“Who me?” Carlton asked, a broad grin covering his face. “Why, teach, I’m surprised at you. I wouldn’t start nothing.”
Dave nodded, the weary sadness inside him again. He was not afraid of Carlton, or of boys like Carlton. No, that wasn’t it at all. It was just... just the bigness of everything, the bigness of the job, and the bigness of the problem. Yes, that was it. He was just a small man, a mild man, surrounded by a big school with a big problem. And maybe a bigger man could stick a heated scalpel into the festering chancre that was the school, drawing out the pus, wiping away the stink and the corruption. Dave was not that big. Dave was content to sit in the gallery and watch the surgeons. Dave was content to play it safe. It was a hell of a lot easier that way.
“How do you start a business letter, Oringo?” he asked.
Oringo looked up at him with blank eyes. “A business letter?”
“Yes,” Dave said. “How do you start one?”
“Ah, lemmee see.” Oringo rubbed the bridge of his nose. “A business letter, huh, teach? Ah, the date, ain’t that how? You start with the date?”
“No,” Dave said softly. “You—”
He heard the commotion out in the hallway, and he immediately figured it for another fist fight. He’d carefully stayed away from fist fights ever since he’d begun teaching at Bernard. He knew he was not a specimen of physical strength, and he did not relish the idea of having his own skull bashed in while trying to separate two angry kids. He hoped this was not a fist fight now, because he certainly couldn’t ignore a fight right outside his room. He sighed with relief when the door opened and Artie Rourke poked his head into the room.
Rourke smiled and said, “Good morning, Mr. Kemp,” using the official title teachers always used in the presence of students.
Dave opened his mouth, ready to answer, but Rourke’s head vanished from the doorjamb, and he heard Rourke say to the corridor, “All right, boys, come on in.”
A frown crossed Dave’s forehead. He didn’t like disruptions in his classroom. It was hard enough without disruptions. Nor did he particularly like Rourke. Rourke taught Science, and there was something alien about test tubes, and Rourke was a big man, six-two at least, who constantly boasted that “none of these little bastards” could ever pull the wool over his eyes. Dave watched now as Rourke stepped into the room again, grinning.
“Come on, come on,” Rourke said to the corridor, and then the doorway was filled with bodies and faces, and the frown on Dave’s forehead deepened. The boys in the doorway were all grinning foolishly. They continued to grin as they milled into the classroom, filing around past the side blackboard, moving toward the coat closets at the rear of the room.
“What is this?” Dave asked, puzzled.
“My Science class,” Rourke answered. He turned to his boys and said, “Double up with Mr. Kemp’s boys. Come on, let’s get on with this.”
“Let’s get on with what?” Dave asked. He blinked his eyes and looked up at Rourke, and Rourke winked at him. The boys were sitting now, sharing seats with the boys in Dave’s class. The room was suddenly very full, looking ready to burst out at the windows. Dave didn’t like this at all. He thought of the careful lesson plan he’d made, and his annoyance began to show in the slight tremor of his hands.
“What’s this all about, Artie?” he asked Rourke quietly.
“This is a showdown, Dave,” Rourke answered, still grinning. “One of your little bastards is going to get hung.”
He did not bother to remind Rourke that the “little bastards!” were all sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, and not so little at that.
“Hung? What are you talk—”
“Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye,” Rourke bellowed, “the court is now in session, the Honorable Arthur J. Rourke presiding.”
The kids in Rourke’s Science class had apparently been briefed on all this. They sat with knowing smiles on their faces while Dave’s kids looked around in puzzlement. They looked first at Rourke, and then at the kids sharing their seats, and then they turned to Dave for enlightenment. Dave’s face was as puzzled as their own faces.
Rourke cleared his throat and then solemnly intoned, “The case of the people versus” — he paused dramatically, eying the kids — “the case of the people versus The Mugger.”
“Look, Artie,” Dave whispered urgently, “what the hell are you trying to do? If Hampton should walk in—”
“Hampton’s not going to walk in,” Rourke said confidently. “He’s entertaining some jerk from the Board. Our principal is very good at that sort of thing.”
“Still...”
The kids had begun to buzz it up out there. They knew all about the muggings and rollings that had been going on in the corridors of their beloved Bernard Vocational. They knew all about them, and they also knew such muggings and rollings, and sometimes knifings, and once in a blue moon zip-gunnings, were all part of the game. They knew that Happy Hampton was a principal who sort of looked the other way when a bleeding kid was carted down to his office. They knew that, and so they’d learned to keep on their toes, and to walk in pairs whenever they went to the toilet, and to avoid dark stairwells during changes of class. Muggings and rollings were okay, so long as it didn’t happen to them. As a matter of fact, there was something pretty exciting about seeing another guy bleeding. Blood’s got a pretty color when it’s not flowing from your own arm.
So they didn’t know what Rourke was planning to do, but they were interested anyway. “The court is in session,” he had said, and now he was standing up there with a big crud-eating grin on his face.
“We’re going to try and convict a mugger today,” Rourke announced to the assembled kids. “We’re going to convict him because we’ve finally got enough students who’ll identify him.” He paused and then swiveled his head around the classroom, looking. His eyes stopped on Carlton where he sat up front. Rourke stared at him levelly and then asked, “What do you think of that, Carlton?”
“Sounds like a good idea, teach,” Carlton answered, smiling. “If you can do it.”
“I can do it, Carlton,” Rourke answered. “You can damn well bet on that.”
“Sure,” Carlton said. He smiled and turned his head to look at the other boys. “Let’s get on with the trial, okay?”
“Artie,” Dave said, “can’t we let this go? I had a lesson all planned out.”
“You can use it tomorrow,” Rourke said. “The people call on their first witness: Peter Donato.”
A lanky boy whom Dave had seen around the school rose from his seat, grinning awkwardly. He shoved a lock of black hair off his forehead, and then began walking toward the front of the room, glancing once at Carlton and then turning his head away. Rourke pulled the chair from behind Dave’s desk and offered it to Donato. Donato nodded and then sat nervously, apparently unsure of what to do with his hands.
“Just relax, Donato,” Rourke said. “Just take it easy.”
Donato nodded, looking out at the other boys, his eyes straying back to Carlton again. Carlton was sitting forward in his seat, the smile still on his face.
“Your name is Peter Donato?” Rourke asked.
“Yes, sir,” Donato said.
“Your official class?”
Donato paused. “Uh, sixty-one, Mr. Rourke.”
“Do you want to tell us what happened last week, Donato? Do you want to tell the court about it, just the way you told it to me?”
“Sure,” Donato said uneasily. He wet his lips and looked at Carlton again.
“Go on,” Rourke said.
Dave watched the boy, and when he saw his eyes on Carlton, he shifted his own gaze there. Carlton seemed to be enjoying all this. But Carlton had been a troublemaker from go, and so he’d naturally enjoy anything that interrupted a normal lesson. Dave sighed heavily.