Chapter 41

Sunday morning started like most typical Sunday mornings. Willie and I were up with the rooster and did our chores. After a large breakfast, we went to church. It was a nice, cool early May morning in Western Pennsylvania, so we all piled into Mom’s Coronet wagon.

Pastor was on his ‘A’ game with his sermon. With a late Easter this year, we were still in the “Easter Season,” but heading towards the longest season in the church year (Pentecost). Pastor had obviously preached heavily on the resurrection the past two Sundays, but today he spent some time talking about the effect of Jesus returning on the apostles. They had gone from simply being Jesus’ followers to actually being witnesses and purveyors of the faith. It became their life’s work to spread the seeds of what would eventually become ‘Christianity’ to the outer world, and the cost that many of them would pay. Aside from it always being a good metaphor in a farming community to talk about spreading seeds, it was a reminder of the challenge that people face when they speak truth to power. While my family had always encouraged me to be respectful, they had also taught me to stand for justice. It was that belief that guided me into defending Janie against Edgar Blanton.

As Monique was at her old church in Carling today, I managed to get Willie and I to be invited over to the Fausts’ house today so we could play video games with Karl and Axel. We had all been spending times with our girlfriends a lot lately. Axel and Angie Bloom were still dating (well, as much any fourteen year old kid could date) and Karl had still managed to keep the cute, but really tall, Dana Daring interested in him. Still, we guys had not gotten together to play Karl’s Atari in more than a month and the Fausts wanted to spend some time getting to know Willie, so it made for a good excuse to use with our girlfriends.

Willie had never played video games, so it took some time to get used to it, but I was happy to see he was having fun. Karl and Axel were really great with him. Being only kids, they had confided in being a little jealous that I had a new foster brother to help with chores. Since their chores were way easier than mine, I felt no pity for them whatsoever. By the time we left, I smiled. I missed hanging out with my friends (and Mrs. Faust’s tomato soup and grilled cheeses), but I knew that my life had improved by adding Janie, Jen and Monique to it. I promised myself I wouldn’t take them for granted.

Mom picked us up and after our afternoon chores were finished, Dad pulled me aside.

“Tommy, I spoke with Jeff Seiling and Dr. Lester. I made it quite clear that if Perry Martin so much sneezed in your direction over the next month and a half left of school, I would come down heavy against the school system.”

“Thanks, Dad,”

“Son, that does not give you license to instigate any trouble. Vice-Principal Seiling is still in charge of student discipline and you are not immune from his discipline,” stated my dad with a very serious expression.

I sighed. I know that most of what happened to me was not my fault, but I could have handled things better. This was Dad’s way of reminding me. “I know Dad. I’ll keep my nose clean. What should I do if Principal Martin confronts me?”

My dad retained his grim expression. “Go along with whatever he says and memorialize it.”

I laughed. I may have been a fourteen year-old kid, but my dad was treating me the way he would an adult. How many kids would understand what he meant when he said memorialize? Only a lawyer’s kid, I guess. I’d have to ask Billy to know for sure.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

I just threw my arms around him in a rare hug. “Thanks for treating me like an adult.”

“Sometimes I forget that you’re just a kid,” he replied, and my grin broadened.

After supper and calling over to the Bridges and then Monique’s to say ‘good night’, I worked on some of the new ninth grade history material I got from Mr. Crane. Then I checked my extended Math homework, before getting ready for bed. I was nervous about Mr. Martin’s return tomorrow and had some problems sleeping. I opened up an old pulp sci-fi book I had gotten the previous year from the used bookstore and eventually dosed off with the book still in my hand. I awoke to sound of my light being turned off (probably Mom because I felt a kiss on my forehead), but quickly fell back to sleep.

Monday, May 4^th, started with the usual chores, a quick chow-down of breakfast, a rush to the bus stop and the obnoxious voice of Jacob Turner, as I took my seat behind Tim Walton.

“I hear Principal Martin is back today,” chirped Jake.

“Good to hear,” I said, trying my best to take the wind out of his sails. I probably should have just ignored him, because it didn’t work.

“My dad said that you and your old man want to antagonize him, so your dad can sue the town and make our taxes go up.”

“Shut up, Turner! Tommy didn’t start anything. It was Old Man Martin and Mr. Thomas,” defended Tim.

“Yeah, get your facts straight, Jake,” agreed David Lincoln.

I grinned as my friends defended me. Sadly, after Jake had been put in his place, David attacked me in another way.

“I hear you were throwing meatballs against the Flyers,” he grinned.

“Spicy meatballs, because they were hard to hit,” I replied with a grin of my own.

“Lionel told me that you walked their pitcher, Donny, on four pitches,” he added and Tim laughed.

“Really?” asked Tim.

I shrugged. “I guess I felt sorry for them.”

I got justly razzed for that remark and unjustly razzed for my competent pitching performance for the rest of the trip to school.

When I got to school, I did my best to sneak by the office. I had no desire to look for trouble. I had just successfully slithered into my seat in homeroom, only to be paged to the office.

“Crap!” I thought.

I got my pass from the sub who was covering homeroom today and walked down to the office.

I got a sympathetic smile from Mrs. Davis as she nodded to Mr. Martin’s door. I went to the door and knocked. I was surprised to see Mr. Martin open the door.

“Ah, Tommy. Please come in, young man,” smiled Mr. Martin.

“What the heck?!

“Hello, Principal Martin. What can I do for you?” I asked cautiously.

“I just wanted to apologize on behalf of the school for what happened to you. I had no idea that the lamentable Mr. Thomas was using you as a pawn in his jealous dealings with Mrs. Douglas. It was not fair to you.”

“Thank you, Sir,” I said, remembering my dad’s warning to keep civil and compliant.

“That being said, your conduct towards me was hardly appropriate. You must always treat your superiors with respect. Am I making myself clear, young man?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good. I think we have an understanding. Now hurry along, you don’t want to be late for first period,” he said just before the end of homeroom bell rang.

“Yes, Sir” I said, swallowing my bile. I could tell that Mr. Martin did not buy my compliant attitude, because his eyes narrowed and a feral grin spread over his face, as I quickly scurried out of his office. I immediately found Mr. Seiling blocking my path out of the office area.

“He didn’t listen to my advice, I gather,” said my vice-principal.

“He apologized, but then made a point of criticizing me for my lack of respect.”

“Your dad won’t like that.”

“I managed to stay calm and polite, though.”

“Well, we can’t ask for more than that, Son,” he said before letting me pass to period one.

I just made in to class before the bell and scurried to my seat next to Karl.

“I heard you got called to the office. Did Martin give you any trouble?” asked Karl.

“He apologized, but I think I felt worse leaving the office, than before I got there,” I whispered.

We both ended our conversation when Mrs. Douglas walked into the room. She looked better than she had on Friday, My guess was that my dad and Billy’s dad might have had something to do with that. They had encouraged her by explaining her options against the school and her husband respectively. Before, she had felt hopeless. Now she had choices.

We continued to work on poetry. After discussing British romantic poets last week, this week, we were talking about nineteenth century American poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. By the end of the week, we would be discussing twentieth century poets. While I liked poetry, I’ll admit that my new romantic feelings made me appreciate poetry even more than I had in the past. I guess having three girlfriends might have had something to do with that.

Speaking of my girlfriends, I couldn’t help but notice the concerned glances I was getting from Jen and Janie across the room. I also noticed that Axel’s girlfriend, Angie, and Billy’s girlfriend, Laura were also looking concerned. My guess was that they heard the same rumors that Karl had heard. I smiled at them to let them know that everything was okay. While I was still concerned about Principal Martin and despite what I had just told Karl, I was feeling better now that I could feel how much my friends cared about me. Mrs. Douglas promised a quiz tomorrow and she gave us a smile as I left the classroom with Janie and Jen, we walked to Mr. Crane’s History class.

“So everything is okay with Mr. Martin?” asked Janie.

“Yeah. I think he wanted to get the last word, but my dad told me not to take the bait,” I said.

“Good. Hopefully he’ll leave you alone going forward,” smiled Jen.

“Any word about your mom?” I asked.

For some reason my hackles continued to be raised concerning Lisa Parker. The last we had heard, she and Mr. Parker were separated and she was a patient at Park Heights Hospital, which was a mental facility. She was there voluntarily, stating that she had been under a great deal of stress. My dad’s theory was that she was there to avoid her share of the responsibility involving Edgar Blanton’s actions towards Janie.

“Nothing since last week. Emily went to see her, but no way am I going!” stated Janie defiantly. “She told Emily that it was all Daddy’s fault and that daddy had made her ‘sick.’ The truth is that she’s just a slut!” snarled Janie.

“Any idea of when she’s getting out?” I asked.

“Daddy said that the police wanted to interview her, but her doctor said that she was traumatized and was just as much a victim as I was in all of this. What a crock!” she complained bitterly. “Daddy thinks she’ll wait several months until the whole thing dies down and then will get out to divorce him. In the meantime, Daddy had to take out a mortgage on the house to pay for her hospital bills!”

I just shook my head. Lisa Parker wasn’t sick. She was just plain evil. To me, she was the other shoe that threatened to drop and stomp all over my happy existence.

Mr. Crane’s class was pretty typical. At times, he could be dry, but at others, he could really make something that happened more than a hundred years ago really compelling. We were still studying the Grant administration. Today, Mr. Crane went back to Grant’s first term and talked about James Fisk and Jay Gould. They were two of the directors of the Erie Railroad who attempted to corner the gold market. Along with President Grant’s bother-in-law, Abel Corbin, they engaged in one of the biggest commodity conspiracies in US History. While Fisk and Gould bought a lot of privately held gold, to raise the price, Corbin leveraged his relationship with Grant’s sister (Virginia) to gain inroads into Grant’s cabinet (in order to convince the Treasury that it was harmful for the Treasury to sell gold). When Grant became aware of the scheme, he took action to sell off some Treasury gold to lower the overall price. This calmed a stock panic on Wall Street and a possible depression was averted. For the most part, New York City’s ‘Tammany Hall’ corruption protected the conspirators as they were all found “not guilty” in court.