After work, and on the evening of the election, Quinn and Cami were sitting glued to the television. They were anticipating a close election. An election that would rule in favor of their preferred candidate, Reese Collins. All the polls were leaning toward their candidate and the candidate’s party in all categories.
Early evening fears turned into late nightmares. The election did not go their way. His old acquaintance had won the election. For that matter, it looked like the races went all for Hawthorne’s party.
Cami, feeling defeated and knowing what the turnout meant, said, “I've had enough, I am off to bed.” In her room, she penned a quick poem:
In quiet towns, where shadows creep,
A weary nation, sighs and weeps,
For choices made, in lines so long,
A leader speaks, but trust is gone.
The banners wave, the voices cheer,
Yet whispered doubts, cling oh so near.
Promises cast, like stones in streams,
But rivers of hope, have turned to dreams.
So though defeat, may mark the day,
Resilience always finds a way.
For even when, the skies seem grey,
The spirit of a nation, can light the way.
Meanwhile, Quinn wanted to check his email and then go to bed, so he decided to go into his home office.
On the way to that room, he stopped in the kitchen for a beer from a local brewery, Rogue Warrior Beer Company. He pulled out two, a Rogue Warrior Porter and a Bandit, which was a smooth Brown, his favorite. He tossed down the Porter on his walk into his office. Finishing the Porter as he opened his laptop, he tossed the bottle in the recycle bin and opened the Brown. His intention for the Bandit was to sip it while checking his email.
Not seeing anything in his email, he opened his social media accounts, and there were posts from his high school group celebrating the fact that one of their own had just been voted President-Elect.
This infuriated him as he knew the character of Victor Hawthorne. Quinn wondered if Hawthorne would implement his radical, homophobic, and racist ideas and how he might rule with prejudice, as he did at school.
So, he wrote a response to the post:
“I can’t believe that you all are celebrating this as a victory. Remember how he treated you, how he treated students from the farming community, especially the migrant worker kids?
“Remember how he put that kid in the hospital for coming out as gay? If that happened today, that would be considered a hate crime.
“The only way I think he could have won is if those voting machines had been tampered with. I wonder if there could be an investigation - I so wish I could find something, some type of proof.
“Oh well, congratulations, I guess, is in order. We cannot fight it, we cannot resist. The next year will prove to be interesting if things go the way I think they will, and you all are celebrating now.”
He shut his computer down, drank the rest of his brown, and watched a little more of the results. Frustrated and with a good buzz, and knowing there was nothing more to do, he went off to bed.
The drive into work was solemn and uneventful. The day just started cool and dreary, with a slight chance of precipitation. Although it had not rained, there was a lot of mist in the air, which made the drive feel even more sad. Thinking of the election, and that the weather put him in a solemn mood, he thought, the outcome was what it was, and life goes on.
He laughed with Cami earlier that morning, saying, “We still have bills to pay, so off to work we go today.” They both departed for work.
He started in the administration office, where he would pick up any paper tickets for work and any correspondence from the university. But first, there is always the need to fill the thermos with coffee. Today, as he entered the break room, he noticed that the pot was almost empty. He poured what was left into his cup, drank it in one sip, and then started a new pot.
Really, people, how hard is it to fill this thing if you take the last of the current pot? He thought to himself. After a few minutes, he poured half of the pot into his thermos and headed to the admin office.
He reached the mail station, checked his inbox, and picked up a few tickets to work on when he went back to his desk. Within the stack was a note from Cheryl, the Dean of the Technology Department, expressing the desire to meet with him sometime today to discuss an issue. He would deal with that later as he needed to jump on these three tickets first in hopes of getting a quick head start on the day.
It would be nice if the professors from archaeology would just use the online ticket system I created and maintained, he thought. That would mean that I would not have to go to the admin office every morning to pick up the paper requests from the older profs.
In his office, he said a quick hello to his fellow IT rep, Kenneth, his old Army buddy. No one called him by his name, Kenneth, anymore, since his primary job in the Army was to maintain the tank fleet, and him being an ex-football player, the name Tank just stuck. Although they did go to high school together, Quinn and Tank hit it off in the Army and were bunkmates at one time. Tank, being an ex-football lineman, took the bottom bunk, and Quinn, being a lightweight computer nerd, took the top.
Quinn wanted to just keep his head down and complete these tickets. However, in checking his email at his desk, he saw one from Cheryl asking to meet in five minutes. Which means that he needed to head back to the administration building, where her office was located.
As he walked into Jenny’s office, Cheryl’s secretary, he noted that in Cheryl’s office were two other people whom he had met when he was hired on. I think those people are from H.R., he thought to himself.
Jenny greeted him with, “Have a seat, Cheryl and the H.R. reps will be with you in a minute.”
“Hey Jenny, what’s going on?” Quinn asked with an edge of nervous anxiety in his voice.
“Oh, just an inquiry, nothing to be alarmed,” she smiled back.
After a few minutes, Cheryl came out to beckon Quinn to come in. She grabbed some forms from Jenny’s desk and followed Quinn in, shutting the door behind her. She then took her seat, and Quinn took the open seat across from Cheryl. The two H.R. reps sat to the left of Quinn, both of them sipping on what he presumed to be coffee.
Quinn thought to himself, I bet these are the two bastards that drained the pot and did not start a new one.
Cheryl started, “Taylor.” This peeved Quinn, but he thought to himself, Only my friends and immediate co-workers call me Quinn. People and others not close to me stick with Taylor. Well, most of the time Cami calls me Taylor, so there’s that.
Cheryl broke his thoughts and continued. “We need to ask you a few questions about your relationship with President-Elect Hawthorne. We know you both went to the same high school and have a history there, but we wanted to know if there is more to the relationship than that.
“Have you had any current contact with him?” She asked, ending her introduction.
Quinn, being somewhat cautious before he would answer any questions asked, “Why are there H.R. reps in this meeting? Am I in trouble? Did I do something wrong?”
“Oh, forgive me," Cheryl continued. “Sorry about that. I was just moving too quickly.
“Yes, we have our H.R. reps here to convey what they might perceive as an issue. First, we wanted to see what your current relationship with him was. We will be asking some further questions after that.”
“Well,” Quinn hesitated, “Yes, I went to high school with him, but I have no current or past relationship with him, for that matter.”
One of the H.R. reps interjected, “Are you at odds with him? Do you have any grievances with him? Could you be a thorn in his side if we were to say, bring him here for a tour?”
Quinn could not place the names of these two or think why they would ask such a question, so he asked, “Why would you ask that? As for a tour, why would he come here? Is he coming here to finally get a college degree, or is he a donor that we want to cater to?”
“Precisely,” the other H.R. rep responded. “He is donating some funds to the university, and we are naming a building after him in our newly created Political Science department. With you having some ties to him, we were wondering if that would be a problem.”
Quinn still not catching the drift, the first H.R. rep bluntly added, “You posted on social media last night a somewhat disturbing comment about him, and we are investigating how damaging that could be for us, the university, and for you, for that matter.”
Well, there it was, the first hint of censorship that caused Quinn to flinch inside a little. He answered, “For what it’s worth, what I said was true. He put a kid, who came out as gay in front of the whole class, in the hospital the next day, nearly killing him. If someone were to be charged with that today, clearly that would be a hate crime.
“I’d say go ask the sheriff’s department about any open records, but being that his dad was a deputy there, I am sure it is all lost in the paper shuffle. Being that he was a juvenile at the time, it might be harder to get those records. But, I stand by my statement.”
“Well then,” Cheryl stated, “How do we proceed from here?”
The H.R. reps looked at each other, and the first one said, “Look, your employment record here is exemplary, and everyone at this university loves working with you. From what we have heard, your work ethic is matched by no one.
“So, we can still work together to resolve this. The problem can be remedied by you taking the post down. This does not have to escalate from here.”
Quinn steamed inside; he could feel his blood warming and could feel his perspiration starting to increase. He sensed his fingers starting to tingle a bit. To combat an oncoming episode, therapy had taught him a quiet breathing technique to defuse his anger, and he calmly stated while using that technique, “OK. So, what you are asking me to do, against any First Amendment rights, is for me to remove the post. If I do that and do not make an issue or escalate it, I will still be employed here. Even though you are going to name a building after someone who I know is a -”
He stopped and paused to gather his next words. “I will remove the post as long as I am still employed.”
“Well, thank you. Then there is the matter of this going on your record,” stated the second H.R. rep. “You will not be able to be promoted and raises will be affected for the next ninety days.”
“Fine,” he responded with an attempt not to sound angry, deflated, or defeated. “I will remove the post, sign your papers. I just need to get back to work.”
He could feel the anger building, and the breathing technique was only going so far. He just needed to remove himself from this situation before he said or did anything that would cause further harm to his standing here.
With the paperwork signed and the meeting closing, he got up to leave, but not before he said, “I will remain quiet as long as I do not have to see that man or have to talk to him. I will not be representing the university as a tour guide. That would be a bad idea. On any level, I do not want to deal with him.”
He left Cheryl’s office and the admin building and walked twice around the campus. Walking was another defusing technique that the therapist and he agreed upon.
Although his nerves were calmer, he was still upset at the situation, the fact that he had to remove the post and forfeit his freedom of speech for the first time at this university. He feared that this would not be his last.
Back at his desk, Tank expressed a bit of concern about Quinn’s meeting with the Dean and Human Resources. He asked, “Everything OK?”
He would talk to Tank later, perhaps at the local brewery on the next free Friday night, and catch him up. They both had several conversations about Hawthorne as Hawthorne got Tank kicked off the high school football team for some stupid reason. Quinn could not think of why that was, but only remembered he and Tank had derived that it was a racial move on Hawthorne’s part, as Tank was the only African American on the team at the time.
But for now, and fearing retribution, he responded to Tank with some standard mumbo jumbo about procedures, and they both went about their day.
On his drive home, he thought, I can’t do it, I have every right to tell the world what a bigot Hawthorne was, and I need to do it. However, with two kids in college and bills, I need the job. I need to stay employed.
So, he needed to formulate a plan, one that would allow him to inform the public but protect his employment and family.