Stepping Up to the Plate

Chapter 2-5

His next day off he rode with Lamar to the shop and talked Ange into letting him snag one of the cars waiting to be detailed. “Just to visit my mom,” Stacy said. “I’ll be back by three.” He plucked the keys from Ange’s back pocket and slid behind the wheel of a late model Jaguar before his friend could stop him. Beneath him the car hummed to life, the digital clock on the dash telling him it wasn’t even noon yet. A couple hours cruising in a car like this was just what he needed to free his mind. Leaning out the window, he gave Ange his most winning grin. “What do you think one of these beauties runs anyway?”

“More than you’ll ever see working here, I’m sure,” Ange replied. He ran a cloth over the door handle to wipe away Stacy’s fingerprints. “You’re back in thirty minutes or I report this ride stolen, entiende? Lora’s coming in at one to lay the flames and if this car’s gone, she’ll ask Mack where it is. If Mack has to ask me…”

Ange trailed off, letting Stacy get his drift. He did. Gunning the engine, Stacy raised his voice to be heard over the noise. “I’ll be back before then.”

At Wal-Mart he parked in the far corner of the lot, well away from the other vehicles, so no doors would scratch up the sports car’s paint and no stray shopping carts would careen into its bumper. He got out and locked up, then made a big show of straightening his shirt and hiking up his jeans, checking his reflection in the tinted window, tugging his baseball cap down firmly into place. He wanted people to see him. This is my car, he imagined. He wondered if he should get in again, take the Jag once around the parking lot, just to show off. He seriously considered it.

But he looked at the front of the store and thought he saw his mother, already outside on her break, so he pocketed the keys and started across the lot. If she saw the car she’d want to know where he got it from, and when he told her the shop then she’d give him a disapproving frown that he didn’t need to see. Stepping quickly, he maneuvered through the other shoppers until he came up behind her on the sidewalk. “Hey Mom.”

“Stacy.” She turned, her eyes scanning his face. She wore her Wal-Mart smock over a sleeveless top, and her bare arms were freckled from the sun. One hand was in her smock pocket, the other holding her cigarette as she spoke. “Two of the checkers called in sick, would you believe it? It’s all I could do to grab a smoke. I told Chelle I had to take ten and get my fix or I’d likely bust open the next carton of Marlboro’s that came through my line.” Stacy laughed because she expected him to, and she nodded. “Glad I caught you.”

“I’m off today,” he admitted with a glance over his shoulder at the Jag. Had she seen it? He didn’t think so—she would’ve mentioned it already. Carefully he said, “Ange let me borrow a ride out here but I gotta be back in a few anyway. Just wanted to see how you were holding up.”

She nodded again. “Getting by.” The hand in her smock began to rummage around, looking for something. Money, Stacy hoped, though if she offered any he’d protest, but only a little. His half of the rent was gone, pissed away on booze Lamar talked him into buying, a fact that his friend conveniently forgot when he needed to cough up the dough in a few weeks.

Stacy already decided this would be one of the last months he paid room and board. It was what, April? He would give himself until the end of the year to get a place of his own. If he didn’t move out this year, he probably never would. “Got something for you.”

She held out an envelope, which Stacy took. He was surprised to see that it was addressed to him, stamped and postmarked, with a return address in Petersburg, over on Washington Street. He felt he should know it. “What’s this?” Without waiting for her reply he opened the envelope. There was one piece of paper inside, a letter typed on formal stationary, and a brochure of some sort. One glance at the letter’s signature and he scowled at the name of his high school principal. “What the hell is this?”

“Read it,” she told him. Then, as if knowing he was only skimming over the words, trying to absorb them all at once, she explained, “It’s a program called Learn As You Earn. I saw the brochure for it in our break room last month. It’s a way for people who never completed high school to get a GED.”

Dear Stacy Evans, the letter started. I want to personally thank you for your registration fee of $500, which enrolls you in the Learn As You Earn program here at Petersburg High…“No.” He wanted to tear the letter in two. “What the f**k? I don’t have time for this, Mom. And I sure as hell don’t have the money—”

She sighed. “I already paid for it.”

He looked at her, pissed, betrayed. Wasn’t this his life now? Didn’t he call the shots? “I’ve been saving,” she explained. “I was going to tell you about it but I knew you wouldn’t want to do it so I sent in the form in your name. Paid for it, too. You need to graduate, Stacy. You can’t do anything in this world without an education.”

“If you wanted to waste five hundred dollars,” he told her, folding the letter back into the envelope, “I could’ve used the cash. I ain’t going back to school. I’m too old.”

“It’s not school,” she argued. “It’s classes during the day—”

He reminded her, “I have a job, Momma. In case you’ve forgotten.”

“This trains you to do something with your life, Stace. You study to take the GED and learn a trade like auto mechanics—”

Stacy shook his head, adamant. “I do that already and I suck at it.”

She wasn’t listening. “Or computers—”

“I’m not smart enough for that. This is bullshit.” The letter rumpled as he shoved it into the envelope. “I’ve got a job, I don’t need to train for another one. How am I gonna pay the rent while I’m at these classes, huh? Answer me that.” He held the envelope out to his mother but she didn’t take it. “Here,” he said with a little shake of his hand. “Write them and get your money back. I’m not doing this.”

For a moment she stared at the envelope. “Take it.”

She didn’t. With a long drag on her cigarette, she raised her eyes to meet his and exhaled slowly. Smoke drifted up like a veil between them. “Cal said you wouldn’t go.”

Cal. His step-dad, Cal…“Said you wouldn’t want to go,” she continued, staring at him, not letting him look away. “Said I was wasting my money, throwing it away. Same reason, too, said you weren’t smart enough to graduate. I thought he was wrong.”

Cal. Slowly Stacy pulled back the envelope, unsure. Of course his step-dad would think he wouldn’t go back—he thought Stacy was a f**k-up. How did he put it? Not smart enough. The asshole. “I’m not stupid, Mom,” Stacy growled. “Tell him to mind his own goddamn business and stay the f**k out of mine. I can get my diploma if I want.”

She gave him a tired, worn out smile. “I know, honey—”

“I’m not stupid,” he repeated.

“I know.”

Another long silence. Stacy frowned at the envelope in his hands and thought of Cal sitting in his recliner by the tv, going on and on about how that boy wouldn’t ever amount to s**t. f**k him. Stacy’s hands curled into involuntary fists, crumpling the envelope in their anger. He’d show that bastard. Ange was right, he wasn’t dumb. Smoothing out the envelope, Stacy asked, “So when’s this thing start?”