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by John Thornton
The duty of an educator is a varied thing, as often tedious as sublime. It is therefore with pleasure that I set to the task of evaluating young Brian O’Rourke, in this old man’s opinion the most promising sprout from this year’s Wellswaddle freshman crop.
Brian is, simply put, an educator’s dream: spirited yet solicitous, independent yet willing to accept a guiding hand. Above all, tractable. Although I myself do not hold with spurious Oriental theories of mysticism and anti-humanistic self-abnegation, the comparison with Dr. Suzuki’s ideal Zen disciple is deliciously inescapable. The picture of this bold fourteen-year-old trudging up a hill, hauling buckets of rice and water upon his willing shoulders, and ultimately collapsing in a senseless heap beyond all question of ego or value, and being grateful for the opportunity, suggests (at least to this fond heart) the vindication of the basic vision of a liberal secondary education.
Permit me to venture into anecdote. It was the annual arrival of the new Wellswaddle students, over which I make it a point to preside, my tweed jacket in place as ever, the same classic reds and ochres of the maple leaves carpeting the stairs. This September it was my privilege to accompany my daughter Sophia as she ascended for her first year to the halls of learning (her acceptance resulting from minimal intervention on my part, felicitously for such a staunch opponent of nepotism as myself). Atop her cherry-blond head perched a shapeless plum hat, ridiculous safety pins skewering it like a tacky pincushion (if you will excuse the pun). But despite her harlequin appearance, so great was my joy at her pedagogic ascendancy that I was able to restrict myself to merely a smirk and a wry remark at her deficiencies of sense both common and fashion. She means well; her intelligence merely follows a different, perhaps not wholly inferior path.
However, my criticisms were proved valid by the unfortunate interaction of hat and wind, which was able to overcome the prodigious weight of the safety pins and carry the plum-colored monstrosity to the bower of a far tree. Sophia responded with an expletive, against the use of which I philosophically cautioned her (to which she responded with another expletive, but all children are ungrateful.) We were prepared to give the chapeau up for lost, when one of the entering students, a slight youth (whose worn leather jacket and verdant hedgehog’s hair did little to endear him to me) dashed towards the offending maple, vaulted the landscaping, and began scaling the tree trunk. It was suggestive of a gibbon’s progress. Sophia responded with a third extraneous expletive, this one spoken in an aura of wonder. The lad plucked the hat from its lodging, descended the tree in a graceful shimmy, and presented the lost item to Sophia. As he pulled the ragged band around her brow his late-pubescent pipes sounded:
Shall I o’erleap the distance
And bring the fairest form into existence?
Goethe! The youth quoted Goethe! So startled was I by this flash of erudition that I restrained my reprimand for damaging school property and affronting the basic honor of my daughter to a mere fifteen minutes. The actual punishment I equally restricted to two weeks of detention and various menial chores, an odious sentence necessary to the smooth sailing of any educational “ship of state” (alas.) Yet Goethe! How was it possible not to warm to this scruffy lad? I even gave a cheery salute to his leather-clad back as he trudged off, late, to his first class-a wave which I am pleased to report was returned, although strangely not with the full complement of fingers.
But I seem to have been carried away by my anecdote. Scholastically, Brian has excelled, despite a certain rough manner and lack of respect for certain important canonical figures: “old pharts”, as I believe he calls them. But I am confident that time and a rigorous application of disciplinary measures will wear away these defects, and thus I cannot help but foresee a promising future for this remarkable young man.
Spring 1998
Although Brian’s efforts this term did not quite live up to the potential of his inaugural, on the whole I consider myself satisfied with his performance. Of course I have some misgivings about the eccentricities of his character. His tendency towards belligerence, for one, is problematic, particularly in the sanctified field of classroom debate. By this I do not mean to imply that independent thought is in any way discouraged in the hallowed halls of Wellswaddle, but when a student continues to insist on the validity of a fundamentally mistaken opinion, despite all attempts to make clear to him by means of argument and pathetic sarcasm the extent of his folly, and when said student responds to such efforts with odious comparisons of his educators to several of the Bard’s more priggish personages, as well as with simulated flatulence-well, this is the sort of lack of respect for one’s elders that gives one pause. Constant correction seems to have no effect: I personally guarantee that morning and afternoon detentions have prevented Brian from seeing the sunlight for a full month, and yet no change in his behavior has been noted. In fact, he has gotten worse.
So what could be the fundamental defect in the boy? Perhaps Brian’s problem is simply a youthful lack of judgment, a theory most strongly evidenced by the “relationship” he seems to have struck up with my foolhardy young daughter, about whose progress this term I can only muster a rueful shake of the head. Although the liaison between the two initially caused a great deal of confusion and, perhaps, undue vehemence on my part, young Brian was able to assuage my doubts with an admirable sobriety and restraint, considering the force of my questions to him on the matter (and also considering the position of my hand on his throat.) This composure of his in the face of a truly existential crisis allows me to remain hopeful on the subject of Brian’s basic character, as do the many entirely reasonable concessions the lad was willing to make apropos of my daughter’s maidenly virtues-concessions which could not but reflect well on the boy. So Brian’s academic progress perhaps retains its seeming luster, as long as he watches out for his progress on other fronts.
Fall 1998
How one can misjudge a person! The lamentable tendency of the fundamentally good (among whose number I must confess to counting myself) to avoid seeing the ebon flames of a truly black heart!
Here I speak again of Brian, the devil’s own Brian, who over the course of this term has seen fit to do to his academic reputation the thing that I caught him doing to my daughter only last night. In my library, no less! Leered down upon by a bust of Goethe! He’d spread her out across the desk, my priceless quill pens tucked behind his ears like some monstrous carrion bird, incessantly plunging its beak into the desiccated virtue of my progeny! The very walls shook with the violence of their damned congress!
That this formerly promising young student might serve as some sort of intellectual guide for the shameless dullard I call Sophia-this secret hope has proven tragically false. (Although it must be noted that the speech Sophia made following last night’s inopportune revelations, in which I was compared to certain of the latter Roman emperors, did not betray a mind wholly devoid of fertile intellectual soil.) Previous to this incident, I had been impressed by Brian’s improved restraint in classroom discussion. Often the boy went for days without saying anything at all, merely shaking his head listlessly in silent yet obvious regard for the insights of his classmates. But it now seems to me that this more socially acceptable response constituted nothing but an effort at fawning, currying my humble trust as a mere prelude to betrayal. O Judas!
It may be that my fellow educators are justified in their insistence that Brian’s performance will improve next term. It may also be that their refusal to admit my recommendations of expulsion and criminal proceedings is justified. For the sake of our nation’s posterity, I can only hope these beliefs are valid. In any case, the immediate removal of the distracting influence of my daughter to St. Mary Magdalene’s School for Wayward Girls will surely prove beneficial to us all.
Spring 1999
I will kill him. By all that is noble I swear I will kill him. I will tear the neon hairs from his scalp.
Sophia is gone. I haven’t seen her since she told me what the doctor said. I have no idea where she is, whether she’s alive-whether both of them are alive. Seven months now. How did he accomplish it, that potent imp? How did they outsmart me?
Or rather, how did you outsmart me, Brian? I know your parents have read none of these reports. I know you alone read these reports, these letters to you from me. You save these reports to laugh at me. You laugh at me; both of you laugh at me. We’ll see who laughs last, Brian. I know who wrote that obscene blank verse about me in the faculty bathroom. I see you every day, lurking in silence at the classroom’s rear, hatching your hellish plans. You want to strike at the very bedrock of a liberal education. You memorized Goethe in order to destroy him. I will break you, Brian. I will show you fear in a handful of chalk dust.
Fall 1999
Despite certain difficulties last term, I am pleased to report a general turnaround in Brian’s scholastic progress. His classroom presence remains as nebulous as ever, and the increasingly sardonic tone of many of his essays has given certain of my colleagues cause for alarm, and sent at least old Mrs. Genevieve home for the day following a hysterical fit of weeping at her presumably wasted years. But none of these facts ultimately matters. Nothing really matters.
If a certain ethical laissez-faire is one of the principles that Wellswaddle prides itself on instituting in its young charges, I can only report success with young Brian on this front. Following the incident by the bike racks with the two-by-four (a wallowing in momentary rage that I of course now profoundly regret), the lad could have easily had my job. I was so drunk, so old-two wobbling swings were all I could manage before the imp’s spry young forearms connected with my gut, bringing me to my knees in the mud.
The concessions I was forced to make in terms of future grading and future manner (no further line-by-line savagings of academic work, no further detentions, no “pissy looks”) were, although humiliating, evidence enough of a certain Napoleonic tactical cunning. Struggling to extricate myself from my unfortunately chthonic surroundings, I informed the boy of this observation. He wrinkled his be-ringed nose.
Can you really not think of anything without referring to the past?” he asked. “Are you really that much of a cunt?”
“The works of the past were more articulate than the screechings and yowlings of your Johnson Rottens and Sexual Pistols, young man,” I said, and not without dignity, despite my momentary slip back into the splattering mud. “Without classical standards we revert to grunting animals.”
He looked down at me. “Jesus,” he said. “Just don’t fail me. Or attack me again.” He lit an under aged cigarette and made a move to withdraw. “Think of the future, maybe,” he said.
This final remark he refused to elaborate on, even after I had once again seized and wielded (ineffectually) the two-by-four. Does he know of Sophia’s whereabouts? Does he still talk to her? Does he, perhaps, love her?
Have I gone wrong somewhere?
Spring 2000
The child is born by now. I’ve seen no pictures. I’ve heard nothing. Brian will have me fired if I ask him. Or he’ll leave her-if he’s with her-and I need him to be with her, if he ever was. I need my job. I need my routines. I sit in my study, surrounded by the past, and I go through my old photos, and I read my King Lear, and I cry. Maybe this is where the child (do I write “he” or “she”?) was conceived. This desk, these quills. Everything here remains as it was, save for the bust of Goethe. That I’ve smashed to pieces. Brian is probably doing fine.
Fall 2000
Last night I took an axe and walked down to the Wellswaddle campus. All the stars shone like a passage from Dante, and I thought of the second circle, of Paolo, of Francesca. Before the maple I stood, scouring the branches for the place where Sophia’s hat had perched those three years ago. The branches have grown since then; new bark filled in the scratches left by the safety pins. I chopped and chopped at the trunk until the whole thing crashed down, breaking the concrete of the sidewalk. I was twenty-five when it was an acorn; I had come fresh from graduate school, enthralled by Goethe and the vision of a liberal education. Perhaps they’ll fire me now; I don’t mind. I could never have scaled that tree.
Brian was in my office last week for a conference about his class work. For the past month his assignments have been late, and several times I’ve seen him asleep against the lockers. He’s been working, stocking shelves late at night. I told him that his proletarian dream was certainly very ambitious, but that schoolwork must come first. “More to life than education,” he said.
My next question came only after hesitation. “You’re supporting her, aren’t you?”
He looked me over: my aging bulk, the wine-colored wrinkles under my eyes.
“Yeah,” he said.
And I was on my knees, on the filthy floor of my office on my knees. “I implore you,” I said. “Tell me how she is. Tell me what she’s doing.”
His young eyes looked down at me from below the fringe of his neon hair. There was innocence in those eyes, fear even of this old man on his knees. His revelations were careful, deliberate. “We’re not together,” he said. “She’s with some other guy. Older-used to be her manager at the drive-thru counter. Seems decent enough.”
Older. “And you still help her,” I mused.
Brian shrugged. “It’s my kid too.”
An unfortunate utterance on his part, perhaps, because here I pleaded with him to let me speak to Sophia, to see the child. He got up from the chair quickly, hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, head shaking. No.
“It’s up to her,” he said. “I have to go.”
With the inertia of sixty-five years I nodded. Brian withdrew to the door. “At least tell me what the child is,” I said, just as he was about to step into the hallway. “A girl?”
It is a boy. His name is Johann Wolfgang.
Spring 2001
This is the final progress report I will ever write, both for Brian and for myself. My desk is empty now, all the books and quills in storage until they’re needed. Perhaps I’ll move to Germany. Perhaps I’ll move to Dr. Suzuki’s village in Japan.
All the graduating students are required to deliver a brief interpretation and analysis of their favorite text from their four years at Wellswaddle. The recital was well-attended: wide-eyed parents and neighbors filled the folding chairs of the auditorium, listening to their darlings perform. I listened to them mouth the words, some with empathy, some automata. What had we taught them, really? How many of them understood what they were saying to the fawning crowd below?
Brian chose King Lear, specifically the storm scene, the isolation and the ever-present Fool and all. The green hair was gone now, as were the rings-that loss and a sallow look were the gifts of the world outside, the gifts whose arrival I have always strived to delay, for a while. Brian tried not to look me in the eye too often, perhaps trying to preserve some kind of dignity. Dignity be damned-before he was halfway through I had to run to the bathroom, to shake, to hide.
Afterward, the students and their families milled around, spoke excitedly to one another. I searched for Brian across the wide room, but before I could go to congratulate him, time stopped. There was a woman there: hair shorter now, heavier with the passing of pregnancy, one hand in her pocket, tall, impossibly tall for what had started as such a little girl. She still had that same horrible plum hat on her head. In her arms lay the child.
Sophia saw me. She quickly whispered some word of goodbye to Brian, zipping up her thrift-store windbreaker. But she lingered a moment, nudged the baby’s chin. I kept my distance. Johann Wolfgang looked up, my old man’s wreck of a body filling his infant vision. His tiny hand freed itself from the blankets, waving at me. My grandson waved at me.
Let that be everything. Good luck to you, Brian. Good luck to all of you inept, impatient, impossible children. Best wishes on your graduation. I am getting out of the way.
About the Author
John Thornton is offering his short story, “A Progress Report from Wellswaddle Academy”, for a critique at One Real Story. He wrote the first draft of this story while attending the MFA program at Antioch University, LA. He has since finished his MFA, moved to Brooklyn, NY, and published two short stories, one in the Santa Clara Review and one in Northeast Illinois University’s Apocalypse Magazine. He is currently working on a novel, as well as plenty of short stories like this one and would like to know what you think.
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