When You Believe Read online

  “Can you confirm this rumor about the school, Gritton?” And Parker was close enough to Patrice Saunders and the microphone that the question broadcast to the rafters. “Or can you deny it?”

  But Sam saw that the journalism teacher wasn’t listening. He was following the electrical cord from where it left the metal base and snaked across the floor beneath a long, narrow strip of duct tape. Dr. Minor, the band director, who was much too far away to come to the bodily rescue of the staff on the floor, lifted his hands, the left one gripping the baton.

  “Can you deny that school officials are meeting with police and the Department of Health and Human Services right now, trying to decide what to do?”

  “Number three,” the band director mouthed soundlessly so his high school band members would be able to find the music. “LOUD.”

  “Can you confirm that there are going to be charges filed, Gritton? Can you tell us if this is a credible accusation?”

  Zip. Up came the length of tape. Brad Gritton jerked the plug out of the wall.

  The sound system went dead. Three hundred kids were no longer privy to their conversation.

  “Now I’m going to tell you what I think about you coming in like this, Parker,” Gritton said, and nobody heard him except for Sam Leavitt and Johnny Nagle and about a dozen others who happened to be standing in his path as he strode angrily back. “It all started during CNN and Desert Storm. Journalism as an unfolding drama instead of a fact-finding mission. Everybody’s in a rush to be the first to say something, even if they aren’t sure what they’re saying yet.”

  Parker came right back at him. “If you had an ounce of professional loyalty, Gritton, you would be the one turning in this story.”

  “You think you’re going to discover anything by coming in here and shouting about what you know?”

  Up in the stands, Dr. Minor marked the downbeat of the song with a heavy stroke of his arms and a slash of his baton. The Mighty Fire-Rattler Marching Band broke into a staggering rendition of “We Will Rock You,” rivaling in both finesse and volume any version that might have ever been played for the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium or for Kurt Warner and the St. Louis Rams at the Trans World Dome.

  The entire Shadrach student body rose to its feet, sensing only that everyone needed to stand up for the honor of the school. Stomp-stomp CLAP. Stomp-stomp CLAP. And then, at the top of their lungs, they began to sing, even if they didn’t know the words. Da da-da-da young boy da da-da-da tempo…

  Sam started the minicam again. The musical interlude, as deafening as it was, and Brad Gritton’s interruption, had given Patrice Saunders the moment she needed to compose herself. Sam taped again as, “If there is any news to be released about this school, we will notify the press in an official statement this afternoon,” she informed the invading microphone with a voice that could freeze Springfield in August.

  Later, when others would look at Sam’s video, they would see that it was Brad Gritton, the journalism teacher, and Charlie Stains, the woodshop teacher, who began to move up and down the bleachers, touching students with great care on the shoulders, releasing them in rows so that no one would get hurt. In Sam’s video, they would see the two male teachers standing guard together with crossed arms as the students of Shadrach High trampled their way down the steps in hoards, headed to their next classes.

  But because Sam hadn’t filmed this, no one would ever know that, after the gym had cleared, Charlie Stains stood alone in one corner, his spine pressed against the wall, his face gone as gray as the cement blocks behind him. He stood with his eyes closed against the world, as if he might soak up just one more piece of this place before he had to walk out.

  And, of course, the whispering in the hallways began as soon as the Shadrach students cleared the gym.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They passed each other as Lydia came winding her way through students in B-hall and Charlie was heading toward the door.

  As if she felt his gaze on her, she lifted her eyes to his.

  He stopped so fast when she looked at him that, like dominoes, people ran into him from behind.

  For one beat, another, they stared. Then her eyes jerked away.

  “Lydia.”

  In his arms, Charlie carried a box filled with personal belongings he had packed out of his classroom. On the top of the pile was the Billy Bob Big Mouth Bass, a plastic fish that, when you punched a button, turned toward you to sing its song. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

  Fifteen months he’d spent settling in at Shadrach High School and this was what he had to show for it. One Dell computer carton filled with his junk. The boat he’d managed to win in a church auction. One woman he had thought trusted him enough to spend her life with him. And this knotted-up, physical sensation in his belly, like one of those deep, painful dreams where you’re in a public place and don’t have any clothes on.

  Even if he didn’t have anything to hide from, he still wanted to, and couldn’t. He felt helpless. Exposed. Vaguely scraped and guilty on the inside, as if parts of everything he had ever done were wrong.

  There were so many things to say. So many regrets to share. “You’re leaving,” she said.

  He nodded as the kids began to move around both of them like creek water rushing around rocks. “I am.”

  She said the words as if she needed to take great gulps of air around them, like the fish they’d caught by hand and hauled out onto shore. “They’ve let you go.”

  “L.R. requested it. A leave of absence. But we all know he’ll release me from my contract as soon as he can.”

  By the brusque way L.R. had stepped into his classroom and launched immediately into speech, Charlie knew he must have been practicing it all the way up the hall.

  You understand, don’t you? You understand what I have to ask you to do?

  He hadn’t answered. He’d just kept packing the box. In went a battery-operated pencil sharpener, a small case of whittling tools, a half-full bottle of Gorilla Glue.

  Charlie, you’ve done a fantastic job with these kids. It will only go into the record as a leave of absence, you know, until the investigation is over. Until everyone’s figured out what’s going on.

  In the hall with Lydia, Charlie shoved the plastic fish down as far as it would go and began to fold shut the lid to the box, two sides down. He didn’t want her looking at his belongings. You would have thought, by the way she focused on them, that they were the most fascinating things she’d ever seen.

  “This is what L.R. wants,” Charlie said to Lydia as she stood in front of him. Just a good-bye, a disappearance into the sunset. Clean and neat. Quiet and simple. The school district would be legally covered. “He asked what I would be doing with all my free time. I told him I had a new boat. I told him I would spend a lot of time out on the Brownbranch. Fishing. I don’t know.”

  I put a call in to personnel this morning at the University of Missouri, L.R. had said. I’m waiting for someone to phone me back. You know, I didn’t check your references the first time. I had known you so long that I didn’t think it necessary.

  I appreciate that, he’d answered with pain in his voice. That means a lot to me.

  Why is it you decided to leave your college professorship? You told me it was politics. We talked around it during your interview, but you never ever really said. Why did you really come back? Were you running from something?

  I’m not much in the mood to rehash my work history right now, L.R.

  Do I have something to worry about in my school? Did you touch that girl, Charlie?

  As the students moved around Charlie and Lydia in the corridor, the stream of people pressed them closer toward each other. And he suddenly felt like he was gasping for air, with her being so near, as he hunched over the cardboard box like he had an abdominal wound. The lid wouldn’t stay shut. He shoved it down, clamped his teeth together so hard that he figured she could see veins straining in his jaw.

  Two people who had thought th
ey had known each other so well. Two people who could list each other’s allergies and ring size and favorite movies. Two people who had discussed fishing holes together and house plans and wedding dates. They stood in poignant wordlessness, as if they had never really ever talked to each other at all, as if someone else had been carrying the conversation, and now they were lost.

  “Well,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, clearing her throat. He could see her hands shaking.

  And so they both understood it. Now, being alone together, there wasn’t anything left to say.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you apologize. When you apologize, it makes you sound like you’re wrong.”

  He stepped past her.

  “I’ll come with you out to the car.”

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  “I can’t leave it this way, Charlie.”

  “Maybe you ought to.”

  “No.”

  “Someone will see you with me.”

  “Do you think that really matters to me right now?”

  He didn’t say Suit yourself. He just plodded past her, out toward the parking lot and let her make her own decision. He sensed her behind him and knew she was still there.

  He didn’t have the boat attached to his truck anymore. He had unhitched it and chocked the tires with rocks in his yard, where he had decided it would be safe. He jammed the computer box inside the truck bed and shoved a tool chest up against it so it wouldn’t stand any chance of blowing out. “What I want to know is this,” he suddenly said to her with censure. “Only one question I have to ask you.”

  “What?” She uncrossed her arms.

  “I want to know if you believe that girl or if you believe me. I want to know which one of us you think is telling the truth.”

  She stood looking at him as if that question had come too fast, as if he had nailed her to the wall.

  “Lydia?”

  She started toward him again, taking up the last few steps between herself and the truck.

  “Stay where you are,” he said. “Don’t move any closer until you answer.”

  She fumbled around for a moment. “Why would you even have to ask what I think?”

  “You know why.”

  “Don’t do this. Charlie, please.”

  He yanked open the driver’s side and climbed in.

  “You’ve agreed to commit your life to me. I need to know where this leaves us.”

  He held the door open until she answered. He gave her no time to fabricate a story or to temper her thoughts with careful words. Lydia had nothing else in mind that she could say; the words came blurting out. “No. I don’t think that girl’s telling me the truth, and I don’t necessarily think you are, either.”

  “That’s what I thought.” After he slammed the door, Charlie cranked down the window like he was reeling in a fighter fish, as hard as he could. He popped the gas pedal, so frustrated he didn’t stop to think that it would flood the engine when he tried to start it. “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  “Don’t you go yet,” she said, taking the steps two at a time. “Look, you can’t expect me to not question this. I’m just human.”

  “That’s the problem with the whole world, isn’t it? Everybody’s just human.”

  “Charlie—”

  “Don’t you know I could have dealt with this, Lydia, if I knew that you were behind me?”

  Lydia grabbed the door and opened it. “How could you say that? How could you make me be the responsible one?”

  Like mist that settled heavy in the bottomlands and rose when sun warmed the air, all the things they could have said to each other and all the things that, to both of them, were unspeakable—I can’t stop thinking of the things Shelby said . . .

  I thought I could count on you to trust me.

  Some doubts are too big to overcome, Charlie.

  I needed you, Lydia, and you aren’t there for me— disclosures, denials, admissions, guilt, shame mounted between them. There wasn’t anything that could save what they had been.

  Charlie stumbled up out of the truck and seized her, hauling her against him, locking his mouth against hers so hard that she tasted blood. Hip to hip, thigh to thigh, leg to leg, their shoulders straining.

  “Stop it,” she cried against his lips. “Just stop it. This doesn’t make anything different.”

  “Lydia, you’re shaking. Are you that afraid of me?”

  “I want you to leave.”

  “From that kiss, it was hard for me to know it.” His mouth twisted, but it wasn’t a smile.

  She slapped him, hard. He lurched back. Overhead the breeze came up and rattled the limbs like rake tines. “I won’t be manhandled by you,” she said.

  The set of his jaw tightened. “That so?”

  It took a tough man to stand before her without reacting, letting her see him broken and strong. But Charlie could be as tough as a log chain. As strong as a thick, broad white oak.

  When he stumbled back into the truck and slammed the door, he couldn’t stop his chest from heaving. On the sidewalk, the damp leaves smelled like steeping, pungent tea. And Lydia just stood there, her eyes closed, as he ached to say her name. Lyddie.

  He keyed the engine instead. The radio awakened with static. He stared at it a minute, expecting a Shadrach football rundown. When the radio didn’t give it to him immediately, he took his frustration out on the knob, twisting it. AM stations crackled up from everywhere.

  “John Ashcroft… if we pray… down three to two… new dessert menu… Joe knows… made the Anaheim Angels so… music up… in store for you… the problem with illegal game-bird baiting… believe Christ… it’s Taco-riffic!… the Carnahan platform… final close-out sale, cash and carry…”

  The sound stopped in one long hum as if the dial had honed in by itself.

  “In other statewide news today, Missouri officials are continuing an investigation this hour after a St. Clair County student made claims that a high school teacher allegedly abused her—”

  Charlie punched it off.

  That radio report was the last sound between them. When he drove away, he left only the leaves at the curb behind him, whispering that he had been there.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sam Leavitt played into the third quarter of the homecoming game before the team trainer diagnosed his broken rib.

  When Coach had lined them up in a two-point stance for warm-ups and assigned them to catch balls while they ran at half speed, Sam had forgotten everything except the battle-call to defeat the Abednego Blazers. His muscles were itching to burn.

  The decibel level at the earlier assembly couldn’t compare to the uproar from Shadrach fans now, their arch rivals in plain view and listening across the field. Rolls of crepe paper soared through the air and unfurled before the opposite team like gauntlets. For all the encouragement and hollering and passion, the two sides might as well have been tribal villages in a life-or-death standoff instead of students at a game.

  By the time the Fire-Rattlers met helmet to helmet in the huddle, there wasn’t time for Sam to think about the bizarre journalist invasion or the angry pain in his side. The corncob burning had incited a riot atmosphere among his classmates and his team. Sam wanted to perform.

  Every time he thought about Whitney and the questions she’d asked him—Where’s Shelby?—he wanted to hit something. And so that’s just what he did.

  In the first quarter he made three bone-crushing blocks, one that laid a kid out and opened a hole for Will Devine to make a thirty-two-yard run up the left sideline for a touchdown.

  During the second quarter, with the sky fading to black and high banks of stadium lights streaming onto the field, Coach Fortney called his number for an inside release. On Josh Dailey’s snap-count, Sam took one short jab step off the line of scrimmage, escaped from the Abednego defensive end with a brutal forearm blow to an inside shoulder, and sprinted upfield.

 
; Josh rocketed him a ball that hit square between the 8 and the 4 on his jersey. Sam wrapped his arms around it and took off. Two plays later Adam kicked his first field goal of the game.

  At halftime in the locker room, which sounded like a barnyard and didn’t smell much better, they were already high-fiving and exchanging victory grunts.

  “Way to let ’em have it, Dailey.”

  “Did you see that hit Leavitt laid on the cornerback?”

  “Those guys are going home with their tails between their legs.”

  “What is this?” Coach bellowed at them. “You think you’re finished for the day? You think it all ends here?”

  “Well—”

  “You’ve got the entire population of Shadrach out there in the stands depending on you and you think it’s time you can stop and celebrate along with them?”

  They plopped their helmets on the benches, heads bent, and let him rage at them. He showed them diagrams, gave each one of them individual criticism. By the time he was finished they felt like they’d fallen ten points behind instead of the other way around. In one connected, surging unit, they blasted up out of the locker room and smashed through the red paper banner.

  Four minutes into the third quarter, Coach called Will Devine’s number again and Sam stutter-stepped into a perfect fake, drawing off a 225-pound Abednego linebacker. The linebacker rushed at him while Josh shoveled the ball toward his teammate.

  At the last possible second, an Abednego player caught on and wheeled in Will’s direction. Sam blasted forward, throwing his right forearm into a brutal left-shoulder block.

  The play unfolded just the way they’d practiced it. The Abednego defensive line piled in on top of Sam while Will broke free. Somewhere in the distance, Sam heard the crowd going wild. Above him, above everything else, above the massive dinosaur of pads and sweat and bodies that pinned him into the ground, above the crepe paper flying and the blinding glare of the lights, hovered the pain.

  Sam couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t stand up. He tried, and went down on all fours. “Hey, Leavitt,” he heard someone calling through the blood pounding in his ears. “You okay?”