own way.” I handed her the order.
She said, “Thank you,” then paused. “You don’t know anything about Bobby buying Gold Bond talcum powder, do you?”
“No, ma’am.”
She cast an angry glance toward the produce department on her way out.
Reg appeared right after Mrs. Smalls left. I wondered if he’d been hiding from her in the storeroom. He smacked the top of the counter and told me, “You are relieved, Thomas! Your dad says you can stop beating the meat.”
I pulled off the hairnet and tossed it in the trash. I advised him wearily, “You really need to get some new material, Reg.”
“What? Not precocious enough? Too invidious? Was I being puerile?”
“Yeah. All of the above.”
In class, Coach Malloy attempted to read us a summary of the Dred Scott decision, and free states versus slave states, but that was not to be. He kept getting interrupted by dissatisfied customers.
Angela raised up her hand and then a glass jar of strawberries. “My mom said I have to return this. It didn’t whoosh when she opened it.”
Coach looked puzzled. “It didn’t what?”
“Whoosh. She said if it doesn’t whoosh when you open it, it wasn’t sealed right.”
The coach laughed. I think he wanted the rest of us to laugh, too, but we didn’t. “Well, we’re not selling whooshes here, honey. We’re selling strawberry preserves.”
Ben raised his hand. “I had the runs all day Saturday.”
Several people groaned, but his point was made.
A girl named Mia spoke up. “We gave some to my grandmother, and she had to go to the hospital.”
Coach sputtered, “Aw, come on now! That’s not fair. Maybe your grandmother was sick anyway. She’s an old lady, right? Old ladies get sick.”
“It happened right after she ate the strawberries.”
Ben followed up. “My dad says you have to give us our money back.”
Coach held up one hand and spread out his fingers. “Well, on that deal there, I can only tell you what Reg told me. He takes your money, and he uses it to pay for the fruit, the jars, and the pectin. So that money is gone.”
Ben was ready with a reply. “Then my dad says we can sue you.”
Coach shook his head. He answered tightly, “Well, I guess what your dad chooses to do within the United States legal system is up to him.”
Then he went back to the Dred Scott decision.
The door to my second-period classroom was closed. That was unusual, so I stopped and peeked through the window. Mr. Proctor was pushing desks toward the back of the room, one row at a time, like he was pushing a train of supermarket carts.
Arthur came up behind me and looked in; then Jenny did, too. Neither seemed surprised.
Jenny said, “It’s for play rehearsal. Mr. Proctor told us that we need more rehearsal. He’s going to use our class time for it today.”
Arthur added, “I guess we suck. I know I do.”
Jenny objected to that. “We do not!” She took a quick look left and right and then whispered excitedly, “Did you guys hear that a teacher got arrested?”
From the looks on our faces, we clearly hadn’t. It was Arthur who replied, “No way.”
“Yeah. Arrested in the parking lot, after school on Friday.”
“For what?”
“Selling drugs.” Jenny reconsidered that. “No, wait. It wasn’t selling. It was possession of drugs.”
I asked, “Who was it?”
“Mr. Byrnes, from the high school. He carpools with Mr. Proctor.”
“How’d they catch him?”
“One of his own students turned him in.”
Arthur said, “No way! A kid was a narc?”
“Sort of. See, the kid got busted himself, right outside the auditorium, for selling weed.” Jenny went on with total authority. “The kid made a deal with the police. If they would charge him with possession instead of selling, he’d give them the name of a teacher who had weed.”
Arthur nodded knowingly. “He traded up.” Seeing that I was confused, he explained. “They offered Jimmy Giles a deal like that. If he’d trade up, if he’d give the name of his dealer, they’d go easy on him. Jimmy wouldn’t do it, though. Jimmy’s no narc.”
Mr. Proctor, red-faced and panting, finally opened the door. He pointed me and the other nonactors to the back of the room. He pointed the actors—including Jenny, Arthur, Wendy, Ben, and Mikeszabo—to the front. They stood by the whiteboard, where they were soon joined by a half dozen high schoolers from the Drama Club, including Chris Collier.
Mr. Proctor told the nonactors in the back, “We’ll be having play practice today. You’re welcome to watch us, or you can do other work.” Most of the kids put their heads down and fell asleep.
I watched.
Mr. Proctor told the actors, “We’ll start with the blocking.”
Arthur commented, “That’s what we do in football, Mr. P. We start with the blocking.”
Arthur was clearly joking, but Mr. Proctor didn’t get it. “No, no, Arthur. Blocking in Drama Club means placing actors where they need to be onstage.”
Arthur rolled his eyes.
Mr. Proctor positioned the lead actors, Chris and Wendy, first. Chris had his Bible cheat sheet in hand; Wendy did not. She had memorized her part.
Wendy delivered her lines like a real actress, with emotion (and empathy). Chris, however, was awful. He may as well have been delivering his “Vote for me for Student Council” speech. He sure didn’t sound like the priest in a plague village four hundred years ago.
Anyway, after the priest and his wife had been blocked, Mr. Proctor took other actors by the elbow and positioned them. Then they read their lines.
Ben’s character had a long argument with Jenny’s character. Ben was actually pretty good, and Jenny was very moving as a doomed teenage girl.
Mr. Proctor took Arthur’s elbow and moved him in and out among the others. Arthur had a few lines, and they were pretty crazy, like a village idiot’s should be. I had to admit he wasn’t bad, either.
After class was over, I walked out with Arthur. I asked him, “So, do you mind playing an idiot?”
He looked at me quizzically. “I’ve done some hard things, cuz, but this ain’t one of them. All I have to do is show up, wander around, and read my lines. For that, Proctor gives me an A in English. Even if I don’t do anything else, which I probably won’t. I can just sit in front of him and sleep for the rest of the year. So tell me: Who’s the idiot?”
Arthur suddenly grabbed my elbow and turned me toward the wall. “Listen, I gotta tell you something. Something not good.” He checked around for eavesdroppers. “Jimmy Giles started using again.”
“Oh no!”
“Oh yeah.” Arthur shook his head, disappointed. “He bought himself some crack and smoked it up.”
“No!”
“Yeah. It’s what Catherine Lyle would call a ‘relapse.’ ”
“Right. Is he okay now? Has he stopped?”
“I don’t know. I doubt that
I used my counseling-group experience to ask, “What was the trigger for him?”
“United flight ninety-three.”
“Really?”
