Darnell Rock Reporting Page 4

  Darnell went back into the school as soon as he could. You didn't mess with Mr. Baker when he got mad.

  “Darnell.” Miss Seldes called Darnell as he passed the library and asked if he had time to give her a hand. “Just a few minutes,” she said.

  Darnell didn't like Miss Seldes always talking to him like that. He liked her, but he didn't like a teacher being so friendly. It made him look a little bad, especially in front of the Corner Crew.

  “What happened out there?” Miss Seldes asked.

  “Chris hit a ball through a window,” Darnell said. “It wasn't such a big thing, but all the sixth-graders are out there.”

  “And they're not nearly as mature as you seventh-graders, right?” Miss Seldes had that funny smile on her face that she got sometimes.

  “That's right,” Darnell said. “I'm more mature than I used to be a year ago.”

  “You probably are,” Miss Seldes said. “Put the books on the cart according to the first number.”

  Darnell started to put the books on the cart, looking at the ones that were being borrowed. He knew that Miss Seldes was going to ask him some more questions. That's the way she was.

  “The newspaper's going all right,” Darnell said.

  “You write any big stories yet?”

  “I don't have any big stories to write,” Darnell said. “I like sports and stuff like that, but Tony O! is the sports guy. I don't like the other stuff.”

  “What's the other stuff?”

  “World peace,” Darnell said. “Stuff like that. I mean, like, I want world peace, but I just don't want to write about it.”

  “Maybe you're more a human interest kind of writer,” Miss Seldes said.

  “What's that?”

  “Well, you ever see somebody and wonder what they're all about?” Miss Seldes asked.

  “Sort of.” Darnell thought about Sweeby Jones.

  “Perhaps you should write about people you want to know about,” Miss Seldes said. “If you're interested in a person or persons, then other people might be interested in that person if you wrote about it.”

  “Could be,” Darnell said. “Could be.”

  He had thought about not going to the meeting of the Gazette staff, but now he thought he would go and ask if he could just write about somebody who interested him.

  The bell rang and he had to go to homeroom. Miss Seldes asked him if he wanted to borrow a book and he said no.

  The day dragged by slowly, and everything that could go wrong went wrong. Darnell had forgotten his math book, which they never used in class, and Mr. Ohrbach got angry.

  “It's a good thing your head is screwed on,” Mr. Ohrbach was saying, “or you would leave that home, too!”

  Darnell didn't think it was funny. He had heard it a hundred times and the same people always laughed. He felt like getting up and walking out of math, but he knew that if one member of the Corner Crew got into trouble—and Chris was already in trouble for breaking the window—then the punishments would get worse and worse.

  The Gazette staff meeting was supposed to start right after the final bell of the day, but Darnell had to copy the homework assignments from English and didn't get to the Gazette office until the fight between Kitty and Linda Gold had started. Linda was one of the most popular girls in the school and maybe the smartest. Darnell figured that if she quit the Gazette the paper would be in deep trouble. And from the way she looked he knew she meant it when she told Kitty that she didn't need to be on the paper.

  “So quit,” Kitty said. “If you don't need to be on the paper, then don't be on it!”

  “You can't fire me,” Linda said. “I'll quit when I'm good and ready!” She dropped three quarters in the soda machine.

  “What's going on?” Mark asked.

  “She wants to print this.” Kitty pushed a sheet of paper across the desk. Mark read it aloud.

  Mr. Baker, the principal of South Oak-dale Middle School, left the school in the middle of a crisis when a window was shattered Thursday. When asked why he was leaving without finding out why the window had been broken, he appeared angry and refused to answer questions. He has still not answered the question as to whether his leaving was proper behavior for a school principal.

  “Wait a minute.” Jessica, who had been half listening to the conversation and half doing her math homework, looked up. “Everybody knows that Chris McKoy broke the window. Where was the crisis?”

  “How did he know for sure it was Chris?” Linda said. “And how did he know it wasn't some gang or something who deliberately threw a ball through the window?”

  “Maybe he asked somebody who saw it,” Jennifer said.

  “Then he should have told us,” Linda said. “It would have taken only a minute or so.”

  “I don't think we should have that story in the paper,” Mark said. “It's only going to get Mr. Baker madder.”

  “It won't be in the paper,” Kitty said.

  “That, my dear, is censorship,” Linda said. “Is that what the paper is about? Censorship? And can I write a story about censorship in middle schools?”

  Kitty got up and started to walk out. Linda looked around the room and shrugged.

  “Hey, Kitty, I got an idea for a story/' Darnell said. He realized he was holding his breath.

  “What is it?” Kitty said.

  “It's about a guy I met on Jackson Avenue,” Darnell said. “It's a human event story.”

  “Human interest,” Mr. Derby said. He had been sitting in the back of the room looking through some quiz papers. “You've met someone you think you'd like to write about?”

  “Yeah,” Darnell answered.

  “Who cares about him?” Kitty asked.

  “Okay, so I won't write about him,” Darnell said.

  He picked up a copy of a magazine and started looking through it. He wasn't reading, not even looking at the pictures. He felt disappointed in himself.

  “I didn't say you shouldn't write about him,” Kitty said. “If you think it could be interesting, you should do it. Right, Mr. Derby?”

  “I certainly think so,” Mr. Derby said. “I'd be very much interested in who you think you should write about.”

  “You going to do it?” Mark asked.

  “Maybe,” Darnell said. “Maybe.”

  SIX

  After school Darnell went home, changed his clothes, and started to do the English reading assignment while lying across his bed. Mrs. Finley had said that he should try to do the reading while he wasn't too tired. He knew she was right. Sometimes he would start reading something, then start daydreaming about what he was reading, and before he knew it he couldn't separate what he was reading from what he was daydreaming about. He read some more of The Old Man and the Sea and wondered why the author, some guy named Hemingway, had written about the old man. He knew that Chris wasn't right, that Hemingway thought the old man was a chump and just wanted to write about a chump.

  Darnell had read the whole story once and hadn't figured it all out, and now he was reading it again, trying to remember what Mrs. Finley had said in class and what the other kids had said. He read for a while with the radio on, then started daydreaming about being on a boat with a big fish tied to the side of it. He couldn't figure how the old man could have caught the fish if he couldn't get it into the boat. It had to be some big fish. He imagined himself catching the fish, and then he imagined himself catching a shark, which was the biggest fish he knew about. But then he knew he would be afraid to try to tie it to the side of the boat. After a while he fell asleep.

  When he woke he went to the kitchen, found some orange juice in the refrigerator, and poured a big glassful. No one was home. He looked out the front window and saw Larry on the stoop. He also saw some legs, which might have been Tamika's. Darnell had some more orange juice, went up to look for his keys, found them in the pockets of his school pants, and then went downstairs.

  Tamika was sitting on the front stoop with Larry. They were drinking sodas. Th
ere was an old bike on the ground next to the stoop.

  “Where did you get the sodas?” Darnell asked.

  “The Black Muslims came by with a load of bean pies and sodas and I took the sodas from them,” Tamika said. “I told them if they don't like it they can come and see you about it.”

  “Why you got to talk stupid all the time?” Darnell asked.

  “No, man, that's true!” Larry said.

  “Now she got you talking stupid, too,” Darnell said. “You want to go over to the park and shoot some baskets?”

  “No. Tamika said you and her can help me paint my bike.”

  ‘That's your bike?” Darnell asked, looking at the bike. It was all right looking, except that it was dirty and the spokes were rusty.

  “Yeah, my dad got it for me,” Larry said. “I got some spray paint.”

  “I told him what colors to get,” Tamika said.

  “How did you get spray paint?” Darnell said. He knew most stores wouldn't sell spray paints to anybody under eighteen.

  “Them Black Muslims got it for me,” Larry said, looking at Tamika and smiling.

  “Yo, man, you still talking stupid, huh? Hey, I got it now,” Darnell said, nodding his head. “You and Tamika got a thing going so you both talking stupid. That's love talk, right?”

  “Get out of here!” Larry protested.

  “You going to help him spray the bike?” Tamika asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Darnell knew that Larry's parents were split and that he only saw his father once in a while. If his father bought him a bike, then it was more than he usually did. Larry mostly didn't like his father that much, so if he said anything good about him at all it was unusual.

  Tamika got some newspapers and put them down, and then they laid the bike on the papers and started spraying it.

  “You said you told Larry what colors to get?” Darnell asked his sister.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he only got one color/' Darnell said, holding up the two cans of navy blue spray paint.

  “Well, that's all he needs,” Tamika said. “This bike is going to look like Batman's motorcycle.”

  “No, it's not,” Darnell said. “It's going to look like a bicycle painted blue.”

  “That's ‘cause you can't paint,” Larry said.

  “Paint it yourself!” Darnell said. He put the paint can down and started up the stairs.

  “Come on, give us a hand,” Larry called to him.

  “I got things to do,” Darnell said.

  “Come on, Darnell!” Larry called again.

  When Larry and Darnell had an argument and Larry was sorry, he would always stretch out Darnell's name so that it sounded like Darn-Nell.

  Darnell turned and pointed at his friend. “I'll see you later, Lar-Ree!” he said.

  “Okay,” Larry said. “See you later.”

  Darnell started up the long flights of winding stairs. When he got to his door he heard the phone ringing. He got in and grabbed the receiver. It was Benny Quiros.

  “What's up?”

  “You hear the news?” Benny asked.

  “What news?”

  “Linda went into the boys' locker room after the wrestling match,” Benny said.

  “Linda Gold?” Darnell asked.

  “Yeah, she said she wanted to interview them,” Benny said. “Only they were undressed when she went in, and she didn't even care.”

  “How come you calling me up to tell me that?” Darnell said.

  “You're the only newspaper guy I know,” Benny said.

  SEVEN

  “So, Dad, how do you feel?” Darnell sat on the end of the couch.

  “What do you mean, how do I feel?” his father asked.

  “You feel good?” Darnell asked. It was Saturday morning and his mother and Tamika had gone to their folk guitar class, leaving Darnell home with his father.

  “I feel okay,” his father answered. He moved the remote from one side of his lap to the other, away from where Darnell was sitting.

  “So tell me,” Darnell said. “How come you ended up with a place to stay and a family and everything and Sweeby ended up—you know—like he ended up.”

  “Sweeby? Sweeby Jones?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where you meet him?”

  “Over on Jackson Avenue,” Darnell said. “He looked like a homeless dude.”

  “Probably is!” his father said. Darnell saw his father's jaw tighten and relax.

  “You mad because I saw him?”

  “No.” Mr. Rock's shoulders lifted and dropped. He turned toward Darnell, and there was the suggestion of a smile on his face. “Hey, he didn't say anything wrong to you, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I'm not mad at you for seeing him,” his father said. “He told you he knew me?”

  “Yeah. He said you and he were in Vietnam together.”

  “A hundred years ago,” his father said quietly.

  “A hundred years!”

  “Not really a hundred years,” his father said. “Just seems that way.”

  “How come you're okay and he's … like he is?” Darnell asked.

  “ ‘Cause I took care of business,” Mr. Rock said. “And he didn't. I come out the Army and looked for a job, took a few civil service tests, and got into the post office. Sweeby, he came out and talked some talk about getting into singing. I told him right then that singing wasn't nothing. Lots of people can sing but they ain't going nowhere.”

  “You ever hear him sing?”

  “Yeah, I heard him plenty of times. Once we were in ‘Nam, place called Cu Chi, and they had a little party. Nothing big, just something to get your mind off the war. An officer told him to go down into a hole and see if there was any Viet Congs down there. He got to the top of the hole and sang opera—that's what he sings—down into the hole. Damn Viet Cong came out and gave himself up.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “That's the truth,” Mr. Rock said.

  “He sings opera?” Darnell asked.

  “Yeah, but you can't just sing no opera. You got to study for ten, maybe fifteen years. Then you got to have a certain kind of voice. He should have taken the post office test.”

  “Is he smart?”

  “Not smart enough to take the post office test,” Mr. Rock said. He clicked the stations of the television, and Darnell watched as four stations in a row had commercials on.

  “You don't think he could pass it?”

  “He just didn't do the smart thing, like I did,” Mr. Rock said. “You got to be smart, know what's going on in the world, so you can see what you need to do. I came out and saw there weren't any jobs around, so I took the test. That's why I'm where I am and he's where he's at.”

  “I'm thinking about interviewing him for the school newspaper,” Darnell said.

  “What for? You should interview some successful people so kids learn how to be successful,” Mr. Rock said. “Anybody can learn how to be a failure.”

  “You ain't mad?” Darnell saw the little veins in his father's temple move.

  “No,” his father said. “Nothing to be mad about, is there?”

  Darnell didn't want to say anything more. He knew his father was upset, but he couldn't figure out why. Maybe, he thought, his father had liked Sweeby and had wanted him to do better. Darnell watched television with his father, but images of Sweeby Jones standing on Jackson Avenue near the fire kept coming into his mind.

  On Sunday, after church, Larry came over and told Darnell that the chain on his bicycle had broken. Darnell saw that he was disappointed.

  “Maybe we can get a new one Monday from that place on Monticello that sells used bikes/' Darnell said.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Larry answered.

  Sometimes Darnell measured time by how much trouble he had during the day. It seemed that if he was having a bad day, time just dragged by, but if he was having a good day, it would go by fast. Monday morning started off as one of the slow d
ays. Mr. Ohrbach gave a five-minute math quiz. Two of the problems were about square roots, and Darnell couldn't remember how to do them. He started the next one, which was one of those problems about two trains coming toward each other and you had to figure out how far they had traveled when they met. One was going at sixty miles an hour and the other one was going at seventy-five miles an hour. Darnell looked at the problem, tried figuring out how far the first train could go in fifteen minutes, decided that was wrong, and then heard Mr. Ohrbach say that the quiz was over.

  “Great work, Darnell,” Mr. Ohrbach said, shaking his head.

  The test started the day off wrong, and nothing went particularly right after that. He had hoped for a good day because he wanted to try interviewing Sweeby that afternoon, and he didn't want to mess that up. But by three o'clock, after the test and forgetting his sneakers for gym, he was almost ready to forget the interview.

  ‘To, Miss Seldes.” Darnell saw Miss Seldes turning the lock in the library door with the key that hung around her neck.

  “Hello, Darnell,” Miss Seldes said. “The library is closed.”

  “Yeah, that's okay,” Darnell said. “I just needed to ask you a question.”

  “I only have a minute,” she said, already starting down the hall. “I have a meeting downtown this afternoon. What did you want?”

  “If you interview somebody, what do you ask them?”

  “You can ask them any questions you want,” Miss Seldes said. “As long as you maintain their dignity. Put yourself in the place of the person you're going to interview. Imagine how it feels to be asked the questions you want to ask.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Good luck with your interview,” Miss Seldes said, pushing into the principal's office.

  “Thanks,” Darnell said, knowing that Miss Seldes couldn't have heard him. He went out the front door, stopping for a moment and shielding his eyes from the bright afternoon sun.

  When his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, he looked over the schoolyard and finally spotted Larry sitting with Mark Robbins. Larry said he had been looking for Darnell.

  “How you looking for me when all you're doing is sitting here?” Darnell asked as they started off.