City Boy (14 page)

“I wish I knew what it was, Len, honest,” said Herbie, out of the depths of humiliation. It was true, he had always had this mysterious blind spot toward baseball. Boys who were fools in the classroom could juggle names and figures by the hour: “Rabbit Maranville batted .235 in '26, Wilcey Moore pitched one shutout in '27,” and so forth forevermore, it seemed, while he knew nothing. He had tried in vain to study the sports pages of the newspapers. The figures evaporated from his brain like sprinklings on a hot pavement in July.

“It ain't too serious,” said Lennie. “With your brains, if you really wanted, you could get to be a regular guy in no time.”

“So help me, Lennie, I'm gonna try,” Herbie said, and made a mental note to spend the summer studying the baseball scriptures, Spalding's Handbook. He forgot about it five minutes later, but at the moment it was an iron resolution, and he felt thankful to Lennie for showing him the straight path. He resumed his coaching with a will, and with such good effect that Lennie came to Mrs. Gorkin's classroom muttering all the necessary secrets of English sentence structure.

The sternness of promotion time was marked by the legal-length yellow sheets lying on each desk. The majestic, oversize sheets seemed instruments of judgment. To add to the frightfulness of the tests as well as to make prearranged cheating harder, the seating order of the children was scrambled. Herbie found himself in the last seat but one in a former girls' row, and Lennie, by dextrously putting himself before the teacher at the right moment, managed to be placed directly behind him.

Mrs. Gorkin read the articles of war. She described to the grim-faced children the horrid penalties for talking, signaling, or looking anywhere but at blackboard or desk. No more than the class did she regard a promotion test as a simple examination. It was battle. On the children's side, a half year of life was at stake; on the teacher's, revenge for stupidity and indifference. She would show no mercy; they would have no scruples. Detection in crime meant being left back. All this was clear.

“Now,” said Mrs. Gorkin, “I shall raise these maps that cover the blackboard. Do
not
start writing until I give you permission.”

Africa and Asia rolled up at her touch, revealing the naked face of Fate. Ten questions were hand-printed on the board in blood-red chalk. White chalk was good enough for every other day of the year —in fact, it was much more readable than the colored—but the scarlet queries added a nice touch of terror.

“Begin!” barked the teacher. Thirty small hands dipped thirty new steel pens in thirty freshly filled inkwells, and on the yellow sheets the answer to the first question took form in thirty different scrawls.

Herbie Bookbinder danced through the examination in half the allotted time. His frivolous mind, barren of the useful facts of batting averages and league standings, was a weed patch of foolishness like infinitive clauses and subjunctive moods. He settled back to enjoy the luxury of doing nothing while others sweated. Suddenly from behind him came a hardly audible “Pss-s-st!” With the caution of a cat preparing for a steep jump, he very slightly leaned back his head to acknowledge the signal.

“Herbie,” came a desperate whisper, “what the hell is a dactyl, again?”

Now, Herbie was not used to cheating. Most school children develop a callus over that area of their souls, as a horse will where the harness galls him, but Herbie had always done well without it, and his conscience was still tender. When he had entered the first grade, his father had taken him aside to say, “Son, whatever you have to do, do it as good as you can. Don't cheat. Fail. But don't cheat.” He had never forgotten.

“Herbie, for Pete's sake, can't you hear me? WTiat's a dactyl?”

The whisper was louder now—dangerously loud. Mrs. Gorkin looked straight at Herbie, and he felt his face flush. Then she turned her glance elsewhere.

“Herbie, are you a regular guy or ain't you?
What's a dactyl?
”

Since Cain and Abel were young, what boy has been able to resist the challenge, “Are you a regular guy?” Whatever the crime involved—cheating, stealing, lying to parents, cruelty to the weak, or worse—what boy has the courage to refuse to be “regular”? Herbie pretended to resume writing his test. Carefully he extracted a scrap of paper from a trouser pocket and wrote the word “outfielder” on it. He leaned back and dangled his arm at his side. Lennie's hot, perspiring hand came groping for the paper, and seized it.

The voice of Mrs. Gorkin came through the air like an arrow of ice.

“Herbert Bookbinder and Leonard Krieger, stand!”

A thrill of horror ran down Herbie's spine. He and Lennie leaped to stiff attention in the aisle, arms hugged to sides.

The red-headed teacher strode to the vacant desk, and after a short search pounced on the crumpled bit of paper lying under Herbie's seat. The rest of the class watched with saucer eyes as she smoothed it out and read it. Upon seeing the single baseball term she looked so comically astounded and foiled that several children laughed aloud. A burning glance around the room withered them.

“Go back to your work, everyone who doesn't want to join these two!”

Twenty-eight heads bent low over desks.

Mrs. Gorkin looked long and hard at “outfielder.” Then she stared at the boys, who stood dumb and rigid. Then she turned the paper over. Then she turned it back and surveyed it upside down. Then she held it up against the light. But there was only one piece of intelligence to be gleaned from it: “outfielder.” She turned and walked to her desk, muttering, “Outfielder—outfielder—outfielder?” Snatching paper and pencil, she scrawled half a column of gibberish like fielderout, outerfield, fieldouter, outrefield, and so forth, studied her work for a moment, crumpled it, and dashed it into the waste-basket.

“Outside with you!” she snapped at the standing boys. “Faces to the wall and not a word, not a sound, do you hear?”

Herbie led Lennie out of the room, with the sense that his young life was coming to an unnatural end.

For fifteen torturing minutes the boys stood in the silent hall, their faces to the plaster. At last the school gong rang the end of the hour. A shuffle of feet and rustle of paper could be heard inside the classroom.

Lennie broke silence with a whisper, “She can't do nothin' to us.”

Herbie said nothing.

“Betcher scared.”

No answer.

“I ain't. That's a lotta bull about gettin' left back.”

No answer.

“What's the difference if we do get left back? We'll skip right back up in a month.”

Silence.

“Whatsamatter, Herb?”

“Sh-sh,” spoke up Herbie at last. “Ain't we in enough trouble?”

“I thought so,” snarled Lennie. “You're yellow. Just plain yellow, that's all you are. Yellow.”

Herbie was enraged. “You're as scared as me, Lennie Krieger. I can hear your voice shakin'. You're just showin' off like you always do. Shut your big trap.”

“O.K., General Garbage. I'll remember that. Gettin' all ready to snitch on me, ain'tcha?”

The classroom door opened.

“About face!”

Herbie and Lennie wheeled. Mrs. Gorkin confronted them with the scowl of a destroying angel.

“Now, then, Master Bookbinder, just what is the meaning of ‘outfielder’?”

“Why, ma'am, it's a guy on a baseball team who lays back of the bases—”

“Don't you play the fool with me! I want an explanation of
this!
” She thrust the paper scrap toward him.

Lennie interjected, “I never seen that paper.”

“Silence, you! Herbert Bookbinder, why did you pass the word ‘outfielder’ to Lennie?”

“That's—that's what I want to play on his softball team—outfielder, ma'am. We were talkin' about it at lunch.”

Mrs. Gorkin seized him by the ear. “Are you trying to tell me that in the middle of a promotion test you (yank) the fattest of all the little fat boys I have ever seen (yank) were thinking about athletics?”

“Ow! I finished my test, ma'am. I guess it was bad for me to pass a paper, but I sure don't have to cheat, ma'am, an' what good could ‘outfielder’ do Lennie?”

Mrs. Gorkin stared at him. He returned his best cherubic look. She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. “I would give a week's salary for the answer to that question,” she said. “Your papers are both forfeited. Return to your seats.”

After school Lennie whispered to Herbie, as they left the play yard, “She won't do nothin' to us, Herb. You'll see. Thanks for bein' a regular guy.”

Herbie often read in Sunday supplements about the end of the world. The fright which seized him at the thought that a comet might strike the earth, or the moon fall into the ocean, or the sun grow cold was not unlike the fear with which he now waited for promotion day. Each morning he woke to a sinking of the heart as he knew himself one day closer to being left back. But the ignorance that makes boys easy to terrorize also gives them hope of miracles. Herbie awaited his doom, nursed a secret faith in a last-minute pardon from the Governor or the President, and said nothing to his parents about his misery.

The day came. In Mrs. Gorkin's classroom thirty scrubbed children, dressed much too elaborately for a weekday, trembled for their good names as the teacher deliberately removed the rubber bands from the pack of report cards which were to be handed out for the last time. Nobody shook worse than Herbie and Lennie, but Herbie's obvious anguish invited pity, while Lennie made a point of looking around with lifted eyebrows and a mocking smile.

“Larry Ravets, promoted to 8A-1,” called the teacher.

Ravets, a sallow little boy with black-rimmed glasses, who had steadily held second place on the honor roll, leaped forward with glee, took his card, and stood against the wall. One after another the bright pupils, all promoted to the next grade, were summoned, received their cards, and lined up beside Ravets. Next the mediocre children, also promoted, joined the procession. The number remaining in their seats dwindled to ten, to six, to four. Herbie and Lennie were two of those four. The teacher paused. She had given out all the cards in her hand.

And now she stood and calmly walked out of the room.

A buzz arose.

“Tough luck, Herbie.”

“Don't worry, Lennie, she's just scarin' you.”

“She's a mean one.”

“I'm glad I ain't one of you two.”

“See you in 7B, fellows!”

Shirley Schwartz, Herbie's ugly little silent worshiper, shed tears in her inconspicuous place near the tail of the line. Although the two criminals had been mum to all questions by their classmates, she knew with the others that if cheating had occurred, it could only have been for Lennie's sake. The sympathies of the class were divided. Some were sorrier for the trapped athlete, and some for the fat boy who had tried to help him. But all felt much pleasure in contemplating the disaster from the safety of the promotion line.

The door opened, and Mrs. Gorkin returned to her desk amid graveyard silence. She carried four cards, each copiously marked with red ink.

“Tomaso Gusi, 8A-2—on probation.”

The bad boy of the class, swarthy, wiry, a dead-eye marksman of the rubber band and paper clip, darted forward, clutched his card to his breast, and fell into line.

“Mary Kerr, 8A-2—on probation.”

A large, slovenly girl, truant and stupid, rose, blubbering loudly, said, “Thank you, teacher,” amid sobs, and received her passport to happiness.

“Leonard Krieger.”

A long pause.

“7B-3.”

A gasp and a groan from the class. One head had fallen. Lennie swaggered up to the teacher. He plucked the card from her hand with an insolent jerk that would have brought severe punishment—except that one doesn't punish the dead—and took his place, grinning defiantly.

“Herbert Bookbinder.”

The teacher spoke the name and no more. Uncertainly, Herbie got to his feet. The teacher allowed a minute to pass while he stood thus in suspense, alone among the rows of empty desks, before the eyes of the whole fascinated class. Then she spoke.

“My opinion is that you are a disgrace to your parents and to me. I believe you cheated on the English grammar test. Leonard Krieger's part in the act is not clear, and he has not been punished for it. His average was low enough to fail him. But a note was passed in your handwriting. A cheat with perfect marks is worse than the stupidest pupil in class.

“I give you one last chance to make a clean breast. You won't be sorry if you do.

“What does ‘outfielder’ mean?”

The room seemed to be rotating around Herbie. He tried to sort out the dizzy jumble of his thoughts. But there seemed no way to tell the truth without accusing Lennie. It was the same painful choice: whether to be honest or “regular.” Pity the boy torn between the children's code and the schoolteacher's code.

“Ma'am, I told you,” he said in a thick voice.

“Step up here.”

Herbie falteringly obeyed.

“Children,” said Mrs. Gorkin, “always remember that in a free country a man is innocent until he is proven guilty. I have no proof that this boy cheated. As it happens, his promotion average was ninety-seven.”