It was one of the very few times I ever looked forward to getting to work on a book report. It was Thurday and next day was of course our day of reckoning.
After supper I scrunched over the kitchen table, my blue-lined tablet with its Indian Chief cover before me, my Wearever fountain pen clutched in my cramped claws. I began my love offering to Miss Bryfogel.
“The Decameron of Boccaccio, by Giovanni Boccaccio.” I thought carefully, my mind humming like a well-oiled clock, toying with phrases, rejecting, and finally selecting the opening line:
“This is the best, most interesting book I ever read. It is by a Italian and I think this book is very interesting. It is about these people that tell stories about knights and friars and cuckolds.”
(I figured this was a nice touch, since I knew Miss Bryfogel liked birds.) Gathering steam, I went on:
“There was this one story about a man named Massetto who worked in a garden and he made believe he was dumb and he did a lot of funny things, and there was this lady named the Abbess who said she would lieth with Massetto because, I guess, she didn’t want to embarrass him because he was lying. She did, and they were very happy. I liked this story because I think having a garden is a good thing to have. There are a lot of other stories I liked in this book. It is very hard to read because it has small printing, but anyone who would read this would like it.”
I leaned back and re-read my masterpiece. It was good, the best work I had ever done. My mother, hunched over the sink in her Chinese-red chenille bathrobe, doing the dishes, was vaguely humming “When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.” At that time she was deep in her Bing Crosby period. The kitchen was warm, my stomach was full, and Life was complete.
Friday dawned bright and clear, a perfect gem of a morning. I floated to the Warren G. Harding School with that high exhilarated feeling of a man who has his homework in his notebook and the world in his hand. Birds sang, milkmen whistled, and I could hardly wait for Miss Bryfogel and Six-B English. Now she would know. She could not mistake my devotion for a mere passing whim.
Miss Bryfogel that afternoon sat at her desk looking even more unattainable, elusive, and sultry than ever before. Her opening remarks followed her classic pattern:
“Pass your book reports up to the front and open your books to page seventy-eight.”
Ahead of me Simonson shoved his smudgy scrap of paper, bearing the title Sam, The Young Shortstop. From behind me Helen Weathers poked my ear with Lassie Come Home, and I, violins playing pianissimo in my soul, added my magnificent epistle to their scrubby lot. Miss Bryfogel simply stacked the book reports together, shoved them in a drawer, and we went to work on gerunds.
At long last my heavenly tryst with Miss Bryfogel ended. The bell rang, and caressing her lovingly with my burning, myopic eyes I drifted out into the hall, knowing that the trap was set. She had a whole weekend to think about me and our life together. Now that she knows the Higher Things to which I aspire, the pinnacles I have conquered, there can be no stopping us!
Saturday and Sunday flew by on the wings of ecstasy. And then Monday—blessed Monday. It was the first time in the recorded history of education in the state of Indiana that a normal, red-blooded, Male kid ever sprang out of bed at 7 A.M., a full fifteen minutes early, and took off for school without so much as a single whine.
The day dragged endlessly, achingly toward that moment of sublime triumph that I knew must come, and the instant I walked into Miss Bryfogel’s classroom I knew I had made the Big Strike. I was not even at my seat when she called me up to her desk. I turned, the way I had seen Clark Gable do it many times. Miss Bryfogel, her voice sounding a little odd—no doubt due to passion—said:
“Ralph, I’d like you to stay a few minutes after class.” The Jackpot!
I swaggered back to my seat, a man among children. Fifty-five minutes later I stood before Miss Bryfogel’s altar, ready to do her slightest command. She opened:
“Ralph … ah … about your book report. That was a very well-written book report.”
I said:
“Heh, heh, heh. Good.”
I was not used to this. Nobody ever talked about my work. I was strictly a C+ man, and C+ men never get praised. Miss Bryfogel was talking in a strange, low voice.
“It was very well written. Did you really … enjoy the book?”
“Yes. It was a very exciting book.”
Then Miss Bryfogel did something I had never seen a teacher do before. The first faint whisper of Danger wafted through my ventilating system. She just sat and looked at me for a long time and finally said, very quietly:
“Ralph, I want you to be very truthful with me.”
Truthful! Was Miss Bryfogel laboring under the delusion that I was leading her on, toying with her affections? I said:
“Yes?” I was beginning to sweat up my corduroys a little.
“Did you read the book or did you copy that from somewhere?” Well, there is one golden rule of all book reporters: never admit you didn’t read the book. That is cardinal.
“Yes … I read it.”
“Where did you get the book? Did you get it out of the library? Did Miss Easter give you that at the library?”
The Animal in us never sleeps. The dog lying on the hearth, eyes half-closed, senses Evil. His back hair rises out of pure instinct. The acrid scent of TROUBLE, faint but real, filtered in through the chalk dust and the lunchbags. My mind, working like a steel trap, leaped into action:
“Well … ah … ah … a kid gave it to me. Yeah, a kid gave it to me!”
Miss Bryfogel closed in.
“A kid? Anybody from class?”
Uh oh! Look out!
“Ah … no! A kid … I met on the playground at recess. A big kid.”
“A big kid gave you that book? That’s a big book, isn’t it? A thick book.”
“Yes, it’s the biggest book I ever read.”
“And a kid gave it to you? Does he go to Harding School?”
“Ah … I never saw that kid before. No, I don’t know where he’s from. A big kid … by the candy store.”
Miss Bryfogel swiveled her chair and stared off at the Venetian blinds for what seemed like two years. Slowly she turned back to me.
“A big kid by the candy store … gave you Boccaccio’s Decameron?”
“… ………… yeah.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“… yeah. Yeah, he said … ‘Here’s a book!’ ”
“He said ‘Here’s a book?’ And he gave you that book?”
“… …… yeah!”
“By the candy store? Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Well, it … it was dark!”
“It was dark?”
“Yeah! It was dark! It was … ah … raining! It was dark!” Miss Bryfogel took some paper clips out of her top drawer and straightened them up for a while and then said, even more quietly than before:
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“… …………yeah!”
“WHERE DID YOU GET THAT BOOK!?”
“… ……………….…home!”
“At home? Do they know that you read this book, at home? Does your mother know?”
“… …… yeah!”
“Are you sure?”
“Ah yeah.”
Miss Bryfogel picked up her pen and took a sheet of paper out of her desk drawer, and looked at me in a way that Jean Harlow never looked at Clark Gable.
“I’m going to give you a note. You are going to take it home to your mother, and in one hour I will call her to see that she got it.”
My socks began to itch. I had been through this note business before!
“… ….…okay.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“NO!”
This moment, this very instant in time, this millisecond was one of the great turning points in my life, and even then I knew it. Miss Bryfogel leaned back in her swivel chair. She
was soft and warm again.
“Ah. Where did you get the book?”
“My father’s room.”
“Oh? Did he know you took it?”
“No.”
“You know that you did something wrong, don’t you?”
“… ….…yeah.”
“Did you like the book?”
Somehow I knew that this was a loaded question, a key question.
“… ….…yeah.”
“I see. It was pretty funny, wasn’t it?”
“… … no!”
I was telling the truth. It seemed like for the first time in two years I was telling the truth. I hadn’t gotten a single boff from the book. Funny! The only thing that I liked about it was castles and knights. There wasn’t a single laugh in it!
“Are you sure you didn’t find it funny anywhere?”
“No!”
She knew I was telling the truth.
“Well, that’s good. That’s much better. Now, will you promise me one thing—that you will not sneak into your parents’ room and get books any more, if I promise not to send a note home?”
“… … okay!”
“You can go now.”
A great crashing wave of relief roared over me, and, bobbing in the surf, I paddled frantically toward the door. Just before I was through it and out safely:
“Oh, Ralph?”
“What?”—Figuring she is about to welsh on the deal.
“I’m curious. Did you read all of it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s very good. I like to see stick-to-itiveness. Now go out and play.”
I sipped my warm Scotch thoughtfully as Miss Bryfogel’s voice faded off into the darkness of my memory forever. Arnold Palmer was coming into the 18th three under par, Julius Boros was lining up a putt. My knees were stiff; my soul was sick. Outside somewhere, far off, a siren droned into the distance. Wading through the papers I retrieved the Book Review Supplement. Yes, there he was, my old friend, the languorous youth, reclining provocatively. The nun looked down upon him as she had for all these centuries, and somewhere off in the fairy-tale background the cuckolds sang sweetly as they busily built their nests.
XXVII POLKA TIME
“I don’t get it,” Flick said.
“Get what?”
“All that stuff about a cuckold. Isn’t that one of them yellow birds they put in clocks?”
I was saved at this point by the sudden entrance of three large, pink-faced youths wearing work jackets and plaid corduroy caps who clattered noisily up to the bar.
“Man, were you hot last week! Boy, was you on!” One shouted at Flick with a noticeable, very familiar Polish accent.
“I throw a working ball, Stosh,” Flick shot back.
There followed a quick flurry of shouting between all four, regarding bowling, the Game, and a waitress called Ellie. I will spare you that. Finally, one of the men threw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and bellowed:
“KEEP THEM BEERS COMIN’, FLICK, UNTIL WE HOLLER!”
They clumped over into a booth, after priming the jukebox, which immediately boomed out a deafening polka. Flick came back, after delivering the suds.
“That was Stosh and Joe and Yahkey. They’re good boys. They work in the Sheet Mill over at Youngstown.”
Inwardly I shuddered, realizing how narrowly I had missed being one of the boys myself, forever doomed to the Sheet Mill where I had once spent a few harrowing centuries one summer.
“They sure throw their dough around, don’t they?”
Flick polished a glass as he said:
“The mills are workin’. They get plenty of Tonnage these days.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“Well, they work their ass off for it.” Flick defended them.
“Don’t I know it! Flick, my back still aches from my days in the mill!”
Flick went on in his Wise Old Bartender manner:
“Once you been there, you never forget it.”
The change from the twenty, fives and singles and silver, lay spread out on the bar in a pool of beer. I idly shoved a half-dollar around with my forefinger, making larger and larger concentric circles.
“This dough means a lot of sweat,” I said reflectively. “Flick, do you ever get nervous when you look at cash? Like you figure it’s going to all of a sudden disappear?”
I smoothed out a beer-soaked five. He leaned forward confidentially and spoke in a low voice to me:
“Don’t tell anybody. It is.”
“You got that same fear, too?”
There was no doubt that we were now getting close to Home Base. Flick was no longer a Bowler. My credit card had dissolved in my pocket; my English flannel had magically somehow become worn denim; my well-cut sport coat a zippered canvas work jacket. I spoke in a low, tense voice:
“I wonder what those three guys would say if we told ’em about the Kissels?”
The jukebox roared into another polka disk; the three open-faced Simple Toilers in the booth downed their beer merrily as they told their dirty jokes. Flick looked over his shoulder at them in a long, piercing way, turned back to me, and, leaning even closer to my ear, said in a flat voice:
“Not one of ’em would believe it. They’d think we made it up.”
XXVIII “NEVERMORE,” QUOTH THE ASSESSOR, “NEVERMORE. …”
Mister Poe’s sinister, beady-eyed raven has always been a figure of great speculation and conjecture among literary analysts. How did Poe come up with such an eerie apparition? What did it mean? What was the source of this evil bird? In what dark, cluttered, moldy recess of Poe’s mind did it live? Why?
It said little; just bleakly stared, a hooded angel of death and destruction and God knows what.
Any resident of Northern Indiana, of a certain benighted period in history, could tell you in spades where Poe got his raven. The banshee wind rattling the eaves, murky shapes lurking in the gathering gloom; those gleaming inhuman, all-seeing eyes could only mean one thing. Unquestionably, somewhere along the line, Poe must have run afoul of an Indiana Personal Property Tax Assessor.
Even at this remove the very word “assessor” sends thin, jangling squeaks of fear through many a Hoosier nervous system. One sure way to clear the street of random Mankind in an Indiana hamlet is simply to bellow at the top of the voice:
“The Assessor is coming!”
Instantly a palpable wave of chill dread causes doors to slam, windows to darken, and souls to quake.
The Indiana Personal Property Tax was very personal. In theory it was also very basic and simple. All personal property was evaluated and taxed. All personal property: footstools, footballs, fielders’ mitts, and eggbeaters. Everything. The evaluating was done by a specter called the Assessor, who came to call, like the raven, and stared with bleak unblinking eyes. What was even more deadly was that the Assessor was appointed from among the neighborhood itself. Brother against brother, hand to hand, the eternal war of State versus Man was waged. Every two years or so the lines were drawn.
Very few people actually paid the taxes, and there were always rumors of impending doom. Brown envelopes arrived in mailboxes periodically, throwing panic into murky kitchens, but few actually paid. Nonetheless, the Assessor came, with clipboard and ruthless eye.
Year after year the forms were filled; the arid, flat envelopes hidden away in dresser drawers unopened, while the tiny cancer of fear grew heavier and heavier and then waned as no lightning bolts from the State House appeared and life went on.
The Assessor, however, produced some stark moments of truth. A knock on the door; a hush while my mother crept through the living room to peek between the curtains, a strangled whisper:
“The Assessor! For crying out loud, quick. Unplug the radio! Take it down to the coal bin! Hurry up!”
More than one four-year-old kid was crushed under a refrigerator that was being quickly grappled down the back stairs into the basement.
My mother, after the first
shock, hissed:
“Don’t open your trap! Don’t say a word, either of you! Do you understand? Not a WORD!”
In came the Assessor, scanning our worn Oriental rug as he nodded curtly and began to put a price on our world.
“How old is the rug? How long have you had that umbrella stand made out of the hollowed foot of an elephant? How much did it cost? New, that is. I don’t have that bridge lamp on last year’s list. New, eh? How much is that Flexible Flyer over there worth?”
All over the house, room after room, closet after closet they went, my mother keeping up a running counterpoint:
“Oh, why that’s just an old thing. My sister was going to throw it out and I just thought I’d bring it home. Didn’t cost anything. We got that refrigerator at the Salvation Army. It burns out all the time and makes a funny noise. This is the first time in months that it’s stopped making that funny noise.”
“Sounds pretty good to me. Sounds good.”
“I can’t understand it. We can’t even sleep when it’s going. We’re thinking of giving it away. It’s not worth the four dollars we paid for it. What a gyp!”
“Sounds pretty good.”
He made a note on his clipboard, smiled thinly, and moved on. He never even bothered to remove his lumpy gray hat.
We had a prop radio that we showed the Assessor every time he came. Our real radio with the magnificent Gothic Cathedral cabinet was lurking under piles of old tires in the basement. We showed him an old battery set that Uncle Tom had had and that was surplus from the Civil War. It had received some of the very first messages that Marconi had tapped out, using a magnetized railroad spike and Edison jars. My mother extolled its virtues:
“It’s a sentimental friend of the family. But it’s our radio. It uses dry cells and has a propeller on the side that is wind-driven. Since the creek dried up, the battery doesn’t work. We get nothing but whistles. But my husband likes it.”
“Hmmmmm. That’s a genuine Crosley Bandbox. Beautiful carved cabinet there. Bird’s-eye oak. Looks hand-rubbed.”
“Look where the mice ate out the back here. See, I stick this Sears Roebuck catalog behind so nobody can see it.”
In God We Trust Page 20