Like We Care (32 page)

She looked across the room and listened as Frank fielded more questions, not just from the retirees but from the public at large who had bothered to show up. When he didn’t know the answer, he admitted it. When the opportunity presented itself to weave some of his reticent charm into a response, he went for it. In the same way Todd had picked the ideal figurehead in Joel, the kid had found what seemed to be a compelling candidate in the intellectual but likable Social Studies teacher.

A lot of people were apparently coming out to vote for the first time; Frank was a novice at the election process, too. Maybe that was what was so appealing about him. Together they’d take a shot at this democracy business, see if it was worth the trouble.

A
nd then it was a kid—
dammit
—who brought it all down.

Because he was sixteen, because he was mean by habit and pumped to the gills with that corrosive teenage bile that required him to piss on anything that felt sincere or hopeful—
gay
—Dickinson junior Mike Barnstall came forward to gut the campaign.

He waited until he thought he would do the most damage, then he took the tape to Channel 4, hoping he’d be paid for the scoop. He had to be content with merely destroying a man.

“With election day just three days away,” anchorman Brad Knight began, “the race for councilman in Berline’s Sixth Ward has been shaken by evidence of criminal behavior by Frank Kolak, a Social Studies teacher at Dickinson High School who was looking to unseat incumbent Jerry Self.

“That evidence, seen here in videotape obtained exclusively by NewsMax 4. . .”

Cut back to the Happy Snack. Everything, inevitably, led back to the Happy Snack.

The amateur video darted and zipped oafishly through the parking lot crowd as the anchorman set up the piece in a voiceover. The images would appear to have come from the heady, early days of the protest, as things were still ramping up.

There were the packs of kids, waving dollar bills like banners and bouncing pennies off Daljit Singh’s front door. There were Bobby Slopes, Wad Wendell, and the others mugging it up for a reporter from another station.

And there were Joel and Mr. Kolak, sitting on the hood of Joel’s car. It was happenstance that they were caught on tape; it would’ve been missed if someone hadn’t called attention to it.

But there they were, chillin’. And sharing a cigarette.

The station zoomed in on the image, turning it grainy, like surveillance footage: a teacher and his underage student, passing a cigarette between themselves.

They backed it up and froze it.

As everything began to fall away. . .

“. . . a minor at the time, technically putting Kolak in violation of the law. Beyond that, it is now calling into question the judgment of a man entrusted with the education of the community’s children, and running on a platform of honesty and ethics.

“Our Bonnie Swerdlow talked to Dickinson High School junior Mike Barnstall, who brought us the tape.”

There he was, his zits seeming to glow red with noxiousness, a snaky smile stretched across braces caked with crud.

He was so proud of himself.

“Can you tell me how you came into possession of this tape?” the reporter asked gravely.

“Just some friends, you know, had been dinkin’ around with a video camera, down at the Happy Snack,” Barnstall mumbled, “and I heard about something that they had accidentally filmed and so, like, I asked to see it and, you know, it was just wrong, far as I could see. I thought people should know about it.”

“Do you know Frank Kolak? Has he ever been your teacher?”

An infinitesimal twinge of guilt passed briskly across Barnstall’s face. “Yeah, I mean. . . He’s all right. He’s not. . .” He shrugged dimly. “I don’t have a problem with him.”

Something, perhaps regret, was threatening to touch him deep inside, so he ratcheted up the pose so as to kill it. “Adults are just such hypocrites, y’know? I mean, they tell you to do one thing, and then you see that they’re doing something else and, y’know, we’re just sick of it. Knowuddumsayin’?”

And there it was, horrid to behold: In the gluey recesses of his mind, the kid was doing a Joel Kasten of his very own. Lob a bomb, get yourself on TV, be famous for a minute or two. Just for a laugh.

The movement was now folding in on itself.

The report then cut to another taped interview. Marty Kasten, pleased again to find himself on camera, feigned outrage.

“I wanna know who this guy is,” he said gruffly, kind of like a TV cop. “My son is an athlete! He has a future ahead of him, and his
teacher
is handing him cigarettes!! Who knows what else this guy has been exposing him to. Some of the stuff I hear about this guy, I’m not sure why he’s being left alone with our kids.”

“Your son is Joel Kasten, who has been getting a lot of attention lately for his various activities around town,” the reporter interjected. “Have you spoken to him about this yet?”

Marty looked into the camera. “My son has been letting himself get led around by all sorts of people who have figured out that the kid isn’t bright enough to see through their act. It’s time for him to cut out this crap and get his head back in the game.”

The reporter delivered her wrap-up: “Berline police are studying the tape to see if there is sufficient evidence to charge Kolak with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor citation that carries a fine of just over one hundred dollars. Far more worrisome for the Kolak campaign, however, are the reactions of voters in Kolak’s district, as well as administrators with Dickinson High School and the Berline school district, whom we have yet to be able to reach for comment.

“But if what we appear to be seeing on this tape turns out to be true, it would seem that Frank Kolak’s teaching career, let alone his political aspirations, may be in serious jeopardy.”

Frank’s mother was watching this, alone in his apartment. Some kind of crisis had come up earlier in the day, and a shaken Frank had left her there without an explanation.

From out of nowhere, something was now pushing in on her from all directions. A maternal alarm she had not felt since he was a boy leapt up and choked her heart.

She looked around his apartment, really noticing for the first time how sparse and unsettled it looked.

“This is nothing!” Todd said as he paced frantically. “This is
nothing!
”

Joel was there, as were Annie and her camera guy. And Frank Kolak, silent as he sat alone at a picnic table a pace or two away. They had gathered in a park on the edge of town, hiding out from the reporters who were now after the candidate for comment.

Annie’s camera circled and taped. She knew she should stay back, maintain her professional distance, but she was part of this.

“Todd. . .”

“He took a drag off a fucking cigarette! From a kid who was less than two months away from being eighteen! This is. . .” He came up short for words, then laughed at the ridiculousness of it. Because he could not bear the inevitability of it. “
This is nothing!!
”

“Todd,” Annie said firmly, but with care, “the appearance of it is horrible.” Frank felt a needle prick. “Especially now. He could be
fired
on Monday, the day before the election! You’re going to have parents and adults out there, pointing at him as some kind of threat to their kids. You’ve got Joel’s own father implying that he’s gay!” Annie continued.

Todd and Joel winced at Annie’s bluntness. They turned to Mr. Kolak, who registered no reaction.

“If they couldn’t muster up enough votes before to counteract what you guys have managed to pull together, they sure can now. He’s hanging out with his students, during school hours, sharing cigarettes with them!”

Joel kept out of it. He was only concerned about Mr. Kolak, but he didn’t know what to say to him.

“These are the same adults who didn’t lift a finger to stop that store from selling us cigarettes!” Todd spit. “These are the same adults. . . Jesus Christ, I could show you a couple dozen parents who let their kids smoke in their house, right in front of them. Are the cops going to arrest
them?
”

She took him by the shoulders to steady him; it appeared he might stroke out. She knew him well enough to understand that he felt the full weight of what his little prank had just brought down on Mr. Kolak.

“Todd. It is the
appearance
. If they want to, the press and the other side can turn this into a huge deal for the next three days, whether it really is or not.”

“But we’ve still got our votes!” Joel blurted out, certain that this was not the time for surrender. He was standing protectively over his teacher. “They’ll all see this for what it really is, and if they see that we’re gonna lose over it, they’ll come out in even bigger numbers, just because it’s so fucking not fair!

“This is still Mr. Kolak we’re talking about,” he pleaded.

They all stopped and looked to Frank, his gaze frozen on the grass between his feet. Annie’s cameraman was swarming around him like a wasp. She silently told him to move back.

Todd took a step toward him. “You could make a statement. You could apologize and say that. . . You could say that you didn’t know Joel was seventeen. He’s a senior. How’s a teacher supposed to know if a kid has turned eighteen or not?”

“Frank?” Annie began gently. He was never her teacher, and though she addressed men 20 years her senior with familiarity every day in her career, it felt odd using his first name. “Teachers have the toughest unions in the country. They wouldn’t let you get fired just for this, right? It could get ugly, but. . .”

Frank drew up his spine and stood, taking in a deep breath on an exquisite spring day.

“I am not going to hide behind my union,” he said casually, almost jauntily. “I am not going to hide behind a lie.

“I did it. And that’s that.”

He stooped to pick up some pinecones and began tossing them at a tree trunk. He never came close to hitting it.

Todd, Joel, and Annie shared a confused look. “That’s that
what?
” Todd asked.

He kept throwing wide of the tree.

“I have to quit.”

Todd turned away as if spun around by a blow. Joel bore down.

“What?
Why?
You don’t know how people are gonna respond to this! C’mon, Mr. Kolak, we still got a chance!”

The camera captured all this. Joel’s hurt was raw, his plea desperate. He was 18 years old and he had the world by the balls and nothing mattered to him more than what was unraveling before him.

Something had gotten through.

“Joel,” Frank said softly. Whatever his own hurt, he saw that the kid needed help through this. “It’s too hard. People are going to be coming after me, saying things about me, and I won’t know how to fight back. I wish I did, but I’m not. . .”

Like you.

Frank stopped, embarrassed by this soul-baring. And saddened by how much it soothed him, how much it made surrender palatable.

“I just need to quit.”

Todd finally turned, a steeliness behind his damp eyes.

“What else are you quitting?”

They kept their distance, Todd and Mr. Kolak. A breeze blew between them.

Frank met Todd’s glare. “That school won’t keep me on. I’ll be sparing them a fight.”

Now Joel turned away. Todd leapt up and hung from a branch just beyond his reach. He was 17. That’s what the moment told him to do.

Annie could only watch. She had no business now with these three.

“You’re giving up,” Todd said flatly, swinging slightly as he dangled from the tree.

“I’m guilty.”

“You’re giving up.”

Mr. Kolak shrugged idly, conceding without betraying much regret.

“I’ve got other things I can do.”

“Name ’em.”

“I can teach.”

“So teach here.”

Frank stooped to grab more pinecones, stepping toward the tree. He was closer now, he could hit it.

“I’m not appreciated here.”

Todd’s palms began to burn. He refixed his grip as his arms ached. It mattered a lot that he not let go.

“What the hell do you think this is?!” Todd shouted. He nodded toward Joel, whose back was still turned to them. He was crying.

“You’re children. I’m a man,” Frank said. “I want to be respected by folks like me. I’d like that for myself.” He was now standing before Todd, still hanging a foot off the ground. “I’d hope you’d like that for me, too.”

Todd hung on stubbornly as Mr. Kolak stood there. He’d wait this out, smiling only slightly at the boy’s losing battle.

Todd finally dropped to the ground, practically the same height as his teacher but looking up to him all the same. He had to accept this.

“I’m sorry for getting you into this,” he said softly. “I shoulda left you alone.”

“I didn’t want to be alone,” the teacher said. “You chased me outside, made me see some things in myself. Don’t be sorry.”

Todd would try not to be.

Their bond settled, they both looked to Joel, his shoulders heaving. Todd and Mr. Kolak were both touched and, to their mutual shame, slightly amused.