The Littlest Boss

“This is where Henry arranged for the meeting,” Lena said as they got out of the car. The lawn was brown and patchy beneath their feet in the relative cold of the South Carolina winter. DeShawn noticed that the paint was peeling and cracked. As they made their way inside, he had a strange feeling of déjà vu. The floor was clean but old. The ceiling tiles were sagging in places. The desks in the classrooms they passed looked like they were left over from the sixties.

He shook his head. “Damn.”

“I know, right?” Malik said. “You’d think they’d have fixed this by now.”

“Reminds me of my elementary school,” Lena said.

“Me too,” DeShawn echoed.

Lena stopped in the doorway to the library. She looked in and he saw her shoulders slump. “When I got to high school,” she said slowly, “we were in a better school district. It was such a shock. They had computers and books in the library. I mean, you know that schools aren’t going to be exactly equal, but...until you see it, until you really see it, you don’t understand. You don’t get how wide that gap really is.”

When she stepped back, he leaned in through the door. The library was no bigger than a classroom. Many of the shelves were empty. It was dim, sad, smelling faintly of mildew and old paper.

“Yeah,” DeShawn said. “I was in the top in my high school class but still barely scored well enough on my SATs to get into college. Had to do the first two years at a community college to get caught up.”

The look on her face made him take a step back. He knew her well enough to know she was a powerfully determined woman. What Lena wanted, Lena got. She looked at them. “This is bullshit,” she said in a voice much quieter than the anger in her eyes. “Let’s try to fix something here.”

“Damn straight,” he said.

“Hey!” a voice called out. “I’m down here.”

A man stood in the hall outside a classroom. “Henry Gardner,” he introduced himself as he shook Lena’s hand.

“I remember you, Henry,” Lena said with a smile.

“And I you. Your visits to the Cleaning Crew office were a source of awe and fear.”

Her mouth fell open and the three men laughed. “What? Why?”

“Ahem. Well, you do have a certain sense of...determination about you,” Malik said diplomatically.

“Come on,” Henry said with a motion toward the door. “Let’s sit down.”

As they pulled chairs into a small circle, Henry looked at Lena. “I’m surprised to see you here, Lena. Are you funding this?”

She shot him a look. Quizzical with a touch of do-you-want-to-die. “I grew up in a trailer park. I am one of your students.”

“Perfect,” Henry said smoothly. “We have a good percentage of Hispanic students so your input would be more than welcome.” He looked at DeShawn. “What’s the plan?”

“The plan is to try to provide what you need,” DeShawn replied. “What do the kids need? Besides role models?”

Henry’s laugh echoed around the small empty classroom. “Need? Books. Computers. Internet access.”

“Wait,” Lena said. “The school doesn’t have internet?”

Henry shook his head. “The public library does, usually. It’s slow, but it’s there. Most of my kids don’t have it at home at all.”

DeShawn looked at Malik and shook his head. Same old story. Different generation. “I’d guess that the best way to start would be getting the kids’ trust,” he said. “I’m trying to recruit more people. We could start with a series of class visits for people to tell their stories.”

“Definitely,” Henry said. “I can tell them they can do it all day long, but in the end, I’m just a white guy from suburbia. They like me, but they don’t identify with me. They need to hear it from people who’ve lived it.”

“We can help you with that,” Malik said with a grin.

They spent the next hour learning about the kids. As they spoke, DeShawn began to get a better idea of just how large the need was out here in the rural, almost forgotten places. The kids needed more than role models. They needed mentors. They needed to see the world outside this crossroads town.

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