My Two Rejected Chapters

[Jacobus]

Several months ago I saw this:

http://www.mackinac.org/freedominfiction

and thought there might be a story in me.  So I wrote up my two chapters and sent them in.  I was not selected to complete my book, but I thought I would share what I had written here. 

I'm not good at making stuff up.  Most of this is actually non-fiction.

[Jacobus]

Chapter 1

Mom had just finished her bath and stood by the dinner table in her long, blue robe.  She wanted to prepare her lunch for the next day but was waiting for her towel-wrapped hair to dry.

"Can't you wait for the weekend?  It's already dark."

"They might not wait until the weekend," Dad replied.  Hank had turned the TV down, but Michael and I pretended to remain intent on the Hogan's Heroes rerun.  "And when they come, they'll take whatever they can find."

"The boys have homework they have to do."

Dad made a dismissive reply, somewhere between "bah" and "eh".  Then he turned to me.

"Do you have homework you need to finish tonight?" 

I shook my head.  He turned to Michael.
   
"Do you have homework you need to finish tonight?" 

Michael also shook his head.
   
"All right, then.  Follow me." 

Hank switched off the TV, and we walked past Mom into the large addition of the house.  The floor was concrete and insulation hung from the ceiling and walls.  Dad liked to call it a sun room because of the large sliding windows, but it was more like having an open garage attached to the dining room.  Here he kept tables of tools and half-used paint cans.  Other stuff accumulated as well: a drafting board from Dad's days as a civil engineer, computer equipment alongside pails of electronics, and a weight machine he found dumped in back of his old office building.  Michael sometimes used it. 

Amidst the clutter and overlooking the lower field, Mom had cleared an area to place a small couch.  A toy chest sat in front of the couch where a coffee table might otherwise be.  The chest contained some of our old toys and was decorated with circus animals.  On top of the chest lay a few issues of Prevention magazine and a Jean Auel novel.

We stopped at the window overlooking the field.  A shotgun and rifle rested against a desk.  The shotgun reminded me of groundhogs slinking in the long grass of the field.  Dad considered these to be a major nuisance, especially for our type of house.  If we ever saw one, we were to alert him at once.  When I was younger, I would run to the opposite end of the house, crouch, and cover my ears.  Once I was taller than the shotgun though, I would run to my bedroom and watch out the window instead.  After the crack-boom, I might see the groundhog flip over once.  Maybe Dad would miss altogether and it would scamper to the safety of the stone wall.  And sometimes it would be wounded and Dad would have to go out and shoot it again.  Once it was over, Michael and I would grab shovels from the shed and find the dead animal.  I would roll it onto Michael's shovel, and we'd both take it into the woods to bury.
   
Dad unloaded the shotgun and placed the shells into a box.  I thought of Dad's advice to any new friend I had over: "If you see a gun, treat it like it's loaded."  Then he'd pause.  "Because it probably is."  He handed me the shotgun and I stepped aside, my left hand on the pump action and my right hand on the pistol grip.  I focused on the muzzle.  Dad gave Michael the semi-automatic .22 rifle.  Dad told us "go" and we lead him back through the house and out the front door.
   
The diesel Jetta sat in the dirt driveway, its backside covered in soot.  We liked to call it the golf ball because it had been pock-marked from a hail storm it suffered in Florida, where Dad had bought it used while we were on vacation.  Dad opened the trunk and moved a milk crate of hand tools forward.  He accepted my shotgun and placed it on top of greasy ropes and oil-spotted rags.  Then he took the rifle.
   
There were still some handguns in the file cabinet downstairs.  When I was younger, you could only get down there through a panel of wood flooring that had to be pried up.  At that time the basement was an exotic labyrinth for Michael and me.  Dad would give us flashlights to hold for him and we would climb down the ladder after him.  In the moments in between Dad making us shine the lights toward whatever he was doing, we'd take turns exploring the cave.  No matter what time of year it was, we felt the same cool dampness, and the walls and floor were thick concrete.  We would shine the lights against the walls and inspect the water seepage, then towards the room corners to look for alien-like fungus.
   
Eventually Dad cut open a larger section of floor to install a proper stairway, and in addition to storage, he used the basement as a sort of office and library for his genealogy research.  He had made two desks, one for each side of the central room, and both were stacked with papers and books.  The only wall decoration was a large glass-covered frame containing a print.  The man in the print looked like he could have been Christopher Columbus.  Apparently he had been someone that shared our last name a few centuries ago.
   
A few of the guns had been growing rust, and I wondered if they still worked.  I had never fired any of these, and I hadn't remembered Dad doing so either.  When no one else was home, I might sneak down with a friend and we would take them out to hold: a .357 Magnum, a 1911 style .45, a .22 revolver, and a single-shot .22 that I liked to think could have been used in a duel in a past century.   
Dad and Hank wrapped the handguns in cloth and placed them in their own milk crate.  At the car, Dad placed the crate in front of the long guns and tried to shut the trunk, but instead the trunk bounced off the crate.  He dug through jumper cables and crumpled papers, reset the crate, and then the trunk latched.
   
We entered the car in our usual arrangement: Dad in the driver's seat, Hank in the front seat, and Michael and me to share the back seat.  I crushed a 20-ounce Dr. Pepper bottle as I stepped through the doorway on Dad's side.  Once seated, I burrowed my feet through Wendy's bags and soda bottles to find the solid floor.

I looked into the house as we started to leave and saw Mom watching us depart, her arms folded.

Dad reached up to the passenger side visor and flipped on the radar detector that he had installed there.  When it completed its startup beep sequence, Hank turned the radio on and pressed one of the presets.  "There's a strike on the outside corner."  Joe Castiglione's voice melded perfectly with the light crackle of AM radio and cricket-chirping late summer evenings.

Dad asked Hank, "Is Bill's job ready for tomorrow? He said he'd meet us after lunch tomorrow."

"The pages are printed.  They need to be collated and stitched."

"Anything else need to be done, while we have the boys?"

"No, all the other jobs require the press."

Hank cocked his head slightly in an effort to better hear the game.  At one point, the Red Sox color man became excited and Hank turned up the volume.  "Way back, way back..." But the Orioles' center fielder caught the ball on the edge of the warning track.  Hank turned the volume back down.

I looked over at Michael to see if he was as excited as I was.  He was staring out the window but sensed I was looking at him and anticipating something, perhaps a smirk or a conspiratorial glance.  Instead, he turned his head slightly, looked at me but not towards my face, and returned his gaze to the outside.  But then, he had more important homework he was missing.  I only had an algebra problem set I knew I could finish before school the next day. 

After we crossed the border into Rhode Island, we passed old-looking diners, junkyards, and a used car auction.  We had done jobs for most of these businesses, and Dad knew most of the local owners and many of the area residents.  Swamp Yankees, he liked to call these people.  That always amused me.
   
"What's a swamp Yankee?" I had asked on more than one occasion.
   
"Well, when everyone was moving out West, swamp Yankees were the ones who were left behind."  I liked to picture a wagon taking off in an early nineteenth century morning and old Uncle Everett drunkenly running after it to catch up.  Just as he reaches the back of the wagon, Ma and the kids would push him back and he would stumble to the ground, forever to remain in New England.
   
Swamp Yankee territory soon turned into a stretch of road with little development of any kind, a sort of buffer between the old swamp Yankees and the newer Rhode Islanders who were derived from the waves of Italian immigration.   
   
The area became built up with strip malls and multi-family homes.  Traffic slowed as we approached a highway overpass, and flashing blue lights appeared on the opposite side of the road.  A cop was interrogating the driver of a cheap looking Toyota.  I saw the man's hands on the top of the steering wheel.  The cop stood behind the open window so that the driver could not look directly at him.
   
Dad slowed even more than the other cars and swerved slightly as he pumped open the window.  Then he stuck his arm out and pointed his thumb down at the scene.  I didn't think either man saw him.
   
We arrived at Office Plus and parked in front of the entrance.  The storefront was attached to a larger warehouse in back.  There had been two large signs with the name printed in black letters, but one had fallen, so it was now only advertised as "Offic".  We followed Dad as he unlocked the door and lit the fluorescent overhead lights.  They flickered a couple of times before coming to full strength. 

I had worked at Office Plus enough to remember every smell: the musty old boxes that greeted you at the door, the encrusted soda and toner of the waste area behind the service desks to the left.  To the right, dusty metal of shelves and machinery.  I knew Hank and Dad were immune to these now.  Just like I was immune to the smells of home.  If we went away on vacation for a week, upon returning I might pick up on a scent that I never knew existed.  But within a few hours I would re-acclimate, and I would never remember quite what the scent was.  Sometimes I wondered what other people thought our house smelled like.  Maybe it wasn't too different from Office Plus.  I hoped it was.
   
The back room contained the primary printing press that Hank worked.  At the back of the room were shelves that held inks, purple plates, and stacks of paper.  Many of the papers had been rejects from jobs. 

Dad instructed us. "Move the inks to the shelf over there.  Take the papers to the trash bin."
   
I started to grab a stack of papers.
   
"No, looky here."  Dad searched for an empty paper box and found one.  "You can move more if you put the papers in the box first and then carry the box out."  Dad put a handful of papers in the box and then left it for me to continue.  Michael and I cleared the shelves as Hank started loading the collating machine in the other room.
   
Dad was sorting through mail when Michael and I were finished and ready to move the guns.  Hank had already loaded the collator with the twenty or so stacks of sheets for his job and was ready to start it.  He closed the lid and pressed the prominent green start button.  The top page of each stack was sucked into one pile and then stapled from a spool of wire.
   
Dad opened the car trunk.  I felt my heart beating and wiped my hands against my pants to clear them of clammy sweat.  I looked down both sides of the street but saw no one.  On the south side of Office Plus was a cigar store: Dapper Dan's.  The sign for the store featured a British-looking man in a tweed jacket.  On the north side of Office Plus was a chain pharmacy store, and across the street was a hairdresser.  All were closed and darkened.  A couple of cars waited for green lights at the intersection a half mile up the street.
   
Dad passed Michael the rifle.  I wiped my hands again, and he passed me the shotgun. 

I had imagined them coming one day when I was home from school.  A black van would appear at the end of the driveway and four men in black suits would jump out of it.  Maybe they would have "IRS" written across their chests.  I would grab the shotgun and the rifle.  First I would hide to the front of the door and wait with the shotgun.  The door would burst open and I would blast the first man, then turn and run through the side bedroom, which had a back entrance to the bathroom.  I could sneak through there and escape out my parents' bedroom, where I would run across the field to take cover behind the stone wall. 
   
"Damn it, boy, don't hold it so high."  Dad gestured sharply with his right hand.
   
I lowered the shotgun and followed Michael to the backroom and cleared shelves.  The thumping of the collator continued as it spat out booklets.  Dad had carried the milk crate of handguns.  He placed the long guns toward the back of the shelf and then the milk crate in front to partially conceal the long guns. 
   
I wondered why they would not find the guns here.  If they could raid us at any time at home, surely they could do so here.  Maybe they'd even prefer to do it here, where they'd think Dad would have old tax records or something of value to them.  I did not want to ask Dad though.  Maybe I'd ask Michael some time.
   
Michael and I helped Hank place the booklets neatly into boxes while Dad milled about his desks sorting and shuffling papers. 
   
I was glad Hank was there to take the front seat for the ride home.  The oldest always has the choice, but if it were between Michael and me, I thought Michael would make me take it this time.  He was not so much older than me that Dad would find it strange. 
   
As we started the ride home, I planned how I would get my algebra homework done the next morning.

[Jacobus]

Chapter 2


Hank was amused any time Michael or I would complain about school.  "Prisons, insane asylums, and schools," he would say, smiling and shaking his head.  I didn't quite know what he meant, but I thought I had a good idea as I rolled myself out of bed at 5:30 each morning.  I had turned his saying into a mantra for my morning routine. 

"Prisons, insane asylums, and schools," I thought as I poked Michael on the top bunk to make sure he was stirring.  Once we were dressed, one of us would run to the end of the driveway and back to fetch the newspaper, and the other would start the water boiling.

I poured the hot water over my oatmeal and added a generous amount of brown sugar.  Michael liked to put some milk on his too.  "Prisons, insane asylums, and schools," I thought as I methodically spooned the oatmeal into my mouth.  Mom would be well into her own morning routine by now, but Dad and Hank typically did not get up until after we left.

Michael would spread the sports section of the newspaper between us, and occasionally one of us would pull it in our direction to try to get a better look at the box scores.  When we finished eating and using the bathroom, we had about ten minutes before we had to go out and wait for the bus.  We spent it watching Sportscenter.

It was almost as hard to get up from the recliner as it was to get out of bed.  I followed Michael and shut the front door.  "Prisons, insane asylums, and schools," I thought as it latched. 

When we reached the end of the dirt driveway, Michael and I reached behind the stone wall and pulled out a couple of bats that we had whittled from fallen branches.  It had been Michael's idea a few years ago, and he had since made half a dozen bats for himself.  I had made just one. 

Michael threw a rock into the air and swung at it.  He connected, and I anticipated hearing it strike well against a tree trunk.  Instead, it crashed through some underbrush. 

I wanted to ask him about last night.  Was he worried?  Was Dad doing the right thing?  I threw up a rock and whiffed at it.

"Albert Belle hit another homerun last night," I said as I gathered a few small rocks into a pile for later use.
   
Michael inspected the nicks on his bat.  "Well, Frank Thomas had three hits, two of them for doubles." 
   
"Albert Belle should still be MVP this year."
   
"So you're telling me that you'd rather have Albert Belle than Frank Thomas?"
   
"He'll definitely end up with more homeruns and RBI."
   
"But he doesn't get on base nearly as much.  Frank Thomas walks all the time."
   
"Walks don't drive in runs."
   
Plus Frank Thomas doesn't assault fans during games."
   
We'd had this long-running argument since school had begun a couple of weeks earlier.  It played out as it always did: after we had exhausted all logical arguments we could make, we resorted to saying the player's name as dramatically as possible.  "Frank ... Thomas".  The longer the pause you could insert between the first and last name, the more awe-inspiring he was, and as a result the closer you were to proving his superiority.
   
We heard the bus before we saw it and had ample time to set our bats behind the stone wall so that we could easily reach them the next morning.  Once the bus stopped, we crossed the street and climbed up its steps.  Mrs. Smith held open the bus door for us, requiring her to lean out in an uncomfortable pose that was nevertheless welcoming in a way.  I avoided eye contact with her but mumbled a hello as I passed by.  Even though she had been our bus driver since kindergarten, it still felt awkward for me to say hello.  But it also felt awkward not to say it.
   
Most of the seats were still vacant, and I chose one in the middle.  Michael continued past me toward the back of the bus, where the older students sat.  A few students from the technical high school were there, but they would be transferred later in our route.  One of them, Jared, sat a few rows ahead of me.  We had been friends in junior high and when we were both freshmen we sometimes sat next to each other on the bus and talked.  Now we never sat next to each other.  I thought of how there must have been one last day that we had sat next to each other, though I did not remember that day.  Had it been especially awkward?  Why had that been the last day, and not the time before it?   
   
I sighed and said one last "prisons, insane asylums, and schools" for the morning.  Time to get to work.  I pulled the algebra textbook out of my bag and opened it upon my lap.  I couldn't read well on the bus, but I wouldn't need to in order to complete the easy first few exercises.  The higher-numbered problems would have to wait.
   
I wrote an answer for the first problem, paused, and pressed my pencil into the crack of the book.  It sprang up from the crack and I pushed it back with a little more force, testing if it would spring back or become stuck.  We had just turned onto Main Street and passed a development of raised ranches.  The houses were spaced by a couple hundred feet, and each one had a couple acres of land.  Their architectures were identical, but each had a unique color.  Did anyone in these houses worry about IRS raids?  Did we really have to worry or was Dad just being paranoid?
   
I pictured the guns sitting on the shelves at Office Plus.  Anyone could break in at night and steal them now.  How stupid was Dad to think this would have any effect?  And what did he really think he could get away with from them?  Mom was right: he should just sit down with them and do what they want and get them off our backs.  I wished I knew more though.  I had to wait for bits and pieces of heated exchange between Mom and Dad, usually overheard from another room, to get what was going on.  Mom wanted Dad to do things differently, and Dad accused her attitude of being part of the problem.  Meanwhile, it was like Hank, Michael, and I had to pretend nothing was going on. 
   
I looked back down at my book and didn't care whether the exercises got done.  If I read too long on the bouncy bus ride I'd get a headache anyway.


      
The bus let us out in front of the high school.  Planmore High School was an amalgamation of several buildings and wings.  On one end was a three-story structure built over a century ago.  It had served as the original school and would have looked nice by itself.  It was ironically called the annex, though few were aware of the irony.  The other wings were built in what seemed a more or less haphazard pattern.  Viewed from above, the school would appear to be an F, with the annex as the base.   
   
I squeezed through the crowd at the main entrance and made my way toward sophomore hall.  A group of boys stood in a circle at the intersection, forcing everyone to maneuver around them.  If someone they liked to pick on walked by (usually a weak freshman), they would either shove him into the lockers or put an elbow in his path.  I sensed the group's fat, blonde-haired leader looking out at everyone, daring people to make eye contact, as I weaved around the group. 
   
I found my locker and looked down at the combination gate.  Sometimes at home I would try to think of my combination yet draw a blank. I might even worry that I had completely forgotten it, and how could I tell a teacher that I didn't have my books because I forgot my locker combination?  But each morning, it would come back.  Even as I stood with my hand on the gate, I would not be able to say the full sequence, but my hand made the correct turns anyway.
   
I planned the books I needed for the morning and then closed the locker and sat with my back against it.  I pulled that algebra book out again and resolved to get the first two sections done before the bell rang.

I took another glance down both directions of the hallway and saw the usual assortment of cliques.  The previous year I would have sought out some friends from junior high to hang out with before class.  Our town was much smaller than Planmore, and so as freshmen we stuck together for a while.  But if you don't share any classes, there isn't much to talk about, and so by halfway through the year they had all found new groups of friends.  Since then I had made sure I had some homework to finish each morning.  If I had no homework to complete, I would pretend to work on some. 
   
A few more exercises were enough for me.  Mr. Andrews dropped our two lowest homework grades anyway.  I heard the closest group of students joking about the last Seinfeld episode. 
   
"Helloooo Jerry," one of the girls said to her friend, mimicking one of the characters from the show.
   
"Hello Newman," he sneered back. The group laughed. 

I didn't know them well, and they seemed okay to me, but I couldn't see myself fitting in with their group.  Every morning it was the same thing, repeating the lines from some sitcom they had seen.  Everything was a big joke.

   

Students always know the skeletons a teacher hides, but with each passing year the stories grow in mythology.  The baseball coach and Social Studies teacher, for example, was known to have had cheated on his wife with one of his students.  The advanced English teacher was said to have sat on her male students' laps, and the freshman health teacher to have had female students sit on his.  We knew which teachers were drunks, and which were homosexual.  Maybe even a tenth of it all was true.
   
Aside from the rumors that originated twenty years previous, older brothers and sisters passed down more reliable information about the predictable mannerisms and lectures of teachers.  We knew who to fear and who was easy.  We also knew about the stories each teacher liked to tell - "has he told you guys the frog story yet?" - and who would have the same laughable introductions.
   
My Modern U.S. History teacher, Mr. Lopes, had one such predictable introduction.  There was the usual grandstanding and rubbish about what behavior was "unacceptable" and what "would not be tolerated."  But he had a special pet peeve, and that was the pronunciation of his name.  On the first day of class he had spelled it out to fill the entire board.
   
"My name is Mr. Lopes, pronounced 'lopes.'  It is not Mr. Lopez."  He pushed his glasses against his temple.  I thought his wavy, greasy hair and cheap-looking shirt and tie made him look like he was from the 50s.  "The name is Portuguese, not Spanish.  That means there is an 's' on the end and not a 'z'.  And it is pronounced Lopes, not Lopez."  He was just stern enough that we would not call him Mr. Lopez to his face, but of course that's how we'd refer to him outside of class.  Didn't he know this annual introduction just encouraged that?
   
Much of the course would be spent on the Great Depression and World War II, but now we were learning about the Teddy Roosevelt era.
   
Mr. Lopes wrote the pages we were responsible for in a corner of the board and drew a box around it with the chalk.  Then he turned on the overhead projector and asked a student in the front row to pull down the screen.  He placed his first page of notes on the overhead.  I prepared to copy the notes verbatim as Mr. Lopes talked through them.
   
"We've already talked about President Roosevelt's foreign policy."  Mr. Lopes paused and looked through his pages of notes.  He put up a page with an editorial cartoon showing a robust Roosevelt in a cowboy outfit, walking abroad the Earth while grinning and carrying a club.  Mr. Lopes chuckled and then replaced the cartoon with his original page of notes.  "Now we'll talk about his domestic policies and some of the crises facing the American people at that time."
   
"First, Roosevelt brought regulation to the big monopolies that were coming to dominate the market.  This work had started with McKinley, but Roosevelt carried it through and became famous for trust-busting.  He dissolved forty-four trusts.
   
"This was important because at the time unhindered free market capitalism was concentrating power into the hands of just a few men.  Once a single trust had a monopoly on a market, it could then do whatever it wanted.  The workers would suffer because they had nowhere else to go, and the people suffered because they had to pay so much money to get what they needed.  According to Roosevelt, it was the job of the government to promote competition and fairness by breaking apart such monopolies.  This was the cornerstone of his Square Deal, that workers, businessmen, and consumers ought to have agreements that are fair to all."
   
I raised my hand, and so did Jean, who sat on the other side of the room.  Mr. Lopes glanced at me but then saw Jean's hand.  Most of the students never asked questions, and sometimes I wondered what they thought about mine.  I suspected they didn't care whatever happened in the class, but even so I always felt like an actor about to come onto stage when I raised my hand.  I wondered if my face reddened when I was called upon.
   
Mr. Lopes called on Jean.
   
"What businesses were the worst?"
   
"The railroads were the worst, and Roosevelt brought some much-needed regulation to their rates, their operations, and how they treated workers.  He also went after the big banks, and we'll see later how he improved conditions for food packaging.  The book has a few examples of some of the trusts and what he did to break them apart or improve them."  He turned to me.  "Jacob?"
   
"If concentrating power is so bad, then couldn't we consider Roosevelt to be the biggest monopoly of all?  Since he executed power over all businesses."  The question was not as well-formed as I had hoped it would be. 
   
"Well, certainly the Democrats criticized him for what they called his 'cowboy imperialism,' so I think maybe in a few cases he went too far.  But he was just trying to even the playing field with his domestic policies and improve the people's conditions."
   
"But trust-busting is based on the idea that power should not be concentrated in the hands of a few men.  But here we see him acting above all those men, telling them what to do.  So wasn't he most guilty of all for being a monopoly of power?"  That wasn't perfect either.  Something seemed wrong to me though with the whole picture.  Not with Roosevelt's actions, necessarily, though I wasn't convinced he had done anything so heroic.  Something more basic with the idea that one man could control so much, whether he chose to do good with it or not.
   
"No.  The difference is that the capitalists had amassed their power through different means.  They were beholden to no one and had become so big through unethical treatment of workers and stamping out all competition.  The President is elected by the people and answers to the people."  Mr. Lopes snickered and took on a slightly condescending tone, as if he could not believe he would have to explain something so basic and trivial at this level.  "It's his job to serve the people, and if he does a bad job of it, they'll elect someone else who will the next term.  That's why we call them public servants."  He turned back to his slides, confident that the exchange was over.  I knew my face must be red now.  I was not ready to give up yet, though.  His words were too vague, too empty.  They could be used to justify anything a President did and in fact to encourage great power in one person's hands.  Why was it that the "great" Presidents were always the ones to start the most wars, kill the most people, and interfere the most in everyone's lives?  Couldn't people just live without being told what to do and who to kill?  Why couldn't Dad just have a business and do what he wanted, so long as he didn't hurt anyone else? 
   
"I disagree."  I said it more forcefully than I had meant, and I sensed a few students stirring.
   
"Excuse me?"
   
I wanted to take a rain check on the argument.  If only I could do a little research and then come back to this moment.  He looked at me, and I knew he expected me to backpedal and try to get the class moving again, since now everyone was attentive on me.     "The only reason the railroads were a monopoly was because the government granted it to them in the first place.  The government took land from people to give to the railroads, and then the government protected the railroads.  Only the government has the power of monopoly!  Only the government can say 'Do this or you'll go to jail!'  That doesn't seem fair to me."
   
"Come now.  The government might have had some hand in building up the railroad trusts, but Roosevelt corrected whatever wrong that might have been.  If you want to keep arguing about this, then you'll have to see me after class."
   
I was silent for the rest of the lecture.  Mr. Lopes proceeded through his notes and focused on a book called The Jungle that exposed the conditions of meat packing.  He told of the legislation that Roosevelt pushed through to mandate food inspection and labeling of food products.  I took down the notes but kept replaying our exchange in my head. 
   
I had no intention of seeing him after class, but I felt sure we would continue disagreements in future classes.  I would not simply be quiet when I felt something was wrong.
   
The bell rang to signify the end of class.  There was some immediate chatter, but I packed my books and made my way into the hall.
   
"Hey, I liked what you said in there."  I knew Dave from a couple of classes.  He was one of the few people who paid much attention in history class.  He didn't ask many questions but from what I had seen he put a lot of work and thought into his reports and projects.
   
"Thanks."
   
"He didn't answer you at all.  I think you really threw him off, and I don't think he was going to call on anyone after that.  Just kept reading his notes." 
   
"Yeah, I guess so."  I smiled.
   
"Keep 'em coming.  I'm going this way, so I'll see you tomorrow." 
   
"You too."  Dave walked down a side hall and I continued back to sophomore hall.  I couldn't help but keep smiling.
   
I arrived at my locker and had to decide which books to take home to study.  I always had algebra work, so I put that one in.  We had to do some reading for English, too, and I might as well take home the Biology book in case I have some extra time.  The History book was already in my bag, but I pulled it out and studied the cover, which showed a waving American flag.  Ten pages of assigned reading.  "This would just be deadweight," I thought and dropped it on the bottom of my locker. 

[Raineyrocks]

Jacobus,

From what I read, (too late to read it all), it seemed intriguing.   It sucks that it wasn't accepted.  How do you go about entering 2 chapters of a book to see if a publisher is interested?

Is there more than one place you can send it to?