Demise

The Panuzio Home, East Lake Monday, 19 September, 5:47 a.m.-6

The hallway was clamorous. Lockers banged, students rushed, meandered, stood in groups, sat shuffling homework, embraced, pummeled one another. East Lake High sprawled across the old pastures southwest of Split Rock Hill like two redbrick octopi—single-storied arms radiating from the high cubic body of the auditorium, intertwining with those from the rectangular box of the gym.

McMillian leaned a shoulder against the cool tile of the walls. He was a slender man, five eight, only 140 pounds. His skin was light, his once-red hair thinning, close-cropped, white at the temples, peppered on top. At 51 he had the appearance of a worn athlete, the smile of an Irish prankster, the eyes of a doting grandfather. Before him a line of students, as if following an ancient Indian trail, single-filed their way through the flowing forest of standing and crisscrossing groups. Then, as quickly as the onslaught had erupted, it dissolved, and the halls were but dotted with a few stragglers, a few students with passes.

F.X. smiled inwardly. Fifth period was his scheduled prep time—a break to prepare for the next day’s classes or to correct papers. Sometimes during fifth he’d grab a quick cup of coffee in the History Department’s office; other times he’d tutor a student one on one. He straightened, came away from the wall. Analyze it, he thought. Build on it. It was the system he used with his team—win or lose. After the game is before the game—after the class is before the class—after the preliminary oral proposals is before the depth of research, the drafts, the final writing of the senior thesis. The format was no different now than it had been 27 years earlier—Lessons Learned Analysis: Here’s what we did right; let’s build on it. Here are our two biggest mistakes; here’s how to correct them. For McMillian the format was the same whether it was classroom, soccer field or infantry company. After the battle is before the battle.

McMillian turned to the room, glanced back at the hallway, smiled inwardly. I love this school, he thought. I love it when they’re involved; when they make new connections; when they light up like a homecoming bonfire. He entered the deserted classroom. East Lake’s students were grossly and subtly different from Lakeport’s, where he’d taught for 12 years. In that time he’d tried to gain a soccer coaching position but had first been put on the waiting list; then, for two years, the sport had been suspended over an incident in the stands, and for two more because of a lack of funding. When it was reinstated there were two new teachers with college soccer experience.

McMillian came to East Lake primarily because the coaching slot was open. He’d expected the students to be virtually the same, had been surprised at the higher level of reading, writing, and computation skills, though not their thinking skills; had been disappointed, at first, at the lower level of commitment in the face of obstacles. In Lakeport he’d found his classroom efforts rewarding because of elementary academic breakthroughs; in East Lake, it was more rewarding to make spiritual inroads.

His current students, too, were different from the students of only a few years earlier. If behavioral aberrations had begun in the late sixties and had exploded in the seventies, they had, at least in East Lake, reversed in the late eighties. By the mid-nineties student classroom behavior was generally respectful, reserved, serious. They were concerned about grades, about college acceptance, about the starting salary they’d receive when they began work. They were almost throwbacks to the fifties—except they were smarter, more sophisticated. There were residual problems from the aberration—and there were new problems: higher teen pregnancies rates, a tendency to react to difficulties with either avoidance or great frustration; a growing belief that they were entitled to good grades—earned or not. The problems coexisted—limited and contained—with academic, social, and physical achievements no prior classes had attained.

McMillian’s senior seminar was the elite of the elite. These students, not without problems, were the brightest, the most mature, the most political; they were as tenacious as pit bulls and often as contentious. It was a challenge to be as astute, even if they buried their perspicacity within a relaxed teenage lexicon. He saw them as kids, still kids, but also as the rough castings of the leadership of the region, the state, the nation: six girls, seven boys, six of European genetic heritage, three of African, two Asian, one Hispanic, one Middle Eastern—more a reflection of the nation’s diversity than of the town’s homogeneity.

F.X. pulled a set of forms from his briefcase, laid them on his desk. They were not papers to be corrected but were his coaching notes: defense, right, slow to shift, cover, take initiative. He read the line, leaned back in his chair, thought instead of Ellen Darsey, Mike Verdeen, Aaron Williams, Rachel Chan, Paul Compari…Analyze it. Build on it.

“…thank you, Miss Darsey,” he had said. “I think we have a decent understanding of your proposal: ‘Feminism in the Nineties and Beyond.’ I like the focus on the broad spectrum of cultural consequences. Rach, you had a comment.”

“I’ll talk to Ellen after class.”

“Good. Get together. Let’s see. Mr. Beck.”

“I went Friday,” a small-framed boy said.

“Um…Right, Ethan. ‘Guns, Urban Violence and Gun Control.’ How about…Paul, let’s hear yours.”

“Ah, I don’t have it finished yet, Coach.”

“You have your topic?”

“That’s the problem, Coach. I haven’t narrowed it down. I can’t think of just one issue that really grabs me. Unless I could do it on, maybe, like, you know, professional sports. I don’t really want to do it on that public cost of banking scandals.”

“How about on the lure of professional sports and the cultural ramifications of the promise…umm, high wages to play games…umm, on the perspectives and productivity of American youth?”

“Yeah. I thought about that. But I don’t think that’d interest me, Coach.”

“What would captivate you, Paul? Find a topic.”

“Yeah, I will, Coach. Uh, you know that stuff we were talking about—that whole idea whether history should be the study of events, or the study of the evolution of culture…how people react to conditions and events created by cultural behaviors and perspectives…Uh, I think you called it ‘ambient cultural story…’”

“That’s to be used as the base, the framework, for the issue you’re exploring. That’s not your contemporary issue.”

“Uh…”

“Paul.” F.X. gestured with a partially opened hand, aiming, jabbing, fixing his student with fingers and thumb. “Don’t get behind!”

“I won’t, Coach. I’m working on it. Really.”

“Aaron, is your preliminary ready?”

“Yes, Coach.” Aaron Williams had stood, had walked smartly to the front of the class, had flicked his head, tossing dreadlocks from his eyes. “I’ve titled it—” he checked the sheaf of papers in his hand—“‘The Institutionalization of Politically Correct Racism: Breeding Ground of Poverty Pockets, Hidden Descent and Covert Intraracial Aggression,’ or ‘When Atlas Can No Longer Shrug—Welfare, Affirmative Action and the New Slavery.’ It’s long, but it’s only the working title.”

McMillian’s brow furrowed. “Don’t worry about the title. Tell me more. What are you reading? What’s your primary focus? How are you relating it to long-term cultural patterns?”

“You’ve read Race and Culture, by Thomas Sowell?” Aaron asked.

“A few years back.”

“Some of this comes from that. And from the stuff I got from the state senate this summer. I want to explore the mechanisms of intraracial polarization—between those who have advanced and those who have lagged in ever-deepening squalor. Or in ever-increasing self-segregation. That’s the real problem the state faces, isn’t it?”

“Umm.” The concepts rolled in McMillian’s head.

“Why, or how, it happens,” Aaron said. “Sowell challenges the fundamental assumptions underlying race and prejudice, and those causing physical and economic segregation.”

“Hmm.”

“What he shows is that a person’s, or a family’s, or a race’s cultural heritage, their inherited belief systems—like what you label their ‘cultural story,’ not their biological heritage, determines their social status. He emphasizes how laws and government programs designed to integrate races or to…umm—” Aaron again checked the papers in his hand “—kind of equalize economic status across races…why it hasn’t worked. How they’re bring on the demise of the American can-do spirit.”

“You have other sources?”

Aaron shuffled pages. “I’m getting into some of the stuff by Dr. King, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson…” Aaron paused, tossed his dreadlocks. “Ah…Allen Keyes. Cal Thomas. Ah…Here it is. Within the macroscopic African-American community, it is as if there are two completely separate voices; and it leads to two separate yet biologically identical communities.”

Aaron flashed a cocky smile at a few of his classmates. Then he added, “I’ve got lots more, Coach. I’ve got a lot of this on my computer at home but I haven’t printed it out yet. I’ve been speculating on the effect of ambient cultural story—”

F.X. held up a hand, took a deep breath. Earlier they had discussed Aaron’s general themata. “I don’t want you to pare it down yet,” the teacher advised. “Continue to do your reading but begin to focus on the goal, on that exact spot you want to hit.”

“Gotcha,” Aaron agreed, then attempted to rush on. “Sowell talks about how multiculturalism and affirmative action aimed at advancing the economic fate of minorities have generally made the targeted group’s fate worse.”

A low voice came from within the room, “That’s a crock a shit.”

“Excuse me?” McMillian looked to the class. He had not been sure if he’d heard the words correctly.

“That’s like saying blacks weren’t brought here as slaves!” Michael Verdeen scowled. “Like our people weren’t, as slaves, coerced into certain attitudes toward work. Like centuries of obstacles weren’t thrown in our economic paths—” Verdeen’s voice broke; he began to shake “—so we wouldn’t overcome those attitudes. So we wouldn’t develop white standards.”

“Mike.” F.X. McMillian acknowledged Verdeen. “Are you working on a similar topic?”

“I…” Verdeen remained seated. He’d transferred from Lakeport to East Lake only at the beginning of the school year. “I…” He was visibly shaken, not ready for what he saw as Aaron’s attack on African-American culture. “I was going to do it on the constitutionality and long-range effects of the gun searches in the projects. In the name of law and order! But it’s…” his voice began to fade “…like…” He became silent, still, his dark eyes seemingly opaque.

“Like…?”

“How come everybody lookin at me?” he blurted. “This goddamn white-bread school. Those searches aren’t different from the Nazis even if some jerks welcome the fascists.”

“That’s a good point, Mike.”

Verdeen continued, hard, barely controlled, angry. “But I think I might change to ‘Regionalism, Racism, and Reform.’ Why it’s needed. Not like what Aaron’s saying. Like black people don’t have culture!”

“That’s not what I said,” Aaron snapped.

“It’s jus bein denied.” Verdeen stared at Aaron. “Denied. An continues to be denied. That’s why Farrakhan speaks to me en all the brothers.”

The noise in the corridor by the library peaked. Lockers banged shut sealing in pictures of boyfriends or movie stars for another 43 minutes. Laughs, shouts, phrases burst and died like skyrocket bombs. “Awesome, man.”

“Where’s my other pair? Mr. Santoro!”

“I’m not in charge of watching your sneakers, Bill.”

“They were my good ones!”

“I thought you liked Andrea.”

“In your nut-sack!”

“Whose tag’s that on my locker?”

“Must be Carter’s. He’s off his Ritalin.”

Kim Sanchez and Katie Fitzpatrick stood, backs to the wall, books clutched before them with both arms. They scanned the crowd. “Don’t you just hate it,” Kim said to Katie, “the way they make jerks of themselves over Miss Radkowski?”

“I know,” Katie answered. “She is pretty, but…Even Mr. Bendler does it. And he’s married!”

“He does it to all the girls,” Kim said. “I can’t stand him.”