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.