The Valedictorian Spot They Gave Away

“That’s the end of my time,” I said. I sat down. Bryan was standing against the shelves with his arms folded, still in his work clothes, and he gave me one slow nod.

Greg Hale read the sheet all the way down. He was a heavy, weathered man in a seed-company jacket, and I had known him my whole adult life, from church suppers and the Co-op counter. I watched his jaw work.

“Thank you, Mrs. Kessler,” Nell Hutchins said. “Dr. Cantrell, would you like to respond?”

“I’ll respond to the board in writing,” Dr. Cantrell said. His voice was as dry as paper, and he did not look up from his folder.

Then the person I had been most afraid for stood up from the back row.

Marsha Hobbs walked up the aisle in her good cardigan, holding her purse in both hands in front of her. I have known her all my adult life, and I had never heard her speak into a microphone.

“I’m the one who entered those changes,” she said. “It’s in the log under my name, and I want it said by me and not by a piece of paper. On May sixth, before school, Dr. Cantrell stood by my desk and told me what to take off and what reason to enter. I entered it. I did not like it, and I didn’t call anyone, because I am not brave. I should have been.” She turned and found my daughter in the second row. “Maddie. I’m so sorry, honey. You didn’t deserve one minute of that.”

Maddie nodded. That was all.

Nell Hutchins let the room stay quiet. Then she looked down the table at the man in the center chair.

I want to be fair to Greg Hale. He had a drought year behind him and a poor one before it, a bill at the elevator he did not tell anyone about, and a son whose whole college plan rested on the tuition waiver that goes with first in the class. I learned all that later. What I saw that night was a tired farmer looking at a sheet of paper.

“Greg,” Nell said, “your boy is in this. You’ll want to step out of the chair.”

“I’ll step out of the chair.” He took his glasses off. “I mentioned it to Curt on the course in March, how much that waiver meant to us. I didn’t ask him to do one thing. If that’s a crime, it’s a new one.”

“It’s not a crime,” Nell said. “It’s why you don’t sit in the chair.”

“I’m not resigning, Nell. The people who elected me can unelect me in November.” He stood, picked up the gavel, set it down in front of her, and carried a folding chair to the side of the room, where he sat with his cap on his knee. “I won’t vote on it, either.”