And Richard counted the steps. A few more. A... few... more...
“Shouldn’t have hit me, Mr. Daddy-oh,” Miller mock. “Ain’t nice for teachers to hit students like that, Mr. Daddy-oh. Nossir, it ain’t nice at...”
The chair crashed into Miller’s chest, knocking the breath out of him. It came quickly and forcefully, with the impact of a striking snake. Richard had turned, as if to run, and then the chair was gripped in his hands tightly. It sliced the air in a clean, powerful arc, and Miller covered his face instinctively. The chair crashed into his chest, knocking him backwards. He screamed in surprise and pain as Richard leaped over the chair to land heavily on his chest. Richard pinned Miller’s alders to the floor with his knees and slapped him ruthlessly across: he race.
“Here, Miller, here, here, here,” he squeezed through clenched teeth. Miller twisted his head from side to si trying to escape the cascade of blows that fell in rapid onslaught on his cheeks.
The knife, Richard suddenly remembered! Where’s the knife? What did he do with the...
Sunlight caught the cold glint of metal, and Richard glanced up instant!;, stood over him, the knife clenched tightly in his fist. He grinned boyishly, his rotten teeth flashing across his blotchy, thin face. He spat vehemently at Richard, and then there was a blur of color: blue steel, and the yellow of Vota’s hair, and the blood on Miller’s lip, and the brown wooden floor, and the gray tweed of Richard’s suit. A shout came up from the class, and a hiss seemed to escape Miller’s lips.
Richard kicked at Vota, feeling the heavy leather of his shoes crack against the boy’s shins. Miller was up and fumbling for Richard’s arms. A sudden slice of pain started at Richard’s shoulder, careened down the length of his arm. Cloth gave way with a rasping scratch, and blood flashed bright against the gray tweed.
From the floor, Richard saw the knife flash back again, poised in Vota’s hand ready to strike. He saw Miller’s fists doubled and hard, saw the animal look on Vota’s face and again the knife threatening and sharp, drenched now with blood, dripping on the brown, cold, wooden floor.
The noise grew louder and Richard grasped in his mind for a picture of the Roman arena, tried to rise, felt pain sear through his right arm as he put pressure on it. He’s cut me, he thought with panic. Vota has cut me. And the screaming reached a wild crescendo, hands moved with terrible swiftness, eyes gleamed with molten fury, bodies squirmed, and hate smothered everything in a sweaty, confused, embarrassed embrace.
This is it, Richard thought, this is it.
“Leave him alone, you crazy jerk,” Serubi was shouting.
Leave who alone, Richard wondered. Who? I wasn’t...
“Lousy sneak,” Levy shouted. “Lousy, dirty sneak.”
Please, Richard thought. Please.
Levy seized Miller firmly and pushed him backward against a desk. Richard watched him dazedly, his right arm burning with pain. He saw Busco through a maze of moving, struggling bodies, Busco who was caught cheating, saw Busco smash a book against Vota’s knife hand. The knife clattered to the floor with a curious sound. Vota’s hand reached out and Di Pasco stepped on it with the heel of his foot. The knife disappeared in a shuffle of hands, but Vota no longer had it. Richard stared at the bare, brown spot on the floor where the knife had been.
Whose chance is it now, he wondered? Whose turn to slice the teacher?
Miller tried to struggle off the desk where Levy had him pinned. Brown, a Negro boy, brought his fist down heavily on Miller’s nose. He wrenched the larger boy’s head back with one hand, and again brought his fist down fiercely.
A slow recognition trickled into Richard’s confused thoughts. Through dazzled eyes, he watched.
Vota scrambled to his feet and lunged at him. A solid wall seemed to rise before him as Serubi and Gomez flung themselves against the onrushing form and threw it back. They tumbled onto Vota, holding his arms, lashing out with excited fists.
They’re fighting for me! No, Richard reasoned, no. But yes, they’re fighting for me! Against Miller. Against Vota. For me. For me, oh my God, for me.
His eyes blinked nervously as he struggled to his feet.
“Let’s... let’s take them down to the principal,” he said, his voice low.
Antoro moved closer to him, his eyes widening as they took in the livid slash that ran the length of Richard’s arm.
“Man, that’s some cut,” he said.
Richard touched his arm lightly with his left hand. It was soggy and wet, the shirt and jacket stained a dull brownish-red.
“My brother got cut like that once,” Ganigan offered.
The boys were still holding Miller and Vota, but they no longer seemed terribly interested in the troublemakers.
For an instant, Richard felt a twinge of panic. For that brief, terrible instant he imagined that the boys hadn’t really come to his aid at all, that they had simply seen an opportunity for a good fight and had seized upon it. He shoved the thought aside, began fumbling for words.
“I... I think I’d better take them down to Mr. Stemplar,” he said. He stared at the boys, trying to read their faces, searching for something in their eyes that would tell him he had at last reached them, had at last broken through the wall. He could tell nothing. Their faces were blank, their eyes emotionless.
He wondered if he should thank them. If only he knew. If he could only hit upon the right thing to say, the thing to cement it all.
“I’ll... I’ll take them down. Suppose... you... you all go to lunch now.”
“That sure is a mean cut,” Julian said.
“Yeah,” Ganigan agreed.
“You can all go to lunch,” Richard said. “I want to take Miller and Vota...”
The boys didn’t move. They stood there with serious faces, solemnly watching Richard.
“... to... the... principal,” Richard finished.
“A hell of a mean cut,” Gomez said.
Busco chose his words carefully, and he spoke slowly. “Maybe we better just forget about the principal, huh? Maybe we oughta just go to lunch?”
Richard saw the smile appear on Miller’s face, and a new weary sadness lumped into his throat.
He did not pretend to understand. He knew only that they had fought for him and that now, through some unfathomable code of their own, had turned on him again. But he knew what had to be and he could only hope that eventually they would understand why he had to do it.
“All right,” he said firmly, “let’s break it up. I’m taking these two downstairs.”
He shoved Miller and Vota ahead of him, fully expecting to meet the resistance of another wall, a wall of unyielding bodies. Instead, the boys parted to let him through, and Richard walked past them with his head high. A few minutes ago, he would have taken this as a sign that the wall had broken. That was a few minutes ago.
Now, he was not at all surprised to hear a high falsetto pipe up behind him, “Oh, Daddy-oh! You’re a hee-ro!”
Short Short Story
In March of last year, I wrote a letter to your magazine which you subsequently published in May. You will recall that I described myself as a bald-headed though virile man of seventy-six with a walrus mustache and a preference for well-built redheaded midgets (female). In that letter, I related the story of my first and only sexual experience with a redheaded midget, and told of the ecstasy I had derived from that brief encounter. I explained that whereas I was now married to a very tall blond woman (five feet five inches), I nonetheless had never forgotten that fleeting affair so many years ago, and was still unable to quell my longings and urgings for female midgets with scarlet tresses. While praising abundantly the various women of height and undeniable girth who have graced the pages of your fine magazine, I asked at that time if your plans for the future included running a centerfold photograph of a nude minikin with an auburn thatch. I also asked if any of your readers shared my feelings about midgets with ruddy locks.