At that moment the bell rang and I didn’t think much more about it, being busy keeping my class in line and being annoyed with Jerry Dufossat, who was leering at me with gum in his mouth.
It was that afternoon we had the bomb scare. It is also one of the few times in my life I’ve been left absolutely alone with a decision, and done the unobvious thing, because it was such a terrible chance to take.
You know, teachers do a lot of things beside teach. And we have to worry about a lot of things besides whether Johnny can read.
One of the things we have to worry about is the children’s safety. And for that, one of the last things in the world we want to see is a strange man hanging around the school yard.
Well, I saw one, that lunch hour, but he just walked around the block and watched the children and didn’t try to talk to them or come into the school yard, so I just kept an eye on him. He was a slouched, dull-eyed man, and he looked so much like a degenerate character I decided he must be an actor practicing.
The second time he came around the block I went over and asked if he were the father of one of the children in the school yard.
“Yeah,” he said, pointing indeterminately, and slouched on.
He smelled like liquor. But sometimes it’s cough syrup and he did have a cough. A hack, now and then, like a comment on whatever dreary thoughts such a man must have.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought I’d better call him back and tell him to take his postprandial strolls somewhere else, because teachers have to be very nervy, but just then the bell rang—and you can’t imagine how many problems are solved, or never get solved, because bells ring.
Well, I was thinking I’d better send a little note to Mr. Buras but first I had to collect the impedimenta the kids had left on the playground—the latest thing was pornographic telescopes—and then we had arithmetic which is always a strain on me because I’ve never really adjusted to the fact that ¼ + ¼ = ½.
Anyway, by two o’clock I was just getting around to the note and had five fraction problems on the board for the children to do—when the door opened and in he walked.
I didn’t like the way he walked.
Nor the way he looked.
Cough medicine, to my knowledge, does not produce this effect.
“He’s drunk,” someone whispered.
“Nah, crazy,” someone else whispered and I gave them my Look which, after several months, was really getting rather good.
It’s too bad fifth-grade children know what drunkenness is. But they do, you know. You have to resign yourself to all sorts of things about children.
I gave the man my Look, too, and he appeared very ill at ease, because sometimes even grown people feel overawed when they walk into a school. Especially the kind of grown people who used to get called to the principal’s office all the time.
“I come,” he began, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Come for my son.”
I looked around the room. There was David Mines, a shy child strung too tall for his weight, sitting immobile. Only tears moved in his eyes. That would be the one.
“School is not out until three o’clock,” I said. “Unless there is some unusual reason I cannot let David go.” Normally, of course, I wouldn’t even question a parent coming for a child early. But not with that expression on David’s face.
“Got a reason,” Mr. Mines said. “My boy. David!” he called to the boy. But he was unsure of himself. He was a man used to being pushed around. It was obviously hard for him to stand on his own two feet.
Literally and figuratively.
“Sit down, David!” I said peremptorily. A thought was coming to me with cold horror. And it was such a bad thought I tried to hide from it. But I could not.
“Sit down, please, Mr. Mines,” I continued, in the same tone I used with David. “In the last desk on the row next to the windows.” Because I recalled the recent case of the man who set off a bomb in a school yard. And although everybody did what they could and did what was expected and the school authorities were not to be blamed —well, perhaps it might be better in such a case not to do what was to be expected.
Like... like what?
Of course, I had no real reason to think Mr. Mines had set a bomb anywhere. Maybe he’d just come to take David for a dental appointment and what with the cough medicine and my authoritative attitude, he was too confused to say so.
On the other hand, I could feel there was something odd about the whole thing.
The proper thing to do was send the man to Mr. Buras.
In which case Mr. Buras would see only two choices. Put the man out, by force if necessary, if he seemed dangerously drunk, or take David out of school and make him go with his daddy. And why not, except for my intuition?
Mr. Mines sat there, overflowing the little desk, his feet shifty, some internal discomfort making a line between his brows.
“Please wait a few moments, Mr. Mines. We have our spelling lesson now and it’s very important that David should not miss it. Children, get out your spellers.”
We had had our spelling lesson, of course, at eleven o’clock in the morning.
Not a child betrayed me. The room was silent as the grave.
“Page thirty-four,” I said. And the monotonous chant began. “Desert, d-e-s-e-r-t.” What was I going to do? What was Mr. Mines thinking, sitting there? If only I could read his ... Jerome!
send me jerome, I wrote on a slip of paper.
“Who’s the messenger for today?” I asked, as casually as possible, between Government and Guide.
Joyce stood up, her lightboned face a little pink with excitement, but shoulders square and fully up to whatever responsibility I was going to put on her.
Mr. Mines was looking suspiciously at the note.
“It’s for Miss Fremen in the fourth grade,” I told Joyce, loud enough for all to hear. “Tell her it’s for the book lists.”
Miss Fremen might well wonder what Jerome had to do with the book lists. But Miss Fremen was not one to waste time satisfying idle curiosity on a busy school day.
“l-a-u-g-h, laugh!”
Mr. Mines didn’t have anything with him that looked like a bomb. But it would have been easy enough for him to sneak a suitcase in when classes were going on after lunch and hide it somewhere. In a lavatory or a broom closet.
I could just let him take David out and have the school searched. But suppose it was where no one could find it?
Or I could ask Mr. Buras to clear the school. On what grounds? That David’s daddy looked like a bum? In this neighborhood a good third of the daddies looked like bums. Hell, they are bums. Mr. Buras couldn’t clear the school every time one of them came around—not that this kind of daddies make a habit of coming around.
Mr. Mines was watching the clock, his face silvery with perspiration where the sun caught it. Every time the clock hand jumped another minute Mr. Mines passed his hand over his forehead.
“Spelling lesson’s over,” he said, when we got to “yule.” He stood up uncertainly. “C’mon, David.”
“David may not be excused yet,” I said firmly. “We have to make a sentence with each of the words.”
Mr. Mines stood there, awkward, by the little desk. “Then I’ll have to leave without him.”
Why not?
The room was so quiet you would have thought all the children had stopped breathing at once.
“Thunk!” went the minute hand of the clock.
“You may not be excused,” I snapped, sure this would not work, wondering where I got that kind of nerve.