Two hours after the school board hired me, I sat with my new principal in his office.
"Jeremy, I'm glad you decided to call me. I just wish you'd done it sooner so we could talk."
"It's like I said, no point in bothering you until I completed the courses I needed to teach in Georgia. I still don't understand why I had to take those extra classes if I didn't need it to teach on the college level."
"Yeah, a lot of us think it's a racket too but that's the way it is. You can teach physics and chemistry to college students, pass or fail it's a done deal but you've got to be trained HOW to teach physics and chemistry to high school students and then if they flunk it you get blamed for it. Go figure."
"It could be worse. At least I don't have to worry about somebody breathing down my back about whether or not I made a justified kill."
"There'll be a few times when you WISH you could make a justified kill," Marcus laughed. "How did the general take your decision not to re-enlist?"
"We haven't spoken in over a year. He hung up on me when I called to tell him I'd left the army and I haven't heard from him since. Mom said she doesn't think he'll ever forgive me and my sister Karen told me they don't even mention my name to him to avoid an explosion."
"It's a hard thing to be the one who ends a five generation military tradition. The general had probably already laid out a plan that would end up with his son another general in the Pentagon."
"The general can kiss my ass. I spent ten years as a Ranger and most of that time was in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't even want to think about how many people I killed and I've got two fucking Purple Hearts. I've more than satisfied the Easton family tradition as far as I'm concerned."
"Yeah, Captain, you have but you're the last son of your line and I guess his expectations of you are higher."
"Bullshit, I've got four cousins and all four of them are military."
"The general doesn't see it that way. You're his only son. His brother went into the Air Force and he doesn't count that as military, at least not in the Easton tradition."
I laughed.
"I know, he and Uncle David spar over that one all the time. That and two of David's sons went into the Navy, his daughter went into the Marines, and David, Jr. went into the Air Force like Uncle David. Not a one of them went army. It annoys Dad more than anything, I guess, and he wanted me to retire from the army."
"Somehow I knew when I was training you back at Fort Benning that a lifetime career isn't in your blood. That's why I told you then to call me when you decided to get out."
"How did you know, Marcus? Even I didn't know then."
"Captain, I was in the army for thirty years and for a good part of it I trained soldiers. You don't succeed at that unless you learn how to weed out the ones who aren't going to make it. You turned out to be a fine officer but I knew your heart wasn't really in it. I guess part of it is that I knew the only reason you were in this man's army."
"One day I realized that I'd accomplished every goal I'd ever really set for myself and I wasn't interested in carrying it any further. I didn't call Dad, I didn't discuss it with anyone, I just didn't re-enlist. That's what pissed him off the most, the fact that I didn't call him and give him the chance to talk me out of it. I don't need anyone's permission to live my life, that's my call and no one else's."
"Jeremy, that one statement's why you were such a good officer and why you'll be a good teacher. You know the right thing to do and you don't need someone else to hold your hand. I could use more like you."
"So what's going on with your teachers? The day I walked into the Board of Education office downtown for my interview I got a sense there's a lot of tension and I could be a big part of it."
"The story doesn't change no matter what line of work you're in these days. It's the budget and not enough money to pay the bills. To make a long story short, we've a mass exodus of families leaving the county to find jobs elsewhere and schools get their money based on the number of students we teach."
"That's nothing new. Even the military has had cutbacks although the general public would never believe it. I just want to know why Mrs. Fowler kept giving me an eat shit look the entire time I was in the office."
"Peggy's sister teaches French at the high school. Pauline got cut back to two French classes a day and she's had to take on English grammar and literature for the other three classes. Pauline was mad as hell but it was that or cut her back to part-time."
"That's all? Are they crazy or what? She's lucky she's got a job."
"You're going to run into a lot more like Peggy and get ready for it. You're what these people call a hybrid teacher and right now there's a lot of them who're scared to death you'll be a huge success. Plus, you actually have a master's degree in chemistry and geography from Harvard and only about a third of the faculty's has a master's degree and they're all master's in education. A degree like yours can open the door to teaching on the college level and a M.Ed. can't do that, not easily.
"It's a master's in geophysics and it's from Columbia. But I've also taken more chemistry courses than most chemistry majors and I've taken enough geography courses to have a major in that, too. And don't forget all those education courses I took at the University of Georgia."
"We cut seven positions, two retired but five we didn't renew their contracts, and that's just at the high school. You represent the loss of four teachers, Jeremy. You'll be teaching chemistry, physics, and geography. That, and you'll be the assistant football coach and you'll be coaching tennis. You're in three departments and you're one of three people on the whole damn staff that can teach in more than one academic department. They're all scared to death that if we lose more students they're going to be let go for more teachers like you."
"That's not my fault! Why don't they just pick up some summer classes or night classes?"
Marcus waved his hand at me diplomatically.
"You know that, I know that, but just take it easy with them, Jeremy. How old are you?"
"Thirty four."
"Well, some of these teachers are close to retirement; they don't even have time to get certified in something else but that cuts no ice with the budget axe. Plus, most of them haven't done anything but their field for so many years they'd have to start on the ground floor to pick up another certification. Just be patient with them, that's all I'm saying."
"I've got you, I understand. I'm just glad you warned me before I stepped into somebody's face. That Fowler bitch had my hackles up and she was just a secretary. I was afraid I was walking into a war zone."
Marcus laughed.
"Well, I'm glad you could get Victoria Moon's place. I vouched for you to Harold so you be sure keep it up like he wants it, you hear?"
