Evan Hunter - The blackboard jungle

“This guy who pitches for our team,” Finley said, “he got to chew gum or else he can’t pitch. He don’t need the gum. He’s a good pitcher anyway.”

“But that’s superstition, isn’t it?” Rick asked. “Is Rumplesnitz superstition? Is that what Rumplesnitz is supposed to be?”

“No,” Bello said. “No, it ain’t. It’s what gives him the confidence. But it ain’t superstition. That’s different.”

“How so?”

“Superstition is you’re afraid of something. Like black cats or thirteens. Gawaine ain’t afraid of Rumplesnitz. He loves that word. That’s his courage, that word.”

“That’s what he leans on,” Spencer said.

“A crutch?” Rick asked.

“Yeah, that’s it, a crutch.”

“And there are people who need crutches in life?”

“Cripples need crutches,” Finley said.

“Only cripples?” Rick asked. “Was Gawaine a cripple?”

“No,” Theros said, “he was strong.”

“In his body,” Rick said.

“Oh,” Theros said, “you mean maybe like he was crippled in his head. Like maybe ’cause he was scared, he was crippled. Like that?”

“Possibly,” Rick said. “Are there people like that?”

“I know a guy can’t do anything without his mother says okay,” Wilson said. “Like he don’t trust his own... his own...”

“Judgment,” Rick supplied.

“Yeah. But he’s okay. I mean, when his mother ain’t around, he’s fine. He could do things without her. He don’t need her.”

“The way Gawaine doesn’t need Rumplesnitz, right?”

“Right,” Wilson said emphatically.

“A cripple,” Rick said.

“As long as his old lady’s around,” Price said.

“Rumplesnitz, you mean,” Ventro said.

“But I thought this story was all about a knight who kills dragons,” Rick said, delighted now, pleased, almost thrilled. He knew he’d broken through, and his watch told him there were three minutes left to the period, and he wanted to round it out, wanted them to realize that the story said one thing while it meant another. “Was it?”

“Yeah, it was,” Finley said.

“And only that? Just a knight who kills dragons.”

“Well, you could twist it around,” Price said. “Then it becomes everybody, and not just Gawaine.”

“Everybody?” Rick asked.

“Everybody who needs a crutch,” Speranza supplied. “Like in real life.”

“You mean the story has a message?” Rick asked.

“Sure. It tells about fake words, and how you don’t need them. If you’re strong and quick, what you need the phony crutch for? You got it all in you anyway. You can kill dragons, not really, but you could maybe be a good mechanic, like that, you know?”

“Yes,” Rick said, “exactly. And is the story a better one because it tells a second story, because it gives a message, and because it’s not only about a cowardly knight?”

“It’s a good story,” Bello said.

“Yeah, that was a good one,” Price said. “I liked that one.”

“And will you remember the word for a story that tells two stories at the same time, a story that gives a message?”

“Yeah, what is it?” Speranza asked.

“An allegory,” Rick said, and he wrote the word on the board, and someone behind him said, “That was a damn good story,” and then the bell sounded.

He sat at his desk, and the kids crowded around him, and they asked him if there were other stories like that, where you could get something else out of them and not just the story. And one kid thanked him for showing him the second story because he’d only realized the story about the knight, and it was like finding something special, a present you didn’t know was there. And another kid told him about a friend of his who was like Gawaine and had a Rumplesnitz, and another kid asked if Rick would read them another story like that.

And Rick sat there stunned, answering their questions, listening to their stories, thinking I’ve broken through, Christ, I’ve broken through, and watching the kids mill around his desk while the kids in his second-period class filed in, puzzled. And at last the kids left, and he was too stunned to try a repetition of the same story in his second-period class, so he let it go, thinking all the while, I’ve broken through, oh my God, I’ve broken through to them. I’ve reached them.

And when he walked to his Hall Patrol at the end of the second period, he was stopped by kids in his seventh-term classes, kids who said they’d heard about the knight story, and would he teach them the same story. And one kid asked him what this was about Rumplesnitz, and could he learn it? And he was stopped at least a dozen times on his way down to the first floor, and each kid made the same request: teach us about the fifty-first dragon.

He would teach them now, oh God, he would really teach them now because he’d broken through and that was half the battle. He would give 55-206 the same story, and then he would give it to his seventh termers, and everything would be all right.

But he didn’t give it to 55-206, and he didn’t give it to his seventh termers because the messenger found him where he was sitting outside the Students’ Lavatory on the first floor opposite the entrance doors, and the message told him that his mother-in-law had called, and that Anne had been taken to the hospital in labor.

The subway stop was at 77th Street, and he ran up the steps to Lexington Avenue. He turned left on the corner, realized he was heading for 78th, and then changed his course and began walking fast — almost running toward 76th Street. There was a candy store on the corner, and he crossed 77th Street and the big brown bulk of the hospital filled Lexington Avenue between 77th and 76th. Across the street, on the other side of the avenue, he saw the stores, and he watched the stores as he walked rapidly opposite them: the grocery, the luncheonette, the restaurant, another restaurant, a stationery store, and on the corner, a florist. There was a florist on his side of the street, too, on the corner of 76th Street. He turned right at the corner, looking briefly at the big church on the other side of the avenue, and then walking past another candy store, and a toy shop, and a dry cleaner’s, and an electrician’s shop, and then the Einhorn Auditorium of Lenox Hill Hospital.

The green canopy of the hospital reached out for the sidewalk. White letters announced LENOX HILL HOSPITAL, added MAIN ENTRANCE in a sotto voce . The canopy covered the center arch of three arches. Plaques with the address 111 held the walls on either side of the center arch. He mounted the steps and he glanced upward, and the arch over the inner doors was inscribed with the legend ERECTED MCMXXX.

He noticed all these things, and he thought of Anne, and he cursed because it hadn’t happened while he was at home, and he worried about her at the same time, and then he was in the large entrance, and he looked first to the wall on his right, and then spotted the reception desk on his left and walked directly to it. The girl behind the desk was on the phone, and he waited impatiently, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. She put down the phone at last, and Rick said, “Mrs. Dadier.”

“Maternity, sir?” the girl asked.

“Yes, my mother-in-law just call...”

“One moment, sir.” She consulted some papers on her desk, papers he could not see, and then she said, “She is in the delivery room now, sir.”

“How long... I mean... is Dr. Bradley here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you let me know... how... how do I find out?”

“The doctor will come down after the delivery, sir.”

“Thank you.”

He stood at the desk for a moment, and the girl smiled sympathetically, and then he turned and walked to the bench on the opposite wall. He sat and jiggled his feet and clenched and unclenched his hands, and when he saw Anne’s mother he almost didn’t recognize her. She came out of one of the arches stemming from the waiting room and walked directly to him, taking his hands.