Night Train

by Thom Jones

  The old Murphy bed was Harold’s magic Persian carpet from which he could encompass the “big picture.” He plotted his moves and savored future pleasures. Harold saw, smelled, felt, and practically tasted the smooth, dove gray leather seats of the burnished black Lincoln Town Car that would replace his ancient Ford. A car so quiet, the only thing he would ever hear was the ticking of the clock. In their gold-plated frames, the Lincoln’s vanity plates would read: HAMMER!

  In the mind-movie there was also a second wife, a newer and better model than the first. Beauty, brainpower, and refinement (“behind every great man…”). When she wasn’t supporting him in his Machiavellian schemes, number two would be a well-rounded person in her own right. Yeah, she gon be so fine! And the school district administration center would be Harold’s seventh heaven of joy—secretaries in short skirts with a little piquant bantering among them by day. A little bit of hanky-panky, while nights and weekends involved a walled country estate with polo, fox hunting, and high society available at his pleasure. Yes, a walled estate! Wasn’t that how the rich did the world over? They put up buffers and walls against the detritus of the everyday life. It was every man for himself in the swinish cesspool of the twentieth century. And why not be absolutely selfish? Was not beauty more pleasing to the eye than ugliness and squalor? To think of this new beginning, to think that it would all take off from a place like Du Bois High School—a veritable war zone, a sinkhole of black despair, a continuous scene of barbarous violence! Well, no problem, Harold would soon have it all squared away. They would have to do a double segment on 60 Minutes to showcase Harold and the new reformation revolution in American schools. Du Bois would become the exemplar ghetto success story. Hope would replace despair. Yes, fairy tales could come true. Harold was going to turn things around on a dime. Only fair that he should reap the rewards.

  The bestseller that his thesis would become would provide the means. Written in the snappy, popular vernacular, it would be a multifaceted jewel. Americans would read Harold’s terse, spellbinding prose with a curious admixture of horror and astonishment. The All-New Blackboard Jungle: An American High School in 1999. Probably make a movie, and playing the role of the visionary reformer—the only actor capable of playing real-life John Harold Hammermeister—may I have the envelope please?—ta da! Ladies and gentlemen, the only actor with sufficient authority and range to catch the infinite subtleties—with the scope, the voice, intelligence, maturity, the physical presence—ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…yet another gifted Canadian, Mr. Donald Sutherland. Was it Sir Donald? Well, it would be. The Queen Mother could hop off her ass and beknight the man. The dear fellow. It was high time. Just ’bout time, all right.

  Boy oh boy, what the mind could behold, the mind could make real. Hammermeister gave the kids a watered-down version of his visualization techniques whenever it was time to light a fire under somebody’s dead ass. Take pride! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It was always in one ear and out the other; they didn’t have a snowball’s chance, but you had to try. Professional ethics required one to take the idle stab.

  Nobody but nobody knew anything about elbow grease anymore. People were so friggin’ lazy. Work like a German! It was the golden key to riches and prosperity beyond imagining. Most American educators were shell-shocked, blown. In the trench warfare of public schooling, one needed to concentrate, work hard, confront problems and wrestle them down. Engage the mind. Work! In the trenches, friends, family, and personal recreation were inexcusable diversions. Insipid fuck-fiddle. You could pick up on that action later. Climb the ladder and then harvest the bounty…in the meantime, later, alligator.

  In Hammerstein’s office, on the left side of his desk in a small glass cage—the bottom covered with pea gravel, the top fixed with a warming lamp—Hammermeister kept a tarantula named Lulu. Hammermeister waited a few days before he brought the spider in. He wanted to get the lay of the land first. Lulu was a statement, and he wasn’t totally sure how to “play” these Americans. A big-ass hairy spider could get to be too much, but then, with his pleasant, affable good looks, his Mr. Nice Guy demeanor, Hammermeister wanted to establish a darker aspect of himself—a presentation of danger. If it gets down to it, boys and girls, if it comes down to it, I’ll fuck you up in a second! I’ll mess up yo’ face!

  Did he really say that?

  No, but he conveyed it just the same. He put out the vibe. When a recalcitrant student was sent to his office, Hammermeister liked to rock back in his executive’s chair, tapping the edge of his desk with a number one Dixon Executive pencil, affecting a debonair Donald Sutherland style, and say, “You aren’t getting through to me, my friend.” Tap, tap, tap. “You aren’t getting through.” It got to even the baddest of the bad—the sneaky quiet malefactors, the toughest thugs, the sulkers, wrongdoers of various shapes and descriptions. Hang a leading question on the guilty soul and he spills his guts. It never fails.

  Hammermeister was the first administrator to show up in the morning and the last to leave at night. He attended the football games, the band, orchestra, and choir recitals—plays. He even showed up at girls’ B-squad volleyball games. He wanted everyone to know that he was at the school and of it, and that because of him and through the sheer force of his personality, the school was going to get better, improve, blaze into the heavens—and the plan was working. A man has to have a plan, and Harold had a righteous plan. Beautiful, wonderful, mar-ve-lous!

  The students and discipline were his forte. He soon had them all under control—the wild-ass freshman girls, the dopers, the gang bangers; the whole spectrum of adolescent vermin. It didn’t have to be “I’ll fuck you up!” It hardly ever was…really. With Lulu on the desk he could focus totally.

  The principal complimented him often about how well he handled the whole arena of discipline, but when Hammermeister asked for more responsibilities, Dr. White put him off.

  “Not just yet. Why don’t you settle in for a while, huh-huh-huh-Harold? Don’t want to burn out, do you? Meltdown by May. That happens to the best of us, you know, even when things are guh-guh-guh-going well.”

  Christ, you could stand there for an hour to hear the motherfucker deliver one complete sentence.

  “Seriously, Dr. White, I want to learn everything I can. I want to know this school inside and out. I’m part of the team, and I don’t like sitting on the bench.”

  “Okay then. There is one little trouble spot that seems to duh-duh-duh-defy our coping skills: the cuh-cuh-cuh-custodians. They’re yuh-yuh-yuh-yours.”

  Hammermeister quickly scheduled a meeting with all thirteen of the men. He had pizza brought in to foster conviviality, but instead of the friendly get-together he envisioned, all thirteen janitors started in on him at once: the year had never been off to a worse start! It was terrible! There was a group of squirrely freshmen, and they were carrying food to all ends of the building—spilling pop on the rugs, spitting chew, sunflower seeds, and peanut shells. A particular bone of contention was a type of hot pink, new-wave chewing gum. This stuff didn’t freeze when you applied aerosol-propelled gum hardener to it—freeze it so you could smack it to pieces with a putty knife, pick up the cold little broken shards, and throw them in the trash.

  A red-faced custodian named Duffy harped on and on about the gum hardener. “For one thing, it erodes the ozone layer, and for another, it makes this fuckin’ gum melt and soak deeper into the fiber of the carpet. Opposite of the very role for which it was intended, man. One piece of gum, fuck! One kid, thirty-two teeth, give or take, and one wad of gum equals twenty-five minutes of my time, which translates into almost nine dollars of the district’s money. One piece of gum! I could ignore it, let the rug go to shit, but I take pride. I take pride! For Chrissakes, why doesn’t somebody tell that jerkoff that fills up the vending machines to quit putting chewing gum in—huh? Or at least use a normal kind. I tried to talk to the man. I don’t know what you have to do with that guy. I can’t get through to him. Mastication
of the South American chicle plant is against the law in Singapore, Harold, did you know that? I tell this guy that selling gum is against the law in Singapore! They got their shit squared away over there. I tell this to Vend-o-face, an’ he ain’t hearin’ it. He’s one of them passive-aggressive sons of bitches who likes to drive fifty in the passing lane or who will hang up an express line at the supermarket jacking around with a checkbook, buying lottery tickets, and asking questions when others are in a fuckin’ life-and-death hurry. Forgive my digression, but are you getting the picture? I never met anyone like him before; he’s just an absolute asshole. You know the character, John Waite from The Nigger of the Narcissus? That’s this guy. There’s just no other way to describe this human piece of shit.”

  Hammermeister was so shocked by Duffy’s stream of invective that his face went pale. In Canada, a man such as Duffy would be fired on the spot. What gross insolence! That Duffy had the nerve to speak to him in this fashion—obviously, there were different rules of engagement going on. Detroit, shit, what a very strange energy inhabited the city where such scenes were commonplace. Harold was almost certain he could smell alcohol on this man’s breath. “John Waite?”

  “Waite from The Nigger of the Narcissus. For God’s sake, you’re a college man, aren’t you? Read the book. Don’t teachers have to read in college?”

  Another of the custodians chimed in. “Hey, the man is right. He knows what he’s talking about. This vending guy is Johnny Waite! He should be banned from the fuckin’ building.”

  Throughout this all, an enormous black man with a shaved head, a silver nose ring, and studded earrings locked a hard stare on Hammermeister, like a heat-seeking missile. At last he said, “Hey! I’d like to get something off my chest. You called us all in here for a meeting, and nothing will change or get done as we all know. You have the secretary call me up to come to a fucking meeting at two-thirty in the afternoon when I work graveyard. Doesn’t anybody have any consideration? I need to come in and hear all of this Mickey Mouse piss and moan. The Nigger of the Narcissus! Watch your mouth, Duffy! I don’t even want to hear you thinkin’ ‘nigger.’ You don’t have the right, motherfucker! I’m the one’s paid dues.” Roused to a fury, the large custodian wheeled on Hammermeister and stuck a finger in his face. “How would you like it if I called you up and told you you had to come to work at three in the morning? Three in the morning, because that’s what this is for me, goddammit! Plus, I’m sick tonight. Call me a sub. You done fucked up my circadian clock! I don’t know when it will come back to normal, I’m still fucked over from fucking daylight savings back in May or whenever the fuck! Foolin’ with Mother fucking Nature. God! Great God! Goddammit, son of a bitch!” With that, Centrick Cline kicked a metal folding chair out of his way and stormed out of the room.

  Mike, the head custodian, got up, ostentatiously glanced at his watch, and said, “There’s a volleyball setup in the gym. Let’s go. We’re already two hours behind. Lord, we got to boogie, folks, or we’re going to be here awl night long.”

  Hammermeister watched the custodians file out of the conference room. He looked down at the untouched pizzas, sixty dollars’ worth leaking warm grease onto the limp cardboard containers. He picked up a piece smothered with sausage, pineapple, olives, and onions and ate it in four bites. It was his first meal of the day.

  All the screaming had caused Rider, the senior vice-principal, to pop his head in the door and catch Hammermeister in a state of panic—catch him in a situation over which he had no control. An abominable scene. Janitors…Dr. White had been right. They defied the usual…well, hell, they were out of control. He would call them in one by one. Isolate them. Break them down. Turn them into lapdogs.

  They did have a point, however, the school did look like hell. The next afternoon Hammermeister got on the p.a. and told the students of W. E. B. Du Bois High School that while the year was off to a great start, food, candy, and pop were not permitted in the halls and classrooms. The following afternoon he repeated the message, shifting from the insouciant Donald Sutherland to the rather arch Donald. When Hammermeister continued to notice litter in the halls and classrooms, he ordered the pop and candy machines shut down for an unspecified period.

  Hammermeister called the head custodian into his office and told him of this decision. “I want to help you guys out. We couldn’t run this school without the custodians,” he said with an ingratiating smile. “Anything you need in the way of supplies, or whatever, just let me know. And one other thing, the district has asked me to address the problem of sick-leave abuse. Du Bois is the worst school in the district in this regard.”

  No sooner were the words out of Hammermeister’s mouth when Mike, the head custodian, proceeded to tell Hammermeister that his daughter had chicken pox and that he needed a sub for the rest of the week—moreover, Ralph, the day man, needed a sub for Monday because he was going in for some blood tests. And, oh, somebody else, too—he wasn’t sure, well, yes, it was Ray. Ray had tickets for a rap concert and wanted to take a vacation day.

  “So…Mike…at least talk to the guys. Can you do that much?”

  “Yo,” the head custodian piped as he turned and walked away. For a head custodian, Hammermeister felt the man had a very bad attitude in regard to chain of command. Well, wait a minute. Mike. Come on back here, my friend. Perhaps that’s too much to lay on you all at once. Maybe you ought to go home and rest. Take a year off for mental health. I’ll watch your area for you and make sure all your checks are mailed…r’hat on time, bro. Izzat cool or what? I mean, I’m hip to all the problems you guys go through. I know your job…ain’t no day at th’ beach. I’m in full sympathy. Really. You don’t think I got a heart? I gotta heart. I got a heart.

  A week after the pop and candy machines were shut off, the associated student body complained that they were losing the revenue from these machines and made it plain to Hammermeister that this revenue was the lifeblood that bought band uniforms, sports equipment, and other essentials. Hammermeister was shocked when he learned the figures. The students at Du Bois consumed enough fluid ounces of Coke, assorted beverages, and refreshments to half fill the swimming pool in a week. The Hammer didn’t allow anything sweeter than fresh fruit back at the juvenile facility in Canada, and what a difference. There weren’t any sugared-out junior gangsters like here, and the behavioral considerations, repercussions etc. were extremely…interesting. Well, it would all be in the thesis. Soon the wide world would know.

  In less than a week there was heavy pressure to turn the candy machines back on. Hammermeister lost his cool and exchanged heated words over the matter with senior vice-principal Rider. He came back later and made a cringing apology, explaining that he wasn’t used to making so many compromises, having come from a detentional facility where his word had been “law”; that he was grinding out his thesis and so on and when he reflected over the apology, it occurred to him how weak and desperate he had sounded—effete and obsequious. A wipe-out migraine could do that to him, turn him white. The pop machines went back on, and the school instantly became a pit.

  Waiting for a pair of codeine #4s to kick in, Hammermeister dropped a succulent white grub into Lulu’s cage and watched the spider attack it with such speed and ferocity that Hammermeister jerked back in his leatherette executive chair. He thought, “What if I were that worm? Lulu would show no mercy. And I wouldn’t expect any.”

  The pace of the activities at Du Bois began to pick up. Hammermeister was getting hit with building requests from the science people—brainy types in Kmart jogging shoes, who wore pen packs and watches with calculators on them and who, generally speaking, displayed the whole range of absentminded-professor types of behavior. They were exasperating when you were trying to get from line “a” to line “b” within a certain time frame and didn’t want to screw around with their spacey weirdness.

  Worse than science were the special-education people, they were the most eccentric bunch on the entire faculty. Do-good, granol
a freaks in Birkenstock sandals, who came in with problems of every description. Stories from left field. All Harold could do was sympathize. He knew their burnout rate was high, and he wasn’t good when they came in weeping, half crazy…they would shed hot, salty tears over virtually anything! But there was no one to foist these people off on, and he sat with a number one Dixon tap-tapping. I have never heard of a student openly masturbating in a classroom. This is a mental health issue. Let me make some phone calls. When they left his office, he would mechanically open his top drawer and pop two Extra-Strength Excedrins, a couple of Advils, and a deuce of Canadian 222s.

  The people who taught social studies and history were coaches, mostly, and their minds were seldom on innovating the curriculum. They wanted to do everything by the numbers. One thing they could do—they could read the sports page.

  The teachers in language arts complained that they had too many papers to grade. Harold hired part-time college English majors as assistants and fed as many student teachers into the language-arts program as he could. The math and business people, Hammermeister found dull. But dull could be good; it had its advantages. These people were undemanding and caused few problems. They were pure gravy in terms of his own job description. Ditto with the vocational-education types.

  The group he cultivated most, although he had little interest in high school sports, was the coaches. The coaches who were P.E. teachers didn’t count so much as those who taught academic subjects. P.E. teachers tended to be happy with the status quo. It was the latter bunch, the so-called academic teachers, who were ambitious, who would eventually give up the classroom and move into administration where there was more money.

  Coaches had popularity not only with the students and the general public but with the administration. Winning teams meant high student morale and coaches were very important. With these imbeciles Harold laughed, drank, farted, and clowned. Whenever the conversation turned to the gridiron, all Hammermeister had to do was listen intently, carefully orchestrating his body language and throwing in a line like, “Geez, you really know your football, coach. I’m impressed. I never saw it that way before. That’s absolutely brilliant. No wonder the students love you.” He despised coaches, but collectively they had more juice than any other group in the building.