He sat at his desk and waited for the boys in 55-206 to arrive. The classroom felt warm, and he watched the falling snow outside the wide windows, and he felt peculiarly cozy, even though he was waiting for 55-206. The world outside was very white and very quiet. He studied it from the warmth of his wood and glass and concrete cocoon, watching the flurry of snow, seeing the white flakes lap soundlessly at the windowpanes, cling there for a moment, and then fall away.
His face bore no marks now. The wounds had healed very rapidly. They were nothing serious to begin with, if you like your face looking like hamburger, and time has a wonderful way of clotting blood and forming scabs, and then dropping the scabs to leave a fresh new layer of epidermis. Time was nice that way, and a month is a long time. The torn cheek had taken longest, of course, but even that had healed after the flap of skin had peeled and withered. He had looked like hell in the beginning, and all during that Saturday and Sunday after the beating, he had winced every time he looked into the mirror.
He had taken beatings before. He had taken a lot of beatings in his day. He had taken beatings when he’d lived in a tenement on 120th Street between First and Second avenues. He’d taken plenty of beatings there, all right, because his mother had insisted on dressing him neatly in a neighborhood that was all filth. And later, when they’d moved up to the Bronx, he’d taken beatings again, but only in the beginning, only when he was the newest kid in the neighborhood and every other kid felt it was his duty to test the boxing skill of the newcomer. And in the Navy, there had been beatings, but by that time fist-fighting was habit to him and he had given as much as he’d taken.
So he had seen cuts on his face before, cuts far more serious than those he studied in the mirror that week end. He still bore a scar under his chin where he’d been clobbered with the wooden orange-crate handle of a rubber-band gun when he was twelve. That had been a cut, all right, and they’d taken three stitches in his chin before that episode was over. No, it wasn’t the appearance of his face that made him wince. It was the knowledge that he’d have to present that face to the assembled multitude of North Manual Trades High School on Monday.
He was not afraid of facing the boys again. That did not enter his mind at all. He had, after all, taken the beating already. He hoped that would be the end of it. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be drunk next time, and next time there’d be a few broken heads to account for his bruises.
But there was something shameful about the appearance of his face, and whereas he couldn’t pinpoint the origin of the shamed feeling, he was guiltily aware of it. He felt like a pregnant woman wearing the badge of a bulging belly, the badge that proclaims to the world at large, “I’ve been layed.” His face shouted, “I’ve been beaten,” and he didn’t want his face to advertise that slogan because it wasn’t a true one. He had not really been beaten. He’d been ambushed and kicked around, but he hadn’t been beaten, and there was a vast difference between getting beat up and being beaten. And so he was ashamed of this face which told such flagrant lies, this face that said, “Look at me, I am a beaten man.” He studied it in the mirror, and he thought I am not a beaten man.
He was surprised, on Sunday night, when Anne asked, “Are you going back, Rick?”
He looked at her curiously, as if he did not quite understand what she’d said. “Of course,” he said, his voice incredulous. “Why, of course I’m going back.” He had cursed his face again in that moment because it had lied even to Anne, had led her to believe he was beaten, too. Anne had stared at him silently, and then simply nodded, and he knew she’d been pleased over his decision.
He tried to forget about his lying face on that Monday after the beating. And when Stanley asked what happened, and of course Stanley knew damn well what had happened. Rick had made some inane remark about having run into a belligerent doorknob. And when Small asked what happened, and of course Small knew damn well what had happened because he saw what Josh Edwards looked like on that Monday morning and he knew two belligerent doorknobs in the same week end was stretching coincidence just a bit too far. Rick had simply answered, “A little trouble,” and that had been the end of that.
Except for the kids.
The kids knew what had happened, too. The kids knew it better than anyone else in the school. The kids got the story straight from the horse’s mouth, all seven horses in fact, and the kids knew that Daddy-oh and Edwards had been worked over but good on Friday night. The kids knew it, and they liked it. This sort of evened the score. If Daddy-oh wanted to go around messing up some guy’s life, okay, fine. But there were other guys who could go around messing up Daddy-oh’s life just as well. And they’d done just that. They’d beat the living hell out of him, and damn if his face didn’t look nice with all that plaster on it. The score, as far as they were concerned, had been evened. Daddy-oh had been paid in full.
And so the silent treatment, which had begun abruptly on the day after Small’s delightful little speech, ended just as abruptly on the Monday after Rick’s beating. Rick was surprised by the sudden change, and he spent a good part of his day trying to figure out the reason for it. He did not once mention the chopped-meat appearance of his face. He knew the kids knew what had happened, and he also knew that any show of leniency on his part would lead them to believe he’d been cowed into it. He did not show any leniency. Instead, he reversed the silent treatment. He played it hard as nails. Silent Sam himself, trying to show the kids that his face was a liar. The kids settled down to normal, for a vocational school, behavior. They called out, and they shouted, and they laughed, and they cursed, and they were disobedient and disorderly and plain goddamn ornery. And Rick settled down to trying to teach them in this normal, for a vocational school, atmosphere. There was no silence to cope with now, nothing like that, and Rick surmised that the street fight had miraculously removed that bloc.
He played it hard for a week, practically ignoring his classes, treating them with cold disdain. His attitude plainly told them what he thought of ambushes. He loaded them with written exercises and tests, and he was severely strict in his grading of papers and answers in the classroom. The kids remained unfazed. This was normal. The Douglas Murray score had been settled, and now they could relax and be just plain bastards rather than super grade-A bastards. The distinction, to them, was a fine one.
The second week after the attack, Rick changed his tactics. He realized he’d get nowhere with his sullen, unapproachable attitude. He also sensed that the kids knew exactly how he felt by this time, despite the appearance of his face. He was here to teach these kids, and he sure as hell couldn’t teach them if he pretended they didn’t exist. So he put the attack out of his mind. He stacked it in a dark corner under what he considered Finished Business, and he started with a clean slate, not realizing that almost every slate in a trade school is a dirty one.
He got the idea the day the machine shop upstairs went into operation. He’d brought an adventure magazine to school, figuring he’d start a new regime by showing some friendship toward the boys, by reading them a story from a popular publication rather than a textbook. The story was a good one, if not a classic masterpiece, and he read it well, injecting life into the descriptive passages, giving the dialogue real meaning. He had reached the climax when the machine shop erupted.
It started as a dull whine, and he barely glanced up from the printed page. The whine increased in volume until it sounded like a runaway buzzsaw. Rick looked up with honest bewilderment on his face, and he saw the boys in the classroom begin to smile. He lifted his eyebrows, shrugged, and started to read again.