Drowning of Stephan Jones (24 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” whined Andy. “Nobody here knows what you’re talking about! So, fuck off, fag!”

“Now ... now ...” Frank responded by telegraphing a conspiratorial smile directly to Andy. “You know how I hate it when you go getting yourself all worked up. By the way, what you testified to about Stephan pestering you for sex ... boy, could I have ever backed that up.”

“No!” shrieked Andy. “You know it’s not true—it never happened! It’s only what Mr. Burwick told me to say!”

“Hey, relax,” Frank ordered in his most tranquilizing tone. “I could never be mad at you, Andy. Stephan himself told me that after you guys had sex, you lost interest in him. That you only wanted me.”

“What is this, some kind of joke?” Andy squealed. He giggled nervously as though there were some scheme afoot that he’d be catching on to at any second now. “If this is your idea of a joke, then it’s not funny ’cause nobody’s laughing, right
gang?” He checked out the faces of his father, mother, Ironman, Spider, and even Donna and Lisa. But instead of receiving what he had hoped for—their encouraging go-get-him-tiger looks—all Andy received for his query was a sea of uncertain faces bobbing around in an ocean of bewilderment.

Suddenly Lawrence Harris’s cheeks puffed visibly pink as he stuck his hands on his hips and his chin defiantly upward and out. “Now you just wait one damn minute, Frank who-ever-you-are Montgomery!” A camera started snapping
whizz-click, whizz-click.
“If you, for one minute, think you’re going to stand there and soil the reputation of a fine young man like my son here, then you’re going to have another thing a-coming!”

“Oh, no, sir,” an innocent-looking Frank protested, looking directly at the elder Harris. “You all still don’t understand, do you? I’m not here to hurt your handsome son. I’m only here to tell him—to show him and to show you all that he’s safe, safe now and forever because he must never for a moment fear exposure from me. Andy, watch this!” Frank showed off the familiar juvenile scrawl with the oversized A. H. in the corner on the envelope that was postmarked “Rachetville” and addressed to Frank Montgomery.

As an obviously confused Mrs. Harris stared for a time at the handwriting she knew so well, she at last turned to Andy and tried to form the question she was almost too frightened to ask. “Well, tell me, son, why ... why would you write to
him
?”

“It’s a trick,” screamed Andy. “Can’t you see?! Can’t you all tell?”

Frank smiled his most engaging smile. “Hey! Hey! No sweat, like I promised you: Nobody will ever see these letters! Watch this!” Then bending down on one knee before Andy’s polished tassled loafers, Frank constructed a pile of the letters
before dousing them with lighter fluid and tossing on a burning match. As the pile ignited, there was a chorus of audible gasps from the onlookers. “There! There!” said Frank, staring with immense satisfaction at the conflagration at their feet. “Now you see them,” he said, showing for the first time his perfect set of strong white teeth, “and now you don’t! And so you, Andy, are safe because the proof of your affair with Stephan Jones is no more.”

“You stop all your lying!” shrieked Andy, his voice rising to an octave that nobody would ever mistake as masculine. “You hear me? You better stop those lies right now!” The acknowledged leader of the Rachetville Five sought his father’s and mother’s eyes for understanding and guidance, but the only thing he received was the same racking confusion that was, even now, visibly overwhelming them.

With the fluid motion of an athlete, Frank Montgomery rose from his bended-knee position to stand straight and proud in front of the stunned gathering, which seemed to be growing by the moment due to fresh infusions of curiosity, mostly from members of the press.

Frank stomped down what remained of the burning ashes. “Well, you can rest easy now, gorgeous guy,” he advised Andy before telegraphing him a sly wink and a blown, yet seductive, kiss. “Because what evidence there was has been destroyed.”

Frank turned smartly on his heel and began to walk away, but not before Andy began racing after him, arms outstretched, pleading, “Boy, you’d better come back here and tell the truth, you hear? ’Cause what you’re doing isn’t fair! Please, Frank, please ’cause it’s NOT fair!” squawked Andy Harris. “Now, you know, you know, it isn’t fair!”

But the only response Andy heard was the chorus of
whizz -click, whizz -click, whizz-click
from the small army of Nikons and the soft hum of the video cameras.

Also by Bette Greene

- Summer of My German Soldier

- Morning Is a Long Time Coming

- Philip Hall Likes Me. I Reckon Maybe.

- Get On Out of Here, Philip Hall

- I’ve Already Forgotten Your Name, Philip Hall!

A Biography of Bette Greene

B
ETTE
G
REENE
was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on June 28, 1934, and grew up across the Harahan Bridge in Arkansas cotton country, thirty-five miles west of Memphis. Bette’s first twelve years were spent in Parkin, Arkansas, a town of 1,100, with two streets and no stop signs, in the very buckle of the Bible Belt.

With the birth of the family’s second child, Marsha, the care and protection of four-year-old Bette became the responsibility of the family servant and housekeeper, Ruth, with whom Bette came to share a child-mother bond. Ruth, a long-suffering, spiritual black woman, engaged Bette’s precocious curiosity with stories and songs. In Ruth’s arms, Bette knew unconditional love, but also felt the fear and anguish instilled by the nightriders of the Ku Klux Klan.

Bette’s elementary school classroom was a place of despair: She and her classmates, many of whom were the shoeless and hungry children of sharecroppers, learned straight from the chalkboard with no access to books. When the last bell of the day rang, Bette knew many of her fellow students would join the black children in the cotton fields, working until dark.

At age seven, Bette, tired of the ten-mile walk to the nearest library from her small town, was allowed to travel to Memphis to visit her grandmother. After riding the train alone from Parkin to Memphis, Bette was met by her grandmother, Tilly, and a chauffeur, and driven to the Peabody Hotel. Tilly, the family matriarch, took Bette into her world. Their love and trust for each other grew over many lunches and conversation punctuated with Yiddish phrases.

On one such occasion, Tilly gave Bette a four-inch-thick dictionary. The gift fed Bette’s voracious hunger for knowledge, and she promised Tilly that she would learn every word. That same year, at Tilly’s request, Bette wrote a letter to Pope Pius XII begging for his help in locating Tilly’s brothers, missing in battle in Lithuania during World War II.

At age eight, Bette submitted an account of a Parkin barn fire, complete with burning cows, to the Memphis
Commercial Appeal
. The story was published and Bette received her first byline—and twenty-four cents—making her the youngest professional journalist of her time. Bette’s experience growing up in the only Jewish family in a suffocatingly small Southern town would later inform her award-winning novel
Summer of My German Soldier
.

After entering the University of Alabama in 1952, Bette became a consistent betting winner, putting her money on Coach Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide. But when the English faculty ruled that Bette could not be admitted into the creative writing program until she completed courses of English grammar, Bette said, “Bye, bye ’bama!”

In 1953, Bette began school at Memphis State University. She became feature editor for the
Tiger Rag
while also writing for United Press International and publishing stories worldwide.

Then, in 1954, Bette took her tuition money and fled to Paris, France, enrolling at Alliance Française and spending a year studying French, life, and love.

In 1955, Bette returned to Memphis and began work as a freelance writer for the
Commercial Appeal
. At the same time, she turned down an invitation from Colonel Tom Parker to write about a new talent he was managing, an unknown singer named Elvis Presley, as it was known that the Colonel didn’t pay. Bette soon left for New York City and entered Columbia University to study writing. She quickly became Columbia’s “rising literary star” and was offered a significant publishing deal for her first novel,
Counter Point, My Love
. Unhappy with the novel, rather than accept the deal she tore up the manuscript and watched it burn in her fireplace.

Bette married Dr. Donald Sumner Greene, a neurologist from Boston, in 1959. Leaving her Southern roots, she moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, where her two children, Carla and Jordan, were born. In the security of their family home, Bette wrote
Summer of My German
Soldier while studying creative writing at Harvard University.

In 1973, after thirty-seven rejections,
Summer of My German Soldier
was published. The novel garnered numerous awards and honors, including the first Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers, and the Massachusetts Children’s Book Award. The novel was also named a
New York Times
Outstanding Book and an ALA Notable Book, and was a National Book Award finalist.
Summer of My German Soldier
was translated into ten languages.

The television film
Summer of My German Soldier
would go on to win the Humanitas Prize for human dignity, meaning, and freedom in 1978, and that same year, Esther Rolle won an Emmy for her performance as Ruth. The screenplay was written and adapted by Bette Greene and Jane-Howard Hammerstein.

In 1974, Bette published her second novel,
Philip Hall Likes Me. I Reckon Maybe
. It was named an ALA Notable Book and a
New York Times
Outstanding Book and collected numerous additional honors including the Newbery Honor, the
Kirkus
Choice Award, and the Child Study Association of America’s Children’s Book Award.

Inspired by her readers, who demanded more adventures of Beth Lambert and Phillip Hall, Bette Greene wrote two more books in the Phillip Hall trilogy:
Get On Out of Here, Philip Hall
and
I’ve Already Forgotten Your Name, Philip Hall!

In 1978, Bette published her sequel to
Summer of My German Soldier, Morning Is a Long Time Coming
. In 1983, Bette was awarded the keys to the City of Memphis. That same year she published
Them That Glitter and Them That Don’t
, a novel inspired by the real lives of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, which received the Parents’ Choice Award.

In 1991, Bette published
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
. This book, based on the true story of the death of Charles O. Howard in Bangor, Maine, was banned, censored, and challenged by school boards, libraries, and parents across the country. To this day, the Eckerd Wilderness Camps use
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
as bibliotherapy, giving copies to campers who have been victims of abuse.

By 2010, Bette Greene’s readers had taken it upon themselves to create a Facebook page for her, as well as a page for
Summer of My German Soldier
, which includes performance videos about the love between Patty and Anton and even rap songs about Hitler.

In 2011, three years after the death of Dr. Donald Greene, her husband of fifty years, Bette discovered a manuscript for a book series long-forgotten in her computer titled
Verbal Karate
. She trademarked the title and earmarked a percentage of the book’s income for the Phoebe Prince Anti-Bullying Foundation, and returned to her island home and writing sanctuary to begin the final edits of
Verbal Karate
.

As a twenty-first century master author with four decades of fans worldwide, Bette Greene uses electronic media platforms and social networks to reach out and embrace her readers.

Bette Greene and her mother, Sadie (far left), organizer of the townspeople of Parkin, Arkansas, answering the nationwide call for scrap metal destined to become ammo for the war effort in 1942.