Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  We talked about Patrick, the mumbly kid who took the history test with me. Patrick would do anything to get out of a class, Mrs. Meese said. “He’s a junior, and he’s ricocheted in and out of this school five times, I think. His parents keep moving. First Kansas City, then Brunswick, then Greenfield, Mass. It was here, Kansas City, here, Brunswick, Greenfield, here, Portland, here.”

  “I think I saw him in the hall with a girlfriend, though,” I said.

  “Yeah, he’s known her all these years. But he’s not getting anywhere scholastically because they keep bouncing in and out of here.”

  “I feel sorry for some of these kids, seeing them struggle,” I said. “They’re barely able to spell, and I’m thinking, Is this the best use of their time?”

  “No, it’s not,” Mrs. Meese said. “The issue that I see is kids that don’t do book learning. They do hands-on learning. There’s a ton of them in this school. Let them be a plumber or a carpenter or an electrician. But here’s the problem. You can’t be a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter now without going to college. There’s no more coming out of high school and apprenticing under somebody.”

  I said, “They’re being made unnecessarily miserable, and they think they’re stupid, but actually they might well be a brilliant small-engine-repair guy, who just can sort of take things apart in his mind, who has that spatial sense. And yet here it’s all about how many isms can you memorize.”

  “It’s very frustrating,” said Mrs. Meese. “My brother falls into this category. He’s fifty-one, and he can do pretty much anything. But he’s never had college. Right now he’s working with a guy who is a furnace guy. He’s learning under this guy, and he’s doing fabulous. So my mother said to him, ‘Why don’t you apprentice under him, and get your license?’ He said, ‘Because there’s no more of that, Mom.’ He says, ‘I’ve got to go to college. It’s book learning.’ He goes, ‘I can’t learn by reading an effing book.’ When my brother was five, he was taking bicycles apart and remaking bicycles. And then he went to lawnmowers and minibikes. He took my mother’s blender apart. You can blindfold him and tell him, ‘There’s a whatever motorcycle engine in front of you,’ he’ll put it back together. But he can’t do it as a profession, because he has no college. He’d be a fabulous teacher. The f-bombs would be flying, I know that. He built a car from the ground up. He can weld like you’ve never seen anybody weld. He learned from my father. He learned all of it at my father’s elbow. My father was the same way. He took my grandmother’s washing machine apart—he wanted to know how it worked. Of course, she spanked him for that one—but it was the same idea.”

  Mrs. Batelle and Ms. Gorton came in with Drew and a new girl, Kendra, to do some more work on the history test. “Let’s get this done, Kendra,” said Ms. Gorton.

  “It’s nice and cool in here,” said Drew.

  Mr. Clapper, the school principal, came on the PA system. “Good afternoon, this is Mr. Clapper, can I have your attention for a moment? I would like to congratulate the class of 2014, and I’d like to announce the students in the top ten percent, in alphabetical order.” He read off twenty-two names—eighteen girls and four boys. “Our honors essayist is Benjamin Young, our salutatorian is Tricia Hadden, and our valedictorian is Kelsie Mattingly. Congratulations to all of those students in the top ten percent of the class of 2014.”

  Kendra read a question on her test: “Give three reasons why fighting in the Pacific was difficult for US troops.”

  I sent some emails, after Drew showed me where to plug in the computer.

  Drew opened a cupboard and found a can of antiperspirant. He gave himself a couple of quick squirts under his sweatshirt.

  Mrs. Batelle looked up from her notes, hearing the hissing sound. “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Deodorant,” said Drew. “I’m sweating.”

  “That’s okay, Drew,” Mrs. Batelle said. “I thought you were having Jell-O pie or something.”

  Ms. Gorton said to Kendra, “We skipped this question yesterday. I want you to read the question.”

  “What was the foreign policy of the United States after World War I?” Kendra read softly.

  Mrs. Batelle was reading an upcoming learning target assessment in Drew’s binder. “Are you good at drawing?” she asked.

  “I draw stick men,” said Drew. “That’s the best I can do.” He yawned.

  “Why don’t you put away all your notes,” said Mrs. Batelle. She handed him the learning target project packet. “And then, we can take a look at this. Okie dokie? You are a reporter or a writer during World War II, and you have just witnessed or experienced one of the following events. Fortunately, you were one American who was able to survive this horrific event. It’s your job to explain this experience to the American people. So how would you explain it?”

  “What experience?” said Drew.

  “How, though,” said Mrs. Batelle.

  “You’ve got to pick an experience,” said Drew.

  “True. But how would you relate it to the American people. You’re over there, you’re not here. How would you get the news to the people, over the ocean to us? What’s one way of doing it?”

  “Boat,” said Drew. “Boat? I don’t know if they had planes.”

  “How else? ‘Hello, hello?’ What’s this? A microphone!”

  “Radio?”

  “Radio. Or television? Did we have television in World War II?”

  “Kind of, actually,” said Drew. “I did a thing about TV last trimester, where I researched the history.”

  Mrs. Batelle said, “When did most households get a TV? I remember getting our first one, that’s how old I am.”

  “Mostly it started getting popular around the 2000s,” said Drew. “Close to there. Like around the 1990s, I think. Maybe a little later.”

  Mrs. Batelle pursed her lips. “I think earlier. Think about when I was born. We did this last year.”

  “Nineteen eighty-five?”

  “I would love that. That was when my son was born. I was born in 1958, and I can remember a TV. Very vaguely. When I was about five years old, my dad had to go to the hospital and have his teeth out, to get ready for dentures. I was a little thing, and I remember going with my mom to the store to get a little tiny TV—”

  Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong.

  “Is that our bell?” Mrs. Batelle asked.

  Ms. Gorton nodded.

  “Okay. Because in those days there were no TVs in the hospital.”

  Drew got up.

  “This little tiny black-and-white TV,” Mrs. Batelle went on. “And then we got the great big monster, and that big monster is still at my aunt’s. It still works. So anyway, you’ll be doing a project. You can do a cartoon strip, you can do a newspaper article, a radio show. Sounds like a blast! Now, Kendra, where do you go?”

  “Metal tech.”

  “Mr. Partridge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a funny man. Bye.”

  Drew slumped off for biology. I packed up my briefcase and followed Kendra to metal tech.

  “Sean, I like the new hat,” said a kid out in the hall. “Nice and loose there.”

  “I like it, too,” said Sean.

  —

  MR. PARTRIDGE HAD A BIKER’S PONYTAIL and a blacksmith’s chest. I found the same gray stool I’d sat on in the morning and positioned myself behind Jamie, Lucas, and Ben—not too close, but not too far. A kid was using a mallet to hammer idly on a piece of metal, watching it bounce around. Two friends discussed a music festival they wanted to go to.

  “Okay, a few moments of your TIME!” said Mr. Partridge. “There’s two boxes. One that’s graded, and one to be graded. If there’s no paperwork, no name, well, who’s this?” He held up a wrought-iron hook with a twisted handle.

  “Ahem, Linus!” said a boy.

&nbs
p; “No paperwork, goes back in the box. No job is done until the paperwork is done. Bear in mind, two pieces of paper for each activity project. Production guide, assessment sheet. On the sheet metal trades, the people that don’t have it. Brian Kelso I don’t have. Unless it’s in the box with no paperwork. Rusty, no paperwork. Adam, paperwork. Roger!”

  “I did it,” said Roger.

  “Well, it’s not in the box. I’m not going to go looking for it! I’m looking for stuff all over the place here. Kendra and Rich, sheet metal! That’s just the first activity. We’re in the fifth week now!”

  All this time Lucas and Ben had their heads crouched low over an iPad, conferring softly and smiling planfully.

  Mr. Partridge said, “We got people working on the hook! We got foundry going on! The sugar scoop is that last sheet metal piece! You have to draw it out on paper.” He held up a piece of paper with a shape drawn on it. “This is half scale. You do it full scale. Dimensions on here. You do your template with that. Bill is not here. I don’t think we’re ready to pour. Are we ready to pour?”

  “Bill’s is ready to be poured,” said a boy.

  “We’ll wait for Bill. The foundry piece, everybody’s doing okay. I got three or four sheets in yesterday for the foundry knowledge book work. It’s an open book. Get the answers! Work together! I don’t want to lecture all period and bore you to death.”

  Mr. Partridge walked around the class, checking on drawings. “You have an idea what I’m trying to do here?” he said to me.

  “Yeah, I like the sugar scoop,” I said.

  “So basically, one, two, three,” he said, pointing to Jamie, Ben, and Lucas. “Jamie does pretty good.”

  I paid a visit to Jamie. He was holding a small metal box that he’d made, using the brake bender. He showed me his paperwork. He’d gotten a 90. Now he was supposed to be working on plans for the wrought-iron hook with the twisted handle.

  Another ed tech, Ms. Laronde, was talking to Ben and Lucas, who were still snickering over Ben’s iPad. “Guys, I’m serious. Go ask Mr. Partridge for some work.”

  “I’ve done it,” said Ben.

  “When have you done the book work?” said Ms. Laronde.

  “Last week.”

  “Did you do the drill press?”

  “Yep,” said Lucas. “First thing we did was that.”

  “Well, ask Mr. Partridge what to do, then.”

  Ms. Laronde went off to help someone else.

  I went over. “Did you make that sugar scoop?” I said to Ben.

  “Yes,” said Ben.

  Lucas thought this was very funny. Had Ben found somebody else’s sugar scoop and appropriated it? Had he swapped his half-finished scoop for a fully completed one?

  “How did you make it?” I asked.

  More laughter from Lucas.

  “Mr. Bowles showed me how to fold it,” said Ben. “Do you have a Sharpie? I forgot to put my name on it. Mr. Partridge will get mad if it gets lost. I’ve just got to put my name on it, and I’ll be done.”

  “You’ll be done with work,” said Lucas, laughing and thigh-slapping.

  “So, Lucas,” I said. “Thanks for telling me that unbelievable story. What are you up to now? Mr. Partridge said I was supposed to sit over here with you guys.”

  “You don’t need to sit with us,” Lucas said. “You don’t need to watch us.”

  “That would cramp your style.”

  “Yeah, just do your own thing.” Lucas pulled out the sheet of paper with a half-scale plan of an unfolded sugar scoop on it. “Ben, you remember how to do this?”

  “Not really,” said Ben. Snurfle snurfle. Either Mr. Bowles had done all the work for them, or they’d stolen or swapped a sugar scoop.

  The blower in the forge came on. It sounded like the Bethlehem Steel factory back in its glory days.

  Mr. Partridge checked on Lucas. “You need your paper template,” he said. “Get the tape. WHO’S GOT THE TAPE? Mr. Bowles must have done the paper template for you.”

  “Give me some tape,” said Lucas.

  Mr. Partridge slapped down a roll of masking tape irritably. He turned to Jamie, who was talking to a girl.

  The girl said, “Jamie, you know those silver things that hold things?”

  “Vise grips?” said Jamie.

  “You should know that by now,” said Mr. Partridge. He showed Jamie how to measure the hook in order to estimate the length of quarter-inch iron he would need. “How many inches?”

  “Sixteen,” said Jamie.

  “So you write that there. Mr. Baker, you can help him out. You got quarter-inch square solid, sixteen inches, and it weighs how much? How many inches in a foot? See where I’m going with this?”

  Jamie and I began calculating how much material we’d need to make the hook. The noise of hammering and pounding was incredible. “How much is it per foot, twenty-five cents?” I said. We looked at a price table for quarter-inch iron.

  “No, it’s supposed to be forty-five,” said Jamie.

  “Okay, forty-five cents a foot,” I said. “And you have sixteen inches.”

  Jamie thought. “Would that be forty-five times sixteen?”

  I drew him a picture of a length of iron two feet high. “This thing is a foot plus another four inches. Twelve inches is a foot, right?”

  “A foot,” said Jamie, nodding.

  “And then we’re going to add one, two, three, four inches”—I made pencil marks—“and then we would have a total of sixteen inches.”

  “So would that be a dollar and thirty-six cents?”

  “I think that’s a bit much,” I said, “because it’s forty-five cents for this much, and then you’ve got to pay a little bit more money for the extra four inches. So if you’ve got four inches out of twelve inches, how many is that?” I wrote a four over a twelve. I was going too fast.

  “Uh, eight?” Jamie was subtracting.

  “You can turn it into two-sixths, or one-third,” I said.

  “Yeah, one-third, right.”

  “So now you’ve got forty-five cents, plus one-third of forty five.” I drew three circles on the top of the piece of iron. “That second foot you’ve divided up into three pieces of four inches. What would be one-third of forty-five?”

  Jamie groaned.

  We divided forty-five by three on the paper. “Fifteen, boom,” I said. “So forty-five cents for most of it, and then you’re going to add fifteen cents for the rest of it. How much is forty-five and fifteen?” I wrote it as a sum, with a line under it.

  “That would be a dollar and . . .”

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  Jamie carefully added the numbers and looked at them. “Oh, sixty,” he said.

  “So it’s going to cost sixty cents.”

  Jamie wrote down $.60 on the blank line. “Now I’ve got to sketch the hook,” he said. “How do I sketch the hook?”

  “Draw a hook,” I said.

  Jamie carefully drew a hook.

  “Now you just have to make it,” I said.

  “No, I made it.” He lifted a nearby hook from the table. It was perfect.

  “Holy crap, you made that?” I said.

  “Yeah, I put on the glasses,” said Jamie. “I had to make this point first. And then, on the horn, you have to make the hook.”

  I read the directions. Twist with the vise grips. Reheat. Twist in the opposite direction. “Wow. Hacksaw, reheat, then punch. Did you do all this in one class?”

  “No, a couple classes. And I made this, too.” He handed me his tin box, which I showered with praise.

  Jamie showed Mr. Partridge his math. Mr. Partridge told him to take the hook home and put the paperwork in the folder.

  “Power!” called a kid near where the girls had been glue-gunning that morning. I showed him how to pres
s the reset button to get current.

  Mr. Partridge pointed to three boys in baseball hats sitting near Lucas and Ben. “They’re the bonehead table,” he said. “They’re just gabbing. I won’t give them much of a grade today, but at least I know where they are.”

  “This is a great class, though,” I said. “You’re really giving them a taste of a lot of stuff.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Mr. Partridge. He shook his head grimly and pointed out that Ben had left the shop. Lucas was doing something conspiratorial with Ben’s iPad. “If they’re working, fine,” he said. “If they’re not, what are you going to do? They might get a three, which is a thirty, for the day. I look at it as time spent. I don’t care if they do lousy work.” He waved toward the kids who were hammering. “They’re beating themselves up over there, but they’re working. I get a few of them that show up once or twice a week. This is the fifth week. Fifteen absences, what do I do? I fail them. That’s up to them. They know how I do things here.” He pointed to Jamie. “This fellow, he works hard. He did the hook, he did the tray.”

  I sat down next to Lucas, while Mr. Partridge looked over my shoulder. “What happens now?” I said.

  “What?” said Lucas.

  “What do you have to do now?”

  Lucas pointed at the template for the sugar scoop, and the sheet of tin from which it was to be made. “Something with that,” he said. No eye contact. He had a pair of tin snips in front of him. Everything was ready to go.

  “You’ve got to cut sixteen and a half,” said Mr. Partridge. He marked the first place to snip with masking tape.

  “Mr. Bowles messed this up for me,” said Lucas.

  “Who did the drawing?” asked Mr. Partridge.

  “I’m going to say Mr. Bowles did,” said Lucas.

  “You’re going to blame him?”

  “He did, he really, really did,” said Lucas.

  “How come you didn’t do it?” said Mr. Partridge.