Jazz Funeral

suddenly had the feeling he was very good at his job. He was somebody who could probably put the kids at ease and convince them he was on their side.
    “I was hoping you could tell me a little about Melody Brocato.”
    “Where she is, you mean. Lord, I wish I knew.”
    “Any ideas?”
    He spread his arms. “Not really. All her little buddies are present and accounted for. I’ve already asked them if they know, of course.”
    He recited the usual list—Blair, the two musicians, and Flip.
    “I just talked to Melody’s homeroom teacher. I gather Melody’s a difficult kid.”
    “Well, I guess it’s all in the perspective.”
    Skip waited, sensed a favorite theory about to pop out.
    “If Ms. Sougeron’s trying to ram English and history down their throats, it’s only natural some of ‘em are going to choke. The ones who do are probably the ones she calls ‘difficult.’ That’s the reason I quit the classroom—I hate trying to make ‘em do something they don’t want to do. I just like to talk to ‘em—listen to ‘em. That way I haven’t got a program, and that means they can’t sabotage my program if they don’t happen to feel like conformin’. Whole different perspective. You see?”
    “So you figure you see a different side of Melody than Ms. Sougeron did.”
    “Oh, indubitably.” Skip had noticed the studied way he dropped his final g’s; now she was starting to think it must really cramp his style not to be able to smoke a pipe while pontificating. “I see an extremely creative young woman there.”
    “Ms. Sougeron said she writes good poetry.”
    “She’s famous for it. The teachers pass it around it’s so good.” He rocked back and forth, as if he did have a pipe. “What’d Ms. Sougeron say? That Melody’s sullen? Uncooperative? Something like that?”
    “Matter of fact, yes.”
    “Well, what you got here is an exceptionally bright young lady. Bright but not that crazy about school. Her teacher says sullen, but I’d say restless comes closer to it. If somebody put a gun to my head and made me pick the most gifted student in the school, she’d be in the running. Might be the one. ‘Course it’s hard to know till twenty years later when they’ve done it or failed to do it, whatever it is, but I’d say Melody’s got a fightin’ chance to be the one that does it. Most people’d probably pick one of the boys—a jock with all A’s, somethin’ like that, but they haven’t been around as long as I have. Kids like that either get tired of being perfect—in which case they become drunks—or they keep on doin’ it. Turn into pediatricians who work for the homeless on weekends, that kind of thing.”
    Skip was fascinated in spite of herself. “What’s wrong with that?”
    “Why, nothin’, of course, but they’re still just bein’ good little boys. Don’t ever develop any real sense of self, who they are. And they don’t really …” He paused here. “… achieve, if you will. In a grand sense. Pediatricians might help a lot of local kids, even save a lot of lives, but a kid like Melody’d be more likely to find the cure for cancer.”
    “She’s that smart.”
    “Not smart. This idn’t about smart. ‘Course smart helps, smart’s a big part of it, but face it. Detective, most all the kids here are smart. Country Day hasn’t got any real dummies. But we got some real conformists, and Melody’s not one of ‘em. She’s a romantic; a dreamer. No tellin’ what’s goin’ on under all those curls when she’s starin’ out the window, cheatin’ Ms. Sougeron out of one more perfect little English student. Twenty years from now Melody could be the graduate Ms. Sougeron invites to come back and talk to the new kids, inspire ‘em to go on to greatness like she did.”
    “She’s a very good singer, I hear.”
    He nodded. “Yep. That might be how she makes it. Voice idn’t that much, but somethin’ about her—she’s got …” He thought a minute. “Passion. That’s what it is. And man, can she sing the blues. Like she knows what she’s talkin’ about.”
    Skip thought about it. If she’d had a voice, she could have sung the blues in high school too—what teenager couldn’t? She said, “As I remember, being sixteen is no root beer float.”
    He leaned forward. “Look, the stuff that goes on in these kids’ homes’d curl your hair—best families in town and all that, but probably no different from what you’d get at Fortier or Warren Easton.