Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [41]
“What if someone attacks you first?” Jack said.
“Good question. Since it’s your life, you have a right to defend it.”
Jack pressed on. “What if you see someone attacking someone else? Can you step in?”
“Another good question. By defending others’ rights to their own lives, you defend your right to your own.” He beamed at Jack. “You’re thinking. Good man.”
Normally Jack would have basked in the praise, especially from his favorite teacher, but his concerns lay outside the classroom.
He had a right to his own life … it was so obvious, yet he’d never consciously formed the concept. Now that he had …
Toliver had attacked Weezy. She couldn’t strike back, so Jack had struck for her. Would he have been justified using the bat that night? Yeah, probably, since Toliver had already opened the door to violence by physically attacking Weezy, but what Jack had done to him instead—without laying a finger on him—had proven so much worse.
“So in the coming months, as we hear lots of talk from the president and his challengers, let’s hold up their ideas to the touchstone of owning your own life. We can decide if their ideas enhance or diminish that ownership, and by that we can judge whom we wish to support. Remember, it’s all a tug-of-war about control: Who has power over your life—you or the government?”
As the end-of-period bell rang he raised his voice.
“A U.S. senator named Daniel Webster once said, ‘There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.’ We’ll keep that in mind as we listen to the palaver.”
Despite the frustration of not having fully dealt Toliver what he deserved, Jack felt an inner glow as he gathered up his books.
“The right to my own life,” he muttered. “I like that.”
“I like it too,” said a girl’s voice.
He looked around and saw Karina standing behind him, smiling.
“But not everybody feels that way,” she added.
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Whole nations and religions don’t think that applies to women, only men.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Even here they couldn’t vote a hundred years ago.”
Her smile broadened. “You know about the Nineteenth Amendment?”
“Um, yeah.”
Weezy had mentioned it a few weeks ago.
5
In the caf, Jack was eating a ham sandwich with a group from his homeroom when Cristin came up to the table and started rapidly sliding her feet around while making spastic movements with her arms.
“Cristin?” Karina said. “What are you doing?”
She grinned. “A new dance. It’s called the Carson.”
That cracked up the table, Jack too.
Oh, yeah. Easy Weezy was history.
Jake Shuett came running up. “Carson’s by his locker and wants everybody there! He says he’s got a big announcement!”
Jack was first out of his seat and on his way as dozens of others rushed from the caf. He managed to snag a spot near the front of the crowd centered around Toliver and his locker.
He’d returned to his usual cool, calm, and collected self as he held up a new lock—a non-combination model.
“Take a look at this everybody: brand-new.”
Then he held up a tiny nail.
“See this? An upholstery tack.”
He then pulled a small hammer from his back pocket and tapped the tack into the keyhole at the bottom of the lock. The hammer returned to the pocket to be replaced by a small plastic vial.
“Krazy Glue.”
He put a few drops of the glue into the keyhole around the tack. Then he turned the lock right side up and emptied the rest of the glue into the shackle hole. He inserted the shackle through the latch in his locker door, then snapped the lock shut.
He turned to the crowd.
“It’s over. It ends here. No more games. This clown will not be getting