“Honey.”
She stopped at the door. “Yes, Dad?”
“I think Jonathon…Jon…is a nice boy.”
“Oh, ok,” she replied with an airy nonchalance. “That’s good to know.” As she walked into the hallway, she could hear her father chuckling softly to himself. She felt her cheeks flush, but she was not angry. No, she was definitely not angry.
#
Mr. Hanson was like no teacher Jon had ever known. He was not as old as Jon’s grandmother, but still pretty old. Of course, that didn’t make him all that much different from other teachers. It wasn’t his age that set him apart. It was the way he taught.
First of all, he sat while teaching, with his feet up on the desktop, exposing the soles of an old pair of shoes that looked to be just about worn through. Even that, though, wouldn’t have merited much note. It was what he did next that Jon found fascinating.
While seated with his feet on his desk, Mr. Hanson leaned back in his chair with a piece of chalk gripped between the middle and ring fingers of his left hand, and, with the palm of his hand facing forward, he wrote on the blackboard behind him. His handwriting was a little sloppy, granted, but no worse than the handwriting of most teachers. To Jon, it was incredible he could write at all in that position, as he was effectively writing upside down and backwards. Apparently, Mr. Hanson had been doing it for so long it was second nature to him.
It was Wednesday morning, and they were in Mr. Hanson’s second period math class.
“Who can tell me the sine of angle A in this right triangle?” asked Mr. Hanson.
Among the twelfth graders, only one hand went up.
“Yes, Mary?”
“The sine would be three fifths, or point six oh.”
“And you got that how?”
“By dividing the length of the side opposite the angle by the length of the hypotenuse.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Hanson, reaching behind himself and, without looking, scrawling “Sin A = O/H = .60” on the blackboard.
“Now, who can tell me the cosine of angle A?”
No hands came up immediately. After a moment, Mary again raised her hand.
Mr. Hanson made a show of peering out around his battered oxfords, rotating his heels so he could look first to the left of his toes, then to the right. Finally, he splayed the tips of the shoes and looked intently between them, his eyes slowly taking in the entire side of the room occupied by the older students. Still, the only hand in the air belonged to Mary. He affected a dour expression.
“Let me rephrase the question. Who, other than Mary, can tell me the cosine of angle A?”
Mary lowered her hand and seemed to duck her head in embarrassment. At least that’s the way it appeared to Jon, who, though hunched over the piece of paper sitting on his desk, was covertly watching the twelfth graders being taken through the basics of trigonometry.
The paper on Jon’s desk contained a series of problems that were designed to test how well the eleventh graders had absorbed their first couple of lessons in advanced algebra. It had taken Jon less than ten minutes to complete the calculations. Much of the subject matter he’d already covered in his freshman algebra class at his old school.
Four fifths, he said to himself. Point eight oh.
With about ten minutes to go in the class, Mr. Hanson assigned reading to the twelfth graders, unfolded his lanky frame from his desk seat, stood and began writing in a conventional way on the blackboard. What he wrote was a long arithmetic formula with symbols Jon had never seen before. When he was done, he turned and motioned to Mary.
“Mary, I’d like you to write this down. This is going to be your assignment for the next week. I want you to either solve for ‘x’ or tell me why it can’t be solved. Everything you need for that is in the first three chapters of your textbook. However, you’ll need to do some independent thinking about how to get to the answer from where we’re starting.”
Mary took out a sheet of paper, and she began transcribing the problem Mr. Hanson had written on the board.
Mr. Hanson then collected the quiz papers from the eleventh graders and released the class. As soon as Jon had turned in his paper, he pulled out another sheet, and, as the rest of the class filed out, he quickly scribbled down the problem on the board, finishing just as the last of his classmates exited the room.
Jon hastily stuffed the paper in his notebook, stood and gathered his things. As he was leaving, he glanced at Mr. Hanson, who had resumed his normal spot at the desk and was reviewing the papers he had collected. Mr. Hanson looked up at Jon over the top of the papers and gave him an enigmatic smile.
#
The boys rounded the last turn and began the run in toward the finish line. A few sprinted ahead. Jon could see they were all members of the basketball team. At the finish, Billy Hamilton just managed to edge out his backcourt mate, Cyrus Clayton.
Jon was content to pace himself. The run they were completing had taken them around the large field behind the school three times, about a mile and a half by Jon’s estimation. It had served as a reminder that he’d not been exercising over the summer. He was a bit winded.
As each boy reached the finish line, Mr. Spitzman consulted a stopwatch and recorded their times. After Jon crossed the finish, he slowed to a walk and put his hands on his hips, drawing in deep breaths. Several of the other boys bent over with their hands on their knees.
Jon was dressed in the clothes he had purchased the prior afternoon, a pair of navy blue shorts with white piping and a white t-shirt with the initials “JHS” stenciled across the front. He was wearing a pair of canvas athletic shoes he had brought with him from New York. The clothes were the closest fit he’d been able to manage given the limited selection at Molly’s. The shorts weren’t too bad, but the t-shirt was at least a size too big. He had tucked as much of the excess material of the shirt into the waistband of his shorts as he could. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a heck of a lot better than being without gym clothes and incurring Mr. Spitzman’s wrath.
“All right,” the gym teacher called out, striding toward the door to the gym, “hit the showers.”
The boys who had been bent over straightened, and the group began following. An instinct told Jon to hold back, and he waited as the others entered the building. Then, as he reached for the door, he heard voices. A moment later, the girls came around the corner of the building. They were each carrying some sort of wooden stick that Jon had never seen before.
With his hand on the knob, Jon stepped back and held the door open for them. As they filed past, a few gave him friendly looks and murmured thanks.
“You are most kind, sir,” Sam Parker said with a dramatic wave of a hand.
She passed through, and Jon saw, with a start, that the last girl was Mary Dahlgren. As she approached the doorway, she gave Jon a direct look. He wasn’t sure, but he thought there might have been a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. At the threshold, she paused, held the look for a long second, then stepped into the building.
Jon inhaled deeply. His heart seemed to be beating faster than it had at the end of the run. He held the breath for a moment before letting it out slowly. Then, with a renewed sense of energy, he swung around the door and made as if to step into the building. He was immediately brought up short. Filling the doorway, was the imposing figure of Vernon King.
Vernon reached out one of his big hands, laid it on Jon’s chest and pushed hard. Jon stumbled backwards a few feet. Vernon stepped out of the gym, allowing the door to close behind him.
“What are you doing?” Jon asked.
“What am I doing? I think the question is what are you doing.”
Puzzled, Jon said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about Mary.”
“Mary?” Jon repeated, his confusion deepening.
“That’s right. Mary.” Vernon took another step toward Jon. Speaking slowly, he said, “You leave her alone.”
Jon shook his head, as if to clear it. “I wasn’t…”
But Vernon had again planted a hand on Jon’s chest, and again he gave Jon a hard shove.
As before, Jon staggered backwards. Anger flashed in him. “That’s the last time,” he said, raising a finger.
A nasty smile spread on Vernon’s face. “Oh yeah?” He stepped closer and put his hand out. This time, however, before he made contact, Jon pushed his hand to the side. Without thinking about it, Jon lowered his head and charged at Vernon. His shoulder drove into Vernon’s chest, and, somewhat to Jon’s surprise, the bigger boy went down.
Jon crouched, facing Vernon, uncertain what to do next. Vernon made a growling sound and began scrambling to his feet. Instinctively, Jon stepped toward him, thinking only that it would be a bad idea if Vernon got up. Suddenly, Jon felt pressure on his back as someone grabbed a handful of his t-shirt. With a ripping sound, he was yanked hard, and he found himself stumbling backwards. He windmilled his arms, trying to keep his balance, but failed, finally landing on his behind, stunned. When he looked up, Mr. Spitzman was glowering down at him.
#
Over the years, Ed Spitzman had developed several highly successful athletic teams by employing a simple set of rules, rules that he enforced with an iron discipline. He’d found that, by making it clear what was expected of each team member and by rigidly adhering to that code of behavior, he could mold a group of disparate young men into a cohesive and effective unit.
One of his rules was no fighting.
He looked down at the new kid, Meyer. He’d already had to discipline the boy once for not being prepared. And here he was again, breaking another of Spitzman’s essential principles. He stared at the boy for a long moment. Then he turned to King. “Who started this?”
“He did,” both boys said at once.
Spitzman whirled on Meyer. “When I’m ready to hear from you, I’ll let you know.” Returning his attention to King, he said again, “Who started this?”
“He did,” King repeated, nodding toward Meyer. “I don’t know why. I think there’s something wrong with him.”
One of Spitzman’s other rules was loyalty to your teammates. It was one of the most sacrosanct. He considered King for a long moment. He wanted to believe him. He almost did. Finally, he turned and looked at Meyer. “All right. Give me another lap.”
The boy was clearly stunned. “Why? Don’t you want to know…”
“You want to go for two?” Spitzman shot back.
The boy blinked. He didn’t immediately move, and Spitzman thought he might try to defy him. Then, slowly, the kid stood. He looked between Spitzman and King, hesitated, then turned and began jogging toward the field.
“Thanks, Spitz,” King said.
“Not now. Hit the showers.”
After King had gone, Spitzman watched Meyer run the course. There was something different about the boy. He couldn’t put his finger on it, and it bothered him. Meyer finished his lap and, without a glance in Spitzman’s direction, jogged to the door and entered the gym. Spitzman continued staring out across the field. What was it, he asked himself, but the answer still eluded him. After a couple of minutes, he shrugged, turned and entered the gym.
He crossed the floor of the basketball court and was on his way to his office when the door leading to the boys’ locker room opened and Cyrus Clayton stepped halfway out, his hair wet and a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Hey Spitz, you might want to come take a look at this.”
Annoyed, Spitzman nevertheless followed Clayton into the locker room. The boys were in various stages of dressing, and water still ran in the showers. Clayton motioned for him to step over to the shower room entrance. It led to a space even smaller than the locker room, bare, save for a series of shower heads placed a few feet apart along the tiled walls.
There was only one person in the shower, standing under the spray from one of the nozzles. At the moment, the kid had his head tilted back, rinsing shampoo out of his hair.
Spitzman was about to ask Clayton why the hell he’d called him in. Then he didn’t need to.
Spitzman had played his college ball at Notre Dame and had stayed two years following graduation as an assistant coach. After that, there had been a succession of high school coaching jobs in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It wasn’t until the year preceding his coming home to Indiana and taking the job at Jackson that he’d seen a circumcised penis. At the time, he’d been coaching at a small school in Maryland, and there were two Jews on the team, neither of whom was any good. He’d run them off pretty early on.
So that was it. None of the boys here had ever seen a Jew. Until now.
Meyer had turned and was looking at him. They held eye contact for several seconds. Then Spitzman hawked, spat on the floor and walked out.
5
Marvella Wilson set her knitting aside, reached over and turned off the radio. Too much talk of war. It had once seemed so far removed, that conflict raging an ocean away, confined to images in newspapers and magazines, terrible to be sure, but still of no immediate threat. These days, however, it was impossible to avoid the notion that, as inconceivable as it was, America might find itself drawn into the horror. Every day brought a higher level of belligerent discourse. Just a week earlier, President Roosevelt had gone on the radio and accused the Nazis of trying to control the seas by ruthless force. He’d likened Germany to a rattlesnake poised to strike and had exhorted the nation not to wait until it had done so before crushing it. The image was chilling.
In the hallway, Marvella paused by the door to her grandson’s room. It was open, and she could see the room was empty. He must be in the work shed, she told herself. A glance out the rear door window confirmed her suspicion. Light from the open shed illuminated a patch of the rear yard.
He had been unusually reserved that evening at dinner. There was clearly something wrong. She had been tempted to ask him about it, but she’d held back. She stood peering out for a long time. Finally, she pulled the ends of her shawl together, opened the door, and stepped out into the cool evening air. At the entrance to the shed, she paused.
He was sitting on one of the stools, bent over the workbench, his profile a study in concentration. Whatever he was working on she couldn’t see from this angle. Something about the whole tableau, however, was extraordinarily familiar, and it triggered a strong emotion. What was it? She felt she should know.
And then it hit her.
His posture, the way he held his head, tipped just so, the furrowed brow, the set of his jaw. She caught her breath. My God. He looks just like a young version of Ernest. She stared in wonder, then shook her head. How had she failed to notice that until now? Or had she noticed it and chosen to ignore it?
Shaken, it took her a moment to recover. Then she knocked lightly on the door frame.
He turned, a look of surprise on his face. Surprise and something else. Was it guilt? No. Embarrassment maybe?
“Hi,” he said, quickly. “You surprised me.”
She noticed that he leaned a little toward the door, which had the effect of placing his body between her and whatever he had been working on.
“May I come in?”
He hesitated a split second, before replying, “Of course.”
Once she was up in the shed, she could see what was on the bench in front of him. A piece of clothing of some kind. Next to it was a pair of scissors and a spool of thread. Lying across the top of the garment where it had obviously just been dropped was a sewing needle. A length of thread was inserted in the needle, the longer end of which ran to a point in what appeared to be a hem. She looked more carefully at the object and realized it was a t-shirt.
“You’re sewing.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“May I see it?” she asked, reaching out a hand, and, again, for a brief moment, he hesitated. Then he reached down, picked up the needle with the fingers of one hand, lifted the shirt with the other, and handed everything to
her.
With a practiced gesture, she slipped the needle through the fabric so as to keep it from falling, held the shirt up and shook it out. It was torn in two places. The seam in the right shoulder had separated and the fabric itself was ripped at a spot in the middle of the back. She could understand a seam coming loose, but it would have taken a lot of effort to tear the fabric. She turned the garment around, noticed the initials on the front, then noticed something else.
“Is this yours?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This is much too big for you. Where did you get it?”
“At Molly’s Thrift Shop.”
“And you need this for school?”
He nodded.
“Tomorrow?”
Again, he nodded.
She was about to ask him how it became torn, but there was something in his expression that made her stop. Instead, she studied the stitches her grandson had already made and shook her head.
As handy as Ernest had been, he couldn’t sew worth a lick. Apparently, her grandson suffered the same shortcoming. She folded the shirt loosely, and, holding it in one hand, reached out and plucked the spool of thread off the workbench. “This won’t take me but a few minutes.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she gave him a look, and he stopped. “Thank you,” he said, simply.
#
Things were slow at the hardware store on Thursday afternoon, so Jon took a seat on one of the stools and opened a book he’d checked out of the library. It was the same trigonometry text that the twelfth graders were using in Mr. Hanson’s class. The school, he’d discovered, kept a few extra copies of the textbooks in the library.
He was trying to figure out the problem Mr. Hanson had assigned to Mary. He’d been noodling it all day, whenever he had a spare moment.
“Whatcha reading?” asked Walt, as he stepped through the back door. Walt had taken advantage of the lull to use the toilet in the storeroom.
Defiant Heart Page 8
