FICTION — SHORT STORY
Devil’s Field Trip Pt. 1
“You wrong, Mister.” Doretha sang from the back. The kids never used the last names of teachers. It was always just ‘miss’ or ‘mister’ and Travis had come to accept it.
He saw Doretha in the rear-view mirror, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. Next to her, Aviella wore a polite smile. But the boys were laughing hysterically. Ja’ron, in the passenger seat, was slapping the dashboard and Nate was buckled over behind him with actual snot coming from his nose.
Travis continued his performance. He bellowed mocking, muttering noises to the offset lyrical delivery and metronomic snares coming from the radio. It was part of his condemnation of what he called trap music (he wasn’t sure if that term was already passé). Whatever it was, Ja’ron had control of their listening. It was a prize for the boy having the most answers to pointed questions from their enrichment coursework. Ja’ron won fairly but Travis wouldn’t let his musical tastes go unmocked.
“Every song,” Travis said with disbelief. “It sounds like drunk auctioneers on crack,” he said and went back to his performance.
Ja’ron took the ribbing with good spirits. “A’ight,” he said, gently stroking the whispers on his chin, an act he performed incessantly since the hairs sprouted on his fourteen-year-old face, “What do you want to listen to?”
“Check this out,” Travis said and tuned the car to Bluetooth to play music from his phone.
“He-ey!” Travis called excitedly at the sound of the opening riff of The Cleanup Woman by Betty Wright, popping his head on his shoulders from side to side to the rhythm.
All the kids laughed now. Ja’ron covered his face, feigning shame at the display. “My dude, you ain’t even old enough to be into this,” Nate said between laughter.
Travis kept moving. He played the role of aggressively unhip as a ‘fuck you’ to teachers who tried to be cool and ultimately ended up without the kind of relationships he had with the kids.
“How old is you anyway?” Doretha sneered.
“Are you,” Travis corrected.
“How old are you?” Doretha rolled her eyes into the back of her brain.
“Not telling,” he stopped dancing, having reached the entrance to the underground parking.
Travis thought how he’d miss this part of being a teacher. when he moved to STRIVE. But all of this — the committees, the after-school clubs, the volunteer enrichment programs — had originally been to strengthen his background for his proposal to the Felleece Foundation.
Yes, he told himself, ultimately it was to serve his community, but he’d be lying not to confess being motivated by a salary unimaginable to a teacher with less than ten years on the job. He wouldn’t be guilted. It took hard work. Not to mention smarts which the average teacher didn’t have to identify grant monies and build his own program to win them. And it was an exhausting process — one that shockingly concluded with meeting Mr. Topher Felleece himself.
A legacy billionaire whose family name peppered the city’s buildings and monuments, Felleece was deep in his fifties with the look of a perpetual child. He sat with a slouch in an oversized suit in his office. Travis had prepared for weeks to model ROI for his program. But Felleece was only interested in his students. He delighted in how much Travis knew about specific kids, their talents, and their backgrounds. The conversation was much longer than a middle school teacher would expect to talk to one of the nation’s richest people.
But when it ended, it did so suddenly. Felleece stood and headed out, glancing back at Travis with beady blue eyes. “I think we can work together,” he said. His top lip arched on one side, then trembled, and he was gone.
This move was essential Travis told himself — he wasn’t abandoning the kids but maximizing what he could do, scaling his efforts to help kids all over the city, even the nation if his program proved successful.
Travis led the kids out onto Michigan Avenue for the art institute before the symphony. The concert was a capstone for all the forty-five incoming ninth graders in the enrichment program, but the museum trip was an add-on for these four who’d somehow never been to the Art Institute. Travis genuinely wanted to rectify this. It didn’t hurt that Dr. Jadavaru, the network chief, seemed rapt when Travis floated this.
Outside the museum, each kid took turns posing dramatically with one of the copper lions that guarded the entrance.
“I want to get you all together,” Travis encouraged, taking out his phone. The boys posed stoically, facing away from each other. Doretha got in between, turning to the side and making duck lips. Only Aviella took a sincere pose, smiling and looking straight at him. As Travis snapped, he felt warm breath on his neck and heard the gravelly voice of its source.
“You want to get in there, chief?” Travis turned to see the asker — a tall, thick man whose hair was gathered into a thin and long ponytail behind a deeply receded hairline. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with no tie and wore round spectacles, and one emerald stud earring in his right ear. He smiled and held up a hand for Travis’s phone, nodding to encourage him to join the kids.
Travis felt powerless to resist this offer and handed the man his phone. “Thanks. That’ll be great.” He joined the kids while the stranger played photographer, even going down to one knee to get a hero's perspective of the group.
“I took a couple for you,” the man said, handing his phone back to Travis. “Let me know if you want another.”
“No, this is great,” Travis said. The tall man stood nearby, nervous for approval of his work, his jaw clinched and eyes bulging. “I really appreciate this,” Travis barely looked at the shots and saw the kids were anxious to get inside and backed away. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the man was still watching him as they continued into the museum. He saw the man’s reflection in the glass entry doors of the museum — his eyes were lit with continued interest.
The group made quick work of the museum’s first floor, each kid took turns looking at specific areas with intense disinterest. Except for Doretha who was bored by everything. She saved her gustiest sighs and deepest eye rolls for the modern wing. But their eyes came alive when they beheld the museum’s crown jewels of painting galleries on the second floor. Then, on the third floor, the tall stranger appeared again.
Ja’ron had stopped for a long time to consider Picasso’s Old Guitarist, thoughtfully stroking his pubescent beard. The other three collapsed on a bench, their eyes battered by artwork.
“I love it here,” the gravelly voice descended on Travis from nowhere. The man was looking straight ahead at the painting.
“Oh, hey,” Travis exclaimed, excited to recognize the man initially until it clicked where he recognized him from.
“I come every day before the performance,” he turned to look at Travis, his eyes wet and forehead misted. Travis was uncomfortable looking at him.
“Really? What kind of performance?”
“The CSO,” he said and added, “The Chicago Symphony Orchestra… across the street.”
“You’re kidding,” Travis exclaimed. “We’re actually going tonight,” he smiled, gesturing in the general direction of the students. The man did not react to the coincidence but nodded expectantly. “What do you do with the symphony?”
“This evening, I’ll be conducting,” his lips twisted into an acerbic grin but Travis was cheered. He was no great appreciator of classical music, but he knew the conductor was in charge.
“Liszt… Faust symphonics,” the man added. “You’re in for a real treat,” he grinned, looking to the side of Travis.
“You the maestro then, huh?” Ja’ron’s voice nearly made Travis jump. He forgot the boy was there, but he was the target of the stranger’s grin.
“You could say that,” the man responded. He licked his lips purposefully and extended his hand. “Joseph Vovez.”
Travis took the man’s hand and shook it. On the release, Vovez slid his hand back and conspiratorially locked Travis’s fingers, then slid his hand up to lock Travis at the thumb, all the while stepping forward and landing his other hand affectionately on Travis’s left shoulder. The moment left Travis was hot with embarrassment.
Vovez quickly moved on though. With Ja’ron, he repeated the same motions, but the teen was delighted with it, even adding a couple of flourishes onto the handshake — twisting the hands into a horizontal position after grasping thumbs and clapping their hands together twice, first the palms, then the backs. Vovez and Ja’Ron were grinning and nodding. Travis desperately wanted this interaction to end.
Vovez stood very close asking, “May I ask what you and your students are doing for dinner?” His breadth smelled of something sweet and warm.
Travis took a step back. He didn’t want to share details with Vovez but heard himself answering honestly. “I think we saw a Shake Shack across the street.”
“I can’t let you do that.” Vovez almost panicked. “Be my guest. We usually have catering for the orchestra. I can’t be sure what it is, but the caterer is divine and there’s always plenty.”
Travis’s instinct was to politely decline because something was nagging him — he was certain he hadn’t said the kids were his students. But he imagined slyly mentioning that they’d dined with the orchestra, at the conductor’s request, on Monday.
“I mean, that sounds great but,” Travis started but Vovez jumped in holding up his hand to silence him.
“I wouldn’t offer if it weren’t my pleasure,” he entered the small distance that Travis had been able to put between them. Ja’ron was already nodding with the raw enthusiasm that teenage boys always have towards food. The other three looked exhausted and his heart cheered at the idea of not having to save a receipt to be reimbursed for the meal.
“Well, I guess I have to take you up on that, then, don’t I?” Travis said, smiling.
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