Evan Hunter: The blackboard jungle

There is no school in the New York City system named North Manual Trades High School, nor is the school in these pages intended as a representation of any existing school. Likewise, the characters in this story are all fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The building presented a not unpleasant architectural scheme, the banks of wide windows reflecting golden sunlight, the browned weathered brick facade, the ivy clinging to the brick and framing the windows. His eyes passed over the turrets on each corner of the building, green-tiled in the sunlight. It was a nice-looking building, he thought.

He walked through the cyclone fence and into the empty yard stretching before him in endless concrete monotony. It was still hot for September, and the sun glared off the concrete except where the building cast a turreted black shadow near the entrance steps. He was a little nervous, but he knew that would pass once the interview started. He was always nervous before an interview. He would feel all bottled up until the first few words were spoken. Then the cork would be drawn, and all the nervousness would spill out, leaving only the confidence that always lay just beneath the bottled surface of the nervousness.

He paused on the shadowed steps, partly to reassure himself of his confidence, and partly to look up at the chiseled letters in the triangular arch over the doorway.

Leave us gird our loins, he thought.

He sucked in a deep breath, the way a man on a diving board will just before taking the plunge, and he started up the steps. He pulled open the wooden door, surprised to find marble steps behind it. He started up the marble steps and saw the sign GENERAL OFFICE. Beneath the sign, in sprawling crayon, someone had scribbled the timeless epithet, and an industrious summer custodian had succeeded in partially scrubbing away every letter but the bold, black F of the first word. He smiled and followed the arrow beneath the sign into a cool, dim corridor. There was another sign with another arrow in the corridor, and he followed that dutifully. The halls were freshly painted and spotlessly clean. He admired this with an air of proprietorship, almost as if he had already won the job. A clean school is a good school , he mused, and then he wondered in which education class he’d picked that up.

He made a sharp right-angle turn at the end of the corridor, following the instructions of another sign, and then walked rapidly to an open doorway through which sunlight streamed. A sign to the right of the doorway read GENERAL OFFICE.

They believe in signs here, by God, he thought. He expected to step into the room and find a desk with a sign reading desk, and a chair with another sign reading chair. Mr. Stanley would undoubtedly wear a cardboard placard strung around his neck, and the lettering on it would say Mr. Stanley. He wondered if he should put a little button in his lapel, like the ones they gave you at Freshman teas.

My name is RICHARD DADIER; what’s yours?

Josephine of France.

Not tonight, Josephine.

He sighed impatiently and stepped into the room. It was a long rectangular room, with the entrance doorway on one long side of the rectangle. The other long side was directly opposite him and covered from short wall to short wall with windows. Five feet back from the wall with the door in it, a railing divided the room, stretching across its entire length. Behind the railing, he saw a group of desks. A distinguished-looking man was talking to a frightened-looking man at one of the desks. A time clock hung on the wall to the left of the doorway, behind the dividing railing. Racks for cards were hung beneath the clock, but the racks were almost empty.

He stood in the doorway for just an instant, and then walked to the railing. The railing had a counter top, except where a gate was set into it near the time clock. A blonde with an upswept hairdo and a pencil stabbed into the hair was busily scribbling something on an official-looking form, her elbows on the counter. He walked to her, glancing quickly at the row of cubbyholes which were labeled teachers’ mailboxes.

She did not look up. He cleared his throat, and she still did not look up. She continued scribbling on the white official-looking form, and she did not deign to notice him until she had finished. She looked at him exactly as she had looked at the official-looking form.

“Yes?” she said.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Stanley,” he said, smiling.

“Your name, please.”

“Mr. Dadier.”

“If you’ll take a seat, Mr. Dadier, he’ll be with you in a moment.”

She looked past him to a bench against the wall near the cubbyhole mailboxes.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Not at all,” she answered, and he immediately figured her for one of those efficient women who always have to get the last word in. He’d known an executive like that once. If he got a letter saying, “Thank you for your kindness the other day,” he’d immediately get off another letter saying, “Thank you for thanking me for my kindness the other day.” Pit two people like that against one another and you’d get an endless round of “Thank you for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me...” Which was probably the best way to keep two such crackpots occupied, anyway.

Having made this astute judgment, Richard Dadier, sizer-up of women with pencils growing out of their heads, promptly walked to the bench and took a seat. There was another fellow sitting at the far end of the bench, but he gave him only a cursory glance and then turned his attention to the two men seated at the desk beyond the railing.

The distinguished-looking man was doubtless Mr. Stanley, and the one with fear all over his face was undoubtedly applying for the open English teacher’s position. Stanley seemed completely bored. He was a blondish man, with a thin, angular face, and a precise mustache that formed an unobtrusive cushion for his slender nose. His eyebrows were blond, and slightly raised now, like the eyebrows of someone politely listening to a joke he’s heard before.

The fellow opposite him droned on endlessly, using his ham-like hands to illustrate pertinent points in his undoubtedly illustrious career. Every time the fellow waved a hand, Stanley flinched, and Rick made a mental note to keep his hands clenched tightly in his lap.

He heard the slightly louder words “student taught,” and Stanley nodded, with his eyebrows still raised in polite anticipation of a punch line he already knew. The fellow went on, and Stanley hastily penciled a few notes on the pad before him, glanced at his watch — the gold cuff links glittering in the sunlight when his jacket sleeve pulled back — and then leaned forward smiling.

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Rick could almost make out the words as they formed on Stanley’s almost feminine mouth. Those words, or a reasonable facsimile, like the box tops always said. He wondered what the box tops had meant. Ten cents and a box top or reasonable facsimile thereof. Did that mean you could draw a box top on a sheet of cardboard and send that in with your dime? He wondered. He had wondered the same thing when he had been a rabid sender-inner. Especially for the Tom Mix stuff. He had received a magnifying glass, and a ring through which you could look and see people behind you, and a six-shooter. And he could never remember finishing a box of Ralston. He had also received the Little Orphan Annie shaker by sending in the aluminum seal from a can of Ovaltine, together with twenty-five cents. He would always remember the Little Orphan Annie shaker because there was a picture of the little orphan herself on it. And in the picture, she was holding a Little Orphan Annie shaker upon which there was a picture of Little Orphan Annie holding a Little Orphan Annie shaker. He had wondered if the thing would go on forever, orphans holding shakers with pictures of orphans holding shakers. He had used his Tom Mix magnifying glass on it, and was vastly disappointed when the series of pictures within pictures petered out after a few tries.