The buzzsaw began to click, and then it began to clank, as if someone had thrown a monkey wrench into the gears and the gears were pounding hell out of it. The entire room seemed to vibrate from the sound. The windows rattled, and the pencils lying on his desk began doing an impromptu jig.
Rick opened his eyes wide in astonishment. The boys laughed, and something inside him responded to the laughter. For the moment, even though his astonishment had been real at first, he had become a showman. He opened his eyes wider in mock astonishment this time, and then let his jaw fall open, and he lifted his eyebrows until they were almost touching his hairline.
The class waited, and he felt the way he had back at college when the group had done Room Service. He felt that waiting for a gag line, sensed the anticipation, and he seized upon the interest and very slowly and very precisely said, “Now-what-the-hell-is-that?”
The class laughed, and then one of the kids said, “Machine shop upstairs, teach.”
Rick had slapped his forehead and pretended to swoon. “Brother,” he answered, “that’s all we need.”
He’d laughed aloud, a half-sincere, half-phony laugh, and the kids had laughed with him. He knew they were not laughing at him. He knew they were, just for the moment, sympathetic with his problems, looking at themselves from where he stood at the front of the room, realizing they were not exactly angels, and laughing because this added sound barrier was making a tough job tougher. They laughed with him because, just for the moment, they saw things as he saw them, and perhaps as they actually were.
“Read the story, anyway,” one of the kids had called out. “It’s a good one.”
Rick had looked up at the ceiling and regarded the noise suspiciously, like a man about to dip his toes into an icy pool. Then he’d sighed, smiled, nodded his head in resignation, and gone on with the story, finishing it before the bell sounded. A feeling of good spirit had prevailed during that class, and Rick correctly attributed it to his impromptu dramatic reaction to the situation. He began to give this dramatization business deep consideration.
He’d been fairly good in college dramatics, and he knew that no one liked anything better than a show, especially if the show were free. And if he could hold the kids’ attention by putting on a show, why not do it? There was no doubt that he had held their attention during the machine-shop episode. They had listened to him attentively, and he had felt something like rapport for the first time at Manual Trades. If the single problem was in reaching them, and if he had successfully reached them by becoming an actor, why not carry the thing further? After all, he didn’t care how he reached them, so long as he did. And if dramatics was the answer, dramatics he would try.
He tried it. A little at a time at first, a few hammy gestures, a few mugging expressions. They ate it up, so he expanded on it. He tried illustrating a grammatical point by doing a little skit. They loved it. So he revised his lesson plans, organizing them so that everything he taught revolved about some piece of dramatics. He dramatized everything he did in class, whether it was reading a story or explaining the structure of a newspaper. He found himself exhausted at the end of each day, but the exhaustion was worth it, he reasoned, if he was accomplishing something.
He recognized the fallacy of his reasoning after he’d been acting for two weeks. He should have recognized it sooner, but he was so enthusiastic over the idea that its shortcomings went unnoticed. He made a common mistake, a mistake Solly Klein had repeatedly warned against. He assumed the intelligence level was higher than it actually was.
He greeted his seventh period, seventh-term English class with the news that he wanted them to write a composition in class. There was the usual grunting and groaning, and when the class had settled down. Rick explained exactly what he wanted done.
“The title of the composition,” he said, “will be Something Lost.” He paused and looked out at the vacant faces before him. “Lost,” he said, spreading his hands wide, “you know, lost. Now there are a million things that get lost every day. I simply want you to write a composition about something you’ve lost, either recently, or a long time ago, or anytime, for that matter.”
He saw the faces out there, and he hoped the gears were beginning to click behind the expressionless eyes.
“You mean jus’ somethin’ we lost?” one of the boys asked.
“That’s right,” Rick said. “Tell me how you lost it, where you lost it, how you tried to find it, and how you finally did find it, if you did. For example...” he said, rubbing his hands together and preparing himself for his dramatic stint. He saw the smiles appear magically on the boys’ faces, saw the anticipation in their eyes. He was going to put on a show again, and they liked his shows. Hell, let the bastard knock himself out. Didn’t cost them nothin’.
Rick walked to the door of the room.
“You come home from school,” he said. He opened the door, stepped out into the corridor briefly, and then entered the room again. He was no longer Richard Dadier, English teacher. He had rolled up the cuffs of his trousers, and he strolled into the room whistling, mugging broadly, giving his interpretation of what a seventeen-year-old kid looks like entering his home when the school day is over.
“You drop your books on the kitchen table,” he said, reliving the way he’d done it every day when he came home from high school. He pantomimed the dropping of the books, and then he pantomimed taking something from his pocket. “You take your fountain pen from your pocket,” he said, “and you put it down on the table, right next to the books.” He patted his desk alongside the imaginary books there. “Right here now. Right here alongside the books. That’s where you put the fountain pen.”
The kids nodded, really enjoying this. He was driving at something, Daddy-oh was, something about that fountain pen, right there near the books.
“Okay,” Rick said, smiling idiotically, rubbing his hands together and looking down at the imaginary fountain pen, “time for a little refreshment. Hard day today, English a pain in the neck, as usual.” He paused and waited for his laugh, pleased when it came, timing it the way he’d done on the stage, waiting for it to reach its crest, and then speaking again when the laugh had almost but not quite subsided. “Think I’ll have a little milk.”
The kids nodded at each other, liking this goddamned show. What was he gonna do with that fountain pen?
“Off to the refrigerator!” Rick shouted, pointing his finger up at the ceiling like a kid getting an inspired idea. He raced across the room, paused at the door, and said, “Ahhhhh,” opening the door and pretending it was a refrigerator door. He reached out into the corridor, shoving around some imaginary items in the refrigerator.
“Pickles, mm, cream cheese, mm, lasagna, bagels and lox, the cat, mm “ He did a take, reached in for the imaginary cat and yelled, “What’s the cat doing in there?” gingerly depositing the animal on the floor while the class howled. “Ahhh,” he said when the laugh had died, “the milk.” He held up the imaginary bottle, beamed, and then went to the sink for a glass.
“So you’ve got the milk and the glass, and you go into the living room and relax,” and here he walked to the opposite side of the room, toward the windows. “And you forget all about the kitchen, and the books and... the fountain pen!”
He nodded his head to emphasize the point, pursing his lips. The kids watched him, realizing it was a mistake to forget about that fountain pen because something was sure as hell going to happen to it.