The Center of Everything (23 page)

When school gets out it’s still raining, and we have to wait under the portico for the buses to come. Traci Carmichael watches the protesters, her thin mouth curled at one end. “Idiots,” she says to Libby. Libby nods in agreement.

At this very same moment, I hear one of them calling my name. I can tell from the voice that it’s Sharon, even though she’s wearing a ski jacket and a green scarf wrapped around most of her face. She holds a sign that says EVIL
UTION: DON’T BELIEVE THE LIE
! In the other hand, she holds a Styrofoam cup.

She isn’t pregnant yet. Harry Hopewell didn’t help.

Pastor Dave stands next to her, holding an umbrella over both their heads. She touches him on the shoulder and points at me. He waves, taking care to keep the umbrella steady. They start to walk toward me but stop when they get to the sidewalk. “You have to come over here to talk to us, honey,” he yells, waving me toward them. “We’re not allowed to cross the sidewalk.” They stay right there, their toes on the edge of the grass. Traci and Libby turn around, verifying that yes, he is speaking to me.

I pull on the hood of my jacket and step out from underneath the portico, moving toward them, but not all the way, stopping well before the sidewalk.

“It’s so good to see you!” Pastor Dave calls out. “We’ve missed you so much, Evelyn. Hey, do you need an umbrella? We’ve got plenty in the car.”

I shake my head and show him the folded-up umbrella in my hand. “I’m just going to the bus.”

They both nod, still smiling. They are getting hurt, I think, wondering why I am not coming closer, crossing over the invisible line. “How’s your grandmother?” Sharon yells, her hands cupped around her mouth.

“Good,” I say. I turn around to see the windows of Ms. Jenkins’s classroom. She could be looking down from them, but she isn’t. “Good.”

“Good,” Pastor Dave says, his eyes steady on my face. “Would you mind telling her what we’re doing out here?” He points behind him, at the people carrying signs. “She’s welcome to join us. We’ll need all the help we can get in the next two weeks.”

“I’ll tell her,” I say, turning around with a wave. “Well, that’s my bus.”

“We could use your help too,” he calls out. But I am already walking toward the bus, and I pull my hood closer around my head, pretending I don’t hear.

If Eileen could see the way that Travis acts in algebra now, she would say he was being a pill.
That little pill,
she would say, shaking her head. Meaning his behavior is hard to take.

He comes to algebra now because he has to, but he does little things that probably make Mr. Goldman wish he would have just let him stay outside, smoking with Ed Schwebbe in the snow. Travis has joined forces with Ray Watley. They each sneeze loudly every five minutes and say “Bless you” to each other every single time. He doesn’t do his homework. He doesn’t even bring his book.

After three days of this, Mr. Goldman balks. “Travis,” he says, “where’s your book?”

Travis takes his time responding, his fish eyes moving slowly around the room. “Forgot it,” he says.

Mr. Goldman rests his hands on his waist, leaning heavily on one foot. “Okay,” he says. He walks back to Mr. Sellers’s desk and pulls an algebra book out of one of the drawers. The drawer squeaks loudly, but Mr. Sellers doesn’t wake up. “Here you go,” he says. “We’re on page two thirty-six.”

Ray Watley sneezes.

“Bless you, Ray,” Travis says.

Deena’s eyes catch mine. Travis sneezes.

“Bless you, Travis,” Ray says.

Traci Carmichael rolls her eyes, so Libby does too. Mr. Goldman goes back to the chalkboard, where he has drawn a graph with red and blue chalk. He is talking quickly, chopping off the words the way he always does, his hands moving in front of him. I like the way he talks about math, all breathy and excited, like he is letting you in on a secret and you are lucky to be able to hear it.

But only a minute later, he stops talking. “You going to open that book, Travis?”

Travis looks down at the cover of the book, as if he is considering this question for the first time. He yawns and leans his head to the right. “In a while,” he says.

Mr. Goldman nods, scratching the back of his neck. “Go ahead and open it now.”

Travis opens his book to the first page. Ray Watley sneezes again.

“Bless you, Ray.”

Mr. Goldman looks down at his shiny shoes, his mouth moving as if he is trying to do some sort of deep-breathing exercise. “Okay,” he says, clapping his hands together one time, “let’s try this. How about I give you guys the rest of class to work through the problems in this chapter in groups of three. That was going to be your homework for tonight, but you can do it now. If you have questions about tomorrow’s test, just come up, and I’ll help you individually.”

This is quite a deal, a generous offer, and we know it. Deena and I move our desks together, and she nods at Travis to join us. But he’s still looking down at the first page of his book, which has nothing on it but the acknowledgments and copyright dates, and he’s dropping his pencil on his desk over and over again, hard enough for it to bounce up on its eraser. Traci looks up from her paper, nudging Libby.

“Fifth grade,”
she whispers.

It’s true. I hate to admit it, but she’s right. Mr. Goldman waits five minutes before he says anything, and when he does, his voice is quiet, calm. “Travis, you can work by yourself, or you can work in a group. But I want you to use this time to work on your assignment. You can’t just sit there.”

Travis catches the pencil in midair and points it at Mr. Goldman. “I’ll do it later.”

It’s so quiet now that all you can hear is the
ticktock
of the large electric clock on the wall, counting off the seconds, and the sound of Travis’s pencil bouncing on his desk.

“I want you to do it now, Travis.”

He bounces his pencil again. “Well, I want to do it later.”

Ray sneezes again, though even Travis has given this up by now. That’s how dumb it is.

“Then you can leave. You’re absent, okay? You’re not here today mentally, so you’re not here at all.” He walks to the door and opens it, one arm gesturing toward the hallway. “Just go.”

Travis laughs, tucking a stray curl behind his ear. “Wow. First you want me to come back, then you want me to leave. You need to make up your mind, Mr. Goldman.”

We wait, watching Mr. Goldman’s face. He looks tense, tired. “Dude,” he says suddenly, his hands resting in front of him, palms up, as if he were waiting to catch something falling from above. “I’m trying to work with you here, okay? It’s my job to teach you, and I want to do that. But you’ve got to work with me, okay?”

Travis remains seated, but his face changes. There is almost a smile, and I hope this is a sign that maybe he is finally starting to see that Mr. Goldman is trying, that he is acting dumb.

“Okay?” Mr. Goldman tries again.

Travis tilts his head to the side. “Um, did you just call me dude, Mr. Goldman? Dude?”

Ray sneezes.

Mr. Goldman looks down at the floor, rubbing his chin. “Just get out, Travis. Just leave.”

“Okay, dude.” Travis stands up slowly and takes his backpack off the back of his chair. He gives Mr. Goldman the thumbs-up. “Right on, my man! Out of sight!”

Everyone is looking at Travis except for Mr. Goldman, who is looking at some point over Travis’s head toward the back of the room. He walks away from the door before Travis can get to it, and sits back down at his desk.

“You got it, dude. Far out,” Travis says, flashing the peace sign from the doorway. Ray Watley is laughing, but no one else is.

Mr. Goldman doesn’t look up. “Don’t come back until we talk.”

“Okay, dude.” Travis waves, his backpack slung over one shoulder, opening the door. “Bye, dude. Righteous, man. Righteous.”

And then, the terrible thing happens. One of the straps of Travis’s backpack catches on the doorknob as he is walking out, and since the other strap is already around his shoulder, part of his body is jerked back as the rest of him tries to go forward. His head hits the doorknob on his way to the floor, and everyone hears him yelp.

Deena’s hand goes to her mouth. Traci laughs, one loud
Ha!,
but the rest of us just sit there, looking down at Travis hanging from the doorknob, his face twisted with pain.

Mr. Goldman gets up quickly, moving to the door. “You all right?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” Travis says. He keeps his eyes lowered as he stands up, rubbing his head. He does not look up once as he unhooks the strap of his backpack so he can try to exit again.

That evening, a little gray car pulls into the parking lot of Treeline Colonies, moving slowly in front of Unit B, the driver squinting at the numbers on the doors. It takes me a moment to see it is Mr. Goldman, because he is wearing a hat and a black fisherman’s jacket and no tie. I close my book, and move closer to the window.

He walks up the concrete stairs to the Rowleys’ door and knocks. Mrs. Rowley answers, Jackie O barking in her arms. She shuts the door, and Mr. Goldman walks back to his car in the parking lot, his arms folded across his chest. I think maybe she’s lied to him, told him Travis wasn’t home, but the door opens again, and Travis comes out, yawning and pulling a sweatshirt down over his head. He takes his time coming down the stairs. Mr. Goldman sits on the bumper of his car, one foot resting on the knee of the other leg, leaving enough room for Travis. But Travis stays standing, looking at his shoes, his hands pushed deep inside the pockets of his jeans.

Mr. Goldman talks, one arm moving back and forth between them, like a bridge for his words to fall onto and bounce more easily into Travis’s ears. They stay like this for a long time, Mr. Goldman’s breath turning to steam in the cooling March evening. When the sun starts to set, I have to squint to see their faces, turning gray and then shadowed against the dusking sky. Travis leans on one foot and then the other. And then, maybe just because he’s tired of standing, he sits.

fourteen

T
RAVIS WON’T TELL ME EXACTLY
what was said between him and Mr. Goldman. He only says they have worked out a plan: he will come in and work with Mr. Goldman during study hall for each day of algebra he has missed this year—thirteen last semester, nine this semester. If he does this, and if he passes the final exam, Mr. Goldman will move him right up to tenth-grade math with the rest of the class, which is good, because already he’s a year behind.

“He’s not so bad,” Travis says.

But of course I already know that Mr. Goldman isn’t so bad. This is now something to worry about, though, because it turns out he is on Ms. Jenkins’s side about the evolution business. I know this because Traci Carmichael raised her hand in the middle of math and asked him what he thought about Ms. Jenkins’s teaching us evolution, even though that’s about science, not math. He was handing out our quizzes, still warm from the photocopier, and he smiled and said, “Ah, Ms. Jenkins, the Copernicus of Kansas. I wish her the best,” and Traci smiled back like all of a sudden that made them friends.

I have looked up evolution in the encyclopedia in the library, and now I know why they’re fighting, why the protesters are mad. Evolution says that we came from monkeys, not Adam and Eve, which is what the Bible says. I don’t know what to think about this.

All ninth graders have been given a letter from Dr. Queen, written on lavender stationery to take home to our parents. It was stapled closed when Ms. Jenkins handed them out, but I opened mine as soon as the bell rang.

Dear concerned parents,

I’m writing this letter to let you know how we at KHS hope to resolve the debate surrounding our science curriculum. Although I appreciate the many parents who have called in to share their concerns with me over this issue, I have decided not to prohibit our teachers from teaching evolutionary theory. Our science faculty points out that human evolution is overwhelmingly supported by the larger scientific community as the best possible explanation of the origin of the human race, and also that students will need to be familiar with this theory should they go on to college. Our science faculty feels strongly that the scientific evidence that supports this theory must be presented to all students, regardless of an individual student’s religious beliefs.

However, since so many parents and religious groups have expressed concern over the possibility that teaching evolution could also be used to undermine religious teachings, I have asked a member of our teaching faculty who is active in his local church to sit in on the biology classes that will focus on Darwin and evolution. It is my hope that Mr. Jim Leubbe will represent other views in the classroom, and that his presence will ensure that no one’s personal views are attacked, demeaned, or dismissed.

Several parents have also suggested that the Genesis story of creation at least be given equal time in our science curriculum. Although I appreciate the willingness to compromise that this suggestion shows, the science faculty has made it clear that teaching the Genesis story should not take place in the science classroom. It is my hope that by next year we can have an elective course on religion offered to seniors to counterbalance the heavy emphasis on science and math for sophomores and juniors.

Sincerely,
Dr. Joan B. Queen
Principal, KHS

I thought Dr. Queen’s letter was okay until I got to the part about Mr. Leubbe sitting in on Ms. Jenkins’s classes. Mr. Leubbe is the gym teacher, and lately, when we have been running laps around the gym, he blows his whistle and says, “You-all run like orangutans! I’m going to talk to Ms. Jenkins about her monkey theory. Maybe there’s something to it after all!” He is just joking, but this kind of joking does not go over well with Ms. Jenkins, who hardly laughs at all, and when she does it is just a lifting up of one side of her mouth so you have to be watching carefully to even see it.

Mr. Leubbe graduated from Kerrville High only ten years ago, and there are still pictures of him in the trophy case, wearing a Kerrville High football jersey and kneeling, his football helmet at his side. If he didn’t have blond hair, he would look exactly like Superman. He has that kind of jaw. When we complain about having to go outside for gym class because it’s too hot or too cold, he tells stories about playing football in freezing snow, and he says we should quit our whining because when he had to play outside in bad weather he loved every minute of it.

“Those were the days,” he likes to say, his hands behind his head so his big arms form a triangle at each side. “I’m jealous of you all, of your youth. I really am.”

Mr. Leubbe saved someone’s life once. Two years ago, a car went off a bridge on the Kaw River, just when Mr. Leubbe happened to be jogging by, and he took off his running shirt and jumped in, even while everyone else was still just standing around, trying to think of what to do. He just went home after it happened, but enough people saw what he did and the governor came down from Topeka to give him a medal and there was a picture of him in the newspaper.

LOCAL FOOTBALL LEGEND SHOWS VALOR OFF THE FIELD

Mr. Leubbe told the newspaper that he didn’t think of himself as a hero because he was just doing what anyone would have done, which was kind of a dumb thing to say, because there were a bunch of other people standing around when the car went into the river, and they didn’t do anything.

He is pretty nice as a gym teacher. He picks teams for us when we play basketball, and I think he does this because he feels bad for the people who never get picked. He didn’t make me climb the rope because I couldn’t even get myself up past the knot at the bottom, but at the end of class, he took me aside and said, “Listen, Bucknow. I’m not going to make you climb the rope, because at this point, I don’t think you can. You’ve got chicken arms, okay? I’m not saying that to be mean. But there it is. You’ve got to start developing your arm strength, or what’s going to happen is you’re going to become one of those little old ladies who can’t even push their grocery carts in front of them. I’m just telling you, okay?”

The only problem I have with him is the only problem almost everyone has with him, which is that he likes to sneak up on people and scare them. He is very good at it, and you never even know he’s there until his fingers are on the backs of your elbows, his voice loud and startling in your ear, saying “
Gotcha
” so loud your heart stops right where it is.

I jump when he does it. Everyone does. Even the large, deep-voiced football players, juniors and seniors, who like Mr. Leubbe very much when he is standing in front of them, jump when he comes up from behind. They laugh, but they step away from him quickly, and you can tell they wish he wouldn’t do it anymore.

Knowing that he can be behind you at any time makes gym class somewhat frightening. We run laps looking over our shoulders. Even in the hallways, at lunch, you have to be careful. He snuck up behind Dr. Queen in the cafeteria once and made her drop her tray.

“Whoa, whoa, sorry there, Joan,” he said, helping to pick up her Tater Tots, rolling on the floor. “Maybe a little too much coffee these days?”

Dr. Queen’s hands were shaking, one of them over her heart.

He is also a back slapper. I think he does it to be nice, because usually he does it when he is making a joke or telling you good luck when it’s your turn to run relays. He slaps hard and fast, usually three times, right between the shoulders. You can hear the slap echoing off the walls of the gymnasium, and when he does it to me, I can feel it in my teeth.

He used to slap Mr. Goldman on the back, but he doesn’t do it anymore. Mr. Goldman slapped him back. I saw it happen. They were walking outside together at the end of the day, looking like they were getting along, Mr. Leubbe wearing his red shirt and his whistle around his neck, almost two heads taller than Mr. Goldman. Mr. Leubbe was saying something, and then he started slapping Mr. Goldman on the back. He was smiling, but he slapped him so hard that Mr. Goldman pitched forward for a moment, his tie lifting up off his shirt. Mr. Goldman straightened up and slapped Mr. Leubbe on the back, just once, but hard enough for us to hear it down by the buses, and hard enough to make the gum that had been in Mr. Leubbe’s mouth fly out and land on the sidewalk in front of him. Mr. Leubbe smiled and slapped him again, three times, and Mr. Goldman slapped him back again, smiling too, and for the first time in my life, I saw Mr. Leubbe wince.

So he doesn’t slap Mr. Goldman anymore, but he still does it to Ms. Jenkins, especially after he makes a joke to her about us running laps like orangutans. When she doesn’t smile, he keeps slapping, and says, “I’m just joking with you, Constance. No harm meant to you or your monkey theory.”

And still she doesn’t smile. But she almost does later, when she tells us that contrary to what Mr. Leubbe believes, it isn’t her monkey theory. She’d like to take credit, she says, the half smile rising, but really, she’s not the one who came up with the idea.

The first day went okay. Mr. Leubbe stood next to Ms. Jenkins while she took attendance, his hands on his hips, wearing the same clothes he wore that morning in gym, a red shirt and tan shorts, the whistle on a string around his neck.

“Look, troops,” he said. “I’m just here to make sure everybody gets a fair shake, okay? That means Mr. Charles Darwin
and
the man upstairs.” His eyes moved across the room, to the endangered species posters, to the bees buzzing in their plastic hive. “I’m not going to pretend to like this monkey business any more than a lot of your parents. Nonetheless, I want everybody to be good sports, to be polite to Ms. Jenkins and to myself and to one another. As far as I’m concerned, we might disagree, but we’re all on the same team, okay?”

Ms. Jenkins must have seen what was coming, his big arm rising up behind her. She tried to step away in time, out of arm’s reach. But he got her, right between the shoulders, one, two,
three,
and all you had to do was look at her eyes when he got to the third slap to see that as far as she was concerned, they weren’t on the same team at all.

But for the rest of the class, there wasn’t a problem. He just sat in the back row, eating trail mix out of a Ziploc bag, making notes in his notebook. He’s too big for one of our chairs, but he sat in one anyway, his knees sticking up on each side. Ms. Jenkins talked about finches and the Galápagos Islands, and he didn’t seem too worried about anything she had to say about that.

But the next day, she started talking about “our watery origins,” and that’s when the fight started.

“So when did monkeys first start talking?” he called out, not even raising his hand. “That’s what I want to know.” He was smiling at all of us, like we were all with him, all of us in on the same joke. He popped a raisin in his mouth. “And how come some of them stopped?”

Ms. Jenkins had been facing the chalkboard, and she flinched when he said this, the chalk in her hand making a small white mark on the board. It was like he had snuck up behind her, even though, really, she must have remembered he was back there.

“No,” she said, turning around. “Monkeys didn’t talk, Mr. Leubbe. That’s not the argument. The argument is that our lineage can be traced back to a shared ancestry with the simian family.” She gestured at the chart on the wall. “Studies of human DNA and simian DNA have supported this idea.”

He was quiet again until the next day. Ms. Jenkins was talking about how
Homo sapiens
came before
Homo erectus
. He didn’t really actually say anything, but we could hear him giggling in the back row. We all turned around again, and finally, he got so loud that Ms. Jenkins had to stop talking.

“Sorry,” he said, his hands raised in front of him. “It’s just that…” He shook his head, his eyes wide, like Rodney Dangerfield telling a joke. “I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t know if I’m comfortable being called
homo
anything.”

Ms. Jenkins scratched her hair. Even after she was done, a large strand of it remained upright, rising up toward the ceiling like a puff of smoke. Then she put her chalk down and walked out of the room.

Traci Carmichael called her mother from a pay phone at lunch, and by the next day, there was another note for us to take home to our parents, on light green stationery, this time not from Dr. Queen but from the Kerrville County School Board.

On April 4, 1987, we will hold a town meeting in the KHS gymnasium at seven-thirty, The purpose of this meeting is to let the community express its views on how different theories on the origins of life should be presented in KHS classrooms. The school board will be arriving at a decision the following week.

Now the Channel 6 news has come to the school parking lot, and when I go home, Dr. Queen is on television. “It’s out of my hands now,” she says to reporters, holding up her hands like she wants to prove that really, there’s nothing there.

Eileen has already found out about the meeting. She calls to tell me she is driving up from Wichita to meet with some people from the Second Ark. They will pick me up in the church van at seven, just before the meeting. “Don’t you worry about that Jenkins woman,” she says. “We’ll take care of her.”

“I don’t think kids are allowed to go to the meeting,” I say, my hands tight around the receiver. My mother and Samuel are in the front room watching
ALF,
but my mother hears me say this and looks up at me, one eyebrow raised.

“They can’t keep you out, baby,” Eileen says. “It’s your school, after all. You have the right to be there. And we’re bringing a little surprise for you too.”

I have to act like this is a good thing, because I love Eileen, but I don’t want my surprise, and I don’t want to go to the meeting. I have secretly read the chapter on evolution in my science book, even though we are not supposed to yet, and there are pictures of fossils and skeletons, human bones too old to be Adam and Eve. I have believed everything Ms. Jenkins has told us this year about mitochondria and ATP and chromosomes and the rain forests in Brazil. She’s never lied to us about anything before, and I don’t see why she would start now.