The Complete Roderick (22 page)

‘No,
MRS DORANO
.’

‘Do we, Billy?’

‘No, Mrs Dorano.’

‘All right then. Thank you, Mr Ogilvy.’

The guard shuffled out of the room, his shin-pads clacking together as he muttered, ‘… vandalizers … burglarizers …’

‘Now then Roger, you sit right here in front next to, that’s right, between Chauncey and Jill, now I see by your card here you haven’t been to school before – illness I guess and that means you may have just a teeny bit of trouble catching up, so you just follow along for now, watch Chaunc – watch Jill and just more or
less do what she – anyway now we’re going to pledge allegiance. Everybody up, up, up.’

‘What’s pledge allegiancing?’

‘Hahahaha,’ Chauncey aimed a kick at him. ‘He don’t even know –’

‘That’s enough!’

‘Yeah but he don’t even –’

‘Chauncey be quiet. Roger, dear, haven’t you ever pledged allegiance to the pretty flag? No? Well just take your right hand –’

‘Hahahaha, he ain’t got no hand. He’s got –’

‘Put your hand, of course he’s got lovely artificial hands, put your hand over your heart –’

‘I haven’t got a heart either,’ Roderick said. Jill gasped.

‘And say –’

‘Missus Dorano, Missus Dorano!’ Jill jumped up and down, pointing to him. ‘He says he ain’t got a heart, how can he pledge allegiance without a heart I mean it’s
illegal.
’

‘Of course little Roger’s got a heart, dumpling. Everybody’s got a heart, Roger, I hope you’re not going to be a little fibber, don’t you want to be a good American? Roger?’

‘My name’s Roderick.’

‘More fibs, tch tch tch, Roger it says on your card and Roger you are – the computer never lies.’

‘I wanta go home now.’

Chauncey grinned slowly. ‘Yeah, let’s all go home, come on.’

‘CHAUNCEY, SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP.
Roger you can’t go home, now stop fibbing and disrupting the class with your no hand and no heart and no name –’

‘My name is Roderick and I’m a robot, so I don’t have a heart –’

‘I’m very disappointed in you, Roger. Very, very disappointed. I’m giving you one more chance to pledge allegiance – oh, what’s the use? If you want to be a fibber and a fool and a bad – naughty American, all right. You sit down and the rest of us will pledge allegiance.’

By then, one or two kids in the back had been infected: robot imitations went the rounds; someone asked permission to take Roderick apart to see if he had a heart, someone else declared her own heart had been removed at the hospital …

*

Chauncey and his gang seemed friendlier at recess. They invited Roderick to play ‘Captain May I’.

The gaunt boy in the blue track-suit said, ‘Hey Rick are you really a robot? Boy you sure gave old Dorano a hard time, boy, are you really one?’

Chauncey, hanging back, said, ‘Don’t be stupid, Jimmy, there’s no such thing as robots they’re like ghosts. No such thing.’

Jimmy said, ‘There are so. Hey Rick, lemme feel your muscle, jeeze you sure are tough I busted my shoe kicking you, see? Hey, you wanna be captain?’

‘I’m captain,’ Chauncey said, ‘I’m always captain.’

‘Owww, leggo, okay let’s choose for it.’

‘Okay but I do the choosing.’

Chauncey counted around the ring (himself, Jimmy, Roderick, Larry, Eddie and Billy) eliminating them one by one:

Eeeny meeny miney moe

Catch a tiger by the toe.

‘We gotta try it again,’ he said, when only Roderick was left. He went through it all again, this time adding, ‘If he hollers, let him go,’ knocking out in turn Billy, Jimmy, himself, Eddie and Larry …

‘Okay, that was practice and this time counts. Only Billy’s out anyway because he’s too little.’ Once more it was Roderick.

‘Hey jeeze, Chauncey, why don’t we just let him –?’

‘Okay, just once more I think I got it right this time, Eeeny meeny miney moe, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers make him pay, fifty dollars every day, aw shit I’m out already …’

‘Look, are we gonna play or what, recess is almost over,’ said Larry.

‘This time I got it, Eeeny meeny …,’ Chauncey began, going on to ‘… dollars every day. O-U-T spells out goes he, with a dirty dishrag on his knee, Eddie’s out. Eeeny …’

‘Look, it’s gonna be me again,’ said Roderick. ‘If you wanta choose yourself all you gotta do is go back to the short rhyme now and –’

‘Listen smart-ass, I don’t need no help from you.’ He went on to the end choosing Roderick again, began again with the short
rhyme as Eddie went off to find Billy on the other side of the playground. ‘… tiger by the aw jeeze it’s you again.’

Larry said, ‘I’m tired of this shit. Recess is practically over, jeeze, I quit.’

‘You sonofabitch you must of fixed it or something, Eeeny …’ Chauncey quickly eliminated Jimmy, then himself, leaving Roderick, who said:

‘Look I don’t care,
you
be captain, whatever that is, let’s just –’

The bell went and Jimmy ran off, but Chauncey gripped the robot’s arm. ‘Not so fast, we gotta settle this.
This
time whoever we finish up on is captain, see? Eeenymeenymineymoecatchatigerbythetoe Jesus Christ you got it fixed even with just two of us …’

Roderick went in from recess with another dent on his torso.

Mr Goun sat in one corner of Miss Borden’s office stroking his face as though surprised to find no beard. ‘Well sure I was prepared for kids being kids but –’ He looked up as Ogilvy came in and dumped a pile of books on the desk. ‘Vandalism, ma’am.’

‘What?’ Miss Borden took a last look at her computer terminal screen and sighed. ‘Always six things at once, just when I get down to budget day – what vandalism?’

‘Somebody’s been over these with a razor-blade, ma’am, they look like IBM cards or something.’

Goun, who was younger, wondered what an IBM card might be.

‘Okay thanks, I’ll look at them later, meanwhile why don’t you do something about Mr Goun here, real security problem for you, somebody burglarized his locker. This morning.’

The guard pushed back his cap in the tradition of baffled policemen and whistled. ‘What did they get?’

Goun looked pained. ‘Only every one of my manuals for the sex education course, that’s all.’

‘Yeah? Guess they couldn’t wait.’

‘Not to mention a valuable psychology book,
The Dream World of the Adolescent Girl
, took me a year to run down a copy.’

Ogilvy snickered. ‘“Rare” book, eh?’

‘It happens to be a serious study of the, the actualization of catalyzing factors in the, in interpersonal relations, you wouldn’t
understand I guess. The kid who took it probably thinks it’s juicy stuff but I – but let me know, will you? A thin blue book, let me know if you see any kid reading it. In the can or –’

‘Right, chief.’ Ogilvy turned to go and bumped into Ms Beek, moving like a sleepwalker.

Miss Borden stood up. ‘Yes, Joan?’

‘I – I didn’t know –’

‘Your class, Joan. Who’s watching them?’

‘Oh – I –’ Ms Beek wandered out.

Goun said, ‘Not very articulate, is she? Since her nervous b – ah, trouble.’

‘Chemotherapy,’ Miss Borden explained. ‘She’ll soon snap out of it and get right back in the swim again. Now let’s see these books.’

Goun opened a book of nursery rhymes. ‘“
Blank, blank
gander,’” he read. ‘“Whither shall I wander/ Upstairs and downstairs and in
blank blank blank.
” Somebody’s hacked out whole words, what is this anyway, “put in his
blank
and pulled out a plum”, what’s going on?’

She put on her glasses. ‘And here’s A. A. Milne, I know some of these:

Where is Anne?

(Walking with her man)

Lost in a dream

(Lost among the buttercups)

Yes and down here where it says:

What has she got in that firm little fist of hers,

Somebody’s [thumb] and it feels like Christopher’s –

This is terrible, who would, somebody’s got a dirty imagination here, some nasty-minded little –’

‘Yeah, and they cut the last two chapters out of
The Marvellous Land of Oz
. I can’t make sense out of any of this. Some kid with an anxietal undedifferentiated –’

‘I know what you mean. Little savages, how can I in good conscience ask for a bigger book budget when – Oh before you
go, do me a favour, will you? I’m way behind on these individual assessment forms, wonder if you’d mind keeping an eye on this Wood boy for me? The little paraplegic whatever he is, Mrs Dorano’s class, I ought to ask her really, but all she ever puts down is sweet, angelic, a darling innocent; try running that through the County Board computer, they’d have my job. So just, just look him over, will you? In an informal interview situ – you know the way to handle it, thanks.’

‘Sure. Sure I – sure.’ Before he could get out of the door it opened and Captain Fest came in with an armload of reports.

‘Just heard about your burglarization Goun, tough. Tough. Kids got no respect for any damn thing, think they’re king – you better put those trophies somewhere, ma’am, glass case in the hall like that is just an open invitation – well here’s the math skills reports, depressing reading for somebody, don’t give a damn myself any more.’ He followed Goun into the hall. ‘You know I stopped giving a damn when I had twelve-year-olds, one day I asked them how many sixths in a whole, brightest one in the class thought maybe seven, how’s that grab you?’

Moving with great energy he left Goun behind, staring at the trophy case and muttering, ‘Sixths in a hole? In a hole?’

‘Finish your nice tree drawings, everyone. Hurry up.’ Mrs Dorano clapped her hands. ‘Jennifer and I are going to pin up all the nicest ones for everyone to see. And, uh, Suzy dear, you pass out the new readers.
QUIET
! Anyone I see talking from now on is going to have his tree put in my waste-basket. Jennifer hurry up, dear. Billy, let her have the drawing, finished or not.’

‘Miss can I –?’

‘Miss, Miss, Billy drawed a boy’s pee-pee!’

‘– my pencil and I want it back!’

‘QUIET
! Suzy they’re right there, the stack of blue books on my desk, just pass them – Margery, sit
DOWN!’

‘But Miss, Billy drawed –’

‘Never mind what Billy draw drew, you shouldn’t even know what one of those looks like, just sit down and …’ She shuffled through the stack of drawings quickly, eliminating those that looked even remotely like body parts – Kids seemed to think of nothing but sex, sex, sex as it was. Too much of it in these promiscuity classes, that’s where it came from. Mr Goun, she’d seen him hovering in the hall, waiting to pounce on any passing child and pour corrupting filth into its little ear.

Most of the drawings looked as little like organs as they did trees, thank heaven. They looked variously like lollipops, fans, clouds, telegraph poles and green squiggles. Little Chauncey had turned out a nice effort, incorporating a rubbing of some ornament – and at the bottom he’d written
DECIGEONS.

‘Very, very good, Chauncey. I think what you meant to write was
deciduous
– I’ll show you how to spell it but I think it’s wonderful that you even attempted such a grown-up word. I oh!’ She had come to little Roger Wood’s drawing.

‘Somebody’s a copycat here,’ she said. ‘But who?’

‘Not me, Mrs Dorano.’ Chauncey grinned.

‘Roger?’

‘What?’ He was peering into his new reader.

‘Did you copy your tree drawing? It looks like a copy.’

‘Well I guess all these decigeon tree drawings look the same, because heck –’

‘That will do.’ She tore up his drawing. ‘As usual, Roger, you disappoint me.’

‘Hey, can I ask you about this here reader? It looks kinda hard and –’

‘That will
do
, I said.’

Ms Beek looked as though she’d been weeping. Miss Borden, patting her arm, spoke to Captain Fest.

‘Do you really have to barge in here? I was just in the middle of a counselling sess –’

‘I’m sorry ma’am, but the damnedest thing, my binoculars are missing.’

‘Stolen?’

‘Presume so. Had ’em locked up in my desk with a few, ah, personal papers, went out in the hall to have a word with Goun, came back to find it ransacked. Everything gone. Naturally nobody in the class saw anything.’ He passed a hand through his grey crewcut.

Miss Borden looked at a stain on his sleeve. ‘Is that blood? You weren’t attacked?’

‘That? No, it’s nothing. Just interrogating one of the kids about the theft, he slipped and fell, that’s all.’

‘I see. And you were talking to Mr Goun when the robbery occurred?’

‘Wanted to see if he’s interested in joining a male teachers’ drill team, I’m trying to form a crack –’

‘Why male? Because I’m sure Miz Beek here would like –’

‘With all due respect ma’am, problem of different heights, different strides – anyway he was busy talking to that handicapped kid, Wood, wonder if maybe he doesn’t take an unhealthy interest there, always following the kid around the corridors, talking to him in corners –’

‘That’s, I asked him to assess the boy.’