“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.