The Didactor

by Roy F. Chandler

  Moran tried to put it all together. "Ben, you can keep on bein' a fighter for a while, and for a while you'll be a champ, but you'll pay in scars an' bum reflexes, in beatin's an' a dirty life.

  "Look, you're EUCOM champion an' you've been All Army Welter champ. I'm sayin' settle for that. Hang up the gloves an' be somethin' else now while you're still young an' the Army's got time for you."

  There was silence between them. Once, Troop cleared his throat as if to speak, but didn't. Moran sought some way to break the moment but failed to find it.

  Troop spoke rather softly, "Look, Mugs, I've trained and boxed since before I can remember and you figure I should just walk away?" He was again silent, lost in thought, then grinned suddenly and said, "Mind if I pick up my jock before I leave?"

  Moran flashed his great expanse of white and gold, thankful that there was no anger between them. "I'll have it starched and mail it to you, Trooper."

  "Mugs, I want you to know I appreciate your advice and your interest, but you got me cold, man. I can't decide out of nowhere, to just walk away. Jesus, Mugsy. Is that what you really expect?"

  "It ain't exactly what I expect, but it's what I'm hopin' for, Trooper. I've seen a lot of boys try to quit. Most of 'em keep hangin' around, trainin' a little, sparrin' now an' then, an' all of a sudden they're back in there, only not as sharp as they used to be.

  "They's only one way to quit, baby. Just like smokin' . . . just stop, an' don't do it no more at all."

  "Look, Mugsy, I'll tell you something I've never mentioned to anyone else. Sometimes I'm scared of being a fighter. I don't like getting hit and sometimes I'd like to get out of it all too, but just stop—like, right now? Jesus, Mugs!"

  Moran took a breath that expanded his chest many inches. "Look, Trooper, you know it's no sweat off my butt, but I'm askin' you to walk out that door, clean out your locker, an' don't even come back for a visit.

  "I don't want to see your bony can punchin' the bag, or standin' around, or coachin' your company team." Then, very softly he added, "I'm askin' you to be smart, Ben."

  Troop sat a long moment, still stunned and undecided. He saw the aging warrior looking tired and concerned and felt a warm compassion for the old heavyweight. He expected he'd be more grateful in later years. He stood and stuck out his hand. "Thanks, Mugsy. I'll see you around."

  Horan enfolded Troop's hand in his own mighty paw and managed, "See ya, Trooper."

  He watched Troop's military figure cross the gym. He thought how good Troop moved. He visualized the machine gun rapidity of Troop in the ring and hoped he'd done right. He sighed and tried to put Troop from his mind. He turned to some scheduling that he had put off too long, but still his thoughts clung to Ben Troop. So many drifted back. The gyms with their smell of stale sweat, wintergreen, and soggy leather lured them back. The good exercise, the sweat running free, tough competition, and the roar of the crowd pushing you on—it was tough to resist.

  Mugsy hoped Troop could walk away. The boy had guts and plenty of smarts. He just might make it.

  +++++

  The boy lay quietly while Doctor Shanks touched his cauterizing needle to a bleeder just within the left nostril. He had pushed and pulled the nose into pretty good shape. It might take more, but it would help to get most of it done before much swelling set in. After that you couldn't see what you were doing and by the time the swelling went down, the bone would have started to set and well, he thought, it was a case of the quicker the better.

  Ruby lay quiet because of the injection Shanks had given him. Until the drug had taken hold, the pain had been severe. Now he lay loose and relaxed, not unconscious; Shanks wanted him awake. A broken jaw could swell the throat shut or drip blood down inside.

  The doctor could do little with the smashed jaw. He picked out a few shards of bone and part of a broken tooth and thought again what a terrific smash it must have been to so pulverize a jaw. He suspected the boy's mouth had been partly open when the blow hit; clenched tightly, much of the force would have been transferred and spread through the skull. With his mouth open, the jaw bone had gathered momentum before the teeth hit. Result: a spectacular crunching.

  He had sent for the ambulance that had belatedly arrived at the high school and he now heard its screeching arrival outside his office. Bob Share would be driving, he could tell by the way the tires slid on the gravel, and Share always ran up the sidewalk. Share could hardly wait to see who was laid out and waiting.

  Share operated a small lunchroom on the town square and Shanks wondered how he could simply dash off the way he did. What happened to the hamburger on the grill or to the customer only half served? He'd have to ask Bob just how he handled that.

  Share came into the treatment room without knocking. Shanks wondered if he thought he owned a piece of the office. He examined Tom Ruby's torn face with experienced clinical attention before turning to Doctor Shanks, "All set, Doc. Where to?"

  As if he didn't know, thought Shanks. He's only made the run a hundred times. "Polyclinic, Bob. Take him right to Emergency. They'll be waiting for him." A bit maliciously he added," That's around on the right side of the main building," Knowing Share resented even a hint that he didn't know all there was to know about ambulance service.

  "And Bob," Shanks urged, "don't be asking Tom a lot of fool questions. He can't answer with his jaw bound up and I don't want him doing any head bobbing. Miss Lilley will go with you and keep him sitting up so nothing runs into his lungs."

  He gave Tom a reassuring pat on the shoulder and watched him wheeled out of the office. In his reception room his secretary was just hanging up the phone. "Call for me, Lydia?" he asked, knowing it wasn't.

  "Oh no, Doctor." She moved hurriedly to her files,

  Deciding not to let her off the hook this time he said, "Filling Clara in on Tom Ruby, Lydia?"

  She turned, embarrassed but righteously indignant, "Well, I did talk to Clara for a few moments, Doctor, and I did happen to mention Tom Ruby. That poor boy!" She shuddered delightedly, "Why would anybody, let alone a teacher, ever beat a person so horribly?"

  He wondered how he could ever convince the meddlesome woman that what went on in a doctor's office is supposed to be confidential and not noised all over town. He wished he could fire her!

  Shanks had inherited Lydia Gould from old Doc Harkness, who had died, leaving his practice up for grabs. Shanks had grabbed and had never been sorry. Newport was a fine town of the fast disappearing Elm Street variety. He made a good living, although not as financially rewarding as it might have been in a bigger community. He was a member of the school board (a position he did not care to examine at this moment) and except for Lydia Gould, he thought he might be quite content.

  In a town like Newport, firing poor Lydia would inevitably haunt him. He would be forever reminded of his cold-hearted uncaring for the poor lady who had given so many years to the good of the town. So he put up with her misfiling and endless gossiping. He often thought of her as the town sewer. Anything needing flushing could be given to Lydia and it would quickly flow out through the town.

  Actually, Lydia spoke with only a few close friends but those few had tentacles throughout the community. As a member of one of Newport's fine old-line families, Lydia Gould would never demean herself by babbling over the fence with the common clay, but between her and, in particular, that bony scarecrow of a Clara Coons, news spread swiftly.

  "Lydia, how many times have I told you not to repeat what happens in this office? It is not your business to tell Clara about Tom Ruby. In fact, it is your business not to tell Clara about Tom Ruby." He shook his head in disgust.

  She pushed herself angrily away from her desk and scuttled to the barricade of her filing cabinets. She presented her employer with a view of her broad behind as she searched industriously for an imaginary record.

  "Doctor Shanks, you know Clara is my best friend and she would never repeat a word I tell her. Clara's been your patient ever since poor Doctor Harkness die
d, bless his soul, and you know she's from one of the best families in Perry County." She thumbed furiously through the already dog-eared documents in the file.

  Shanks watched her a moment, realizing they had traipsed the same ground many times before. If he persisted, she would launch into a listing of things she had never mentioned to anyone and finally remind him that poor Doctor Harkness, "Bless his soul," had never complained, and she, Lydia, felt the doctor was picking on her without just cause and . . . He decided to drop it.

  He turned his thoughts back to the boy now en route to the hospital. He would spend time with his teeth wired, then he'd be much as he was before. Biggest danger was probably Bob Share running the ambulance off the road, but Miss Lilley would keep him slowed down. He'd sent her along more to watch Bob Share than the patient. That Share, he was always bragging how he had set a new record to the hospital. Anyone with an ounce of brains could see that sooner or later he would pass the point beyond which the ambulance would not stay on the road and that would be that, another pile up. He wished the volunteer fire department that cooperated with the ambulance service would put Share on the hose truck or something.

  This Ruby thing was going to be trouble. No question of that. Miss Lilley had filled him in enough to know that Ben Troop had broken the boy's jaw and nose in a fight. He considered calling Bob Boden and then decided against it. Boden would contact him as soon as he had the facts and had chosen the right direction.

  Boden was a damned good man. He kept the lid on. Boden even had a dress code, and the board supported him so strongly that it had endured despite assaults by antagonistic students.

  Recently, Boden had decided hair was again getting too long. Some kids didn't like it; probably a lot didn't. Generally speaking the board didn't give a hoot whether they liked it or not. That was the point of things at Newport High. The students attended to learn, not to control. They sat before their educators with open ears and open eyes, not open mouths. Shanks wondered where he had gotten that thought, then remembered Ben Troop had used it when speaking to the Lion's Club one time. He had liked it and filed it away for his own use. It pretty well fit Newport's educational philosophy. The adults of the town ran the school. The board was their representative body. If the town didn't approve of something, there wouldn't be any in the school.

  Boden was the one who made such rulings possible. When a problem reached the school board, Boden was invariably one step ahead of the opposition. One family had showed up with a couple of sharpy civil rights lawyers from Harrisburg. They'd gone away whipped, just like the rest.

  Boden's approach was simple. He just made sure he was right, then he organized all his facts with no omissions and let the bricks fall where they might.

  Still, this Ruby thing was something different, Shanks thought. The injuries were damn well serious and he supposed if bone splinters had flown just right they could have entered the brain and perhaps killed.

  Then there was the town itself. He could not predict how it would jump on this one. Most people disliked the Rubys, but Tom was this year's football hero and he had been badly hurt by a teacher whom many people felt disturbing. Some thought Troop a mysterious character. Shanks shook off the latter thought. God, he was getting as bad as Lydia Gould.

  He punched his buzzer almost angrily and then with deliberately modulated voice so that Mrs. Gould would not suspect his agitation, requested the next patient.

  He knocked pipe dottle into his ashtray, moved to the small sink in the corner and washed his mouth with a quick swirl of Lavoris. He hung a stethoscope around his neck to give an added professional touch and let his mind flit across the school situation. Boden would get the facts; he would have them right; and the school board could depend on his guidance. He just hoped that half the board would not go one way and half another. That, he recognized, could be fatal.

  Solidarity was the thing. Choose a direction and hang in there all together. He hoped Boden came up with a good course. Offhand, with the few facts he had, none appeared particularly navigable.

  +++++

  "Give it an extra half-turn."

  "Now, Clara, I'm the plumber."

  "Another half-turn, Sylvester!" Her long nose, with the bifocal glasses centered, was shoved well inside the cabinet under the sink making the light even worse to work by. "I don't want to call you next week because it's leaking again."

  Reluctantly, he eased the monkey wrench a hair tighter. Too often, a little bit extra on a fitting stripped the whole works, especially in plumbing this ancient.

  Clara Coons disappeared from his view with an approving "Humph" and Sylvester heard her bony knees crack as she got up from kneeling on the worn linoleum floor.

  Christ! he thought, then mentally scratched the word because he was trying to stop swearing. I must have worked on this sink twenty times in the last ten years. It was worn out and probably had been when dad was the town plumber.

  He pictured his long, lean, and patient father meekly putting on another half-turn. Inwardly he hoped the threads would strip and he could blame it on Clara. Then, grunting and sighing with effort, Sylvester worked his fat body out from around the arrangement of pipes, valves, and fittings to end up sitting on the kitchen floor.

  He paused a moment to catch his breath and let the black spots settle down. He always got spots before his eyes if he exerted himself. Two hundred and fifty pounds did that to a man. God, he ought to diet! Again he chastised himself for taking the Lord's name in vain. Swearing seemed to be like eating; he couldn't resist either.

  He became aware of Clara Coons' skinny Shanks planted primly before him and marveled, as he often did, at the astonishing length of her feet. Sensible shoes with safe flat heels and round toes helped not at all. Fascinating, he thought, and longed to slap a tape measure on them.

  "Get up, Sylvester. You don't have to polish my floor with your behind."

  Mighty barbed tongue, he thought, struggling to his feet and again pausing to let his spots and heartbeat subside. No wonder John Coons had quietly expired at age fifty-five. Sylvester recalled how contented John had looked all laid out for viewing. Mortician probably didn't even have to touch him up; he must have been pleased to be free of old Clara and her busybody, nagging ways.

  "Sit down, Sylvester, and have some pie. Will you have tea or milk? I'm not making coffee this time of day."

  He looked at the slab of pie laid out on an old ironstone plate, fought an already lost battle with his conscience, and selected milk.

  Clara Coons did make awful good pies and cakes. When the Presbyterian ladies had their bake sales on the town square, Sylvester always tried to buy a few of Clara's things. He'd contribute to the church efforts anyway, so he might as well get the best of the cooking while he was doing it.

  He cut into the flakey crust with the edge of his fork, appreciating that widow Coons knew enough to cut a pie in five pieces instead of the eight skimpy wedges most people did. A fifth of a good deep pie was enough for a man to get his teeth into, though he knew with a certain weariness that he was going to pay heavily for this piece of blueberry pie.

  Clara Coons thought Sylvester would never get that leak stopped. The joint had been dripping for weeks, but when she heard what had happened at the school this very morning she just had to talk to Sylvester. Sylvester Drum was not only the town's best plumber, he was school board president, and it was right and proper that some of the more reliable citizens of the community advise him on how to act in such a difficult situation.

  "Sylvester, I heard what went on at the high school this morning."

  Pausing to swallow, "Thought you might have, Clara. Seems to have gotten around awful fast."

  "Well, Mrs. Gould—Doctor Shanks' nurse, you know . . ."

  Sylvester knew.

  "Well, she called me almost as soon as that poor boy reached the office."

  I'll bet she did. Birds of a feather, especially bony old birds without enough to keep them busy.

  "Lydi
a said that poor Tom Ruby had his whole jaw smashed so it will never be right, and his nose just isn't there at all!"

  Once started, Clara could never just outline the problem and get on, so Sylvester comforted himself with a new glass of milk and half listened in resignation as Widow Coons plopped a second deep, juicy pie wedge on his plate.

  "Why Lydia told me that his jawbone was probably broken in a dozen places and that whole bunches of his teeth were snapped right off."

  Her pointed tongue flicked quickly across the thin and almost colorless lips. My God, thought Sylvester, she's really enjoying this mess!

  "Now Sylvester Drum, I believe in teachers being boss in their classrooms, just like you do, but for an educator in our school system to brutalize a poor child like that! Well, it's just scandalous, that's all."

  Educator! Brutalize! Wonder where Clara's picking up such words?

  "Sylvester, are you listening?"

  "Huh, oh sure, Clara. I’m just thinking about it, and I'm thinking maybe we'd better get all the facts before we start deciding what to do. Before you get all sputtery, remember we haven't heard Ben Troop's side and the superintendent hasn't had a chance to look into the matter, and Clara, just offhand, it doesn't seem altogether likely that Mr. Troop just walked over and hit Tom Ruby for nothin'.

  "Might be more here than Lydia Gould knows about. Might be we all oughta remember that just because somebody ends up doing most of the bleeding doesn't necessarily mean he didn't ask for it."

  She sniffed angrily and Sylvester watched her eyes glitter behind the gold framed glasses. "I know you have to stand by your teachers, Sylvester." She leaned across the table aiming her nose aggressively. "But you know as well as I do there's something peculiar about Ben Troop. He's been strange ever since he was a little boy. He's never in church, Sylvester. Some people say he learned to be an atheist while he was off in the Army and that he doesn't believe in anything at all!"