“Mr. Dadier is the subject teacher,” he said. “And incidentally, Whoust,” he glared at West, “anyone misspelling my name in the heading will lose ten points.”
“What!” West complained, outraged.
“You heard me,” Rick snapped.
“Well, how do you spell Daddy-oh?” West asked, the smile curling onto his mouth again.
“You figure it out, West. I don’t need the ten points.”
“Don’t worry, teach, I can spell your name all right,” West said.
Rick bitterly pressed the chalk into the board. It snapped in two, and he picked up another piece from the runner. With the chalk squeaking wildly, he wrote out the rest of the test.
“No talking,” he ordered. He sat down behind the desk and eyed the class suspiciously.
A puzzled frown crossed Miller’s face. “I don’t understand the first question, teach,” he called out.
Rick leaned back in his chair and looked at the board. “It’s very simple, Miller,” he said. “There are ten words on the board. Some are spelled correctly, and some are wrong. If they’re wrong, you correct them. If they’re right, spell them just the way they’re written.”
“Mmmmmm,” Miller said thoughtfully, his eyes glowing. “How do you spell the second word?”
Rick leaned back again, looked at the second word and began, “D-I-S...” He caught himself and faced Miller squarely. “Just the way you want to. You’re taking this test, not me.”
Miller grinned widely. “Oh. I didn’t know that, Chief.”
“You’ll know when you see your mark, Miller.”
He cursed himself for having pronounced the boy’s name correctly, and then he cursed Miller for simply being Miller. He remembered the day he’d come back, after the Christmas vacation. He remembered Miller stopping him in the hallway and telling him he’d heard about the baby and was sorry. He’d stared at the boy and tried to combine both halves of his character: the half that could be an angel in a Christmas show and could express concern over the death of Rick’s son, and the half that raised hell in the classroom. He had given it up as a sorry task, had thanked Miller for his sympathy, and then left the boy. He knew what to expect from Miller now. Even after the show, and especially after the long talk he’d had with the boy. The easy road. That was what he would get. And the easy road was the hell-raising road, the one-of-the-boys road. And I’m taking the same goddamned road, Rick thought bitterly.
He sighed and made himself comfortable at the desk, and then he looked out over the class.
De la Cruz will cheat, he thought. He will cheat and I won’t catch him. He’s uncanny that way. God, how I wish I could catch him. How does he? On his cuff? Where? He probably has it stuffed in his ear. Should I search him? No, what’s the use? He’d cheat his own mother. An inborn crook. A bastard.
Bastard, Rick mused. Even I call them that now. All bastards, all the time. I must tell Solly Klein I’ve succumbed. I must take Solly aside someday and say, “Solly, old boy, you were right. This is the garbage can of the educational system.” Hell, even Miller recognized that. And then I must admit that I’m doing nothing more than sitting on the lid. And then I must look up Josh Edwards, wherever the hell he is, whatever the hell he’s doing, selling shoes, washing automobiles, and I must tell him. I must say to him, “Josh, I’m a fake. You were the brave one. Josh, and I’m just a goddamned fake. It’s I who’s the coward, Josh.”
But when did I give up, he wondered, when did I start taking the easy road, Miller’s easy road? Or have I given up? Yes, I’ve given up. No, I haven’t.
But I have, I have. And when? When the baby was born, when my son was not born. Before that? No, before that was “The Fifty-First Dragon,” and oh what a lesson that had been, God what a lesson that was. Just give me a lesson like that once a week, just once a week, that’s all, and I’d teach for the rest of my life. I’d take all the crap all the Millers and Wests in the world have to hand out, I’d let myself be called on the carpet everyday by all the Smalls alive, if only I could reach them like that once a week, just once a week. Or if one kid, just one kid that’s all, one kid got something out of it all. If I could point to one of these bastards and say, “I showed him the way,” if I could only do that, but who have I shown?
I’ve shown no one. It’s a big laugh, all right, but I’ve shown no one. And after all my big talk to Miller, all my big talk about hard roads and easy roads, with Miller wanting to be shown, and I couldn’t even show him. It’s Miller who’s shown me. It’s Miller who offered the easy road, join the crowd, fool around, play around, be a fake. Miller showed that to me, and I took it, and now we’re both on the easy road, a fake student and a fake teacher. But how can I blame myself?
They’re all the same, just the way they were when I first started, not changed one goddamned bit. But am I to blame?
Yes, you’re to blame, all right. You’re to blame because somewhere along the line you stopped trying. And you can say it’s because you don’t give a damn anymore, and you can say you’ve got your own headaches, but you still stopped trying. When Josh Edwards stopped trying, he also stopped teaching. He gave it up, and that was the honest thing to do, but you’re not honest. You’re filling the chair, but you’re not filling the job. You’re taking the easy road, and I’m glad I don’t have to live with you.
There are a lot of guys taking the easy road, Rick thought, but I never thought I’d be one of them, but I’m certainly one of them now, and that’s a hell of a thing to admit. The shining example, the one who was going to show Miller all about the hard road, and Miller’s skin is black, by Christ, he was born with a hard road, and yet you blamed him for taking the easy road that time you talked with him, even though you couldn’t explain the hard road, even though you still can’t explain it, especially not now when you’ve succumbed to the bastards.
Bastards again. All right, bastards.
They’re all rotten, and they’re all bastards, and I agree with Solly Klein now, and I should have seen it in the beginning, Solly, for you are all-wise, Solly, and you know all about baseballs crashing into blackboards alongside your head, and you know all about this machine that won’t run no matter what you do to it — no it’ll run but it won’t produce. You know all about this big goddamned treadmill with all its captive rats scurrying to get nowhere, scurrying to get right back where they came from. You know all about it, Solly, and you tried to tell me but I wouldn’t listen because I was the Messiah come to teach. Except even a Messiah wouldn’t be heard in this dump.
So why the hell bother? Why should I teach? Why should I get ulcers?
“Keep your eyes on your own paper, Belazi,” he cautioned.
Everyone is a cheat, a potential thief. Solly was right. We have to keep them off the streets. They should really hire a policeman. It would be funny, he thought, if it weren’t so damned serious. How long can you handle garbage without beginning to stink yourself?
“All right, Belazi,” Rick said suddenly. “Bring your paper up. I’m subtracting five points from it.”
“Why? What the hell did I do?” Belazi shouted.
“Bring me your paper.”
Belazi reluctantly slouched to the front of the room and tossed his paper on the desk. He was a big boy with a sinewy, big-boned frame, and he stood with his thumbs looped in the tops of his dungarees as Rick marked a large — 5 on the paper in bright red.
“What’s that for?” Belazi asked.
“For having loose eyes.”