The Fall of the Year (17 page)

At exactly 7:30 by the courtroom clock, Bull walked up to the judge's dais and turned to face the class. “My name is Inspector P. W. Bull of the Northern Vermont District of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. This”—jerking his head at me, standing below the dais and in front of the defense table—“is Frank Bennett. In the unfortunate absence of Father Lecoeur, he'll be your instructor. At least until I can find someone better qualified.”

Just then a tall young man with long dark hair sauntered into the courtroom. The newcomer came down the center aisle, taking his own sweet time and grinning. He sat down four rows back.

It was Frenchy LaMott, who ran the slaughterhouse on the edge of the village.

“You're late,” Bull said. “This class started at seven-thirty.” Frenchy slouched back on the bench. In his heavy French Canadian accent he said, “I thought it started at eight.”

“You thought wrong,” Bull said.

I wasn't sure, but I thought Frenchy grinned at me.

“It's my understanding,” Bull continued, “that in the past the district immigration office has been lenient to the point of laxness. As a result of new laws and my appointment, that's going to change.”

Bull paused for this to sink in, then looked at Roy Quinn and Reverend Johnstone. “Would you gentlemen like to add anything?”

Roy cleared his throat. “On behalf of the town, I'd just like to say that it's an honor, as always, to have you aspiring citizens use the courthouse for your classes. All we ask is that you leave our building in the condition you found it.”

The minister took a step forward, held up his hand like a bishop, and intoned, “Our dear heavenly Father, we ask Thy blessings upon this most worthwhile enterprise and upon all of these aspiring citizens and their fine young instructor, Frank Bennett, and the fine village where we live. Amen.”

Roy Quinn and Reverend Johnstone hurried out of the courtroom as though eager to get away from the class. P. W. Bull, after one more look at the group, steered me down the aisle by my elbow. “I'd like a private word with you, Bennett.”

Near the door he stopped with his back to the class. In a lowered voice he said, “Look. You and I got off on the wrong foot. I'm prepared to forget about that and start with a clean slate. Here's my card. Don't hesitate to give me a holler if there's trouble of any kind.”

I ignored the card in Bull's hand. “I'm sure there won't be any trouble.”

Inspector P.W. Bull sighed. “Listen, Bennett. Don't get the wrong impression. I don't have a thing in the world against any of these people. But frankly”—he glanced over his shoulder, then swiveled his head back to me—“if half of them stick it out for the next three weeks and half of those who do pass the test, I'll be surprised. Nobody, least of all me, expects or even necessarily wants you to work miracles. Understand?”

Staring right into Bull's eyes, I said, loudly enough for the entire class to hear, “I understand that every single one of these students is going to pass that test and become a United States citizen.”

P. W. Bull gave me a profoundly skeptical look, as if we both knew better, then marched out the door.

 

“Well, folks, how many of you have ever done anything like this before?”

No hands went up.

“Me neither,” I said, hoping desperately to break the ice. “So we're all in the same boat.”

“You ask me, Bennett, it a goddamn leaky boat,” Frenchy LaMott piped up. “We don't pass, you in big trouble.”

I laughed, but the class looked even gloomier.

A small man with wispy gray hair and dark eyes turned around in his seat. It was Abel Feinstein, the village tailor. “Please,” he said. “Mr. French LaMott. Rule number one. Show respect to the teacher.”

“Thank you, Mr. Feinstein,” I said. I took a deep breath and plunged onward. “For any of you who don't know me, my name's Frank Bennett. I'm helping Father George this summer. And whatever our friend the inspector may think, I'm going to be your instructor for the next three weeks. One more thing. I meant what I said about everyone passing the test.”

On the tray of the portable blackboard were a pointer and several broken pieces of chalk, some white, some colored. I picked up a white stick and wrote my first and last name on the blackboard. “We'll be getting to know each other pretty well, so just call me Frank.”

Up shot the hand of Abel Feinstein. “Please,” he said again. “
Mr.
Frank Bennett. You are our teacher. Rule Number two. A teacher we must call mister.”

“Just Frank is fine, Mr. Feinstein.”

“Mr. Frank, then,” Abel Feinstein said.

“Okay,” I said, opening the folder that Father George had given me. “I'm going to hand out a sheet of one hundred questions to each one of you. We'll meet twice a week for the next three weeks to go over them. They deal with basic American history, the Constitution, and the way our government works. At the end of the class, you'll be asked these same questions. To become citizens, you need to get eighty-five percent on the test. Mr. Feinstein, would you please help me pass these out?

“The questions aren't hard,” I continued. “You'll have them down pat in a couple of weeks.”

Frenchy scowled at his sheet. “Don't count on it,” he muttered.

“Mr. Frank will teach, we will pass. Not to worry,” Abel Feinstein told the class as he returned the leftover question sheets to me. “Not to worry” was Abel's trademark and refrain, and he meant it. A fixture in Kingdom Common for years, Abel was a tireless local booster. He led the Fourth of July parade around the common with a flag as big as a horse blanket, belonged to the volunteer hook-and-ladder brigade, served faithfully on the village water board and library committee, organized charity drives as if his life depended on it. In addition to tailoring he repaired shoes, hung wallpaper, refinished furniture. Some villagers called him Jack, for jack of all trades, though this name he disliked. Most Commoners called him Mr. Feinstein. “Not to worry,” Mr. Feinstein repeated as he sat down.

But many of the other people in the room looked puzzled as they studied their question sheets. A few looked really scared. Probably I did myself. Still, I had to start somewhere.

“Question number one. What are the colors of the flag?”

A group of upturned blank faces.

“The colors of the flag?”

Mr. Feinstein put up his hand. He pointed apologetically at the limp flag behind the judge's bench. “Is red, white, blue?”

“Yes! Thank you, Mr. Feinstein.”

“One down, ninety-nine to go,” Frenchy said.

“Number two. How many stars on the flag?”

“Forty-eight?” Mr. Feinstein said after a moment.

Soon I found myself all but pleading with the class to help Abel answer the questions. Yet my impression, as I raced through the number of states in the union, the date of Independence Day, who elects the president, and how long he serves, was that most members of the class were only too glad to have Abel answer all the questions himself.

Finally it was nine-thirty. The local train that would take some of the students back to Memphremagog was due in at the station in ten minutes. Somehow, with the help of Abel Feinstein, I had managed to stumble through my first class.

Afterward Abel shook hands with me fervently. On his way out of the courtroom, his head bent over the question sheet, the tailor mumbled questions and answers fast to himself, like a man praying. I, for my part, fought off a strong impulse to collapse with my head on the defense table.

“Frank!”

It was Louvia, still seated in the last row of the courtroom. “Come back here. I have something to show you.”

The fortuneteller was impatiently swinging her feet back and forth an inch or two off the floor. In the bright globe lights her rouged cheeks glowed like fire. Her dark eyes shone like a cat's. “So,” she said. “How's your love life?”

“Good God, Louvia. We've been over all that before.”

“I wasn't born yesterday. You don't pull the wool over Louvia DeBanville's eyes that easily. I have my sources.”

Unaccountably, the thought of the blue-eyed baker's girl crossed my mind. But I said to Louvia, “Your sources know more than I do.”

With a knowing smile, she stalked out of the courtroom, down the stairs, and into the night.

 

“How'd it go, son?”

Father George was sitting at the bird's-eye maple table in the Big House kitchen, reading over his “Short History.”

“Great. I met an immigration officer who detests immigrants, was pretty much displaced by Abel Feinstein, got threatened by Frenchy LaMott, and called everything but a whoremaster by Louvia DeBanville.”

“Louvia's in your class?”

“Big as life. Or, in her case, little as life.”

Father George smiled. “So how do you like teaching? Apart from the minor rain delays you mentioned?”

“It's tiring.”

“It is. I guess doing it off and on for fifty years must be what tired me out.”

“You want a nightcap?”

“I want a lot of things,” Father George said cheerfully. “Youth. A sixteen-ounce porterhouse steak. An evening fishing the Broadhead River in Quebec. I'll settle for half a glass of warm milk with a dollop of blackberry brandy stirred in.”

I got myself a cold beer and sat down across from Father George at the table with the manuscript pages of the “Short History” spread out on it. Over our drinks we talked, as we had talked together in the Big House kitchen since I had learned to talk. Or, rather, Father George talked and I listened. He talked about baseball, about teaching in the one-room school in Lost Nation Hollow, about teaching and coaching at the Academy. He talked about the history of the bird's-eye table and about his own family history. Talking was one thing my father could still do without getting tired, and I never tired of listening to him.

Finally a lull settled over the conversation.

“What should I do with my class, Father G? Tonight was a disaster.”

He shrugged. “You'll figure it out, son. The same way I did fifty-some years ago when I stepped into that mountain schoolhouse and looked at twenty kids in eight different grades. Five of them couldn't read a word. It took me a while. But I figured it out. You will, too.”

 

“Look. Mr. Frank Bennett. Time flies!”

Mr. Feinstein was smiling and holding up, of all things, an hourglass. He set it on the corner of the defense table, where the entire class could watch the sand pour through. It was a cheap red plastic affair such as one might buy at a five-and-dime store or through a mail-order novelties catalogue. Perched there on the defense table like Exhibit A, it looked absurd. I wanted to tell Abel Feinstein to put the thing away, but I didn't know how.

“Sands of time are running,” Mr. Feinstein announced. “Please, Mr. Frank. Teach!”

With one eye on that infernal hourglass, I announced that we'd begin with a quick review of the first twenty questions, then tackle the next batch. I added that tonight I had decided to write the answers on the portable blackboard.

The review started with me asking the questions—Who was the first president? What is the date of Independence Day?—and writing down the answers the class members gave. Tonight I had also decided to direct questions specifically to a few other members of the class besides Mr. Feinstein, people who presumably would know the answers. Even so, they had to answer quickly to head off the indefatigable tailor.

What is the Constitution? Can the Constitution be changed? What do we call a change to the Constitution?

As I wrote the word “Amendment” on the board, Abel was on his feet again.

“Mr. Frank, no offense, please. But your writing is terrible. No one can read. Please, a favor. You ask the question, explain answer, teach. Abel will write for you.”

Abel Feinstein stepped forward and plucked the chalk out of my hand. “Next question,” he said.

I realized I was losing control of the class. Yet short of seizing Mr. Feinstein by the shoulders and shoving him back into his seat by main force, I didn't know how to get him to sit down. Besides, he was right. Even when I printed, my writing was almost indecipherable. But how would the class take this?

“Question twenty-two. Who wrote the Emancipation Proclamation?”

“Not to worry,” announced Mr. Feinstein, and before anyone could answer, he wrote “Abraham Lincoln” on the board in tall elegant script.

The man's earnestness and good will were inexorable. To Abel, learning was joyful, teaching nothing less than rapturous.

 

“Time flies,” Abel was saying, as he pointed at the hourglass. While we watched, the last grains of sand ran through the narrow neck. Sixty minutes had elapsed in what had seemed to me like fifteen.

Abel grabbed the glass and turned it upside down to start the second hour.

“How about a five-minute smoke break?” Frenchy said.

Abel shook his head vehemently. “Please,” he cried. “We must study, Mr. French. No break.”

“Let's vote about the break,” Louvia said. “The way people vote for their congressmen.”

“You bet you ass we vote,” Frenchy said. “Turn this goddamn outfit into a democracy. How many here in favor of a break?”

Two or three hands went up.

A triumphant expression appeared on Abel Feinstein's face. “How many vote straight through the break to keep on learning?” he asked.

A few more hands.

“Learners have,” he said. “Next question.”

 

“So?” Father George said as I came into the kitchen. When I went immediately to the refrigerator, he grinned. “I see.”

“On the positive side, nobody's dropped out,” I said, opening my beer. “On the other side of the ledger, Abel Feinstein's usurped my job. I don't know what to do about it.”