All-American (6 page)

Stacey stopped before one of the lockers that lined the hallway and showed him the combination: 8. 17. 9. He tried it himself, opened it with Stacey silently watching, and shoved his coat inside. Then they went down the hall to Mr. Kates’ room. The teacher, evidently expecting him, came forward. All the faces in the room turned together toward the door. There was an undercurrent of titters from desk to desk. He could swear he heard the words “Pretty Boy” several times. One or two girls recognized him and began giggling to each other. With some repulsion Ronald realized that girls were like that; they were always giggling.

Mr. Kates was short, pleasant, unassuming, like the principal. It was a study period, so he sat down with Ronald in the rear of the room and discussed his work at some length. In Abraham Lincoln you didn’t sit at an ancient desk with dozens of names like “Chandler, ’22,” or “Royce, ’34,” or “Farnsworth, ’29” carved so deeply in the grimy wood you could hardly write on it. You sat here in a kind of combination seat and desk connected with metal tubing. The whole affair was new, clean, and practically unbreakable. Moreover the desks were of varnished hardwood that discouraged attention. Ronald felt the smooth, rigid surface.

Then a bell rang somewhere. The whole class rose together, dumping their books into piles. Stacey led him down the teeming corridors, and they passed several boys whom he recognized as football players. Along came a black-faced pirate; it was a black face; it was a pirate. Ronald, as they drew near, saw it was Ned LeRoy dressed as a pirate with a sword at his belt. He paid no attention to anyone and nobody paid attention to him.

“National Thespians,” explained Stacey. “See, he’s being taken into the National Thespians, the dramatic society. He stole the show in our school play last week.”

The next class had a woman teacher. It was Ronald’s first woman teacher, and he had a prejudice against women teachers. This also was his first real class, and he looked around. It was a large class compared to those at the Academy, two or three times as large; about thirty-five in all, including many girls. Every other girl wore a sweater. There were yellow sweaters, white sweaters, blue sweaters, red and pink sweaters, many pink sweaters. The boys wore varsity sweaters with the letters plainly visible outside, yet no one seemed to realize they were chucking their weight around. Some had on windbreakers, a few wore no coats at all. Almost nobody bothered with a necktie.

What struck him most was the different discipline. Even in Mr. Wendell’s class, which was known for its informality throughout the Academy, the class discipline was much stricter. While the teacher distributed some corrected papers, there was a steady hum of talk and conversation. She looked up and stopped. “Shsss... not
quite
so much noise, please....” Ronald smiled to himself, thinking how the masters at the Academy would have immediately handed out detentions.

The papers were finally distributed and she called on the class for book reports. “Gordon Brewster.”

A small, black-haired, olive-skinned boy, slender and rather good-looking, walked to the front of the room. With assurance he began an account of a book he had read. It was done, to Ronald’s amazement, more smoothly and better than many boys could have done on the Hill. But Stacey’s head with the bristling red hair kept wagging in disapproval. His hand shot up. The teacher saw it but paid no attention. Stacey made it evident that he didn’t like the boy who was reciting. Finally he could restrain himself no longer and interrupted.

“Naw... he’s wrong, Miss Davis, he’s wrong on that date. 1862.”

She was cool, sharp, efficient in her tone. “I’m sorry, Jim; he’s right. It was 1864.”

The snub didn’t affect Stacey in the least. He continued to make derisive noises, apparently doing his best to upset Gordon Brewster who refused to be upset. This continued until the bell rang and the class, taking no notice of the boy reciting, cut off his last sentences in a Niagara of noise. Gathering their belongings, most of the boys and girls turned their backs on him and tramped out.

From every room crowds poured into the wide, cool corridors, filling them completely. The sound was terrific; the strangeness of it all, the uproar and confusion, dazed him. It was like being lost in a big city; so many unfamiliar faces, so much rush and bustle and turmoil on every side, that he was completely unsettled.

Then he heard a sound. A sound which pulled him from the deep well of his bewilderment, which yanked him back to that hallway. It was a voice from behind in the milling mob, a boy’s voice, high-pitched, imitating a girl. It was calling in derision.

“Oh, Ronny! Oh, Pretty Boy...!”

Class followed class. His head was dizzy with the confusion and largeness of the place. Shortly after twelve he tagged along with Stacey to the cafeteria on the third floor, for luncheon.

The cafeteria was an enormous room running the whole length of the building, with what seemed like hundreds of tables in rows. Around the walls were more oil paintings. Opposite the doorway was the cafeteria itself. You entered, took a tray from the counter, put on it whatever you wished from the menu, and then paid as you went out. Ronald chose scrambled eggs, potato chips, a piece of pie, a bottle of milk, bread and butter. Cost: 27 cents.

They emerged from the cafeteria proper to the main dining room, or at least he did, and stood holding his tray and feeling awkward. It seemed as if a million girls sitting at the tables were watching. After a minute Stacey joined him, holding out silverware.

“You forgot yer tools.”

“Oh, thanks.” They found an empty table and sat down on the aisle, Ronny opposite the other boy. Stacey ate rapidly and in complete silence, although judging from the noise around them he was the only silent person in the entire room. As Ronny ate his scrambled eggs, he looked about.

To his surprise he saw that those paintings on the four walls were actually scenes of life in and around the town. Not mythological Greece, or ancient history; but the town itself, today. There were scenes of people eating lunch in Forest Grove, or swimming in the Lake, or skiing in the hills up back of Jamestown. As he ate, looking at the paintings on the walls, he became aware of the same high-pitched giggling he had heard in the corridors. Girls with heads together at different tables were glancing his way. Across the aisle he saw Fronzak the big tackle. He hoped he’d look up and smile; but he didn’t. Ned LeRoy was eating at a table in one corner with half a dozen colored boys. The table next to them was half-filled with colored girls. Ronny observed that most of them were eating out of paper bags containing lunches brought from home, not off trays purchased at the cafeteria as did nearly everyone else.

Then he realized that his conductor had finished and was leaning back in his chair. No one wastes much time eating in this place, he thought.

“You take yer tray and hand it in at that window back there by the door, on the way out.” Stacey indicated the window over his shoulder, and Ronald noticed boys and girls already passing by with their empty trays. He finished his pie and gulped his milk. Grabbing the tray, he rose hurriedly just as Stacey, across the table, was getting ready to rise also. Clumsily he hit the Irishman’s foot, stumbled a little, not much but enough. CLASH! BANG! CLATTER! There they were—tray, dishes, silverware in a mess on the floor.

Before the noise had died away a roar started. Gently at first, then louder, louder still. All over the room in unison six hundred and fifty throats opened wide.

He stood dazed by the sound. It was terrifying. Every eye in the room was on him. Never in his life, not even out there alone in the backfield on the Academy gridiron, had he felt so conspicuous. And so helpless. The roar continued. It grew. Red and flushed he leaned over to scoop up the remains of his luncheon.

Then down the aisle holding the fragments of disaster in his hand. It seemed a million miles long, that aisle. Gosh, what a dope I am! What a way to begin a school! How could I come to make such a fool of myself!

The aisle was endless. Finally he reached the window. Stacey was there beside the pile of trays and dirty dishes with a kind of malicious grin on his face. Shoving his burden beside the others, Ronald turned and went into the corridor with his red-haired companion. Behind them the roar was slowly dying away.

“Yeah... they always do that when you smash or drop something. It’s a custom here.” The boys and girls passing by grinned widely, and Ronald, still red and angry with himself, hardly heard Stacey’s comments as they went downstairs.

“See that guy, see him? He’s Mr. Morgan, physical ed. You hafta take it twice a week if you aren’t on the varsity. This here’s the liberry. This is the music room. We’ve got the best high school band in the country.”

Oh, you have, have you? thought Ronald, vaguely remembering the band from the day of the game. He was still too annoyed with himself to talk, and through the next class, an advanced algebra course, he felt hot and conspicuous all the time. Luckily this class was attended by fewer girls than boys. In fact there were only two girls in it. Evidently girls disliked algebra as much as he did.

Discipline here was stricter, attention better, although he saw that nearly everyone still kept an eye on the clock in the rear of the room, something never tolerated by the masters at the Academy. He himself had to follow closely, and he liked the teacher, a quick, active, elderly man who seemed to know his stuff. This man made the boys recite. They got away with nothing. “I don’t think the others can hear you,” he remarked to a pupil who was mumbling the lesson.

Then followed a Latin class with a woman teacher, and before he knew it the final bell rang. He was tired, dead tired. The noise and confusion and especially the newness of it all were wearying.

With Stacey he went upstairs. Already lots of the kids were pouring down, the girls carrying books home to study. Ronald noticed that few of the boys had books under their arms. He grabbed his coat from the hook in the locker.

“Well, s’long. I’m gonna try out for the swimming team. You can’t swim, y’know.”

Ronny slammed his locker shut. Two or three hundred lockers up and down the long corridor were being slammed at the same time and the noise was overpowering.

“Oh! Why not?”

Stacey had to shout over the sound of banging lockers and yelling boys and girls. “Ten weeks rule. No transfers can play varsity athletics ’cept after ten weeks.” Was there a trace of satisfaction in his tone? “S’long. See you tomorrow.” He turned away and was lost in the crowd.

Tired, confused, still annoyed with himself, Ronald went down the stairs alone in the chattering crowd. Every one of these hundreds of boys and girls knew each other, called each other by first names, yelled at each other. Everyone was either with a group or some one kid. The girls each had an arm in another girl’s, the boys were joking to a pal as they rushed down the long hallways. Ronny felt almost homesick for Keith and Rog and the boys with whom he had fought at the Academy.

There was a sort of jam at the main doorway. He stood aside watching them swarm through. Then he came out with the crowd into the sunlight. Cars were lined up at the curb; at one side was the long bicycle rack with double rows of bikes awaiting their owners. Then from behind, from inside the door, he heard it, now distinctly.

“Oh, Ronny! Oh, Ronny!” It was a boy’s voice, high-pitched, imitating a girl. Or trying to.

Ronald went down the steps. Somehow this wasn’t working out quite as he’d expected.

On the bed was the boy in the leather collar, looking straight ahead, and in the chair at the foot of the bed was the boy who had helped put him there.

“How do I know? Oh, I do, that’s all.”

“But, Meyer,
how
do you know?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Ronald. I know ’cause I’ve been there.”

Ronny was amazed. “You have! Really! You went to the Academy, to some school...”

“Nope. You don’t get me. I mean I’ve been where you are now. I’ve been in your place.”

“In my place!”

“Uhuh. Y’see, Ronald, it’s like this. A Jewish boy, now, he’s behind the 8-ball all the time. It isn’t enough to be better than the other guy, he’s gotta be a whole lot better.”

“Has he? How you mean, Meyer?”

“Well, I mean like this. Is he after a job, he’s gotta be twice as smart as the other boy, else he don’t land that job. Get me?”

Ronald got him.

“Like, now, is he trying to get a scholarship to college. His marks must be lots higher than the other boy or the boy grabs off the dough. See?”

Ronald saw. The other boy. Why, that’s me! That’s Keith! That’s Tommy Gilmore. It’s some of the kids in Abraham Lincoln, even. Ronald saw. What he saw he did not like.

“Well, yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“Now me, for instance. I want to be a doctor. I want to, understand. I’m set. My old man says sure, he’ll help me. He’ll give me dough. I get my marks; I’m set. Will I get into Medical School? Maybe so, maybe not.”

“Why not, Meyer?”

“Why not! ’Cause I’m Jewish. Lots of the Medical Schools don’t want me. They don’t say so, out loud, that is. But they don’t and I know they don’t.” His face looking straight ahead was stern.

Ronald felt uncomfortable as that determined voice continued. This was something he’d never before realized. When you were on the Hill, you thought of the kids at Abraham Lincoln as meatballs, not as boys trying to get into Medical School. On the Hill boys were going to Medical School, only they took it sort of for granted. Eric Rodman, for instance. His old man was a doctor and lived in New York. Once Ronald had stayed with him during vacation, and they went to shows, real shows not movies. And when they got home Eric’s old man was there. Eric would get to Medical School, he would get to be a doctor.

It was hard. But anyhow, there was one place things were pretty ok. He blurted out what he felt. “Only not in sport, Meyer; it isn’t that way in sport.”

To this remark the stiff-necked figure on the bed would have to agree. But there was a moment’s silence. “Sometimes yes, sometimes not. D’you ever hear of a Jewish boy on the crew at a big college? Nope. It’s like a Negro in the big leagues.”