Teacher Man: A Memoir (6 page)

Some boys in the class wish they had their own war so they could go over there and get even. One boy says, Oh, bullshit, you can never get even, and they boo him and shout him down. His name is Richard and they say it’s well known around the school what a Communist he is. The chairman makes notes, probably on how I’ve lost control of the class by allowing more than one voice in the room. I feel desperate. I raise my voice, Anyone here ever see a movie about German soldiers called
All Quiet on the Western Front
? No, they never saw it and why should they pay money to see movies about Germans after what they did to us? Goddam krauts.

How many of you are Italian? Half the class.

Does this mean you’d never see an Italian movie after they fought against America in the war?

No, it has nothing to do with war. They just don’t want to watch those movies with all those dumb subtitles that move so fast you can never catch up with the story and when there is snow in the movie and the subtitles are white how the hell are you supposed to read anything? A lot of these Italian movies come with snow and dogs taking a leak against a wall, and they’re depressing anyhow with people standing in streets waiting for something to happen.

The Board of Education ruled that a lesson must have a summary that pulls everything together and leads to a homework assignment or reinforcement or some kind of outcome, but I forget, and when the bell rings there’s an argument going on between two boys, one defending John Wayne, the other saying he was a big phony who never went to war. I try to pull everything together in one grand summary but the discussion dribbles away. I tell them, Thank you, but no one is listening and the chairman scratches his forehead and makes notes.

I walked toward the subway, berating myself. What was the use? Teacher, my arse. I should have stayed in the army with the dogs. I’d be better off on the docks and the warehouses, lifting, hauling, cursing, eating hero sandwiches, drinking beer, chasing waterfront floozies. At least I’d be with my own kind, my own class of people, not getting above meself, acushla. I should have listened to the priests and the respectable people in Ireland who told us beware of vanity, accept our lot, there’s a bed in heaven for the meek of heart, the humble of soul.

Mr. McCourt, Mr. McCourt, wait up.

That was the chairman calling from a half block away. Wait up. I walked back toward him. He had a kind face. I thought he was there to console me with a Too bad, young man.

He was out of breath. Look, I’m not supposed to even talk to you but I just want to say you’ll be getting your exam results in a few weeks. You have the makings of a fine teacher. I mean, for Christ’s sakes, you actually knew Sassoon and Owen. I mean, half the people walking in here can’t tell the difference between Emerson and Mickey Spillane. So, when you get your results and you’re looking for a job, just call me. OK?

Oh, yes, sure, yes, I will. Thanks.

I danced along the street, walked on air. Birds chirped on the elevated subway platform. People looked at me with smiles and respect. They could see I was a man with a teaching job. I wasn’t such an idiot after all. Oh, Lord. Oh, God. What would my family say? A teacher. The word will go around Limerick. Did you hear about Frankie McCourt? Jaysus, he’s a teacher over there in America. What was he when he left? Nothing. That’s what he was. Poor miserable bugger that looked like something the cat brought in. I’d call June. Tell her I was offered a teaching job already. In a high school. Not as high up as Norman the professor, but still…I stuck a dime into the phone box. It dropped. I put the phone down again. Calling her meant I needed to call her, and I didn’t need to need. I could live without her in the tub and the monkfish and the white wine. The train rumbled in. I wanted to tell people, sitting and standing, I was offered a teaching job. They’d smile up from their newspapers. No, no call to June. Let her stay with Norm, who destroyed monkfish and knew nothing about wine, depraved Norm who couldn’t take June as she was. No, I’d make my way downtown to Port Warehouses, ready to work till my teacher’s license arrived. My teacher’s license. I’d like to wave it from the top of the Empire State Building.

When I called about the teaching job the school said sorry, the kindly chairman had passed away and, sorry, no positions were available and good luck in my search. Everyone said as long as I had the license I’d have no trouble finding a job. Who the hell would want a lousy job like that? Long hours, low pay and what gratitude do you get for dealing with the brats of America? Which is why the country was crying out for teachers.

School after school told me, Sorry, your accent’s gonna be a problem. Kids, you know, like to mimic, and we’d have Irish brogues all over the school. What would parents say when their kids come home sounding like, you know, like Barry Fitzgerald? You unnerstand our position? Assistant principals wondered how I managed to get a license with that brogue. Didn’t the Board of Education have any standards anymore?

I was disheartened. No room for me in the great American Dream. I returned to the waterfront, where I felt more comfortable.

H
ey, Mr. McCourt, did you ever do real work, not teaching, but, you know, real work?

Are you joking? What do you call teaching? Look around this room and ask yourself if you’d like to get up here and face you every day. You. Teaching is harder than working on docks and warehouses. How many of you have relatives working along the waterfront?

Half the class, mostly Italian, a few Irish.

Before I came to this school I worked on Manhattan, Hoboken and Brooklyn piers, I said. One boy said his father knew me from Hoboken.

I told them, After college I passed the exams for the teacher’s license but I didn’t think I was cut out for the life of a teacher. I knew nothing about American teenagers. Wouldn’t know what to say to you. Dockside work was easier. Trucks backed in. We swung our hooks. Haul, hoist, pull, push. Stack on pallets. Forklift slides in, lifts the load, reverses, stacks the load in the warehouse, and back to the platform. You worked with your body and your brain had a day off. You worked eight to noon, had a foot-long sandwich and a quart of beer for lunch, sweated it off from one to five, headed home, hungry for dinner, ready for a movie and a few beers in a Third Avenue bar.

Once you got the hang of it you moved like a robot. You kept up with the strongest man on the platform and size didn’t matter. You used your knees to save your back. If you forgot, platform men would bark, Chrissakes, you got a rubber spine or sumpin’? You learned to use the hook different ways with different loads: boxes, sacks, crates, furniture, great chunks of greasy machinery. A sack of beans or peppers has a mind of its own. It can change shape one way or another and you have to go with it. You looked at the size, shape and weight of an item and you knew in a second how to lift and swing it. You learned the ways of truckers and their helpers. Independent truckers were easy. They worked for themselves, set their own pace. Corporation truckers prodded you to hurry up, man, lift the damn load, let’s go, I wanna get outa heah. Truckers’ helpers were surly no matter who they worked for. They played little games to test you and throw you off, especially if they thought you were just off the boat. If you worked close to the edge of pier or platform they’d suddenly drop their side of the sack or crate hard enough to pull an arm from its socket and you learned to stay away from the edge of anything. Then they’d laugh and say, Faith an’ begorrah, Paddy, or Top o’ the mornin’ with a fake Irish accent. You’d never complain to a boss about any of this. He’d say, Whassa matter, kid? Can’t you take a little joke? Complaining only made matters worse. The word might get to a trucker or a helper and he might accidentally bump you off the platform or even the pier. A big new man from Mayo took offense when someone put a rat’s tail in his sandwich and when he threatened to kill whoever did it he was accidentally toppled into the Hudson and everyone laughed before they threw him a line and hauled him out dripping with river scum. He learned to laugh and they stopped bothering him. You can’t work the piers with a long face. After a while they stop picking on you and the word goes around that you know how to take your lumps. Eddie Lynch, the platform boss, told me I was a tough little mick and that meant more to me than the day I was promoted to corporal in the United States Army because I knew I wasn’t that tough, just desperate.

I told my classes I was so uncertain about teaching I thought of simply spending my life at Port Warehouses, big fish, small pond. My bosses would be so impressed with my college degree they’d hire me as checker and promote me to an office job where I’d surely rise in the world. I might become boss of all checkers. I knew how it was with warehouse office workers or office workers anywhere. They pushed papers around, yawned, looked out the window at us slaving away on the platform.

I did not tell my classes about Helena, the telephone woman who offered more than doughnuts in the back of the warehouse. I was tempted till Eddie said if you even brushed against her you’d wind up in St. Vincent’s Hospital with a dripping dick.

What I missed about the piers was the way people spoke their minds and didn’t give a shit. Not like the college professors who would tell you, On the one hand, yes, on the other hand, no, and you didn’t know what to think. It was important to know what professors thought so you could give it back to them at exam time. In the warehouses everyone insulted everyone else in a joking way till someone stepped over the line and the hooks came out. It was remarkable when that happened. You could see from the way the laughs faded and the smiles got tighter that some bigmouth was getting too close to the bone and you knew the next thing was the hook or the fist.

Work stopped when fights broke out on piers and loading docks. Eddie told me men got tired of lifting and hauling and stacking, same damn thing year in year out, and that’s why they insulted and pushed one another to the edge of a real fight. They had to do something to break the routine and the long silent hours. I told him I didn’t mind working all day and not saying a word and he said, Yeah, but you’re peculiar. You’re only here a year an’ a half. If you did this fifteen years your mouth would be goin’ too. Some of these guys fought in Normandy and the Pacific and what are they now? Donkeys. Donkeys with purple hearts already. Pathetic donkeys in a dead end. They get drunk over on Hudson Street and brag about their medals as if the world gives a shit. They’ll tell you they’re working for the kids, the kids, the kids. A better life for the kids. Jesus! I’m glad I never got married.

If Eddie hadn’t been there the fights would have been worse. He was the man with eye and ear on everything and he could sniff trouble in the wind. If two men started to go at it Eddie would stick his great belly between them and tell them get the hell off his platform and finish their fight in the street. Which they never did because they were really grateful for the excuse to avoid the fist and especially the hook. You can handle a fist but you never know where a hook is coming from. Still, they’d keep on muttering and giving each other the finger, but it was all gas now because the moment had passed, the challenge was over, the rest of us were back at work and what’s the use of a fight if there’s no one to see what a killer you are?

Helena came from the office to watch the fights and when they were over she’d whisper to the winners and invite them to a dark place in the warehouse for a nice time.

Eddie said some of those rotten bastards pretended to fight so Helena would be nice to them, and if he ever saw me in the back with her after a fight he’d throw my ass in the river. He said that because of the time I had a fight or nearly had a fight with the driver Fat Dominic, who was dangerous because of rumors he was connected to the mob. Eddie said that was bullshit. If you were really connected you weren’t driving and breaking your ass unloading rigs. The rest of us believed Dominic probably knew people who were connected, or even made, so it was a good idea to cooperate with him. But how could you cooperate when he sneered, Whassa madda, Paddy? Can’t talk? Maybe a dummy humped your momma, huh?

Everyone knows that on the docks or the platforms, or anywhere, you are never to let anyone insult your mother. Kids know it from the time they’re able to talk. You might not even like your mother, but that doesn’t matter. They can say anything they like about you, but insulting your mother is pushing it and if you let it go you lose all respect. If you need someone to help with a load on the platform or the pier they’ll turn their backs. You don’t exist. They won’t even share a liverwurst sandwich with you at lunchtime. If you wander round the docks and the warehouses and you see men eating alone, you’ll know they’re in deep shit, men who tolerated insults to their mothers or once scabbed across a picket line. A scab can be forgiven in a year but never a man who allowed an insult to his mother.

I got back at Dominic with an army insult. Hey, Dominic, you’re such a fat slob, when was the last time you saw your dick and how do you know it’s really there?

He swung around and knocked me off the platform with the flat of his fist and when I hit the street I lost control and jumped back on the platform, clawing at him with my hook. He had the smile now, the one that says, You poor miserable shit, you’re gonna die, and when I lunged at him he pushed my face away with the palm of his hand and knocked me to the street again. The palm of the hand is the most insulting thing in a fight. A punch with a closed fist is a straightforward honorable thing. It’s what boxers do. But the palm in the face says you’re beneath contempt and you’d rather have two black eyes than sink beneath contempt. The black eyes will clear up, but the other thing is there forever.

Then he added insult to insult. When I grabbed the edge of the platform to pull myself back up he stepped on my hand and spat on my head and that sent me into such a white rage I swung my hook and caught him in the back of the leg and pulled till he yelled, You little shit. I see blood on my leg you’re dead.

There was no sign of blood. The hook was deflected by the thick leather of his work boots, but I was ready to keep swiping for flesh till Eddie rushed down the steps and pulled me away. Gimme that hook. You are one crazy mick. Get on the bad side of Dominic and you’re shit in the street.

He told me get inside, change my clothes, leave by another door, go home, get the hell outa here.

Will I be fired?

No, you won’t, goddammit. We can’t fire everyone who has a fight here, but you’ll lose half a day’s pay we’ll have to slip to Dominic.

But why should I lose money to Dominic? He started it.

Dominic brings us business and you’re passing through. You’ll be graduating from college and he’ll still be driving in loads. You’re lucky to be alive, kid, so take your lumps and go home. Think about it.

On my way out I looked back to see if Helena was there and she was, with that little come-hither smile, but Eddie was there, too, and I knew there was no hope of going to the dark place with her with Eddie glaring.

Some day when it was my turn on the forklift I’d get revenge on Fat Dominic. I’d hit the pedal and jam the fat one against a wall and listen to him scream. That was my dream.

But it never happened and that’s because everything changed between him and me the day he backed in his rig and called to Eddie from the cab, Hey, Eddie, who you got unloadin’ today?

Durkin.

Nah. Don’t gimme Durkin. Gimme bigmouth mick with the hook.

Dominic, are you crazy? Let it go.

Nah. Just gimme bigmouth.

Eddie asked me if I could handle it. If I didn’t want to I didn’t have to. He said, Dominic’s not the boss around here. I said I could handle any fat slob and Eddie told me cut it out. Chrissakes, watch your mouth. We’re not gonna bail you out again. Get to work and watch the mouth.

Dominic was up on the platform, unsmiling. He said this was a real job, cases of Irish whiskey, and there might be a dropped case along the way. One or two bottles might be broken, but the rest were for us and he was sure we could handle it. There was a fast little smile and I felt too embarrassed to smile back. How could a man smile after he used the palm of his hand on me instead of his fist?

Christ, you’re one gloomy mick, he said.

I was going to call him a wop, but I didn’t want the palm of his hand again.

He talked in a cheerful way as if nothing had ever happened between us. That puzzled me because whenever I had a quarrel or fight with someone I turned away from them for a long time. We loaded pallets with the cases and he told me in a normal way his first wife was Irish but she died of TB.

Can you imagine that? T damn B. Lousy cook, my first wife, like the rest of the Irish. Don’t get offended, kid. Don’t gimme the look. But, boy, could she sing. Opera stuff, too. Now I’m married to an Italian. Don’t have a note in her head but, boy, can she cook.

He stared at me. She feeds me. That’s why I’m a fat slob can’t see his knees.

I smiled and he called to Eddie, Hey, asshole. You owe me ten. I made the little mick smile.

We finished unloading and stacked the pallets inside and it was time to drop a case of whiskey for breakage and sit on bags of peppers in the fumigation room with truckers and warehousemen and make sure nothing from that case was wasted.

Eddie was the kind of man you’d like to have for a father. He explained things to me when we sat on the platform bench between loads. When he explained things to me I was puzzled I didn’t know these things already. I was supposed to be the college boy but he knew more and I had more respect for him than I had for any professor.

His own life was a dead end. He took care of his father who came out of World War I shellshocked. Eddie could have put him in a veterans’ hospital but he said they were hellholes. While Eddie worked a woman came in every day and fed his father and cleaned him. In the evening Eddie wheeled him to the park, then home to watch the news on television, and that was Eddie’s life. He didn’t complain. He just said it was always his dream to have children but it wasn’t in the cards. His father was gone in the head but his body was sound. He’d live forever and Eddie would never have the place to himself.

He chain-smoked on the platform and ate huge meatball sandwiches washed down with pints of chocolate malted. The cigarette cough got him one day when he was yelling at Fat Dominic to straighten out that damn rig and back it in, You drive like a Hoboken hoor, and when the cough came it tangled with the laugh and he couldn’t catch his breath and collapsed on the platform with a cigarette still in his mouth, Fat Dominic in the cab of his rig yelling insults at him till he saw Eddie turning whiter than white and gasping for air. By the time Fat Dominic had heaved out of the cab and up the platform, Eddie was gone and instead of coming over to him and talking the way they talk to the dead in the movies Fat Dominic backed away and waddled down the steps to his truck weeping like a great fat whale and driving away forgetting he had a load to deliver.

I stayed with Eddie till the ambulance took him away. Helena came from the office and told me I looked terrible and sympathized with me as if Eddie were my father. I told her I was ashamed of myself because no sooner was Eddie out of sight than I thought I might apply for his job. I said, I could do it, couldn’t I? I was a college graduate. She told me the boss would hire me in a minute. He’d be proud to say Port Warehouses had the only college-graduate checker and platform boss on the waterfront. She said sit there at Eddie’s desk to get used to it and write a note to the boss saying I was interested in the job.