They can have them, he thought. They can stuff them up their asses.
Shaking, he slowed down, pulled over to the right and turned the corner. On a quiet side street he coasted to a stop. Traffic noises had fallen away behind him. Peacefulness. He shut off the engine. The car rolled a trifle. He put on the hand-brake.
Should I go by the house? he asked himself. And pick up my stuff? No, he thought. I probably will never go back there again. I don’t see any reason for it. Too bad, he thought. After all my work. What a thing to have happen. How could she have done that kind of thinking, figuring out exactly what part of the machines belonged to her, and the reasons why. Maybe she called her attorney.
Now, he thought, I might as well get back on the road again. But he did not feel like it. Starting up the engine, he drove along, past the houses. Residential section, he thought. Lawns and driveways. For a time he drove at random.
I never thought it would work out like that, he thought. You never can tell. All those years of knowing her. Back to grammar school. When I knew her in high school and delivered her newspaper to her. That should have tipped me off, that business where I wasn’t invited into the house. It’s the same thing all over again. I should have been warned.
Maybe the best thing to do, he decided, is to rent a room. I’ll rent one here in town somewhere and stay in it for a while until I can get rested up. Then I can think better and know what to do.
Right now he did not feel able to think it out.
Later on I can plan, he decided.
Accordingly, he turned the car in the direction of the rooming house section of town. He came at last to a large white board building with several doorbells and mailboxes. In one of the front windows hung a sign reading: ROOM FOR RENT. So he parked and got out.
Not a bad neighborhood, he thought as he walked up the steps to the porch. On the porch was a carton of empty Coca-Cola bottles. He rang the top bell. Presently the door opened and there stood a fat middle-aged man in trousers and underwear, his huge stomach hanging out over his belt.
“What is it?” the man said, putting his finger into his eye to rub at it.
He explained to the man that he was interested in the room. The man said that he was not the manager, only one of the tenants, a fireman who slept during the day. But he led Bruce up a flight of carpeted stairs, past a potted rubber plant, and showed him the vacant room. It was recently painted and it smelled clean. In one corner was a sofa; in the other a gas circulating heater. The windows had both shades and curtains. The fireman stood in the entrance, still rubbing at his eye.
“This is fine,” Bruce said.
“You can move right in,” the fireman said, turning his back and starting downstairs again. “The building manager’ll be around sometime this evening and you can pay him the rent then. It’s twenty bucks as I recall, but you better settle that with him.”
In the car Bruce still had enough of his things; he had his clothes, and that was what counted. And he had his toilet articles, his hair brush and aftershave and cuff links and shoes. He carried the suitcase upstairs to the room and put the articles away in the dresser drawers and the cardboard wardrobe closet. Then he shut the door, took off his coat, and lay down on the single bed. It had sheets and blankets on it, and even a pillow. All I need, he thought, lying on his back with his arms at his sides. I’ll have to eat out, but I’m used to that.
I’ll stay here a few days, he thought. Until I make up my mind.
In his wallet he had twenty or thirty dollars, possibly more. He considered getting up to look into his wallet, but after debating it for a time he decided not to go to the trouble. There’s enough there, he decided. I’ll make out okay.
The room seemed to him comfortable and quiet. Downstairs, along the street, a car or two passed: He listened to their motor noises. This could be a lot worse, he said to himself. I don’t really have it so bad. Hell, he thought. I’ve got my health and my youth; they say if you have that you’ve got nothing to worry about. And I learned something. You always profit by experience. And if I want to I can go back and claim the machines that belong to me. But why go to the trouble? Let her have them. If it’s so important to her. Make a buck, if she wants to.
He lay there, thinking about that.
16
Lying on the bed, he thought back to the first day they had seen her, the young new woman teacher standing at the board. Alone in the rented room he recalled that important day, years ago, when he had come into the classroom and seen the new teacher writing in large clear letters:
MISS REUBEN
Miss Reuben wore a blue suit, not a regular dress. It seemed to all of them as if she were dressed up for some occasion, for church or visiting. The color of her hair amazed them, and there was some whispering about that. It was yellow, not dark gray as was Mrs. Jaffey’s. None of them had ever seen a teacher with yellow hair; it was like the hair of one of the girls, not a teacher’s hair at all.
When she turned from the board they saw she was smiling at them, at the whole roomful of them, not to any one of them in particular. Some of them were frightened by that and took seats in the far back of the room. Her face had a freckled, reddish roundness, smooth and peculiarly active. Her eyes, too, struck them as alarming; she seemed to be watching everything in the room. She did not focus on anything. Some of the children noticed that she had a cluster of white flowers fastened to her suit, where her coat came together and buttoned. The buttons of her blue suit were white, too; they noticed that.
The final bell rang.
Seating herself at Mrs. Jaffey’s desk, Miss Reuben said. “All right, children.” The few of them that had been talking now ceased. “I’m going to be your teacher until the end of the semester,” Miss Reuben said. “Mrs. Jaffey won’t be coming back. She’s very ill. Now, I want to take the roll.” On the desk was Mrs. Jaffey’s attendance book. “I know you’re supposed to be seated alphabetically,” Miss Reuben said, “but I can see you’re not. There’s not one of you in your regular seat.”
All the boys had gone over to one side, leaving the girls in a group by themselves. And no one was in the front row. So that was how Miss Reuben had known. But they all felt uneasy. How clever she was. Mrs. Jaffey would never have noticed, and yet Miss Reuben had seen that at first glance.
A girl stood up and said, “I’m Mrs. Jaffey’s proctor. I always call the roll for her.”
This was true. But the new teacher Miss Reuben said, “Thank you, but today I’ll take the roll myself. Here’s what I want you to do.” Again she smiled at all of them together. “When I read a student’s name I don’t want him or her to answer. Do you understand that?”
Taken aback, they remained silent. They had planned to answer “president,” as they had done with the temporary teacher during the last day and a half.
“What I want you to do,” Miss Reuben said; sitting with her hands folded in the center of the desk, “is this. When I call a student’s name I want all the other children—together!—to point to him or her. And I don’t want him to speak a word. Do you all understand that?”
Miss Reuben called a name, then. A few pupils pointed to that boy. Miss Reuben scrutinized the boy and made an entry in the attendance book. Again she called a name. This time more pupils pointed. By the time she had finished calling the roll, the students were enthusiastically pointing one another out to her.
“Good,” she said. “Now I think I have you all firmly in mind. I’m going to have you sit alphabetically, the way Mrs. Jaffey did. And if I call on you and I get your name wrong, I want everybody else to tell me right away.” She smiled. “So please get to your feet and without any noise seat yourselves in your usual seats.”