The Essay A Novel (11 page)

Mr. Speer had not congratulated me after I had won the Alpha & Omega essay contest the previous day and I tried to convince myself that was the reason for the summons. Perhaps he was going to slap me on the back and give me an “Atta boy, Jimmy Lee, you've made us proud.” Of course, I knew better. My name had been Jimmy Lee Hickam long enough to know that a call to the principal's office was never good news.

I swapped out of my gym clothes and, still perspiring, reported to the office. Mrs. Green, the school secretary, opened the door to Principal Speer's office and poked her head inside. This was followed by a few seconds of inaudible conversation, and then she pushed open the door for me to enter. Principal Speer was seated at the end of a mahogany conference table that was gouged and dull with wear. Mrs. Gloria Johanessen, the freshman-sophomore English teacher, and Ernestine Wadell of the Alpha & Omega Literary Society were seated to his right, neither of them making eye contact with me.

“Sit down, Jimmy Lee,” Principal Speer said, nodding toward an empty chair to his left, and giving not the first indication that I was there to be congratulated. On the corner of the table near his left hand was the blue notebook that contained my essay. With great deliberateness, he picked up the notebook and held it in front of me like a prosecutor displaying a murder weapon to the jury. “We want to talk to you about your essay.”

“Yes, sir. What about it?”

“We have some concerns.”

I shrugged. “What kind of concerns?”

He nodded toward Mrs. Johanessen, who passed a manila folder to him. He pulled out a packet of stapled papers that I assumed were my transcripts. “It seems that you barely passed junior English— two C's, two D's, and two F's.” He looked at me as if waiting for an explanation.

“Yes, sir,” I said, not offering any detail.

“And yet, you created this essay for the contest that is nearly flawless in its grammar and tells a very compelling story.” It wasn't a question, so I didn't respond. “Who wrote this?”

“I did.”

“Did you have help?”

“Help? What kind of help?”

Mrs. Johanessen asked, “Did someone else write it before the contest so that you could just recopy it?”

Prickly chills ran up my spine and spread into my rib cage. “No.”

A faint grin pursed her lips. “You're perspiring a great deal, Jimmy Lee. Are you nervous?”

“No. I just came from gym class.”

My answer wasn't important. It was the question she wanted Mr. Speer and Mrs. Wadell to remember.
You see he's sweating, don't you? Liars always sweat when they get caught. Look at him. Look at the perspiration streak down his face.
She folded her hands in front of her on the table and said, “Well, Jimmy Lee, doesn't it strike you as a bit odd that someone who could barely pass his junior English class suddenly wins the school's biggest writing contest?”

“Are you accusing me of cheating, Mrs. Johanessen?”

“We just want to know if you had help. That's all.”

“Uh-huh, that would be called cheating, wouldn't it? You're accusing me of cheating.”

Mrs. Wadell cleared her throat and said, “Mr. Hickam, we just want to make sure that your essay was completely your own. This is a marvelous essay, but it is imperative that it be original work. That is clearly stated in the rules of the competition.”

Anger was replacing the timidity with which I had entered the room. I pointed at the booklet and said, “Mrs. Wadell, that is my work. No one else helped me, not one bit.”

“Jimmy Lee, are you sure you want to go through with this?” Mrs. Johanessen asked. “The county essay competition is a lot of pressure.”

“Pressure doesn't bother me, Mrs. Johanessen. The only thing that bothers me is people thinking I cheated or that I'm not good enough to represent their school just because my last name is Hickam.”

“That's not what we meant, Mr. Hickam,” Mrs. Wadell said apologetically.

“Maybe that's not what you meant, ma'am, but that's exactly what they meant. Believe me, I've been a Hickam long enough to know what's going on here. Mrs. Johanessen's upset because I won the contest and her daughter won't get to compete in the county competition.”

I knew I had stepped over the line with that comment. Mrs. Johanessen said nothing; she just peered at me with a hateful look. When she was angry, Mrs. Johanessen had a habit of squinting her left eye, like a hunter taking bead on a quarry, and her lips drew up in a pucker. At that moment, she was at full squint and pucker. Mrs. Wadell now had beads of sweat appearing on her upper lip and a tiny rivulet rolling down the side of her orange face. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Principal Speer said, “Given your history of poor performance in the classroom, Jimmy Lee, I'm afraid that in order for you to compete in the county competition you're going to have to prove that this essay is your original work.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Before you arrived we agreed that you would have to write a second essay under the observation of Mrs. Johanessen and Mrs. Wadell. If you create an essay of equal quality, we'll accept this as your original work.”

“So, you've already decided that I cheated.”

“We're just trying to be fair,” he said.

“No, you're not. You're just trying take away my award. You would never ask one of the girls to rewrite their essays.”

“Both of the other girls passed freshman, sophomore, and junior English with near perfect scores,” Mrs. Johanessen said, the faint grin returning to her lips. She produced another blue notebook from the stack of papers in her lap and slid it across the table to me.

Principal Speer said, “We believe this is the only way we can be fair to everyone who . . .”

Outside of some out-of-shape linemen struggling through summer conditioning drills, I have never in my life seen a face the shade of maroon as that of Miss Amanda Singletary when at that moment she barged into Principal Speer's office. She pushed the door with the flat of her hand and I thought it was going to come off its hinges. The warning-light red blotches scarred her neck and the muscles reaching down into her clavicle strained like bridge cables. She asked, “What is this all about?” She looked at the adults, leaning forward like a dog at the end of its leash, her knuckles digging into the mahogany table; Mrs. Johanessen and Mrs. Wadell looked at Principal Speer. Mrs. Wadell was now perspiring worse than me.

Before he could speak, I said, “They think I cheated on my essay, and Mr. Speer said I have to write another one before they'll let me compete in the county competition.”

Miss Singletary's fisted hands went to her hips and she said, “Absolutely you will not. And, since I oversee the competition, why wasn't I consulted on this?” No one answered. I could see the muscles in Miss Singletary's jaw working beneath the skin. She stared hard at Mrs. Johanessen and said, “Of all the . . .” She stopped, took a breath and put her hand on my shoulder. “Wait for me out in the attendance office, Jimmy Lee.”

I scraped my books off the table and went to the attendance office just outside of the principal's office. It was a futile attempt to shield me from the ensuing conversation; I could hear every word through the closed door. Miss Singletary said, “Mrs. Johanessen, I am outraged that you would attempt to pull a shameless stunt like this. And Mr. Speer, I'm even more outraged that you would sanction it!”

“Miss Singletary, I would strongly suggest that you not forget that I am the principal of this school.”

“Then I would strongly suggest that you start acting like it. I am the teacher in charge of this competition, and I will not have my authority or the integrity of the papers submitted called into question.”

“This is a very important competition with scholarship money at stake,” Mrs. Johanessen said. “We believe that the school might be better represented if . . .”

“If what? If we were represented by someone whose last name isn't Hickam? Let's see, if Jimmy Lee doesn't go, then East Vinton's representative would be the runner-up. Who was that? Oh wait, now I remember, it was your daughter, wasn't it, Mrs. Johanessen?”

Mrs. Wadell attempted to speak, but was cut off by Principal Speer, who said, “ We just think it might be better for everyone concerned if someone more appropriate represented our school.”

“More appropriate? Did you just say, ‘more appropriate?' Of all the unmitigated gall. I don't give a damn what that boy looks like or what his last name is. Jimmy Lee Hickam won that contest, and he won it fair and square.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Mrs. Johanessen sniffed.

“Do you have proof that he cheated?”

“I have his transcripts from his previous English class and . . .”

“That's not what I asked you.”

“No, I don't have
proof.
I don't think proof is required. All one needs to see that Jimmy Lee didn't write this is a little common sense.” A faint smile creased Mrs. Johanessen's lips.

There was a moment of silence before Miss Singletary continued, “You better wipe that smirk off your face before I help you.”

I wanted to stand up and cheer.

“That will be enough of that kind of talk, Miss Singletary,” Principal Speer said.

Mrs. Johanessen said, “His grades were abominable in my freshman and sophomore classes, and I know he struggled last year. In fact, it would appear that his passage to senior English was probably a gift. Then, miraculously, he wins the essay contest with a nearly flawless paper. Does that make any sense to you?”

“A lot of students entering my junior English class struggle, but rather than write them off as idiots, I'm more inclined to believe it was a lack of preparation during their freshman and sophomore years.”

The gloves were off. Miss Singletary had lunged for the jugular.

“Again, we don't need this kind of talk,” Principal Speer said. “Simply, we're here to discuss the validity of Jimmy Lee's paper and whether he should be the one to represent East Vinton in the county competition.”

“Obviously, he should not,” Mrs. Johanessen said.

“You're not taking this away from him,” Miss Singletary countered. “If you try, I'll go to the superintendent and if that doesn't work, I'll go to the newspapers.”

“You are treading on dangerously thin ice,” Principal Speer said. “Are you willing to jeopardize your teaching career for this boy?”

“It looks to me like I already have.”

The door to Principal Speer's office flew open, and Miss Singletary snatched me by the shoulder of my shirt and said, “Get up. To my room, now!” She pushed me down the hall to the empty classroom. She pointed to the chair just in front of her desk and I sat without comment. She paced the front of the room for several minutes until the heaving in her chest subsided, the pulse in her neck slowed and the red blotches began to fade. Finally, she said, “Jimmy Lee, I am so very sorry for what just happened. It was inexcusable.”

“You didn't have anything to do with it, Miss Singletary.”

“What did they say before I got there? Did they accuse you of cheating?”

“Mrs. Johanessen did, more or less. She asked if someone else wrote it for me and I just copied it down in the book. I think she's the one who's making the big stink, and I don't know why. I never gave her a hard way to go.”

“It's not about you winning, Jimmy Lee. It's about Catherine
not
winning. If you had come in second, she would never have said a word.” She took a cleansing breath and sat down in her chair in front of me. “You showed me last year that you're capable of doing the work. But, Jimmy Lee, I would be lying to you if I said that very thought didn't cross my mind.”

“I think you're insulting me, Miss Singletary.”

“This has nothing to do with your last name being Hickam. Mrs. Johanessen had a valid point. You virtually crapped out of junior English and then come back after the summer and write this marvelous essay. It sends up a red flag, Jimmy Lee.”

“When I put my mind to it, I can be a pretty good writer, Miss Singletary. I read a lot, too.”

“With very few exceptions, you've not displayed that in my class.”

“Do you want me to write another essay while you sit here and watch me?”

“I certainly do not. I will go to the mat for you, Jimmy Lee. All I want you to do is look me in the eye and tell me that essay was your work.” For a long moment, I looked at Miss Singletary and digested her words. Never in my life had a teacher or anyone else shown such faith in me. Never before had anyone agreed to take me at my word. “Jimmy Lee, was that essay your own work?” she repeated.

I focused on her green eyes and said, “Yes, ma'am. Every last word.”