George Austin Elementary School, Tyler TX. Three weeks after James Miller’s 6
th
birthday.
The secretary had been warned that this day was coming, so she had been given specific orders. She was the only one with a window to the parking lot, so it only made sense that she would be the one to keep watch. She knew just what to do when she saw the old, red truck drive up and park in the visitors’ parking space. She was in the principal’s office before the occupants had even stepped onto the pavement. The principal, who had also been warned of this event, jumped into action. He was out the door and in front of the school faster than one would think possible, given his rather portly frame. He met the mother and child halfway down the covered sidewalk that led to the main entrance to the school. He had been given explicit instructions on what to do.
“Mrs. Miller I presume,” he said to the mother as she stepped over the curb and made her way towards the school. “I’m Principal Gaffee. I was wondering when you would be arriving.” That wasn’t true, he had been dreading her arrival, but he had pretty much known when it would be. One of the school board members knew the records clerk at City Hall, and the birth records had been patiently scanned in anticipation of this event. Lorraine was a little confused with the special attention. She had been hesitant to do this, knowing what the prevalent feelings were in town, but she figured that it would be ok in the end. She had dismissed her jitters by deciding that this is how all mothers feel when they go to register their children for school. She had been living with HS for so long that she was half oblivious to Jim’s condition. To her, everything seemed normal, and she somehow believed that everyone else felt the same way. She kept walking down the path, right up to the fat, balding man who stood in the way. Principal Gaffee was a typical teacher. He was short and fat compared to most men, and the hair had mostly left the top of his head behind, only occasionally making a return appearance as long strands that were held taut across the oily dome by judicious application of hair spray. He wore a white and blue striped dress shirt with short sleeves and a slightly off-kilter tie. The cuffs of his pants were muddy from walking in the grass behind the playground. He smiled broadly, if somewhat nervously, checked his manila envelope, and continued talking as the pair came closer.
“...and this must be little Jim,” said the principal, rubbing the boy’s head in a gesture of familiarity. “How are you doing today son?” He smiled again, but his smile appeared strained, as if he was being told a joke by a man pointing a gun at him. The child looked up at the strange, sweaty man with his large, dark eyes. He didn’t say anything. If Lorraine could be classified as nervous, then Jim would have to be called terrified. He wasn’t used to being off the farm. His parents rarely took him into town. He didn’t have much contact with other people. But he had heard about school. He knew what it was supposed to be like. As much as the TV shows he watched in the afternoons made it sound like fun, he didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to leave his mother and his toys and his solitude behind. He didn’t want to mix with a bunch of children who didn’t look like him, or act like him, or played with different toys than he did. It was all pretty standard anxiety for a six year-old. Jim knew that he looked different from most kids, but he didn’t attribute a value judgment to that, he didn’t understand what the difference meant, or how much importance to place on it.
“Principal Gaffee, I’m here to register my boy for classes. He just turned six years old. I got a letter in the mail.” She held up the piece of paper as proof of her story. “It says that I need to bring him down here to register, so here I am.” Lorraine had a certain primordial respect for principals, as do most people. People really only deal with teachers and principals as children, and at that time their authority is absolute. That fear tends to stay with a person throughout adulthood, even if the actual authority dissolves away after graduation. Somewhere deep inside Lorraine’s mind was a small child hoping to stay out of detention.
“Well, ye see, there might be a bit of a problem with that,” said Gaffee. He rubbed the back of his greasy neck with his meaty, nicotine-stained hands and looked down at the concrete. He inhaled through his teeth. “Some folks on the Board have been thinking that you may want to keep a closer eye on little Jim here than we can really provide here at George Austin. Maybe you’d consider home schooling.”
“But I got this letter,” Lorraine said dejectedly. She again held up the letter from the county clerk.
“Yeah, the letter. That was a mistake from the clerk’s office, someone over there hadn’t done their homework. I’ll take care of the clerk’s office, don’t you fret about that. There are just some people here in town that are a might uncomfortable having a child with your son’s ‘condition’ here at the school with their kids.” Beads of sweat formed on the fat man’s forehead. He wasn’t used to being so politic.
Lorraine stiffened. “What condition is that Mr. Gaffee?” said Lorraine in an indignant voice.
“You know, the whole... condition.” Mr. Gaffee was obviously uncomfortable talking about this, especially in front of the child. He waved his hands up and down hoping to give visual clues as to what ‘the condition’ was. Lorraine caught on quickly to the situation.
“Go wait in the car Jim,” she said to her child sternly. Jim Miller, happy to be free of this strange place, didn’t wait for her to confirm her request. He immediately took off in a waddly run towards the truck. “Mr. Gaffee, regardless of my son’s ‘condition’ I will have him educated. That is his right as a citizen, isn’t it?”
“umm, yes ma’am, that’s true, and I would agree with you. I wish all parents were as concerned with their children’s education as you seem to be. I admire you for that. But you see, the thing is, ... how can I put this... we’ve gotten complaints.”
“Complaints?”
“Yeah, you see there’s a lot of people here in this town, good people, who are a bit... touchy about all the ‘HS’ stuff going around. You’ve heard what they’ve been saying on TV about it. People are starting to get worried. They don’t want their children to be infected.”
“Mr. Gaffee, there is no evidence that HS can be passed on like a cold. And even so, it don’t affect people who’ve already been born, it can’t turn anybody else’s kids into... into...,” Lorraine hesitated. Just what did the HS virus turn people into?
“I understand that Mrs. Miller, I really do. If it was up to me, I would have no problem with this, but it’s not up to me Mrs. Miller. I have to report to the Superintendent and the school board and the PTA. As I said, people are pretty durn edgy about this whole thing. You’ve heard what Senator Johnston’s been saying haven’t you?”
“No, I don’t listen to Senator Johnston,” Lorraine said coldly.
“Well Mrs. Miller, the people around here do, and they’re worried, and dammit, they’ve got a right to be. Nobody knows what’s going on here, and they’re scared. I just don’t want there to be any... incidents.”
“Is that a threat Mr. Gaffee?” She stared at him. He wiped his head with his shirt sleeve. It was hot today.
“Mrs. Miller, I understand your situation, I’m a parent myself, you know, but I hope that you’ll try to see this thing from the point of view of the community. Having Jim in school is going to be disruptive. Kids aren’t going want to study, they’ll be staring at him. Parents won’t send their kids to school, teachers won’t teach him. No one wants to catch this disease Mrs. Miller and frankly I don’t blame them. And besides, I’m not just doing this for the community, I’m asking you to reconsider things from Jim’s perspective. I mean look at him, the spindly little thing. He ain’t gonna be able to play sports with those scrawny arms. He don’t have any hair. How do you think he is going to do here in school, especially with all the parents telling their kids all sorts of stories about this HS thing? If you sent him here, he’d be miserable, he’d be a pariah. A kid like that just ain’t gonna fit in, and let me tell you Mrs. Miller, kids who don’t fit in come out poorly.”
Lorraine turned and glanced back at the truck. Little Jim was sitting in the passenger seat bouncing up and down on the cushion. He looked so innocent. She lowered her eyes and turned back around, shoulders slumped in resignation. She wasn’t used to fighting for things, especially not against the perceived authority of a Principal. He did have a point about...
“I knew you’d see it my way Mrs. Miller,” said the principal, smiling again. “But I don’t want to just dump all this on you and leave you stranded. In this folder I’ve got a pile of information on home schooling, take it.” He passed the file over to Lorraine. “And if you’ve got any questions or problems, I want you to call me personally, my card’s in the folder. I might even be able to convince the Board to pay for a private tutor. We’ll get through this together Mrs. Miller. You’ll see, this is what’s best for Jim, and best for Tyler, you’ll see.”
She held the folder limply in her hand as she walked back to the truck, biting her lip to keep it from quivering, trying to maintain a brave face for Jim.
The Senate Chambers of Ray Johnston (R-NY), almost three years after his inauguration.
The rumpled figure of Senator Johnston is sitting at his desk. The only light in the room is the desk lamp. He has been there since before dusk and the loss of sunlight was too slow for him to notice enough to get out of his large padded chair and turn on the room lights. A few cars can be heard crossing the street, sloshing in the rain. The only other sound is that of a lone trumpet player eerily playing the same six bars of “Happy Days are Here Again” over and over for weary Metro riders on their way home. All of Ray’s staffers have left for the day. They were off celebrating the passage of another bill to increase funding for HS research. At this moment they are scurrying about the bars of Capitol Hill furtively flirting with each other and drinking enough courage to talk to the interns who were spending their summer shuffling papers for prestigious people.
Ray was reading over the text of the speech he was scheduled to give to the American Medical Association next week. It promised more governmental assistance for scientific research in general. Did it have enough references to HS? Did it have too many? Ray knew that he was elected as a single-issue candidate. If he had learned one thing in his years on the hill, it was that you couldn’t stay a single-issue candidate, not if you wanted to get re-elected. He didn’t want to alienate his core constituency (he chuckled gruffly at the pun), but he needed to sound more broad if he wanted to stay in the Senate and accomplish his mission. He rubbed his forehead a bit and started to make changes to the page with his pencil.
After a few minutes of scratching and erasing, he sat back in his chair. He tossed off his reading glasses and closed his eyes. It wasn’t working. He was mad at himself. Mad for becoming just like the damn bureaucrats he hated. Here he was, with the biggest threat to the human race looming on the horizon, and he was writing speeches. He did nothing. He no longer was on the front lines, defending America. Now all he did was deliver speeches imploring other people to spend their money to hire people to solve the problem. What the hell had happened to him, to his dream? The Senate was too out of the loop for his tastes. He needed something to happen, some breakthrough. The research hadn’t been going too well. The scientists kept asking for more money, the people clamored for more results. Nothing was happening. Ray wished that there was someone he could shoot to solve the problem. That was the way he had always been trained to handle things. Get out there and force the issue.
A phone is ringing. It wakes Ray from his self-incrimination. At first he didn’t think that it was for him. As a Senator, he had people answering the phone for him going on three years now. He was used to having a secretary tell him when he needed to be on the phone. After four rings, he realized that he was alone in the office. No one was going to answer the phone except him. “Well, at least this is something that I can do,” he thought as he reached for the blinking button on line 2.
“Hello?” he said cautiously into the phone. It was unusual to get a call this late. Most everyone that would call his office knew that Senators aren’t in the office after about three pm. He was so unused to phone edict that he didn’t even know the proper greeting that his office staff answered the phone with.
There were a few seconds of silence on the line. Suddenly, a furtive voice spoke, almost in a whisper, “Hi, um I want to speak to Senator Johnston.”
“This is Senator Johnston.” The Capitol Hill security staff would have had a heart attack if they had heard that. There had been briefing after briefing about not identifying yourself to potential stalkers and psychos. Of course, Ray had never bothered to attend those briefings. He had more important things to do.
“No, kidding? Is this really the Senator? Holy cow. It’s an honor to meet you Mr. Senator. I’ve been a fan of yours for years.”
“What do you want son.”
“Mr. Senator, oh geez, “ said the voice, “I can’t believe that I’m talking to you.” The boy on the other end of the line seemed a bit giddy, he giggled. Then all of a sudden, he snapped into seriousness. “Mr. Senator, I have some information for you, there’s something that you need to see. I’m a Real American sir, just like you are. That’s why I joined the Air Force sir. I want to serve my country just like you’re doing. We all respect to you sir, that’s why I’ve got to tell you something they’re covering up over here sir. I just want to be a patriot, just like you.”
The boy told Ray about the terrible secret. Ray listened intently. He wasn’t sure to believe at first, but the more the boy spoke the more it became apparent that he made sense. It was all there waiting to be broken out into the open. It really made perfect sense, thought Ray, once you think about it. Of course that’s what those morons who run the country would do in this case. President Michaels was no different than that oaf Dillon was. They were so worried about public perceptions and campaign contributions from industry that they would never release this sort of information. No one had the guts to do what needed to be done– no one except Ray Johnston. For the first time in a long time Ray felt that he could make a difference again. That he could actually do something positive. He reassured the Airman that he would do something about this information immediately.