The blackboard jungle

1

The building presented a not unpleasant architectural scheme, the banks of wide windows reflecting golden sunlight, the browned weathered brick facade, the ivy clinging to the brick and framing the windows. His eyes passed over the turrets on each corner of the building, green-tiled in the sunlight. It was a nice-looking building, he thought.

He walked through the cyclone fence and into the empty yard stretching before him in endless concrete monotony. It was still hot for September, and the sun glared off the concrete except where the building cast a turreted black shadow near the entrance steps. He was a little nervous, but he knew that would pass once the interview started. He was always nervous before an interview. He would feel all bottled up until the first few words were spoken. Then the cork would be drawn, and all the nervousness would spill out, leaving only the confidence that always lay just beneath the bottled surface of the nervousness.

He paused on the shadowed steps, partly to reassure himself of his confidence, and partly to look up at the chiseled letters in the triangular arch over the doorway.

Leave us gird our loins, he thought.

He sucked in a deep breath, the way a man on a diving board will just before taking the plunge, and he started up the steps. He pulled open the wooden door, surprised to find marble steps behind it. He started up the marble steps and saw the sign GENERAL OFFICE. Beneath the sign, in sprawling crayon, someone had scribbled the timeless epithet, and an industrious summer custodian had succeeded in partially scrubbing away every letter but the bold, black F of the first word. He smiled and followed the arrow beneath the sign into a cool, dim corridor. There was another sign with another arrow in the corridor, and he followed that dutifully. The halls were freshly painted and spotlessly clean. He admired this with an air of proprietorship, almost as if he had already won the job. A clean school is a good school, he mused, and then he wondered in which education class he’d picked that up.

He made a sharp right-angle turn at the end of the corridor, following the instructions of another sign, and then walked rapidly to an open doorway through which sunlight streamed. A sign to the right of the doorway read GENERAL OFFICE.

They believe in signs here, by God, he thought. He expected to step into the room and find a desk with a sign reading desk, and a chair with another sign reading chair. Mr. Stanley would undoubtedly wear a cardboard placard strung around his neck, and the lettering on it would say Mr. Stanley. He wondered if he should put a little button in his lapel, like the ones they gave you at Freshman teas.

My name is RICHARD DADIER; what’s yours?

Josephine of France.

Not tonight, Josephine.

He sighed impatiently and stepped into the room. It was a long rectangular room, with the entrance doorway on one long side of the rectangle. The other long side was directly opposite him and covered from short wall to short wall with windows. Five feet back from the wall with the door in it, a railing divided the room, stretching across its entire length. Behind the railing, he saw a group of desks. A distinguished-looking man was talking to a frightened-looking man at one of the desks. A time clock hung on the wall to the left of the doorway, behind the dividing railing. Racks for cards were hung beneath the clock, but the racks were almost empty.

He stood in the doorway for just an instant, and then walked to the railing. The railing had a counter top, except where a gate was set into it near the time clock. A blonde with an upswept hairdo and a pencil stabbed into the hair was busily scribbling something on an official-looking form, her elbows on the counter. He walked to her, glancing quickly at the row of cubbyholes which were labeled teachers’ mailboxes.

She did not look up. He cleared his throat, and she still did not look up. She continued scribbling on the white official-looking form, and she did not deign to notice him until she had finished. She looked at him exactly as she had looked at the official-looking form.

“Yes?” she said.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Stanley,” he said, smiling.

“Your name, please.”

“Mr. Dadier.”

“If you’ll take a seat, Mr. Dadier, he’ll be with you in a moment.”

She looked past him to a bench against the wall near the cubbyhole mailboxes.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Not at all,” she answered, and he immediately figured her for one of those efficient women who always have to get the last word in. He’d known an executive like that once. If he got a letter saying, “Thank you for your kindness the other day,” he’d immediately get off another letter saying, “Thank you for thanking me for my kindness the other day.” Pit two people like that against one another and you’d get an endless round of “Thank you for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me...” Which was probably the best way to keep two such crackpots occupied, anyway.

Having made this astute judgment, Richard Dadier, sizer-up of women with pencils growing out of their heads, promptly walked to the bench and took a seat. There was another fellow sitting at the far end of the bench, but he gave him only a cursory glance and then turned his attention to the two men seated at the desk beyond the railing.

The distinguished-looking man was doubtless Mr. Stanley, and the one with fear all over his face was undoubtedly applying for the open English teacher’s position. Stanley seemed completely bored. He was a blondish man, with a thin, angular face, and a precise mustache that formed an unobtrusive cushion for his slender nose. His eyebrows were blond, and slightly raised now, like the eyebrows of someone politely listening to a joke he’s heard before.

The fellow opposite him droned on endlessly, using his ham-like hands to illustrate pertinent points in his undoubtedly illustrious career. Every time the fellow waved a hand, Stanley flinched, and Rick made a mental note to keep his hands clenched tightly in his lap.

He heard the slightly louder words “student taught,” and Stanley nodded, with his eyebrows still raised in polite anticipation of a punch line he already knew. The fellow went on, and Stanley hastily penciled a few notes on the pad before him, glanced at his watch — the gold cuff links glittering in the sunlight when his jacket sleeve pulled back — and then leaned forward smiling.

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Rick could almost make out the words as they formed on Stanley’s almost feminine mouth. Those words, or a reasonable facsimile, like the box tops always said. He wondered what the box tops had meant. Ten cents and a box top or reasonable facsimile thereof. Did that mean you could draw a box top on a sheet of cardboard and send that in with your dime? He wondered. He had wondered the same thing when he had been a rabid sender-inner. Especially for the Tom Mix stuff. He had received a magnifying glass, and a ring through which you could look and see people behind you, and a six-shooter. And he could never remember finishing a box of Ralston. He had also received the Little Orphan Annie shaker by sending in the aluminum seal from a can of Ovaltine, together with twenty-five cents. He would always remember the Little Orphan Annie shaker because there was a picture of the little orphan herself on it. And in the picture, she was holding a Little Orphan Annie shaker upon which there was a picture of Little Orphan Annie holding a Little Orphan Annie shaker. He had wondered if the thing would go on forever, orphans holding shakers with pictures of orphans holding shakers. He had used his Tom Mix magnifying glass on it, and was vastly disappointed when the series of pictures within pictures petered out after a few tries.

He looked back to the desk now. The frightened-looking fellow had still not moved. He had leaned forward earnestly, and was now entering on the second stage of his illustrious career, with Stanley looking more bored than he had before.

“Richie?” the voice asked.

He was surprised because he had not been called Richie since he was fifteen. He turned to his right, and the fellow on the end of the bench was beaming broadly and extending his hand uncertainly, the way someone will when he’s not sure he’s identified the right person.

“Richie Dadier?”

“Yes,” Rick answered, striving to recognize the fellow at the end of the bench. He was a short man with tightly-curled hair and a broad nose. He had blue eyes that were crinkled into a smile now, and Rick studied the eyes and then the smile, and suddenly he knew who the man was because the wrinkles dropped away as did the dark circles under the eyes, leaving only the youthful face he had known many years ago.

“Jerome Lefkowitz,” he said, using his full name, as if that was the way the name had come back in his memory. He reached over and took the extended hand, sliding closer on the bench. “I’ll be damned! How are you, Jerry?”

“Fine, fine,” Jerry answered, and Rick noticed that he still possessed the same mild manner he’d had in high school. “What are you doing here?”

“Hoping for a job,” Rick answered. “Gee, how many years has it been? I haven’t seen you since we graduated.”

“That’s right,” Jerry said, still smiling.

“Are you still playing the fiddle?”

“On and off,” Jerry said, still smiling.

“You certainly could play that fiddle,” Rick said. “Say, what are you doing here?”

“There’s an English teacher’s job,” Jerry said, smiling.

“Oh no! How do you like that?”

“Are you applying for the same job?”

“Yes,” Rick said, overwhelmed by the coincidence.

“Maybe there are two of them,” Jerry said, smiling.

Rick nodded. “Sure, maybe there are.” It seemed unfair somehow that he should be placed in competition with someone he had liked so well so many years ago. It seemed doubly unfair because he was certain he would get the job instead of Jerry, and the knowledge left him feeling a bit guilty. “There probably are two jobs,” he said hastily. “Vocational schools always need teachers.”

“Sure,” Jerry said, smiling.

He wanted to stop talking about the job because Jerry was such a hell of a nice guy, mild and even-tempered, and vocational schools didn’t want nice guys who were mild and even-tempered. He wanted to get as far away from the subject as possible because the unfair coincidence of the competition had caused a tight knot in his stomach, and he was nervous enough without having tight knots to worry about.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” he said.

“I’m married,” Jerry said, smiling.

“Well, that’s grand. Who’d you marry? Anyone I know?”

“I don’t think so. Shirley Levine, did you know her?”

“No, I don’t think so. Well, that’s swell. I’m married, too, you know. I don’t think you know the girl.”

“Congratulations,” Jerry said, smiling.

“It’s a little late for that,” Rick answered pleasantly, wishing he had not been placed in competition with Jerry whom he truthfully and honestly liked. “We’ve been married close to two years.”

“Well, that’s wonderful,” Jerry said. “I’ve got two kids, you know.”

“Two kids! No, I didn’t know. Two kids!” He was very happy to learn this because Jerry Lefkowitz was just the kind of nice guy who should have two kids, but at the same time he remembered he was in competition with Jerry for the same job, and the two kids didn’t make him feel any happier about the whole damn mixed-up situation. “Boys or girls?”

“One of each,” Jerry said, smiling paternally now, smiling the smile that always preceded the showing of snapshots in the gatefold of a wallet.

He rapidly changed the subject because he did not want to see the pictures of the children. It was bad enough he knew they existed. If he saw their pictures they would become real flesh and blood, and that would make taking the job away from Jerry even harder.

“Jesus,” he said, “remember the time we played Monroe? Do you remember that football game, Jerr? Jesus, did we raise hell!”

“The school had a good team,” Jerry said mildly.

“Only City champs,” Rick added expansively. “Remember the Elf? Brother, could he run!”

“He was very good,” Jerry said mildly.

There was movement behind the railing, and Rick saw the frightened-looking man rise and shake hands with Stanley. He thought he saw Stanley heave a heavy sigh, but he wasn’t certain. The blonde with the pencil in her hair came to the railing and said, “Mr. Lefkowitz?” and Jerry rose rapidly.

“I’ll wait for you, Richie,” he said.

“All right,” Rick said, wishing Jerry hadn’t wanted to talk more after the interviews. “Good luck, boy.”

“Thanks,” Jerry said, smiling. He walked to the gate in the railing, and then directly to Stanley’s desk. He still walked like a duck, that big wide-toed amble, and Rick watched Stanley appraise his walk with slightly raised eyebrows. He likes a man who walks proudly, he thought, and then he felt immediately ashamed of his analysis. It was somehow unfair of him to benefit by Jerry’s mistakes. If there was to be a competition, he would make it a completely honest one. Having set the rigid rules of the game firmly in his mind, he turned sideways on the bench so that he could not see the interview going on behind the barrier of the railing.

It seemed like a very short time, but that may have only been his imagination. The blonde said, “Mr. Dadier?” and Rick turned and rose, and saw Jerry crossing the room behind the railing. Jerry smiled and winked and indicated the corridor with a slight movement of his head, and Rick knew he’d be waiting for him out there.

Rick wet his lips, the bottled-up nervousness moving up against the cork of the bottle, swelling up into the neck, bubbling frothily. He threw his shoulders back, remembering to walk proudly, reminding himself that he was taking advantage of Jerry’s mistake, but telling himself that he had learned that before he made up the rules of the game. Stanley appraised him as he came closer to the desk, and Rick kept his hands tightly clenched because he knew they would tremble if he loosened them. Stanley followed him all the way across the room, his eyes inquisitive.

“Mr. Dadier?” he said, and his voice was very soft, like the roll of distant thunder in purple hills.

“Yes, sir,” Rick said.

“Sit down, won’t you?”

He sat stiffly, fastening his eyes on Stanley’s face immediately. Stanley’s eyes were gray, a pale gray. His hair was not as blond as it had looked from the other side of the railing. He wore a soft button-down collar, and a simple gold pin held his narrow tie to his shirt. His suit was expensively tailored, and he looked the complete picture of the chairman of the English Department at Princeton or Harvard, except this was North Manual Trades and not Princeton or Harvard.

Rick made a mental note of that, with the nervousness bubbling noisily within him now. He wanted to get on with it, wanted the cork to pop.

“Why do you want to teach here?” Stanley asked suddenly. His gray eyes narrowed for just an instant, and then his blond brows went up inquisitively, as if he were surprised by his own question.

“I have to teach in a vocational school,” Rick said honestly.

“Would you rather teach in another type of school?” Stanley said suspiciously.

Rick smiled a bit tremulously, wondering if he were taking the right tack. “Sir,” he said, “I would rather teach at Princeton... but so would a lot of other people.”

Stanley smiled briefly, and Rick knew he’d hit the right spot, and suddenly the cork popped. The nervousness flooded over the lip of the bottle, a green bilious stuff that dissipated into the air. He felt his hands unclench, and he knew he could take whatever Stanley had to offer now. Fire away, he thought, and he waited impatiently.

“You said you have to teach in a vocational school. That means you have an emergency license, doesn’t it?” Stanley asked.

“Yes, sir,” Rick said. “A year in vocational high schools to make the license valid for any high school.”

“A good move on the Board’s part,” Stanley commented dryly. “We need teachers in vocational high schools.” He paused and smoothed his thin mustache, patchy in spots Rick saw, now that he was closer to it. It’s probably a new mustache. A department chairman must look older, and he figured Stanley for no more than thirty-eight or nine.

“Which college did you attend?”

“Hunter, sir.”

“Oh?” Stanley’s brows went up in interest. Everyone’s brows always went up in interest. It was better than having a Harvard degree. It always caused interest, and interest was what separated the men from the boys, interest was what made one face stand out from all the thousands of other hopeful faces. “That’s an all-girls’ school, isn’t it?”

“It was, sir. They took in veterans after the war. It was difficult to find a school, so many of us were returning at once.”

“You’re a veteran then?” Stanley asked.

“Yes, sir. Navy.”

“I see.” He could tell Stanley was pleased. The veteran hook always pleased people. Do their bit for the boys, you know. “Where did you student teach?”

Stanley pronounced it “styu-dent,” and Rick suddenly remembered his diction, and he recalled the Speech I and II classes. He knew he possessed a sibilant S, and he reminded himself to watch that S, and when he spoke, his speech was letter perfect, as if Stanley’s “styu-dent” had given him an invisible shot in the arm.

“I taught...” and he hit the T perfectly, touching his tongue to his gum ridge, pulling it away quickly, trippingly... “at Machine and Metal Trades, sir.”

“Oh? A vocational school, eh? That was thinking ahead.”

“Yes, sir,” and he watched the S carefully, cutting it off the instant it began to hiss.

“How’d you find it?”

“I enjoyed it, sir. It wasn’t at all as bad as they’d painted it.”

“If you liked Machine and Metal, you’ll like it here. Who was Department Chairman there?”

“Mr. Ackerman, sir.”

“Mmm, yes, a good man.”

“He helped me a lot, sir.”

“You speak rather softly,” Stanley said suddenly, lifting his brows again. “Can you be heard at the back of a classroom?”

“Well, I did a lot of dramatics in college, sir, and they could always hear me in the last row of the theater.”

“Really?” Stanley asked, seeming truly interested.

“Shall I project a little?” Rick asked, smiling.

Stanley leaned back and smiled with him. “Go ahead. Project.”

Rick felt for his voice at the pit of his diaphragm. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” he quoted loudly, strongly, “or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility: but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger.”

He stopped there, hoping Stanley would not want him to go farther because he could not remember any more of the quotation. The blonde at the railing had turned and was looking at him curiously.

“An aptly chosen quotation for this particular example,” Stanley said smilingly, pleased. “Henry the Fourth, wasn’t it?”

Rick hesitated for the first time during the interview. The passage he’d quoted had been from Henry V, Hank the Cinq as they’d called it in school. Was it possible that Stanley, the chairman of the English Department, did not know this?

“I think it’s Henry the Fifth,” Rick said politely, smiling, gambling that Stanley knew and was simply testing him.

Stanley nodded knowingly, more pleased now. “Damn right it is,” he said. He did not hear Rick sigh. “Can you be here Friday for an Organizational Meeting, Mr. Dadier?”

“Certainly, sir,” Rick said, still not realizing the job was his.

“Fine. Give your license to Miss Brady in the adjoining office. She’ll list you on the books and make out a time card for you. You know how to punch a clock, do you?”

“Yes, sir,” he said happily.

“Fine. The meeting is at noon Friday, but I’d like you to be here by eleven or so. I’ll introduce you to Mr. Small, our new principal, at that time. You can report to the English office. That’s on the fourth floor, Room 439. Any questions?”

“Just one, sir,” Rick said. He hesitated, and then asked, “The discipline problem here. Is it...”

Stanley’s eyes tightened. “There is no discipline problem here,” he said quickly. “I’ll look for you on Friday.”

He rose quickly and took Rick’s hand, and Rick rose uncertainly.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”

He strode briskly from the desk and through the gate, remembering to keep his shoulders back and his head high. He went directly into the adjoining office and asked for Miss Brady, who turned out to be a spinsterish sort of person with mouse-brown hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her thin neck. He handed her his license, and she asked for the book the Board of Education had supplied him with, the one with all the dates listed in it, the one that would keep a record of the days he had worked. He handed it to her, and she explained that she would keep this in her possession, even though the listing of the dates was a mere formality when it concerned a regular substitute as differentiated from a day-to-day substitute. She also told him he could have his license back in about ten minutes if he cared to wait, but he abruptly remembered Jerry standing outside in the corridor, and he told her he’d pick it up when he came in on Friday. She nodded noncommittally, and then gave a birdlike shrug which plainly said, “It’s your license, mister.”

He did not want to leave the security of her office, nor did he wish to meet Jerry. He still felt irrationally guilty about having taken the job from his old friend. He decided, though, that it would be worse to put it off any longer. He squared his shoulders and walked out into the corridor.

Jerry met him with a smiling face and an extended palm. “You got it, didn’t you?” he said happily. “Congratulations.”

Rick took his hand, feeling even more guilty in the face of Jerry’s obvious sportsmanlike joy. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry I...”

“Say, what did he have you doing in there? Reciting poetry?”

“He wanted to know if I could project or not,” Rick said embarrassedly.

“I knew I didn’t make it the minute we started talking,” Jerry said sheepishly. “I could tell he didn’t take to me.”

“Hell, there are other jobs,” Rick said.

“Oh, sure.” Jerry smiled. “I’ll find something.”

“Have you tried New York Vocational?”

“No,” Jerry said. “Where’s that?”

“On 138th Street and Fifth Avenue. I was going to head there right after I left here. I think they have an opening.” He felt better about revealing this information. He knew they did have an opening, and it somehow took the onus off his having stolen this job from Jerry.

“I’ll try them,” Jerry said, happily, thankfully, gratefully.

“And I think Samuel Gompers may have something. I know a guy who was hired there last week, and he said they were desperate.”

“I’ll try them, too,” Jerry said gratefully. “Did you student teach in a vocational school, Richie?” They were walking down the dim corridor now, walking toward the door through which Rick had first entered the building. Their heels clacked on the marble floor, and the corridor seemed very lonely and very dim.

“Yes,” he said, “I did.”

“You were lucky. I student taught at Taft, up in the Bronx.”

“That’s a good school,” Rick said.

“Yes,” Jerry agreed, “but it doesn’t train you for coping with juvenile delinquents.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Rick said. “I got along fine at Machine and Metal Trades.”

Jerry looked at him admiringly. “Is that where you taught? I heard that was a very rough school.”

“I never had any trouble there,” Rick said, basking in the glow of admiration on Jerry’s face.

“Still, it’s a tough school.” They were walking down the marble steps now, and Jerry shoved open the scarred, slashed wooden door and held it open for Rick. He gestured with his head toward the corridor they’d just left, and said, “This one isn’t any finishing school, either, you know.”

“Stanley said there’s no discipline problem here,” Rick told him, stepping out into the sunshine.

Jerry nodded solemnly. “There’s no discipline problem at Alcatraz, either.”

The door slammed shut behind them, and they started across the schoolyard. This is my schoolyard, Rick thought. My students will play in this schoolyard.

“I’ve heard pretty good reports about this school,” he said, disturbed by Jerry’s Alcatraz allusion.

“Really?” Jerry said agreeably. “Well, perhaps I’m wrong.”

“I’ll soon find out, I guess,” Rick said.

“Yes.”

They walked in silence to Third Avenue, and then Jerry said, “I’ll take a cab to New York Vocational. It’s getting late and if there is anything, I don’t want to miss out. Can I drop you anywhere?”

“No,” Rick said. “I get a bus across the street. Thanks, anyway.”

“We should get together,” Jerry said, smiling.

“Yes, we should.” He paused, and then popped with sudden inspiration, “Look, let me know how you make out at New York, won’t you? Give me a call.”

“All right,” Jerry said happily. “I will.”

“It’s Tyrone 2-9970,” Rick said. “Like in Tyrone Power.”

“That’s a funny exchange.”

“It’s a new one,” Rick said,

Jerry jotted down the number in a small black pad. “I’ll call you,” he said. “It was real good running into you again, Richie.”

“Same here. Good luck, Jerry.”

They shook hands awkwardly, the way two people will when they have recalled an old friendship for just a brief while, and are ready to commit it back to the limbo from which it had come.

“There’s my bus,” Rick said.

“Go ahead,” Jerry said, smiling. “You can catch it.”

They terminated the handshake abruptly, and Rick ran across the street under the El structure. He caught the bus at the corner, and when he was seated and looking through the window he saw Jerry wave and smile from the other side of the street.

It wasn’t until then that he remembered he hadn’t called Anne, but he told himself it was better this way, he’d surprise her.

And then the bus belched carbon monoxide, pulled out into the thick traffic, and left Jerry on the corner where he stood, smiling.

When the old-fashioned twist bell in the metal door sounded she was standing at the sink with her hands in soapy water. There was a nice breeze here on the eleventh floor, and it lifted the plaid curtains at the kitchen window, touching her blond hair lightly, loosening a wisp near her throat.

She called, “Just a moment,” and then opened the cabinet to the left of the sink, removing a dish towel from its hook and drying her hands rapidly. She dropped the dish towel on the kitchen table, walked down the long foyer past the living room and to the front door. She lifted the metal flap of the peephole in the door, and then said, “Oh, Rick, it’s you.” She said it happily surprised, and then she dropped the peephole and unlocked the door, wondering why he hadn’t used his key.

He stood there with a little-boy look on his face, both hands behind his back. The light from the bulb down the hallway struck the planes of his face, touching on the high cheekbones and the strong nose, putting a pinpoint of light in each of his deep brown eyes. He was grinning broadly, like a kid on Christmas morning, and she knew then that he’d got the job, but she would not have spoiled his surprise for all the tea in China.

“Hello, Anne,” he said softly, secretly.

“Hello, darling,” she answered, smiling, almost not able to contain the fact that she already knew his secret. “Why didn’t you use your key?”

“I couldn’t,” he said secretly, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. His hair was still cropped close to his head in an even, militaristic fashion, like the bristles on a brush, the way he’d worn it all through college. It added to his secretive, little-boy appearance, and she wanted to hug him to her breast, and she thought, God, I really am getting the maternal urge.

“Why couldn’t you?” she asked, playing along with the game, still standing in the doorway, waiting for him to break the surprise.

“My hands are full,” he said. “Voilà,” he popped, and he pulled one hand from behind his back, and there was a bouquet of red roses in that hand, six of them, with ferns and crisp green wrapping.

“And voilà!” he popped again, and he pulled the other hand out, and she saw the bottle of champagne, and she could read the delicately scripted Domestic, but that didn’t matter to her at all.

“You got the job!” she said ecstatically, pretending surprise, not having to pretend vast joy because she was truly excited, the way she had only been excited on several occasions in her lifetime.

“Did I get it? Did I get it?” He pushed through the doorway and scooped her into his arms, lifting her off her feet, with the champagne and roses clutched tightly behind her back. “Did I get it, honey? Did I get it?”

He swung her around, and she shrieked girlishly and squealed, “Rick, your son and heir!” and he answered, “Nuts to my son and heir.”

But then — remembering that she was six-months pregnant, remembering that you don’t go swinging six-months pregnant women around in the air, even if you did get a job at Manual Trades, and even if this was the first goddamned break you’d had since you got out of school, even so, you did not go swinging pregnant women around in the air, not if you indeed wanted a son and heir, or a daughter and heiress, though he would have vastly preferred a son and heir — he put her down.

He put her down, and when her feet touched the asphalt tile floor covering, he kissed her resoundingly on the mouth, thinking how sweet her lips were, and thinking there was no one on earth he would have rather come home to with the news that he had got the job at Manual Trades. No one on earth, and that included Hedy Lamarr and Rita Hayworth and anyone else you might care to name, sir.

“Oh, Rick,” she said, “that’s wonderful, truly wonderful!”

“And are you going to worry about money anymore?”

“No,” she said softly, pleased, smiling.

“And are you going to call me a lazy loafer anymore?”

“Rick, I never...”

“And are you going to love me?”

“I love you, Rick,” she said.

“Are you going to really love me?”

“I really love you, darling.”

“Have you cooked supper yet?”

“No, I...” She put her hand to her lips because she hadn’t even begun supper yet, and here Rick was home with wonderful news, news that rated at least a supper begun. Her green eyes clouded. “I...”

“Good! Because I am going out for supper. I shall bring supper home to you as befits the wife of a new English teacher at North Manual Trades High School, Incorporated, of America.”

“Rick,” she said, chiding and laughing at the same time, and feeling the happiness swell inside her like a blossoming flower.

“How about ravioli?” he asked, his eyes sparklingly excited. “How about that? That goes well with champagne, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Ravioli, and a good antipasto before. And we’ll put candles on the table, and these roses, by God, these good American Beauty roses!”

“All right, Rick,” she said, watching him happily, loving the excitement in his eyes, and the high flush on his cheeks. “All right, Rick.”

“And I want you to wear your black strapless, and I’ll wear my blue...”

“Rick, I’d never get into it!” she complained.

“The hell you say, Skinny.” He swept her into his arms again and kissed her lingeringly this time, and she tightened her arms around his neck, not wanting to let him go, wanting to preserve this bubble of complete happiness forever, wanting to coat it in bronze and put it on the living room end table, the way people put a baby’s first pair of shoes on the living room end table.

He released her suddenly, holding her at arm’s length. “That new maternity thing then, the pink one. I want this to be dressup, Anne. Do you understand?”

“Yes, darling,” she said. “I do.”

“Good. Are you happy, Anne?”

“Yes, I’m very happy.” She could not keep the happiness off her face, and she knew he must have seen it there because it was reflected on his own face, in his eyes, in the smile on his lips.

“Good. Now you set the table, and don’t forget the candles. You can use those goddamn brass candlesticks your mother gave us. By God, I knew they’d come in handy someday.” He laughed aloud, and he danced a little jig across the kitchen floor, and then he pointed a finger at her like a commanding officer and said, “Hop to it, wench! I’ll go get the vittles.”

He kissed her again, swiftly this time, and she said “Be careful, darling,” and he left the apartment like a whirlwind, leaving a curiously empty silence behind him.

They could not have asked for more from the evening.

The candles cast a warm glow onto the stiff regularity of a City Housing Project kitchen, and the food looked inviting and tempting. They ate with relish, and he related the entire interview to her, still excited, leaving nothing out, telling her all about the frightened jerk who was there when he came in, and then all about Jerry and how guilty he’d felt about him (to which Anne said, “That’s silly, Rick. Someone had to get the job”), and then all about how he’d recited Hank the Cinq, and Stanley calling it Henry the Fourth to trip him up. He told her all about it, and she listened while she ate, listened excitedly, enjoying the experience vicariously because he told it so marvelously, leaving no details out.

And afterward they turned on the radio and danced in the living room, with the cool breeze blowing off the East River, and across Bruckner Boulevard, and up Soundview Avenue, into their eleventh floor window. They danced with her belly big against him, and he held her tightly, and they didn’t speak, just listened to the music and felt the breeze and were content in the tight little happy vacuum they had built around themselves.

In bed, they were not awkward. It had become awkward this past month, sometimes so awkward that all the pleasure was lost in their near-adolescent strugglings. She had begun to curse her mountain of a belly because she had always enjoyed bed with Rick, and now it was rapidly becoming anything but a pleasure. But tonight, there was no awkwardness. There was something about both of them tonight, something that transcended the hill of flesh that could have made things difficult. She was slender again for him tonight, the way she had always been, and she did not even realize she was pregnant, this thing in both of them changed all that.

They did not know what this thing was. They accepted the gift gratefully, moving with the casual abandon of expert ballet dancers, but with none of their scientific aloofness. This thing that miraculously surrounded them was all a part of Rick’s getting the job, and the impromptu supper suggestion, and the dancing afterward, and now the sex in this beautifully tender way they had almost forgotten.

They did not stop to realize that this thing about them was simply being in love.

2

Solly Klein had been to Organizational Meetings before. In his twelve years at Manual Trades he had been to plenty of them. And in his own words, they were all just so much horse manure. The Boss would get up there like the coach of a football team between halves, and he’d tell them all how he wanted them to get out there and fight. He’d tell them all what a fine school this was, as if they all didn’t know this was not a fine but a ratty school, and then he’d tell them all to get out there and fight again.

Solly had been getting out there and fighting for twelve years, and he prided himself upon the fact that he was still not punch drunk. He did not know why he was not punch drunk, but he imagined it had something to do with his attitude, and his attitude was damn well not shaped by any stupid Organizational Meetings. It always amazed him how The Boss could get up there in front of all those fairly honest people and lie his goddamn head off so baldfacedly. It was like using an advanced form of Orwell’s doublethink, he supposed, but he always wondered if The Boss really belived everything he said about the vocational school system and the need Manual Trades filled in that complex, complicated system.

This year, there was a new Boss, and so the between-halves talk would probably be more spirited. He remembered back to when Ginzer had come in as principal, and the talk then had really set a mark for spiritedness. Ginzer had come to Manual Trades fresh from an administrative assistant’s job at Evander Childs, which was a fairly decent academic high school. He had read all the books about the vocational high school, and he had proceeded to tell the gathered teachers — some of whom had been at Manual Trades for close to twenty years — all about it. They were very polite, and they did not laugh at him. Perhaps because the talk had had so much spirit in it. Besides, they were all returning from summer vacation, and facing the fall term after summer vacation is certainly not a laughing matter. Not at Manual Trades.

Of course the new Boss, Small was his name — and he was anything but, if Solly was any judge of height — had come from another vocational school, and so he should know the score. He had caught a glimpse of him this morning as he’d gone into his office, and after that Stanley had led in his bevy of new English teachers, all shined up and spruced, the way the new English teachers looked every year. Kalbenstadt had followed Stanley in with a new science teacher, and Morley trailed behind both of them with the two new history men, and that was probably the fall lineup as picked by Red Barber in Collier’s. Thank you. Red Barber.

The meeting had been called for noon, and it was quarter past that now, but these damn things never started on time. The tables in the library had been situated so that they formed a rough semicircle around one table over near the fiction section. The Boss, naturally, would sit at that table, together with Mike Angelico and a few of the other wheels. Solly had greeted all the old-timers, and they’d exchanged the usual prattle about how was your summer and how was yours, and then he’d found an inconspicuous spot at a table off to one side of the Boss’ table. He’d also found an old copy of Today’s Woman, and he was leafing through it, musing over the crap women would read and wondering what a copy of a woman’s magazine was doing in Manual Trades, when Stanley came in with his train of English teachers again.

He found a table for them close to the Boss’ table, and then seated them with all the maternal care of a mother hen, while Solly watched with all the disinterest of the barnyard rooster. It wasn’t until he noticed the girl that he dropped his magazine and took out his reading glasses, perching them expertly on his broad, flat nose.

The crew-cut Kid College had not interested him, nor had the intense-looking, bespectacled boy with the dark hair and the serious eyes. But the girl was something else again.

Her hair was very black, and she wore it trimmed close to her face and neck, and the neck was delicately curved and very white. Her face was a pale white, too, like a flawless piece of alabaster, or an untouched, rounded bit of balsam. She had large, liquid brown eyes which dominated the paleness of her face, and she wore a light crimson lipstick which contributed to the fragile, delicate appearance of her features.

There was nothing delicate or fragile-looking about her body, though, and Solly scrutinized it from the insurmountable, protected heights of middle-age. She was big-breasted and narrow-waisted, and she wore a thin nylon blouse through which the delicate lace of her slip and the slender straps of her brassiere could be clearly seen. Solly wondered if she would wear that blouse on Monday, because if she did, there would surely be a rape. Either from the students or the teachers or maybe both. Unless they locked her up in the bookroom where no one could take advantage of the view.

She wore a straight black skirt that followed the line of her flesh-padded hips. The skirt was very tight, and the rolled line of her panties showed through the skirt where it tightened over her buttocks. This one, Solly thought, has never even heard the words Vocational School.

Or perhaps this is just for today, just so she will be the star of the North Manual Trades picnic. Organizational Meeting, and chowder party. On Monday, the beginning of the school term, she would come in wearing a dress down to her ankles, and up to her throat. She would also wear gold-rimmed glasses and no lipstick and the boys would look upon her as a spinster aunt, provided she did something about the line of her panties tight against her behind.

Still, a girl as young and as pretty as that in a vocational high school. Solly shook his head in muted wonder.

There was a hushed murmur at the back of the library, and then the door opened and Mike Angelico rushed into the room, like a page in the royal chambers. He walked briskly down the aisle which had been left between the tables, and Miss Brady, the Boss’ secretary followed behind him. Hawkner, who had been at the school for close to seventeen years, entered with a broad smile on his broad face, and behind him was William Small, the new principal, God bless him and keep him, and heal his head.

The men teachers rose, and Small accepted this small tribute with a small nod of his rather large head. He was rather large all over. He looked like a misplaced fullback, and Solly hoped he was as tough as he looked. He still remembered the time Juan Garza, a little bastard of a troublemaker, had thrown an inkwell through the window in Ginzer’s office, and then almost thrown Ginzer out after it. They’d have a tough time throwing Small through any windows, unless the meat was just meat with no spine in it. He watched Small as he deposited his notes on the table top, Mike Angelico on his left, and Miss Brady on his right. A thin scar ran from Small’s right temple to just below his cheekbone, and Solly wondered if it were an occupational wound.

Small did not sit. He kept standing, and when the room was absolutely silent, he said, “Well now,” and that was all.

Martha Riley, who was a lady of about fifty, and who had been teaching math at Manual Trades since before Moses, giggled and then stifled it immediately, and Small smiled like a benevolent despot, and cleared his throat.

“First, welcome back to all the old faces,” he said in a rhetorical voice, “and welcome for the first time to all of the new faces. Since I’m a new face, welcome to me, too.”

The assembled teachers, remembering Martha Riley’s recent outburst, hesitated. Then Mike Angelico gave out with a hearty chuckle, and accepting this as their cue, the staff of Manual Trades acknowledged the Boss’ razor-sharp wit with a polite round of subdued laughter.

“I mean it when I say ‘Welcome,’ ” Small said. “I mean it because I mean to make this school one of the best damned schools in the vocational educational system, and a school where knowledge and practicality will always be welcome.”

There was a stunned silence, and then Mike Angelico nodded his head in appreciation, and the staff buzzed appreciably, showing they appreciated Mike’s nod of appreciation.

“Oh, I know vocational schools,” Small said. “I taught for two years at Bronx Vocational, and three years at Manhattan Aviation, and three at Manual Training in Brooklyn, and I even taught at Benjamin Franklin, which is not a vocational high school but which gave me a little memento that made me grateful there were such things as vocational high schools.” He touched the thin scar on his face here, and everyone nodded in tribute to his heroism under fire.

“I’ve taught at New York Vocational,” Small went on, “and Central Commercial, and Brooklyn Automotive.” He paused here for the gasp of acknowledgment, because Brooklyn Automotive was possibly the worst goddamn school in the whole setup, and they all knew it. When the gasp did not come. Small said in a voice like muted gunfire, “I was administrative assistant at Brooklyn Automotive for seven years.”

Mike Angelico flinched at this, but not because he was admiring the courage or skill of the new principal. Mike Angelico had been at North Manual Trades for eighteen years. He had been administrative assistant at the school for ten of those years. He had been administrative assistant when Anderson was principal, and he had been administrative assistant when they dragged in Panucci from Chelsea Vocational for the principal’s spot, and later when they brought in Ginzer from Evander Childs. He had been administrative assistant all that time, and now they had brought in another outsider for the principal’s job, and Solly knew that Mike did not wholly appreciate this incontestable fact.

Even so, Solly reflected, Brooklyn Automotive is no goddamn picnic and maybe Small is a good man after all, despite his half-assed jokes.

“So I know vocational schools,” Small said. “I know them very well, and I know what they’re supposed to be doing in the community that is our city, and I also know what they are doing. Now understand this. I don’t care what North Manual Trades was doing, but I know damn well what it’s supposed to be doing, and that’s what it’s going to be doing, starting this term, starting this day, starting right this minute!”

Mike Angelico started to applaud, but Small cut him short with a withering glance. It was apparent The Boss had not finished.

“We’ve got a good staff here,” Small went on. “The teachers who have been here all these years are some of the best to be found in the system. I’ve checked the records of the new ones, and I think we’ve got a fine crop of level-headed people who can handle any situation that may arise.

“The point is this,” and here he stabbed the air with a large forefinger, “I do not want any situations to arise!”

“When those kids come into this school on Monday morning, I want them to know immediately who is boss. The teacher is boss, and I want them to know that, because we are not running any goddamn nursery school but we are running a school that will teach these kids to be useful citizens of a goddamn fine community, and pardon my French, ladies, but that’s exactly the way I feel about it.”

The ladies present, of which there were four, smiled in a virginly, ears-unused-to-such-language manner, and the men chuckled a bit, and then Small cut the nonsense with a slicing wave of his hamlike hand.

“So here’s what I want. I want a well-disciplined school because we can’t teach a disorderly mob. That means obedience, instant obedience. That does not mean delayed obedience, or tomorrow obedience, or next-week obedience. It means instant obedience! It means orders obeyed on the button. The teacher is boss, remember that! And I’m sure I don’t have to remind a great many of you of that fact.”

He paused to consult his notes and then shouted, “Troublemakers? I want troublemakers squelched immediately! If a teacher can’t handle a troublemaker, I want him sent to the department head. That’s what department heads are for. And if the department head can’t handle a troublemaker, I want that damned troublemaker sent to either Mike or myself, and you can bet we’ll know how to take care of him, you can bet your life on that. I don’t want any troublemakers in my school. There are reform schools for troublemakers, and that’s where I’ll send them as sure as I’m standing here, as sure as I am Principal of North Manual Trades High School.”

Small nodded his head emphatically, and Mike Angelico unconsciously nodded his head simultaneously.

“So on Monday morning, we come here ready for trouble. If there’s no trouble, fine and dandy. If there is, we step on it immediately. We step on it the way we would step on a cockroach. I want no cockroaches in my school, the same way I want no cockroaches in my kitchen. Now as soon as this meeting is adjourned, and I promise you I will not keep you very much longer, there will be departmental meetings, at which time programs will be distributed. Now I do not wish to hear any complaints about programs. I’m an old hand at this game, and I know that free hours and lunch hours can be juggled, and I know there are desirable classes and undesirable classes, and I know all the little tricks, believe me.

“But our department heads and the head of the program committee have made these programs out fairly and honestly, and we’ve tried to combine the good with the bad, and where you get the dirty end of the stick in one spot, you get the mink-lined end of the stick in another spot. So no complaints about programs, please. It took a long time to figure out the schedule, and I can assure you no changes will be made at this late date, no matter how things used to be before.

“Now on Monday we will greet the students in the auditorium, at which time each teacher will call off the roll for his official class, and then lead them to the official room. I expect that this will consume the major part of the first two periods, if not the third period also.

“We are giving ourselves leeway, and saying that it will also consume the third period. At the end of the third period, the fire gong will be sounded twice. This is not a fire drill, and please warn your students beforehand so that we will not have a mad rush out of the building, an excuse they would readily seize upon. This is simply the signal for change of classes, and it will be the beginning of the fourth period. You had best make this clear to the students in your official class, or they’ll all head for the first period, and things will really get fouled up.

“I guess that’s all for now. I won’t bother to introduce everyone in the room to everyone else in the room because I’ve no doubt you will all know each other within a matter of days, and I know I can count on the older teachers here to lend whatever orientation assistance is needed to the newer teachers.

“If we’ll all go with our department heads now, we can get the routines set, distribute the programs, and then see that our rooms are all ready for Monday. Then we can all go home, except poor me,” and here he smiled briefly, “because Monday is the big day, and I want you to relax over the week end and forget all about Manual Trades and come in fresh and ready to handle anything that comes up. All right, now.”

He left the desk, and the teachers applauded, all but Solly Klein who watched Small walk to the back of the room and out of the library, followed by Mike Angelico, Miss Brady, and Hawkner.

Yay team! Solly thought.

And I’ll bet it’s me who got the crappy end of the stick.

Whether or not Solly Klein got the crappy end of the stick was not a matter of great importance. He had been teaching for twelve years at Manual Trades, and one more crappy end certainly wasn’t going to break him after all that time.

Richard Dadier, however, was a new teacher, a teacher of English in a vocational high school, and the end of the stick he grabbed might very well make or break him.

He examined his program with more than curious interest, and after he’d studied it he could not but admit it was a fair and a good one, in fact a better one than he had hoped for. He did not realize that he had received the crappiest end of the crappiest stick, and that his program was the worst one distributed in the English Department.

He had, of course, seen a good many programs of different shapes and form throughout his many years of schooling, the years that had prepared him for his present exalted position. It was an exalted position to him because, as short a time ago as June, when he had still been at Hunter College, he was a student and the other people were teachers. Now, he was a teacher, and the roles were reversed, and this reversal of roles made him feel damned fine.

As did the program.

The program was divided into eight forty-five minute periods. There was five minutes allowed between each period for change of classes, and fifteen minutes allowed at the beginning of the day for his official class. All told, he reported for work at 8:30 a.m. and his day ended at 3:25 p.m. A short day, even counting the lesson plans that would have to be prepared at night on his own time, and even counting the traveling time, and even allowing for the fact that he’d have to be at school by about 8:15 and wouldn’t leave, most likely, until 4:00. Even so, it was a short day.

His official room was Room 206, the room in which he would teach all day long. His official class was a second-term class. There happened to be nine second-term classes at North Manual Trades, and the official classes at the school were differentiated by numbers. The figure 2, then, designated the term, and any figure from 1 to 9 designated the specific official class in that term. His official class was officially titled 27, the term figure and the group figure wedded in holy matrimony. On his program, the appropriate spaces for the appropriate periods were filled in with a figure indicating the term he’d be teaching, another figure indicating the period in which he taught them, and then — because many teachers taught in several different rooms throughout the day — the number of the room in which he taught. In short, if he taught a second-term class during the second period, in Room 206 (which he did), the space on his program card would be filled with the numerals 22-206.

The program looked like this:

And that was it, and it looked good to him.

He did not realize that it was undesirable to have two English 2 classes. It was undesirable because I’s and 2’s at North Manual Trades followed a block program, a so-called exploratory course. This meant that they, unlike the upper term classes, did not follow individual programs. They traveled in a group, and that group was a well-knit, solidified thing. It was undesirable because 2’s are beginning to feel their oats, are beginning to feel familiar in the school, are beginning to know the score, their “exploration” being almost at an end. The I’s still haven’t cut their teeth, and they’ll take whatever you have to hand out. The 2’s have already cut their teeth, and those teeth are getting sharp now. They are just marking time until they’re sixteen and can get working papers and drop all this horse manure by going to continuation school while they’re out earning money. The 2’s are fourteen and fifteen, and you can’t smack around a fourteen-year-old without feeling like something of a tyrant. And 2’s, in short, simply do not give a damn about learning a trade and especially about learning English.

Rick did not realize this. He was, in fact, pleased that he had two English 2 classes. And he was especially pleased over the fact that one of those classes was his own official class, 27. He did not know that this, too, was undesirable for the simple reason that a prophet is never appreciated in his own backyard, and his official class would never appreciate him as an English teacher, even if he were the best English teacher in the school, or the system, or the world — which he was not.

The Hall Patrol period did not disturb him, either. He knew that there were so-called “duty” periods in every high school, and a hall patrol was a nice time to sit on a chair and catch up on lesson plans while the monitors did all the work.

He did not as yet know that his hall patrol was in the short end of the first-floor corridor L, and that there was an entrance at the end of that L, and also a toilet. Even if he had known this, it would not have bothered him because he didn’t know the locks on every door to that entrance were broken, and he didn’t know that this particular toilet was a gathering place for every kid in the school who was cutting, smoking, or just generally killing time.

He was glad they’d given him an English 5 class. Perhaps he would still have been glad if he had known a little about English 55-206, but that is doubtful. Most of the boys in 55-206 had started as freshmen in Ginzer’s reign. A good many of them had traveled in a block program with a freshman named Juan Garza, and Juan Garza had raised delightful sorts of hell at Manual Trades, culminating it by throwing an inkwell through Ginzer’s closed window and attempting to throw him after the inkwell. Nor was Juan Garza without disciples, and most of those disciples were in 55-206, and those disciples were reported to be some of the worst troublemakers at Manual Trades, even now that Garza was safely ensconced in a reform school. Rick did not know all this.

He vaguely surmised that it would have been more desirable for his unassigned period to immediately follow his lunch period, and he didn’t like the idea of lunch at 11:20. It would have been better if English 55-206 had not separated these two periods. However, he could always eat lunch in his unassigned period, which was at one o’clock. God knew, there were millions of people who ate lunch at 1:00. And besides, a fellow couldn’t ask for everything. His program looked fine, especially when he saw that he had two English 7 classes.

Now everyone knew that English 7’s were ideal. They’d come to within a term of graduation, and they sure as hell didn’t want to get thrown out of school for fouling up at this late stage of the game.

This was ordinarily true.

It was, unfortunately, not true at the present time.

Because most of Rick’s English 7’s were boys of eighteen and nineteen, and most of them were expecting to be drafted into the Army of the United States at any moment. They were really not interested in English or Manual Trades because they would soon be carrying guns — a prospect most of them looked forward to — and if there should be another outbreak any place on the globe, they might very well have their goddamned heads blown off.

In the meantime, most of them worked after school, so it was doubly unfortunate that one of the English 7 classes was during the eighth and last period. A last-period class is always a restless one, and when a boy is thinking about the money he can be out earning, it can become a torture, even if the English teacher is the best English teacher in the world — which Rick was not.

Nor can you push around a nineteen-year-old boy when he sometimes outweighs you and outmuscles you and outreaches you.

Rick did not think of all these things. Rick was immensely pleased with his program, and after Stanley had spoken to the gathered English teachers, including the lovely brunette with the peekaboo blouse — a blouse which seemed to unruffle Stanley until he finally advised her to wear something “less feminine” this coming Monday — after Stanley had spoken to them about the books they would be using and the classroom procedure and the conferences he would like to have with each of his staff before the first week was out, after all that, Rick had gone down to the general office to pick up the roll book for his official class, to see just what sort of a crew he was getting.

The older teachers were all lined up like bums at the Salvation Army, and Rick wondered what this was all about until he realized they were probably waiting for their August checks, the one real reason they all looked forward to the Friday Organizational Meeting. He picked up the roll book, a heavy leather folder with the numerals 27 lettered on its front in white ink, and then crossed from the metal rack where the books were kept to the key rack near the time clock. He took the key to his official room, and then walked out into the corridor, passing the lined-up, chatting teachers.

“What did you think of the new Boss?” a thin man with rimless eyeglasses asked the shorter, stouter man with him.

“So-so,” the short man replied, rubbing his broad, flat nose with his spatulate fingers.

“You didn’t like him, Solly?” the first man asked.

The one called Solly shrugged. “He sits when he goes to the can, doesn’t he?” he asked philosophically.

Rick smiled and walked down the corridor to the elevator that had been pointed out to him earlier. He buzzed for it, and then realized it probably wouldn’t be running until Monday, so he took the first stairwell he came across and climbed the steps to the second floor. Room 206 was situated on the long stem of the L that was the floor plan of North Manual Trades High School. It was close to the elevator and close to the stairwell, and it received sunlight from six large windows that faced the street. It was also directly below a machine shop on the floor above, a fact Rick would discover shortly. The machines were not running since the school term had not yet started, so the corridor was absolutely still as he inserted his key into the door and twisted it now.

He shoved back the door, pushing the metal prong in its back against the metal forks set in the wall behind the door, holding it open. He noticed that the upper half of the door consisted of four panes of glass, and he thought that was sensible and wise in a vocational high school, where any passerby could look through the glass and see if the teacher inside were perhaps being pinned to the wall or stomped into the floor.

The room was absolutely silent. The sun streamed through the windows, and the dust motes floated lazily on the broad golden beams. There was something almost sanctified about the room at this moment, and Rick walked solemnly to his desk and looked out over the rows of empty seats, feeling something like a priest in a new parish awaiting his Sunday congregation. He pulled back his chair gently, and then opened the drawers in the desk, looking into each one. There was a pencil in one of the drawers, but aside from that, they were empty.

He put the leather-covered roll book on the desk top and opened it. For each boy in his official class, there was a plastic-encased white card in the book. The plastic cases were lined up vertically, with each one overlapping the one beneath it. The boys’ names were lettered at the bottom of each white card. The only full card that showed was the top one. After that, only the names of the boys were visible in a row down the length of the book. Rick glanced down the list of names quickly.

There were more, a good many more. He did not bother looking at them now. He would make a list of the names before he left the school today, and study them when he got home. He flipped back the plastic cases, choosing one at random in the center of the row. The white card was divided into sections for each month, and each month had a row of boxes, one box for each day of the month. The attendance was kept in these little boxes, on these white cards which were easily slipped out of the plastic cases. It was a simple matter.

Rick flipped the cases, and then closed the book.

He sat at the desk quietly, looking out over the empty classroom. When the voice came from the doorway, it startled him.

“Makes you feel good, doesn’t it?”

He looked toward the door and the voice, and recognized the new teacher Stanley had introduced him to earlier that day. The man was small and meek-looking, with intense brown eyes and heavy spectacles. Something burned in those brown eyes now, and there was a smile on his round, wide face. Rick tried to think of his name, but he couldn’t remember it. He felt a little embarrassed, too, at having been caught staring out over an empty classroom. He almost resented the small, beaming man’s intrusion.

“Yes,” he said, trying to sound less frigid than he felt. “It makes you feel good.”

The small man walked into the room, still beaming, as if Rick’s words had somehow served as an invitation, and as if he wouldn’t have considered entering if Rick hadn’t spoken those words.

“I didn’t think it would affect me that way,” the small man said expansively. “I mean, you know, it’s just a job.”

“Yes,” Rick said. He estimated the new teacher to be about twenty-eight or so, and he wished he could remember the fellow’s name. Hell of a thing not knowing whom you were talking to.

“But the minute I stepped into my room, I felt differently about it. Like reaching a goal, you know? Like — like here I am.” The small man’s grin widened. “Damn, if I don’t feel good!”

Some of the small man’s enthusiasm was beginning to rub off on Rick, despite his earlier resentment. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name,” he said.

“Edwards,” the small man said. “Joshua Edwards. The man with the two first names, like Harry James. Do you like swing?”

“Well, yes.”

“I do, too. I have a good collection. I plan on bringing some of the records in for the kids to hear sometime. Do you think they’d like that?”

“Well, yes, I suppose they would.”

“You can call me Josh,” the small man said. “Your name is Dadier, isn’t it? Richard, I think. Shall it be Dick, Rick, Rickey, or Richard, or what?”

“Rick,” Rick said.

Josh extended his hand, and Rick took it. “I’m right across the hall,” Josh said, “if you should need any help.”

Rick smiled. “I’m not looking forward to any trouble.”

Josh withdrew his hand. “I’m not, either. My God, I’m excited. Are you excited?”

“Yes, in a way.”

“Well, I’m excited. I can’t remember ever being so excited, except the time I almost drowned, and that was different. Hell, I can hardly stand still.”

“It’ll pass. Wait until Monday.”

“Have you ever taught before?” Josh asked.

“No. Just student teaching.”

“Me, too. My God, I can’t wait.” His brown eyes burned intensely, like the eyes of a man who’s found religion. “Do you think it’ll be okay?”

“I imagine so. The new principal sounds on the ball.”

“He is, oh he is that. He’ll be all right, a good man to deal with. Knows how to handle this type of kid, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But I’m not expecting trouble anyway.”

“Did you student teach in a vocat...”

“Yes, Central Commercial, do you know it?”

“There’s a nice bunch of kids there, isn’t...”

“Yes, very nice. These kids will probably be rougher, but they’re just kids, you know. I mean, damn it, you won’t mind if I hop around a little? I swear to God, I can’t stand still.”

“That’s all right,” Rick said, smiling because he was beginning to like this little man with the restless feet and the round beaming face.

“I figure you can handle any kids if...”

“If you can handle them,” Rick finished for him.

“Yes, exactly,” Josh said, beaming. “Say, that’s right. You just have to handle them, that’s all. I can’t wait until Monday. Can you?”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Rick said, his own enthusiasm a bit overshadowed by Josh’s.

“Me, too. You think we’ll have trouble?”

“I doubt it,” Rick said. “I’m just going to get up there and teach. Hell, I’m not looking to be a goddamned hero.”

3

Rick was certainly not a goddamned hero at 8:30 on Monday morning when he walked into the auditorium together with the host of other teachers who sallied forth to meet the foe. Nor did he even suspect he would become a hero, if you looked at it from a certain viewpoint, by the end of that day.

He had entered the building at 8:15, punched the time clock with a curious sense of efficiency, and then gathered up his roll book and walked confidently toward the auditorium, smiling at several students he passed in the hallway. His confidence had momentarily wavered when he entered the high-ceilinged, student-filled room and heard what he considered an unruly murmur of many voices. He figured, however, that this was the customary fall exchange of summer experiences between the students, and he imagined the same murmur would be filling the auditoriums of every academic high school in the city on this first day of school.

He had walked to the left side of the large room, and then down the aisle there where the teachers seemed to be congregated up front, near the piano. He had found Josh Edwards sitting up front, his hands clenching and unclenching nervously on his roll book, had exchanged greetings with him, and had nodded pleasantly at the pretty young woman teacher whom Stanley had introduced yesterday, noting with amused satisfaction that she’d exchanged her sheer blouse for a severely tailored beige suit that still did not quite hide the obvious thrust of her breasts.

“When do we start?” Josh wanted to know.

Rick shrugged. Now that the moment was actually here, he felt no real excitement.

“Look, there’s somebody now,” Josh said.

Somebody, or something, had indeed climbed the steps to the stage and was now fiddling with the adjustment of the microphone there. Each time the Somebody twisted the adjustment, the microphone squeaked. And each time the microphone squeaked. Rick winced.

He studied the Somebody with interest. The Somebody was very tall. He owned a thatch of unruly hair that sprang up from his forehead like crab grass. His brows were thick patches of chickweed. His mouth was a ripe slice of watermelon, and his nose could have been a banana, though Rick shied away from the obvious metaphor.

Mr. How-You-Gonna-Keep-Them-Down-on-the-Farm, Rick labeled him. He watched the man as his long, disjointed arms struggled with the intricate mechanism of the microphone. The man thrust his long jaw closer to the head of the mike and then said, “All right, testing, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.”

A boy at the back of the auditorium shouted, “Five by five, Mr. Halloran,” and this started a series of shouts, cries, laughter, and catcalls which Rick felt would soon get out of hand unless somebody took control of the situation.

Somebody did. It was Somebody himself who did. Somebody, or Mr. Halloran to be exact, picked up the mike in his beefy red hands and shouted, “SHADDUP!”

Rick himself was startled by the outburst, so it did not surprise him that the gathered students immediately quieted down.

“All right,” Mr. Halloran said in a normal, gravelly, chipped-rock, wood-splinter voice. “All right, now dat’s the end of any nonsense like dat anymore, you follow? Just can it ’cause we’re here on business.”

“Who is that?” Josh whispered behind his hand.

“Superintendent of Schools,” Rick said, smiling.

“No,” Josh said, “I think he teaches public speaking here.”

“By dis time, you’ve all said hello to ever’body else, so le’s calm down and get on wid the business before us,” Halloran said. “We’re here to get dis business over wit, and not t’dally aroun’ all day, so le’s get on wit it, and dat way get over wit it.”

The students were very quiet now, and Rick wondered what power Halloran wielded over them.

“Dere’ll be a assembly in the middle of da week for de extreme purpose of meetin’ the new princ’pul, Mr. Small, so we’ll dispense wit any conjecture as to wedder he’ll be here now or not. He won’t, and dat’s dat, so put it out of yer minds. We’re here for just two tings. The first ting is to wish you all a good welcome back to Manyul Trades...”

And here all the students groaned audibly.

“... and so I’m doin’ dat right now. Welcome back, and I hope dis’ll be one of de best terms we’ve ever had. So much for dat. Dat’s over and done wit, and now we come to de second point as to why we’re here t’day, and that’s to start the school term. So, witout any further ado, le’s start the school term. We will start it by havin’ all the teachers call the rolls for dere official classes. When your name is called, you fall out in de center aisle wit the rest of the boys in your class, and your teacher will den lead you up to your official room. We don’ want any monkey business now because we want to get dis term under way as soon as possible. And I can guarantee I know how to take care of any you guys who feel like a little monkey business, I’m sure you all know dat.”

The students laughed at this, and Rick continued to stare at Halloran, wondering if his speech pattern was simply affected in order to establish rapport with the boys.

“We’ll start wit de seniors,” Halloran said, “ ’cause the seniors got priority, and den we’ll work our way down to de freshmen. Any complaints you should register wit your official teacher after you’re up in your official room, so don’t start talkin’ it up now, we got business t’attend to. We’ll start wit a teacher you all know well, and dat’s Mr. Clancy from Carpentry and Woodworking. The floor is yours, Mr. Clancy.”

Rick watched the red-thatched, rotund Mr. Clancy mount the steps to the stage, and he heard whisperings in the audience which he could only interpret as “Ironman Clancy.” Then Clancy’s voice, in comparatively brilliant English diction, rolled forth over the assembled throng, and the seniors he called began filing into the aisle, slapping each other on the back occasionally, clasping hands, all friendly classmate gestures. And then Clancy’s voice ended as abruptly as it had begun, and he stepped down off the stage and walked back to join his class who immediately calmed down as he approached.

Halloran was back at the mike, and he shouted, “Shaddup, shaddup,” and the students who had deigned to open their mouths quickly closed them. “De nex’ teacher is a new one in d’school, and she’ll be takin’ care of the other senior boys. Miss Hammond, please.”

Perhaps Halloran’s choice of language was unintentional, or perhaps it was part of his pitch to the boys, the we’re-all-brothers-under-the-skin pitch, and I-know-your-problems-well, fellows. Rick had to admit, however, that his choice had been an unfortunate one. For after having introduced the woman who would “be takin’ care of the other senior boys,” Halloran stepped back and the new English teacher started mounting the steps to the stage. Her skirt, even though it belonged to the severely-tailored suit, was straight and perhaps too tight. At any rate, it rode up over her calves and the flawlessly straight seams of her stockings as she climbed the steps, and a loud wolf call whistle arose from several thousand throats simultaneously.

She was a pretty woman, and Halloran’s injudicious choice of words had put an anticipatory flush of excitement on her pale complexion. To make matters worse, she dropped her roll book, started to stoop down for it, and then seemingly realized what such a stoop might do to the riding-up-over-nylon-knees quality of her skirt. She pulled back her hand, looked to Halloran imploringly, and then was forced to stand by in embarrassment while Halloran retrieved the errant roll book for her.

Halloran grandstanded it all the way. He handed her the book, bowed from the waist, and then grinned out at the boys, who whistled and cheered in appreciation of Halloran’s chivalry, and who were all too aware o£ Miss Hammond’s reasons for not wanting to stoop down for the book.

Miss Hammond suddenly seemed to regain the composure she had all but lost. Like a follies queen whose breasts have been insulted by a drunken third-row heckler, she threw her shoulders back defiantly, tossed her black hair impatiently, and strode purposefully to the microphone.

She opened her roll book, and the kids packing the auditorium were dead silent as she prepared to speak. She opened her mouth, and her voice caught in her throat, and she succeeded in getting out only a mouselike squeak which positively convulsed the kids. Hell, this was better than Martin and Lewis. This was one of the best goddamn first-days-of-school ever.

Rick thought back to what Stanley had said about there being no discipline problem at Manual Trades. Perhaps this was so. And perhaps it was so because the people who were supposed to be looking for problems were casually ignoring them. When Miss Hammond, completely rattled now, the composure she had regained all gone again, hardly able to control her tongue, finally blurted the name of the first boy in her class, a cheer of congratulation went up from the assembled kids.

The senior who’d been called leaped into the aisle and shouted, “Lucky old me!” and this caused a fresh outburst of laughter. Man, this was terrific. This was grand! Let’s just sit here all day and have laughs at this piecy new English twat.

Rick writhed in his seat, wondering when Halloran was going to step in and take over the ball again. He didn’t have to wonder long.

A prolonged “SHADDDDUPPP!” burst from Halloran’s watermelon lips, and the kids heard the rumble of impending doom and promptly shut up like obedient little clams. Halloran kept his lips pressed firmly together, casting an evil eye out over the crowd. He nodded his head once in emphasis, a nod which plainly told the muted kids they’d better keep shut up or it would be their asses. Miss Hammond smiled tremulously, and then began calling the roll in a very quiet voice while the kids listened in cowed respect.

When she’d called the two dozen or so seniors in her class, she stepped down from the stage, and every eye in the auditorium was on the nylon sleekness of her legs. She walked back to her class stiffly, trying to hide a walk that was very feminine, but succeeding only in emphasizing the emphatic swing of her well-padded hips. When she’d finally left the auditorium with her class. Rick breathed a sigh of relief, and he nodded his head in disgusted agreement when Josh said, “That was an exhibition, wasn’t it?”

The party was over now, and the kids all settled down to listen to the droning voices of the less inspiring teachers as the rolls were called one after the other. Rick chatted quietly with Josh until it was Josh’s turn to call up his class, a fourth-term group. When Josh had left. Rick sat impatiently in his seat, almost dozing. When he heard Halloran call out his name, mutilating it as only Halloran could, he picked up his roll book and his briefcase, walked quickly to the steps, and mounted them with his shoulders back and his head high. He paused dramatically for a moment, and then began calling the roll in his best Sir Laurence Olivier voice.

“Abrahms,” and he saw movement out there in the seats, but he did not pause to focus the movement.

“Arretti,” and another blur of movement.

“Bonneli,” and “Casey,” and “Diaz,” and “Di Zeffolo,” and “Donato,” and “Dover,” and “Estes,” and on, and on, and on, until he flipped over the last card in the book. There had not been a murmur while he spoke, and he was satisfied that he had been accorded the respect due an English high-school teacher. He slapped the roll book shut, and walked down the steps and then into the center aisle, conscious of the curious eyes of the kids upon him.

When he reached his official class the same curiosity was reflected in their eyes.

“Follow me,” he said, unsmiling. “No talking on the way up.”

That, he figured, was the correct approach. Let them know who’s boss right from the start, just the way Small had advised.

“Hey, teach,” one of the boys said, “what did Mr. Halloran say your name was?”

Rick turned his head sharply. The boy who’d spoken was blond, and there was a vacuous smile on his face, and the smile did not quite reach his eyes.

“I said no talking, and I meant it,” Rick snapped.

The boy was silent for a second, and then Rick heard him say, “Dig this cat. He’s playin’ it hard.”

He chose to ignore the comment. He walked along ahead of his class, feeling excitement within him now, feeling the same excitement he’d felt when he got the job, only greater now, stronger, like the times at school when he’d waited in the wings for his cue. Like that, only without the curious butterflies in his stomach, and without the unconscious dread that he would forget all his lines the moment he stepped out onto the stage in front of all those people. He felt in complete control of the situation, and yet there was this raging excitement within him, as if there was something he had to do and he simply could not wait to get it done.

He could best compare it to the excitement he had felt a long, long while ago, when he’d first entered Hunter College and had planned the seduction of Fran Oresschi. Exactly like that night, that payoff night, when he would find out if his plans would succeed or not. Just like that, only without any of the slyness or the feeling of conspiracy.

He led the class to the stairwell, and aside from a few whispers here and there, they were very orderly, and he felt that everything was going well. He could hardly contain the excitement within him, and he wished that Anne were there to share it with him. And thinking of Anne, he thought of telling her about this, his first day, when he got home that night, and this made the excitement inside him flame.

When they reached the door to Room 206, he inserted the key expertly, twisted it, removed it, and then pushed the door back.

“Sit anywhere,” he said brusquely. “We’ll arrange seating later.”

The boys filed in, still curious, still wondering what sort of a duck this new bird with the Butch haircut was. They seated themselves quickly and quietly, and Rick thought, This is going even better than I expected.

He walked rapidly to his desk, pulled out his chair, but did not sit. He looked out over the faces in the seats before him, and then sniffed the air authoritatively, like a blood hound after a quarry. He cocked one eyebrow and glanced at the windows. Then he turned and pointed to a Negro boy sitting up front near his desk.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The boy looked frightened, as if he had been accused of something he hadn’t done. “Me?”

“Yes, what’s your name?”

“Dover. I didn’t do nothin’, teach. Jeez...”

“Open some of the windows in here, Dover. It’s a little stuffy.”

Dover smiled, his lips pulling back over bright white teeth. He got up from his seat and crossed behind Rick’s desk, and Rick congratulated himself on having handled that perfectly. He had not simply given an order which would have resulted in a mad scramble to the windows. He had first chosen one of the boys, and then given the order. All according to the book. All fine and dandy. Damn, if things weren’t going fine.

He turned and walked to the blackboard, located a piece of chalk on the runner, and wrote his name in big letters on the black surface.

“That’s my name,” he said. “In case you missed it in the auditorium.” He paused. “Mr. Dad-ee-yay,” he pronounced clearly.

“Is that French, teach?” one of the boys asked.

“Yes,” Rick said. “When you have anything to say, raise your hand. We might as well get a few things straight right this minute. First, I want you to fill out Delaney cards. While you’re doing that, I’ll tell you what it’s going to be like in my classroom.” He swung his briefcase up onto the desktop, reaching inside for the stack of Delaney cards. He took them to the head of each row, giving a small bunch of the cards to the first boy in each row, and asking him to take one and pass the rest back.

“The official class is 27,” he said, and then he walked to the blackboard and wrote “27” under his name. “Please fill the cards out in ink.”

“I ain’t got a pen,” Dover said.

“Then use pencil.”

“I ain’t got a pencil, either.”

“I have some,” Rick said coldly. He walked back to his briefcase again, silently congratulating himself upon remembering to think of an emergency like this one. He pulled out eight sharpened pencils, handed one to Dover, and then asked, “Does anyone else need something to write with?”

A husky boy sitting near the back of the room said, “I do, teach.”

“Let’s knock off this ‘teach’ business right now,” Rick said angrily, his sudden fury surprising the class. “My name is Mr. Dadier. You’ll call me that, or you’ll learn what extra homework is.”

“Sure, Mr. Dadier,” the boy at the back of the room said.

“Come get your pencil.”

The boy rose nonchalantly. He was older than the other boys, and Rick spotted him immediately as a left-backer, a troublemaker, the kind Small had warned against. The boy wore a white tee shirt and tight dungaree trousers. He kept his hands in his back hip pockets, and he strode to the front of the room, taking the pencil gingerly from Rick’s hand.

“Thanks, teach,” he said, smiling.

“What’s your name?” Rick asked.

“Sullivan,” the boy said, smiling. His hair was red, and a spatter of freckles crossed the bridge of his nose. He had a pleasant smile, and pleasant green eyes.

“How would you like to visit me after school is out today, Sullivan?”

“I wouldn’t,” the boy answered, still smiling.

“Then learn how to use my name.”

“Sure,” Sullivan said.

He smiled again, a broad insolent smile, and then turned his back on Rick, walking lazily to his seat at the rear of the room.

“I want those pencils returned,” Rick said gruffly, feeling he had lost some ground in the encounter with Sullivan. “Fill out the cards as quickly as you can.”

He cleared his throat and walked over to one of the boys, looking over the boy’s shoulder to see that he was filling the card out properly, and then turning away from him.

“To begin with, as I’ve already told you, there’ll be none of this ‘teach’ stuff in my classroom. I’ll call you by your names, and you’ll call me by mine. Common courtesy.” He paused to let the point sink in, remembering Bob Canning, who’d graduated from Hunter the semester before him, and who’d taught in a vocational school, only to leave the job after five months. Bob had allowed the boys to call him “Bob,” a real nice friendly gesture. The boys had all just loved good old “Bob.” The boys loved good old “Bob” so much that they waited for him on his way to the subway one night, and rolled him and stabbed him down the length of his left arm. Good old bleeding “Bob.” Rick would not make the same mistake.

“I’ve also told you that there will be no calling out. If you have anything to say, you raise your hand. You will not speak until I call on you. Is that clear?”

The boys made no comment, and Rick took their silence for understanding. All of their heads were bent now as they busily filled out the Delaney cards.

“We’ll be together in this room every day from 8:30 to 8:45. Then, as you probably know, you’ll come back to this room during the second period for English, which I will teach.”

The boys’ heads bobbed up, and he read the puzzled looks in their eyes and realized he had not yet given them their programs. They did not know he would be teaching them English, and he had broken the news to them in perhaps the worst possible way.

In defense, he smiled graciously. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be your English teacher, and I’m sure we’ll get along fine.” He paused. “I’ll give you your programs now,” he said, “while you’re filling out the Delaney cards. I might add you’ve got a very good program this term.” He had barely glanced at the individual programs, which were carbon copies of each other since the boys were second-termers who still traveled in a group during their exploratory adventures, and he truthfully didn’t know if it was good, bad, or indifferent. But he felt it sounded fatherly for him to say the boys had a good program. He got the program cards from his briefcase and rapidly distributed them, calling the boys’ names and taking the cards to their desks while they worked.

“You all know the rules about lateness,” he said. “I won’t tolerate lateness. If you come in one second after the late gong sounds, you go right down to the General Office for a late pass. And I won’t listen to sob stories about absences. You can tell those to the General Office, too.”

He glanced out at the class, whose interest was alternating between the Delaney and program cards. “You can look over the programs later,” he said. “Let’s finish the Delaney cards.”

He paused and said, “When you come into this room, you put your coats, jackets, hats, or whatever you were wearing outside into the coat closet at the back of the room. I don’t want anyone sitting in this room with a coat or jacket on. I don’t want pneumonia in my class.”

“Hey, what’s our official class?” one boy asked.

“Twenty-seven,” Rick said, “and no calling out.” He turned his back to the boys and chalked the numerals 27 on the board again, remembering the vocational school adage which frankly warned, “Never turn your back on a class.” But he obviously had the situation well under control, and he saw no reason for demonstrating distrust at this early stage of the game. He put the chalk back on the runner and said, “Dover, you will be in charge of seeing that the windows are adjusted every morning when you come in.”

“Yes, sir,” Dover said respectfully, and Rick was a little surprised, but immensely pleased. He remembered something he’d been told back in one of his education classes, something about giving the difficult boys in the class things to do, like raising windows and cleaning blackboards and erasers, or running errands. Dover did not seem to be a difficult boy, and perhaps he’d been wrong in giving him the window assignment. He remembered then that someone had to bring down the list of absentees each morning, and he decided Sullivan, his good friend in the rear of room, was the ideal man for the job.

“And you, Sullivan,” he said, looking directly at the boy, “will take down the roll book each morning.”

“Sure,” Sullivan said, smiling as if he’d won a major victory.

Sullivan’s attitude puzzled Rick, but he decided not to let it bother him. He picked a blond boy in the third row and said, “Will you collect the Delaney cards, please?”

“Sure, teach,” the boy said, and Rick realized he’d made a mistake. He should have had them pass the cards down to the first seat in each row, and then have the boy in the first row go across taking the cards from each row. Well, it was too late to correct that now. The blond boy was already making the rounds, picking up the cards dutifully.

“What’s your name?” Rick asked him.

“Me?”

The answer irritated him a little, but that was because he did not yet know “Me?” was a standard answer at Manual Trades High School, where a boy always presupposed his own guilt even if he were completely innocent of any misdemeanor.

“Yes,” Rick said. “You.”

“Foster, teach.”

“Mr. Dadier,” Rick corrected.

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

“Hurry up with those cards, Foster.”

“Sure, teach.”

Rick stared at the boy incredulously. “I don’t want to have to mention this again,” he said. “The next boy who calls me ‘teach’ will find himself sitting here until four o’clock this afternoon. Now remember that.”

The boys stared at him solemnly, a wall of hostility suddenly erected between Rick’s desk and their seats. He sensed the wall, and he wished he could say something that would cause it to crumble immediately. But he would not back down on this ‘teach’ informality, and so he stayed behind his side of the wall and stared back at the boys sternly.

The door opened suddenly, and a thin boy with brown hair matted against his forehead poked his head into the room.

“Mr. Dadier?” he asked.

“Yes?”

The boy moved his body into the room, walked briskly to Rick’s desk, and handed him a mimeographed sheet of paper. “Notice from the office,” the boy said.

“Thank you.”

“Y’welcome,” he answered, turning and heading for the door instantly. Rick was impressed with the boy’s efficiency and apparent good manners. The boy walked to the open door, stepped out into the hallway, and then thrust his head back into the room. He grinned and addressed one of the boys near the front of the room.

“Hey, Charlie, how you like Mr. Daddy-oh?”

He slammed the door quickly, and was gone before Rick had fully reacted to what he’d said. Someone near the back of the room murmured, “Daddy-oh, oh Daddy-oh,” and Rick turned toward the class hotly.

“That’s enough of that!” he bellowed.

The boys’ faces went blank. He looked at them sternly for another moment, and then turned his attention to the notice from the office.

It told him that the roll-calling had been accomplished much faster than they had expected, and that a gong would sound at ten-thirty summoning the start of the third period, rather than the fourth as anticipated. It advised him to instruct his class that they should proceed immediately to their third-period class, ignoring any instructions they may previously have received concerning the fourth period.

Luckily, Rick had not given any instructions concerning departmental as yet. He was aware of the sudden attentiveness in the classroom, and he realized the boys wanted to know what was in the notice from the office. He glanced at his wrist watch. It was ten-fifteen.

“A gong will sound in fifteen minutes,” he said. “The gong will announce the start of the third period. When the gong sounds, you will leave this room and go directly to your third-period class, is that clear?”

The boys began talking it up, looking at the programs on their desks, which told them their third-period class was Civics.

A boy in the fourth row raised his hand.

“Yes?” Rick asked.

“Does that mean we won’t have you for English today, Mr. Dadier?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s what it means. You go directly to Civics when you leave here,” Rick said, consulting his copy of the boys’ program. He smiled, pleased because the boy had used his name and raised his hand. “Say,” he said conversationally, “we’d better hurry if we want to get seated before it’s time to go.”

He opened his Delaney book, and then his roll book, and he began calling the boys’ names alphabetically, seating them one behind the other. Several boys complained when they were separated from lifelong buddies, but he ignored the complaints and went on with his seating plan. Belatedly, he realized it would have been simpler to have the boys hold their Delaney cards until they were seated properly. Then he’d just collect them by rows, ready to slip into the Delaney book. This way, he had to alphabetize the Delaney cards, jotting down the name of the first boy in each row, and arranging the cards in the book on his own time later. Well, he would not make that mistake again.

He gave the boys an opportunity to discuss the program among themselves while he started to alphabetize the cards. He had alphabetized all of them and was beginning to put them into the Delaney book when the gong sounded. He rose swiftly.

“You go to your third-period class now,” he said. “Remember that. Civics, Room 411.” He paused and added, “Be sure to have all your subject teachers sign your program cards.” He smiled. “I’ll see you all tomorrow morning.”

Some of the boys had already filed out into the corridor and were lingering outside near the open door. Rick heard someone shout, “Not if we see you first, Daddy-oh!” but when he turned to the door, the boys were gone. He let out a deep breath as the remaining boys filed out of the room, and then he consulted his own program.

Hall Patrol.

Quickly, he began packing his stuff in his briefcase. He had been a little Caesar, true, right from go, and in the best possible little Caesar manner. He had done it purposely, though, because the first day was the all-important day. If you started with a mailed fist, you could later open that fist to reveal a velvet palm. If you let them step all over you at the beginning, there was no gaining control later. So, whereas being a little Caesar was contrary to his usual somewhat easy-going manner, he recognized it as a necessity, and he felt no guilt. As Small had advised, he was showing the boys who was boss. He finished packing, locked the door, and then started for the General Office, where Stanley had said a Hall Patrol schedule would be posted.

He fought through the swarm of students in the hallway, abruptly remembering that Dover and Sullivan had not returned the pencils he’d loaned them. He cursed his own inefficiency, making his way toward the stairwell. He thought he heard several shouts of “Daddy-oh!” in the thronged hallway, but he could not be certain. When he found the Down staircase, he walked quickly to the main floor corridor, and then to the General Office. The schedule was posted near the time clock, and he studied it carefully, located the position of his Hall Patrol on the diagram beneath the schedule, and then started for his post.

The General Office was located approximately in the middle of the long side of the L of the building. He walked toward the intersecting short side of the L, turned right, and then headed for the end of the corridor. His Hall Patrol post was directly opposite the entrance doors there.

Two boys stood flanking the wide entrance doorways, and the yellow armbands on their biceps told Rick they were monitors. He walked directly to them and said pleasantly, “Hello, boys. My name is Mr. Dadier. We’ll be working together on this post during the third period every day.”

The two boys nodded obediently, and Rick knew he’d have no trouble with them. Monitors were selected from the cream, such as it was, of the school.

One of the boys, a fat kid with streaked dungarees and a striped tee shirt, kept staring at Rick, as if he were expecting further instructions. Rick said, “Would you get a chair for me in one of these rooms, please? Tell the teacher it’s for Mr. Dadier.”

“Sure,” the fat boy said pleasantly.

Rick watched the boy go down the corridor, and then he turned his attention to the doors. There were four of them set side by side. On the other side of the doors a flight of marble steps led to the outside doors of the building. He looked through the glass panels on the inside doors, nodded his head briefly, and then said to the second monitor, a tall boy who stood with his hands behind his back, “You haven’t been letting anyone in or out of these doors, have you?”

“No, sir,” the boy said.

“Good. And no one is allowed in the corridor without a room pass.”

“I know,” the boy said.

“Good,” Rick said again. He clapped the boy on the shoulder, the way a commanding officer will do to a particularly obedient enlisted man, and then he looked down the corridor to see if the fat boy was returning with his chair. The boy was not in sight. He bit his lip and then studied his end of the corridor, noticing the toilet there for the first time. He walked to the battered wooden door, read the gold lettered students’ lavatory, and then pulled the door open.

“Chiggee,” someone shouted, and Rick heard the instant flush of a toilet. The room was smoke-filled, and his entrance started a mad scramble among the ten or twelve boys who’d been standing around smoking.

“All right,” Rick bellowed, “let’s just hold it!”

The kids stopped dead in their tracks, dropping their cigarettes and stepping on them. One made a rush for the door, but Rick blocked the boy and shoved him back into the white-tiled room.

“What’s going on here?” he roared, squinting through the smoke. “What is this, the Officers’ Club?”

One of the boys snickered, and Rick cut him short with a dead cold stare.

“Now clear out of here,” he shouted. “I’m letting you all go this time, but if I catch anyone else smoking or loitering here, your name goes to the principal. Now just remember that.”

The boys, thankful to be let off the hook so easily, filed out of the room swiftly. Rick watched them go, and then turned to face two boys who lounged near the sinks by the windows.

“What’s the matter with you two?” he asked.

One of the boys was a husky Negro with an engaging grin. He had a wide nose, and thin lips, and clear, large brown eyes. He wore a white tee shirt and tight dungarees, and the rich brown of his skin glistened against the white of his shirt.

“We ony just got here, Chief,” he said.

“Well, you can only just get right out of here,” Rick mimicked.

The boy with the Negro was obviously Puerto Rican. He grinned and a gold-capped tooth in the front of his mouth gleamed.

“Sure,” he said, “we jus’ get here, Chief.”

“Look,” Rick told them, “I don’t want a debate. Let’s clear out.”

The Negro boy continued to grin engagingly, continued to lean against the sink. “Can’ a man take a leak, Chief?”

“Take it and get out,” Rick said.

“Sure, Chief,” the Negro boy answered, still grinning pleasantly. “You goan to watch me leak, man?”

“Listen,” Rick said, “I don’t go for wise guys. If you came here for trouble, you’ll get it. If you came to urinate, do it fast and then get out.”

“He come to ur-ee-nate,” the Puerto Rican said, smiling.

Rick turned on the thin Puerto Rican. “What’s your name?” he asked.

The boy blanched. His eyes got suddenly frightened, and he said, “Me?”

“Yes you. What’s your name?”

“Emmanuel,” he said.

“Emmanuel what?”

“Emmanuel Trades,” the Negro boy said. “Man, don’choo know? This boy yere, he got the school named after him.” Again he grinned engagingly, and Rick turned on him furiously.

“What’s your name, wise guy?”

The boy lifted one eyebrow, and he continued to slouch against the sink. “Gregory,” he said, defiantly. “Gregory Miller.”

“I’ll remember that name,” Rick said.

“Sure, Chief. You do that.”

“Or maybe you’d like to take a walk to the principal’s office right this minute? Maybe you’d like that?”

Miller shrugged, and then smiled, showing those brilliant white teeth. He was a good-looking boy, with the build of a weight lifter, and an easy, nonchalant charm. “You holin’ all the cards, Chief,” he said. “You wanna take me t’see Mistuh Small, that’s your choice.”

Rick reconsidered. Hell, there was no sense getting a boy into trouble on the first day of school. “Well,” he said slowly, “I’ll let it pass this time. Just get back to your classroom.”

“This’s my lunch hour, Chief,” Miller said.

“Knock off that ’Chief’ routine,” Rick said. “If it’s your lunch hour, what are you doing in the building?”

“Had to take a leak, man, like I tole you.”

“Well then take it.”

“Sure, Chief. Thass what I been dyin’ to do all this time now.”

Miller stepped over to one of the urinals, and the Puerto Rican boy followed him like a shadow. Rick turned away while they urinated, and then Miller, buttoning his fly, said, “Okay for us to drift now, Chief?”

“If you’re on your lunch hour, you’re supposed to leave the building by the exit near the auditorium. Isn’t that right?”

“Yessir.”

“Then head down that way. And don’t let me catch you in this toilet again.”

Miller smiled. “Suppose I got to crap, man?”

“That’s different,” Rick said instantly.

“I figured,” Miller answered, smiling.

“All right, take off.”

“Sure thing,” Miller said. He walked to the door with the Puerto Rican behind him, and Rick followed them both into the corridor. He watched them walk slowly and naturally down the corridor, and then turn left into the long side of the L. When they were out of sight, he turned to find the fat boy with his chair.

He took the chair, placed it against the wall, and said, “Thanks a lot.” The fat boy nodded, and then took his place on one side of the doors. Rick sat, unzipped his briefcase, and took out the Delaney book, hoping to arrange the cards in it for his official class. He was reaching for the Delaney cards when the outside doors were thrown open, and he heard several voices floating up the marble steps and approaching the inside doors. He got to his feet as three boys came through the inside doors, still talking and laughing. They spotted Rick and stopped, seemingly deciding whether to stick it out or run back toward the outside doors again.

“What’s this?” Rick asked sternly.

The boy standing in the center of the trio, obviously the leader and spokesman of the group, opened his eyes innocently and asked, “What’s what, teach?”

“Where are you boys coming from?”

“Outside, teach.”

“You’re not supposed to enter the building through this entrance,” Rick said sternly.

“Oh no?” the boy asked, surprised.

“No,” Rick said.

“We was just havin’ lunch,” the boy answered.

“Well clear out and go around to the auditorium entrance, the way you’re supposed to.”

“Sure, teach,” the boy said. He smiled and made a slight movement with his head, which the other boys instantly obeyed. Together, the three went down the marble steps and out of the building.

“How’d they get in?” Rick asked the fat monitor.

“Through the doors, I guess,” the boy answered.

“I know, but aren’t the doors locked?”

“Gee, I guess not.”

“Go down and lock them, would you? Just pull them tight against the door jamb.”

The fat boy hesitated. Then he said, “I can’t, Mr. Dadier. The locks are busted.”

“What do you mean busted?”

“On all of the doors. That’s how the kids get in.”

“How long have they been broken?” Rick asked.

“Long as I can remember,” the fat boy answered.

“Mmm,” Rick said, making a mental note to tell the custodian about the broken locks. “We’ll just have to be careful then, that’s all.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rick sat down again and began slipping the Delaney cards into their slots in the Delaney book. Two boys sauntered down the corridor, passed him quietly, and went into the toilet. When he finished inserting the cards into the book, he sat back and relaxed, and then realized the boys had still not come out of the toilet. He rose and walked to the wooden door, pulling it open.

The two boys, as he’d suspected, were standing near the windows, smoking. He bawled them out heartily, sent them back to their classroom, and then went out into the corridor again. He was seated for about thirty seconds, when the outside doors flew open and a swarm of kids started up the marble steps. He dispatched them quickly, sat down for a full minute, and then rose again when a new gang started up the steps. By the time he’d sent them around to the auditorium entrance, the toilet had gathered five loiterers and smokers, and Rick flushed them out angrily, giving them all warnings. He didn’t get a chance to sit down again because the third period was almost over, and the outside doors were opening and closing with rapid regularity now as the kids began returning in force to the building.

When the bell announcing the end of the period finally rang. Rick was exhausted. He promised himself he’d have to figure out a way to cope with those broken locks. Perhaps post one of the monitors outside the building to steer away any kids who tried to use those doors. He’d also have to do something about the smoking in that toilet. Maybe he’d ask some of the other teachers. He reached into his briefcase and consulted the program he’d Scotch-taped to the inside of his small black notebook.

Fourth period: lunch.

Allah be praised.

Of course, he had still not become a hero. Dashing into the toilet to put an end to the tobacco habit was not exactly an occupation of heroic proportions, even though it was fatiguing disciplinary work. Nor was charging up and down marble steps, even if he had done it on a splendid white stallion, a task that was heroic in its nature. He had simply behaved in a normal vocational schoolteacher manner, attending to the little tiresome details that sent vocational schoolteachers babbling incoherently to the nearest booby hatch. But he had done nothing heroic, and he was still not looking for trouble, and he was still resolved not to be a “goddamned hero.”

As he walked up to the third floor, having lingered a while to avoid the student rush, he congratulated himself upon what he considered almost perfect behavior thus far. He had made a few mistakes, true, but on the whole he had done well. He had shown a tough exterior to the kids, and whereas tough teachers were not always loved, they were always respected. He was not particularly interested in being loved. Mr. Chips was a nice enough old man, but Rick was not ready to say good-by yet. He was interested in doing his job, and that job was teaching. In a vocational school you had to be tough in order to teach. You had to be tough, or you never got the chance to teach. It was like administering a shot of penicillin to a squirming, protesting three-year-old. The three-year-old didn’t know the penicillin was good for him. The doctor simply had to ignore the squirming and the protesting and jab the needle directly into the quivering buttocks.

It was the same thing here. These kids didn’t know education was good for them. There would be squirming and protesting, but if the teacher ignored all that and shot the needle of education directly into all those adolescent behinds, things would turn out all right.

To do that, you had to present a tough exterior, no matter how you felt inside. There was the danger of becoming so goddamned tough, o£ course, that you forgot you were also supposed to be a teacher. Rick would never carry it quite that far. He intended to lay down the law, and then to relax, never letting discipline establish itself as a problem. Once discipline became a habit, there would be time for joking, time for a few laughs while he injected the educational needle. But not until discipline was an ingrained response.

Stanley had explained how the teacher’s lunchroom could be reached. You could go directly to a deserted staircase on the main floor, and take that up four flights. Or you could go to the gymnasium on the third floor, cut across and through that, and then climb one flight of steps to the lunchroom. Since Rick had not yet seen the gym, he chose the latter approach.

The gym was situated on the short side of the L, directly at the end of the corridor. Twin wooden doors were set side by side, and the inevitable gold lettering announced that they opened onto the gymnasium.

Rick opened one of the doors and stepped into the high-ceilinged, wire-mesh-windowed room. The floor was highly polished, and Rick noticed that all the boys lined up before the teacher’s platform were in their stocking feet. He imagined this was the teacher’s method of preserving his polished floor on this first day of school when the boys would not be carrying sneakers. The teacher was a tall red-headed man with muscles bulging under and around his white tee shirt. A whistle hung from a lanyard around his neck, and he stood on the platform with his hands on his hips, talking out over the heads of the lined-up boys.

Rick crossed the gym, his shoes clicking noisily on the polished wood floor. He passed between the teacher’s platform and the boys, smiling up at the teacher, who waved slightly and went on laying down the law to the kids. When he reached the door at the opposite end of the gym, he opened it and stepped onto a landing. He closed the door on the hollow, echoing voice of the gym teacher, and then started up the steps to the lunchroom.

He had formed no preconceived notion of what the teachers’ lunchroom would be like, so he had no reason to be surprised by what he found. He was, nonetheless, surprised. The lunchroom consisted of two rooms, actually. At the top of the steps there was an open doorway, and Rick stepped through it into the first room.

One wall of the room was lined with windows. The opposite wall was bare. A long table ran the length of the room. The table was bare. A refrigerator and a sink occupied the wall facing Rick. An old gas stove was on the other side of the doorway that divided that wall in half. A tea kettle was on the stove, a blue flame curling around its metal sides.

Rick stepped through the doorway, walking between the sink and the stove, and into the second, smaller room.

This room was occupied. This room was the dining room, as differentiated — he supposed — from the other room which could be classed as the galley or the kitchen.

A table was in the center of the room, and there were chairs around the table, and there were men sitting in the chairs, and each man had a sandwich in his hands. There were windows on two walls of the room. The third wall held the door through which Rick entered, and the fourth wall boasted a bulletin board and a cupboard. Rick saw cups hanging on hooks inside the cupboard, and saucers stacked in neat piles. Looking through the glass doors, he also saw a small tray with silverware stacked in it. A couch was against one of the windowed walls, and a leather lounge rested beneath the bulletin board. The lounge was occupied at this moment by a man who lay face down on the leather, his shirt-tail sticking out of his trousers, a bald patch at the back of his head.

A short stout man with a flat nose was standing near the bulletin board, looking over some of the notices there. He turned when Rick came in, and he smiled and said, “Sit down anyplace. The waiter will take your order shortly.”

“Thanks,” Rick said. The other men at the table glanced up, smiled, and then went back to demolishing their sandwiches. Rick pulled out a chair, dipped into his briefcase for the sandwiches Anne had prepared, and spread them on the table before him. The man at the bulletin board continued looking at him.

“My name is Solly Klein,” he said. “You’re one of the new English teachers, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Rick said. He wasn’t sure whether he should offer his hand to Klein. He decided against it. The man was on the opposite side of the table, much too distant for a handshake. “My name is Rick Dadier.”

“Welcome to the Forbidden City,” Solly said. “How’s it going so far?”

“Not too bad,” Rick said.

“Give it time,” Solly answered. “It’ll get worse.” He smiled, and then the smile vanished, and Rick wondered if he were joking or not. He slipped the rubber band from one of his sandwiches, and then began unwrapping the waxed paper. He spread the paper, and then lifted the top slice of bread, smiling at Anne’s thoughtfulness when he saw she’d given him ham, his favorite cold cut.

“Can I get anything to drink?” Rick asked.

“You mean non-alcoholic, I take it,” one of the men at the table said.

The man was small and wiry, with a curling crop of hair that hugged his head like a Navy watch cap. He had a long, hooked nose, and black-rimmed bop glasses behind which intense blue eyes sparkled. He held a sandwich in one hand, and an open history book in the other. Rick estimated his age at thirty-one or so.

Rick smiled. “I don’t suppose there’s beer available, is there?” he asked.

“You’re lucky if you can get the water tap to run,” Solly said, and the small wiry man with the history book chuckled.

“This your first teaching job?” the small, wiry man asked.

“Yes,” Rick said. He had somehow been put on the defensive, and he didn’t like the position at all. And simply because he’d asked if he could get anything to drink, which seemed like a normal, civilized question.

“I’m George Katz,” the small, wiry man said. “Social Studies. Taught at Christopher Columbus before I got appointed here.”

“You should have stayed there,” Solly said. “Even if they had you sweeping up the toilets.”

“They didn’t,” Katz assured him, smiling.

“Well, not to change the subject,” Rick said, “but can I get something to drink?”

“You get a choice,” Solly said, walking to the table and looping his thumb through his suspender. “You can bring your own container of milk and stick it in the refrigerator. That’s if you drink milk. If you drink coffee, you can bring instant coffee and use the hot water from the tea kettle outside. That’s if you drink coffee. If you drink tea, you can pay Captain Schaefer a scant ten cents a month, and he’ll let you use the tea balls he buys for us thirsty bastards. The hot water is still free.”

“Well...” Rick started.

“In any case, you will have to pay Schaefer your dues. He’ll pop in any minute and put the bite on you, as soon as he has his gymnasts climbing ropes or playing basketball or pulling their dummies.”

“Is he the gym teacher?” Rick asked.

“You saw him downstairs?” Solly asked. “Captain Max Schaefer.”

“What are the dues for?” Rick asked.

“The cups. The Captain buys the cups. Then he takes the dues we pay, and he replenishes his pocketbook. He also uses the dues to replace chipped, cracked, or broken cups. The Captain is a non-profit organization, or so he tells us.”

“How much are the dues?”

“Ask the Captain,” Solly said. “They change all the time.”

“He charged me a quarter,” one of the men at the table said.

Rick looked down the length of the table to the man who’d spoken. He was a tall, handsome boy, with midnight black hair that spilled onto his forehead in small ringlets. He had a perfect nose, high cheekbones, and sculptured, almost feminine lips. He was no older than twenty-five, and he was built like the statue of a Greek athlete. He did not introduce himself, so Rick didn’t ask his name.

“A quarter sounds reasonable,” Rick said. “Do you think I could use one of the tea balls before paying my dues?”

“Help yourself,” Solly said, waving a short, wide hand. “The Captain makes his living on this concession anyway.”

Rick rose and went to the cupboard, found the cardboard container of tea balls, and was reaching for a cup when a voice behind him said, “That’s mine.”

The voice was mild. Rick turned and saw that it belonged to a thin man in a gray, pencil-stripe, rumpled suit. The man wore rimless glasses, and his eyes were sad behind them. He had thin brown hair and shaggy brown eyebrows, and he repeated, “That’s mine,” almost apologetically.

“I didn’t know...” Rick started.

“Everything belongs to Lou,” Solly said. “He’s got a proprietor’s complex.”

“We have our initials on the cups,” the thin man said. “So we can tell them apart. See the L.S.? That’s me. Lou Savoldi.”

“He thinks he owns everything,” Solly said, grinning. “You talk to Lou, you find out he owns Manual Trades. He just leases it to the city during the season. In the summer, he runs a whore house here.”

“You’re one of my best customers,” Savoldi said, unsmiling, his eyes sad.

“Not since your wife left for one of those fancy East Side places,” Solly countered.

“That’s all right,” Savoldi answered, his eyes still sad. “I get more calls for your wife anyway.”

“That’s natural. She’s a prettier woman.”

“The kettle’s boiling,” Savoldi said. “Anybody want tea?”

“I’ll have some,” George Katz said, looking up from his history book. “Would you bring me a tea ball, Dadier?”

“Sure,” Rick said.

“My cup is in there, too,” Katz went on. “G.K. Be careful, the initials may still be wet.”

“I see it,” Rick said. He took down Katz’s cup as Savoldi left the room. “Can I use one of these without any initials on it?” Rick asked.

“Sure,” Solly said. He walked to the cupboard and took down a cup marked with S.K. in bright blue letters. “Hell, we might as well all have some tea.” He brought his cup to the table, putting it down next to Rick’s sandwiches. “How about you, Manners?” he asked the Greek athlete at the end of the table.

“None for me,” Manners replied. “I’m strictly a milk man. Two quarts a day.”

“Sugar baby,” Solly said. “I’ll bet you don’t drink, smoke, curse, or screw either.”

“You’ve got me wrong,” Manners said. “They call me Amoral Alan in my neighborhood.”

“Where’s that? In the Virgin Islands?”

“Bensonhurst,” Manners said quickly, proudly.

“So why the hell did they give you a school in the Bronx?”

“I’ve got pull,” Manners said dryly.

“Pull this a while,” Solly said. He sat down abruptly, and Lou Savoldi came back into the room with the steaming tea kettle in his hand. Rick sat down with his cup, and Savoldi poured for himself, Solly, Rick, and Katz.

“I won’t be here long, anyway,” Manners said, smiling.

“How come?” Savoldi asked.

“I want an all-girls’ school,” Manners said honestly.

“They’re worse than all-boys’ schools,” Savoldi told him.

“Yeah, but think of the pussy,” Manners said honestly.

“Think of twenty-year jail sentences,” Savoldi said sadly.

“I know a guy who’s teaching science in a school in Harlem. All girls. He got propositioned six times his first day at the school. He was almost raped on the staircase.”

“I’ll stay here,” Savoldi said sadly. “It’s safer at my age.” He finished pouring and left the room to put the kettle back on the stove.

“Well,” Manners said, “that’s for me. An all-girls’ school.”

“You’re just a regular Lover Boy,” Solly told him.

Savoldi came back into the room and said, “You’re the original Lover Boy, Solly.”

“Don’t I know it?” Solly picked up his tea cup in both hands, sipped at it noisily and then said, “This is too damn hot.”

Rick bit into his ham sandwich and then sipped at his tea. The man lying on the couch had not moved a muscle since Rick had entered the room.

“You can go to an all-girls’ school if you like, Lover Boy,” Solly said, “but you won’t find it any different than any other vocational school in the city.”

“Girls are different from boys,” Savoldi said. “Ain’t you heard, Solly?”

“You always got your mind up some pussy,” Solly said. “I’m telling you there’s no difference. I know plenty of guys teaching in girls’ vocational schools. It’s no different. If anything, it’s worse. You can’t smack a girl around.”

“You never smacked any boy around, either,” Savoldi said.

“That’s true. I don’t want to get contaminated.”

“What do you mean?” Rick asked, chewing on his sandwich.

“What do I mean?” Solly repeated. “I’ll tell you something, Dadier. This is the garbage can of the educational system. Every vocational school in the city. You put them all together, and you got one big, fat, overflowing garbage can. And you want to know what our job is? Our job is to sit on the lid of the garbage can and see that none of the filth overflows into the streets. That’s our job.”

“You don’t mean that,” Rick said politely, incredulously.

“I don’t, huh?” Solly shrugged. “You’re new here, so you don’t know. I’m telling you it’s a garbage can, and you’ll find out the minute you get a whiff of the stink. All the waste product, all the crap they can’t fit into a general high school, all that stink goes into the garbage can that’s the vocational high school system. That’s why the system was invented.

“Sure, the books will tell you the vocational high school affords manual training for students who want to work with their hands. That’s all so much horse manure. Believe me, there’s only one thing these guys want to do with their hands. So some bright bastard figured a way to keep them off the streets. He thought of the vocational high school. Then he hired a bunch of guys with fat asses, a few with college degrees, to sit on the lid of the garbage can. That way, his wife and daughter can walk the streets without getting raped.”

“No one would want to rape your wife, Solly,” Savoldi said sadly.

“Except me,” Solly said. “The point is, you got to keep them off the streets. And this is as good a place as any. We’re just combinations of garbage men and cops, that’s all.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Rick said slowly. “I mean, there are surely boys here who really want to learn a trade.”

“You find me one,” Solly said. “Go ahead. Listen, I’ve been teaching here for twelve years, and only once did I find anything of worth in the garbage. People don’t knowingly dump diamonds in with the garbage. They throw crap in the garbage, and that’s what you’ll find here.”

“That’s why I want an all-girls’ school,” Manners said.

“Yeah, sure,” Solly said. “The only difference in an all-girls’ school is that you’ll find perfume along with the crap in the garbage.”

“You’re just bitter,” Savoldi said.

“Sure,” Solly said. “I should have been a teacher instead of a garbage man.”

“Garbage men get good salaries,” Savoldi put in.

“Which is more than teachers get,” Solly answered.

“Me,” Savoldi said sadly, “I’m very happy here.”

“That’s because you’re stupid,” Solly told him.

“No, I’m smart,” Savoldi admitted. “I teach Electrical Wiring, and that gives me bread and butter. Outside, I do odd jobs, and that gives me little luxuries.”

“I don’t see you driving a Caddy.”

“I don’t want a Caddy. I’m not that ambitious.”

“You’re not ambitious at all,” Solly told him.

“I have one ambition,” Savoldi said, nodding his head. “Just one.”

“What’s that?”

“Someday I’m going to rig an electric chair and bring it to class with me. I’m going to tell the kids it’s a circuit tester, and then I’m going to lead the little bastards in one by one and throw the switch on them. That’s my ambition.”

“And you’re happy here,” Solly said dryly.

“Sure. I’m happy. I’m like a man in a rainstorm. When the rain is coming down, I put on my raincoat. When I get home, I take off the coat and put it in the closet and forget all about it. That’s what I do here. I become Mr. Savoldi the minute I step through the door to the school, and I’m Mr. Savoldi until 3:25 every day. Then I take off the Mr. Savoldi raincoat, and I go home, and I become Lou again until the next morning. No worries that way.”

“Except one,” Solly said.

“What’s that?” Savoldi asked politely.

“That the kids will rig that goddamned electric chair before you do. Then they’ll throw the switch and good-by Mr. Savoldi and Lou, too.”

“These kids couldn’t wire their way into a pay toilet, even if they had a nickel’s head start,” Savoldi said sadly. He sipped at his tea and added, “You made my tea get cold.”

“Maybe the kids just need a chance,” Rick said lamely. “Hell, they can’t all be bad.”

“All right,” Solly said, “you give them their chance. But whatever you do, don’t turn your back on them.”

“I turned my back on them this morning,” Rick said, a little proudly.

“And you didn’t get stabbed?” Solly shrugged. “The first day of school. They probably left their hardware home.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Rick said, smiling.

“I am, huh? All right, I’m exaggerating. Tell him how much I’m exaggerating, Lou.”

“He’s exaggerating,” Savoldi said. “Solly is a big crap artist.”

“I turned my back on a class just once,” Solly said, “that’s all, just once. I never turned my back again after that.”

“What happened?” Rick asked.

“I was putting a diagram of a carburetor on the board. You have to illustrate things for these dumb bastards or they don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I had my back turned for about forty seconds. I had hardly picked up the goddamned chalk and started the drawing.”

“I heard this story already,” Savoldi said sadly.

“Yeah, well it’s true,” Solly said defensively.

“What happened?” Rick prodded.

“A goddamn baseball came crashing into the blackboard about two inches away from my head. It knocked a piece of slate out of the board as big as a half dollar.” Solly nodded, remembering the experience.

“What’d you do?” Rick asked.

“He wet his pants,” Savoldi said.

“You would have, too,” Solly said. “I did that, and then I got so goddamned mad I was ready to rip everyone of those bastards into little pieces. I turned around, and they were all sitting there dead-panned, with that stupid, innocent look on their faces. And then I cooled down and played it smart. I picked up the baseball, dropped it in the wastebasket, smiled, and said, ‘You’ll never pitch for the Yanks, boy.’ Just that. But I never turned my back again. Even writing on the board. I do it sideways.”

“Like a Chink,” Savoldi said. “Solly is part Mongolian.”

“Thank God I’m not part wop.”

“I’m all wop,” Savoldi said.

“Solly’s right,” George Katz put in, laying down his history book for a moment. “You’ve got to realize what you’re dealing with. You’ve got to understand the problem of most of these kids, and adjust your teaching accordingly.”

“What teaching?” Solly wanted to know. “Who’s kidding who? There’s no teaching involved here, none at all. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.”

“Well,” Katz said respectfully, “I think that’s carrying it a little far.”

“I’m understating it,” Solly said flatly. “If you want to be a success at Manual Trades, or any other goddamn vocational high school, you’ve got to live by two simple rules. One: Forget any preconceived notions you may have had about adolescents wanting to learn. There’s no truth in that when you apply it to the vocational high school. Two: Remember that self-preservation is the first law of life. Period. Amen.”

“I told you,” Savoldi said wistfully, “Solly’s a philosopher.”

“You didn’t tell us,” Solly said, “but who’s paying attention anyway?”

“You should have been President of the United States,” Savoldi said. “You’re going to waste, Solly.”

“Agh, who’s the President?” Solly asked. “He sits when he goes to the can, doesn’t he?”

George Katz laughed, and Manners said, “Anyway, I’m looking for an all-girls’ school.”

“All right. Lover Boy,” Solly said. “Look. I hope you find it.”

“Me too,” Manners said, smiling.

“Me, I’m stuck in the Forbidden City. I tried to get out of it a long time ago. But once you’re appointed here, it’s like being made a guard on Devil’s Island. There’s no escape.”

“I’m just a sub,” Manners said. “I won’t have any trouble.”

“Mazoltov,” Solly said, bowing his head.

There was the sound of loud laughter in the kitchen outside, and Solly said, “Here comes the Captain.” The laughing got louder, and then the red-headed gym teacher whom Rick had seen earlier burst into the dining room, slapping his thighs, tears rolling down his face.

“You’re late. Captain,” Solly said. “What happened? Kids didn’t feel like the parallel bars today?”

“Oh God,” the Captain said, roaring with laughter. “Oh my God!”

“What’s so funny?” Savoldi asked sadly.

“Oh great holy mother of Moses,” the Captain said, slapping his thigh again. “I’ll be goddamned to Samuel Gompers and back again. Oh my living ass!”

“What the hell is it?” Solly asked impatiently.

“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” the Captain said, the tears streaming down his ruddy cheeks. He shook his head, and the laughter subsided for a moment, and he said, “This beats it all. I’m standing there on the platform, you know, about fifteen minutes after the period started. Oh, my aching ass.”

“You going to tell the story or you going to pee all over the floor?” Solly asked.

“I’m reading the kids the riot act, and the door pops open and who should walk in?”

“Governor Dewey,” Solly said.

“Almost,” the Captain said. “But not quite. Who walks in but Mr. Small, principal of North Manual Trades High School. Mr. Small, himself, the bastard. Inspecting my class on the first goddamned day of school. Oh, my bleeding piles.”

“So?” Solly asked.

“I tell you, this is one for the books. I haven’t seen anything like it since I was in the infantry.” He began laughing again, and he continued laughing for a full minute before he was able to go on with his story. “He comes in, and the minute I see him, I shout, ‘Boys! Mr. Small, the principal!’ Like ‘Gentlemen, the Queen!’ you know? Well, he comes striding across the room, and the kids are standing there like limp rags, and he shouts in a commanding officer voice, ‘All right, boys. At ease!’

“At ease!” the Captain shouted. “At ease, when half those kids had their asses dragging on the floor, anyway. Well, he comes up to the platform, and he climbs up there, and he puts his hands on his hips and then he looks out over all the kids, and he doesn’t say a goddamn word. He just keeps looking out at them for about five minutes, with me standing right behind him. Then he climbs down from the platform, walks to the door, turns and says, ‘Carry on, Mr. Schaefer.’ CARRY ON, MR. SCHAEFER! Carry on, mind you, carry on, and a pip-pip and a cheerio! I swear to God I thought he was General MacArthur. I couldn’t stop laughing after he was gone. I picked up a towel and started wiping my face so the kids wouldn’t see me.

“What the hell does he think this is, a military academy?”

“He’s just showing them who’s boss,” Solly said, chuckling.

“Oh my back. I’m telling you, he convulsed me. That simple bastard. All he needed was a riding crop! Listen, I got to get back. I’ve got the idiots playing basketball, but the period’s almost over.”

He turned and left the dining room, striding across the kitchen, and laughing until he was out of earshot.

“He was a captain in the last war,” Solly explained. “Hell of a nice guy.”

“I didn’t give him my dues,” Rick said.

“Oh, he’ll get you. The Captain never misses.”

Lou Savoldi stood and began clearing the table before him. He took his cup out to the sink, washed it, and then hung it back on its hook. “I’m going down,” he said.

“Back to the salt mines,” Solly said. “You free the sixth?”

“No,” Savoldi said sadly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“I guess so,” Savoldi said sadly.

Rick rose, cleared his place and dumped the waxed paper and brown bag in the trash basket near the bulletin board. Then he washed the cup he’d used and put it back in the cupboard.

When the bell rang, he picked up his briefcase, and Solly said, “I’ll walk down with you.”

“Okay,” Rick said.

“What’ve you got now?” Solly asked as they left the lunchroom.

“Fifth-termers,” Rick said.

“Fifth-termers, you say?” Solly asked, his eyebrows raised.

“Yes.”

“Mmm,” Solly said. He didn’t say another word as they walked down the steps and across the gymnasium.

Rick could have become a hero during that fifth period, fifth-term English class. He certainly had opportunity enough to become one if he’d wanted to. It’s to his credit that he did not achieve heroic stature until later in the day.

The first thing he noticed when he entered the room was that the class was a small one, not more than twenty or so boys. He was happy about that because it’s easier to teach a small group. He didn’t know, of course, that there were thirty-five boys in 55-206, and that most of them had already begun cutting on this first day of the term.

The second thing he noticed was the well-built Negro boy with the white tee shirt and dungarees. The boy noticed him at the same moment, and the charming grin broke out on his handsome face.

“Well,” he said, “hello, Chief.”

“Gregory Miller,” Rick said.

“You did remember the name, dintchoo, Chief?”

“Sit down, Miller,” Rick said. “And my name is Mr. Dadier. I think you’d better start remembering that.”

Miller took his seat, and Rick looked over to the other boys who were standing in clusters around the room, talking or laughing.

“All right,” he said, “let’s sit down. And let’s make it fast.”

The boys looked up at him, but they made no move toward their seats.

“You deaf back there? Let’s break it up.”

“Why?” one of the boys asked.

“What?” Rick said, surprised.

“I said ‘Why?’ ”

“I heard you, smart boy. Get to your seat before you find a seat in the principal’s office.”

“I’m petrified,” the tall boy said. He had stringy blond hair, and the hair was matted against his forehead. His face was a field of ripe acne, and when he grinned his lips contorted crookedly in a smile that was boyishly innocent and mannishly sinister at the same time. He continued smiling as he walked to the middle of the room and took the seat alongside Miller. The other boys, taking his move as a cue, slowly drifted back to the seats and turned their attention to Rick.

“You may keep the seats you now have,” Rick said, reaching into his briefcase for the Delaney cards. He distributed the cards as he’d done with his official class, and said, “I’m sure you know how to fill these out.”

“We sure do,” the blond boy said.

“I didn’t get your name,” Rick said pointedly.

“Maybe ’cause I didn’t give it,” the boy answered, the crooked smile on his mouth again.

“His name is Emmanuel, too,” Miller said. He smiled at the private joke which only he and Rick shared.

“Is it?” Rick asked innocently.

“No,” the blond boy said.

“Then what is it?”

“Guess,” the blond boy said. “It begins with a W.”

“I’d say ‘Wiseguy’ offhand, but I’m not good at guessing. What’s your name, and make it snappy.”

“West,” the boy said. “Artie West.”

Rick smiled, suddenly reversing his tactics, hoping to throw the boys off balance. They were expecting a hardman, so he’d wisecrack a little, show them that he could exchange a gag when there was time for gagging. “Any relation to Mae West?” he asked.

West answered so quickly that Rick was certain he’d heard the same question many times before. “Only between my eyes and her tits,” he said, the crooked grin on his mouth.

His answer provided Rick with a choice. He could drop the banter immediately and clamp down with the mailed fist again, or he could show that he wasn’t the kind of person who could be bested in a match of wits. For some obscure reason that probably had a smattering of pride attached to it, he chose to continue the match.

“Watch your language,” he said, smiling. “My mother’s picture is in my wallet.”

“I didn’t know you had one,” West said.

Again there was the choice, only this time West had penetrated deeper. A warning buzzer sounded at the back of Rick’s mind. He saw the grinning faces of the boys in 55-206, and he knew they wanted him to continue the battle of half-wits. He would have liked to continue it himself, despite the incessant warning that screamed inside his head now. The truth was, however, he could not think of a comeback, and rather than spout something inadequate, he fled behind the fortress of his desk and said, “All right, let’s knock it off now, and fill out the Delaney cards.”

West smiled knowingly, and winked at Miller. He was a sharp cookie. West, and Miller was just as sharp — and if the two were friends, there’d probably be trouble in 55-206, Rick figured.

Rick looked out over the boys as they filled out the Delaney cards. There was a handful of Negroes in the class, and the rest of the boys were white, including a few Puerto Ricans. They all appeared to be between sixteen and seventeen, and most of them wore the tee shirt and dungarees which Rick assumed to be the unofficial uniform of the school.

“As you know,” he said, “this is English 55-206, and we’re here to learn English. I know a lot of you will be wondering why on earth you have to learn English. Will English help you get a job as a mechanic, or an electrician? The answer is yes, English will. Besides, no matter what you’ve thought of English up to now, I think you’ll enjoy this class, and you might be surprised to find English one of your favorite subjects before the term is finished.”

“I’ll be s’prised, all right,” Miller said.

“I don’t want any calling out in this classroom,” Rick said sternly. “If you have anything to say, you raise your hand. Is that understood? My name, incidentally, is Mr. Dadier.”

“We heard of you, Daddy-oh,” a boy at the back of the room said.

“Pronunciation is an important part of English,” Rick said coldly. “I’d hate to fail any boy because he couldn’t learn to pronounce my name. It’s Mr. Dadier. Learn it, and learn it now. Believe me, it won’t break my heart to fail all of you.”

A small Negro boy wearing a porkpie hat suddenly got to his feet. He put his hands on his hips, and a sneer curled his mouth. “You ever try to fight thirty-five guys at once, teach?” he asked.

Rick heard the question, and it set off a trigger response in his mind which told him, This is it, Dadier. This is it, my friend. He narrowed his eyes and walked slowly and purposefully around his desk. The boy was seated in the middle of the room, and Rick walked up the aisle nearest his desk, realizing as he did so that he was placing himself in a surrounded-by-boys position. He walked directly to the boy, pushed his face close to his, and said, “Sit down, son, and take off that hat before I knock it off.”

He said it tightly, said it the way he’d spoken the lines for Duke Mantee when he’d played The Petrified Forest at Hunter. He did not know what the reaction would be, and he was vaguely aware of a persistent fear that crawled up his spine and into his cranium. He knew he could be jumped by all of them in this single instant, and the knowledge made him taut and tense, and in that short instant before the boy reacted, he found himself moving his toes inside his shoes to relieve the tension, to keep it from breaking out in the form of a trembling hand or a ticcing face.

The room was dead silent, and it seemed suddenly cold, despite the September sunshine streaming through the windows.

And even though the boy reacted almost instantly, it seemed forever to Rick.

The boy snatched the hat from his head, all his bravado gone, his eyes wide in what appeared to be fright. “I’m sorry, teach,” he said, and then he instantly corrected it to “Mr. Dadier.”

He sat immediately, and he avoided Rick’s eyes, and Rick stood near his desk and continued to look down at the boy menacingly for a long while. Then he turned his back on the boy and walked back to the front of his room and his own desk. His face was set tightly, and he made his nostrils flare, the way he’d learned to do a long time ago in his first dramatics class.

He flipped open his Delaney book, stared down at it, and then raised his head slowly, the mock cold anger still in his eyes and the hard line of his mouth. “Pass the Delaney cards to the front of the room. Pass down your program cards, too, and I’ll sign them. You there, in the first row, collect them all and bring them to my desk.”

The boy in the first seat of the first row smiled at Rick vacuously, and he made no move to start collecting the cards which were already being passed down to the front of each row.

“Did you hear me?” Rick asked.

“Yes,” the boy said, still smiling vacuously.

“Then let’s move,” Rick said tightly.

The boy rose, still smiling that stupid, empty smile. Another wise guy. Rick thought. The room is full of wise guys.

The stupidly smiling boy collected all the cards, and brought them to Rick. Rick inserted the Delaney cards into his book, and then began mechanically signing the program cards in the spaces provided, a system which made it impossible for a boy to miss being enrolled in the class to which he had been assigned. When the program cards were returned to the official teachers the next day, any delinquent would automatically be exposed. It was an effective system.

“We won’t accomplish much today, other than getting acquainted. Tomorrow we’ll get our books from the book room, and begin work.”

He shifted his glance to the boy in the first seat of the first row. The boy was still smiling. The smile was plastered onto his thin face. He looked as if he were enjoying something immensely. Rick turned away from him, irritated, but not wanting another showdown so soon after his brush with the other boy.

“Our trip to the book room shouldn’t take more than...”

“Is this trip necessary?” one of the boys called out.

Third seat, second row. Rick automatically tabulated the boy, and then fingered his card in the Delaney book. “What’d you say, Belazi?” he asked, reading the boy’s name from the card.

“I said, is this trip necessary?”

“Yes, it is. Does that answer your question?”

“Yes, it does,” the boy said.

“I’m glad it does, Belazi. Do you have any other important questions to ask?” He recalled something about sarcasm being a bad weapon to use against a class, but he shrugged the memory aside.

“Nope,” Belazi answered.

“Well, good. May I go on with what I was saying then, with your kind permission?”

“Sure,” Belazi said, smiling.

“Thank you. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”

“He the most thoughtful cat in this class,” Miller said emphatically.

“Nobody asked you, Miller,” Rick snapped.

“I ony just volunteerin’ the information.”

“I appreciate it,” Rick said, unsmiling. “But I’ll try to manage without your help.”

“Think you’ll make it, teach?” West asked.

“I’ll tell you what, West,” Rick said. “I’ll be here until four this afternoon, planning tomorrow’s lesson for this class. Since you’re so worried, why don’t you join me, and we’ll plan it together.”

“You can handle that case alone,” West said.

“Aw, go on, help him,” another boy called.

Rick located the card in the Delaney book. “Antoro? Is that your name?”

“Yeah,” the boy said, proud to be in the act.

“Do you know what Toro means in Spanish?” Rick asked.

“My name ain’t Toro,” Antoro replied.

“Nonetheless, do you know what it means?”

“No. What?”

“Bull. Plain, old, ordinary, common bull.”

Antoro, plainly insulted, retreated behind a sullen visage. Rick turned away from him and looked directly at the boy in the first seat of the first row. The boy was still smiling that blank, stupid smile.

“What’s so funny?” Rick asked.

The boy continued to smile.

“You,” Rick snapped. He looked at the card in the Delaney book. “Santini. What’s so funny?”

“Me?” Santini asked, smiling vacuously.

“Yes, you. What’s so funny?”

“Nothin’,” Santini said, smiling broadly.

“Then why are you...”

“He the smilinest cat in this whole school,” Miller informed Rick. “He smile all the time. Thass cause he an idiot.”

“What?” Rick asked, turning.

Miller tapped his temple with one brown forefinger. “Lotsa muscles,” he said, “but no brains.”

Rick looked at Santini. The boy was still smiling, and the smile was an idiotic one. There was no mirth behind it. It perched on his mouth like a plaster monkey. He felt suddenly embarrassed for having brought the smile to the attention of the class. Surely, the boy was not an idiot, but his intelligence was probably so low that...

“Well, try to pay attention here,” Rick said awkwardly.

“I’m payin’ attention,” Santini said innocently, still smiling.

Rick cleared his throat and passed out the signed program cards. He hated these damned orientation classes. The beginning was bound to be difficult, and it was made doubly difficult by the fact that there was really nothing to do without books and without... without a plan, he reluctantly admitted, realizing he should have planned out these first, difficult, getting-acquainted periods.

“We’ll cover a lot of interesting topics this term,” he said. “We’ll learn all about newspapers, and we’ll read a lot of interesting short stories, and several good novels, and we’ll cover some good plays, too, perhaps acting them out right here in class.”

“Tha’s for me,” Miller said suddenly. Rick smiled, pleased because he thought he’d struck a responsive chord.

“The acting, you mean?” he asked.

“Man, man,” Miller said. “I’m a real Tyrone Power type. You watch me, Chief. I’ll lay ’em in the aisles.”

The boys all laughed suddenly, and for a moment Rick didn’t know what the joke was. He understood suddenly and completely. Miller had used the word “lay” and that was always good for a yak. He wondered whether or not Miller had chosen the word purposely, or had simply blundered into the approving laughter of the boys. Whatever the case. Miller basked in his glory, soaking up the laughs like sunshine.

“Well, you’ll get plenty of opportunity to act,” Rick said, pretending he didn’t understand what the laughter was about. “And we’ll have all sorts of contests, too, for letter-writing, and for progress made. I’m thinking of awarding prizes to the boys who show me they’re really working. Like tickets to football games and hockey games, things like that. Provided I get some co-operation from you.”

“You ever hear of Juan Garza, teach?” one of the boys piped.

“No, I don’t believe so,” Rick said. “Who was Juan Garza?”

“He used to be in my class,” the boy said. Rick had located his card now in the Delaney book. The boy’s name was Maglin.

“What about Juan Garza, Maglin?” Rick asked.

Maglin smiled. “Nothing. He just used to be in my class, that’s all.”

“Why’d you ask if I knew him?”

“I just thought you might have heard about him. He used to be in my class.”

“I gather he was a celebrity of some sort,” Rick said dryly.

“He sure was,” Maglin said, and all the boys laughed their approval.

“Well, it’s a shame he’s not in the class now,” Rick said, and for some reason all the boys found this exceptionally funny. He was ready to pursue the subject further when the bell rang. He rose quickly and said, “I’ll see you all tomorrow, Miller, I’d like to talk to you for a moment.”

Miller’s brow creased into a frown, and the frown vanished before a confident smile. He came to the front of the room, and while the rest of the boys sauntered out, he stood uneasily by the desk, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Rick waited until the other boys were all gone. He knew exactly what he was going to do, but he wanted to do it alone, with just him and Miller present. Its effectiveness would depend upon Miller’s response, and he was sure the response would be a good one, once he separated Miller from the pack. When the other boys had all drifted out, he said, “Man to man talk, Miller. Okay?”

“Sure,” Miller said uneasily, staring down at his shoelaces.

“I’ve checked your records,” he lied. “You’ve got the makings of a leader, Miller. You’re bright and quick, and the other boys like you.”

“Me?” Miller asked, lifting his eyes, surprised. “Me?”

The flattery was beginning to work, and Rick pressed his advantage, smiling paternally now. “Yes, Miller, you. Come now, let’s have no modesty here. You know you’re head and shoulders above all of these boys.”

Miller smiled shyly. “Well, I don’t know. I mean...”

“Here’s the point, Miller. We’re going to have a damned fine class here.” He used the word “damned” purposely, to show Miller he was not above swearing occasionally. “I can sense that. But I want it to be an outstanding class, and I can’t make it that without your help.”

“Me?” Miller asked again, really surprised now, and Rick wondered if he hadn’t carried the flattery angle too far.

“Yes, you,” he pushed on. “Come on, boy, let’s lay our cards on the table.”

“I don’t know what you want, Ch... Mr. Dadier,” Miller said.

“I want you to be the leader in this class, the way you’re entitled to be. I want you to set the example for the rest of the boys. I want you to give me all your co-operation, and the other boys will automatically follow suit. That’s what I want, Miller. If you help me, we can make this class the best one in the school.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Miller said dubiously.

“I do know,” Rick insisted. “What do you say, boy?”

“Well... sure, I’ll help all I can. Sure, if you think so.”

“That’s my boy,” Rick said, rising and clapping Miller on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Miller.” He walked Miller to the doorway, his arm around the boy. “Now take it easy.”

“Sure,” Miller said, puzzled. His brow furrowed once, and then he smiled again. “Sure,” he said. And then, almost arrogantly, “Sure!”

Rick watched him go down the corridor, and then he went back into the room and packed his briefcase. He had been smooth there, all right. Brother, he had pulled the wool clear down over Miller’s eyes, clear down over his shoelaces, too. Once he put Miller in his pocket, he’d get West, too. And once he got the two troublemakers, the clowns, the class was his. He’d used flattery, the oldest of weapons, and Miller had taken the hook without once suspecting any trickery. A leader, indeed! Rickie, he told himself, you are a bloody goddamned genius! The class had been troublesome, true, but he’d put his finger on the trouble spot and immediately weeded it out. That was the way to do it, despite what Solly Klein preached. These kids were humans, and not animals to be penned up and ignored. All you had to do was hit the proper chord.

He zipped up his briefcase, and when he left the room for his Unassigned sixth period, he was pretty damned happy, unaware that he would be elevated to the pedestal marked Hero within a matter of ten minutes.

When he left the classroom, he had no idea where he was going. He knew he could go up to the teacher’s lunchroom again, but he also knew Solly Klein was free during this sixth period, and he somehow did not feel like listening to more comments this day upon the imbecility of the students at Manual Trades. Especially after his coup with Miller. No, he was not anticipating any serious trouble with any of his classes, and Klein’s bitter pronouncements would definitely clash with his present frame of mind.

Had he decided to go to the teacher’s lunchroom, he’d have headed toward the short side of the L, and then climbed to the third floor where he would cut across the gymnasium. He might have avoided the laurel of Herohood had he done so. But he did not head for the teacher’s lunchroom.

Instead, he decided to leave the building, take a brisk walk outside. He did not know that a teacher was not permitted to leave the building during an Unassigned period. A teacher could do what he wanted on his lunch hour, which was a God-given right, but he was expected to be around during an Unassigned period, should any emergency arise. Not knowing the technicality or legality involved. Rick decided to leave the building, returning in time for his seventh-period class. On a whim, and because he did not feel like walking, he stopped near the elevator and rang for it.

Had the elevator arrived when he summoned it, he might also have missed becoming a hero. Unfortunately, the elevator was parked on the fourth floor of the building, stacked with World History books. George Katz, the eager beaver that he was, was directing the unloading of those books, and he had thought far enough in advance to include books for his entire battery of classes. The elevator would be inactive on the fourth floor for the better part of the sixth period.

Rick pressed the button three more times, waiting patiently for the elevator. When he saw that the floor indicator refused to budge from the figure four set in its semicircular face, he shrugged and headed for the stairwell.

The stairwells at North Manual Trades High School were divided into Up and Down sections. He was ready to start down the open steps that confronted him when he stepped through the doors, and then he saw the Up sign. A strange sense of right and wrong suddenly possessed him, and he could not at that moment ever consider going down on a staircase plainly marked Up. He backed off, and began walking around the landing, toward the meshed window set in the wall, and toward the Down part of the stairwell.

It was then that he became a hero.

The sunshine streamed through the meshed window, blinding him for an instant. He saw a blur of movement to the right of the window, and he blinked his eyes against the sunlight, and then the blur became two figures.

He was still walking slowly, with his briefcase in one hand. He suddenly realized that the figures were struggling, and he instantly figured it for a fight between two of the boys. And then the figures took definite shape, and he dropped the briefcase, and started forward at a sprint.

One of the figures was a tall boy in tee shirt and dungarees, no more than seventeen years old. The other figure was Miss Hammond.

The boy had one hand clamped over Miss Hammond’s mouth. The other hand was around her waist as he forced her backward against the wall.

“Hey!” Rick shouted.

The boy turned suddenly, moving to Miss Hammond’s side. It was then that Rick saw the torn front of her suit jacket, and the ripped blouse and lingerie. My God, he thought wildly, that’s her breast, and then he was clamping his hand on the boy’s shoulder and spinning him around.

Fear and panic were mingled on the boy’s face. He had gotten more than he’d bargained for, a hell of a lot more. He had planned on a quick piece on a deserted stairwell. He had planned it from the moment he’d caught a glimpse of Miss Hammond’s legs in the auditorium that morning. He had also planned on scaring hell out of her, threatening her with violence if she told anyone what had happened. But this was different. He was caught, and there’d be no threats of violence now that this crew-cut bastard had stepped in and loused up the works.

Miss Hammond, her mouth free now, screamed. Rick probably wouldn’t have hit the boy if Miss Hammond hadn’t screamed, but the scream gave urgency to the situation, and he brought back his fist as he spun the boy around, and then he threw his arm forward, and when his fist collided with the boy’s mouth, the shock rumbled all the way up to his shoulder socket.

The boy bounced back against the radiator, and Miss Hammond screamed again, holding her hand up to cover the purple nipple and roseate of her breast behind the torn slip and brassiere.

“You lousy bastard,” the boy yelled, and Rick hit him again, and this time a smear of crimson spread on the boy’s mouth, staining his teeth. Miss Hammond kept screaming, and the stairwell was suddenly flooded with teachers and monitors. Rick held the boy’s arm tightly, twisting it up behind his back.

“What happened?” someone said, and Miss Hammond said, “A jacket, something, a jacket,” blubbering incoherently. Another teacher grabbed the bleeding boy, and Rick stripped off his jacket, handing it to Miss Hammond. She slipped into it quickly, still sobbing, her hair disarranged, her hands trembling. The jacket was too large for her, but she clutched it to her exposed breast thankfully, her cheeks flushed with excitement. Rick looked at her again, at the delicate features, the full body thrusting against his jacket. He looked at her, and felt terribly embarrassed for her all at once. And feeling her embarrassment, he suddenly hated the boy who’d attacked her. He hated him intensely, and he thought of the innocent exposure of Miss Hammond’s breast as he had seen it, full and rounded, the torn silk of her underwear framing it, providing a cushion for it. A youthful breast it had been, firm, with the nipple large and erect. He concentrated on the embarrassment he felt for her, and he concentrated on his hatred for the boy, and he seized the boy roughly and shouted, “Come on, mister. The principal wants to see you.”

The quicker of the teachers had grasped the situation immediately, and they were shooing the monitors away from the scene of the attack. Martha Riley, whose math class happened to be on the second floor, arrived on the scene and began comforting Miss Hammond, putting her fat arm around her and clucking like a mother hen. She led her to the ladies’ room, and Rick watched the pair depart, still feeling embarrassed for Miss Hammond.

The teachers began talking it up, and amid the babble of voices. Rick took the boy down to the principal’s office. He listened to everything the principal said, listened to the principal say, “We’re going to take care of you, smart guy. We’re really going to take care of you.” He filled out reports and signed them, and he told the story at least ten times before the bell sounded for the beginning of the seventh period.

It is accurate to say that Richard Dadier, even though he went through the paces of orientating his seventh- and eighth-period classes, did not really know what the hell was going on. He was excited now that it was all over. He had not had a chance for excitement while it was happening because it all happened too quickly. But the excitement bubbled inside him now, and as he spoke to the classes, he thought of the experience again and again, putting all the pieces in their proper order, reliving it again and again. He did not remember afterward what he had said to the classes. He was totally unaware of them throughout the last two periods of the day.

And he was certainly unaware of the fact that his heroism, tales of which had spread through the school like a brush fire, was regarded by the students of Manual Trades as nothing but the basest, most treacherous type of villainy.

4

It was not until Thursday of that first school week that Rick came down from outer space and tried to evaluate his new standing at the high school. It was a new standing, and even the most casual observer could not have denied that fact. The Richard Dadier who emerged from the sordid business of rape was not the same Richard Dadier who’d been headed for an illegal stroll outside the building in an Unassigned period.

When the initial excitement had worn off, when Small had already congratulated him, when Stanley had already congratulated him, when even George Katz had offered his congratulations. Rick began feeling a little embarrassed over his part in the drama.

He had never stopped a rape before, except by changing his mind, and he found his role of “protector of the virgin” a difficult one to assume. He was sensitively aware of the heads that turned when he walked through a corridor, of the hushed whispers that sprang up behind his back, of the curiously lifted eyebrows, the cupped hands. There was not a student on Tuesday morning — except those who’d been cutting since the term began — who had not heard of Rick’s derring-do. He had been elevated to a celebrity’s position on the first day of school, and he did not know whether or not he appreciated the sudden fame.

The fame, ignoring Rick’s feelings completely, walked everywhere before him. Students parted in the corridors to let him through. Teachers he hadn’t met stopped to pat him on the back or pass the time of day. The monitors at his Hall Patrol post seemed afraid of him, and the Students’ Lavatory at that end of the corridor was conspicuously empty for long stretches of time.

He wore the fame the way he’d wear a Christmas tie from a wealthy aunt. The gaudy brilliance of it embarrassed him, but he simply couldn’t throw it away now that he’d received it.

His classes on Tuesday beheld him with a mute curiosity. When he spoke, they listened. No one called him “teach.” Everyone raised his hand before speaking. There was no calling out, and no buzzing, and no disorder of any kind. The curiosity was of the same kind that would have been afforded Rocky Marciano had he paid a visit to the school.

The kids all knew that Rick had stopped a rape, and they knew he’d stopped it by clobbering a fairly hefty boy square on the kisser. Hardly any of the students had seen the attacker after Rick split his lip. Some had, though, and the quantity of blood spilled had increased with each telling of the gruesome tale. By the time the story had made its rounds through the school, the kid who’d tried to rape Miss Hammond had been carted away to the hospital with half his teeth missing, a broken nose, and a possible concussion of the skull, with brain surgery a likelihood.

So Rick’s classes watched him, and whereas their silence was appreciated, it was also a peculiar silence, a calculating silence. If Rick had been a reader of Westerns, he’d have been able to interpret the calculating silence. For he was, in actuality, the renowned gunslick entering a strange town. His fame had spread before him, and the eyes were not so much admiring as they were appraising. The eyes were waiting, waiting for a chance to test the skill of this notorious fellow.

Rick was not of the bulging muscles variety of man. He was thin and sinewy, and the kids appraised his lanky length and wondered if perhaps he hadn’t pulled a lead pipe on the rapist. His physical appearance whetted their curiosities further, and there were those who fondly recalled Juan Garza, remembering that he’d been a skinny little runt, much skinnier than Rick could ever be, and look at the hell he had raised.

Curiosity led to conjecture on the part of the kids. The lead pipe story was in vogue for about two hours, to be replaced immediately by a story which said Mr. Dadier carried a brass doorknob in his briefcase, and that he’d used the doorknob unmercifully on the rapist.

One of the kids in the schoolyard, watching a handball game, ventured the possibility that Mr. Dadier had once had boxing lessons. The possibility became a reality within the next half-hour. Rick had not only had boxing lessons, but he was contender for the Hawaiian championship, having left the army to teach only because he’d once blinded a man in the ring.

There were the jokers, too. The jokers spread the yarn that Rick hadn’t really rescued Miss Hammond. On the contrary, it was Rick who’d been about to get raped, and Miss Hammond had saved him in the nick of time.

And, of course, there were the righteous protectors of student rights who felt that it was Rick who’d attempted to rape Miss Hammond. The unfortunate student had happened along, and Rick had slugged him and quickly shifted the blame.

But beneath all the stories and the raillery, the kids knew deep within them that Rick had indeed stopped the rape, and that he’d done it by slugging the attacker. And so they watched his every move silently, like vultures wheeling over a thirsty man on the desert. They devoted more intense concentration to Rick’s footwork and the size of his clenched fist on that Tuesday than they’d devoted to the process of education in all their collective lives.

On Wednesday, the picture changed.

Up to that time, the rapist had remained a faceless nobody, a phallic symbol floating on a sea of rumors. Mr. Small changed all that on Wednesday, at his get-acquainted assembly with the students.

He was a big man, and the kids gave him almost as much attention as they’d given Rick’s sudden rise to fame. Hell, this might be a new trend. First a goddamn English teacher who goes around batting kids on the staircase, and now a principal who looks like a wrestler. What the hell was North Manual Trades High School coming to anyway? The grapevine had already told them he’d come from Brooklyn Automotive, a fact they greeted without noticeable enthusiasm. The grapevine also added that the scar on his face had come from a knife fight, and that he’d taken the knife from its wielder and shoved it down the poor bastard’s throat.

This was not good news.

It was always rough when a new man hopped in the principal’s chair. It was like a woman marrying an alcoholic, gambling, lying, screwing drug addict. Right away came the reforms.

There had been reforms before. The kids were used to hotshot principals who shot their loads in the first month and then settled down to letting the school run itself. These guys were always tough in the beginning. Until they knew what they were up against, and realized they were shoveling manure against the tide. You take a few shovelfuls of the stuff, and then you decide to go up on the boardwalk and watch nature. It’s less smelly that way, and you expend less energy.

Small, however, looked like the kind of dim-witted jerk who would enjoy a little horse dung in his hair. Hell, he’d keep shoveling the stuff until he was covered with it, and then he’d order some for lunch. He’d probably done a lot of shoveling at Brooklyn Automotive. A job like that can get to be a habit. Like Charlie Chaplin tightening the bolts in Modern Times.

So they looked at Small, and they said, “Small, huh?” and they wondered whether or not they’d be asking for transfers to Bronx Vocational or Samuel Gompers before long. Nothing can screw up a good school like a hot-shot principal, especially one who pulls knives away from people.

Small crowded the microphone, as if he expected no back talk from it or anyone present. The kids disliked him instantly. Their worst fears were realized the minute he opened his big yap. He was, the bastard, a reformer, and they needed a reformer like they needed a hole in the head.

He gave them the usual reform pitch, the one all the new jerks gave, only he sounded as if he meant it. He sounded, in fact, as if he dared anyone to doubt that he meant it. This was not good at all. This was miserable. This was a bad way to start out. How were you supposed to enjoy school when you got a guy like this one for principal? How were you supposed to learn anything?

And then Small got around to the attempted rape. He lowered his voice, and the kids sitting up front saw that he also narrowed his eyes and tightened his lips.

“There was an unfortunate incident here on the first day of school,” he said. The kids had all been silent before this, but the room seemed to grow even more hushed, as if all breathing had suddenly stopped. Sitting in the back of the auditorium with his official class. Rick sucked in a deep breath. The heads were beginning to turn already, a few at a time, spreading across rows, racing through the packed auditorium like a petroleum blaze. They turned in two directions, as if the blaze were fanned by cross-currents of wind, one half turning toward Rick where he sat, and the other half swiveling to catch a look at Miss Hammond.

“One of our boys decided he was out in the streets,” Small said, ignoring the twisting heads and craning necks. “The boy’s name was Douglas Murray.”

It was out now. Douglas Murray. And there were kids who’d known Murray, and there were kids who’d liked Murray, and the entire rape had suddenly assumed a very personal aspect. If it happened to Murray, who was just one of the guys, why couldn’t it happen to any one of them? You get bastards like Dadier fouling up the detail, and you get a hot-shot like Small who condones such horse manure, and next thing you knew they’d all be in reform school. The kids leaned forward eagerly, turning all their attention to Small again. This was no laughing matter. This was something of vital importance to all of them.

“One of our teachers stopped the incident from becoming a disastrous one,” Small said, casually ignoring the fact that every kid in the auditorium knew the “incident” was an attempted rape. “Douglas Murray may be a little sorry he stepped out of line. Criminal assault charges have been pressed against him. I think you all know what that means.”

They all knew, all right. They all knew that this didn’t mean reform school. They mentally calculated Murray’s age, and they figured this for a prison rap, if anything, and all because the poor bastard tried to cop a feel. And all because Dadier had stepped in and made like a goddamned hero.

“I’m telling you this story,” Small went on, “to illustrate an important point.” He paused, and then roared, “I WILL STAND FOR NO NONSENSE IN MY SCHOOL, IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?”

The kids caught their breaths collectively, and Small’s voice dropped to almost a whisper.

“No nonsense at all. None. Never. We took care of Douglas Murray, and we’ll take care of anyone who steps out of line. Remember that, boys, because we’ll all be a whole lot happier if you do. And you’ll be a whole lot sadder if you don’t.”

Rick’s hands were trembling. He clenched them in his lap, and bit his lip, and then stopped biting his lip when he realized the boys in his official class were watching him. He sensed hostility from them, and he wondered if Small had done the right thing in calling attention to what had happened. Certainly, enough attention had been called to it before this.

Small’s manner suddenly changed. He was no longer the tyrant addressing his peasant multitude. He was a nice guy now, a master of ceremonies at a stag smoker.

“Boys,” he said, smiling, “we’re going to get along fine. I’ve taught at schools before, plenty of them, but I’ve never felt so good as I do about being appointed principal here. This is going to be a fine term, and we’re going to make it one of the best in the school’s history.” He shrugged sadly, his eyes becoming dolorous. “We’ve had a bad start, but the teams that win the pennants very often have bad starts.” He clenched his right fist and leaned out over the microphone. “North Manual Trades High School is going to win a pennant, boys!” He chuckled and then said conspiratorially, “What’s more, fellows, we’ll probably win the Series.”

The boys did not applaud. They did not move. This big bastard may think he’s Milton Berle, they were thinking, but he’s not fooling us, not one bit. We know he’s a louse, and we’ve got him pegged, and we’re going to watch him because he’s liable to stick a knife in our backs while he’s patting us there. And Dadier... well, we’ll see about our good friend Daddy-oh, the tough guy.

So the colors were carried out, and the assembly was dismissed, and since the day was shot anyway, what with shortened periods in order to give all the boys a chance to meet Small at two separate assemblies, there wasn’t much time left for teaching. The school term, for all practical purposes, did not start until Thursday morning, even though it had started with a considerable bang several days before that.

And it was on Thursday, at precisely 2:07 in the morning, that Rick started evaluating his position. He and Anne had talked until almost one-thirty, lying in bed and conversing in whispers, almost as if they were not the only two people in the apartment. She had seemed terribly distressed about the incident, and she had not liked Small’s handling of it at all. She firmly pronounced that the new principal must be a very stupid man, and she hoped his little speech hadn’t started Rick off on the wrong foot, together with the Series-winning school.

She had also exhibited a womanlike contempt for Miss Hammond, blaming her for not wearing sackcloth and ashes to a teaching job in a school like that. Even after Rick explained that Miss Hammond hadn’t been dressed flashily at all, Anne still held to the theory that no woman gets raped or nearly raped unless she’s looking for it.

Rick did not pause to analyze the psychology of the pregnant woman. It had not occurred to him that pregnancy was a complete paradox. It was paradoxical in that only the female of the species could perform the amazing feat, while perhaps being less psychologically prepared for it than a male would have been. No woman enjoys the sight of sagging breasts and a bulging stomach, no matter how maternal her urge. A woman’s good looks are a woman’s good looks, and there is little good-looking about a pregnant woman.

Rick did not know that his wife had stood before the full-length mirror in the bathroom, sometimes for half-hours on end, studying her profile and wagging her head in sad, amazed wonder. She could not be blamed, therefore, for feeling some contempt for the woman who had plunged Rick into his present predicament. Such contempt was only normal. This Miss Hammond was slim. This Miss Hammond’s breasts were not tender to the touch, nor did they feel like heavy stones. This Miss Hammond did not have a constant backache, nor was the skin on her stomach stretching like a bloated balloon. This Miss Hammond did not have to stand before a full length mirror and drape a towel from chin to toes over a mountainous fetus in order to remember what she’d once looked like.

No. Miss Hammond had been sufficiently attractive to provoke a rape. Anne had heard of pregnant women being raped, but she doubted very much if she could arouse any rampant male interest at this late stage of the motherhood game. So whereas she looked forward to the new addition with an almost childlike expectancy, she still possessed a woman’s eye, and she could not trick that woman’s eye into thinking all was well in the state of Denmark, or even in the state of her expanding middle.

That Rick had performed gallantly was another matter entirely. She’d have been surprised if he hadn’t. But that a slender, attractive, rape-provoking woman had been the cause of his gallantry — well, this did not sit too happily in her lactating breast. Especially if it led to trouble for Rick, and it showed every indication of doing just that.

Rick had listened to everything she’d said, silently agreeing with her, but not wanting her to get upset about the whole thing. He even wondered if he should have told her about it at all. She did, after all, have a condition.

He smiled in the darkness. Anne was asleep already, her hands holding his own hand to her breast, clinging to it warmly. He thought again of the “condition” and the smile expanded. Ever since the beginning of her pregnancy, even when it had hardly shown at all, Anne had girlishly lowered her eyes whenever Rick raised his voice. And then, in a barely audible whisper, she would say, “Please, Rick. I have a condition.”

She did indeed have a condition, and it looked as if he had one, too. Tomorrow was another day, of course. Maybe the kids would have forgotten Small’s speech by that time. Rick doubted it. He would have to play his cards right tomorrow, because tomorrow might be a very important day. Tomorrow might be the day that made or broke him.

Thoughtfully, with the street noises far below him, with the shade rattling only slightly at the casement window, he evaluated his position.

He was still doing that on Thursday morning when he stopped in the Teachers’ Lavatory at 8:22 a.m. He had barely closed the door behind him when the voice said, “Ah, the conquering hero.”

He looked over to the urinal near the window, spotting Alan Manners.

“Hello, Manners,” he said.

“Ready to do battle today?” Manners asked.

“Ready every day,” Rick said, smiling. He had taken a lot of ribbing from the assembled teachers in the lunchroom on Tuesday and Wednesday. Oddly, Solly Klein had been the only one who hadn’t joined in the good-natured sport. Solly had simply stated, “I knew that broad would get raped,” and then let it drop. Not the other teachers. In fact, their humor had closely paralleled that of the students of Manual Trades. Rick had taken it all good-naturedly, smiling and parrying all their thrusts. But this was Thursday, and this was the day after Small had delivered his speech to the boys. Rick did not expect any kidding today, and when it came, he was a little surprised.

“You sure she didn’t try to rape both of you?” Manners asked.

“I’m sure,” Rick said, smiling.

“Some guys have all the luck,” Manners said, wagging his head. “I’d have known how to take care of that situation, all right.”

“That’s because you’re a Lover Boy,” Rick said, borrowing Solly’s terminology.

“I admit it,” Manners answered, smiling. “Have you talked with Miss Hammond yet? Or has it reached the ‘Lois’ stage by this time?”

“Is that her name?” Rick asked.

“You mean you don’t know? Brother,” Manners said.

“I haven’t spoken to her since Monday,” Rick said.

“Hero,” Manners said, “you are slipping. Now is the time to cement the friendship. Now is the time to gather in the lady’s gratitude.”

“Hell,” Rick said kiddingly, “I’m a married man.”

“But not a blind man, surely,” Manners told him. “This Hammond woman is a lot of woman, Dadier. Or had you noticed?”

“I’ve been too busy to notice much of anything,” he said honestly. He stepped back from the urinal and waited for Manners to leave the sink. Then he washed his hands and dried them on a paper towel.

“You ought to start noticing. It’s not every day a man rescues a woman’s purity.”

“Me,” Rick said, still kidding but a little annoyed by Manners’ persistence, “I rescue them every day. I’m a regular Galahad.” He paused. “You going upstairs?”

“In a minute. No sense rushing into the ring before the bell.” He sighed deeply. “Brother, will I be glad to get out of this place.”

“Even with Miss Hammond here?”

“Lois? My only regret. I can see I’m leaving her to swine.”

“Well...” Rick started.

“Have you figured on how to handle this yet. Hero?” Manners said.

“Handle what?”

“The kettle of fish. It’s a fine kettle, you will admit.”

“The kids, you mean?”

Manners shrugged. “If you insist on calling them that, yes. The ‘kids.’ ”

“I’ve done a little thinking,” Rick said, grossly underestimating the hours of lying-awake he’d put in the night before, and the concentration he had given the problem during breakfast, and on the way to school, and even now just before he’d entered the toilet.

“And what have you figured?”

Rick summed up the total of his earlier thought on the situation in a single sentence. “If I’ve got the name, I’ll have the game,” he said.

“You’re going to make like a tough guy?”

“I think so. Yes. I think that’s best.”

“Maybe so. Hero. But maybe the kids won’t like it.”

“I can’t be worrying about what they’ll like,” Rick said. “I didn’t ask to get dumped into a rape scene.”

“You think you can carry it?”

“Carry what?”

“The tough guy part. Maybe they’ll want to test you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Rick said, not really certain that he could, but resenting Manners’ intimation.

“Spoken like a true hero,” Manners said, grinning. “I shall think of you when I’m far away in some all-girls’ school.”

“Suppose you don’t...”

“I’ll get out, don’t worry,” Manners said, examining his classic profile in the mirror over the sink. “And I’ll think of you playing Humphrey Bogart back here.”

“Come on,” Rick said. “We’d better get upstairs.”

“I can see why things happen to you,” Manners said knowingly, lifting his briefcase from the window sill. “You’re too damned eager.”

“Me?” Rick said. “I’m not eager, I’m Humphrey Bogart.”

He was Humphrey Bogart all through that day. He had no trouble at all during the first three periods, even though he could sense resentment on the other side of his desk. He tried to forget the resentment, and he kept the classes pinned down with an iron fist, never once forgetting he was Humphrey Bogart. He was beginning to feel good about his part in the little rape drama. He didn’t care if every kid in the school feared him, and he didn’t care if they hated him. He was there to teach them, and since the major problem in a vocational school was making yourself heard, he was thankful for the wall of silence that stretched out in front of him. The kids, he realized, were using a sort of passive resistance on him, but their Gandhi philosophy was playing right into his hands, and he conducted his classes in an efficient and orderly manner. Yes, that old rape might very well turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to him. He made a mental note to tell Anne to stop worrying as soon as he got home, and when the bell sounded at the end of his duty period, he dropped the Humphrey Bogart role and headed straight for the teachers’ lunchroom.

Contrary to the way he’d felt in the lavatory with Manners, he was a little disappointed when the teachers showed no signs of continuing the past few days’ banter. Hell, the thing wasn’t that serious. If anything, it was helping him. But Solly Klein was holding forth about a friend of his who taught shop in a junior high school, a real cream job from the way Solly described it, and all of the teachers — with the exception of the one who lay face down on the leather lounge, who’d been lying there every day now, whose face Rick had never seen, and whom Rick suspected of being dead — listened to Solly and paid very little attention to the hero of Manual Trades. He ate his sandwiches silently, almost morosely. He’d have liked to hear their opinions on the course he was taking, but Solly monopolized the floor until the bell sounded, and Rick disgustedly went to greet 55-206.

The boys were talking when he entered Room 206, but they took their seats immediately and stared at Rick as he went to his desk. Miller watched him with raised eyebrows. The room was dead silent.

Good, Rick thought. That’s the way it should be.

He put his Delaney book on the desk, opened it, and quickly took the attendance. West, he noted with satisfaction, was absent. That was good, too. He’d be able to concentrate on Miller exclusively.

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a blue-jacketed book titled Graded Units in Vital English. He opened the book on his desk, reading the stamped lettering on the title page:

He wondered if they understood any of the high-falutin’ language therein, turned his attention therefrom, and said, “I’d like to pinpoint some of your most common grammatical faults today, so that I’ll be able to plan the remedial work we’ll need throughout the term.”

He said it coldly, and the boys eyed him coldly, showing neither distaste nor enthusiasm for his project.

“Antoro,” he said, “will you get these books from the closet back there and distribute them to the class?”

Antoro rose without a sound. He was a good-looking boy, with sandy-brown hair and brown eyes. He walked to the front of the room, extended his hand for the key Rick offered, and then walked back to the book closet and opened it.

“You’d better give him a hand, Belazi,” Rick said. Belazi rose as soundlessly as Antoro had, walked quickly to the back of the room, and then began carrying the blue books through the aisles, dropping one on each desktop. Antoro started on the other end of the room, and the book distribution was accomplished neatly in a very few moments. Both boys returned to their seats after Antoro gave the key back to Rick.

“If you’ll all turn to page one,” Rick said, and he watched the boys move like automatons, heard the whispering pages as the boys flipped past the Preface, and the To the Teacher section, and the Suggested Aids for Study section, and the Correction Chart, and the Bibliography, and the Table of Contents.

“Page one,” Rick repeated. “Have you all got that? It’s an Achievement Test. If you’ll all look at part A, now. It says, ‘Select the correct word or words in each parenthesis.’ Have you all found that?”

No one in the class answered Rick. He frowned slightly, and then went on.

“There’s an example there of what’s to be done.” He paused, and then read aloud: “EXAMPLE: He (done, did) what he was told. Answer: did.” He paused again. “Do you all get the idea? There are thirty-five sentences in this first section, more than enough for all of us. I’ll call on you, and you’ll take the sentences in order. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. That’s what I want to find out. When I discover your weak spots, I’ll be able to fix them. Is that clear?”

The class remained silent. The boys looked up from their books expectantly, but no one said a word.

“All right,” Rick said, “will you take the first one, Miller?”

He had chosen Miller purposely, hoping the boy would start things off right, especially after his chat with him the other day. A lot of things had happened since that chat, though, and Rick didn’t know exactly where he stood with the colored boy. Miller made a motion to rise, and Rick quickly said, “We can do this seated, boys.”

Miller made himself comfortable in his seat again, and then studied the first sentence. Rick wasn’t really anticipating too much difficulty with the test. This was a fifth-term class, and they’d had most of this material pounded into their heads since they were freshmen. The first sentence read: Henry hasn’t written {no, any) answer to my letter.

Rick read the sentence, and then looked out at Miller. “Well, Miller, what do you say?”

Miller hesitated for just a moment. “Henry hasn’t written no answer to my letter,” he said.

Rick stared at Miller, and then he looked out at the class. Something had come alive in their eyes, but there was still no sound. The silence was intense, pressurized almost. “No,” Rick said. “It should be ‘Henry hasn’t written any answer.’ Well, that’s all right. I want to learn your mistakes. Will you take the next one, Carter?”

Carter, a big red-headed boy looked at the second sentence in the test.

If I were (he, him), I wouldn’t say that.

“If I were him,” he said rapidly, “I wouldn’t say that.”

Rick smiled. “Well,” he said, “if I were you, I wouldn’t say that, either. ‘He’ is correct.”

Something was happening out there in the class, but Rick didn’t know what it was yet. There was excitement showing in the eyes of the boys, an excitement they could hardly contain. Miller’s face was impassive, expressionless.

“Antoro, will you take the next one, please?” Rick said. He had been making notes in his own book as he went along, truly intending to use this test as a guide for future grammar lessons. He looked at the third sentence now.

It was none other than (her, she).

“It was none other than her,” Antoro said quickly.

“No,” Rick said. “The answer is ‘she.’ Take the next one. Levy.”

Levy spoke almost as soon as his name was called. “George throwed the ball fast,” he said.

“Throwed the ball?” Rick said, lifting his eyebrows. “Throwed? Come now. Levy. Surely you know ‘threw’ is correct.”

Levy said nothing. He studied Rick with cold eyes.

“Belazi,” Rick said tightly, “take the next one.”

“It is them who spoke,” Belazi said.

He knew the game now. He knew the game, and he was powerless to combat it. Miller had started it, of course, and the other kids had picked it up with an uncanny instinct for following his improvisation. Now Rick would never know if they were really making errors or were just purposely giving wrong answers even when they knew the right ones. The “he-him,” “she-her” business may have thrown them, but nobody used “throwed” for “threw.” No, he couldn’t buy that.

He listened to scattered sentences throughout the test as he called on every boy in the class.

Won’t anyone borrow you a pen?

The player stealed a base.

Last term the class choose Mary Wilson as president.

She speaks worst than her brother.

Where was you when the policeman came?

Where was I indeed. Rick thought, when the brains (was, were) passed out?

“We didn’t do too well on that, did we?” he asked.

The class was silent.

Okay, Rick thought, we can play this game from both sides of the goddamn fence. If we’re going to be little smart guys, let’s all be little smart guys.

“Since we’ve gone over all the sentences in class now, and since I gave you the correct answer for each sentence, the homework for tonight should be fairly simple,” he said.

“Home...” one of the boys started, and Miller turned in instant reproval. The word “Shut...” burst from his mouth before he could stop it, but he never finished the sentence, never added the “up,” apparently realizing the completed sentence would be too incriminating.

But Rick knew the whole story now, and the class sensed it, and they kept their silence only with the greatest effort. A battle of wills raged before Rick’s desk, and he watched it with amazement, because it was obviously Miller who was holding the minds of his classmates captive in a clenched fist. He had given Miller a leadership pitch on Monday, but he hadn’t for a moment believed that Miller was really a leader. A troublemaker, yes, someone to laugh at, but not a person to follow seriously. He revised his thinking rapidly now, and he even wondered if he hadn’t, like Frankenstein, helped create this monster. Damnit, had he established Miller as a leader in Miller’s own mind?

He watched the battle out there, watched the students’ protest, like sand held in the tightest fist, slowly seeping through Miller’s closed fingers. It was one thing to play games with the new snot-nose teacher, but when that teacher began dropping homework on their skulls, the game wasn’t so hilarious anymore. Rick smiled, sensing the conflict, wanting to bring the battle to a head.

“Yes, homework,” he said, still smiling. “And since I don’t want you to take these books home, you can begin copying all thirty-five questions into your notebooks right now.”

“Hey, what the hell!” Carter shouted. Carter’s outburst started it. His words were livid with outrage, and his carrot-topped head seemed to lend fiery pictorial support to his indignation.

De la Cruz, a pale, thin boy with a reedy voice shouted, “Homework? How come we have thees...”

“It ain’t even the first week of school!”

“Goddamnit, talk about slave drivers...”

“I go to work after school, teach!”

“That’s enough of that!” Rick shouted. He tightened his jaws and calmly said, “Start copying the sentences now. The homework will count as one of the tests the class receives during the term. It may very well decide whether you pass or fail this course.”

The rebellion ended as suddenly as it had started. Miller smiled at his classmates coldly, his face telling them they were all jackasses for having protested in the first place. It all led to the same thing anyway, didn’t it, and now the teacher had the satisfaction of having heard them whine. He flipped open his notebook with weary superiority, and the other boys followed suit while Rick watched them copying the sentences.

“Better get them all,” he said, almost enjoying his power now. “The test will be marked on the basis of thirty-five questions.”

This time, the class was silent. They had apparently grasped the meaning of the Miller-Gandhi method of attack. They wouldn’t give Rick any more satisfaction. They would be separate stones now, held together by a mute mortar that bound them into a wall as solid as any fortress. Rick sat at his desk and watched them laboriously transcribing the sentences. His victory, if considered such at all, had been a hollow one. And aside from the momentary elation he’d felt when they’d finally broken to his will, he felt no real joy.

The silence out there was an almost tangible thing. He wanted to reach out and probe it with his finger, push at it like some gelatinous mass. He could hear the scratching of pen on looseleaf paper, could see the tops of the boys’ heads as they worked.

What the hell goes on inside those heads? he wondered.

Probably nothing. Zero. Perfect vacuum.

This is a job for a man with a vacuum cleaner, he mused.

How do you go about cleaning a vacuum? Do vacuums get dirty? How do you get inside a vacuum to begin with? Someday we’ll discuss vacuums in class. And for the best ten thousand word thesis following our discussion, I’ll award a hollow loving cup, the hollow symbolizing the vacuum, and the loving cup symbolizing the mutual love and affection the boys and I share.

That was fun, he thought wryly, what’ll we play next?

Probably charades for the rest of the term if this goddamned silent treatment persisted. The silence, of course, could be broken easily enough. Just shock them out of it, that’s all. Like using insulin on a schizophrenic. Steady now, sir, easy now. WHAM! I beg your pardon, doctor, but did you see the top of my skull? I’m sure I had one when I came in.

Shock always worked, one way or another. Cure them or kill them.

It had its definite setbacks, though, the way this sudden homework assignment did. The shock may have goosed them out of their silence, but once the shock wore off the silence returned, and with it the memory of the shock to increase the formidability of the silence. Vicious circle. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Well, my dear Watson, just what do you propose? Shall we allow the silence to smother activity, like a dense London fog? Or shall we pierce the fog occasionally, knowing it will return anyway? Well, my dear Watson, what the hell’s wrong with you, old boy? No answers? No suggestions? Nothing? Hell of a help, all right, you are.

Or should we treat the disease rather than the symptoms? If so, just what was the disease? Resentment, of course. They didn’t like his interference in the rape. Well, he didn’t like it much either, so they were even. Nobody likes polio much, for that matter, but everyone recognizes it as a disease. You can’t discount something simply because it doesn’t appeal to you.

Well, there was nothing to be done about the rape intervention. That was history, dead and gone, and rightfully in the province of the Social Studies department, with George Katz perhaps teaching a sparkling course on The Rise and Fall of Richard Dadier.

But, as with any disease, you can isolate the germ — or at least the germ-carrier. He knew who the germ carrier was in this ward, by God. His finger unconsciously tapped the Delaney card in its slot in the book.

Miller, Gregory.

He sounds like a movie star, Rick thought.

Only you and I, Watson, know that he is in reality a germ-carrier.

Shall we operate?

We shall operate. Scalpel, please. Sponge. Suture. Scotch tape...

The bell sounded.

“That’s all,” Rick said. “Pass the books down to the front of your row. Belazi and Antoro, collect them please and take them to the closet. Your homework is due tomorrow when we meet again.” He paused. “Miller, I’d like to talk to you. Would you mind waiting?”

The class began filing out silently as Belazi and Antoro picked up the grammar books. Rick gave Antoro the key, and Miller waited alongside Rick’s desk until the books were back in the closet. When Antoro and Belazi left. Rick faced Miller squarely.

“What do you say, Miller?” he said.

Miller did not smile. His face was in complete repose. He eyed Rick levelly and asked, “About what, Chief?”

“I thought we had a little talk.”

“So?”

“You led them today,” Rick said earnestly, being completely honest with the boy, using the same hook he’d used on Monday, but really meaning it this time. “But you led them the wrong way. Why?”

“Maybe you should of ought to minded your own business, Chief,” Miller said. “Ain’t many guys who like whut happened to Douglas Murray.”

“That wasn’t my fault, Miller,” Rick said seriously. “You should know that. You’d have done the same thing in my position.”

“Would I of? You don’t know me so good, Chief.”

“You’re angry because I intervened, is that it?”

“Murray’s goan to jail, you know that?”

“I had nothing to do with pressing charges, Miller.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You jus’ pure-white innocent, that’s all,” Miller said.

“But what about our talk the other day, Miller? I thought we...”

“Mr. Dad-yay,” Miller said, “s’pose we jus’ forget that li’l snowjob, okay?”

“I wasn’t snowing you,” Rick lied. All right, he had snowed Miller. That was before he knew. This was different now.

“Man,” Miller said, “the snow was knee-deep.”

Rick stared at the boy, feeling curiously like the fellow who’d cried wolf. He’d tried to capture Miller’s loyalty on a false peg Monday. The peg had turned out to be a true enough one, and now Miller had turned the tables. He hadn’t believed Rick then, and he wasn’t buying anything Rick sold from now on.

“I mean it, Miller,” Rick said fervently.

“Man, you know that li’l poem, don’t choo?” Miller asked.

“What poem?”

Miller smiled. “The wind blew, and the crap flew, and for days the vision was bad.” He paused and studied Rick’s face, still smiling.

“I don’t see the point,” Rick said slowly.

“You don’t, huh? Well, what I mean, Chief, the vision is jus’ now beginnin’ to clear up a little. I can see fine now.”

“You are a leader,” Rick said, almost desperately this time, the realization overwhelming.

“I got a class now,” Miller said. “Mind if I go, Chief?”

He walked across the room and hesitated at the door, seemingly about to say something further. Then he smiled, shrugged, and left Rick sitting at his desk with an Unassigned period.

The remainder of Rick’s teaching day was almost a repetition of what went on in his fifth-period English class. He could not, of course, know whether or not Miller had engineered the silences which persisted in both his seventh-term classes. Perhaps he had, or perhaps the boys had hit upon this method of treatment on their own initiative.

They were silent. They were as silent as Death. They volunteered nothing. When he called on an individual directly, the boy would answer tersely and sullenly. The ball was all his own, and they sure as hell weren’t helping him carry it. Any interference they ran was all in the opposite direction.

He gave them all he could give them, and then went into some written drills in an attempt to crack the silence that way. The silence remained silent, and Rick felt his anger rising, and he controlled himself only with the greatest effort. He learned on that Thursday of his first week at Manual Trades that there is a vast difference between an orderly classroom and an ostracizing one.

By the end of the day, he was as jumpy as a toad. He gathered up his books and papers and stuffed them into his briefcase viciously. Then he went to his closet at the back of the room, unlocked it, and took out his topper, slinging it over his arm. He was leaving the room when he noticed all the windows were open. Angrily, he dumped his briefcase and topper on his desk, and then went around closing each window, using the long window pole and almost breaking a pane of glass on one window. He put the pole back into its corner, gathered up his briefcase and topper again, locked the door to Room 206, and headed down for the General Office.

Lois Hammond was standing by the time clock when he got there. She inserted her card, punched out, and then slipped the card into its identically-numbered slot in the rack near the clock. She turned then and spotted Rick.

“Oh, hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Rick said briefly. He did not mean to be intentionally rude, but his mind was occupied with Miller and the treatment he’d received from his classes, and he could not exactly discount Lois Hammond’s role in the sequence of events.

She was smiling now, her pale lipstick almost dark against her delicate face. She had good teeth, Rick noticed, the better to eat you with. Grandma. There were lines of weariness around her eyes and her sensuous mouth, and he suddenly wondered what kind of hell she’d been going through, and this softened his attitude a little.

“I’ve... I’ve been wanting to thank you,” she said in a low voice. She lowered her eyes momentarily, and then lifted them suddenly in a turning-full-power-of-brown-eyes-on gesture. He noticed this, and he wondered if she were being artful or coy, and then he decided she was not. There seemed to be an aura of innocence about this one, a naïveté that gave the lie to the woman’s body beneath the loosely tailored suit. He realized abruptly that she had no more desired the attempted rape than he had, and he smiled.

“I guess we’ve just been missing each other,” he said. “It can get pretty busy the first week.”

“Yes,” she said. She took her lower lip between her teeth, nibbled at it, and then dropped it. “Well, now that I’ve cornered you... thanks.”

“Now that you’ve cornered me,” he said, “you’re welcome.”

Lois Hammond hesitated. “I hope... I hope this hasn’t hindered you in any way. With your classes, I mean. I’d hate to think...”

“No,” he lied hastily. “If anything, it’s helped. Made me a notorious figure.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said uneasily.

“And... you?”

“Oh, it’s been fine,” she said. “I teach two senior classes and two freshmen classes. My official class is a senior group. They all want to graduate, you know, and I think they’re frightened by what happened to Murray. I haven’t had any trouble with them at all. And the freshmen, of course... well, they’re not too aware.” She smiled knowingly, and said, “I mean, they’re just little boys, really.”

“I understand,” Rick said.

“So it hasn’t been bad at all. I was just worried that you might have suffered for it. It’s been bothering me.”

“Nope,” Rick said with manufactured nonchalance, “no pain at all.”

“Well, I’m truly happy about that. And thanks, really, I don’t know what got into that boy. He just...” She shrugged her shoulders, as if she honestly could not understand what had provoked lust. But in shrugging, her breasts moved, and Rick wondered for the second time if she were being artful, exhibiting her femininity while denying it. She seemed unaware of her breasts, though, like a little girl visiting a mature woman’s body, living in it for a while, but not really getting used to all the furniture.

Rick smiled and said, “Well, tomorrow is Friday. I think the hardest part will be over once this week is gone.”

“I hope so,” she said. She sighed. “I think I’ll celebrate its passing.”

“Have a good time,” Rick said, still smiling.

“I’ve got to run now,” she said, She extended her hand, and when Rick took it, she tightened her fingers. “Thanks again. Very much.”

“Don’t mention it,” Rick said.

“Good-by.”

He nodded and watched her leave the office. When she was gone, he took his card from the rack, inserted it into the clock and punched out.

It was 4:05, and he was tired and anxious to get home.

5

At 3:45 the next day Rick was just as tired, and perhaps just as anxious to get home. With his last period class dismissed, he sat at his desk without budging, staring out over the empty seats, relaxing completely for the first time that day.

The silence had persisted. It had reached almost gruesome proportions. He had fought it tenaciously, but the battle was a one-sided one, a struggle in which he was forced to take the offensive while all of his classes sat behind their calm defenses and watched.

He savored this other silence now, this silence that was a normal one, the silence of an empty classroom. It was a good silence. He appreciated it. He sat at his desk and let it swirl around him, like the warm currents of a tropical lake. He rose finally, and lazily began stuffing his briefcase. This was Friday, the end of the week. There was no rush. Tomorrow was Saturday, and the next day was Sunday, and by Monday he’d have figured something out.

He moved slowly, not rushing, and not wanting to be rushed. He was like the classic man who stopped batting his head against the stone wall and was immensely grateful because the pain had stopped.

When Josh Edwards poked his head into the classroom. Rick did not mind the intrusion. Josh was an adult. Josh was someone to talk to.

“Come on in,” he said.

Josh smiled, the lenses of his glasses catching the late afternoon sun that streamed through the windows, reflecting it wildly, giving him a fiery-eyed look. He came into the room and plunked himself down in the nearest seat, propping his feet up on a desk across the aisle. “Pal,” he said, I’m bushed.”

“Rough day, huh?” Rick said, snapping shut his briefcase.

Josh sighed heavily. “As my sainted father oft remarked while cracking Brazil nuts: this ain’t as simple as it appears.”

“It ain’t,” Rick agreed, smiling. “It most decidedly, emphatically, definitely, goddamn well ain’t.”

“You feel like a beer?” Josh asked abruptly, swinging his feet off the desk and sitting upright, almost bouncing in his seat. His store of energy never failed to surprise Rick. In this past week, he had seen Josh after many a difficult session with the kids. They’d usually meet in the corridor, or in the teachers’ lavatory where they went to catch a smoke between classes. They’d spend about three or four minutes together, and then rush back to their respective classrooms in time for the next assault wave. At the start of each of these brief meetings, Josh always seemed exhausted, just about ready to collapse. But before he went in to greet his next class, he had regained all his pep. He was like a handball that got slapped soundly, only to bounce back more strongly when it hit the wall.

“I don’t know,” Rick said. “Beer...”

“I’ll buy,” Josh offered. “Come on, boy, this is Friday.” He paused and then sang, “No more pencils, no more books, no more...”

“Okay,” Rick said, deciding suddenly. “Let me get my coat.” He walked to the closet at the rear of the room, opened it, and called over his shoulder, “Have to phone my wife, tell her I’ll be a little late.”

Josh nodded solemnly. “Duty bound,” he said. They left the room together, and when Rick had locked up, they went downstairs and punched out. A bunch of boys were standing in one corner of the schoolyard when they stepped out of the building, and Josh glanced at them casually and remarked, “They can’t bear to leave the place. It’s like home to them.”

“Oh, yes,” Rick said. “Oh, my yes.”

“Oh, my ass too,” Josh answered. They smiled and walked across the schoolyard and out past the cyclone fence and onto the sidewalk. They did not look back at the knot of boys in the schoolyard.

Rick felt good. All at once, he felt good. There were no more kids to worry about until Monday. No more dead silences. No strategy to be planned, no offensives to be taken. The prospect of a few beers, even if he wasn’t crazy about beer, seemed like the most delightful idea he’d heard in a long time. In a sudden glow of warmth, he clapped Josh on the shoulder and said, “Brother, am I glad this week is over I”

“Ditto, came the reply,” Josh said.

“Are you familiar with the local bars?” Rick asked. The outing had become a thing of excitement to him. He looked forward to getting it started, anticipating the cool dimness of a bar in the afternoon, the bottles stacked before the mirror, the juke box glowing with bubbling reds and oranges and greens.

“Never been inside one,” Josh said. “We’ll pick the closest one, okay? Beer tastes the same all over.”

“Fine,” Rick said enthusiastically. He walked along beside Josh, feeling unaccountably happy as hell. There was a nice nip in the air, a nip that made him appreciate the rough tweed of his collar at the back of his neck. He wished he smoked a pipe. Autumn was the time for pipes, and he had always secretly envied those broad-shouldered, cleft-chinned characters who smoked pipes so nonchalantly, and who apparently enjoyed them. The tall apartment buildings stood out in firm, afternoon-shadowed relief against the clear sky. They made him feel comfortably hemmed-in, like a soldier walking sentry in the courtyard of a fortress. Damn, he was happy.

They stopped at the first bar they found. A few men sat at the bar, watching the television, sipping at their drinks. It was a quiet place, warm with the glow of a neighborhood drinking spot. He felt immediately at home, and he took off his coat and went to phone Anne, leaving Josh to order.

When he came back to his stool, he was surprised to see two martinis resting on the bar top.

“You go for martinis?” Josh asked.

“Yes, but I thought...”

“Beer is everyday stuff,” Josh said. “Hell, we’ve just completed a week at Manual Trades, and we’re still alive. It calls for more than beer.”

“Suits me fine,” Rick said happily. “But no treat if we’re drinking...”

“I just got a dividend check on my GI insurance,” Josh assured him. “Come on, drink up.”

Rick shrugged and picked up the fragile stemmed glass. “Here’s to our own North Manual Trades Reformatory,” he toasted.

“And to its charming inmates,” Josh added, nodding solemnly.

They tilted the glasses, almost draining them. The martini was dry, and it burned a hole clear down to Rick’s stomach, but he enjoyed it, and he finished the drink with his second pull.

Josh put his own glass down on the bar top and said, “This has been a week, Rick. A mighty week.”

“Are you disappointed?” Rick asked.

Josh seemed to consider this a moment. “Not really,” he said. “No, not disappointed. I think the kids’ll shape up. This is just an adjustment period, I suppose. Me to them, and them to me.” He paused and added, “I hope.”

“They’re not exactly what I’d call ideal students.”

“No, not exactly,” Josh answered, smiling. He poked at his eyeglasses with the forefinger of one hand, lifting them, rubbing at his eye, and then letting them drop onto the bridge of his nose again. “But they’ll come around. I’m not expecting any Einsteins.”

“Another drink?” Rick asked. He remembered abruptly that Josh was paying, and he said, “Look, let me split this, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll be drinking guiltily.”

“Drink all you want,” Josh assured him. “I’m loaded, believe me.”

“Well, all right,” Rick said, signaling the bartender. “He mixes a good drink, this fellow.”

“Does he?” Josh said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes, he does.” The bartender came up, and Rick ordered two more of the same. They sat silently, waiting for the drinks, as if they could not manufacture any further conversation until Josh had commented on the quality of the drinks the fellow mixed. When the martinis came. Rick lifted his glass, but he did not drink until Josh had tasted the mixture.

“Yes,” Josh said, “it is good. Very good.”

“Dry, but good.”

“We’re lacking music,” Josh said. “I like music when I drink. Shouldn’t we have some?”

“Sure,” Rick said. “Why not?”

“All right,” Josh said. He rose and walked to the juke box, fishing a quarter out of his pocket and stabbing at five buttons. He came back to the bar, finished his drink standing, and then straddled the stool again. “I like music. Let’s have another one, shall we?”

He signaled for the bartender, and they heard the whir of the juke as it dropped a record onto the turntable, and then the sudden blast of an orchestra erupted into the room.

“Kenton,” Josh said. “Stan the Man. Terrific stuff. Very far advanced for this day and age.”

“Like our students,” Rick said.

“Everything gets back to our students,” Josh said, almost sadly. “You want to know something, Rick?”

“What?”

“I am disappointed. I am goddamn disappointed. I didn’t think it would be like this at all.” He paused and listened, his brown eyes sparkling with sudden life behind their spectacles. “Here, listen to this passage.” He swung his knees out toward the juke. “My God, what those trumpets are doing!”

“I like Kenton,” Rick said.

“Mmm, yes. What a sound. God, what a sound!”

The fresh martinis came, and they listened to the record and sipped at their drinks. Rick hadn’t eaten since the fourth period, and the first two drinks had already attacked his blood. He felt them working inside him, and he listened to the almost-ca-cophony of Kenton’s music, feeling it pulse inside him, sensing the drive behind the band, a drive that was almost a physical thing. The alcohol felt warm within him, and he was aware of a vague hazy feeling in his head, but he did not give a damn.

“I’ve got no right to complain, I guess,” Josh said. “I suppose I’m luckier than most.” Josh had already finished his third drink, and he stared at Rick curiously, blinking his eyes as if he were trying to focus him properly.

“How so?” Rick asked.

“Well, this isn’t really a bad school. Oh, it’s no picnic, but there are some that are a lot worse.”

“Name one,” Rick said perversely. He lifted the martini, sipped at it once, and then drank it all down. He took the olive from the glass, popped it in his mouth, and waited for Josh to answer.

“Name one?” Josh repeated. He watched Rick chewing on his olive, seemed to be possessed of a sudden appetite, and reached into his own glass, popping the olive into his mouth. Around the olive, he said, “Hell, I can name a dozen.”

“All right, name one.”

“A worse school than North Manual Trades?” he asked, chewing.

“Yes. Go ahead, name it.”

Josh chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, and then delicately removed the olive pit from his mouth and placed it in the glass. “You name it,” he said. “I want another drink.”

Rick laughed aloud, feeling better than he had all week, feeling free and light, and almost able to float. He looked up at the ceiling and wondered if he could float up there. He did not see or hear Josh order, but when he looked down a fresh drink was waiting for him.

“I wonder if there is a large percentage of alcoholics among trade school teachers,” Josh said.

“Why?” Rick asked. “What makes you ask?”

“Seems like the most sensible thing to do every Friday is go out and get drunk. Don’t you think so?”

“Possibly,” Rick said, and the word twisted around his tongue, and he thought it sounded like “poss-iss-oss-ibly.” He stared at the fresh martini dubiously for a moment, wondering if he should drink it. Josh had already lifted his glass and tilted it to his mouth. Oh, what the hell, Rick thought. He brought the drink to his lips.

“I tell you, Rick,” Josh said a little thickly, “I feel kind of cheated. You know what I mean?”

“The martinis?” Rick asked innocently. “Not enough gin?”

“No, no, martinis is fine,” Josh said, tasting what was in his glass, just to make sure. “No, not the martinis. The school.”

“Oh, yes,” Rick said. He intended to nod his head slightly in agreement, but it emerged as an exaggerated, slow-motion lifting and dropping of his chin and head.

“They shouldn’t give us schools like this one, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No, I meant no, they shouldn’t give us schools like...”

“Yes, that’s what I said. It’s not fair, you know? I mean, Rick, I want to teach. I really do. Do you want to teach?”

“I do indeed,” Rick said firmly, finishing the drink and holding up two fingers to the bartender. The bartender was standing close to them now, apparently having realized these two boys were going to be drinking in earnest. Rick watched him mix the drinks, and then said to Josh, “These are really good, you know? I must have had three already.”

“You had four,” Josh said thickly, “but who’s counting?”

Rick slapped the bar top in an outburst of laughter, and Josh laughed along with him. They were still laughing when the next round came, and the bartender eyed them curiously, shrugged, and wiped the bar top with a wet rag even though it was absolutely clean.

Josh stopped laughing abruptly, and he stared at Rick seriously. “I really want to teach, Rick, like you. So why won’t they let me teach? That’s what I do not understand. I get up there, and I try to teach, and they won’t let me. A man who wants to teach should be allowed to teach.”

“You’re positively right,” Rick said emphatically.

“Didn’t the people allow Christ to teach?” Josh wanted to know, his indignation mounting as he started his drink. “Didn’t they?”

“You are not Christ,” Rick said with the air of a man who has made a remarkable discovery.

“In this school, even Christ would have a tough time being heard,” Josh said. He raised his eyebrows. “Hey now, listen to this one. You like Sarah Vaughan?” He cocked his head at the juke box.

“I love Sarah Vaughan,” Rick said.

“She does things,” Josh agreed. “She certainly does things. Did I tell you I’m going to bring my record collection to class someday?”

“Yes, you did,” Rick said thickly.

“Well, I am. I got a good collection, started it when I was in high school. All the old Miller stuff, and the early James records. Charlie Barnet, the Duke when he was really laying them down. You remember ‘Concerto for Cootie’?”

“I remember,” Rick said.

“Do nothin’ till you hear from me,” Josh sang in a horrible voice. “Pay no attention to wha’s said...”

“Tha’s pretty,” Rick told him.

“Yeah, nice tune. I got all those old records, all of them, the old records. Remember ‘Trumpet Blues’? I got that one. ‘Trumpet Blues,’ I mean.”

“Tha’s a good one,” Rick said.

“Fine,” Josh said thickly. “An’ ‘Tuxedo Junction,’ remember that? An’ Shaw’s ‘Backbay Shuffle.’ All of them.”

“Hey,” Rick said, “how ’bout ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’?”

“Oh, why sure!” Josh said, spreading his hands wide. “Certainly. Of course. Sinsinsin, naturally.”

“I used to go to the Paramount every time Miller came to it,” Rick said. “I liked Miller.”

“He was good,” Josh agreed. “A clarinet on top of four saxes, you know. Tha’s how he got that sweet sax section sound, that nice high reedy sound. Shame he died. He was really good.”

“Bet the kids today don’t even know who Glenn Miller is,” Rick said sadly.

“They’re missing out,” Josh said, just as sadly.

“Remember ‘The Make Believe Ballroom’?” Rick asked.

“Tha’s still on the air,” Josh reminded him.

“Yeah, sure, but didn’t you used to listen to it always?”

“Oh, sure. Every night.”

“Jus’ close your eyes

“An’ visualize

“In your solitude

“Your fav’rite bands

“Are on the stand

“An’

“Mis-

“ter

“Mill-

“er

“puts you

“ ‘In the Mood,’ ” Rick sang.

“ ‘In the Mood,’ ” Josh said. “That was another great one.”

“You like Harry James, Josh?”

“In the old days, yes. Oh, he really did some fine ones. ‘Trumpet Rhapsody,’ ‘He’s My Guy,’ ‘Sleepy Lagoon,’ ‘I Don’t Wanna Walk without You.’ There was a record. Remember that one?”

“Sure. Helen Forrest.”

“That’s right. I wonder what happened to her.” Josh sipped at his drink, a happy thoughtful expression on his face.

“They vanish,” Rick said thoughtfully. “Remember when Bob Eberle and Helen O’Connell were with the Jimmy Dorsey band? You hardly ever hear from them anymore.”

“They’re still around,” Josh said. “Trouble is, bands are on the way out. You listen to the Ballroom now, and all you get is vocals. The day of the instrumental is dead and gone.”

“Maybe the kids won’t like your records, Josh,” Rick said suddenly, surprising himself with the observation.

“My records?” Josh asked incredulously. “Oh, sure, why sure they will. It’s good stuff, Rick, really. An’ I always kept them fine. Hardly a scratch on any of them. Oh, they’ll like it.” He grinned. “I’m jus’ tryina figure how to tie it in with an English class, tha’s all.”

“Why bother?” Rick said. “Jus’ tell ’em you’re gonna have music that day, tha’s all.”

“Yeah, but I like to tie it in. Tha’s the way they tell you to do it.” He paused, sipped at his drink again, and said, “Tha’s what gets me, you know?”

“What?” Rick asked, feeling really dizzy now, drinking the martini automatically now, and feeling dizzier with each additional sip. “What gets you, Josh?”

“The things we learned in school. The Ed courses. What a bunch of horse manure.”

“Right,” Rick said, nodding his head.

“Damn right,” Josh agreed. He paused for a moment, studying the open rim of his glass. He scratched his head and then asked, “What was I saying?”

“Ed courses,” Rick said, silently congratulating himself upon having remembered.

“Oh yes, Ed courses.” Rick waited for more, but Josh had apparently said all he cared to say about the subject.

“A bunch of horse manure,” Rick supplied. “Tell you to give difficult kids board erasers to clean. Well, I got a question for the bigshot Ed Psych experts.”

“Wha’s that?” Josh asked lazily.

“What do you do when you got thirty-five difficult kids? There ain’t that many board erasers in the city of New York.”

“Besides, what are we raising, a generation of board-eraser cleaners?”

“Damn right,” Rick said, getting angry about nothing in particular.

“Tha’s what I like about you,” Josh said, wobbling unsteadily on his stool now. “You got a keen, analytical mind.”

“Thank you,” Rick said.

“Don’t mensh it. Not at all.”

“If it’s true,” Rick said staunchly, “I’ll mention it.”

“What’ll you mention?”

“That you got a keen, analytical mind.”

“Tha’s jus’ what I said,” Josh said, nodding his head.

“Thank you,” Rick told him.

“Don’t mensh it,” Josh said solemnly.

They sat silently, sipping at their drinks, listening to the silence of the bar now that Josh’s quarter in the juke had been exhausted. A kid of about eighteen came into the room, and they watched him walk to the cigarette machine near the door and punch out a package for himself. He glanced briefly at Josh and Rick, and then left the bar. Josh watched him, and as if sight of an adolescent had reminded him of something, he said, “I’m gonna teach them, you know. I really am, Rick.”

“Good for you,” Rick said.

“Oh yes, I’m gonna teach them. I waited too long for this, Rick, too damn long. I been wantin’ to teach since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. They don’t know how much I been wantin’ to teach, Rick. Some kids wanted to be cops or firemen. Not me. I wanted to be a teacher. Long as I can remember. Tha’s all, jus’ a teacher. So now I’m a teacher, an’ a teacher’s job is to teach, ain’t it? Of course. So I’m gonna... going to... teach. Even if they don’t want me to. A man’s got to do what a man wants to do, Rick. He’s jus’ got to.”

“An’ the best way he can,” Rick said. “He’s got to do a good job, Josh.”

Josh nodded reflectively. “Am I a bad guy, Rick?”

“You a good guy, Josh. A damn fine guy.”

“So why won’t they let me teach?”

“ ’Cause they’re bad guys,” Rick said.

“Oh no, don’t say that.”

“Yes,” Rick said, “they’re bad guys.”

“No,” Josh said with drunken dignity, “tha’s a common error, fallacy. They ain’t bad guys. They’re jus’ ignorant.”

“Same thing,” Rick said.

“No, no, Rickie, don’t say that. Please don’t say that. These kids ain’t bad guys. I mean it. Now I mean it, so pay attention an’ please don’t say that again. They are not bad guys. They jus’ don’t know any better.”

“They ain’t good guys,” Rick said, blinking his eyes, holding to the bar top. He tried to concentrate on what Josh was saying because he had a feeling this was very important to Josh, and he didn’t want to appear rude and not pay attention to something that was obviously very important to somebody else.

“They’re good guys,” Josh said. “Yes. Jus’ like me an’ you. Good guys. Unless they don’t get taught, then they’ll be bad guys, Rick. Tha’s why I got to teach them, you see? Can y’understan’ that? It ain’t fair that no one should want to teach them. Teachers got to teach, Rickie, an’ especially these kids. Please unerstan’ me, Rickie.”

“I understan’ you, Josh,” Rick said, trying very hard to understand.

“Okay then. Okay. An’ you promise you won’t call them bad guys?”

“All right,” Rick said, “they’re just ignorant.”

“That’s right, ignorant.”

“Bad guys can be ignorant, too,” Rick persisted.

“But ignorant guys don’t have to be bad. You’re reversin’ the syllog... you know.”

“Sure,” Rick said.

“ ’Zactly. Le’s finish this drink.”

They lifted their glasses and Rick said, “Here’s to all the good guys.”

“Well spoke,” Josh said. “Spoken.”

“An’ here’s to Stan the Man, a real good guy.”

“To Stan.”

“An’ the Duke.”

“The Duke, Rick.”

“An’ you an’ me, God bless our bleeding...”

“Wounds,” Josh supplied.

“Asses, I was gonna say.”

“All right, whatever you say.”

“Wounds,” Rick finished.

They drank solemnly.

“I got to go home,” Rick said suddenly. “Wife’s pregnant.”

“Congratulations,” Josh said, taking Rick’s hand.

“Thanks,” Rick answered.

“How does it feel, being a father?”

“Not yet. I’m not one yet.”

“How soon, Rickie?”

Rick began counting on his fingers, and then shrugged. “Soon.” He stood up, staggered to the coat rack, and struggled into his topper, with Josh awkwardly trying to help him.

“I got to pay,” Josh said.

“Lemmee split it,” Rick offered.

“No, no, this’s on me.”

“Okay. Me next time.”

“Nex’ time,” Josh said. He put a large bill on the bar top, and then waited for his change, scooping it up without counting it. “How do you go home, Rickie?”

“Bus. Third Avenue,” Rick said.

“I’ll walk you down,” Josh said.

“Good,” Rick answered.

They went out of the bar and into the darkness of the street. The street lights had come on, casting a warm yellow glow on the concrete. The sky was a dense black, studded with stars, streaked with scudding purple clouds. Rick looked up at the sky, receiving an abstract impression of blackness and pinwheeling stars, and realizing it was probably later than he thought.

“Got to get home,” he said. “Got to hurry.”

“Okay,” Josh agreed.

They staggered down the street together, arm in arm, their heels echoing on the pavement.

“Le’s cut down to Third,” Rick said.

“Okay,” Josh answered agreeably.

They took a narrow side street behind the department stores that crowded Third Avenue. A street lamp burned at the far end of the block, but this end was in darkness. They started down the street, and heard the footsteps behind them almost instantly.

“Somebody comin’,” Josh said without turning.

“Let ’em come,” Rick answered, trying to concentrate on Anne, and worried lest she was worrying, but not able to focus his thoughts clearly through the alcoholic haze on his mind. They staggered down the street, sometimes on the sidewalk and sometimes in the gutter. Rick clung to his briefcase with one hand, the other slung around Josh’s shoulder.

They heard the footsteps grow closer, and then move up on their left, and then pass them, and they glanced up disinterestedly.

“Bunch of kids,” Josh said.

There were three of them, boys of about seventeen or so, and they walked past Josh and Rick without even looking at them. Their shoes clattered on the asphalt, and then the darkness swallowed them up. Josh and Rick kept walking, unsteady on their feet, the air sharpening the effect of the martinis.

“Tha’s funny,” Josh said abruptly.

“What? Wha’s funny?”

“Still footsteps behin’ us.”

Rick listened, hearing the even cadence of footsteps behind them, like marching feet in a German parade, listening to them and wondering at the same time what had happened to the footsteps that had been in front of them.

Something came alive in his mind. He whispered, “Josh!” and he wished desperately that he were sober.

The boys struck at the same instant.

There were seven all told. The three who had gone ahead, passing Rick and Josh just a few moments before, suddenly came out of the darkness, blocking the path. Rick turned unsteadily and looked up the street, trying to focus the other four boys who were closing fast.

The street lamp was a good way off, down at the other end of the block, and the area of ambush was in almost complete darkness, darkness enough to have effectively hidden the three boys who’d gone ahead and then doubled back. They were far enough from Third Avenue, too, to make any cries for help worthless. Rick shook his head, trying to clear it, wondering why the hell he had to feel so dizzy when he knew he was going to have a fight any minute. He found himself thinking of Bob Canning, good old “Bob” who’d been assaulted on his way to the subway.

Well, this was good old Rick and good old Josh, and they were on their way home, too, and God knows how long these kids had patiently waited outside the bar while they’d been drinking themselves silly. The gang in the schoolyard, when he and Josh had been leaving — were these those boys? That seemed so long ago, such a long time to wait.

What does such long waiting do to an appetite hungry for blood?

“Hello, Daddy-oh,” the voice came out of the darkness, and if he’d had any doubt before, there was no doubt now, none at all. Josh stiffened beside him, and his voice came softly, still slurred with alcohol.

“Back to back, Rick,” he said.

The boys were glad about how things had worked out.

The boys couldn’t have been gladder, because this was an ideal trap, worthy of guerillas, worthy of cutthroats anywhere. They’d have liked it better if Daddy-oh had been alone, but the shrimp with him was nothing to worry about, and if he didn’t take off his glasses he was going to be picking glass slivers out of his nose.

The street was dark, nice and dark. They were seven, and there were only two of the enemy. With odds like that, you couldn’t lose, not even if you tried, and they weren’t going to be trying.

One of them shouted, “This is for Douglas Murray, you bastard,” and he threw his fist and felt it connect with flesh and bone. He felt Daddy-oh’s head lurch back, felt the teacher slam up against the shrimp’s back and then bounce off swinging wildly.

The shrimp had taken off his glasses and he was yelling, “All right, you bastards, all right, you bastards,” and swinging his fists like pistons. Daddy-oh wasn’t saying anything. Daddy-oh had his feet planted wide, and his back up against the shrimp’s, and Daddy-oh was taking this fight as if it was hard work.

Another boy slammed his fist on the back of Daddy-oh’s neck, and Daddy-oh grunted and bent forward, and another of the attackers brought his knee up, connecting with his groin. Daddy-oh grunted again, and then swung out and one of the boys felt his fist and backed away respectfully. But Daddy-oh was facing the side with four boys on it, and Daddy-oh hadn’t been in a street fight since that time in Panama when everyone on his ship had got drunk and turned on each other. That fight had been a good one, and a bloody one, but it had been a long time ago, when Daddy-oh had been twenty and considered a good fight an exciting thing. He was plainly not enjoying this one. He was plainly not enjoying it because any one of the attackers knew his blows were scoring. Even if they hadn’t seen the blood pouring from his nose, they’d have known they were scoring. They’d have known because their knuckles were getting sore from the pounding they were giving him. They felt flesh ripping, and they felt the grind of knuckle against bone, and they heard him grunt, and they knew his blows were getting weaker.

The shrimp just kept yelling, “All right, you bastards,” as if it was the only song he knew. Only the song was beginning to fade, like a radio program does just before an electrical storm.

The boys felt victory near. They felt it with the instinct of all good street fighters, and they were glad they hadn’t used anything but their fists. There was a certain pride attached to it this way. Hell, anybody can use a knife or a zip gun. You don’t have to be smart to beat somebody that way. They’d used only their fists, and they were still using those fists, climbing all over Daddy-oh now, wedging themselves between him and the shrimp, breaking the pair apart, and then really going to town.

One of the boys grabbed Daddy-oh from behind, struggled for a grip in his short hair, and then gave that up as a sorry task. He looped his arm around Daddy-oh’s neck, tightening his forearm across the mother-lover’s Adam’s apple, pulling his head all the way back. Another boy brought back his foot and gave it to Daddy-oh, right in the balls, and Daddy-oh yelled, and another boy whacked him in the mouth, tickled pink when he felt the blood spurt onto his fist.

“All right, you bastards,” the shrimp kept yelling, but the shrimp was on the ground now, and feet had taken over because it was easier to use feet when a guy was down. The feet connected with his rib case and his thighs and his groin and even his head. He kept yelling all the time, the same tune, over and over again like a goddamned broken record. And then somebody broke the record by kicking him under the chin, and the shrimp ended his song and his resistance, and he didn’t even feel the ensuing kicks that rained on his body like horseshoes.

You had to hand it to Daddy-oh because he went down swinging all the way. He hadn’t said a word all through this, one of those guys who take their fights seriously. He wasn’t saying anything now either. He was spitting blood, and his clothes were all torn, and his nose was running off into the gutter, but he kept swinging until they dragged him down to the pavement and gave him four sharp blows to the stomach. He stopped swinging then, but he didn’t stop struggling, and he didn’t stop bleeding. He couldn’t swing because his arms were pinned to his sides, but he could sure as hell struggle, even though he was bleeding like a whore on her legitimate day off.

This was getting sloppy as hell. Maybe Daddy-oh could afford dry cleaning bills, but the boys would rather spend the dough in a movie. They decided to end it fast. They ended it by resorting to feet, and this time there were six pairs of feet because the shrimp was already out and, except for one boy who was enjoying kicking the piss out of an unconscious man, the others were free to give their undivided attention to Daddy-oh.

They gave it to him. They gave it to him until they felt they’d squashed his scrotum flat, and then they gave it to him equally around the head. He stopped struggling at last, and they grabbed his briefcase and dumped everything into the gutter, tearing the papers and the notebook, and then ripping the stitching on the bag, and breaking the clasp, and finally working it over with a knife, until it looked like a holiday streamer hanging from the ceiling of a dance hall. The kid with the knife in his hands got ideas, but the sport was over now, and when the sport is over you get the hell out of the neighborhood before the cops show on the scene. The kid put the knife away reluctantly, and they all strolled off down the street, heading for the street lamp near Third Avenue.

They walked out of the darkened block in pairs, two, two, and a final group of three. They walked up Third Avenue and looked in the shop windows and whistled at a few girls in tight sweaters, and they laughed a little and joked a little and then met in one of the ice-cream parlors, where two of the boys shot the works on banana splits. The other boys had ice-cream sodas or malteds, and they were all very orderly even though they laughed a lot.

When they left, the proprietor couldn’t help commenting to his wife that high school kids were much quieter than they were in his day.

The clock on the kitchen wall had become a leering face. She could almost see eyes on it, could almost twist the advancing black hands into a crookedly grinning mouth.

The steam had gone off at a quarter to eleven, and the apartment was cold now. She trembled slightly, holding her robe close to her, looking at the clock once more.

It was possible, of course, that Rick had begun enjoying himself, had possibly even gotten drunk, and had forgotten to call her again. Anything, of course, was possible. But when he’d called, he told her he was going to have a few beers with — what was his name? — and that she should plan on a later-than-usual supper. He’d also asked her if she minded, and she’d said no, not at all, even though she’d have preferred him to come directly home.

The later-than-usual supper had been ready by eight. She did not remember how many times she’d gone to the living room window and looked down to the street eleven stories below. She knew Rick’s walk the way she knew the new contours of her body. She was able to spot him a good half-block away from the project, and generally when he saw her standing by the window, he’d wave at her, then look hastily in both directions before crossing 174th Street and heading for the door of the building, out of her line of vision.

The street tonight was unusually deserted. Perhaps it was the unseasonally strong wind that had driven everyone indoors, leaving the lamp posts solitary and forlorn-looking. The supper she’d prepared stood in its pots on the stove, cold now. The dishes set on the kitchen table looked up at her with open white faces.

She was worried, truly worried. The radio in the living room was tuned to WNLW, and the strains of ‘Music ‘Till Midnight’ wafted into the apartment, soft, lilting melodies that made the place seem more empty. She would wait until midnight, until the announcer with his honeyed tones gave the talk about another day having gone to rest, with a future day ready to burst on the horizon. Or maybe she’d wait for the opening theme of ‘The Milkman’s Matinee,’ or perhaps until the theme had played and Art Ford came on the air. Yes, she’d wait until then, and if he wasn’t home, she would phone the police.

Even the idea of phoning the police frightened her. It was as if by admitting the possibility of violence, she was openly acknowledging that violence had happened.

She felt tears spring to her eyes, and she held them back desperately, hating the way she cried so easily lately, knowing it was due to her condition, and hating even that word now.

If anything has happened to him, she thought. If anything has happened to him. She could not hold back the tears. They streamed down her cheeks, and she wiped at them with the sleeve of her robe, and her mind conjured a picture of her giving birth to her child, with Rick not there, sometime in the future, with Rick not there, not there.

No, nothing has happened, she told herself. He’s just having a good time. He’s just j or gotten to call.

But doesn’t he know I’m worried frantic? If that’s all it is, I’ll kill him, I really will, not calling when he knows I’m worried sick.

She smiled at the idea of killing him, because that was silly, because she was worried that... that something had happened to him, and she would certainly not kill him, and when the realization of her silliness struck her she laughed a little, and the laugh dissolved into rapid tears, and she wiped at them with her robe until the sleeve was all wet. She prayed desperately for the phone to ring, prayed for the doorbell to burst into sound. The tears kept flowing unchecked, as if all the worry inside was running down out of her eyes.

There was a rush of violins from the radio, gripping the cold air of the apartment, and then a crooner’s voice flowed from the prolonged violin passage, as warm as copper, tender, soft.

She rose and walked far into the kitchen, walked right up to clock, as if she were defying its hands to move while she watched them. It was eleven-fifty, ten minutes to the deadline she had set. She wrung her hands together, stopped it when she felt like the heroine of a cheap melodrama, and then began pacing the floor, walking back and forth before the set table.

Rickie, Rick, come home, she pleaded silently.

She walked back into the living room again, stopping at the window and looking down at the deserted streets, watching a newspaper sidle up to the curb, flap wildly in the gutter for an instant, and then leap onto the sidewalk.

When she heard the key in the latch, her breath caught in her throat. She whirled from the window and shouted, “Rick? Rick?”

She listened to the rattling of the key for a second and then rushed into the foyer, reaching for the inside lock. He was twisting his key at the same time, and they worked at cross purposes, fumbling on either side of the door, each anxious to have the door open, each anxious to remove the metal barrier between them.

And then the door was open, and he stood there unsmiling, blood caked on his mouth and streaked on his face, his left eye almost closed, his cheek ripped wide in a flap of flesh. His suit was torn, his new suit, the tweed he looked so well in, and there was a rip in his shirt, and she saw the flesh of his chest beneath that tear, and it was the sight of that skin, exposed-looking, white against the soiled white shirt, vulnerable-looking, that brought the tears again.

“Rick,” she said, “Rick,” and she led him into the apartment, not bothering to lock the door, sensing that the danger had passed long ago. “Darling, oh my darling, my poor darling.”

He didn’t speak. He walked into the living room like a dead man, with his arm around her shoulder, his weight heavy on her. He flopped down onto the couch, still not speaking, lifting his legs as if the effort was an extremely painful one.

“I’ll get a doctor,” she said in a rush, and he shook his head, and she stood there undecided for a moment, not knowing quite what to do, knowing only that he was hurt badly, and wanting desperately to help him. She left him and ran to the bathroom, still crying wildly, unable to control the tears. She got iodine and peroxide, and gauze and adhesive tape, and she rushed back into the living room, helping him out of his jacket, kissing his hands when she saw the lacerated skin there. She undressed him, biting her lip when she saw the blue bruises on his body, almost screaming when the red welts on his crotch were exposed.

“Darling, darling,” she kept repeating, soothingly through her tears, unable to think of anything else to say, working hastily with her medicines and her bandages.

“When the world should all be sleeping,” the radio sang, “and a melody comes creeping, ’til you want to sway, it’s the Milkman’s Matinee...”

“Midnight already,” Rick said hoarsely.

“Yes, darling, yes,” Anne answered, not knowing what to do about the flap of skin that hung from his cheek, with the crisscrossing red fibers under it. She splashed peroxide into the wound and Rick winced, and she said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and he said, “That’s all right.” She put the flap of skin back into place, wondering if that were the right thing to do, and then she covered it with gauze and adhesive tape and began treating the other cuts on his face.

“They didn’t hurt your teeth,” she said, really wanting to think it, and surprised when it found voice.

“No,” he answered.

“Were they...”

“The boys, yes. Me and Josh. I took him home first. We got a cab. I’m sorry, honey, but he...”

“It’s all right,” she said.

“He’s a good guy, Anne. I’m sorry he got dragged into it. Oh Christ, why did he have to get dragged into it?”

“It’s all right, Rick,” she repeated.

“We were high,” he said. “We shouldn’t have got high. We’d have stood a better chance...”

“How many were there?” she asked, not wanting to hear his answer, but having to know.

“Seven, I think. Big kids. We shouldn’t have got high.”

“You didn’t know, Rick. Rick, shall I get a doctor?”

“No, I’ll be all right.”

“Did you recognize any of them?”

“It was dark,” he said helplessly.

“That’s all right. Come, Rick, come to bed. Come, darling. You’ll be all right.”

“Can’t I just... just rest here a while?”

“Yes, whatever you want. Would you like some coffee? Did you eat anything, Rick?”

“No. Nothing, Anne. I’m not hungry.”

She washed his face, and then got him into his pajamas and threw a robe around his shoulders. She got a pot of coffee going anyway, remembering something about hot drinks being good for shock. She almost started crying again as she measured out the coffee, but this time she held back the tears because she didn’t want him to know what a sissy she was. When the coffee was ready, she poured two cupfuls and brought them into the living room, dragging over one of the end tables and placing them on it.

He drank the coffee gratefully, even though he’d said he hadn’t wanted anything. She saw a little color coming back into his face, and she watched him while he sipped at the coffee, hardly touching her own, just watching him and glad to have him home again, and knowing he’d be all right, knowing she’d do everything she could to make him all right.

“Shall I get a doctor?” she asked again, and he shook his head and sipped at the coffee, the steam enveloping his face.

“I must look like The Invisible Man,” he said. “All these bandages.”

She smiled, feeling her eyes moist again. He began telling her what had happened then, leaving nothing out, telling her the whole story. She listened with her hands clenched in her lap, feeling unaccountably proud of him, not knowing why, knowing you’re not supposed to be proud of the side that loses, but feeling this pride bursting inside her anyway. When he finished his story and his coffee, she sat beside him on the couch and held him close to her breast, stroking his face.

They sat silently and listened to Art Ford and his records, and after a long while, Rick said, “I think I’ll survive, don’t you?”

“You’d damn well better,” she said. “I’m too young to be a widow.”

He laughed, and she laughed with him, and she knew that everything was really going to be all right. Their laughter broke the solemn mood that had been upon them. As if they were both anxious to forget what had happened, they began talking of other things, of what she’d done all day, avoiding any talk of the school and the attack and what was to happen when he went back to his classes on Monday.

“Jerry called,” she said.

“Jerry Lefkowitz?”

“Yes. He got a job.”

“Really?” he asked. “Where?”

“Central Commercial.”

“I’ll be damned,” Rick said. “And I was worrying about him!”

“Is it a good school?” Anne asked, smiling because Rick was smiling, but not really knowing what was funny.

“Is it a good school?” He began laughing. “Oh, Anne, baby, and I felt guilty about taking this job from him. Oh, honey!” He started laughing again, really laughing this time, the laughter that is produced sometimes after tears, the laughter that is spontaneous and often completely humorless, the laughter that is more a release of sorrow than an expression of joy. He laughed boomingly, shaking his head continually, and because the laughter was so spontaneous, and because he looked so pathetic in his bandages, she laughed with him. They sat there on the couch and laughed like two idiots, shook with laughter until the tears were streaming down their faces, laughed until the man upstairs banged on the floor with a broom handle, and even then they couldn’t stop.