The Scarecrows, Or: You Don't Get What You Don't Pay For
A short story about student loans
Face the Press
Transcript
Sunday, April 7, 2041
DESCRIPTION FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED: A mostly bare stage, with A purple curtain as a back drop. Two swivel chairs sit about an arms length apart, under spotlights. Host KAYLA-MARIE COX wears a red dress and gold necklace.
KAYLA-MARIE COX: Good morning. You're watching Face the Press, our weekly long-form interview where we talk to the most intelligent, influential, and interesting people in America. Our guest today is all three. Please join me in welcoming Oscar Diggs.
[POLITE APPLAUSE from the studio audience as a spotlight comes up on guest OSCAR DIGGS. He wears a black suit and grey tie.]
OSCAR DIGGS: [chuckles] Well, I don't know about all three. Maybe two and a half.
[LAUGHTER from the audience]
KMC: You certainly own more billion dollar companies than that.
OD: If you want to be technical, I have controlling interests in several multinational corporations. I don't outright own any of them. But something tells me you didn't have me on to talk about Pacific Courier shipping and logistics.
KMC: No, you're right. I want to ask you about the scarecrows.
[A mixture of CHEERS and BOOS from the audience.]
OD: Hey, now, I told your producer my employees are not called "scarecrows."
KMC: That's how they're commonly known—
OD: They're mental reclamation technicians.
[Unintelligible SHOUT from the audience.]
KMC: Please, settle down. We'll have a Q and A later on in the show. But let's address that question. How do you respond to accusations like the one we just heard that—
OD: I don't respond to baseless libel. I have lawyers for that. That's right, I'm talking to you.
[Diggs points at the audience member.]
KMC: How would you describe what your, erm, mental reclamation technicians do?
OD: It's nothing different than any other collection agency. If you take out a loan for a large purchase, then don't pay it back, the property gets repossessed, be it a home, a car, or otherwise.
KMC: When you say property, though...
OD: Intellectual property is in the constitution.
KMC: I'm not certain that's what the founding fathers meant.
OD: Again, that's what I have lawyers for.
KMC: I guess the more relevant question is, if student loans go unpaid, why not simply "repossess" the degree?
OD: Two things. First, these loans don't "go unpaid." The borrower chooses not to pay. It's a conscious decision to not fulfill their obligations.
KMC: But—
OD: Second—
KMC: But it's not always a choice.
OD: Second, they— Yes, it's always a choice. Second, what do you think the purpose of higher education is?
“Bullshit!” Jo exclaimed.
Aiden looked up from the espresso machine. He had been focused on cleaning it before the lunchtime rush; Jo had been focused on the TV in the corner. “Hmm?”
“This guy, this asshole, he doesn't know what it's like to owe thousands of dollars. He thinks it's a choice to not pay it back? He doesn't know. He doesn't know what it's like.”
“Hm.” Aiden thought he had read somewhere that Diggs had taken a loan out to open his first business. But he knew if said that, Jo would immediately ask for a source. And whatever source he found wouldn't count for some reason.
“Why does college cost so much, anyway? That's the real question! But of course nobody asks that. ‘Why don't you pay back your enormous loan?’ Why is it so enormous in the first place?”
Why did you take out an enormous loan at all? Aiden thought, but didn't say. He wiped off the steam wand, instead.
Jo turned to him, gesturing wildly with her empty hands. “We should be making it easier to go to college, not harder! There's an epidemic of media illiteracy going on, you know?”
He did not know.
“Why do people call them scarecrows? I mean, have you seen The Wizard of Oz?”
Aiden had seen it, when he was little. The Wicked Witch gave him nightmares, until his mom found an old Mr. Rogers clip on YouTube, with Margaret Hamilton as a guest. It was the first time Aiden wrapped his little mind around the idea of actors playing pretend.
“The Scarecrow didn't have a brain,” Jo continued. “He didn't take brains, you know? You know.”
The scarecrows didn't take brains, either, but Aiden knew better than to interrupt Jo.
“We should just take all of his money, all the money he's hoarded, and pay off the student loans.”
Aiden nodded. “That sure would help you a lot.”
“It's not me. It's not about me. It's about people who hoard all their money like freaking dragons, and don't do anything with it.”
The bell over the front door dinged. It was Tomás, in his usual brightly colored, tailored suit. Aiden thought it garish, but what did he know about fashion?
He went to grab a cup for the boss's usual double espresso, but Jo was already putting one under the portafilter. Aiden pursed his lips, but didn't say anything.
Jo smiled at Tomás as she poured his drink. “How's it going, boss?”
“Not my best day, but getting better now.” He winked at her as she handed him the cup. He looked around the empty coffee shop. “Busy today?”
With his back to her, Jo sneered at Tomás.
Aiden said, “It was pretty packed during the morning rush.”
On the TV, Diggs was saying, “Would it be more humane to keep them in debt forever? Garnishing their wages in perpetuity?”
Tomás turned back to the baristas. Jo's smile instantly returned. “It'll pick up,” he said, then downed the drink. “This is good, Jo.”
She took the empty from his hand with a smile.
He looked back and forth between them. “Hmm. Two employees, no customers.”
“It'll pick up,” Aiden parroted.
“Yeah,” Tomás replied. Then he smiled. “Welp, you guys know where to find me if you need anything.”
He left, the bell sounding more subdued this time. Jo rolled her eyes, and set the dirty cup down in front of Aiden.
“Did you see that? Did you see what he just did? Threatened us! ‘Two employees, no customers.’” She said it in a sing-songy, faux-Spanish accent that Aiden thought would've enraged her if anyone else had done it. “Like he needs the money. I looked up how much these espresso beans cost. Do you know how much profit he's making? I make three cups of espresso, and that's my hourly wage. The rest is his profit for our labor.”
Aiden had seen the cost of the espresso beans, because he was the one who inventoried incoming stock every week. He also knew how much Tomás paid to rent the space. He didn't want to even think about how much property taxes in this neighborhood were. Jo didn’t really know about those kinds of things, but she did know about movies, so…
“My mom showed me an old movie once. Black and white. It was about a rich old newspaper publisher.” Aiden smiled, thinking about watching old movies with his mom on the couch, when they didn't have enough money to go out to the movies, or even subscribe to one of the streamers that had new movies. “This one scene, his accountant or whatever is complaining that the paper loses a million dollars a year. The guy goes, ‘Yeah, if I lose a million dollars a year, I'll go broke... in about sixty years.’”
Aiden smiled expectantly. Jo just replied, “I don't watch movies about rich old white men.”
Aiden blinked. “No, you don't understand. He doesn’t care about the money, he just likes running a newspaper.”
“Yeah, because he's so rich.”
“Tomás is losing money on this place. It's not just the cost of ingredients and our pay. It's rent, taxes. He had to remodel the whole place before we opened. He bought the equipment, the dishes, the furniture...”
“So he can afford it.”
“He only keeps it open because he likes having a coffee—”
“And if he can't afford it, he shouldn't have bought it!”
“But then we wouldn't even—”
“And don't get me started on rich people complaining about taxes. It's the cost of civilization, and Tomás needs to pay his fair share.”
It was like she hadn't even heard anything he said.
“You just know he pays less taxes than we do. And don't get me started on expenses! I pay for rent. I pay for utilities. I make payments on my car, my credit card, my student loans—”
Before she could finish (if she was ever going to finish), the bell over the door rang again.
A man—so tall he nearly had to duck under the doorway and so wide he twisted his shoulders a bit—entered, followed by a mousy woman about half his size in every dimension. They wore matching coveralls: dark green, with yellowy-brown trim. They could pass for mechanics, if their outfits weren't so clean. Sanitized.
Possibly sterile.
“Jolene Mulhern?” the woman asked politely. She was carrying a small metal case, about the size of a first aid kit, and set it down on one of the tables.
Aiden realized that Jolene had stopped talking, probably for the first time that day. She was backing into the corner, and her butt nudged shut the dishwasher she had failed to empty.
The woman flipped open the latches on the case and examined the contents. The man approached the counter, looking Aiden up and down. “You don't look like a Jolene,” he rumbled.
Aiden shook his head, the only move he dared make. The man responded with a simple nod and turned to Jo. “Jolene Mulhern, you are in arrears on a debt in excess of one hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars. Are you prepared to pay down said debt?”
“No,” Jo said, shaking her head vehemently. “No no no no no no no—” She kept going, not so much a response to the question, but a negation of the entire situation.
The woman finished tinkering with the kit, and raised what looked like an extra-long mascara brush, with even finer bristles and dripping with a pink goo.
“Then we are authorized by law to begin the mental reclamation process,” she said, looking at her brush and not Jo.
The man grabbed the bar flap, about to open it, when Aiden raised his hand reflexively. “Customers aren't allowed behind the counter.”
The man met Aiden's gaze. He didn't stare, he didn't glare. He just looked.
Aiden backed away, to Jo's horror. “Aiden..?” she pleaded.
Aiden didn't reply. He couldn't even apologize before the man stepped between them.
He didn't like Jo very much. Or at all. And he was pretty sure she didn't think about him enough to even have an opinion. He was just someone she worked with that she could talk at, preach to. All she ever wanted from him before was to listen. Now what did she want him to do in the face of this scarecrow?
The man grabbed Jo's wrist, pinched it. She stiffened as the electro-neurolizer needle concealed in his glove poked into her nerve. He grabbed her by the chin so she wouldn't collapse.
She owed one hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars. Aiden couldn’t imagine borrowing that much money. But he couldn’t imagine his nervous system locking up under an electro-neurolizer, either.
“Excuse me.” The little scarecrow scooched past Aiden and around her partner. She carried the delicate scrubbing device—tethered to a tablet in her other hand—pinched between two fingers. Her little shuffles would've been comical in another circumstances.
She lifted the high-tech brush to eye-level, and Aiden saw the bristles moved independently. They were weighted down by the viscous, translucent goo, but one-by-one, they broke the surface tension and began to wriggle in the air. At first, it looked like they were caught in a breeze, but then it became clear they were each reaching out, searching, groping.
Aiden realized he was seeing a brain straw for the first time. He wondered if it cost more than one hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars.
The straw began to spin. The tendrils burred into invisibility and flicking away pink droplets of goop. Jo's eyes, the only part of herself that she could move, widened as the woman brought it closer to her head. Her lips quivered involuntarily.
The woman gently inserted the brain straw into Jo's ear. Aiden could her a light buzzing noise as the bristles whipped against the inside of Jo's earlobe. The sound muffled as the woman pushed further, past the ear drum, into the canal.
The man shifted his weight, revealing half of Jo's face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her eyes rolled back in her head. The corners over her mouth curved down in a frozen grimace. She was trapped in her own mind.
Over one hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars.
Aiden found his voice: “Hey! Hey, that's enough.”
The man turned his head towards Aiden, and this time he did glare.
But Aiden didn't back down. “Can't you see she's in pain? You guys always said it was painless, but she's—”
“You're projecting,” the woman said, still reading the progress bars on her tablet's screen. “Her face looks like that because of a nervous reaction, but she doesn't feel a thing. The first thing I do is cut off the pain receptors.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “I can show you, if you'd like to try it.”
Her smile chilled Aiden more than the man's glare.
The entrance bell dinged, startling Aiden. He and the male scarecrow looked over at the new customer, a swarthy young man wearing tight jeans, hip shoes, and far more scarfs than the weather merited. He took one look at what the female scarecrow was doing, pulled one of those scarfs up over his face, and backed out quickly.
“Alllmost... done!” She yanked the straw out with such suddenness, Aiden was sure several tendrils must've broken off inside Jo's brain. She unplugged it from her tablet and dumped it unceremoniously into the trash can under the espresso machine. She turned to her partner. “Let's go.”
The man released Jo's jaw, which went slack. “Thank you for your time and cooperation.”
Jo's eyes flicked around the room, clearly not recognizing anything around her. They landed on Aiden and paused. “I... Ai...?”
“Aiden,” he said.
She squinted with exertion, struggling to remember.
The woman had already tossed her tablet into her case, and was snapping it shut. Aiden called out to her, “Hey! It's not supposed to be like this. You're only supposed to take away her studies. I didn't even know her in college.”
“It doesn't work that way, kid. The brain isn't a computer; I can't just delete some files.”
“Then... then it's a lie. Everything you do, everything he says—” Aiden pointed at the TV, where the interview was still going on. “None of it's true.”
The man chuckled. “Okay, I see. Let's talk about it. Gimme a...” He glanced at the menu board behind Aiden. “A large latte. Double shot.”
The man's demeanor had totally transformed, now that the procedure was over, and Aiden didn't know how to react. During his puzzled pause, Jo floated over to the espresso machine and began pressing grounds into the portafilter.
“How much do you owe on your college debt?” he asked Aiden, ignoring Jo.
Aiden couldn't keep his eyes off Jo. He knew she knew how to make an espresso; she just never did it, unless Tomás was around. “I don't... I don't owe anything. I didn't go.”
The man slapped a $10 bill on on the countertop. “Even better. If she doesn't pay off her loan, what happens to the creditor?”
“They lose the money?”
“Right-o. And who's the creditor? Thank you, dear.” He took the hot latte from Jo, who then stepped back and stared blankly into space.
“The government. All student loans are backed by the US federal government. They're not going to go bankrupt. What are they going to do?”
Aiden shook his head.
“Raise taxes,” the woman called out from the tables behind him.
The man smiled. “She's heard this before. They'll raise taxes on her, on me, on you, to pay for her.” He pointed at Jo.
“But you didn't get any money back. The whole thing is pointless. Look at her!” Jo was still staring blankly at nothing.
“That's true, that's true,” the man nodded. “But imagine if we didn't repossess her knowledge. People would keep getting loans they never paid back, year after year, generation after generation. It's called ‘moral hazard.’”
“After seeing what I did to her,” the woman spoke up again, “you’re probably not going to take out a student loan, are you? And if you ever have kids, you wouldn't let them, unless you were sure they'd be able to pay it back, right?”
“You’re just... punishing her! Because she got a dumb, useless degree?”
“Don't think of it as a punishment. Look at her. She's fine, aren't you, dear?”
Jo smiled brightly. It made her face light up, sweet and innocent. “I’m fine.”
“See?” the man said, knocking back his drink. “There you go. Thanks for the drink.”
He set the cup down, and Jo immediately picked it up and took it to the dishwasher. The man held the door for his partner, and they walked out of the cafe forever.
“Do you know what their uniforms reminded me of?” Aiden nearly jumped at the sound of Jo's voice. He looked over at her, furrowing her brows, but still half-smiling.
“An old movie I saw when I was a kid,” she continued. “There was a girl with a blue dress, and she had a dog. And they met a guy on the side of the road. He had an outfit like theirs, only... Only...”
“The Wizard of Oz. The Scarecrow.”
“Yeah!” she lit up with the recollection. “Wizard of Oz. I liked that movie.”
She paused, thinking. “What were those scarecrows doing here, though?”
OD: Harsh? No. There's no value in the degree. That's a piece of paper. The real value is in the knowledge. I believe in education.
KMC: But you want to take away that knowledge.
OD: You don't get to keep what you don't pay for. Seems fair to me.