Patricia Cornwell - Southern Cross

'Do it, baby!' Sticks yelled, and he started in.

It sounded like a musical war going on as Sticks beat and throbbed and boomed in a rhythm that made the blood wild, and Weed was march-dancing around the room, crashing and flipping up, flashing and spinning.

'Go! Go! Oh yeah!' Sticks was frenzied.

Weed was moonwalking, his bright sound rolling out from the edges, then crashing staccato, then crashing long. He didn't hear the bell ring but he finally noticed the clock on the wall. He packed up the cymbals and made it back to Mrs. Grannis's art room with two minutes to spare. He was the first one there. She was writing on a white board and turned around to see who had come in.

'Did you get a lot done during your free time?' she asked Weed.

'Yes, ma'am.' Weed wouldn't meet her eyes.

'I wish everybody liked the computer as much as you do.' She started writing again. 'You have a favorite software so far?'

'QuarkXPress and Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.'

'Well, you have a real knack for it,' she said as he chose his place at one of the tables and tucked his knapsack under his chair.

'It's no big deal,' Weed mumbled.

'Have you written your story of the power behind your fish?' Mrs. Grannis asked as she continued writing this week's project on the white board in long, looping letters.

'Yea, ma'am,' Weed sullenly answered, opening his notebook.

'I can't wait to hear it,' she continued to encourage him. 'You're the only person in the class to pick a fish.'

'I know,' he said.

The assignment for the past two weeks had been to make a papier-mache figure that was symbolic to the student. Most picked a symbol from mythology or folklore, such as a dragon or tiger or raven or snake. But Weed had constructed a cruel blue fish. Its gaping mouth bared rows of bloody teeth, and Weed had fashioned glittery eyes from small compact mirrors that flashed at anyone walking past.

'I'm sure all of the students can't wait to hear about your fish,' Mrs. Grannis went on as she wrote.

'We doing watercolor next?' Weed asked with interest as he made out what she was writing.

'Yes. A still-life composition that includes reflective objects, texture.' She wrote with flourish. 'And a 2-D object that gives the illusion of a 3-D object.'

'My fish is three-dimensional,' Weed said, 'because it takes up real space.'

'That's right. And what are the words we use?'

'Over, under, through, behind and around,' he recited.

Weed could remember words in art, and they didn't have to be in bold.

'Freestanding, or surrounded by negative areas,' he added.

Mrs. Grannis put down her Magic Marker. 'And how do you think you'd make your fish three-dimensional if it was actually two-dimensional?'

'Light and shadow,' he said easily.

'Chiaroscuro.'

'Except I can never pronunciate it,' Weed told her. 'It's what you do to make a drawing of a wineglass look three-dimensional instead of flat. Same for a lightbulb or an ice chicle or even clouds in the air.'

Weed looked around at boxes of pastels and the 140-weight Grumbacher paper he only got to use on final sketches. There were shelves of Elmer's glue and colored pencils and carts of the Crayola tempera paints he had used on his fish. On a counter in the back of the room the computer terminals for graphics reminded him of the secret thing he had done.

By now, students were wandering into the room and scooting out chairs. They greeted Weed in their typically affectionate, smack-him-around fashion.

'Hey, Weed Garden, what's going on?'

'How come you're always in here before we are? Doing your homework early?'

'You finished the Mono Lisa yet?'

'You got paint on your jeans.'

'Whoa, doesn't look like paint to me. You been bleeding, man?'

'Uh uh,' Weed lied.

Mrs. Grannis's eyes got darker as she looked at him and his jeans. He could see a question mark in a little balloon over her head. Weed had nothing to say.

'Everybody ready to read what you wrote about your symbols?' She returned her attention to the class.

'Groan.'

'I can't figure out what mine means.'

'No one said we had to write.'

'Let's take a minute to talk about symbols.' Mrs. Grannis hushed them. 'What is a symbol? Matthew?'

'Something that means something else.'

'And where do we find them? Joan?'

'In pyramids. And jewelry.'

'Annie?'

'In the catacombs, so the Christians could express themselves in secret.'

'Weed? Where else might we find symbols?' Mrs. Grannis's face got soft with concern as she looked at him.

'Doodles and what I play in the band,' Weed said.

Brazil was at his desk, drawing designs on a legal pad, trying to come up with a newsletter logotype as the chairman of the Governor's Blue Ribbon Crime Commission drove him crazy over the speakerphone.

'I think it is a dread-filled miscalculation,' Lelia Ehrhart's emphatic, haughty voice sounded.

Brazil turned down the volume.

'To even suggest much less implicate we might have a gang here is to cause one,' she proclaimed.

The logo was for the website and needed to attract attention, and since it was agreed that CPR was out the window, Brazil had to start over. He hated newsletters, but Hammer had been insistent.

'And not every children are little mobsters. Many of them are misguided and misled astray, mistreated and abusive and need our help, Officer Brazil. To dwell on those few bad, especially those to band together in little groups you call gangs, is to give the public a very wrong, untrue and false view. My committee is completely all about prevention and doing that first before the other. That's what the governor has mandated to tell us to do it.'

'The last governor,' Brazil politely reminded her.

'What is relevant about that and how does it matter?" retorted Ehrhart, who had been raised in Vienna and Yugoslavia and did not speak English well.

'It matters because Governor Feuer hasn't gotten around to appointing a new commission yet. I don't think it's a good idea for us to be making assumptions about his policies and mandates, Mrs. Ehrhart.'

There was a high-pitched, outraged pause.

'Are you implicating that he might dissolute my commission and undo it? That he and I may be a problem in my relationship?' said Ehrhart.

Brazil knew that a good nameplate should attract attention without overdoing it. Perhaps because they were on the subject of gangs, Brazil suddenly scrawled Richmond P.D. graffiti-style.

'Wow,' he muttered in excitement.

'Wow which?' Ehrhart's angry voice filled the office.

'I'm sorry.' Brazil came to. 'What were you saying?'

'I demand you tell me when you were saying wow about just there,' she demanded.

Chief Hammer filled the doorway. Brazil rolled his eyes and put his finger to his lips.

'I think you were became impertinent!' Ehrhart went on.

'No, ma'am. I wasn't saying wow about anything that has to do with you,' Brazil answered honestly.

'Oh really? And did that supposedly mean what?'

Tm working on something here, and was saying wow about it.'

'Oh, I see. Here I am taken my costly time to call your phone, and you're working on something else in addition to our conversing while I'm talking to you?'

'Yes, ma'am. But I'm listening.' Brazil tried not to laugh as he looked at Hammer, who was never amused by Ehrhart.

West walked in.

'What…?' she started to say.

Hammer motioned for her to be silent. Brazil clamped his pencil between his teeth and crossed his eyes.

'The upshoot, Officer Brazil, is I simple will not allow to permit you a commission quote for whatever your next column might be about in terms of so-called gangs. You're banging out by a thread on a limb all alone on this one!'

Brazil snatched the pencil out of his mouth and wrote down the quote. West scowled. Hammer shook her head in disgust.