Monday morning, the first bell rang. Kelsey Lou migrated like a salmon through the hallway past her locker and into Ms. Maines’ American History class.

“Hey,” Samuel Bybee whispered loudly at Kelsey Lou, soon as she sat down with her books. “Can I see your homework?

Kelsey Lou rolled her eyes and said nothing.

“I’ll pay you,” he added. “Five bucks.”

Ten would’ve made the request tempting – enough for three lunches in the cafeteria. Kelsey Lou shook her head no, though. Samuel hit her gently in the arm with a big gesture that implied she was being unfair; unreasonable, perhaps.

“You coulda done your own homework, ” Kelsey Lou said. “Your granma in the hospital or som’n?”

“I was busy gettin’ laid,” he said with a full-teeth grin of pride and accomplishment that exposed the chew he wasn’t s’posed to have in his mouth during class. 

“Hope it was worth whatever grade you’re gonna get for the work you ain’t put in, then,” Kelsey Lou shrugged.

“Ten bucks,” he begged.

Ten woulda been tempting earlier, but now that Samuel had annoyed Kelsey Lou this early in the morning, she wasn’t havin’ it. She’d have to spend those meals tasting the energy of Samuel’s smile at this exact moment for the next three days if she’d said yes. Whatever she’d buy at the cafeteria would be seasoned with his arrogance, entitlement, and the unwelcome imaginings of his recent procreative efforts.

Who would settle for a boy like him anyway, Kelsey Lou wondered? She hoped the girl had gotten herself on birth control. Lord knows Old Homestead County didn’t need another little Sam Bybee Junior runnin’ ’round,  askin’ every decently hardworkin’ kid in the county for a copy of their homework.

The answer to her question was obvious: A girl who didn’t have a job at Mr. Hogg’s impound, or any hope for a future – that’s who settles for makin’ a wet mess in the torn backseat of a 1996 Monte Carlo with a boy like Sam Bybee. Kelsey Lou knew that the work Mr. Hogg gave her meant more than a paycheck. If every girl in school could afford to create their own futures, most of ’em wouldn’t even give the fool-boys one whole glance.

It seemed to Kelsey Lou that the boys liked it this way, and somehow, their parents must like it this way, too. It’s not like there wasn’t plenty of money in the region, with local mega retailers and food production companies employing a majority of folks at too-low of wages to make ends meet. Meanwhile, their CEOs and the CEOs’ pastors enjoyed private jets and mansions without payin’ as much total in taxes every year as Kelsey Lou herself paid on them junk cars. Long as everyone stayed poor, no one could leave. If no one could leave, the companies would have workers. If enough girls get pregnant before they have a say, the companies would have workers for another generation, and their kids wouldn’t never know the means to leave neither.

Since no one could leave, the girls had to make it work with whatever boy they settled for, ’cause there wasn’t none others to pick from. Without better to pick from, boys never had to grow up to be real adult men-folk participatin’ in relationships like equals. Boys could stay perpetually 12 years old all their lives and nag someone like Kelsey Lou, until one day she’d finally just give up all hope for ever finding what she deserves or wants from a real partner, and say “okay” to marryin’ one of ’em, even if he had to propose three times to break her down to a “yes.”

Persistence was key. Boys like Samuel Bybee had persistence, if little else.

Kelsey Lou felt the weight of this truth, sittin’ beside Mr. Bybee smackin’ dip under his lip in American History. Even though he was asking for her homework, not sex, it felt the same. Fact was, she’d said no, and he wouldn’t take the answer she gave him.

“Twelve dollars?” Bybee whispered quickly, begging harder as the teacher stood up to begin class.

Is this how we got here? Kelsey Lou asked herself. My little sister just lost her whole future because every adult in this county teaches boys like Sam Bybee the rules don’t apply to them, and they can just take whatever they want, or maybe pay ten bucks to get off the hook for their negligence. Grown adults who know better actually let these boys keep believing that shit? But they don’t let me grow up to believe that shit. I’ve gotta do my own homework. Karly Lynn’s gotta do her own homework. For what? So she can spend the rest of her life barefoot in the kitchen and pregnant for some emotionally stunted man-child who never did his own homework? Who still copies her answers every day, lettin’ her tend all the cleanin’ and cookin’ and givin’ him everything he wants — because she was smart enough and powerful enough to learn to do all that herself without copyin’ answers? But the parents we’re supposed to trust to care for us, they raise us up to believe men-folk are the more powerful ones than us? Even though they can’t even cook their own dinners right, on account of never learnin’ fractions for all the math homework they copied off a girl in school?

She argued with herself over whether she was stretching this whole feeling out of proportion. He’d just asked to copy her homework, not confine her to the kitchen making his babies for the rest of her life. Right? Right? So why did this feel like the same thing? Why couldn’t she just stuff her ill, angry feelings about boys, and be like a normal girl? Why couldn’t she just let him copy her homework and take the twelve bucks?

“Good morning, class,” Ms. Maines greeted from the front of the room. “Today we’re gonna talk about the Emancipation Proclamation. Who knows what it is?”

A couple girls raised their hands, and one answered. Ms. Maines built on their answers, providing context and illumination. Kelsey Lou was only half-paying attention, half-distracted by her anger. Parents are supposed to act like grown-ups, teach their children not to abuse or exploit others. Why did so few parents in Homestead County believe was an important lesson to impart?

“… exactly!” Ms. Maines said to Veronica, as Kelsey Lou tuned back into the discussion. “So the 13th Amendment was touted as an end to slavery, but it really wasn’t ending slavery at all. In order to appease the Confederacy and get them to surrender to rejoin the Union as one nation, Lincoln made the compromise that he would allow them to continue slavery as long as the enslaved people had been convicted of a crime – this way, most of the enslavement was brought indoors where the white moderates and white liberals wouldn’t have their consciences bothered by seeing the slavery happening on their way to work anymore.”

“What?” Kelsey Lou didn’t mean to say out loud. She blinked, struggling to process the information she’d just heard. Lincoln didn’t end slavery? Last year’s textbook had said he did. 5th grade textbook said he did. The storybook in the library said he did. But he never ended slavery?

“Which part would you like clarification about, Ms. Farmer?” Ms. Maines asked kindly.

“Uh,” Kelsey Lou fumbled to find words. “If Lincoln didn’t end slavery in 1865, then when did slavery end?”

“That’s a good question,” Ms. Maines sighed. “The 13th Amendment’s ‘exception clause’ is still in effect today. Right this minute, there are workers making goods that you and I purchase from stores every day. If they get paid anything for their labor, the wage is about as much per hour as they’re charged per minute to call their families.”

“Hey,” Sam Bybee laughed, “you do the crime, you do the time!” Some of the other students agreed audibly.

“Let me ask you this, Mr. Bybee,” the teacher said, inhaling deeply as she readied for a learning lesson . “Your uncle went to prison in 1997 or so, didn’t he?”

Bybee’s ears pricked back like a rabbit. “You leave him out of this,” he snapped.

“Oh, but Mr. Bybee,” Ms. Maines said gently, “in my classroom: you raise your voice, you make a choice. You have a strong enough opinion about folks in prison to be makin’ comments about it for everyone to hear. So let’s discuss your opinion. I’m inviting you to share with the class why you hold this belief that you obviously regard very earnestly.”

The students all shifted in their seats. Sam Bybee said nothing.

“Now, as I recall, your uncle went to prison for life around 1997, that right?” Ms. Maines asked. Sam nodded. “Because then-President Bill Clinton had just made a new law called ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out.‘ Who here knows about that law?”

Everyone in the class raised their hands except the three offspring of corporate executives who’d moved to the Ozarks for work in the past few years.

“Show of hands: Who here has a family member or knows someone in prison today because of that law?” Ms. Maines asked.

Two of the hands went down in a room of 28 students.

“Mr. Bybee, I’m not sure what your family has told you about your uncle, but the story as I understand it is that he was just tryin’ to provide food and shelter for his family. His fourth child had just been born, and the ol’ factory plant closed down the same month, cost him his job. He took on work with Ol’ Man Downey who’d always made his livin’ for four generations off a moonshine still, and got to growin’ and sellin’ a particular plant folks like to smoke. Without better job prospects, he had no way out of that business, even after he’d got caught. Third time he was charged with sellin’ weed, he went to prison for life.”

“He wasn’t even sellin’ no more by then! Just workin’ at the chicken plant is all!” Bybee yelled. “He just had enough on him for himself, but the cops said he was gonna sell it.”

Ms. Maines looked on Bybee not with pity, but with compassion, and added, “And now today, these corporate folks got storefronts, sellin’ that same plant right in broad daylight, growin’ it in huge fields and grow-houses, advertisin’ it with coupons and billboards – while Uncle Bybee spends the rest of his life in prison for the exact same thing. These wealthy store owners are payin’ for their kids’ college off it, while Uncle Bybee’s kids are, uh, well I heard they been fallin’ into some troubles themselves lately, just tryin’ to make ends meet any way they can.”

“That’s what we get for votin’ a Democrat into office,” Bybee snarked. “Fucking Clinton.”

“Yeah, he just let the poultry industry give the whole eastern half the state cancer when he was governor!” Anthony added indignantly. “My ma’s still mad she had to leave her home ’cause there ain’t no drinkin’ water there no more but he still got elected President after he tried to kill so many of us here in Arkansas.”

“You may be interested to know,” Ms. Maines redirected with a nod acknowledging both students’ contributions, “the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ began with Republican President Ronald Regan, Mr. Bybee. So did the first gun control laws. But you are correct that under Clinton’s administration, the Corrections Corporation of America’s stock prices skyrocketed as he built up the private, for-profit prison industrial complex with legislation that benefitted them, and has taken so many people into its clutches without any regard for whether they are a genuine threat to society or not. The stock market charts tell a clear story on this. CCA’s stock tanked when Bush was elected. Then, investors turned their portfolio interests toward military weapons manufacturing. But those for-profit prisons are still thriving today, because the states have signed contracts agreeing to put a certain number of our human bodies into those prisons every day, whether anyone is committing crimes or not. Some of you will likely be in these prisons within the next decade.

“Think about it. They’re private prisons run by for-profit companies, but the government legislation is what keeps them running. The government which is supposed to protect and serve us, not enslave people for free labor. But because of the 13th Amendment, and because we never fully abolished slavery, that’s what the whole system of government and corporate interests working together are doing,” she explained.

“This ain’t a pro-Democrat or pro-Republican kind of issue, Mr. Bybee. We are learning here about a system that upholds slavery, which never ended; and how that system is kept alive by both political parties; and how good folks tend to get caught in that system, helpless to escape,” Ms. Maines explained.

“You could say your uncle ‘did the crime’ and should ‘do the time.’ But do you think that’s really fair to him? To his family? To his community? You think all of us here in Old Homestead County are better off with him laboring for free in prison the rest of his life than having him living in his home, raising his own kids, as a well-paid yet affordable electrician who helps us all keep our houses safe from burning down?”

Sam Bybee shook his head no.

“Then how about we apply that same consideration to Black and brown folks, who make up the majority of imprisoned people, even though they’re a minority of the U.S. population. They’re often in prison for crimes they didn’t even commit, or for minor non-violent offenses where they’ve been issued excessive sentences, because of this systemic effort to keep the prisons filled with unpaid workers ever since the 13th Amendment became the only way for the ultra-wealthy to legally enslave humans anymore. You think you might could wrap your head around caring about their lives as much as your uncle’s? As much as your own?”

The silence moved through the classroom in waves, each student feeling touched by spirits, ancestors, teachers who’d taken root in their hearts already. Most students were breathing like fish in freshly changed water, their gills hustling to adjust to this new, clearer, scary reality. The room was not filled with anxious tension, but with the pressure of comprehension. 23 students in the room had a family member in prison for life from Three Strikes and You’re Out.

23 students had a relative making someone’s cheap clothes or earbuds for $0.13 an hour, or painting the walls of new corporate buildings for $0.20 an hour under supervised excursions to job sites in freshly remodeled convention centers, where someday a non-profit might hold a gala to raise funds for helping inmates access education and skills training, so they could get promoted to being a plumber in prison making only $0.40 an hour. As a higher-paid plumber, an inmate could work 40 hours in a week to afford a 45-minute phone call to his kids on the weekend, and nothing else.

23 students in the mostly-white Old Homestead County region of the Ozark Mountains knew a bubbling anger in the marrow of their bones they’d never put words to before, and still weren’t sure they could. Ms. Maines did not disrupt them from feeling, deeply and attentively, the painful ache they’d so often been told to “just forget about.”

Of the 23 with kin in prison, Kelsey Lou looked around and noticed 19 of ’em looked white. She knew there was some mixing that happened here and there for just about everyone, but she reckoned “white” was less something a person really is, and more of a question ’bout what the cops or judge see when they decide whether you’re going to prison for life or not. If 19 students in this class were white and had kin in prison, but Black and brown folks took up as much or more space in prison as white folks, even though there were only four Black or brown students in the whole classroom… Kelsey Lou struggled to imagine the mathematics of what this must mean. How many kin of those four students must be in prison to make the numbers as big as they are? Obviously more than just one uncle.

“Ms. Maines,” Charlie spoke up without raising his hand to ask, “Is that why my pops never calls? It’s not ’cause he don’t love us? He just gots to choose ‘tween callin’ us and spendin’ his money gettin’ a snack?”

“I can’t say I know the answer to that, Mr. Daniels,” she replied. “I don’t know the details of every individual’s situation. What I do know is about the system they’re stuck in. It’s the system we’re all stuck in. Some of us, stuck in prisons. Some of us, stuck in classrooms. Some of us, stuck in workplaces. Some of us, able to see what’s on the other side of the walls. Some of us, cain’t see half a foot in front of our noses to tell which way forward leads to an exit. What I do know is: if we don’t care for one another and help one another here and now, including caring about folks in prisons and how they got there, how we got this way we are right now, ain’t none of us never gonna have freedom.”

“But we already live in a free country,” young Joseph H. Walten argued aloud with firm confidence. He hadn’t quite figured out how to fit in since relocating last year, when his father took on a new role in the family business at a large retail corporation which employed most of the other students’ parents for meager starvation wages. What he had noticed, though, was that having a different yet strong opinion, and being very committed to it, seemed to work fine for most of the boys. “I’m proud to live in a free country,” he added, showing his commitment to not hearing any of the real, lived experiences that had just been told to him.

Half an hour earlier, nearly all the boys in the class would have agreed with Mr. Walten, and more than half the girls, too. They had U.S. flags, black and blue flags, and ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ flags in stickers all over their binders to show for that agreement. But now, sitting with the truth they’d already known since they was kids, ’bout how their own fathers, uncles, cousins, and older brothers all fit into this big lie they’d been sold by every history book they hadn’t bothered to read, they weren’t sure they could say what it means to call this a “free country” no more.

Kelsey Lou took out her homework and put a note on top. “$15 cash or 3 hours helpin me garden this weekend.”

She passed it to Sam Bybee, who nodded in agreement and then looked back at Kelsey Lou with as much confusion as he’d already felt from Ms. Maine’s history lecture.

Kelsey Lou wrote on a scrap of paper: The point is to learn yourself smart. Seems you’re doin that today. I’ll help this time, but you gotta keep learnin’ yourself goin forward.

Then she added: I charge less for tutoring than for cheating.

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