Evan Hunter - The blackboard jungle

The knife. Rick suddenly remembered! Where’s the knife? What the hell happened to...

Sunlight caught the cold glint of metal, and Rick glanced up instantly, expecting to find Miller there, expecting West’s friend. Belazi stood over him, the knife clenched tightly in his fist. He grinned idiotically, his lips parting over rotten teeth. He spat vehemently at Rick, and then there was a blur of color: blue steel, and the yellow of West’s hair, and the blood on West’s lip, and the brown wooden floor, and the gray tweed of Rick’s suit. A shout came up from the class, and a hiss seemed to escape West’s lips.

Rick kicked at Belazi, feeling the heavy leather of his shoes crack against the boy’s shins. West was up and fumbling for Rick’s arms. A sudden slice of pain started at Rick’s shoulder, careened down the length of his arm. Cloth gave way with a rasping scratch, and blood flashed bright against the gray tweed.

From the floor. Rick saw the knife flash back again, poised in Belazi’s hand ready to strike. He saw West’s fists, doubled and hard, saw the animal look that had come on Belazi’s face, and again the knife, threatening and sharp, drenched now with blood, dripping on the brown, cold, wooden floor.

The noise grew louder and Rick grasped in his mind for a picture of the Roman arena, tried to rise, felt pain sear through his right arm as he put pressure on it.

He’s cut me, he thought with panic. Belazi has cut me.

And the screaming reached a wild crescendo, hands moved with terrible swiftness, eyes gleamed with molten fury, bodies squirmed, and hate smothered everything in a sweaty, confused, embarrassed embrace.

This is it, Rick thought. This is really it.

“Lee him alone, you goddamn fool!” Miller was shouting.

Leave who alone. Rick wondered. Who? I wasn’t...

“Lousy sneak,” Levy shouted. “Lousy, sneaky bastard.”

Who, Rick thought. What...?

Miller seized West and pushed him backward against a desk. Rick watched him dazedly, his right arm burning with pain. He saw Morales through a maze of moving, struggling bodies. Morales who’d delivered the profane wire-recorder speech, saw Morales smash a book against Belazi’s knife hand. The knife clattered to the floor with a curious sound. Belazi’s hand reached out for it and Santini, the smiler, stepped on it with the heel of his foot. The knife disappeared in a shuffle of hands, but Belazi no longer had it. Rick stared at the bare, brown spot on the floor where the knife had been.

Whose chance is it now, he wondered? Whose turn to slice the teacher?

West tried to struggle off the desk where Miller had him pinned. Erin brought his fist down heavily on West’s nose. He wrenched the larger boy’s head back with one hand, and again brought his fist down fiercely.

A slow recognition trickled into Rick’s confused thoughts. Through dazzled eyes, he watched.

Belazi scrambled to his feet and lunged at him. A solid wall seemed to rise before him as Carter and Antoro flung themselves against the onrushing form and threw it back. They tumbled onto Belazi, Carter’s red hair flashing wildly, holding Belazi’s arms, pummeling him with excited fists.

They’re fighting for me! No, Rick reasoned, no. But yes, they’re fighting for me! Against West. Against Belazi. For me. For me, oh my God, for me.

His eyes blinked nervously as he struggled to his feet. Belazi and West were subdued now, and Rick looked at them briefly and then said, “Let’s... let’s take them down to Mr. Small.” His voice was very low.

Antoro moved closer to him, his eyes widening as they took in the livid slash that ran the length of Rick’s arm.

“Man, that’s some cut,” he said.

Rick touched his arm lightly with his left hand. It was soggy and wet, the shirt and jacket stained a dull brownish-red.

“My brother got cut like that once,” Maglin offered.

The boys were still holding Belazi and West, but they no longer seemed terribly interested in the troublemakers.

For an instant. Rick felt a twinge of panic. For that brief, terrible instant he imagined that the boys hadn’t really come to his aid at all, that they had simply seen an opportunity for a good fight and had seized upon it. And then he remembered whose voice he had heard first, the voice shouting, “Lee him alone, you goddamn fool!” He looked among the crowd of faces around him, and he found Miller, and their eyes met, but he could read nothing on Miller’s face.

“I... I think I’d better take them down to Mr. Small,” he said. He stared at the boys, trying to read their faces, trying mostly to read Miller’s unsmiling face, searching for something in their eyes that would tell him he had at last reached them, reached them in a different way than “The Fifty-First Dragon” had. He could tell nothing. Their faces were blank, their eyes emotionless.

He wondered if he should thank them. If only he knew. If he could only hit upon the right thing to say, the thing to cement it all.

“I’ll... I’ll take them down. Suppose... you... you all go to lunch now.”

“That sure is a mean cut,” Kruger said, and Miller watched and said nothing.

“Yeah,” Rodriguez agreed.

“You can all go to lunch,” Rick said. “I want to take Belazi and West...”

The boys didn’t move. They stood there with serious faces, solemnly watching Rick.

“... to... the... principal,” Rick finished.

“A hell of a mean cut,” Taglio said.

And then Miller came out of the circle of faces, and he stepped forward, and he chose his words very carefully, and his face was very serious. “Maybe we should jus’ forget the principal, Chief, huh?” he said. “Maybe we should jus’ oughta go to lunch.”

Rick looked at Miller, and again their eyes met. He did not pretend to understand. He knew only that West had stepped over the line Miller had drawn, and Miller had been presented with a choice. He could either step over the line with West, or he could help in shoving West back over that line. He had chosen to help Rick. He had fought for him, and now the fight was over, and through some unfathomable code of his own, he was now turning on Rick again.

Or was he?

There was something strange in Miller’s eyes, and the smile that usually dominated his face was not there now. His eyes were inquisitive and his entire body seemed to strain forward, tensed, waiting. He did not take his eyes from Rick’s face, and those eyes pleaded, pleaded with a mute intensity. Rick stared at him, and he did not understand at first, and then abruptly he realized that Miller had not chosen the easy road when he’d joined the fight against West. Miller had made a choice, and for once that choice had led him down the hard road.

And now there was another choice, and Rick weighed it carefully, and his eyes held Miller’s in the ring of faces around him. It would make things a hell of a lot simpler if he just sent all the kids to lunch and forgot all about Belazi and West. It would make things simpler the way things would have been vastly simpler had he not interfered in that rape so long ago. It would be easy, so easy to say, “All right, let’s just forget all this,” and then go back to teaching the way he’d come to teach lately. It would be easy, very easy, because the kids would all have had a good fight, and Dadier would have shown himself to be a fine guy by forgetting all about it and not getting Belazi and West in trouble. So easy.

The kids crowded around Rick and Miller, and West was smiling broadly, insolently, and everyone was very quiet, and they waited. They had heard what Miller suggested, and now they saw Rick and Miller staring at each other, and they did not know that one was deciding and the other was waiting for that decision. They themselves waited, but they did not wait the way Miller waited, and they did not know Rick was making one of the hardest decisions he’d ever had to make in his life.