Solemn Page 17

  * * *

  Don’t know what possessed me to fill the science class turtle’s pool with hot water the day of my special turn to tend to it, so the whole class gathered round it thinkin he was dancin for them. He was really just dyin.

  “That one there, she grab more than one tray and don’t even eat the food,” the lunch ladies finally tattle-told on me. “Just waste…”

  “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Redvine, Freshmen is working on mythology now. All students expected to choose a Greek or Roman god to create a diorama for final exam. They gosta turn in a paper. Not all families contributed to the school supply fund this year. I believe yours may have not. But a rainbow necklace of paper clips stole from my desk is not exactly what I had in mind as a acceptable project to turn in. I may have to flunk Solemn and she need four English credits to graduate,” the English teacher wrote.

  “That girl slammed the door shut on her locker partner’s hand … this child gotta go to the health department for stitches. Ain’t no way I can do this here,” the school nurse told the principal when he wrote my last note.

  Now, that one was an accident.

  * * *

  “Mr. and Mrs. Redvine, Solemn’s … um … outbursts, have been reported and documented for quite awhile now … I mean, I have her records here…”

  “How you have her records?” Bev asked the principal. “I don’t even have her records. I tried to get them. ’Cause my friend Ruby said she knew somebody could get her in Piney Woods, just like that. Solemn’s that smart. She’s just had a rough year.”

  “Oh, Piney Woods is a fine school. You can’t beat it, Mrs. Redvine,” the principal said. “I’m quite sure Solemn has the smarts for such a stellar boarding school. She’s very brilliant, actually. Her test scores among the highest in the school. So I’m sure she has the capabilities. I’m just not sure she got the demeanor.”

  “Solemn is no problem whatsoever at home, sir,” Redvine interrupted. “All these messages from teachers, notes home, suspensions, meetings. Saying she start yelling in class, picks on other students, talks back to nobody. I don’t understand it all…”

  “She come home and do her homework,” Beverly chimed in. “She sit all through church without disturbing nobody. It just seem like you people have all these little problems with her no one else got. I don’t know. It don’t make sense to me.”

  Solemn reclined in the corner without hearing any of it. She stared at a colony of ladybugs traveling up the room’s office window, collecting themselves in the left-hand corner where the principal’s chair leaned. They clamored atop one another and took off to less crowded places, only for a few to notice and hobble behind. The principal leaned back even farther and his elbow threatened the colony in the crook of his window. A loner settled on the point of his jacket at the elbow. Solemn watched it.

  “I ain’t sure what Solemn’s like at home, but I know here at Miller’s she can be a bit unpredictable, to say the least…”

  He was just doing his job. There were more in his care beside Solemn. She was a disruption and a disturbance to the rest.

  “I’m afraid she’s no longer welcome. She’s exhausted her suspensions. I’m sorry. The regular KHS may take her. And there are some GED homeschooling options … believe an alternative program in Jackson for students like her—”

  “She’s being … kicked out?” Redvine asked, a brow upturned. “I know there was a problem with her turning in her work and seeing the chalkboard. Solemn needs glasses. We’re working on that.” Solemn stared out of the window. Bev cried in her hands.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Redvine,” the principal said, “the staff asked me to meet with your family last semester about Solemn. Some wanted her gone then. I didn’t. I wanted to see what happened this semester, give her a chance. But with so many teachers and students complaining she interrupts, has outbursts, doesn’t do her part, curses, late to class, bathroom passes for the whole period, tardy, well. I just can’t hope no more.”

  The round man scratched his fingers at his scalp. Every tiny orange dot of insect cascaded to the floor and back to the windowpane with the others. As he and her parents worked all that out, Solemn was gone on to the vending machines, with a taste for potato chips, for her last skip through the hallways as a formal student ever in life.

  Come spring of 2004, with what she had already collected, her unicorn jewelry music box was too overloaded to stay secret. She had nearly seven hundred dollars balled up in socks under her bed. She talked to herself. Forget petty concerns hovered around success in spelling bees and multiplication table recitations, much less grand and opportunistic than her thoughts to leave Bledsoe behind. Like Landon. Nashville, Hollywood, New York, Chicago … on televisions and stages, just a slice of her voice heard.

  NINETEEN

  DIGICATE:

  Join the wave of the future.

  Be your own boss! Set your own hours!

  Train others! Own a Business!

  Revolutionary company merging new

  technologies with proven educational systems.

  6 Figure Income.

  The future.

  The future.

  Cicadas had gone. Future was coming.

  Waves and waves of it, coming soon, like the summer blockbusters, mercenary. Redvine could do more than mutter a “Fuck you” to the factories that wouldn’t hire him ’cause, at forty-five, he was too risky. At least that’s how they broke it to him at the electronics plant, an imposition since the main high school was about to graduate nearly twenty athletes (without scholarships) in June. Enlistments stalled; most weren’t that brave to waltz coolly into Iraq after the black hole of Afghanistan took more than it sent back. The lines for humid day labor rivaled the circus camped out to audition for American Idol. It was too hot in those joints anyway. And dangerous. One time, the tip of his ring finger had almost skidded underneath a rubber belt on his pick line for the day. For all that hazard, he couldn’t even afford to have a phone line installed at home.

  Within three weeks of being dismissed to watch commercials in between Bev’s shows and Solemn’s pouts, when nobody was looking at him, at the pizza joint in town, Redvine zoned in past the ink-drained Have You Seen Pearletta? poster next to it and pulled the green tack out of the DigiCate sign, stuck on side of the building along with the other sun-washed papers for housekeeping and yard work and social services.

  They were down to cold food and showers only, due to little money for propane. His plate of pickles and lunch meat half-eaten, canceled out by butterflies in his stomach, Redvine put on a tie, a blue button-down shirt with a collar, and his good shoes.

  “You gotta interview?” Bev asked him, sunken into the Oprah rerun she missed that morning, due to picking up extra hours at the library. Open and close now.

  “New company coming to town,” he told her.

  “I ain’t heard about it. Where?”

  “Yonder,” Redvine said. “Out past the new development.”

  “Good luck, sweetheart.”

  Outside, Solemn dried off the Malibu she hosed down at Redvine’s request. He thought it should have been shinier. Then he remembered: he had had to cut back on wax.

  “Where my five dollars?” Solemn asked when he walked past.

  “Give it to you when I get back!” Redvine shouted, jangling his keys. “I ain’t got no change.”

  He needed the five dollars for gas to get to the Days Inn, for the informational session he was heading to. He’d make it up to Solemn, soon as he got to six figures.

  * * *

  A DigiCate banner in the lobby directed Redvine on where to go without having to see the front desk clerk. A younger suited white man eyed him as he tapped at the hotel switchboard. Redvine thought about letting the man know where he was going, but the instinct to do so sparked him back to why he had come to the info session in the first place. Insubordinate, he kept on. At the conference room, he met a black man and a Latina at the door. Their welcomes strong, their eyes wide, their
handshakes firm. They appeared more upbeat than beat up. He knew he was in the right place.

  “Just print your name and phone number and e-mail address,” the Latina told him.

  “E-mail?” Redvine said. “Oh, well, I gotta mailbox.”

  “Yes, just put it right on down for us.”

  The black man, stout and fired up, stepped in.

  “No problem if you don’t have an e-mail address. Phone number good for now.”

  “Okay.”

  Redvine jotted down Alice Taylor’s digits.

  “Okay, Mr. Earl Redvine.” The Latina beamed: Maggie, according to her name tag. She markered his name on a peel-off badge to stick on his shirt.

  “We’ll be getting started here in just a bit,” said Walter, the black man. “In the meantime, get settled and feel free to help yourself to some refreshments. Thanks for coming out.”

  After the table with the sign-up sheet was a round table in the corner holding a display of what looked to Redvine like Etch A Sketches. Bright and glowing thick rectangles with fat books beside them, and stacks of the same flyer he’d seen at the pizza joint. Near that table was a smaller one with canteens for water and coffee. There was a bit of a swarm. He didn’t know the ladies and one man who stood around the table—all black, in jeans and sandals. So, he spotted three rows of chairs in front of a projector and sat down. No sooner he took a seat, another woman was in front of him—daring red suit.

  “And how are you today, sir?” she squeaked through perfect teeth.

  “I’m good … and yourself?” Redvine said.

  “Great! Happy ya joining the team!” Her sticker said Heather.

  Team went good with work. Made it go by quicker. Redvine thought this was fun.

  The woman carried a black binder under her arms and a few pens in her jacket pocket. Redvine had a pen but … damn … nothing to write on. Of course, he should have thought of this. There were the flyers, at the table. So, with the bundle moved on now, he walked back to grab a few flyers. He poured himself coffee, kept it black. As he looked back up to the front of the room where a screen was, he noticed he was possibly overdressed. No one else in the seats wore a suit. One man, near the back, cradled a plate of doughnuts. One lady had on scrubs and a bonnet. A couple had two children—one in a stroller and a taller one gobbling chips from a bag set down in her mama’s bag. A little more than a dozen people, and he was the only one in dress clothes besides those signing everybody up and walking around smiling.

  I’m gonna get this job, he thought. He took a seat in the front row.

  Two white men—boys really—came from a door connected to the conference room partitions. They didn’t just walk. They danced. They didn’t just talk. They belted. As much as they clapped between their words, Redvine wondered if it was a concert.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I wanna thank you folks for coming out here today on this hot and sweaty Saturday afternoon,” one boy said.

  “And hey, this is not about us. It’s about you!” the other boy chimed.

  “So just feel free to stop us if you have any questions.”

  “Don’t be shy!”

  “Now, I’m gonna be pretty straightforward. But I gotta warn you. He’s the one you gotta watch out for the garboil with.”

  “I gotta question,” said the lady wearing the bonnet.

  “Fire away!”

  “What’s garboil?”

  Redvine somehow gleaned that apparently (as “Connor” and “Jason” talked in either unison or circles), DigiCate was a recipe or marriage or coagulation (or something like that) of two critical concepts the world depends on: Digitals and Education. DigiCate was a combination laptop-encyclopedia-library. Better than the whole World Wide Web. ’Cause, they said, with the Web you can get anything you want—could be mindless entertainment, celebrity worship, even pornography …

  “… No discipline and restriction, far too all-purpose not to be dangerous. A time suck and counterproductive peril. Do you really want all that at your child’s fingertips? God only knows what the World Wide Web will bring. A virus. No, a computer can’t make you sick. Well, of course, if one person is sick and another doesn’t wash their hands after they use the same keyboard … I understand certified nurse’s assistants know all about spreading germs … But if a virus comes from one computer to another, or one Web site from another, it can crash everything. Then where are you when your child needs to finish a report for school or you need to know something for work?…

  … “But no, DigiCate is strictly a walking digital encyclopedia. About a third of the cost of entire set of hardback books the competitors and traditional publishers want to sell you: Britannica, Funk and Wagnall’s, a bunch of off-brands you don’t even have to know about. Look, this is the future. Nobody’s gonna be buying those anymore. We contain the whirlwind of the Internet and the familiarity of the tried-and-true encyclopedia into one place: at your fingertips, on our handy portable device. DigiCate Incorporated works our butts off to compile, update, and expand every single day from our offices in Silicon Valley. No, ma’am, Death Valley is the desert.

  “This is not about death … This is about life! Living how you want to live! Making a difference in the world! Living on your own terms! Joining our sales force! You don’t have to know about selling nothing, ma’am. We train. Walter back there—stand on up, Walter (looking good, man)—is the field coordinator and trainer for this entire region. ’Cause we want everybody included in this. Everybody taps the bigger cities. They forget about the margins. Well, who better needs a digital device of this nature than people who may not have access to the World Wide Web the way the rest of the world does by now? You’re gonna be on the cutting edge. You’ll be on the front lines. Well, sorry, pardon me. I mean no offense. Trust me, I have utmost respect for our servicemen. No harm intended. My cousin served in Kuwait … tore my aunt apart. So, yeah, my bad. But you’ll be like pioneers. Well, er, we aren’t talking about killing the Indians. Okay. You’ll be at the head of the class, at the top, how ’bout that? Right, “Walter—head of the class!”

  “This too confusing,” someone grumbled.

  “They talk longer than the preacher…” Redvine heard. “And them doughnuts ain’t do nothing for me. I’m starvin’.”

  “I don’t know ’bout all this,” another person said. “Can’t I just fill out my application and go? I think Fresh Prince bout to come on in lwhile.”

  “We get sick pay?” another asked.

  “Is they gonna get to the point? All this talking just sickenin’ me…”

  … So, now, ‘Maggie’s’ passing out some pens and papers for y’all. And our folders. Those are yours to keep, special gifts inside. Pens, notepads, refrigerator magnets. Definitely pass out our pamphlets to your friends. But we just want you to follow long best you can because our payment structure is unparalleled. Trust me, unparalleled. Well, how much you get paid depends on how far you want to go …

  … Now, with our initial kit you get started with ten DigiCates, one just for you to get familiar with the product. It’s totally free, complimentary. Now, the basic DigiCate retails for a thousand bucks, but … wait! We do have an installment plan. We’ve thought about all this a lot, trust me. We have. We want this to be affordable to all families and income brackets, so we’ve taken all economic budgets into account. Some of our installment plans start just as low as two hundred dollars, if they want to wait on the DigiCate until they can get down at least fifty percent of that. Yes ma’am, just like layaway. And, the DigiCate includes the warranty and five years of discounted update DVDs. So that means every few months we release an update DVD with brand new information and entries, because we’re keep our customers on the cutting edge. But all this is explained in the materials. You got enough, ‘Maggie’? Okay, great!

  … So, the goal for you would be to offer the DigiCate to customers for a lump sum you get fifty percent commission on. You get twelve hundred dollars from a customer, you keep six hundred d
ollars. Because we can offer you each DigiCate for six hundred dollars. So, we give it to our partners—that’s you!—for half off retail price. So, you sell two DigiCates in one week, that’s twelve hundred dollars in your pocket for the week. Yeah, sounds good, right? Now we’re talking, huh? Yup …

  “… You get yourself a good block of schools or maybe even some of these parent clubs, who gonna buy bulk orders. You could be done for the month. Or you get a patch of a village talking about it, buying them up. Sounds good right? And we’re gonna start you off past Copper Tier to Bronze—so you can get your free DigiCate, exclusive to the Bronze level. And when you start to rise up to different levels—I come all the way up to the Diamond Tier, past Silver and Gold—then DigiCate will give you a discounted trip to our company retreat. It’s in Orlando, Florida, this year. Next year, guess where’s it’s gonna be … Cancun! You know … in Mexico?

  * * *

  Redvine thought, This ain’t a job like I was thinking. six figures means one hundred thousand dollars. Least. But six hundred dollars a week fine for me. That’s real good. Florida’s nice … I can do this.

  When ‘Connor’ and ‘Jason’ took questions, Redvine turned to see few left to ask any. Most had taken the folders and left. The table of refreshments was over with. The man with doughnuts in his lap remained, asleep. So did the look-alike couple with look-alike kids, crying now. The woman with the scrubs and bonnet talked to ‘Maggie,’ about her grandson: day-care costs. She was thinking about taking in foster kids, Redvine heard her say. While ‘Connor’ dismantled the projector and screen, Redvine shuffled the papers in his lap into the DigiCate folder they gave him and he approached Jason.