Like we care, p.23
Like We Care, page 23
Frank’s youth brigade blanched as the grandmas and grandpas in the room suddenly turned to smile at them and applaud dotingly.
What the hell, most shrugged. Like it’s so awful to be caught caring about something.
“But I must be getting good at this politician business, because I’m avoiding the issue,” Frank continued with a smile. “To be honest, I don’t know what the answer is to your bus stop problem. Once I’m in office, I’d take a good long look at it and do what I could. That I can promise you.
“But,” he added, pointing at his supporters dramatically, “win or lose, I am charging my young friends out there, if you know any kids who use that bus stop, tell them to knock it off and give these folks a break. Tell them that no matter how immortal they’re feeling right now, one day it’s going to be them looking for somewhere to take a load off. And it’s going to be sooner than they think.”
The room came alive with grateful applause. Frank smiled and shyly waved his acknowledgement as he handed the microphone back to Jerry Self for the next question. Self sagged visibly, his voter support draining out from under him.
Annie applauded too, then realized she was probably obligated to show some kind of impartiality. This even after Self had tried to ban Annie and the crew on the grounds that they were an entertainment entity and not a news organization. All Annie had to do was flash her permit and roll the camera—The Man caught trying to shut down R2Rev—and Self was forced to slink away impotently.
This was precisely the type of material Annie needed for the show. Quite obviously too civil, too sincere, for the average R2Rev viewer, but if Viceroy’s quixotic, not entirely cynical desire was to change some hearts, Kolak was the kind of politician who might do it: young (compared to the stereotypical politician), plain-spoken, and an outsider by virtue of his skin. Jerry Self, with his eight-dollar haircut and his badly chosen tie, was the archetype of a musty, passionless civic administrator. Frank Kolak bested him with humor and honesty, and in the same breath had the balls to scold the town’s young people—his voter base—for being such putzes when they were around old people.
Annie still didn’t know how this was going to cut together. No amount of flashy editing could make this more than a bunch of old farts kvetching about a bus stop. She suspected that R2Rev would ultimately decide that Viceroy’s stodgy get-out-the-vote drive had no business on the pridefully mindless network, freeing her to find a more appropriate outlet for the material. PBS, for example, did documentaries like this all the time— muted studies of some minor slice of Americana, where folks were acting up in ways unexpected.
How would that sound to Viceroy: A joint effort of R2Rev and PBS, television’s most profane and most cerebral linking up to shed light on one oddly compelling quirk in youth culture. He could still get his message out, but now with the dignified stamp of left-leaning Public Broadcasting. He might even get an award out of it, instead of the contempt and condemnation that most of his programming brought him.
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.
That’s That
And 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.
“Joel. . .?” Frank asked gingerly.
The kid turned, completely without words.
“Fuck, dude,” he blubbered. “Just. . . Fuck.”
He trudged over to them and they fell into an embrace, a three-man huddle. When they broke, they’d be returning to separate games.
Annie watched, tears in her eyes and a wistful smile on her face.
Her cameraman taped it all. He was just doing his job.
Another Thing
Since he withdrew so late, there hadn’t been time to take Frank’s name off the ballot, so the chance had still been there to cast a symbolic vote for him.
When the final tally came in, he ran a strong second. If the adults hadn’t been enticed to the polls to put down this degenerate who had been teaching their children, if some of the young and the black hadn’t ended up staying home, disillusioned by the brutally cynical turn their first taste of politics had taken. . .
One would never know.
Annie had stayed in town, hoping for just such a dispiriting, what-might-have-been finale. Todd found her at a local video house, where R2Rev had rented space for her to put together a rough edit.
“Hey,” he said weakly, peering into her editing bay.
“Hey.” She smiled. The wound was still fresh, the aftermath still unfolding. She had not spent enough time with Todd and Joel, so busy was she documenting the final days of the campaign.
“How are you doing?” she asked sincerely.
He shrugged cavalierly, like he was already past it. “Seen the final numbers?”
