SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK.
by Stephen King.
Jim Norman's wife had been waiting for him since two, and when she saw the car pull up in front of their apartment building, she came out to meet him. She had gone to the store and bought a celebration meal - a couple of steaks, a bottle of Lancer's, a head of lettuce, and Thousand Island dressing. Now, watching him get out of the car, she found herself hoping with some desperation (and not for the first time that day) that there was going to be something to celebrate.
He came up the walk, holding his new briefcase in one hand and four texts in the other. She could see the title of the top one - Introduction to Grammar. She put her hands on his shoulder and asked, 'How did it go?’
And he smiled.
But that night, he had the old dream for the first time in a very long time and woke up sweating, with a scream behind his lips.
His interview had been conducted by the principal of Harold Davis High School and the head of the English Department. The subject of his breakdown had come up.
He had expected it would.
The principal, a bald and cadaverous man named Fenton, had leaned back and looked at the ceiling. Simmons, the English head, lit his pipe.
'I was under a great deal of pressure at the time,' Jim Norman said. His fingers wanted to twist about in his lap, but he wouldn't let them.
'I think we understand that,' Fenton said, smiling. 'And while we have no desire to pry, I'm sure we'd all agree that teaching is a pressure occupation, especially at the high-school level. You're on-stage five periods out of seven, and you're playing to the toughest audience in the world. That's why,' he finished with some pride, 'teachers have more ulcers than any other professional group, with the exception of air-traffic controllers.’
Jim said, 'The pressures involved in my breakdown were extreme.’
Fenton and Simmons nodded noncommittal encouragement, and Simmons clicked his lighter open to rekindle his pipe. Suddenly the office seemed very tight, very close. Jim had the queer sensation that someone had just turned on a heat lamp over the back of his neck. His fingers were twisting in his lap, and he made them stop.
'I was in my senior year and practice teaching. My mother had died the summer before - cancer - and in my last conversation with her, she asked me to go right on and finish. My brother, my older brother, died when we were both quite young.
He had been planning to teach and she thought . .
He could see from their eyes that he was wandering and thought: God, I'm making a botch of this.
I did as she asked,' he said, leaving the tangled relation-ship of his mother and his brother Wayne - poor, murdered Wayne - and himself behind. 'During the second week of my intern teaching, my fiancee was involved in a hit-and-run accident. She was the hit part of it. Some kid in a hot rod. . . they never caught him.’
Simmons made a soft noise of encouragement.
'I went on. There didn't seem to be any other course. She was in a great deal of pain - a badly broken leg and four fractured ribs - but no danger. I don't think I really knew the pressure I was under.’
Careful now. This is where the ground slopes away.
'I interned at Center Street Vocational Trades High,' Jim said.
'Garden spot of the city,' Fenton said. 'Switchblades, motorcycle boots, zip guns in the lockers, lunch-money protection rackets, and every third kid selling dope to the other two. I know about Trades.’
'There was a kid named Mack Zimmerman,' Jim said. 'Sensitive boy. Played the guitar. I had him in a composition class and he had talent. I came in one morning and two boys were holding him while a third smashed his Yamaha guitar against the radiator. Zimmerman was screaming. I yelled for them to stop and give me the guitar. I started for them and someone slugged me.' Jim shrugged.
'That was it. I had a breakdown. No screaming meemies or crouching in the corner. I just couldn't go back. When I got near Trades, my chest would tighten up. I couldn't breathe right, I got cold sweat -’
'That happens to me, too,' Fenton said amiably.
'I went into analysis. A community therapy deal. I couldn't afford a psychiatrist. It did me good. Sally and I are married. She has a slight limp and a scar, but otherwise, good as new.' He looked at them squarely. 'I guess you could say the same for me.’
Fenton said, 'You actually finished your practice teaching requirement at Cortez High School, I believe.’
'That's no bed of roses, either,' Simmons said.
'I wanted a hard school,' Jim said. 'I swapped with another guy to get Cortez.’
'A's from your supervisor and critic teacher,' Fenton commented.
'Yes.’
'And a four-year average of 3.88. Damn close to straight A's.’
'I enjoyed my college work.’
Fenton and Simmons glanced at each other, then stood up. Jim got up.
'We'll be in touch, Mr Norman,' Fenton said. 'We do have a few more applicants to interview -'Yes, of course.’
'- but speaking for myself, I'm impressed by your academic records and personal candour.’
'It's nice of you to say so.’
'Sim, perhaps Mr Norman would like a coffee before he goes.’
They shook hands.
In the hall, Simmons said, 'I think you've got the job if you want it. That's off the record, of course.’
Jim nodded. He had left a lot off the record himself.
Davis High was a forbidding rockpile that housed a remarkably modern plant - the science wing alone had been funded at 1.5 million in last year's budget. The classrooms, which still held the ghosts of the WPA workers who had built them and the postwar kids who had first used them, were furnished with modern desks and soft-glare blackboards. The students were clean, well dressed, vivacious, affluent. Six out of ten seniors owned their own cars. All in all a good school.
A fine school to teach in during the Sickie Seventies. It made Center Street Vocational Trades look like darkest Africa.
But after the kids were gone, something old and brooding seemed to settle over the halls and whisper in the empty rooms. Some black, noxious beast, never quite in view. Sometimes, as he walked down the Wing 4 corridor towards the parking lot with his new briefcase in one hand, Jim Norman thought he could almost hear it breathing.
He had the dream again near the end of October, and that time he did scream. He clawed his way into waking reality to find Sally sitting up in bed beside him, holding his shoulder. His heart was thudding heavily.
'God,' he said, and scrubbed a hand across his face. 'Are you all right?’
'Sure. I yelled, didn't I?’
'Boy, did you. Nightmare?’
'Yes.’
'Something from when those boys broke that fellow's guitar?’
'No,' he said. 'Much older than that. Sometimes it comes back, that's all. No sweat.’
'Are you sure?’
'Yes.’
'Do you want a glass of milk?' Her eyes were dark with concern.
He kissed her shoulder. 'No. Go to sleep.’
She turned off the light and he lay there, looking into the darkness.
He had a good schedule for the new teacher on the staff. Period one was free.
Two and three were freshman comp, one group dull, one kind of fun. Period four was his best class: American Lit with college-bound seniors who got a kick out of bashing the ole masters around for a period each day. Period five was a 'consultation period,' when he was supposed to see students with personal or academic problems. There were very few who seemed to have either (or who wanted to discuss them with him), and he spent most of those periods with a good novel.
Period six was a grammar course, dry as chalkdust.
Period seven was his only cross. The class was called Living with Literature, and it was held in a small box of a classroom on the third floor. The room was hot in the early fall and cold as the winter approached. The class itself was an elective for what school catalogues coyly call 'the slow learner'.
There were twenty-seven 'slow learners' in Jim's class, most of them school jocks. The kindest thing you could accuse them of would be disinterest, and some of them had a streak of outright malevolence. He walked in one day to find an obscene and cruelly accurate caricature of himself on the board, with 'Mr Norman' unnecessarily chalked under it. He wiped it off without comment and proceeded with the lesson in spite of the snickers.