“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.