Mr. Harris, with a snort of pleasure, would bellow: “RIGHT! There are many diverse elements, which …” After which he was good for at least a forty-minute solo.
History was more of the same, and English was almost embarrassingly easy as, day after day, Miss McCullough preened and congratulated herself before our class. All she needed was a little ass-kissing and there was no limit to her applause. I often felt she regretted that an A+ was the highest grade she could hand out to one who loved her as sincerely and selflessly as I did.
Every morning at eight-thirty-five, however, was another story. I marched with leaden feet and quaking bowels into Mr. Pittinger’s torture chamber. By the sixth week I knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that after all these years of dodging and grinning, I was going to fail. Fail! No B, no gentleman’s C–Fail. F. The big one: my own Scarlet Letter. Branded on my forehead–F, for Fuckup.
There was no question whatever. True, Pittinger had not yet been able to catch me out in the open, since I was using every trick of the trade. But I knew that one day, inevitably, the icy hand of truth would rip off my shoddy façade and expose me for all the world to see.
Pittinger was of the new school, meaning he believed that kids, theoretically motivated by an insatiable thirst for knowledge, would devour algebra in large chunks, making the final examination only a formality. He graded on performance in class and total grasp of the subject, capped off at the end of the term with an exam of brain-crushing difficulty from which he had the option of excusing those who rated A+ on classroom performance. Since I had no classroom performance, my doom was sealed.
Schwartz, too, had noticeably shrunken. Even fat Helen had developed deep hollows under her eyes, while Chester had almost completely disappeared. And Zynzmeister had taken to nibbling Communion wafers in class.
Christmas came and went in tortured gaiety. My kid brother played happily with his Terry and the Pirates Dragon Lady Detector as I looked on with the sad indulgence of a withered old man whose youth had passed. As for my own presents, what good did it do to have a new first baseman’s mitt when my life was over? How innocent they are, I thought as I watched my family trim the tree and scurry about wrapping packages. Before long, they will know. They will loathe me. I will be driven from this warm circle. It was about this time that I began to fear–or perhaps hope–that I would never live to be twenty-one, that I would die of some exotic debilitating disease. Then they’d be sorry. This fantasy alternated with an even better fantasy that if I did reach twenty-one, I would be blind and hobble about with a white cane. Then they’d really be sorry.
Not that I’d given up without a struggle. For weeks, in the privacy of my cell at home, safe from prying eyes, I continued trying to actually learn something about algebra. After a brief mental pep rally–This is simple. If Esther Jane Alberry can understand it, any fool can do it. All you gotta do is think. THINK! Reason it out!–I would sit down and open my textbook. Within minutes, I would break out in a clammy sweat and sink into a funk of nonunderstanding, a state so naked in its despair and self-contempt that it was soon replaced by a mood of defiant truculence. Schwartz and I took to laughing contemptuously at those boobs and brown-noses up front who took it all so seriously.
The first hints of spring began to appear. Birds twittered, buds unfurled. But men on death row are impervious to such intimations of life quickening and reborn. The only sign of the new season that I noticed was Mr. Pittinger changing from a heavy scratchy black suit into a lighter-weight scratchy black suit.
“Well, it won’t be long. You gonna get a job this summer?” my old man asked me one day as he bent over the hood of the Olds, giving the fourth-hand paint job its ritual spring coat of Simoniz.
“Maybe. I dunno,” I muttered. It wouldn’t be long, indeed. Then he’d know. Everybody would know that I knew less about algebra than Ralph, Mrs. Gammie’s big Airedale, who liked to pee on my mother’s irises.
Mr. Pittinger had informed us that the final exam, covering a year’s work in algebra, would be given on Friday of the following week. One more week of stardom on Cleveland Street. Ever since my devastating rejoinder at the dinner table about abstract mathematics, my stock had been the hottest in the neighborhood. My opinions were solicited on financial matters, world affairs, even the infield problems of the Chicago White Sox. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Even Ralph would have more respect than I deserved. At least he didn’t pretend to be anything but what he was–a copious and talented pee-er.
Wednesday, two days before the end, arrived like any other spring day. A faint breeze drifted from the south, bringing with it hints of long summer afternoons to come, of swung bats, of nights in the lilac bushes. But not for such as me. I stumped into algebra class feeling distinctly like the last soul aboard the Titanic as she was about to plunge to the bottom. The smart-asses were already in their seats, laughing merrily, the goddamn A’s and B’s and C’s and even the M’s. I took my seat in the back, among the rest of the condemned. Schwartz sat down sullenly and began his usual moan. Helen Weathers squatted toadlike, drenched in sweat. The class began, Pittinger’s chalk squeaked, hands waved. The sun filtered in through the venetian blinds. A tennis ball pocked back and forth over a net somewhere. Faintly, the high clear voices of the girls’ glee club sang, “Can you bake a cherry pie, charming Billy?” Birds twittered.
My knot of fear, by now an old friend, sputtered in my gut. In the past week, it had grown to roughly the size of a two-dollar watermelon. True, I had avoided being called on even once the entire year, but it was a hollow victory and I knew it. Minute after minute inched slowly by as I ducked and dodged, Pittinger firing question after question at the class. Glancing at my Pluto watch, which I had been given for Christmas, I noted with deep relief that less than two minutes remained before the bell.
It was then that I made my fatal mistake, the mistake that all guerrilla fighters eventually make–I lost my concentration. For years, every fiber of my being, every instant in every class, had been directed solely at survival. On this fateful Wednesday, lulled by the sun, by the gentle sound of the tennis ball, by the steady drone of Pittinger’s voice, by the fact that there were just two minutes to go, my mind slowly drifted off into a golden haze. A tiny mote of dust floated down through a slanting ray of sunshine. I watched it in its slow, undulating flight, like some microscopic silver bird.
“You’re the apple of my eye, darling Billy … I can bake a cherry pie …”
A rich maple syrup warmth filled my being. Out of the faint distance, I heard a deadly rasp, the faint honking of disaster.
For a stunned split second, I thought I’d been jabbed with an electric cattle prod. Pittinger’s voice, loud and commanding, was pronouncing my name. He was calling on ME! Oh, my God! With a goddamn minute to go, he had nailed me. I heard Schwartz bleat a high, quavering cry, a primal scream. I knew what it meant: If they got him, the greatest master of them all, there’s no hope for ANY of us!
As I stood slowly at my seat, frantically bidding for time, I saw a great puddle forming around Helen Weathers. It wasn’t all sweat. Chester had sunk to the floor beneath his desk, and behind me Zynzmeister’s beads were clattering so loudly I could hardly hear his Hail Marys.
“Come to the board, please. Give us the value of C in this equation.”
In a stupor of wrenching fear, I felt my legs clumping up the aisle. On all sides the blank faces stared. At the board–totally unfamiliar territory to me–I stared at the first equation I had ever seen up close. It was well over a yard and a half long, lacerated by mysterious crooked lines and fractions in parentheses, with miniature twos and threes hovering above the whole thing like tiny barnacles. Xs and Ys were jumbled in crazy abandon. At the very end of this unholy mess was a tiny equal sign. And on the other side of the equal sign was a zero. Zero! All this crap adds up to nothing! Jesus Christ! My mind reeled at the very sight of this barbed-wire entanglement of mysterious symbols.
Pittinger stood to
one side, arms folded, wearing an expression that said, At last I’ve nailed the little bastard! He had been playing with me all the time. He knew!
I glanced back at the class. It was one of the truly educational moments of my life. The entire mob, including Schwartz, Chester, and even Zynzmeister, were grinning happily, licking their chops with joyous expectation of my imminent crucifixion. I learned then that when true disaster strikes, we have no friends. And there’s nothing a phony loves more in this world than to see another phony get what’s coming to him.
“The value of C, please,” rapped Pittinger.
The equation blurred before my eyes. The value of C. Where the hell was it? What did a C look like, anyway? Or an A or a B, for that matter. I had forgotten the alphabet.
“C, please.”
I spotted a single letter C buried deep in the writhing melange of Ys and Xs and umlauts and plus signs, brackets, and God knows what all. One tiny C. A torrent of sweat raged down my spinal column. My jockey shorts were soaked and sodden with the sweat and stink of execution. Being a true guerrilla from years of the alphabetical ghetto, I showed no outward sign of panic, my face stony; unyielding. You live by the gun, you die by the gun.
“C, please.” Pittinger moodily scratched at his granite chin with thumb and forefinger, his blue beard rasping nastily.
“Oh my darling Billy boy, you’re the apple of my eye …”
Somewhere birds twittered on, tennis racquet met tennis ball. My moment had finally arrived.
Now, I have to explain that for years I had been the leader of the atheistic free-thinkers of Warren G. Harding School, scoffers all at the Sunday School miracles taught at the Presbyterian church; unbelievers.
That miracle stuff is for old ladies, all that walking on water and birds flying around with loaves of bread in their beaks. Who can believe that crap?
Now, I am not so sure. Ever since that day in Pittinger’s algebra class I have had an uneasy suspicion that maybe something mysterious is going on somewhere.
As I stood and stonily gazed at the enigmatic Egyptian hieroglyphics of that fateful equation, from somewhere, someplace beyond the blue horizon, it came to me, out of the mist. I heard my voice say clearly, firmly, with decision:
“C … is equal to three.”
Pittinger staggered back; his glasses jolted down to the tip of his nose.
“How the hell did you know?!” he bellowed hoarsely, his snap-on bow tie popping loose in the excitement.
The class was in an uproar. I caught a glimpse of Schwartz, his face pale with shock. I had caught one on the fat part of the bat. It was a true miracle. I had walked on water.
Instantly, the old instincts took over. In a cool, level voice I answered Pittinger’s rhetorical question.
“Sir, I used empirical means.”
He paled visibly and clung to the chalk trough for support. On cue, the bell rang out. The class was over. With a swiftness born of long experience, I was out of the room even before the echo of the bell had ceased. The guerrilla’s code is always hit and run. A legend had been born.
That afternoon, as I sauntered home from school, feeling at least twelve and a half feet tall, Schwartz skulked next to me, silent, moody, kicking at passing frogs. I rubbed salt deep into his wound and sprinkled a little pepper on for good measure. Across the street, admiring clusters of girls pointed out the Algebra King as he strolled by. I heard Eileen Akers’ silvery voice clearly: “There he goes. He doesn’t say much in class, but when he does he makes it count.” I nodded coolly toward my fans. A ripple of applause went up. I autographed a few algebra books and walked on, tall and straight in the sun. Deep down I knew that this was but a fleeting moment of glory, that when I faced the blue book exam it would be all over, but I enjoyed it while I had it.
With the benign air of a baron bestowing largess upon a wretched serf, I offered to buy Schwartz a Fudgesicle at the Igloo. He refused with a snarl.
“Why, Schwartz, what seems to be troubling you?” I asked with irony, vigorously working the salt shaker.
“You phony son of a bitch. You know what you can do with your goddamn Fudgesicle.”
“Me, a phony? Why would you say an unkind thing like that?”
He spat viciously into a tulip bed. “You phony bastard. You studied!”
Inevitably, those of us who are gifted must leave those less fortunate behind in the race of life. I knew that, and Schwartz knew it. Once again I had lapped him and was moving away from the field, if only for a moment.
The next morning, Thursday, I swaggered into algebra class with head high. Even Jack Morton, the biggest smart-ass in the class, said hello as I walked in. Mr. Pittinger, his eyes glowing with admiration, smiled warmly at me.
“Hi, Pit,” I said with a casual flip of the hand. We abstract mathematicians have an unspoken bond. Naturally, I was not called on during that period. After all, I had proved myself beyond any doubt.
After class, beaming at me with the intimacy of a fellow quadratic equation zealot, Mr. Pittinger asked me to stay on for a few moments.
“All my life I have heard about the born mathematical genius. It is a well-documented thing. They come along once in a while, but I never thought I’d meet one, least of all in a class of mine. Did you always have this ability?”
“Well …” I smiled modestly.
“Look, it would be pointless for you to waste time on our little test tomorrow. Would you help me grade the papers instead?”
“Gosh, Pit, I was looking forward to taking it, but if you really need me, I’ll be glad to help.” It was a master stroke.
“I’d appreciate it. I need somebody who really knows his stuff, and most of these kids are faking it.”
The following afternoon, together, we graded the papers of my peers. I hate to tell you what, in all honesty, I had to do to Schwartz when I marked his pitiful travesty. I showed no mercy. After all, algebra is an absolute science and there can be no margin for kindness in matters of the mind.
I smiled my thin, crafty Sidney Greenstreet smile, admiring it in the rearview mirror.
“Yep, you pulled it off, you snake in the grass … heh, heh.” It ain’t luck. It’s like Lippy Durocher said: “There ain’t no such thing as breaks. Winners make their own breaks.”
I peered into the gloom ahead, rich with burned Exxon. Some days you grease right through this bastard; others, it’s forever. This is one of the mean ones–bad. A Jack Daniel’s night.
A warning buzzer which I had never heard before sounded off under the hood. Now what the hell? Mysteriously, it stopped, but my life around cars of all types had taught me one thing: Nothing bad ever really goes away.
In desperation for something to do, I flicked on the radio. Still nothing. Well, you don’t get anything in the tunnel anyway these days. I remember a few years back, maybe in the early sixties, they had a radio station inside the tunnel. It just came in all over the dial, playing music, with a happy voice giving you facts about how long the tunnel was, when they built it, how many cars go through. Really exciting stuff, but at least it was a human voice and not a warning buzzer. Gone, all gone, with other graces of human existence in these dark days of advancing barbarism and approaching ice ages.
Ice ages–I wonder if the tunnel will get clogged with ice when it comes, and a few last commuters will get frozen down here for all time like those Mammoths in Siberia? Or like that ancient Irishman they dug up a couple of years ago, perfectly preserved in a peat bog. He was sitting in his canoe, still wearing his socks. They say that even though he was three thousand years old, he had that smart-ass look on his Irish map like all the Third Avenue Irishmen I ever knew, including Breslin.
Tough, boy. That’s what they are. Or at least loud. I turned over mossy rocks in my memory, rummaging around looking for tough Irishmen I had heard of. Why? Well, that’s the kind of thing you do in traffic jams. The late Mayor Daley, a true Mick. Used to say, “Gimme a dozen Irish cops and I’ll clean up this crummy neigh
borhood.”
Out of the blue, it came to me, the toughest Irishman I ever personally ran into, who didn’t look tough, but when the test came, he was there. I knew his kid from high school. What was his name? Leggett, of course, Mr. Leggett. Tougher than a cob.
Ellsworth Leggett and the Great Ice Cream War
As I drove my rental car over the cracked and potholed surface of what had once been the main drag of my home town, I felt a bit like an invisible alien from another planet. First of all, it was the car itself; anonymous, sexless, of no known make. Perhaps it was a Hertz Deluxe, or maybe an Avis. It was hard to tell: cheap, cigar-scarred naugahyde seats, a Taiwanese radio that emitted only a crackling hum; it was a far cry from the proud, gleaming chariot I had floated down this very street during my lusty youth.
My old man’s Pontiac Silver Streak 8 with its three yards of gracefully tapering obsidian black hood, its glorious Italian marble steering wheel with gleaming, spidery chromium spokes–a steering wheel that could well hang on the walls of the Museum of Modern Art–its low, menacing purring classic Straight 8 engine, bore as much resemblance to this eighty-five-dollar-a-day tin can as the Queen Mary does to a plastic Boston whaler.
Past the boarded-up, graffiti-splattered ruins of what had once been elegant shops and petite tearooms, past burnt-out hulks of erstwhile department stores, I had the disturbing sensation of being a Pompeian suddenly restored to life and being treated to a tourist jaunt through the ruins of old Pompeii. I had an instantaneous feverish image of the leering Italian spiv who had collared me as I alighted from the bus one day outside tourist Pompeii. As he hissed into my ear: “Cocka-balla, Cocka-balla. Maka dem laugh at home,” he furtively displayed his wares: key rings carved crudely to resemble swollen, erectile male genitalia made of the actual alabaster that his far-distant ancestors had used to create “David” and “The Pietà.” At the time I had thought, God, Rome really has fallen, but now I knew that our time, too, had come.
A Fistful of Fig Newtons Page 20