It wasn’t until Rick came up from his Unassigned sixth period, a little before the seventh period started, that he found Joshua Edwards.
He walked into the room and saw Josh sitting in the middle of the floor, his fingers idly running over the dented case, the broken records scattered around him like a dead army.
“Josh!” he said. “What the hell...”
“My records,” Josh mumbled. “They... they broke my records, Rick.” He looked up, and his face looked pathetically young without glasses perched on his nose, and there were thin streams of blood running down his nose, and he suddenly began to cry bitterly, tears that welled up from deep inside him. He was ashamed of the tears, but he couldn’t stop them, and they streamed down his face together with the blood, and Rick put his arm around Josh’s shoulder and held him in a firm grip, and Josh kept crying and saying, “Why’d they want to do that, Rick? Why’d they want to do that? What’d I do wrong? Rick, they broke my records.”
The tears kept coming because the records were broken, and each time he said it he was reminded of the fact. And the tears kept coming because the records were a part of Josh Edwards, and if the beating that night so long ago had taken something out of him, this breaking of the records had taken a little more, only this time it was a little more that was really a part of the man, and you can’t dissect a man slowly and expect him to survive.
And so Rick crouched alongside Josh on the floor of the classroom, and he kept his arm around Josh’s shoulders, and he listened to the sobs that wracked his friend’s body, and he wanted to cry himself, but he didn’t.
8
The first note came on November 4th, the day after the Election Day holiday. It was not in the mailbox when Rick left for school that morning, and it was not placed in the mailbox until 10:44 when an overburdened mailman pulled down the row of boxes in the hallway of 1935 East 174th Street and methodically began dumping letters into the open metal mouths. He was busy, and he gave only a cursory glance to the small envelope typed MRS. RICHARD DADIER, and then he dumped it into the box for 11C.
The delivery of the note was preceded by an important flow of events at North Manual Trades, a tide in fact which left no doubt about Mr. Small’s reformative policy. The incident in Joshua Edwards’ classroom had disturbed him deeply. The records, of course, had meant little or nothing to him. Hell, you could buy records anywhere. The record player, on the other hand, had belonged to the school, and the record player had been damaged in the disorderly fracas, and Small could not let such an incident go unnoticed or unpunished.
The parents of every boy in Josh’s sixth-period English class had been summoned to school, and an itemized list of the damages presented to them. Small had informed them in firm, principal-like tones, that Joshua Edwards would be reimbursed for his loss, and that North Manual Trades would be likewise reimbursed for the damaged record player. There had been twenty-six boys present that day, and the sum total of the damages had been divided by twenty-six, and Small advised the parents that payment should be made promptly. He would not like to call in the police on a matter such as this, but he was sure they all knew that wilful destruction of private or public property was a criminal offense. He was quite willing to forget the police; he knew that no one liked trouble with the police. On the other hand, he could not ignore the damage that had been done, hence his suggestion that payment be made promptly or he would be forced, in spite of his distaste for such a course of action, to inform the police of the incident. The collected, collective parents got the point. They got the point, and they forked over the cash, and there were many raw, red behinds that week, and a few battered heads. Money did not grow on trees, and being called to school was humiliating even when it didn’t cost anything.
Nor were the red and aching behinds the only punishment the boys in Josh’s class suffered. They were brought in a group to Mr. Small’s office, whereupon Mr. Small delivered a shouting, ranting, biting, vituperative ten-minute speech on the conduct he expected from the students of Manual Trades. He concluded his dissertation by telling the boys they would spend their next week at school in the auditorium, all day, every day. They would come supplied with fountain pens, paper, and bottles of ink. They would sit three seats apart from each other all day long, and there would be three Unassigned teachers watching them during each period of the day, a task which did not appeal to the faculty of the school, who enjoyed their Unassigned periods fully as much as they did their God-given lunch periods.
The boys would not be idle during their week of incarceration. They would use the pens, the ink, and the paper. They would write. They would write all day long. They would write, “I shall learn to respect the property of others.” They would fill page after page of lined paper with these words. The teachers watching them would make sure that none of the boys shirked their literary efforts. The boys would write until their fingers were ready to fall off, and then they would write some more. So did William Small, Principal and Chief Executioner of North Manual Trades High School, decree.
Rick, perhaps prompted by the Boss’ decisive action in The Edwards Affair, inflicted his own punitive program upon Arthur Francis West. He exiled the Urinating Unicorn to the English Office during the fifth period every day. There, under the watchful eyes of Mr. Stanley, Department Chairman and Executioner in Charge of English Department Violations, West practiced his own penmanship to the tune of “I shall learn to ask for the pass properly.” West did not like the tune. He also did not like Stanley. He cared even less for the English Office, and his lack of affection spread rapidly to include North Manual Trades High School, Bronx County, and even the entire City of New York. Most of all, he definitely did not like Daddy-oh. Not at all. Not in the least.
And while his cramped right hand struggled with “I shall learn to ask for the pass properly,” a punitive technique which allegedly went out of practice with the coming of the horseless carriage, his mind silently avowed “I shall piss all over Daddy-oh.”
Anne Dadier, on that morning after Election Day, was not aware of West’s urinating aspirations. She had given Rick his breakfast that morning and then gone back to bed, rising finally at 9:10 and beginning another day, a day which loomed large on the horizon, and which loomed large in the area beneath her breasts and above her legs.
She went into the bathroom in her shorty nightgown, and when she spotted herself in the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door, she put her hands on her hips and thought. Gad, you sexy creature, you.
She turned sideways and examined her profile, studying the insistent bulge with fascination. She placed both hands on her belly, holding it like a medicine ball, and then she turned again, looked at herself fullface, and thought. You can hardly tell this way. Except that my hips have gone.
She turned her back to the mirror, looking back over her shoulder, her eyes traveling over her good, long legs where they jutted out from beneath the end of the gown. This is the best view, she thought. All expectant mothers should be forced to walk backwards. She shrugged, walked to the mirror over the sink, and unbuttoned the top part of her gown. She cupped one breast and studied it in the mirror, amazed at the way the nipple had darkened, had become somehow more mature, had become a woman’s nipple. She dropped the breast and her thoughts about pregnancy and then brushed her teeth, washed her face, and brushed out her hair.