A Fistful of Fig Newtons (27 page)

Don’t call on me, Don’t call on me, Don’t call on me …

That night I ate my meatloaf and red cabbage in sober silence as the family yapped on, still living back in the days when I was known to all of them as the smartest little son of a bitch to ever set foot on Cleveland Street.

“Boy, look at the stuff kids study these days,” the old man said with wonder as he hefted my algebra textbook in his bowling hand and riffled through the pages.

“What’s all this X and Y stuff?” he asked.

“Yeah, well, it ain’t much,” I muttered as coolly as I could, trying to recapture some of the old élan.

“Whaddaya mean, ain’t much?” His eyes glowed with pride at the idea that his kid had mastered algebra in only one day.

“Abstract mathematics, that’s all it is.”

The old man knew he’d been totally outclassed. Even my mother stopped stirring the gravy for a few seconds. My kid brother continued to pound away at the little bbs of Ovaltine that floated around on the top of his milk.

That night sleep did not come easily. In fact, it was only the first of many storm-tossed nights to come as, algebra class by algebra class, my terror grew. All my other subjects–history, English, social studies–were a total breeze. My years of experience in fakery came into full flower. In social studies, for example, the more you hoked it up, the better the grades. On those rare occasions when asked a question, I would stand slowly, with an open yet troubled look playing over my thoughtful countenance.

“Mr. Harris, sir,” I would drawl hesitantly, as though attempting to unravel the perplexity of the ages, “I guess it depends on how you view it–objectively, which, naturally, is too simple, or
subjectively, in which case many factors such as a changing environment must be taken into consideration, and …” I would trail off.

Mr. Harris, with a snort of pleasure, would bellow: “RIGHT! There are many diverse elements, which …” After which he was good for at least a forty-minute solo.

History was more of the same, and English was almost embarrassingly easy as, day after day, Miss McCullough preened and congratulated herself before our class. All she needed was a little ass-kissing and there was no limit to her applause. I often felt she regretted that an A+ was the highest grade she could hand out to one who loved her as sincerely and selflessly as I did.

Every morning at eight-thirty-five, however, was another story. I marched with leaden feet and quaking bowels into Mr. Pittinger’s torture chamber. By the sixth week I knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that after all these years of dodging and grinning, I was going to fail. Fail! No B, no gentleman’s C–Fail. F. The big one: my own Scarlet Letter. Branded on my forehead–F, for Fuckup.

There was no question whatever. True, Pittinger had not yet been able to catch me out in the open, since I was using every trick of the trade. But I knew that one day, inevitably, the icy hand of truth would rip off my shoddy façade and expose me for all the world to see.

Pittinger was of the new school, meaning he believed that kids, theoretically motivated by an insatiable thirst for knowledge, would devour algebra in large chunks, making the final examination only a formality. He graded on performance in class and total grasp of the subject, capped off at the end of the term with an exam of brain-crushing difficulty from which he had the option of excusing those who rated A+ on classroom performance. Since I had no classroom performance, my doom was sealed.

Schwartz, too, had noticeably shrunken. Even fat Helen had developed deep hollows under her eyes, while Chester had almost completely disappeared. And Zynzmeister had taken to nibbling Communion wafers in class.

Christmas came and went in tortured gaiety. My kid brother played happily with his Terry and the Pirates Dragon Lady Detector as I looked on with the sad indulgence of a withered old man whose youth had passed. As for my own presents, what good did it do to have a new first baseman’s mitt when my life was over? How innocent they are, I thought as I watched my family trim the tree and scurry about wrapping packages. Before long, they will know. They will loathe me. I will be driven from this warm circle. It was about this time that I began to fear–or perhaps hope–that I would never live to be twenty-one, that I would die of some exotic debilitating disease. Then they’d be sorry. This fantasy alternated with an even better fantasy that if I did reach twenty-one, I would be blind and hobble about with a white cane. Then they’d really be sorry.

Not that I’d given up without a struggle. For weeks, in the privacy of my cell at home, safe from prying eyes, I continued trying to actually learn something about algebra. After a brief mental pep rally–This is simple. If Esther Jane Alberry can understand it, any fool can do it. All you gotta do is think. THINK! Reason it out!–I would sit down and open my textbook. Within minutes, I would break out in a clammy sweat and sink into a funk of nonunderstanding, a state so naked in its despair and self-contempt that it was soon replaced by a mood of defiant truculence. Schwartz and I took to laughing contemptuously at those boobs and brown-noses up front who took it all so seriously.

The first hints of spring began to appear. Birds twittered, buds unfurled. But men on death row are impervious to such intimations of life quickening and reborn. The only sign of the new season that I noticed was Mr. Pittinger changing from a heavy scratchy black suit into a lighter-weight scratchy black suit.

“Well, it won’t be long. You gonna get a job this summer?” my old man asked me one day as he bent over the hood of the Olds, giving the fourth-hand paint job its ritual spring coat of Simoniz.

“Maybe. I dunno,” I muttered. It wouldn’t be long, indeed. Then he’d know. Everybody would know that I knew less about
algebra than Ralph, Mrs. Gammie’s big Airedale, who liked to pee on my mother’s irises.

Mr. Pittinger had informed us that the final exam, covering a year’s work in algebra, would be given on Friday of the following week. One more week of stardom on Cleveland Street. Ever since my devastating rejoinder at the dinner table about abstract mathematics, my stock had been the hottest in the neighborhood. My opinions were solicited on financial matters, world affairs, even the infield problems of the Chicago White Sox. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Even Ralph would have more respect than I deserved. At least he didn’t pretend to be anything but what he was–a copious and talented pee-er.

Wednesday, two days before the end, arrived like any other spring day. A faint breeze drifted from the south, bringing with it hints of long summer afternoons to come, of swung bats, of nights in the lilac bushes. But not for such as me. I stumped into algebra class feeling distinctly like the last soul aboard the
Titanic
as she was about to plunge to the bottom. The smart-asses were already in their seats, laughing merrily, the goddamn A’s and B’s and C’s and even the M’s. I took my seat in the back, among the rest of the condemned. Schwartz sat down sullenly and began his usual moan. Helen Weathers squatted toadlike, drenched in sweat. The class began, Pittinger’s chalk squeaked, hands waved. The sun filtered in through the venetian blinds. A tennis ball pocked back and forth over a net somewhere. Faintly, the high clear voices of the girls’ glee club sang, “Can you bake a cherry pie, charming Billy?” Birds twittered.

My knot of fear, by now an old friend, sputtered in my gut. In the past week, it had grown to roughly the size of a two-dollar watermelon. True, I had avoided being called on even once the entire year, but it was a hollow victory and I knew it. Minute after minute inched slowly by as I ducked and dodged, Pittinger firing question after question at the class. Glancing at my Pluto watch, which I had been given for Christmas, I noted with deep relief that less than two minutes remained before the bell.

It was then that I made my fatal mistake, the mistake that all guerrilla fighters eventually make–I lost my concentration. For years, every fiber of my being, every instant in every class, had been directed solely at survival. On this fateful Wednesday, lulled by the sun, by the gentle sound of the tennis ball, by the steady drone of Pittinger’s voice, by the fact that there were just two minutes to go, my mind slowly drifted off into a golden haze. A tiny mote of dust floated down through a slanting ray of sunshine. I watched it in its slow, undulating flight, like some microscopic silver bird.

“You’re the apple of my eye, darling Billy … I can bake a cherry pie …”

A rich maple syrup warmth filled my being. Out of the faint distance, I heard a deadly rasp, the faint honking of disaster.

For a stunned split second, I thought I’d been jabbed with an electric cattle prod. Pittinger’s voice, loud and commanding, was pronouncing my name. He was calling on ME! Oh, my God! With a goddamn minute to go, he had nailed me. I heard Schwartz bleat a high, quavering cry, a primal scream. I knew what it meant: If they got him, the greatest master of them all, there’s no hope for ANY of us!

As I stood slowly at my seat, frantically bidding for time, I saw a great puddle forming around Helen Weathers. It wasn’t all sweat. Chester had sunk to the floor beneath his desk, and behind me Zynzmeister’s beads were clattering so loudly I could hardly hear his Hail Marys.

“Come to the board, please. Give us the value of C in this equation.”

In a stupor of wrenching fear, I felt my legs clumping up the aisle. On all sides the blank faces stared. At the board–totally unfamiliar territory to me–I stared at the first equation I had ever seen up close. It was well over a yard and a half long, lacerated by mysterious crooked lines and fractions in parentheses, with miniature twos and threes hovering above the whole thing like tiny barnacles. Xs and Ys were jumbled in crazy abandon. At the
very end of this unholy mess was a tiny equal sign. And on the other side of the equal sign was a zero. Zero! All this crap adds up to nothing! Jesus Christ! My mind reeled at the very sight of this barbed-wire entanglement of mysterious symbols.

Pittinger stood to one side, arms folded, wearing an expression that said, At last I’ve nailed the little bastard! He had been playing with me all the time. He knew!

I glanced back at the class. It was one of the truly educational moments of my life. The entire mob, including Schwartz, Chester, and even Zynzmeister, were grinning happily, licking their chops with joyous expectation of my imminent crucifixion. I learned then that when true disaster strikes, we have no friends. And there’s nothing a phony loves more in this world than to see another phony get what’s coming to him.

“The value of C, please,” rapped Pittinger.

The equation blurred before my eyes. The value of C. Where the hell was it? What did a C look like, anyway? Or an A or a B, for that matter. I had forgotten the alphabet.

“C, please.”

I spotted a single letter C buried deep in the writhing melange of Ys and Xs and umlauts and plus signs, brackets, and God knows what all. One tiny C. A torrent of sweat raged down my spinal column. My jockey shorts were soaked and sodden with the sweat and stink of execution. Being a true guerrilla from years of the alphabetical ghetto, I showed no outward sign of panic, my face stony; unyielding. You live by the gun, you die by the gun.

“C, please.” Pittinger moodily scratched at his granite chin with thumb and forefinger, his blue beard rasping nastily.

“Oh my darling Billy boy, you’re the apple of my eye …”

Somewhere birds twittered on, tennis racquet met tennis ball. My moment had finally arrived.

Now, I have to explain that for years I had been the leader of the atheistic free-thinkers of Warren G. Harding School, scoffers
all at the Sunday School miracles taught at the Presbyterian church; unbelievers.

That miracle stuff is for old ladies, all that walking on water and birds flying around with loaves of bread in their beaks. Who can believe that crap?

Now, I am not so sure. Ever since that day in Pittinger’s algebra class I have had an uneasy suspicion that maybe something mysterious is going on somewhere.

As I stood and stonily gazed at the enigmatic Egyptian hieroglyphics of that fateful equation, from somewhere, someplace beyond the blue horizon, it came to me, out of the mist. I heard my voice say clearly, firmly, with decision:

“C … is equal to three.”

Pittinger staggered back; his glasses jolted down to the tip of his nose.

“How the hell did you know?!” he bellowed hoarsely, his snap-on bow tie popping loose in the excitement.

The class was in an uproar. I caught a glimpse of Schwartz, his face pale with shock. I had caught one on the fat part of the bat. It was a true miracle. I had walked on water.

Instantly, the old instincts took over. In a cool, level voice I answered Pittinger’s rhetorical question.

“Sir, I used empirical means.”

He paled visibly and clung to the chalk trough for support. On cue, the bell rang out. The class was over. With a swiftness born of long experience, I was out of the room even before the echo of the bell had ceased. The guerrilla’s code is always hit and run. A legend had been born.

That afternoon, as I sauntered home from school, feeling at least twelve and a half feet tall, Schwartz skulked next to me, silent, moody, kicking at passing frogs. I rubbed salt deep into his wound and sprinkled a little pepper on for good measure. Across the street, admiring clusters of girls pointed out the Algebra King as he strolled by. I heard Eileen Akers’ silvery voice
clearly: “There he goes. He doesn’t say much in class, but when he does he makes it count.” I nodded coolly toward my fans. A ripple of applause went up. I autographed a few algebra books and walked on, tall and straight in the sun. Deep down I knew that this was but a fleeting moment of glory, that when I faced the blue book exam it would be all over, but I enjoyed it while I had it.

With the benign air of a baron bestowing largess upon a wretched serf, I offered to buy Schwartz a Fudgesicle at the Igloo. He refused with a snarl.

“Why, Schwartz, what seems to be troubling you?” I asked with irony, vigorously working the salt shaker.

“You phony son of a bitch. You know what you can do with your goddamn Fudgesicle.”