A Charter to That Other Place Read online

  Chapter Seven: Rodrigo

  He stood atop the deck he had built that extended out from their swimming pool. Their house was on a hill that overlooked the entire valley. The view included fields that he used to work in, which was by design, so he could look back on those days he had risen above. He liked to recall the mornings he would ride an old school bus painted white, filled with two dozen other workers, a trailer of portable potties hitched to the back, not knowing what sort of work they would do until they reached the field for that day. Eventually he bought a used Datsun and drove himself to where the work was being held. He couldn’t remember what color that car was, since it was perpetually covered in dust.

  He could see a white school bus in the distance, parked along the perimeter of a field that was a rectangle of green in an expanse that was otherwise fallow for winter. He couldn’t tell what kind of lettuce it was from so far away, but figured that’s what it was, which meant a lot of stooping over for those who caught the bus, and those whose battered cars filled in the remaining spaces along one side of the green patch.

  Rod’s back ached in sympathy, but his satisfaction was even greater than usual. For in addition to absorbing the past below him, he had his ear to his cell phone, absorbing the news from his technology contact that the classrooms would be wired during the upcoming summer break. His networking had come through.

  They mentioned how impressed they were with Dale’s pitch. They felt the two of them, Rod and Dale, represented the kind of merger between business and education that they had been seeking for sponsorship. There were some structural modifications in the buildings for which the charter would be responsible, but the hardware was complimentary, the software license fees reduced, and the promotional presence minimal.

  Rod felt as though he could fly over the valley that he surveyed while they sliced through the details. A tap on his shoulder from behind interrupted his flight. He turned to find nobody there, then spun in the other direction to find Artie grinning with pride. Rod covered the bottom of his phone.

  “Wait,” he mouthed.

  “Can Josh sleep over?” Artie asked anyway.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Kento,” Rod lowered his phone and glared at Artie.

  “Wait,” he said out loud this time through bared teeth.

  Artie saluted and imitated a robot as he walked away.

  The phone conversation proceeded and the deal was sealed, with contracts on their way by the end of the week. As Rod exchanged concluding pleasantries with Kento, his phone alerted him that a call was coming in from his daughter Lena.

  But before he could switch over to her, there was Artie’s voice again.

  “Dad?”

  “It’s your sister,” Rod waved him off again.

  Artie sighed dramatically and slumped his shoulders, this time impersonating a penguin as he walked off.

  Lena wanted money, which normally irked Rod, but he was feeling celebratory, and suggested they come to the city and deliver it in person over a nice dinner. She didn’t do a good job of sounding enthusiastic about the idea, but he laughed it off.

  “Just dinner,” he assured her. “You can meet your friends afterwards.”

  She brightened up over the promise of brevity, and warmly suggested a restaurant and a time before saying goodbye.

  Artie once more knew exactly when the conversation was ending, and appeared just as Rod lowered the phone and tried to stand triumphantly in front of the farmland lying beneath him. He also knew what Rod and Lena had been discussing.

  “Can Josh come, too?”

  “Where were you eavesdropping from? It’s a good forty feet to the house.”

  “You’re so loud.”

  Rod made a playful move to push him in the pool. Artie dodged him and asked again if Josh could come with them on the plane to the city.

  “I didn’t even say he could spend the night yet. How did we jump to him flying to the city with us?”

  “Please?” Artie collapsed and walked on his knees toward his father with hands wrapped together in prayer.

  “Have I even met Josh?”

  “He goes to LOCA.”

  “I figured as much. What does he look like?”

  “He’s the tall dude with brown hair that all the girls have a crush on.”

  That gave Rod an idea of who it was, but his realization confused him even more.

  “The one who makes fun of you all the time?”

  Artie seemed surprised that his Dad remembered that part. He stood up and brushed off the bottom half of his pants.

  “He doesn’t do it as much anymore.”

  “Look, Artie…” Rod searched for a way to articulate his answer. “The company plane is not a toy.”

  “You’re using it to go to dinner.”

  “To celebrate a business transaction,” was the best justification Rod could come up with.

  Artie crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows at him. Rod had to agree that his excuse sounded rather pitiful. He went with something more straightforward.

  “I’d like to just be with the family tonight.”

  “Fine,” Artie said. “Can Josh still come over?”

  “You don’t want to come with us?”

  Artie shook his head.

  “We can’t leave you two alone here.”

  “I’ve done it before. For more than one night.”

  “When Lena and Tony were still home.”

  “No,” Artie corrected him. “I did it at the end of last summer when you moved Tony into his apartment.”

  “But nobody else was with you, Artie. I don’t know Josh’s parents, but I’m pretty certain they won’t go for it, either.”

  Artie fell silent and looked around, searching for a comeback.

  “Can I go over to his house, then?”

  Rod exhaled until there was just enough air left inside of him to say “Sure.”

  Artie thanked him and ran inside to make the call. Rod turned toward the valley and tried to re-live his moment of triumph, but it was gone. He would have to regain it over dinner, and when he delivered the news to Dale, which he decided to do in person the following week.

  It was still a pretty view, though. He gazed at it a while longer before going inside to tell Rita and make arrangements for the plane.

  He found Artie in the living room sitting quietly on the couch.

  “Josh said no?”

  Artie nodded his head.

  “Did he give you a reason?”

  “He said his parents aren’t going to be home, either.”

  “And do you believe him?”

  Artie looked stunned.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” he replied.

  Rod regretted asking the question, and tried to spray whipped cream over the situation before Artie could see what it was made of.

  “If you come to the city with us tonight, we’ll go on a Lego run to Toys R Us. You can get a whole stack of boxes for your shows. Enough for a year’s worth of episodes. Isn’t there even a Lego store there? A store with nothing but Legos?”

  Artie nodded.

  “So what do you say?” Rod felt as though it was his turn to get down on his knees. “Come celebrate with us. I struck a deal to wire the whole school this summer.”

  Artie glared at him. “Wire it to blow up, I hope.”

  He got up off the couch and walked to his room. There were no imitations of robots or penguins, just one sad step after another.

  “So no Legos, then?” Rod called after him, grasping at a last chance for a light moment. The only reply he heard was Artie’s door closing.

  Rather than chase after him, Rod decided to regain some of his buzz by proceeding with his initial reason for coming inside. He found Rita watching television in their room, and gave her the good news. She was happy for him, and then happy for herself when he mentioned the flight to the city.

  “Perfect,” she gushed. “I’ve been wanting to introduce the kids to ikebana in my art class
es, and I need some supplies. Lord knows we have plenty of flowers and plants around here, but I just can’t find a decent variety of containers.”

  “You mean the art classes at the recreation center or at the school?”

  "Oh, mi querido, you know I stopped teaching at the rec center when I started teaching at LOCA.”

  “But that’s hundreds of containers.”

  “You just got free computers, Rigo.”

  She kissed him and since he couldn’t stop himself from laughing, he kissed her back. He gave her the name of the restaurant Lena had recommended. She picked up the phone to make reservations and to check which of their pilots was available.

  “Is Artie coming?” she asked.

  Rod crumpled his lips.

  “Could you find out, please?”

  He set out back into the hallway, devising a strategy as he approached Artie’s room. Rather than converse through the door, he tapped on it to see if he encountered any resistance. There was neither sound nor movement, so he slowly entered.

  Artie was lying on his side facing the far wall.

  “Your mother and I would really like you to join us tonight.”

  “At least somebody wants to hang out with me.”

  “Your sister would also like it.”

  “That’s because you have to. It’s the law.”

  Rod ventured over to the bed and sat down by his side.

  “I was thinking,” he introduced his plan. “We should bring your whole class out to some of our local operations on a field trip. Maybe one of the processing plants, something with lots of big machines.”

  “The one with the helicopter?”

  “Well, the helicopter kind of gets around. But we can make sure it’s at the one we visit on that day. We can’t give everyone a ride, but maybe Mr. Benton can put together some kind of contest, and the winners get to go up.”

  “Hmm. That sounds pretty cool.”

  “Then at the end of the school year, how about a pool party?”

  Artie rolled over and sat up.

  “Here?”

  “Of course, here. You know a better pool in town?”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Artie gave him a hug, and Rod accepted it gratefully. But as Artie characteristically started to overdo it, and rock back and forth while telling him in a goofy voice that he was the best Dad ever, Rod wondered what he had done, if he was really helping Artie make friends, or only helping to ostracize him further.

  At least they could always rely on having a good time in the city. The restaurant was indeed impressive, and Lena was able to maintain her charm since they didn’t exceed the two hour window in which she was capable of turning it on. Rod and Artie dropped off Rita at a home and garden outlet so she could compile a collection of containers and have them shipped to their home. Rod suggested shipping it right to the school, but she wanted to deliver it personally. He could relate, since he was likewise so intent on delivering the computer news to Dale in person, rather than calling him.

  Artie kept his bounty in hand. He and Rod left the Lego store with several sets of the new Architecture collection. The boxes contained pieces that would create Lego versions of real-world structures like the Sydney Opera House and the Brandenburg Gate. Artie imagined out loud that the collection would raise the maturity level of his show. He just had to come up with some alternative arrangements of the pieces.

  As Artie wrestled with some possibilities on the plane ride home and on the living room floor the following day, Rod noticed him pausing more than usual, and not in frustration. He instead came across as more contemplative than Rod had ever seen him. And though he was reluctant to interrupt such a landmark sequence of tranquility, Rod’s curiosity eventually ballooned to a degree where he had to ask what was on his mind.

  Artie’s response was even more surprising than the silence, so much so that Rod didn’t process the exact words as they were being spoken. He could only nod and piece together a summary as he walked out onto the deck in a pleasantly-surprised daze, then down the steps to the olive orchard that climbed the hill below the house. He was pretty certain he heard his son suggest that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to toy with reality, that for years the models he rearranged on camera were based on creations that didn’t really exist, and to change the Batmobile into a cyborg rocket launcher was one thing, but changing the Chrysler Building into a troll fortress was another thing, something that undermined his wish to come across as more mature. Rod did recall the exact words Artie used at the conclusion of his meditation:

  “I’d be taking something grown up and turning it into something childish.”

  And with that Rod found himself in the middle of the olive trees. He had planted them after buying the house to prevent erosion along the hillside. He had bought the property from the squabbling sons and daughters of a big-time grape grower. The offspring had all left the area the first chance they could get, and used the house maybe once a year for a decade after the last parent died, which left it in a state of disrepair by the time Rod picked it up. He did everything he could to fortify his investment, including the addition of the orchard. The trees were still young and thin, not quite having shed their sapling past. They stood just a couple heads taller than Rod, and it occurred to him that as gradual as he knew growth tended to be, he was always looking for that seminal moment when his daughter would become a woman, and his sons become men.

  Over the weekend he had calls to make and reports to draft. In the spaces between, he would quietly open the door to the guest house to check on the production of Artie’s newest episode. Rita would smile from behind the camera and put a finger to her lips. She had mentioned while they lay in bed after the first day of filming that Artie was trying something new. He was simply building the structure, starting with the United Nations Headquarters, then offering some history and trivia concerning it when the demonstration was complete. They were still in the process of filming the construction, since there were hundreds of pieces and Artie liked to make each move carefully so that when they sped up the video before loading it, the fast-motion sequences looked smooth, and the audience could see a logical progression to how the parts grew into a whole, despite the high speed.

  “Dad?” he asked without looking up from the pieces splayed across the table in front of him during one of Rod’s visits to the guest house production facilities.

  “Can you talk when you do that?” Rod asked. “Didn’t you just screw up the take?”

  “This is the fast motion part,” Artie said. “And it’ll have music in the background.”

  “Then why does your mother always make a gesture for me to be quiet when I come in?”

  Rita chimed in.

  “Because we’re not always doing fast motion parts when you come barging in.”

  “Barging in?” Rod defended himself.

  Rita smiled and Artie giggled before following through on what he wanted to ask.

  “Dad, can you check my research on the United Nations? It’s on my desk in my room.”

  “Um. Sure.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I should add,” he said as he slowly grabbed a piece from the spread and clicked it onto the burgeoning United Nations of Lego. “Just remember that the history part shouldn’t last more than two minutes.”

  “Got it,” Rod was about to duck out. “What if I find something that I think should be deleted?”

  “I’ll consider it,” Artie said, still focused on the pieces.

  Rita and Rod exchanged raised eyebrows.

  “Okay, then,” Rod offered a casual salute and left them alone.

  Artie’s history of the U.N. had the plagiarized look of something that had been written by a committee, rather than a person. Rod’s only suggestion to Artie was to write the passage himself, rather than copy and paste it from the web, and to mention the sources he used at some point in his presentation.

  He presumed his son’s attempt at word theft was innocent,
since it was so blatant and Artie had asked him to proofread it. Unless of course he thought his Dad was too stupid to notice. Either way, the incident had Rod thinking about the ramifications of a school utterly aligned with the internet, and how plugged in to temptation the students would be.

  He asked Dale about this issue on the morning he planned to break the news to him, caching up to him on the catwalk right after the Pledge of Allegiance and announcements.

  “Well,” Dale straightened up and shifted into a one-on-one version of an investor pitch. “Education is about meeting challenges, and teaching intellectual honesty is a challenge that the brightest educators will lead the way on.”

  His response sounded as plagiarized as Artie’s great moments in Lego history. Rod smiled.

  “Sorry,” Dale dropped into a more casual mode. “It’s an answer that was floating around the conference. I need to put my own spin on it.”

  “You’d better,” Rod smiled even more broadly.

  “Wait…” Dale caught on. “Do you mean to tell me…?”

  Rod nodded.

  Dale yelped and gave him a hug.

  The Kindergarteners were almost to their classroom, the first graders just starting to make their move, while the rest of the students were still on the showroom floor. Everyone turned around to face the sound above them.

  “One more announcement!” Dale beckoned everyone back together. Within seconds all were once again present, but the confusion caused by their principal’s excitement and his sudden orders to reverse course erased the manicured lines as the colored shirts coalesced into a bright mob.

  “Mr. Pluma has some great news!” Dale swept his arm in Rod’s direction, catching him by surprise.

  “Yes,” Rod hemmed while lobbing a good-natured glare at Dale. “We have secured a deal to get the whole school online this summer. By next fall, we’ll have computers in every room, a computer at every desk…”

  The students, faculty, and volunteers bunched together below started to buzz. They looked stunned, at each other and up at Rod, who got the sense that one more exhortation might help the news sink in.

  “We’re going to be the future of education!” he raised his fist.

  It sounded like a teen idol had just taken the stage as a swell of high-pitched voices shook the windows and seemed to raise the catwalk.

  Rod and Dale nodded at one another. Dale then put an arm around Rod and got in on the hyperbole.

  “Get ready to be the envy of the county,” he shouted. “Maybe even the state! Maybe even the nation! We are leading the way, people! Welcome to the cutting edge!”

  Dale’s motivational screed maintained the bedlam a little while longer. He used the arm he had draped around Rod to pull him into a full embrace and the youthful roar reached yet another crescendo.

  “I know the applause is fun,” Rod whispered loudly in Dale’s ear. “But I’m afraid of what you might do next to keep it going.”

  Dale cracked up and as Rod joined him, their laughter inspired one more great howl from the little voices.

  When they quieted down enough for Dale to re-excuse them, and the showroom was at last clear, reality swooped in quickly in the form of Rita holding a box of containers at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Congratulations, guys,” she said. “Now if you don’t mind, there’s still five more of these in the back of my car.”

  “Just when I think you couldn’t possibly give anything more…” Dale said.

  “I’m putting these in the supply area behind the shelves, yes?” Rita started walking toward the old parts department that held the backpacks.

  “Perfect,” Dale confirmed. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t know what they are,” muttered Rod as Rita faded from sight.

  “Art supplies, I assume.”

  “They’re ikebana containers.”

  “What’s ikebana?” Dale asked.

  “It means you need to get a real art teacher in here once and for all.”

  “Speaking of art…” Dale chuckled.

  “I’m not kidding,” Rod deadpanned.

  “I know you’re not, and I agree,” Dale gestured for Rod to follow him down the stairs. “Not that I don’t think Rita is doing a great job.”

  “Ikebana is flower arranging, Dale.”

  “And how many other schools will be doing that this year?” Dale insisted on seeing the bright side as they reached the floor and turned toward the front door.

  “How many schools would want to?”

  “We’ll get an art teacher, Rod. We’ll get whatever we want once the donations start flying in. Thanks to your help…”

  He led Rod out the door and stopped halfway down the cement path to the parking lot. He turned to face Rod with an expectant smile and took a big step toward one side of the walkway. Rod got the impression he was letting him pass.

  “Rita’s car is still a ways out there,” Rod reminded him.

  “You didn’t notice anything here on your way in this morning?” Dale asked, still beaming as he moved closer to a leafy section of landscaping.

  “I took the side door.”

  “Well take a look,” he said, jerking his head toward the bushes.

  Rod noticed a thick wooden post standing about three feet high, driven into the ground beside the walkway.

  “That wasn’t there before?”

  Dale laughed. “I thought you knew this place inside and out.”

  Rod drifted in to get a closer look and saw a plaque bolted to its top. Then he saw that his name was on it. He caught his breath and read the whole inscription aloud.

  “’Dedicated to Rod Pluma, whose hard work and generosity provided the foundation for this campus and the ideas it fosters.’”

  He stared at it a while longer, trying not to get too emotional. Dale seemed to pick up on his wishes and provided some verbal cover.

  “And that was before today’s announcement,” he offered. “We just might put one in every classroom next year. On the wall, of course. We won’t stick any posts in the floor.”

  Rita pushed through the door and looked ready to ask why they weren’t unloading the boxes, but then respected the moment even though she wasn’t sure what it was about. She approached the two of them to figure it out.

  Taking her place by Rod’s side, she read the post.

  “How did I miss this?” she admonished herself and gave him a hug.

  “You’ve got Ikebaba on your mind,” Dale kidded.

  “Ikebana,” Rod corrected him while still hugging his wife.

  “Wow, Rigo,” said Rita over his shoulder. “A memorial. And you’re not even dead.”

  All three of them shared a laugh, and Rod stopped laughing first as he peacefully considered the reference to death. He was comfortable in knowing his time was limited, as long as he left a trail of accomplishments that led to his name.