Reparations

Dustin Baxter was catching up on paperwork in his claustrophobically tiny office at Brandenburg High School, when Monica Crowell slipped into the room and discreetly shut the door behind her. In her mid-twenties she was a skinny bean pole of a woman with a bony torso and no chest to speak of. Her face was, at best, unremarkable with fleshless lips and a humped nose. On the rare occasion when she smiled, a fleeting prettiness flitted across her angular face like an optical illusion, a desert mirage and was gone in an instant. Dustin had no issues with the dark-skinned woman. She was pleasant enough but a puzzling enigma, and for that reason had always kept his distance. “There are thirteen, Afro-American staff members here at the school and out of the thirteen, twelve consider you the devil incarnate.” Monica spoke in a gravelly tone, Only now did a diaphanous smile flicker across her lips as she approached and lowered herself into the Windsor chair alongside the desk.

“Thanks for your unsolicited support.” Dustin threw the paperwork aside. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with what happened in the teachers’ lounge last Tuesday?" 

Monica nodded in the affirmative. “Rumor has it, half the white teachers are siding with Aiyanna Simpson, and your reputation is one step lower than dog poop.”

Dustin shook his head in mild disbelief. “I should have kept my thoughts to myself."

“That nutty remark about reparations stood everyone back on their heels.” Monica took great pleasure torturing him.  

“I only said it because the woman was baiting me… looking for trouble.”

The bell in the hallway rang with a shrill, piercing clatter and shortly there emerged the pitter-patter of feet rushing off to various classrooms. “I must admit,” Monica confided, “that I enjoyed your deranged soliloquy about a priori truth and Copernicus’ theory of how the universe functions.” Placing his head in his hands, Dustin groaned as the skinny bean pole of a Negro disappeared out the door.

* * * * *

“So what are your thoughts on this urgent matter, Mr. Baxter?” Aiyanna Simpson was sitting at the far end of the lunch table in the staff lounge, surrounded by a coterie of black teachers. A middle-aged educator with a perpetual axe to grind, the woman was constantly harping on racial injustice directed against her kind. While Dustin was polite and noncommittal when dealing with the loudmouthed firebrand, other whites either showered Aiyanna with slavish praise or kept their mouths shut, depending on political predilections.  “Can we count on your support?” Her tone was syrupy sweet with a hint of belligerence. 

Dustin, who had a mere fifteen minutes to wolf down his meal before moving on to an honors English class, cracked open a small container of cole slaw before biting into his tuna fish sandwich. “What’s the issue?” 

“Critical race theory,” Aiyanna replied. “We’re approaching the school committee with a proposal to begin including the concept in the standard curriculum.”

Dustin teased a mouthful of coleslaw onto the tines of his fork. “But critical race theory is neither critical nor theoretical.”

“Excuse me?” A jumble of disagreeable sounds welled up among Aiyanna Simpson’s followers.

“It’s,” Dustin continued, “nothing more than an a priori truth.”

Aiyanna’s features clouded over. “Opry what?”

“A priori truth,” he clarified. “A philosophical concept where you make statements of unassailable truthfulness with no proof to back them up.” “Ten thousand angels can fit quite comfortably on the head of a pin. Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, not a swanky beach resort in Acapulco.” “Critical race theory… it leads you down a Minatour’s maze of linguistic sophistry. In the end, none of it's true. None of it’s relevant. None of it’s worth diddly-squat.” Dustin’s tone had turned decidedly sarcastic. “Reminds me of a witch stirring up a magic potion of frog legs, bat wings, rat tails and poison mushrooms. It’s all terribly entertaining but nothing more.

“Critical race theory… the concept’s indisputable,” Aiyanna hissed.

“And before Copernicus arrived on the planet the sun revolved around the earth.” “Critical race theory is hogwash.” Dead silence. “One more thing,” Dustin, who had already crawled dangerously far out on a brittle ledge, inched doggedly ahead. “When the government starts paying reparations for slavery, I fully intend to marry a black woman so I can cash in on the financial windfall.” With that outlandish statement the entire group surrounding Aiyanna Simpson rose to their feet and stormed out of the room.

* * * * *

A week later Monica Crowell cornered Dustin in the high school parking lot as he was leaving for the day. “There are hiking trails at the bird sanctuary off Cumberland Street, where I walk my dog every evening.”

Dustin unlocked the front door to his car. “And why are you telling me this?”

“I’ll be at the sanctuary around seven this evening, if you care to join me,” She said, ignoring the question and sauntering away.

Dustin went home, fixed an early supper then drove to the hiking trails, where Monica was waiting near the entrance alongside a clump of willow trees. A dusky white lap dog with a pushed-in snout and floppy ears was resting close by. The ears were pendant and heavily feathered, the eyes dark brown and almond shaped with the fluffy tail arched over the back. The jaw was slightly undershot, giving the face a dignified, lionlike appearance. Squatting down on his knees, Dustin splayed his fingers. “Don’t touch him!” Monica cautioned. “Rocky’s a Lhasa Apso not a Shih Tzu. They were the Tibetan temple guard dogs in palaces and religious sites and can be quite ferocious, especially around strangers.”

“Okay.” Dustin stepped away and eyeballed the diminutive pooch that was no more than ten inches long and a meager handful of pounds. “What was so secretive that we couldn't discuss it at work?”

Monica headed off down the gravelly trail. “Are you aware that Aiyanna Simpson, the dumbest nitwit on the planet, is going before the school board with a petition to make critical race theory a part of standard curriculum?”

The dog pulled up in front of a poplar tree, lifted a hind leg and emptied his bladder on a scraggily clethra bush. “Yes, I heard. I’ll be there Tuesday evening speaking against the request.” 

“Which is exactly what I intend to do,” Monica spoke in measured tones. “Critical race theory’s a cockamamie crock of shit!” Dustin stared at the black woman in mild disbelief. Up until this moment he hadn’t a solitary clue where her allegiances lay. “Aiyanna Simpson would have every minority student mirroring her obnoxious sense of self-righteous indignation, while whites would grovel and ingratiate themselves for crimes committed by ancestors they never even knew.”

Directly ahead, a pond dappled with a profusion of water lilies came into view. “You're an apostate of sorts,” Dustin noted, “and the black faculty… your own kind will turn against you.”

“Screw them!” she muttered and, once again, a gossamer smile flooded her sharp features. “You’ll never convince them that the earth revolves around the sun or ten thousand angels can’t possibly fit comfortably on the head of a pin.”

They sat on a bench near the water’s edge. Dustin glanced at Rocky, who was resting on a clump of dandelions with a thoroughly impassive expression. The dog somehow reminded him of its inscrutable mistress. Monica’s hand was resting on her lap. Reaching out, he placed his own hand on top of hers. The woman, who was staring out over the placid pond, never shifted her gaze. “What exactly are you doing?”

“It’s what they call a ‘show of affection’.”

Rocky crouched down on his rump and began vigorously scratching his left ear with a hind leg. “Is that the best you can do?” An infinitesimal hint of emotion crept into her raspy voice. Dustin leaned forward and kissed her full on the lips. “Much better,” she sighed. “Now do it again.”