Читать книгу The Wine of the Heart - Victor Jay - Страница 6

CHAPTER TWO

It occurred to Glen, as he drove into the parking lot at Morning Valley Junior College, that he had driven the entire way to work without any conscious awareness of what he was doing. His thoughts, as they were so often, had been directed to his problem—the problem. What did it mean, his inability to perform sexually? Certainly it didn’t mean that he wasn’t sexually excited; there were times when it was all but maddening, his senses churning with desire, his body refusing to do its part, remaining limp and ineffectual.

He had told Ann the truth, the truth that he had for years tried not to admit to himself. It wasn’t only her. It had always been this way, even as far back as high school. Star athlete, well mannered, popular, he had had his pick of the girls in school, and more than his share of opportunities.

A few times, with tramps like Carol Steward, everything had been all right—or pretty much so. It had been necessary to drink well past his usual limit, neck and pet almost to the bursting point, but it had worked. The other times, however, had been disastrous. Ironically enough, the inability that had forced him to retire from the campaigns at the crucial moments had earned him a reputation as a “gentlemen,” a “safe” date, and had in turn assured him of even more opportunities.

Always it had been the same—through college, through his marriage with Ann. He could still not remember their wedding night without a blush of humiliation, all of his efforts, including drinking himself almost to the oblivion, failing to produce the necessary results.

Pete Jennings was just parking his car when Glen got out of the convertible and started across the school parking lot. Glen waited for Pete to join him, and they started toward the school building together.

“Another Monday,” Pete announced in his loud, slow voice. “Seems to me like someone could design a calendar without Mondays.”

“The trouble is with your Sundays,” Glen informed him, his face relaxing into a grin. It was easy for him to relax with Pete, feel comfortable with the burly ex-football player who had barely managed to get through college and get his credentials to teach. “If you’d lay off the wicked life on Sundays, you’d find Mondays a lot easier.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Pete agreed with a contented grunt. “That’s the price a bachelor pays for his freedom.”

A bachelor, Glen thought, the word sticking in his mind. That’s what he’d be now, when Ann left, a bachelor again. In a sense, it would be a new experience for him; he’d never really lived by himself. Before, through high school and college, it had been his sister and her husband who had raised him, taking over after the death of his parents. He had lived with them, in fact, right up to the time when he had married Ann. He certainly couldn’t go back to them now, like running home to mother when things went wrong. Anyway, there was the house now, and maybe he’d enjoy being a bachelor.

“What’s it like?” he asked impulsively.

“What’s what like?”

Glen paused, realizing suddenly how silly his question would sound, and knowing that he didn’t want to discuss his marital problems, not with Pete, or anyone else, not just yet. He was trying to think of some logical statement to make when Pete looked beyond him and let out a yell.

“Okay, okay, what’s the big idea?” he demanded. Glen turned, following his gaze to the young man a few feet from them. “What’s with the cigarette? You know better than to smoke on school grounds, Jerry.”

Jerry, the young man, dropped his eyes to the ground and let the cigarette fall from his hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible despite the short distance. “I forgot.”

“You’d darned well better not forget again,” Pete boomed, his voice stern and commanding.

Glen watched the young man quicken his pace and hurry on his way ahead of them toward the school building. Jerry Allen was a student in one of his own classes. There was something about the tense, withdrawn way in which Jerry walked, the shoulders huddled closely together as though in protection from a nonexistent cold, that made him seem somehow forlorn and pathetic. The pretty, almost cherubic face that should have glistened with innocent youth was hardened and sullen, the supple, sturdy young body bent as though under a great weight.

“That one,” Pete snorted, resuming his own progress toward the faded brick building in front of them. “Someone ought to get hold of that kid and shake a string of knots out of him.”

“Jerry?” Glen asked. That’s silly, he thought as he said the name, who else could Pete be talking about? He blushed, for some reason he did not understand, and pulled his eyes from the retreating figure of Jerry Allen. “Why is that?”

Pete grunted again, a gesture that Glen knew from experience could mean happiness or displeasure, or anything in between. “Take a look at him. A young hood, that’s all he’ll be, going around with a king-size chip on his shoulder, all the time goofing off. And the worst of it is, he’s not dumb. Ever seen his I.Q. tests?”

Glen frowned thoughtfully. If he had thought of Jerry Allen at all in the past, it had been as an unhappy boy, not a young hood. There was, in the very sullenness that he wore so flagrantly, a rather frightening loneliness, a plea almost for understanding that remained, seemingly, unanswered. “No, I can’t say I have. Is he really bright?”

“Damn right he is. He could have the best grades in this school, if you could get him to do anything but sit and glare at you in class. You have him in English—am I right, or am I right?”

“You’re right, I guess,” Glen admitted after a moment’s reflection. “He doesn’t do much more than that in my class. Kind of sad, don’t you think?”

“Sad?” They were entering the big front doors of the building now, Pete’s voice echoing loudly in the halls that were already filled with students. “If it was up to me, that kid’s backside would have blisters on it.”

One or two students glanced at them in passing, no doubt wondering if Pete’s comment concerned themselves. Glen and Pete parted, Pete slapping Glen’s shoulder pleasantly as he left. Glen stopped at the office, checked his mail, and hurried on to his first class.

* * * *

The morning went quickly and smoothly. With the end of the school year drawing near, the efforts of both students and teachers were intensified. As a result, Glen had little time to think about Ann, or their problems, devoting his attention instead to his students and his subject matter. He was a good teacher, sincere and conscientious, if somewhat mechanical in his approach. He was respected by his students, although not greatly liked, and whatever criticisms they voiced of him among themselves generally took the line that he was too distant, too demanding.

It was not until his third period that he saw Jerry Allen again. Contrary to the impression that he had given Pete, Glen had noticed Jerry before. It would have been difficult not to notice the youth. An artist would have sighed in rapture at the delicate beauty of the sullen face, a sculptor might have chosen the thin, gracefully molded form for his model. Glen was neither artist nor sculptor, but a teacher and a man with a certain sympathy for the unhappiness of others, a sympathy perhaps springing from his own inability to come to terms with life. He had not, it was true, given more than a token concern to the boy’s unhappiness, and yet he had noticed. More than once he had looked up to find the large, silver-hued eyes fastened on him, their expression a puzzling one of defiant antagonism mingled with something else impossible to define, something that might almost have been a question. What, Glen had wondered, was the question they were trying to ask?

As a student, Jerry seemed neither brilliant nor ambitious. His contributions to the efforts of the class were few and more often than not disinterested. Yet there was something, an underlying impression of real potential, that Glen had discerned before. He had felt it, sensed it, and yet been unable to touch it or even define it successfully. Pete’s remarks of the morning lingered in his consciousness as he stared the length of the room at the young man, working, as was the entire class, at a test.

Glen took up the stack of papers before him, the assignments from Friday, and thumbed through them. Nothing from Jerry. He scowled, lifting his head as though to say something about it, then changed his mind. Instead, he took the first of the papers and began to read it, grading the answers rapidly and without pause.

Jerry was the third to finish the exam. He got up from his seat to approach the front of the room and place his work on the indicated corner of the desk. Glen glanced up as the paper touched the desk, to find Jerry’s eyes on him. Like two fighters, or strange dogs, they studied one another, mentally sniffing, weighing the situation and one another.

“Finished already?” Glen asked. The class period was only three quarters over, the entire period having been given over to the exam.

“Yeah,” Jerry answered flatly. The strange blending of emotions had gone from his eyes, leaving them dull and listless. He paused for a second, waiting for any further comment. Then, slowly, almost regretfully, he turned and made his way back to his seat.

Glen sat for a moment staring at his desk. Finally, wondering if his curiosity were too apparent, he reached for the paper Jerry had left.

The test was limited to five questions, but they were not simple ones. They required essay answers, some of them lengthy ones intended to show how well his students had grasped the content of their subject rather than their ability to memorize. The first three answers on Jerry’s paper were of little significance, brief and with little evidence of any interest on his part in the subject matter. The third, to his surprise, was lengthy, nearly two pages of writing.

The question had been one of comparison, the literature of today weighed against the literature of previous periods. Glen read the cramped, painfully small script slowly, his lips pursed thoughtfully.

“...early writers had several advantages. In the first place, they had the best ideas first, the first chance at plots and peoples. In the second place, the bad things they wrote have been forgotten, and only the better works still exist. But today’s writer has the advantage of writing about what people today know, and how they live and think. I like the old writers best....”

It wasn’t profound, and yet, there was merit to it. The boy had thought, and thought well on his subject. Without realizing it, Glen smiled. He turned back to the first page, wrote a large B at the top, then added a plus sign. It was, he knew, probably more than the work merited on its own. On the other hand, taken in context with the bulk of Jerry’s work, it was a singular effort, one well deserving of a reward which might well be regarded as an investment.

The bell rang, sounding the end of the period. The students shuffled about, some of them hurriedly finishing their tests and bringing them up to the desk, others crowding toward the door that led to the hall. Jerry was slow to leave, only starting toward the door when the room was almost emptied.

“Jerry,” Glen called impulsively, noting the sudden tension when the boy stopped. “Got a minute?”

The boy came without an answer to stand in front of the desk. Glen dropped his eyes to the test paper, still in his hand.

“Tell me,” he began, lifting his eyes to Jerry’s. “Do you like English?”

“Some of it,” Jerry answered after a pause. It was hard to tell whether he was being evasive or not.

“The classics? I gather from your test that you prefer the older writers.”

“Some of them,” Jerry shifted his weight, changing his books from one arm to the other.

“Why?” It was like swimming upstream against the current, Glen was thinking. He was getting nowhere, making no contact with the mind of the boy. Jerry only grimaced and shrugged in answer to the question.

“Better go along,” Glen told him, returning the test paper to the stack. “You’ll be late for your next class.”

“How did I do?” Jerry asked without moving.

Glen looked up again, surprised by the question and the interest it implied. “Very well. I think you can do a lot better, but it’s good. I gave you a B plus on it.”

Jerry blushed and grinned, a pleased yet bashful smile. He turned then and started toward the door. Puzzled, Glen looked away, wondering what the grin had really meant.

“Mr. Sanford?” Jerry was at the door, half in, half out of the room. “Thanks,” he said simply. Then he was gone.

Glen stared after him for a minute or two. Then, putting the papers carefully into the drawer of his desk, which he locked, he got up and made his way to the hall. This was his free period, ordinarily a time devoted to grading the various papers accumulated on his desk throughout the morning. Instead, he made way down the hall to the administrative offices. Mrs. Devraux was there, seated at her cluttered desk just outside the office of the principal.

“Good morning, Mr. Sanford,” she greeted him, flashing a too-sweet smile at him.

“Morning,” he answered briskly, not eager to become involved in one of her gossip-ridden conversations. “Can I see the file on the Allen boy—Jerry Allen?”

Mrs. Devraux stood and crossed to the large files behind her desk, rifling through them. She pulled out a manila folder and brought it to the counter. “Here you are,” her curiosity all too apparent. “Any trouble with him?”

“Not particularly,” Glen told her, opening the file. Seeing no promise of interesting news, Mrs. Devraux sniffed and returned to her desk.

Glen scanned the material in the file, pausing from time to time to examine some piece of information critically. Pete hadn’t exaggerated his appraisal of Jerry’s potential. The kid was bright enough according to everything in the file. Yet his grades ranged from mediocre to appalling. His attendance record showed a high percentage of absenteeism, even more tardiness, and once or twice he had been sent to the offices by an irate teacher.

Still, there was nothing really malicious or ugly in his behavior record, only a puzzling lack of interest or effort. He went on to the personal information. The father was not listed, and after the mother’s name was a notation in pencil—divorced.

Glen went back to the chart that showed the grades. English had fared better than most subjects, starting modestly well but curving downhill from the beginning of the term.

History was another exception, the first grade period ranging even higher than English, but following the same downhill trend. Was that the clue he was seeking, he wondered? Jerry had indicated an interest in antiquity, and his grades seemed to bear out this fact, dropping as the past became present.

He perused the rest of the chart. Physical education, one of the classes in which Pete would have the boy, was erratic, ranging from excellent reports to poor ones. Nothing else seemed particularly significant.

He glanced up as Mrs. Wade, one of the History teachers, came into the office and asked for the principal. She gave Glen a pleasant nod.

“Problems, Glen,” she asked, leaning against the counter near him while Mrs. Devraux checked with the principal.

“Wish I knew,” he answered, closing the file and pushing it across the counter in the direction of Mrs. Devraux. “Tell me, don’t you have Jerry Allen in your class?”

Mrs. Wade sighed and gave him a sympathetic nod. “Yes, and he is a puzzling one, isn’t he? Is he any better in English than he is in my History class?”

Glen grinned and shook his head. “I doubt it. Tell me, how is he in History, any interest at all in the subject?”

“Well you know, I thought there was at first. He started out well, and showed some real promise. But it all tapered off after a short while and I haven’t been able to get a spark out of him since. I don’t think modern history appeals to him at all.”

“But antiquity did?” It was something, a possible clue to where Jerry’s interests lay, and it fitted with Glen’s own conclusions.

“Yes, I think so, up to the Middle Ages even, but nothing beyond that.”

The door to the principal’s office opened and Mr. Meier came out with another teacher. “You wanted to see me?” he asked, addressing his remark to Mrs. Wade. He nodded a curt greeting in Glen’s direction.

“Yes, nothing too drastic,” she answered, gathering her things together. “I won’t take more than a minute.”

“Thanks, Alice,” Glen told her as she started toward the office. He tapped the counter for Mrs. Devraux’s attention, indicated that he was finished with the file, and left to return to his own classroom.

He would have been hard pressed to explain, even to himself, the reason for his interest in Jerry Allen. In the past he had limited his interest in the welfare or the problems of his students to the classroom itself, adhering to the philosophy that he was, after all, only there to teach them English and literature, and not to interfere in their lives.

This instance was different, however. Almost without realizing it, he had already made a decision. Somehow, in some way, he intended to help Jerry Allen. He wanted to surmount the wall that the boy had built about himself, illuminate the dark regions beyond. How it would be done, he did not yet know, but he knew, as he reentered his classroom, that he would find a way.