Ongoing

Missing this evening, like all the others recently, was Goings. In a swift act of discipline, James had been swept from the school community with the dispatch of an executioner's sword. From that point forward, there had been an enormous change in each of the boys for whom Grandma's represented an escape from the sometimes overbearing world of St. James.

His expulsion hit the sixth form like a nor'easter slams into the Vineyard. Each of them had, in his private way, played a game of roulette with the rules of the school. Bottles of whiskey hid beside overstuffed chairs, hoards of pot beneath chairs, and harder things in recesses in the floor and walls. In a place where honor permeated, dishonor was actually the rule.

Goings though had always kept his word. He could be trusted within the cloistered walls, a friend whose kindness bridged the gulf of race that seperated him from the rest of the boys. James had arrived as a small black boy from Dorchester, a far cry from the Cambrdges, Tenaflys, Saddle Rivers, Manhattans, and Hamptons that his classmates called home. He was gifted academically, but moreso on the soccer field, where his quickness and agility made his athletic gifts special and worthy of jealousy from the white boys that truly believed themselves superior to their four darker skinned classmates in every way imaginable.

Black students at St. James were not there because they were part of the entitled few, they were there as part of the wholly Episcopal sense of noblesse oblige that made the less wealthy, the less cultured, the less worldly, less than a complete St. James boy. For many, the fact that James had been fired from school for stealing was the ultimate statement that he did not, could not ever, truly belong.

To the boys in Grandma's though, Goings was something more than less. They couldn't comprehend or believe that the James they knew would have stolen anything from anyone. Kip had seen James nearly dismantle the third form boy caught rifling through Kip's drawers. The lecture had been stern and physical. James' distaste for taking things belonging to someone else was clear.

Each knew that James had played his own game, and had enough money to get by. More than enough. The visits to Grandma's were fueled by supplies James had brought from Dorchester, and sold to the preppy boys for cold cash. Fifty dollars? James was kicked out for stealing fifty dollars? This boy measured his worth in stacks of fifty dollar bills given to him by younger boys all too eager to join the ranks of the experienced. Nothing had been stolen by James. He didn't need to steal. His color, and his connections a mere half hour drive from school though light years away in culture, had rendered money a commodity to James. "Cash for services rendered" was what he called the money in his dresser, even when he had to supply a false receipt for a trust fund that would ensure nobility for his supposed betters. "Cash for services rendered."