“Why?”
“Well, I thought we’d take a little ride. Westchester, maybe. Unless you’re in a rush.”
“No, it’s okay,” Rick said.
“Good.”
Josh unlocked the car and then walked around to the driver’s side. Rick opened the door for him, and when he’d settled himself behind the wheel, he fitted the key into the ignition and started the car. He drove uptown, and Rick leaned back against the seat cushion, his legs stretched out in front of him. They hardly spoke until Josh turned onto the Bronx River Parkway, and then Josh said, “Well?”
“Well what, Josh?”
“Say what you think, Rick.”
“About your quitting?”
“Sure. Start cursing me out.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, Rick. Quitter, coward, turncoat, I don’t know. All of them, I suppose. They all fit, don’t they?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything like that,” Rick said.
“No? Well, Stanley was thinking it. I could read it in those cold eyes of his. That superior smirk, you know? The commanding officer watching the green private turn and run under fire. That’s me, Rick. Running under fire.”
“Stanley’s a jackass,” Rick said, remembering the reports the Department Chairman had given to Small.
“Admittedly. But he’s not a quitter. That’s the difference. A jackass commands more respect than a quitter, doesn’t he?”
“If you feel that way about it,” Rick said, “why are you quitting?”
“That’s a good question,” Josh said. “I asked myself that question a lot of times, Rick. It’s a very good question.”
“Well, why?”
“Why? Not the beating, Rick. Hell, what’s a beating? You took the beating, too, and you’re not quitting. The records? Smashing my records? No, not that either. I loved those records, but you don’t live with a phonograph. So it wasn’t the beating, and it wasn’t the records, though both helped in my decision. It was something bigger than both, Rick.” Josh smiled at his own unintentional cliché. “This is bigger than both of us, baby,” he said.
“What, Josh?”
“A feeling of failure.”
“Hell, Josh...”
“Oh, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me the term started in September, and it’s only November now, and why don’t I give it a little time? I gave myself the same argument, Rick, and I always came up with the same answer.”
“And what was that?”
“That I’m no damn good. I’m not a teacher.”
“Don’t be silly. You...”
“No, it’s the truth. It’s not my fault, Christ knows, because I certainly want to be a teacher, you know that. But I’m not one. I’m not teaching. I’m standing up there and doing a lot of talking and waving my hands a lot, but I’m not teaching anything. Sure, the license says I’m a teacher, but the license is full of crap. You’re only a teacher if somebody learns from what you say or do. Nobody is getting anything from me, believe me.”
“Josh, you’re hardly given it a fair chance. It’s a matter of breaking through to the kids, and once you’ve done that...”
Josh turned his eyes from the road momentarily, and then shifted his attention back to driving again. “No. I’ll never break through. I’m the square peg in the round hole. I could teach for fifty years, and the kids still wouldn’t learn anything. I’d stand up there and pour my heart out at them, and nothing would sink in. I know there are teachers like that, but I’m not of a mind to cheat the City of New York. If they pay for a teacher, they should get one, and I sure as hell am not one.”
“Josh, you’re as good as I am. I haven’t reached the kids yet, either. But I’m not quitting. Why should I quit? How can I ever get to them if I quit?”
“Nobody’s asking you to quit,” Josh said. “I’m doing it because I have to do it.”
“I don’t understand that,” Rick said.
“You don’t? Maybe it’s a little difficult, Rick. Maybe you don’t know me well enough. Maybe it’s just my makeup, I don’t know.”
“Explain it to me.”
“I’m disappointed, but I’ve been disappointed before, too, and it never seemed to matter this much. I was disappointed in the service because I expected glamour and I got drudgery. I was disappointed when I was discharged because the apple pie and coffee dream wasn’t that at all. I came home to a not-too-pleasant apartment and a lot of changes, and it didn’t add up to my dreams of home while I was away. But I let that disappointment ride, and I enrolled in college, and college wasn’t the way I’d seen it in the movies or in Life magazine. I didn’t steal anyone’s panties, and I didn’t paint a cannon blue, and I wasn’t a football hero, nor did I ever steal a girl’s virginity in the chemistry lab after hours. I let all these disappointments ride because I knew what I wanted to do, and I’d known it for a long time. I wanted to teach. So I studied to be a teacher. I studied hard, and I swallowed all the junk they handed out because I thought that junk would really make me a good teacher. Well, I’m not a good teacher, and this time I’m not going to ride out the disappointment. This time I’m going to be goddamned good and disappointed, and I’m going to chuck it all and do something else, and maybe I’ll find a niche someplace for myself. And if I don’t, the hell with it, because I’m not going to teach when I know I can’t teach.”
“Josh, it’s the kids. It’s...”
“Sure it’s the kids, because the little sons-of-bitches don’t want to learn. But a good teacher should make them want to learn. There are good teachers in the vocational schools. Rick, you know that, don’t you?”
“Well...”
“There are, and maybe we’re surrounded by lemons, but we’ve got some good ones at Manual Trades, too. Do you know Sokoloff? He’s really good, and a grade advisor to boot, and there’s Jamison and...”
“Then why don’t you stick with it?”
“Because I’m no goddamned good. Rick, don’t you see? Rick, what’s the sense of kidding myself? Could I live with myself if I did that? Could I come to school all day and fake being a teacher, fake it all the way through, just blab all day long, and then go home and look at myself in the mirror and try to think I’m not a fake. Could I do that?”
“I don’t know, Josh. I suppose...”
“Well, I know I couldn’t. So I’m running out, and that may seem cowardly to Stanley and to Small who has a scar down his face and who probably took a lot of crap climbing the ladder in the system, and it may even seem cowardly to you. For all I know, it may be cowardly. I don’t feel like a coward, though, so maybe I’m not being one. I don’t know.”
“Can’t you stick it a while longer? To the end of the term? Josh, the term is almost over.”
“Rick, I knew the first week. Rick, I just knew, that’s all. When I got the beating, I began thinking about it seriously, and I tried harder to get at the kids, but they weren’t having any. Why? How the hell do I know? Maybe it’s the system. Maybe the vocational high school stinks completely, and maybe it isn’t the wonderful idea they thought it was. Except that some teachers do teach, and I’m not one of them. What the hell am I supposed to do, Rick? Take a complaint back to my college? Tell them, ‘Look, you stupid bastards, you didn’t teach me how to teach! What have you got to say for yourselves?’ Hell, are they to blame? They went to college, too, and someone who’d never learned to teach taught them how to teach me so that I never learned to teach. What came first, the chicken or the egg?”
“If you’d only give it a chance,” Rick persisted. “Come on, Josh, don’t throw it over so soon.”