Angry Management (16 page)

Matt Miller

If I hadn’t been so enamored of flexing my biblical scholarship muscle, I might have saved him. I was planning to run partway around the reservoir after my weight-room workout, but I got waylaid by the BattleCry kids. BattleCry is this organization of aggressive Christians who think they need to define the moral high ground for teenagers who aren’t them. They think it’s a sin to have sex if you’re not married, or if you’re gay, so they’re big on the abstinence-only approach to teenage pregnancy and even bigger into praying gay people straight. What the hell, at least they’ll get a lot of practice. I wish God would get as sick of them as I am and just fire down a lightning bolt and yell, “Shut the hell up!” They have events that fill football stadiums, with Christian rock bands and nationally known Jesus freaks shouting out the Word. Tell you what, I’d follow Jesus into the eye of a hurricane, but saying “Christian rock” is like saying “Caucasian rap.” Ain’t no such thing. I’m a lot more Chris Rock then I am Christian rock, which is probably why I don’t belong with these guys. I wish more people understood that
spirituality is private. If you have to fill football stadiums and scream out your message all the time, you’re not too confident in it.

At any rate, they missed the point of my “ministry” this morning in the gym, and as I trot out the front entrance headed for the lake, they cut me off.

“Hey, Matt.”

“Hey, Darcy, what’s up?”

“Could we talk with you for a minute?”

The closer I get to wrestling season, the more fiercely I train. I don’t like to get caught even a little bit out of shape when I hit the mat for the first time. But I can shorten my run a mile or so to take time for Darcy Zindel, who is one beatific Christian, if you know what I mean. I say, “Sure.”

“We’re having an after-school meeting at Mike’s,” she says, nodding to Mike Campbell’s house, just across the street. “Do you have a minute?”

I look down at my sweatshirt, which is doing the job for which it is named. “If you guys don’t mind a little locker-room ambiance.”

She smiles and I melt. “I think we can stand it.”

I follow her and Charles Lott to the Campbell house, noting that they’re holding hands, again giving myself leeway for two of those un-Christian thoughts: throwing
Charles into a quick takedown to make him ugly, and…well, I’ll let you guess at number two.

Inside the house I think I’ve stumbled into the Marines of Rapture recruitment center. The honcho, Walt Johns, who I guess cries louder than the other BattleCriers, tells me right off what courage it took to stand up this morning. They too are committed to the truth, and they think it was great how I snuck in the blurb for Jesus. They too think what happened to Marcus was a sin; that there is no room in the kingdom of Heaven for that kind of hate, and though they’re committed to get him to a center for scaring the queer out of him (my words, not theirs), they love him and would I like to join BattleCry because I’d be a strong voice for the Lord.

In a word, “Nope. Thanks, seriously, but not my thing. God created us all: black, white, gay, Down Syndrome, left-handers, deaf, blind, and control freaks.”

We have a short conversation in which we discuss whether or not being homosexual is a choice. Funny thing, not one of them can tell me when they made the choice to be heterosexual. So I say they might do better, and have fewer people think they were nutballs, to get a sense of who the real Jesus was, tell Darcy if she ever
comes to her senses she can find me in the wrestling room, and hit the road. Can’t have taken more than maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes total.

By the time I get to the reservoir, Marcus James is dead.

Mr. S

Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, as they say; maybe I should have done it differently. The smart thing seemed to be to go to Coach Steensland. He’s a young guy, but a hard-ass old school football coach on the field, and a guy who knows that only a small percentage of the guys who play for him will ever go on to play in college or beyond. He wants them to lead responsible, productive, well-educated lives. He’s a twenty-seven-year-old throwback, and it doesn’t take a genius to see why his kids play so hard for him.

“The Miller kid is rock solid,” he said to me in his office before practice. “I’ve tried to get him on the football field, but he’s single-minded. A wrestler first, last and always. What he said isn’t proof Marshall did it, but I can’t see him coming out of left field with his accusations this morning.”

“I don’t know him as well as you do, Coach, but I get the same sense. And your boys were pretty cavalier when Marcus showed up in class wearing the damn thing around his neck. Kind of a ‘You know we did it and we know we did it.’”

“Gotta cut this off quick,” Coach said. “I’m calling a meeting with the boys before we hit the field. I don’t want this to blow up and we’re all sitting around afterward wondering if there was something we could have done.”

He asked me to wait in his office and headed for the locker room. When he came back I could have taken his pulse from across the room. “By God, those boys are going to grow up or they won’t play another down for me!” He threw his cap into his chair.

I waited. There’s a reason his players don’t mess with him.

“Damn it!”

“What happened?”

He took a deep breath. “The same damn thing that happened in your classroom,” he said. “They blew it off, laughed until I lowered the boom. I told them I know they did it. Claimed they didn’t but it was with a wink, like, ‘No big deal, huh, Coach?’ I suspended them until further notice.”

“Whoa.”

“Marshall started to come unglued so I threatened him. By God, Simet, I don’t know where these kids get their ideas. Football is a
game
, it’s not a damned entitlement. They know that from day one if they play
for me, but the other students treat ’em like gods and they start winnin’ and it goes to their heads. Well, it is
not
happening that way on my watch.” He walked to the office window and stared into the empty gymnasium.

“You can only do so much, Coach,” I said. “You aren’t their parent.”

“I guess,” he said. “Listen, I’ve got to get onto the field. I’ve got a game to win this Friday, and I may have to do it without three of my best players. I’ll sit down with them and their folks tonight, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

I did
not
envy Coach having to sit down with any Marshalls. They’ve been staples of Cutter football for more than a decade. Most people around here can’t remember a three-year stretch when there wasn’t a Marshall on the team. And always a stud. Way I see it, nothing that happens on a football field could hurt worse than what happens in their house if they fuck up with the old man.

But Coach did not have to make that call.

My classroom phone rings. I set aside the papers I’m grading and glance at my watch: 5:21. Who would think I’d still be here this late? I’m famous for being the first teacher out of the parking lot after the last bell.

“Simet.”

“Mr. Simet. God I’m glad I caught you. Could you come up to the lake? By the boat landing? Hurry.” The voice sounds shaky, urgent.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Matt Miller, sir. Please get here quick.”

Ambulance lights flash as I crest the slight rise on the north end of town. A stretcher, Wallace James, Matt Miller, three paramedics, and a blood-soaked sheet covering the stretcher. Several yards away, Randy Mix, a city policeman, questions the Marshall gang. I slam on the brakes, leave the engine running, and sprint toward the loading dock. Wallace has gathered the blood-soaked sheet covering what I know has to be Marcus in his arms, and his back heaves with sobs. “Where’s the flag? Where’s the flag?” Matt kneels beside him, a hand in the middle of Wallace’s back.

I grip Matt’s elbow, pull him just out of earshot. “What happened?”

“Run over by a boat,” Matt says, nodding toward the police questioning Marshall, Stone, and Strickland. “Propeller-blade cuts all up his legs and back. The paramedic says he’s not sure if Marcus bled to death or if the prop cut his spine.” The three are animated, stricken, shaking heads, stomping feet. Strickland’s covers his face with his hands, yelling, “No! No! Oh, God! No!
We didn’t see him! I swear, we didn’t see him!”

“Those bastards killed him,” Matt says. “No coincidences, Mr. Simet. No accident. You know it. They killed him.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions, son,” I say. “You stand here and listen to what they say. I need to see if I can help Wallace.”

There is no help for Marcus’s grandfather. He is inconsolable, sobbing against the bloody sheet, saying his grandson’s name over and over. I can barely breathe.

The paramedics put Marcus’s body into the back of their truck, and I help Wallace in. “You need me to come, Wallace?”

He shakes his head, leans on the boat. “I don’t need nothin’ no more.”

The paramedic van rolls slowly over the hill; no light, no siren.

Matt Miller and I stand and watch it go, both listening to the police finish up with Marshall and his buddies. It was Marshall’s boat, he was driving. “Coach let us out early from practice,” Marshall says, “so we come up here to do a little fishing. Strick got this new rod and we just wanted to try it out. Swear to God, it was like we said. Fished the cove down there south of the park. Nothin’ was bitin’, so we was headed over across. Thought I hit
a log an’ it killed the engine. Looked back and didn’t see nothing, so I cranked ’er up and we headed for the other side. Swear we didn’t even know we hit him till you stopped us when we was loadin’ the boat. It was an accident, Randy. Man, I feel awful.”

Randy Mix reads his notes, looks at the boys. Ray Stone stands with no expression on his face, his hair soaked; Strickland looks distraught, pacing back and forth, shaking his head and murmuring, “No. God
damn.”

Randy glances at the water. “Swear you couldn’t see him, huh? I guess I can understand that; flat in the water.” He looks up toward the hill. “I saw him from the road, but I guess I was higher.”

“Swear to God,” Marshall says. “I didn’t see him till…well, I mean I didn’t see him.”

Matt says to me, “Those guys killed him, Mr. Simet. No other way this happens.”

“Did he tell the cop a second ago that Coach let them out of practice early? Did I hear that right?” Miller nods. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Well, he’s told at least one lie. They were suspended.”

Miller starts toward them, and I grip his shoulder. “Not yet. Let’s see if we can find out what else they lied
about. I know this feels bad, Matt. I can hardly breathe myself. But if we make accusations before we can prove them, these guys are going to walk away with a slap on the wrist.”

“But there’s no one else up here,” he says. “Not another boat, nobody in the park. There are no witnesses.”

I hold on to his shoulder, can almost feel the ache coming up from his heart. This kid is the real deal. “I see that. But all I have to do is look through my grade book to see that these guys aren’t the next wave of Mensa. No way they’re smart enough to cover all their tracks.”

“Yeah,” Matt says. “And either way, Marcus James is dead.”

“Uh-huh. Marcus is gone.”

Marcus James
is
gone. In a little under eight months, he’d have been home free, matching up that big brain of his with the professors at Stanford University, safe with his race and his sexual preference in the warm embrace of the Bay Area in Northern California. I consider the sign in Wallace’s barn.
NIGGER DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOUR ASS IN CUTTER.
1969. Well within my lifetime. I was nine. How could there be a sign at either end of town as late as that? Brown versus the
Board of Education was ruled on in 1954. The Civil Rights Bill was signed in 1963. And still it was 2008 before a black man ran for president on a major-party ticket. And he’s
half-black.

“Could I speak with Matt Miller?”

“This is Matt.”

“Hey, Matt. John Simet. How are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. Nah, I’m not doing okay. I’m going crazy. I can’t think, can’t sleep.” I hear his voice crack.

“Me neither,” I say. “Listen, Mr. Bean asked me a strange question this afternoon, sometime after the meeting you all had in his office with Dr. Nethercutt. He said you called Cutter a sundown town. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What exactly is a sundown town?”

“Uh, it’s usually a small town in the Midwest or the West that had a policy of not letting blacks live there. They had to be out before the sun went down. They had them for other races, too—like Chinese and stuff—but mostly it was blacks.”

“How do you know about them? Is that a formal name?”

“Kind of. I read it in a book called that.
Sundown Towns
. The author is a sociologist. If I remember right,
he wrote it partly because he couldn’t figure out why there were so many all-white small towns spread around the country. Like, African-Americans were mostly slaves in the South, and it seemed to him like they’d go where there was agriculture. But most of them ended up in cities. You know, like, in ghettos. Not a natural place for them to have gravitated. So, like, this guy, the historian—his name is Loewen, I think—starts investigating. Finds out there were a bunch of towns, like hundreds and probably thousands, that had policies not to let blacks live there, or to let just one or two.”

“Wow.” I’m an American history teacher and I’ve never heard of this. I mean, I know blacks ended up in the cities; I know some moved West to do some cowboying right after the war, but this is news to me. “Remind me to get the title and author from you at school tomorrow, when I have a chance of remembering. And you’re sure Cutter was a sundown town?”

“Yeah, he had it listed. He says in most of the towns, law enforcement would escort you right out to the city limits at dusk, if you were black. That is, if you were black and lucky. There were way more lynchings and beatings in the North and West than most people think.”

“Listen, Matt. You going to be okay?”

“I don’t know, sir. I can’t find a place to put this. I
tried to eat tonight and I couldn’t.” He laughs, nearly devoid of humor. “I may have to wrestle at one-twenty-one this year.”

“The only thing you can do right now is feel it,” I tell him. “If you want to scream, scream. If you want to cry, cry. I’ll be doing the same. You call if you need to.”

“I don’t know how I feel, Mr. Simet. I mean, I could cry and scream at the same time, and I gotta tell you, I’m so fucking mad I don’t know if I can hold it in. Pardon the language.”

“Don’t pardon it,” I say. “You have to be mad in the language you’re mad in. Remember, call if you need to, whether you’re sad or fucking mad.”

“Thanks, Mr. Simet.”

“Thank
you.”

“Yes, sir.”

I snap my cell shut and stare into the dark of my living room.
Sundown Towns.
That was the sign Wallace showed me today. Interesting coincidence that he and Matt brought it to my attention within hours of each other, and within hours of a time when the sun would no longer set on Marcus James’s ass at all.