The Spyglass Tree

by Albert Murray

  On the way back from the dining hall that first Thursday night I found out that my roommate’s family, including the Old Trooper, was really from Fort Deposit in Lowndes County, which was only about seventy-five miles away. As it turned out, it was the Old Trooper who had financed my roommate’s family’s move north, where he finally settled in Chicago when my roommate was four years old.

  Back inside the room again he stood looking around, and then he sat at his desk humming and whistling “Sleepy Time Down South” and “(Up a) Lazy River” and opened his lettering and sketch kits. Then he turned and said, How about this for a start and held up a card that was to be our personalized door plaque which he called our reversible escutcheon, giving me that sidewise glance with the movie gangster, conspiratorial twinkle again.

  He had printed “Atelier 359” on both sides. But on one he had lettered CAUTION in red ink and in all capitals and then “work-in-progress” in lowercase, and beneath that there was a black-ink drawing of a hooded monk near the column of a cloister above a quill and a T square crossed over a Leyden jar. On the other side the word in all capitals was WELCOME and the lowercase phrase was “mischief afoot” and the drawing was of a satyr wearing a top hat playing a trumpet instead of Pan’s pipes while cavorting on a keyboard that had a stem glass on his left and a cocktail shaker on his right.

  I said, Hey, solid, Gates, and he looked around the room again and said, Not a bad pad, not great but okay for what we came to do, once we fix it up; and he started fixing it up as soon as he finished registration that next afternoon.

  In those days there was an eleven o’clock curfew, and lights were supposed to be out at twelve, but that first night we went on talking in the dark until the wee hours, and that was when I found out that it was the Old Trooper who had decided to send him south for his first two years of college to get his bearings. Then he could transfer to any Ivy League or Big Ten university that he was eligible for. Or he could stay on in Alabama and get his bachelor’s degree and then still go to the northern university of his choice for graduate studies.

  That was also when he told me about how the Old Trooper had taken him around in the limousine to shop for his freshman wardrobe in the college department of the top men’s stores in Chicago and when I told him that my Gladstone bag was my graduation gift from Miss Slick McGinnis in New York and that my cowhide looseleaf all-purpose notebook was from Miss Lexine Metcalf and my Elgin wristwatch was from Mister B. Franklin Fisher himself, I couldn’t see him in the dark but I knew he was giving me that sidewise look again because what he said was, Heh, heh, haay, heh, heh, haay, and then I also guessed that he had turned his conspiratorial twinkle into a mock penny-dreadful chuckle because then he added, You too, roommate, you too, you too.

  III

  Miss Lexine Metcalf never did actually say what you were supposed to become or were on your way to becoming or even had already become another one of the very special bright-eyed little boys she was always on the lookout for but had found so precious few of over the years.

  She herself didn’t have to tell you anything because when the time came there were always plenty of others who had been doing so for her all along. All she had to do was show any special curiosity about you, and you were on the spot, and as soon as they felt that they had seen enough to tell that you were going to be the next one at long last, they began pointing and signifying as if it were all a classroom version of the old playground game in which you had been tagged as the one who was to be It.

  Everybody knew that she always made it her very special personal business to know what the new crop of first-termers looked like on the very day school reopened each September. Then, some weeks before Maypole Day during your second-grade year, the speculation would begin about how well who would do next year when you finally made it to Miss Lexine Metcalf and her shawl of many colors and her magic blackboard pointers.

  But before your classroom was the one with the globe stand and map rack and bulletin-board peoples of many lands and your front-row seat on the aisle next to the planting-box windows, there was first Miss Rowena Dobbs Singleton and second Miss Thelma Caldwell.

  When Miss Tee took me through the double gate with the brick pillars and into the school yard that first Monday morning and we came on by the flagpole and the main building to the beginner’s area, Miss Rowena Dobbs Singleton was the one who was there, because that was the room where everybody started, and she collected the slip that Miss Tee and Mama had filled out about me, and she said my last name and then my first name, and then my last name again.

  Then you had to stand in line along the wall with all the other boys until she called your name again and showed you the table where your seat was and said, Boys and girls, this is the primer grade. This is the beginners classroom and I am the primer teacher and my name is Miss Singleton, Miss Singleton, repeat after me, Miss Singleton, again, Miss Singleton. Very good, very good, and now quiet, boys and girls, and she picked up her ruler and hand bell and said, Children, children, children, pay attention. Boys and girls who talk in class after the bell sounds will have to hold out their hand for lashes as punishment. Then she said, Answer present to your name, eyes forward, back straight like this. That is good posture. When you slump and slouch like a grumpy grouch, that is bad posture.

  Miss Rowena Dobbs Singleton was also the first one to say, Repeat after me, this is the way we wash our hands, wash our hands, wash our hands, this is the way we wash our hands so early every morning. This is the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth, brush our teeth, this is the way we brush our teeth so early every morning. This is the way we brush our hair. This is the way we shine our shoes. This is the way we drink our milk. This is the way we raise our hands to recite and ask, repeat after me. May I not can I, may I, repeat, may I please be excused, Miss Singleton. And this is the way we stand and place our right hand over our heart when we say, repeat, I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  This is A-B-C time. This is one-two-three time. These are letters. These are numbers, also numerals. This is the way letters from ABC through XYZ make words which is spelling. This is the way numbers go from one to ten which is counting, which is the way we find out which is more and which is less. This is the way we spell our name as written. This is the way we write our name as spelled. This is two ways we form letters to make words that form what we say which is writing and also, pay attention, printing. This is the way we say what we write which is reading which is what storybooks are for. This is the storybook about Baby Ray (who lived in a somewhat but not altogether different place but not in a different time, not once upon a time but everyday, Baby Ray every day).

  This is plus which is addition which is the way we do our sums to find more. This is minus which is subtraction. This is the way we take away and find the remainder. This is the way numbers tell us how much and how little and also how long and how short, how far and how near and how heavy and how light and on and on and on.

  You were always supposed to sit in the same seat at the same table with the same tablemates, but sometimes everybody had to push all of the tables back and bring all of the chairs into a cozy family circle in the front of the room for story hour, and at other times, especially when the weather turned bad, everything was pushed against the walls to clear the floor for exercises and indoor games.

  When you went to the blackboard, you were supposed to have your own eraser just as you were supposed to bring your own tablet, pencil, and wax crayons every day. But what you used at the blackboard was a piece of chalk from the box by the flower vase on the teacher’s desk which is also where Miss Rowena Dobbs Singleton used to keep the little bell that she tapped for order. She kept the hand bell in the bottom drawer until she had to ring it for ten o’clock recess. Then she let it stay on the desk by the roll book until she rang it again at the end of playtime after lunch.

  At each recess period, tablemates wh
o put everything away and became tidy and quiet in the quickest time got to be the first in the boys’ line on one side and the girls’ line on the other to march out, and the best all-round tablemates for the whole day were the ones to line up first to go home at dismissal time.

  In those days there were so many playthings and bright colors in Miss Rowena Dobbs Singleton’s room that it was almost like a toy fair. But when you were promoted to Miss Thelma Caldwell for more spelling and the beginning of Elson readers and more addition and subtraction plus multiplication tables and short division and the beginning of long division and also of such simple fractions as the equal and unequal parts of whole pies and apples and sand tables, when you came into her room that next year that was where you sat in your first regular school desk with an aisle on each side and one seat mate (boys with boys and girls with girls) and two individual pen and pencil trays and inkwells plus an out-of-sight shelf for two book satchels and lunch boxes and also with hinged seats that you were always supposed to leave turned up like a theater seat when you went out for recess and at the end of the day.

  Miss Thelma Caldwell also used to say, Boys and girls, and also, Dear children, and also, My dear darling pupils, and for a while you could still recite in chorus with the rest of the class as you had done when you had to repeat after Miss Rowena Dobbs Singleton, but before very long everybody was called on pupil by pupil and row by row, and when it was your turn and you heard the teacher-enunciated pronunciation of your officially registered name once more you were supposed to stand in the aisle with your shoulders square and your head erect and your eyes forward as if the sunny blue sky outside the windows and the everyday working hours sounds and echoes from the nearby neighborhood and street vendors and the call of the wild territory beyond the tree line on the other side of the rooftops of Chickasaw Terrace were not there anymore.

  Sometimes during those first two years you could hardly keep from feeling sorry for yourself, not only during recitation and blackboard example time, but even during recess periods. Then when you were finally on your way home at last after the final bell, you were free again for a while. But only until it was school-bell time again the next morning until Friday afternoon and then next Monday there would be week after week until Christmas holidays and then beginning New Year’s Day there would be month after month until next May was over.

  It was not that I didn’t really want to become the buster-brown schoolboy that Mama and Miss Tee had always said that I was the one to be, nor was it that I was any less curious about all that was going on around me in the classroom and out in the school yard than I had ever been about so many other things up to that time. That was the way Little Buddy Marshall was, not me. But even so, school bells always sounded as sad as church bells tolling, until I finally reached Miss Lexine Metcalf that following year and she said what she said about all of the things that reading, including map reading, was always all about.

  She said opening books was like opening window shutters. Which was also the beginning of what she always used to say about books, including the newspaper and magazine clippings about peoples of many lands on her bulletin board. It was also in her classroom that you had to go up front to do map and globe exercises as well as blackboard exercises. That was also why everybody could tell that you had advanced to Miss Lexine Metcalf just by looking at you on your way to school, because that was the year when you could stop using your old oilcloth book satchel and strap your regular-size books crossways on your first-year geography book.

  When you did something the way it was supposed to be done, Miss Lexine Metcalf always used to nod and smile and say, Very good, and call your name, and say, Very good, again; and when she was very pleased because you had done something that was very special because you had put more into it than was expected or required, she said, Excellent, superb, and put her fingertips together and touched them to her mouth and closed her eyes and then spread them and looked at you again and said, Yes, superlative.

  Outstanding girls were wonderful young ladies and marvelous young ladies for whose sake princes also had to be charming no matter what else their ancestral mission required them to achieve. Outstanding boys were splendid young men, and when she called you one of her splendid young men it was precisely as if she were making you one of the Knights of her Round Table, which was no less real for being invisible.

  Not that you didn’t miss being outside anymore, especially when you looked out of the windows, because from my seat every time you stood up you could see northeast across the vocational workshop area to the poplar tree-line and the sky stretching away above that part of Chickasabogue Swamp and the L & N Railroad canebrake territory, nor was I quite ready to give up rambling and meandering with Little Buddy Marshall. But once Miss Lexine Metcalf was there for you Monday through Friday, I began to make up more and more excuses not to play hooky to do so.

  The first time she said who if not you was before class one Wednesday morning. I was there that early because I wanted to have the globe and map rack all to myself while everybody else was either still on the way or waiting and playing around outside until the first bell for the flag formation. When she looked up from her desk and saw me coming in as I had asked permission to do, she said, How conscientious you are, a young man with initiative, and why not, because who if not you.

  Who indeed? she said the next time, which was the day I stayed after school because I wanted to read the new bulletin board display all by myself and the time after that was the day I stayed in during the first part of the noon recess to work on my cutouts for the new sand-table project, and when I came out to the playground Simon Ray Hargroves saw me and came up and whispered, Hey, Scooter, boy you better watch out, man, you mess around and let old lady Metcalf get her claws on you and she ain’t gone never let you alone. He was whispering not only because he was being confidential but also because you’re not supposed to use nicknames on campus. You could get demerits for that, just as you could for keeping your hands in your pockets and wearing your cap crooked or backward.

  Not as long as you were at Mobile County Training School, he said, and I said, Not me, man, and he said, Well, you sure better watch out then, because everybody knows she always been dead set on finding somebody so she can help old man B. Franklin Fisher hook him and turn him into a mad genius. Man, before long she going to be giving you a whole stack of extra work and stuff just to see how much more you can do and the more you do, the more she going to keep piling on and piling on.

  Which by that time she had already begun doing and was to continue to do right on up through each succeeding homeroom teacher until it was time to turn me over to Mister B. Franklin Fisher himself for the Early Bird program, reminding me all the while that some are called and some are not.

  And some are also called, she also used to say, and heed not. She said. Some are called to the church, some to the bedside, some as advocates to the bar of justice. While I myself am called to the classroom. Who can tell just what you might be called to do, my bright-eyed young man. For all we know, you may have to travel far and wide just to find out what it is you are called for.

  When I came out onto the play area late during another noon recess period, the first one to spot me was Jaycee Robinson from Chickasaw Terrace and he said, Boy, I’m telling you, pretty soon you ain’t hardly going to be able to make it out here at all no more. Boy, look to me like she just about got you right where she want you already, and I said, That’s what you say, man. That’s what you say.

  Because by that time I was absolutely satisfied that she was always going to make sure that I got outside in plenty of time to join in whatever games they were playing that day, because sometimes I used to sneak glances back up at the window and find her peeping down to see how well I was making out.

  I said, That’s all right about some old lady Metcalf, man. I said, Come on, let’s go, Jaycee, man. I got your old lady goddamn Metcalf swinging, man. I didn’t say what you mean old lady Metcalf, because ev
erybody knew that she was hardly even thirty yet, but I also knew that as far as most grade-schools pupils during my time at Mobile County Training School were concerned, it was as if she didn’t have any business being that young and good-looking and wearing such stylish clothes to boot if she was also going to be that book smart and that serious about everything anyway, although she was just as nice as she was strict. When a lot of them had to say something about her, they always made it sound as if they were talking about a middle-aged nun from the Saint Francis Charity Hospital.

  I said, Man, don’t worry about no Miss Lexine Metcalf. I said, She promised my big auntie to keep a special eye on me, so you know what that mean. But I wasn’t about to tell him anything at all about how I always felt when she used to say, You will go where you will go and you will see what you will see, so you must learn what you must learn because who, if not you, will do what you must do, my splendid young man.

  IV

  The monument that marked the site of the original campus—the original log cabins of the old slave compound—had been in place for some twenty-odd years. It had a triangular base that supported three bronze men, the one on the right holding a seed in one hand and a hoe in the other, the one on the left with a hammer and an anvil, and the one in the center seated with an open book on his knee, and not only had it been the most famous landmark on the campus ever since it was dedicated, it had also become one of the national emblems of Afro-American aspirations and achievement through education.