by Jon Hassler
Wayne Workman was impressed. He nodded with satisfaction.
“Do you believe this Handbook covers every exigency in life, Wayne?”
Wayne lifted his hands and shrugged. He couldn’t help policy.
“Does this mean a teacher can’t go to the funeral of a friend without losing a day’s pay?”
“We play funerals by ear, Pruitt. We can usually work something out if the funeral is close by. Funerals take an hour, and we can usually find somebody to cover a class for an hour. But my wife is asking for a whole day.”
“St. Paul is a hundred miles from here, Wayne.”
“I know where St. Paul is.”
“This woman was like a mother to Thanatopsis.”
“Goddamn you, Pruitt, for the last time, will you stop using that ridiculous word when you’re talking about my wife? And will you please let me interpret the Faculty Handbook according to my own lights? And as for Joanie Cooper’s mother, I daresay you never once met the woman. Admit it.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“I have known Joanie Cooper’s mother as long as I have known Anna Thea, and you don’t have to come in here and tell me how close a friend she was of Anna Thea’s. I know all that. I also know that it’s part of my job to interpret the Faculty Handbook according to my own lights, Grievance Committee or no Grievance Committee.”
“These days no enlightened employer docks an employee’s wages for going to a funeral.”
“Pruitt, what have you got against policy? You’re always defying policy.”
Miles stood up. “Let’s go see the man who made this policy.”
“You go see him. I’m busy.”
“All right, I will.” He turned to go. “And another thing, Wayne, why is little Hank Bird standing in your outer office?”
“He skipped school Friday.”
“Is that supposed to answer my question?”
“I’ve tried every punishment in the book on little Hank Bird and he still skips, so now I’m trying one that isn’t in the book. He’s got to stand with his two feet on those two sheets of paper for forty minutes. Maybe that will make him think twice next time he gets the urge to skip. Forty minutes is a long time when you’re standing on two sheets of paper, Pruitt. Have you ever tried it?”
“No.”
“I tried it for five minutes yesterday. Five minutes seems like an hour when you’re standing on two sheets of paper.”
Miles knew little Hank from study hall. Like so many of his fellow Indians from Sandhill, he was a good-natured stoic. On his way out of the office, Miles laid his hand on little Hank’s black thatch of hair and said, “How much time do you have left?”
Little Hank smiled broadly and said, “Till I’m sixteen.”
Miles crossed the hall to Stevenson’s outer office, where Delia Fritz, counting lunch money, told him that the superintendent was occupied. Miles said he would wait. Delia pointed to a chair and went on counting her pile of coins, four at a time, pulling them off her desk with four fingers and dropping them into a metal box on her lap.
Delia Fritz, former shoe-store clerk, and now, since Stevenson’s abdication, the true administrator of the Staggerford school system, was a whiz. She was chubby and quick. Today she was wearing three pencils in her wig. Her phone rang, and she rested the receiver between her shoulder and ear and went on counting. The caller was a parent requesting conferences with five teachers, including Miles. From memory Delia told the parent when each of the five had a free hour and added, “If you’re coming in tomorrow, you may not find Mrs. Workman, she will be away attending the funeral of a friend. If you wish to talk to Mr. Pruitt right now I think I could find him for you.” Delia winked at Miles. “Yes, that’s the one. He teaches English. Yes, senior English. Yes, a bachelor, a good catch for somebody. But he gives the young ladies very little encouragement. He’s all wrapped up in his teaching, you know. Yes, you know the type. He’s forever running off worksheets and quizzes and things like that on the Xerox. Yes, he seems to have a comfortable rapport with his students. The only criticism I’ve heard about his teaching is that his lesson plans are sketchy. I have another call on line two, Mrs. Holt. Yes, it was nice talking to you. Good-by.”
Line two was a salesman calling long distance. “Don’t bother,” said Delia. “We’re up to here in office furniture. We overbought when we built this wing. No, even if you make the trip, the superintendent will not want to talk to you. Send me your card and if the day ever comes to open bids on office furniture we’ll let you know. No, all our carpeting is like new. You’re welcome.” She hung up.
“Since when did it become your job to read lesson plans?” said Miles.
“Don’t get testy, Miles, I’m only repeating what Mr. Workman said to Mr. Stevenson about your lesson plans. ‘Sketchy’ was his word for them.”
“And about my rapport with students? Were you quoting Mr. Workman about that too?”
“No, that was what Mr. Stevenson said to Mr. Workman. He said you have a comfortable rapport with students. You’re Mr. Stevenson’s fair-haired boy, you know. That’s why he was so shocked this morning to see Jeff Norquist jump out your window.”
“What did he say?”
“He came out here to my desk, where he never comes anymore, and he said, ‘Delia, you will never believe what I just saw. I saw the Norquist boy jump out Miles Pruitt’s window. Please make an appointment for me with Dr. Maitland.’ He thought his heart was stopping.”
Miles heard the toilet flush in the superintendent’s private lavatory. Delia nodded toward the inner office.
Miles entered and saw Superintendent Stevenson making his way slowly across the deep carpet of his office, his long, angular body contracted around his heart. He cocked his head at Miles and motioned for him to sit down.
Miles shut the door behind him, but he did not sit. “Mr. Stevenson, I’ve come to ask you to waive a regulation in the Faculty Handbook. Mrs. Workman would like to take a day of emergency leave tomorrow. She wants to attend a funeral.”
It was some time before the superintendent spoke. He was settling into the position Miles saw him in from eight till three every day. He turned his swivel chair to face the window beside his desk, then tilting the chair back, he rested his feet on the pulled-out bottom drawer. He looked out across the courtyard at the windows of Miles’s empty classroom.
“Please sit down. Miles.”
He sat.
“Now, Miles, I am not a man who is easily alarmed. As a rule I take things in my stride and I don’t fuss about them.” The superintendent brushed dandruff off his left shoulder and lapel. “But I was alarmed this morning when I saw the Norquist boy jump out the window. It gave me a start, Miles. I thought for a moment I was dreaming.” He found a speck of dandruff on his sleeve. “That classroom of yours is usually the picture of good order, Miles. I see you carrying on in there day after day. I see classes coming in and classes going out. I see students raising their hands. I see students writing at the blackboard. I see their heads bending over their work. I see good order. I see education.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Then suddenly this morning I see the Norquist boy jump out the window.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“It was that window there on the right.” Stevenson pointed to the window with a long, unsteady finger.
“Jeff Norquist is hard to handle.”
“I understand that, but he should be kept from jumping out the window.”
“Yes, I agree.”
“And I’ll tell you why.”
“I’m sure I understand why, sir. It gives the townspeople a mistaken impression of what goes on in school.”
“Oh, that. Never mind that.” He swept the air with his hand, as though brushing away a fly. “That’s not what I’m getting at. What does public opinion matter? Poof! It’s nothing. There was a time when public opinion was foremost in my thinking, but not anymore. What I’m getting at is my opinion, my re
action. When I saw Norquist jump, I thought my heart was going to stop.”
There was a long pause while Stevenson slipped his hand under his necktie and felt his breastbone. The clock on the wall was approaching lunch hour.
“Now of course there was nothing dangerous about the jump,” he continued. “The window is only four feet above the ground. It wasn’t the acrobatics of the jump that startled me. It was what the jump symbolized. This is a school with a long history of attendance problems, Miles. For twenty years it has been my job to get students into this school who don’t want to be here, and once they’re here, to keep them here. And when I saw the Norquist boy jump out the window, I recognized the curse I’ve been fighting for twenty years—the desire of a certain percentage of our students to run away from school, to stay away, to reject what we offer them. I call it the Staggerford Curse. It’s inevitable, year after year, like sun and darkness. And to tell the truth, I’m not much concerned about it anymore.” He brushed dandruff from his right lapel, his right shoulder, his right sleeve. “No, I’m not much concerned about absenteeism anymore, not consciously at least. It’s a curse peculiar to Staggerford, and I tried to overcome it, to change it, and I couldn’t, and I’ve taught myself to face it with equanimity. I don’t wear myself down with worry. I can keep it out of my consciousness.”
He turned to look Miles in the eye.
“But I can’t control my subconscious, Miles. My emotional reaction to absenteeism. These twenty years have left me with a conditioned reflex, a strong involuntary emotion concerning the Staggerford Curse. When I saw the Norquist boy jump out the window I could reason with myself and say in my mind, ‘So what,’ but I couldn’t control my heart, Miles. I thought my heart was going to stop.”
The lunch-hour bell rang. The halls filled. Here in this office, where the superintendent had insulated himself from his school, the voices and the noise of slamming lockers sounded far away.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Miles?”
“Yes,” Miles said, although he wasn’t sure. Stevenson’s voice always made him sleepy.
“We can’t control our involuntary reactions to things, can we?”
“No, I guess we can’t.”
Delia Fritz poked her head in the door and said she was going to lunch. “When you leave,” she told Miles, “shut the outer door. It will lock after you.”
The halls grew quiet. Everyone was down in the lunchroom, standing in line for butter sandwiches and hamburger-macaroni-tomato hot dish.
“I’m sorry it happened,” Miles said.
“Think nothing of it,” said Stevenson. “I only mention it because you know about my little secret.” He lowered his voice. “Viola, I believe, told Imogene Kite all about the valve in my heart when you were over for bridge, and I assume Imogene told you. Any shock, you know …”
“I won’t let it happen again.”
The superintendent nodded. “I’m sure you won’t. And even if it did happen again, I doubt if my heart would stop. It’s only the first time that one is startled by something like that. But even so …”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Of course not.”
“Now, what I came to ask is this. Mrs. Workman would like a day of emergency leave for the funeral of her best friend’s mother. I think she should have it.”
“What did she die of? Was it her heart?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’ll bet it was her heart.”
“It may have been. I’m not at all sure.”
“How old was she?”
Miles didn’t know. “Eighty-nine,” he said.
“Eighty-nine. Think of it.”
“Yes.”
“Eighty-nine. That’s a good long life.”
“Yes. And she was very close to Mrs. Workman. I really think she should be granted a full day with pay.”
“Of course she should.”
“But there is no provision for it in the Handbook.”
“The what?”
“The Faculty Handbook.”
“Oh, that.” Stevenson swept the air again with his hand, indicating that the Handbook, like public opinion, amounted to no more than a pesky fly. “Never mind that.”
He took his feet off the pulled-out drawer and set them carefully on the carpet. He turned in his swivel chair and for no reason Miles could think of, except perhaps that his insulated office had made him lonesome, he warmly shook his hand.
“Tell Anna Thea Workman she shall have her day with pay. Excuse me for not getting up.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stevenson.”
“Be sure you hear the snap of the lock when you close the outer door.”
Leaving the office, Miles glanced back and saw the superintendent facing the windows again, but bending forward now in his swivel chair with his elbows on his knees. He was brushing the dandruff from his eyebrows and watching it settle on the carpet.
Miles pulled the outer door shut and heard the snap of the lock.
Miles used his noon hour to visit Doc Oppegaard’s office on Main Street. He found Stella Gibbon and the dentist sitting together in the waiting room, lunching on wine and cheese.
“Wine at noon?” said Miles, not finding fault, merely surprised.
Stella and the dentist looked at each other and giggled.
Miles told them he had a toothache.
“Help yourself,” said Doc Oppegaard, pointing to the wine bottle, obviously not ready to go to work.
Miles thanked him, and as he looked about the waiting room for a third wine glass, Stella went into another room and brought him a paper cup meant for mouthwash.
The dentist poured. “Here’s to Stella,” he said. They touched wine glasses, and when Miles held forward his soft paper cup, the dentist and Stella collapsed from laughter. Stella sank into a chair, shaking until her eyes watered and her thighs were exposed under the creeping skirt of her scanty white uniform.
“You must have started early,” said Miles, pouring himself more wine, for his cup held but a swallow.
Doc took off his glasses and wiped his eyes and blew his large nose. “We did for a fact,” he said. “We had a cancellation at eleven.”
After Stella quit laughing and pulled down her skirt, she and the dentist led Miles into the examination room, where they fitted him out in a lead vest and trained the X-ray machine on him and set it to buzzing for what seemed like a dangerously long time. The picture must have been alarming, for Doc grew sober as he studied it, then he peered into Miles’s mouth, causing Miles to gag on his cheesy breath.
“Do you want to see something?” Doc asked Stella. She crowded in for a look. “It’s the wisdom tooth on the lower left. It has come in sideways and the root is curled around his jawbone.”
“Oh, it’s so ugly,” said Stella.
“Go ahead and pull it,” Miles said. “I have forty minutes left of my lunch hour.”
“No, no,” said the dentist. “I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. That’s a job for Karstenburg in Duluth.”
Stella said, “Yes, Dr. Karstenburg is your answer.”
Looking up at Stella as she spoke, Miles saw the bright new lines of gold outlining her eyeteeth and anchoring the handsome new bridge that didn’t cost her a penny. Her smile was splendid.
“Yes, Karstenburg is your man,” said Doc. “He specializes in wisdom teeth. He’s been known to pull forty-eight teeth in one day. And I’m not talking about baby teeth. I’m talking about impossible cases. Teeth with roots like fishhooks. Teeth like yours.”
“Call him,” said Miles.
Stella went to the phone and called Duluth and got Miles an appointment with Dr. Karstenburg for the next day.
“So soon?” said Miles. “If he’s so busy, how is that possible?”
“He works fast,” said Doc.
On the way out of the examination room, Miles glanced at Doc Oppegaard’s appointment book and saw (confirming his suspicions) nothing scheduled any day
of the week between eleven and one.
Like the host and hostess at a party, Doc and Stella saw him to the door, and on the front step the dentist asked him how old he was.
“Thirty-five,” said Miles.
“I was rid of all my wisdom teeth by the time I was twenty-three,” said Doc.
Stella giggled.
The rain was all but over. The brisk west wind was tearing the clouds to shreds.
After fifth hour Beverly Bingham approached Miles as he stood at his door, but she was shouldered out of position by Wayne Workman, who said angrily, “Pruitt, I understand you went over my head.”
“I told you I was going to see Stevenson. You said, ‘Go ahead.’ ”
“Pruitt, what do I smell on your breath?”
“Oh … Well …”
“For godsakes, Pruitt, don’t tell me you nip at lunch.”
“You’d be the last man I’d tell.”
“Pruitt, if we ever get to the point of dissension in this school, it’s going to be your fault. You and your Grievance Committee. Now that Stevenson has overruled his own Faculty Handbook none of us know where we’re at. Is that a policy handbook or is it not? We were all led to believe that it was, and now we find the policy broken by the man who made the policy. Where does that leave us, Pruitt, in regard to policy?”
“If you’ll pardon me for a second, Wayne, I have this student here who wants a word with me.”
“Tell her to come back some other time. I’m not finished.”
“I’m sorry,” Miles told Beverly. “See me some other time.”
“I just wanted you to look at this letter I’ve written to Berrington Junior College.” She gave Miles and Wayne a lovely smile.
“You and your committee fancy yourselves such a progressive bunch of schoolpeople,” said Wayne, “but you’re not in the least progressive after all, and I’ll tell you why. You ignore the rules. Ignoring the rules is anarchy, and anarchy is not progress. Someone ought to explain to your committee how progress is really made. First the rules are formulated and then abided by and then, and only then, is progress possible.”