Jefferson nodded.
“I’d like to introduce you to him.”
He led Charles Jefferson down the halls to the office of Lt. Lawrence “Larry” Flowers.
“Lieutenant Flowers . . . this is Charles Jefferson.”
There were two posters on the office wall. One was of a waterfall, with white calligraphy: “You do your thing/And I do mine/And when we meet/it’s beautiful.” The other was of a cat hanging upside down from a steel baton. It said: “Hang in There, Baby.”
And in the middle was Flowers himself. He had mellowed a bit from his first days at the school. Flowers had at first ripped into Ridgemont like a hungry dog. He sealed up the hole in the fence behind the baseball field, even tried to seal off the Point. Kids had ripped the access hole right back open with wire cutters, but the fact still remained fresh in many minds—He tried to seal up the Point.
Worse yet, Flowers had reinstated a Ridgemont policy that had gone out of practice in the sixties, presumably when students still retaliated with Molotov cocktails. Flowers had brought back The Student Parking Ticket. Student parking tickets, while not a valid city ordinance, still cost a kid money.
If you came back to your secret parking spot and saw an S.P.T. flapping on your windshield, that was still two bucks you had to hand over to Ridgemont. Lieutenant Flowers gave out 75 parking tickets in his first month at the school.
Lieutenant Flowers sat there now in front of Charles Jefferson, wearing a brown paisley shirt, brown polyester pants, and a light yellow sweater. Pinned on the sweater was the everpresent gold badge.
“Hello, Charles,” said Lt. Flowers.
Charles Jefferson nodded.
“I want you to know, Charles that I am not a disciplinarian. I’m an independent man. I don’t call parents. I just like kids coming to me, opening up and sharing what’s going on. Letting me know how I can help them. I really don’t like being known as a disciplinarian.”
Flowers got up and closed his office door.
“I feel I can be open with you,” he said. “I know about drugs, Charles, and violence and the street. I know about being black. I worked at a junior high school in Chicago for seven years. I may look mean, but I am not a mean man.”
Charles Jefferson nodded.
“I feel the bottom line with any problem student—if I may be frank—is ‘I love you.’ We all want to feel love. Very few of us, Charles, are getting as much as we want. We’re all beggars, and our cups are empty, Charles. Maybe there’s only a few coins rattling around at the bottom . . . but that is it, baby”
Charles stared straight ahead.
“Baby, you are kissing that scholarship goodbye! And for what? To get a city bus to give you a ride home? Charles, we all have restrictions and taboos keeping us from getting what we want, and it’s the same thing. We’re all human beings, alive and magnificent . . . you are a magnificent student, and ball player . . . and baby, you’re about to kiss that scholarship goodbye! Now what do you have to say to that?”
“Fuck you,” said Charles Jefferson.
High Noon at Carl’s
Brad Hamilton reported for work as usual on Monday night at Carl’s Jr. He knew instantly that something was wrong.
“Hamilton,” said Dennis Taylor, “I need to speak with you about something.”
“Yo.” Brad had been setting up his fryer.
Dennis Taylor’s voice was neither friendly nor accusing. “Brad,” he said, “there was some money taken during your shift last night. A hundred-and-twenty-five dollars. We don’t know where it’s gone, but we do know this. We know who took it . . . and there was a witness. Do you know anything about this?”
“I don’t know anything about it, Dennis.”
There was a long pause.
“Jesus,” said Brad, “don’t look at me.”
But they were looking at him. There was a small cluster of the other employees, his golf-cap buddies, watching silently.
“Let me ask you this,” said Dennis Taylor.
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“Hamilton,” said Dennis Taylor, “Carl’s has the voluntary program of a polygraph test. Would you be willing to submit to one of those tests and have this same conversation with me at that office?”
“You mean a lie detector test?”
“Yes.”
“You bet,” said Hamilton. “We all would take a test.”
“Okay,” said Taylor. “We’ll make an appointment for you tomorrow at the Harris Detective Agency, the agency that Carl’s uses in these cases; it’s located down at Third and Central. I’ll give you the card, and I’ll see you there tomorrow at, say, four.”
Hamilton looked at his friends. To his horror, they, too, were neither friendly nor accusing. They were more like a crowd of people across the street from a car wreck. They said nothing. Not David Lemon. Not Gary Myers. Not Richard Masuta. Not even Lisa. Brad felt it first as nausea. He was so angry, so confused, that only later would he try to remember who looked the guiltiest of the bunch. Who could have been a witness to his robbing Carl’s? Carl’s—his own turf?
“Aren’t you guys gonna say anything?”
They said nothing. None of them.
“You think I took that money, Dennis? You think I took that money?” Brad yanked off his Carl’s hat and apron and the country-style string tie. “Then you can SUCK SHIT because I QUIT!”