“Mr. Frank, no offense, please. But your writing is terrible. No one can read. Please, a favor. You ask the question, explain answer, teach. Abel will write for you.”
Abel Feinstein stepped forward and plucked the chalk out of my hand. “Next question,” he said.
I realized I was losing control of the class. Yet short of seizing Mr. Feinstein by the shoulders and shoving him back into his seat by main force, I didn’t know how to get him to sit down. Besides, he was right. Even when I printed, my writing was almost indecipherable. But how would the class take this?
“Question twenty-two. Who wrote the Emancipation Proclamation?”
“Not to worry,” announced Mr. Feinstein, and before anyone could answer, he wrote “Abraham Lincoln” on the board in tall elegant script.
The man’s earnestness and good will were inexorable. To Abel, learning was joyful, teaching nothing less than rapturous.
“Time flies,” Abel was saying, as he pointed at the hourglass. While we watched, the last grains of sand ran through the narrow neck. Sixty minutes had elapsed in what had seemed to me like fifteen.
Abel grabbed the glass and turned it upside down to start the second hour.
“How about a five-minute smoke break?” Frenchy said.
Abel shook his head vehemently. “Please,” he cried. “We must study, Mr. French. No break.”
“Let’s vote about the break,” Louvia said. “The way people vote for their congressmen.”
“You bet you ass we vote,” Frenchy said. “Turn this goddamn outfit into a democracy. How many here in favor of a break?”
Two or three hands went up.
A triumphant expression appeared on Abel Feinstein’s face. “How many vote straight through the break to keep on learning?” he asked.
A few more hands.
“Learners have,” he said. “Next question.”
“So?” Father George said as I came into the kitchen. When I went immediately to the refrigerator, he grinned. “I see.”
“On the positive side, nobody’s dropped out,” I said, opening my beer. “On the other side of the ledger, Abel Feinstein’s usurped my job. I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Where are you with the questions?”
“Up to fifty. Ten ahead of schedule. The questions are going fine. It’s Abel I’m worried about. I’m going to have a mutiny on my hands if I don’t shut him up.”
“Does the class understand what they’re learning?”
“They seem to.”
Father George shrugged. “Whatever you and Abel Feinstein are doing seems to be working. If it works, stick with it. There aren’t any hard and fast rules for teaching.”
“Okay. But Feinstein’s shouting out the questions like the Grand Inquisitor, Frenchy argues with everything I say, and Louvia glowers at me the whole time. There may not be any rules, but this doesn’t seem like the way a teacher should run a class.”
“There isn’t any single way a teacher should run a class. There’s no formula. If they’re learning the material, that’s all that matters. It sounds pretty lively.”
“It’s like teaching a class in hell.”
Father George laughed. “I think everybody’s having a pretty good time but you, son. Loosen up and enjoy it.”
The third session, the following Monday evening, got off on exactly the wrong foot when I walked into the courtroom to discover Inspector P.W. Bull, Roy Quinn, and the Reverend Mr. Johnstone waiting for me. They’d come, Bull said, to sit in on my class.
“To see how things are going,” Roy added.
So not only was I going to have to compete with Abel Feinstein, Louvia DeBanville, and Frenchy LaMott, I was going to be officially observed!
Everyone showed up on time, and again Abel stationed himself at the blackboard. Tonight Frenchy was wearing on his belt the pistol he used at the slaughterhouse to dispatch cows. Louvia had taken her rose quartz Daughter out of her reticule and was consulting with her and frowning at me.
At first the students seemed cowed by the visiting dignitaries. But well before the review session ended, a class discussion had started up. It was exactly what I’d wanted and what Father George had advised me to encourage. But not necessarily in front of P. W. Bull and the selectmen.
The discussion began about twenty minutes into the class, with dissension over a few paired questions reminiscent of the old Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First?” routine. Question twenty-eight, for instance, was “What is the Fourth of July?” Question twenty-nine was “What is the Date of Independence Day?”
“Wait, Mr. Frank,” Evie St. Francis said. “You just asked us that.”
“It a goddamn trick question, dummy,” Frenchy called out.
“Please, Mr. French,” Abel said. “Rule number three. Respect one another.”
“Thanks, Mr. Feinstein. Question thirty. Independence from whom?”
“From Great Britain,” said Evie.
Ed Handsome Lake, an Abenaki Indian from Magog, Quebec, raised his hand. “Fact is, Frank, Great Britain never owned this continent to start out with.”
“I guess that’s right, Ed. Your ancestors did.”
He shook his head. “Hell, no. They didn’t, either.”
“Please, Mr. Handsome,” Mr. Feinstein said. “Don’t contradict teacher. Say ‘I beg to differ, Mr. Frank.’”
Paying no more attention to Abel than to a black fly during a big rise of trout, Ed stood and walked up to the front wall of the courtroom, behind the judge’s bench. He pointed to the mural of the northern range of the Green Mountains, with Lake Memphremagog, stretching off between the peaks.
Ed reached up and touched Jay Peak. “How can a man or a government own a mountain? Don’t matter whether those men are red or white.” He looked out at the class and the visitors, then turned back to the mural and touched Lake Memphremagog. “Or a beautiful wild lake? You folks really believe any man or government can own a lake? How many of you believe that?”
“I believe that,” Roy Quinn said. “What’s going on here, Frank? You’d better get your class back on track, don’t you think?”
“We’re having a class discussion, Roy.”
Frenchy laughed out loud. “You tell ’em, Bennett. You tell ’em where old bear shit in the buckwheat.”
But Ed Handsome Lake just shook his head. “Tell you what, mister,” Ed said, looking at Roy but jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the mural. “You venture up on any of these mountaintops on a January night when the snow’s eight foot deep and the temperature’s twenty below zero and the north wind’s blowing up a thirty-mile-an-hour gale. Or you paddle out on this big lake in a canoe when the waves are four foot high and crawling over the side into your lap at every stroke. Then you tell me whether a man or government can own a wild mountain or a lake.”
Ed nodded and went back and sat down. For me, this was the best moment of the evening.
“Question thirty-one. Name three freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.”
“Freedom of speech,” someone said.
“Freedom of the press,” someone else said.
“Freedom of religion,” Louvia said. “Including the freedom not to have any.”
Reverend Johnstone turned around. “Louvia! How can you become a citizen if you don’t believe in God?”
“Oh, I believe in God,” Louvia said. “He’s been my mortal enemy for many a long year.”
Mr. Feinstein, still writing the answers on the board, called over his shoulder, “Peaceable assembly.”
Then came Frenchy LaMott’s great moment. Standing up, he marched down the aisle to the front of the class, pulled his slaughterhouse pistol out of his pants, and pointed it straight up in the air over his head like a drunken cowboy. “Right to bear arms!” Frenchy shouted and pulled the trigger three times. Three deafening roars filled the courtroom, followed immediately by the sharp scent of gunpowder.
“Blanks,” Frenchy said, doubling over with laughter. But
the selectmen were scurrying for the door, P.W. Bull was on his feet with his hand on his holster, and Abel Feinstein was bravely and ineffectually trying to get the revolver away from Frenchy.
Louvia saved the day. Jumping to her feet, she hurried forward, stayed the alarmed immigration inspector’s gun hand, and cried out, not without irony, “Please, Inspector. No cruel and unusual punishments!”
“Only left one more class after tonight,” Mr. Feinstein said exuberantly as I came into the courtroom the following Monday evening. “Tonight all questions we review, studying the Preamble to the Constitution, going over the Independence Declaration and oath of citizenship. Also, for you on the table is a letter, Mr. Frank. Maybe from a student. I don’t touch.”
I picked up the envelope, which had my name typed on it in capital letters. The letter inside read:
Frank:
We the Selectmen in charge of the Kingdom County Courthouse have determined that the conduct of the members of your citizenship class is not in keeping with the purposes of the building. The members of the class are inappropriately dressed. Furthermore the class uses inappropriate language. Finally, one member of the class brought firearms into the courtroom and discharged them. Therefore we must regretfully inform you that after tonight the Kingdom Common Courthouse will no longer be available for your class.
Sincerely,
Roy Quinn, Chairman
Kingdom Common Selectmen
At first I was sure the letter was a joke. But who would play a joke like this? Who in the class could type? I looked at it again. It was written on the town’s official letterhead.
Other class members were beginning to appear, singly and in twos and threes. The 6:45 local had pulled in while I was reading the letter, and the contingent from Memphremagog was coming through the door.
I reached for the question sheet on the defense table, picked up the letter instead, decided that could wait, and dropped it again.
“What are the colors of . . . ?” Mr. Feinstein said helpfully a minute later.
I took a deep breath. “What are the colors of the flag?” I said. And by degrees, as the sand ran through the hourglass, I taught.
It was my old friend Louvia to whom I decided to show the eviction notice, during a short break I’d insisted the class take between the two hours. And Louvia, after consulting with her Daughter, suggested that I read the letter aloud.
I looked at the fortuneteller, her black eyes full of outrage.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll read it. But what this class wants to do now is graduate. There’s too much at stake here to mount some kind of protest.”
“There’s too much at stake not to,” Louvia said. “Besides, they will graduate.”
“You don’t know that.”
Louvia looked at her rose quartz gazing ball. “I know that.”
“How?”
“Because you won’t let them not. For some unknown reason my Daughter has faith in you. And she’s never wrong.”
“. . . all of which unfortunately boils down to the town fathers ordering us out of the courthouse,” I concluded after reading the letter to the class. “I don’t really see it as a big deal with only one session left after tonight. I’m sure Father George will let us meet in the social hall at the church. As for this letter, the best way to respond is to pass the test with flying colors. For everyone to become an American citizen.”
Frenchy was the first to speak. “What difference it make, Bennett? Whether we citizens or not? Letter like that make one thing clear. Far as this town concerned, we trash anyway.”
“That’s just their opinion,” Louvia said. “We know who the real trash are.”
“Examination day, who and what we are we will prove,” Mr. Feinstein said.
“Probably they find some way cheat us out of passing test,” Frenchy said.
Mr. Feinstein sprang to his feet, the question sheet in his hand. “No, Mr. French. That they cannot do. Mr. Frank is right. Even harder now we must study. We must”—he thought, a frantic expression on his face—“we must all get every question correct. We must all get one hundred percent on the test.”
The question sheet shook in his hand. But he glanced at it and all but shouted, “What is the Fourth of July?”
No hands went up. Mr. Feinstein looked at the hourglass. The sand poured through the neck in a thin steady stream. “What is the Fourth of July?”
“Independence Day,” Frenchy said. “But only if you got the right last name. LaMott ain’t it. Neither Feinstein.”
“Last name don’t matter,” Abel said. But when he asked for three freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, Frenchy was on his feet again, this time furious. “Listen,” he shouted. “When you dummies going to get it into you thick heads? We don’t have no freedoms under Bill of Rights. On account of we don’t have the right last names. Might better ask how many freedoms the town fathers yank away from us. I say we ought to go on strike!”
Once again, Abel came to the rescue. “Mr. French. Wait. How many are the number of our rights the fathers have violated?”
“Four,” Frenchy said immediately. “Free speech, peaceable assembly, bear arms, no fair trial. Maybe five. Getting kicked out of public courthouse pretty goddamn close to cruel punishment.”
“Then tell them so we must. We must write them a letter. From our class.”
“What the hell good that do, Feinstein?”
“Always it is right to speak out. Right, Mr. Frank?”
“Right,” I said. And this time I meant it from the bottom of my heart.
When the last grain of sand had run through the hourglass, the chalkboard read:
Dear Selectmen:
This letter is to express our dismay and anger over being evicted from the courthouse. In our citizenship class we have studied many things. We have studied the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence written by Mr. Thomas Jefferson, and the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment guarantees the freedoms you want to take away from us. It guarantees one, freedom of speech. Two, freedom to assemble peaceably. Three, freedom to bear arms. Four, the right to have a fair trial. Five, no cruel or unusual punishments. All of these rights you have violated. We have decided not to let this happen. We have decided to exercise our constitutional rights and stay in the courthouse for our last class.
—Respectfully, Your Soon-To-Be-Fellow-Citizens
One by one, the entire class and I signed our names. Then I wheeled the chalkboard over to the bailiff’s desk and faced it outward toward the courtroom, where anyone coming in would be sure to see it immediately.
“What if somebody erases?” Mr. Feinstein said.
“They’ll read it first,” I said. “And I don’t think they’ll erase it until everybody reads it. They’ll be too mad.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Frank,” Abel said as the class members left for the evening. “That our letter is not erased someone should stay here to make sure.”
“It’ll be read,” I said. “I promise you. I’ll tell Roy Quinn to come over and read it first thing in the morning. Unless they lock us out, we’ll meet here again Thursday night for our last class.”
But Mr. Feinstein still looked doubtful. And when I left, the tailor and jack of all trades of Kingdom Common was still sitting in the front row, staring at the blackboard as if guarding it with his life.
At 9:00 the next morning, just as I was about to visit Roy Quinn, he showed up at the Big House with Sheriff White.
“Jesum Crow, Frank,” the sheriff said. “What are you folks over in that night class doing? You got the whole town in an uproar.”
“What are you putting those people up to, Frank?” Roy said.
“You got to get over to the courthouse right now,” the sheriff said. “Before Judge Allen shows up and blows his stack. Judge A ain’t going to be happy with this. You’ve got some explaining to do.”
“I’ll explain, all right,” I said. But when I walked into the court
house five minutes later, I discovered that Inspector P.W. Bull and five selectmen were already there, along with the bailiff, a couple of local lawyers, and the usual town ne’er-do-wells waiting to answer charges at that morning’s court proceedings—all looking from the blackboard with the letter printed on it to Abel Feinstein, sitting in the front row with a massive padlocked logging chain fastening his right leg to the metal foot of the bench.
Apparently the tailor had been there all night; a gray stubble had appeared on his face, the only time I’d ever seen him in need of a shave. “Here sits Abel, Mr. Frank,” he said apologetically. “The chain I borrowed from Mr. French LaMott.”
“What’s this all about, Bennett?” P.W. Bull said.
I thrust the letter from the selectmen at him just as Farlow Blake, the bailiff, said, “Please rise. The Honorable Judge Forrest Allen.”
I helped Abel Feinstein to his feet. P.W. Bull stood on the other side of me, still looking at the letter and frowning. The selectmen were gathered across the aisle.
Entering from his chambers at the rear, Judge Allen barely glanced at the scene in front of him before sitting down and opening the folder containing the day’s docket, which he read with attention. When he finished, he looked up again, a man well past seventy with sharp eyes and a commanding presence. Over his dime-store reading glasses he looked at Abel Feinstein and the logging chain, at the knot of town fathers, at me and Inspector P. W. Bull, and finally at the blackboard by the bailiff’s desk.
“Farlow, please swing that slate around so I can read what’s on it,” he said.
The bailiff complied and the judge read the letter carefully. Then he looked past the blackboard and out the window down onto the common.
The Fall of the Year Page 14