Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, hi, Mr. Marx.” Her Tejano accent was downright musical. “Are you teaching our comp-and-lit class again today?”
“I, uh, dunno,” I said. I was discombobulated. The last time I had seen this girl, she had been stealing a van with a tuba in the back. “I assume Eliz—uh, Ms. Owens will tell me where to go.”
At the counter, Lester made a choking noise.
Marisa smiled. She probably knew “Ms. Owens” and I had been married in the distant past. In fact, it had only been six years since Elizabeth had divorced me and I’d bugged out to Chicago. But to a seventeen-year-old, that would seem like ancient history. I wished it seemed that way to me, too.
“Well, I hope we have you again,” Marisa said. “I liked that D. H. Lawrence story. Mr. Morris would have made us write about ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ for the tenth time.”
“Poe you,” I said.
Marisa frowned. “Huh?”
The inner-office door opened again, and my ex-wife stood there in all of her tall, smooth-skinned, blue-pantsuited glory. Her hair was tied back, emphasizing her high forehead, dark eyes, and perfect cheekbones. It would have been nice if she’d let herself fall apart after we’d split, but no such luck.
“As I’ve told you before, Mr. Marx,” Elizabeth said, “no one likes puns. And I won’t tolerate them at Kingman Rural High.” She glanced at Marisa. “Don’t be late, now. They’ll need you to unlock the cabinets.”
Marisa said, “Yes, ma’am,” and started for the exit. She nodded to me. “See you later, Mr. Marx.”
I watched her as she went into the hall, and I saw what was silk-screened on the back of her band T-shirt.
In bold block letters, it said BAD ASS. But in a stylized scrawl, the letters “BR” were inserted before “ASS.”
BAD BRASS.
6. Sparks and Wildfires
I turned to Elizabeth. “If I’d worn a shirt like that back when I was a student here, I would’ve been suspended. After Lester here had smacked me upside the head.”
Lester snorted. “Well, it woulda been you.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “We’ve had one parent complain. Then that parent found out the shirts were gifts from our anonymous San Antonio band benefactor. When donations are the only way a school can maintain its music program, people find they can put up with a little vulgarity.”
“Even the Baptists?” I asked.
“Especially the Baptists. They embrace the fact that we’re all sinners. Come on in, Mr. Marx.”
I followed Elizabeth into her office and closed the door behind me as I heard Lester mutter, “Mister Marx?”
“You know,” I said as Elizabeth sat down behind her desk, “you might as well use my first name. Everyone knows we used to bump uglies.”
Elizabeth gave me a thin smile and gestured at the two black-vinyl chairs on my side of the desk. “Speak for yourself, Matt.”
I sat down sideways in one of the chairs and propped my feet on the other. “I love it when we banter, Lizbeth. That’s how I know the spark is still there.”
“This is Texas. Sparks start wildfires and ruin hundreds of lives.”
“You’re exaggerating,” I said. “At most, we only ruined my life. You, on the other hand, are running one of the twenty or thirty finest high schools between Conroe and Nacogdoches. How many badass students you got now, anyway? About 666?”
Her smile flatlined. “I take it you still think of Kingman as ‘Satan’s cornhole.’ But I’m grateful you brought me here. I was scared to death of any part of Texas that wasn’t Austin, but Kingman showed me there are good people everywhere.” She gave an annoyed sigh that I remembered well. “Why’d you come back, Matt? Your parents are gone, and I’m a thorn in your side. And you can’t be happy in that tiny apartment over the hardware store.”
“Casa de Kingman Bolt and Supply is temporary,” I said. “Regardless of living quarters, though, this is where I grew up. It’s home. But I can’t idealize it because I know what’s under all the rocks. Such as the fact that this county harbors more than its fair share of plain old-fashioned racism. You know how many people said unkind things about our marriage?”
Actually, what I had heard most people say was that I wasn’t good enough for her. I could go to UT, make the Dean’s List, and get a master’s in education, but I would always be a third-generation delinquent to the older folks. They weren’t wrong, of course, but it was still unkind of them to comment on it.
Elizabeth gave a short laugh. “If I let a few garden-variety racists drive me off, I couldn’t live anywhere.” Then she frowned. “But if I couldn’t have this job, I’d go where I could. Which brings me to something I’ve been wanting to tell you.” She leaned forward. “Maybe you’re thinking if you watch and wait, a space will open up so you can join the Kingman faculty again. But that won’t happen anytime soon. Whereas you could go full-time right now in, say, Dallas. Or Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City.” Her eyebrows rose. “Or Canada. If you liked Chicago, you’d love Canada. Snow. Ice. Moose. All sorts of things you can’t have here.”
I made a face. “Naw. Some of those people speak French. I have a hard enough time with Spanish.” I checked my watch. “Bell’s gonna ring. Where do you need me? Which you could have told me in voice mail, by the way. If you didn’t want to banter.”
“I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure,” Elizabeth said. “But I knew we’d have a few teachers calling in sick. That happens toward the end of the term as they realize they haven’t burned through their sick leave yet. I thought one of them might be Morris again, in which case you could continue doing some actual English teaching. Except he’s here after all.”
“Too bad. Some of those kids verged on being bright.”
“I know.” She looked down at her desk. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter. “However, someone I didn’t expect to bail … did. He sent an ‘I can’t come in’ text this morning with no explanation. And now he isn’t answering texts or phone calls, either.”
I waited. Given the way Elizabeth was talking, it wasn’t hard to guess who the culprit was. But I wanted her to say it.
“It’s the band instructor,” Elizabeth said. “David Garrett.”
I swung my feet down. “You mean the guy you’ve been riding like a rodeo bull?”
It didn’t faze her. “That’s a gross mischaracterization,” she said. “And no one else knows. So don’t say anything.”
I gave a chuckle that came out a little bitter. “Hell, Lester probably has tiny red X’s on his calendar to mark the mornings when you and Mr. Garrett happen to arrive within five minutes of each other. This is a small town, Lizbeth. If the high-school principal is playing the slide trombone with the duke of the band dorks, I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”
Now Elizabeth gave me a look that could have cut glass.
“All I need to hear from you,” she said, “is whether you’ll take symphonic band for first hour, then kill an hour, then cover two back-to-back history classes. Ms. Conley left a Gettysburg DVD she says will be fine for both. After that, you can go home with a half day’s pay. Or you can take two study halls this afternoon. Final exams start in a week, and a few real teachers could use the planning periods.”
I tried to give her back the same stare she was giving me. But she was a whole lot better at it. “First of all, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout teaching no band. Second, kudos on the ‘real teachers’ shot. Third …” If only my weekend adventure had been more profitable. I could use the full eighty bucks. “Okay. I can do the afternoon, too.”
Elizabeth regained her leader-of-the-pack composure. “Don’t worry about the band. That’s why Marisa was here. She’s only a junior, but even the seniors respect her. So does David. I gave her a key to the instrument cabinets, and she’ll be running the rehearsal. All you have to do is make sure no one disrupts it. The spring concert is this Friday, and they have to play well. The bake sale and barbecue are right after, and people buy more cookies if they like the show. Our benefactor has provided some nice instruments and T-shirts, but we still need gas money to get the band to football games and district competitions next year.”