Shadowland (4 page)

 
   None of the boys responded, and he gave a high-pitched whinnying snort down his long nose. This was obviously the characteristic sound of his anger.
'Got that?
Don't you donkeys have ears?'

 
   'Yes, sir.'

 
   'That was you, Flanagan?' ' .

 
   'Yes, sir.' The speaker was a wiry-looking boy whose red-blond hair was combed in the 'Princeton' manner, flat and loose over the skull. In the moving dim light from the candles, his face was attentive and friendly.

 
   'You coming out for JV football this fall?'

 
   'Yes, sir.'

 
   All the new boys felt a fresh nervousness.

 
   'Good. End?'

 
   'Yes, sir.'

 
   'Good. If you grow a foot, you'll be varsity material in two years. We could use a good end.' The teacher coughed into his hand, looked behind him down the black administration corridor, and grimaced. 'I should explain. This incredible . . .
situation
has come about because School Secretary can't find her key to this door.' He banged a heavy arched wooden door behind him with hisknuckles. 'Tony could open it if he were here, but he doesn't report until tomorrow. Be that as it may. We can all function by candlelight, I suppose.' He surveyed us as if it were a challenge, and I noticed that his head was as narrow as the side of a plank. His eyes were so close together they all but touched.

 
   'By the way, you'll all be on the junior-varsity football team,' he said. 'This is a small class-twenty. One of the smallest in the whole school. We need all of you out on the gridiron. Not all of you will make it through this . . .
crucial
year, but we have to try to make football players out of you somehow.'

 
   Some of the other teachers began to look restive, but he ignored them. 'Now, I know some of you boys from the good work you did with Coach Ellinghausen in the eighth grade, but some of you are new.
You.'
He pointed at a tall fat boy near me. 'Your name.'

 
   'Dave Brick.'

 
   'Dave Brick,
what?'

 
   'Sir.'

 
   'You look like a center to me.'

 
   Brick showed consternation, but nodded his head.

 
   'You.' He pointed at a small olive-skinned boy with dark liquid eyes.

 
   The boy squeaked.

 
   'Name.'

 
   'Nightingale, sir.'

 
   'We'll have to put some meat on you, won't we, Nightingale?'

 
   Nightingale nodded, and I could see his legs trembling in his trousers.

 
   'Speak in sentences, boy.
Yes, sir.
That is a sentence. A nod is not a sentence.'

 
   'Yes, sir.'

 
   'Tackle?'

 
   'I guess so, sir.'

 
   The teacher snorted, surveyed us all again. The waxy smell from the candles was beginning to build up, hot and greasy, in the corridor. Suddenly he snaked out one thick hand and grabbed Dave Brick's hair, which was combed into two small curling waves meeting in the center of his forehead.
'Brick! Cut that disgusting hair! Or I'll do it for you!'

 
   Brick quailed and jerked back his head. His throat convulsed, and I thought he was choking back vomit.

 
   The narrow-faced man snapped his hand back and wiped it on his baggy trousers. 'School Secretary is sorting out some papers you will need, forms for you to fill out and things like that, but since we . . .
seem
to have some time, I'll introduce you to the masters who are here today. I am Mr. Ridpath. My subject is world history. I am also the football coach. I will not have any of you in class for two years, but I will see you on the field. Now.' He took a step to the side and turned so that his face was in darkness. Oily tendrils of hair above his ears shone in the candlelight. 'These men are most of the masters you'll have this year. You will have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Thorpe, your Latin master, the day after tomorrow. Latin is a compulsory subject. Like football. Like English. Like Mathematics. Mr. Thorpe is as tough as I am. He is a great teacher. He was a pilot in World War One. It is an
honor
to be in Mr. Thorpe's Latin I. Now, here is Mr. Weatherbee — he will be your Mathematics I teacher, and he is your form tutor. You can go to him with your problems. He comes to us from Harvard, so he probably won't listen to them.'

 
   A small man with horn-rimmed glasses and a rumpled jacket over shoulders set in a permanent slouch lifted his head and grinned at us.

 
   'Next to Mr. Weatherbee is Mr. Fitz-Hallan. He teaches English. Amherst.' A rather languid-looking man with a handsome boyish face lifted a hand in a half-wave. He had made the joke about efficiency, and he looked bored enough to fall asleep standing up.

 
   'Mr. Whipple, American history.' This was a rotund, bald, cherub-faced man in a stained blazer to which the school crest had been affixed with a safety pin. He put his hands together and shook them before his face. 'University of New Hampshire.'

 
   Mr. Ridpath glanced back down the black corridor now to his left, where a single dim light wavered behind flat glass. 'See if you can help her, hey?' Whipple/New Hampshire padded off into the dark. 'We'll have those papers in a minute. Okay. Talk among yourselves.'

 
   Of course none of us did, but just jittered in the dark corridor until Mr. Ridpath thought of something else tosay. 'Where are the two scholarship boys? Let's see some hands.'

 
   Chip Hogan and I raised our hands. Chip was already standing with Tom Flanagan and the others from the Junior School. Everybody looked curiously at the two of us. Compared to us, all the others, even Dave Brick, looked rich.

 
   'Good. Good. Call out your names.'

 
   We did.

 
   'You're the Hogan who ran seventy-five yards last year in the eighth-grade championship against St. Matthew's?'

 
   'Yeah,' Hogan said, but Mr. Ridpath did not seem to mind.

 
   'You two boys know the great opportunity you're getting?'

 
   We said 'Yes, sir' in unison.

 
   'All of you new boys?'

 
   There was a general sibilant mutter.

 
   'You'll have to work, you know. Work like you never have in your lives. We'll make you break your backs, and then we'll expect you to play harder than you ever have in your lives. And we'll make men out of you. Carson men. And that's something to be proud of.' He looked around scornfully. 'I don't think some of you are gonna cut the mustard. Wait till Mr. Thorpe gets his hands on you.'

 
   A large old woman in a brown cardigan shuffled out of the corridor, followed by Mr. Whipple, who carried a flashlight. She too wore rimless glasses, and toted a large bundle of papers sorted so that they were stacked crosswise, in different sections. 'Behind the duplicator, wouldn't you know? Frenchy never washes his cups, either. He couldn't put these on the counter like anyone else.' While she spoke, she dumped the stack of papers on the first desk. 'Help me distribute these — different piles on different desks.'

 
   The knot of teachers dissolved, each of the men picking up a separate stack of papers and moving to a different desk. Mr. Ridpath announced, 'Mrs. Olinger, school secretary,' in a parade-ground voice, and the old woman nodded, snatched her flashlight back from Mr. Whipple, and marched up the stairs into the light.

 
   'Single file,' Ridpath ordered, and we clumsily jostledinto each line and went down the desks, picking up sheets from each.

 
   A boy behind me mumbled something, and Mr. Ridpath bellowed, 'No pencil? No pencil? First day of school and you don't have a
pencil?
What's your name again, boy?'

 
   'Nightingale, sir.'

 
   'Nightingale,' Ridpath said scornfully. 'Where are you from, anyway? What sort of school did you go to before you came here?'

 
   'This sort of school, sir,' came Nightingale's girlish voice.

 
   
'What?'

 
   'Andover, sir. I was at Andover last year.'

 
   'I'll loan him a pen, sir,' said Tom Flanagan, and we passed down the line of desks without any more bellowing. At the far end of the corridor, we stood and waited in the darkness to be told what to do.

 
   'Upstairs, single line, library,' Ridpath said wearily.

 
3

 
We went, like Mrs. Olinger, up the stairs into sunlight, which fell and sparkled through the mullioned glass set beside the high, thick scarred front door. The light was already dim and gray up here, but across the hall was the library, which had rows of big windows set between bookshelves on either side. If the library had not been so naturally dark, it would have shone. Cordovan-colored wood and unjacketed spines of books blotted up the available light, and on normal schooldays the big chandeliers overhead burned whenever the library was in use. Without this light, the library was oddly tenebrous.

 
   Two rows of long flat desks, also of the cordovan-colored wood, filled the center of the front main section of the room, and we took our papers to them. Across the room ahead of us was a waist-high shelf of reference books behind which sat the librarian's desk and file cabinets in a kind of well with clear sight lines to all the tables. Mrs. Olinger watched us file into the library andtake our seats, standing beside a thin woman with tightly penned white hair and gold-rimmed glasses. She wore a black dress and a strand of pearls. The teachers came in last and sat all at one table behind us. They immediately began to mutter to each other.

 
   'Masters?' Mrs. Olinger queried, and the teachers quietened. One of them drummed a pencil in a triplet pattern, and continued to do so as long as we were in the library.

 
   'This is Mrs. Tute,' said Mrs. Olinger, and the thin woman wearing the pearls gave a nervous nod like a tremor of the head. 'Mrs. Tute is our librarian, and this is her domain. She will be present while you fill out the registration forms and digest some of the information on the other sheets, after which she will provide you with an orientation to the library. If you have any questions, raise your hand and one of the masters will help you.'