All-American (7 page)

Wait a minute. Hold on now. This was too much for Ronald. “You mean to say if Ned LeRoy was a... was a great first baseman like, well, like Hank Greenberg, he couldn’t make the Tigers?”

He laughed, not a happy laugh either. “Why, no; ’course not, Ronald. Name me one Negro ballplayer, one.”

“H’m, now, that pitcher, that one, you know...”

“Satchel Paige. Sure. He’s maybe the best pitcher in all baseball. Only he isn’t in the big leagues. Say! Do you know what league he’s in? I’ll tell you. He’s in our league. And now you’re in our league, too, and you don’t like it. You don’t even understand it the way we do because we were brought up in this league. We’re on to their curves.”

“Whose curves?”

“The other guys.” There was hardness in his voice. “The guys who get the jobs, the scholarships, the places on the Yale crew and the Tigers.

This wasn’t so good. He was going to Yale. Say, was that true? Was Yale like that? Were the rest of the colleges that sort of places? Gosh. Made you sort of think, all this Meyer was saying.

He looked at the figure stretched on the bed. That’s where he’ll be tonight when I’m doing my French and Latin in my own room, and tomorrow when I’m trying not to hear them in the hallways, and the next day, and the next. This is the guy they called a meatball, this is the boy they ganged up on. We ganged up on. There he is, lying with a queer leather collar up around his neck and a pained look in his eyes.

It made him angry all of a sudden. “But look here, Meyer, what do you do?” This was unjust. It was unfair. That Meyer couldn’t get a scholarship if he earned it, that Ned could never play first for the Detroit Tigers. Gosh, it was wrong, all wrong.

“What do we do? We don’t do anything. We learn to take it. That’s why you’re in our league now, Ronald, and that’s what you’ve got to do, learn to take it.”

Thank goodness he didn’t add, “and like it.” No one in his senses could do that. Meyer was right. At the Academy he hadn’t taken it; he hadn’t taken the silent treatment, the unfriendliness, and all the rest. He’d gotten up and walked out. Now he had to learn to take it.

Only if there was all this unfairness, all this injustice, why did older folks like teachers and the principal and the Duke talk about America? And democracy. And all that sort of thing. Why did they? Why?

“Look, Ronny, since this... since that game... since I got to seeing you so often, I can tell you things you maybe don’t know. Now take that trick Stacey pulled on you in the cafeteria the other day...”

“What! You mean to say he did that on purpose!” It was the kind of thing which could never happen in the Academy. Nobody there would think of humiliating another boy before the school. He saw suddenly that not all the meanness and cruelty was in the Academy, that it was here, too, right around him, a different kind perhaps; but there it was.

They looked at each other; the boy in bed amused, for the first time a sort of smile on the lips above the leather collar. And sitting at the foot the boy who had helped put him there, shocked and worried.

“Why, sure he did. But look, he’s a good guy, Stacey is. Yes, really. Only he thinks you aren’t one of us, understand. At heart he’s an ok guy.”

“Takes a funny way to show it,” remarked Ronald.

“Sure. That’s Stacey. He’ll ride you, but give him time. He’s not a bad guy. I know. He likes to make folks think he’s tough.”

“Oh! Is that his trouble?”

“Yeah. Now you’re in the same situation I was. He’ll ride you plenty, all he can. Tried to pull that stuff on me, and finally I told him, I said, ‘Looka here, Stacey, lay off me or I’ll poke you in the puss.’ I’m bigger’n he is, so he quit. Then we became friends, good friends, too. So’ll you.

“Maybe.” Ronald in his distress doubted it.

“Of course. Only you mustn’t let him get away with anything. Call him sometime and he’ll quit. He’s ok; I know you mightn’t think so after what he did up in that cafeteria, but he’s a good guy, honest he is. He thinks right, get me? Understand?”

In a way he did understand. It was hard to believe about a boy who’d stick his foot out in the cafeteria on a stranger; it was hard to believe about that fresh kid with straight red hair and the freckles and the queer clothes. But if he thought right, after all, that was what counted. Ronald felt he could trust Meyer Goldman. If Goldman said so, it must be so. Besides, many of them like Keith and Tommy wore the right clothes, shirts with collars that buttoned down and saddle shoes, only they didn’t think right. They were nice guys, but they didn’t think right. That was what counted, and if Goldman said so, it must be so.

He went down the steps to the street, thinking hard. The picture ahead was not attractive. Ronald hated fights, scraps, brawls, especially when people were around. Well, I’m in their league now, Meyer’s and Ned LeRoy’s.

For the first time since arriving at Abraham Lincoln High he saw the funny side of the thing. You were the best back on the Academy team, and you ended up in the league with Meyer Goldman and Ned LeRoy. This he had hardly expected that morning up in Keith’s room on the Hill when he’d exploded out of Hargreaves, out of the Academy, out of everything he was used to and into a very different league.

Stacey leaned toward him. “Hey, Ronald, lemme have a look at your French paper, will ya?”

Ronald glanced up, uneasy. Mr. Robinson, the history teacher, was handing out corrected papers, with his back turned. So Ronny slipped his French lesson across, feeling uncomfortable. At the Academy this was never done, first because the teachers would catch you, second because they were there for help day and night, and third because as a rule every boy came to the first period prepared. At Abraham Lincoln as a rule almost every boy came to the first period unprepared.

Mr. Robinson came down the aisle toward him, handing out papers and calling names. “Gracie... John... Rosie... Bob... Sue... Paul... Barbara... Susie... Donald.”

The first names jarred on Ronny’s ears. At the Academy the masters called you by your last name: Perry, Davidson, Treadway, Rodman. Most teachers at Abraham Lincoln called you by your first name. He much preferred the Academy method.

Hang it, he always preferred the Academy method; he wished he didn’t but he did. Why was it always necessary to compare everything with the Academy? No matter what happened he invariably seemed to be thinking back to Academy days, not always with regret, either. Trying to stop it did no good. He must try harder, must end this business somehow.

Then Mr. Robinson placed his own paper before him. Turning it over he saw the mark on the back—B plus. Stacey, across the aisle, leaned across, took it from his desk, looked at the mark, and without saying a word but with an air of disgust which was plainly genuine, dropped it again. In some queer way Ronald felt ashamed of his paper. The teacher came toward them and slapped Stacey’s down. Ronald couldn’t help reading the large handwriting on the outside:

“This was stolen from the Encyclopedia.”

There it was. He was shocked. Cheating, outright cheating, shocked him. He gasped. Stacey half-turned in his seat, looked over, glaring.

“Hey, what’s the idea, you looking at my paper, huh?”

Ronny was confused, feeling Stacey’s hostility and not for the first time. Painfully he realized the distance that separated him from that chattering roomful of boys and girls. To them he was a stranger; suspected by most, disliked by many. Look, he wanted to say, look, I don’t like the boys at the Academy; they were my friends, they aren’t anymore. I came down here to be one of you, to be friends with you, because I wanted to, of my own free will. But you...

They were laughing, paying no attention. He was still an outsider, that kid from the Academy, the football star who had beaten them last fall.

It was the football crowd he should have known, with whom ordinarily he would have been pals. Yet it was the football crowd who had never forgotten Meyer Goldman’s injury. In the front row sat Dave Mancini, one of the tackles, who had merely nodded once and paid no more attention. At the side was Mike Fronzak, the right tackle, who never seemed to see him. At his left was Ned LeRoy who hardly noticed his presence in the room.

LeRoy wore a badly fitting, greenish sweater with a checked shirt underneath. His short curly hair receded from his high forehead; his square black jaw stuck out prominently. For several days Ronald had wanted to talk to him, but LeRoy never gave him any chance. If they passed in the corridors, LeRoy was always looking the other way. Never since his earliest days at the Academy had Ronald felt so lonely. They didn’t give you the silent treatment here. They just never bothered about you. It was all impersonal. This place could be tough, too.

While the distribution of papers continued, there was a constant buzz and hum of conversation, a noise which would have meant a wholesale handing out of detentions at the Academy. However, no one seemed to mind and the teacher paid no attention. Once only did Mr. Robinson intervene.

“Aw, shut up,” remarked Stacey in low-toned conversation with a boy behind.

Mr. Robinson, standing nearby, heard the remark. “Be polite, Jim. Say, ‘Shut up, please!’” Stacey did not seem in the least bothered by this rebuke and continued his conversation.

Finally the papers were all distributed and the teacher made some comments on their English. The spelling, he announced, was bad. One thing the High School had in common with the Academy was bad spelling. Apparently every American boy and girl was a bad speller, and there wasn’t much you could do about it. The teacher read some of their worst blunders, making Ronald smile.

“Now here’s one word almost everybody slipped up on.” He read from a student’s paper in his hand. “‘The North denied the South the right to succeed.’” He chuckled. Ronald decided he liked this man. “I shouldn’t blame the Southerners for being annoyed at this. What did he mean, class? Yes, that’s it. Secede. How do you spell it?” Before Ronald thought, his hand was raised. Stacey turned with a sneer and he tried hastily to yank it down; but the teacher saw him. “Yes... Ronald... that’s right. S-e-c-e-d-e. Some of you had queer ideas about that word and it’s important. Here’s another strange sentence. ‘The farmers of this section were planting their opinions.’” The class roared.

He went on listing their mistakes, mistakes that Ronald found hard to understand. Simple things, such as the lack of margins at the top and sides of their papers. Sentences not punctuated. Most of these errors seemed elementary to Ronald. He lost interest and began looking around the room, at the huge class of girls and boys, at the words and problems written on the blackboard, at the notices stuck up on a smaller board in the rear of the room, at the Honor Roll of the class posted high above their heads. It contained four names.

“Marion Sackett

Rose Lake

Jeanette Calahan

Esther Neuman.”

Girls, all girls. That was the way it was in every room all over the school. The girls seemed to take all the honors everywhere. Why were girls like that? And why did they invariably giggle, why couldn’t they walk and talk together two minutes without giggling? In study periods—in the library—in the corridors—on the stairs between classes—in the cafeteria—giggle—giggle—giggle.

Yet not all were gigglers, either. There were several, quite noticeable in the room, who never giggled, who were sort of serious. Especially a tallish girl in the front of the room, a girl with blonde hair and red lips. In his first week at Abraham Lincoln Ronald had discovered that all the girls except the homely ones, who apparently didn’t care, put on makeup. This girl usually wore the same costume; a rose-colored sweater and skirt, effective with her hair. She also wore stockings and tan and white shoes. He glanced under the desks around the room, looking over the bare legs, fat legs, short legs, scrawny legs, ugly legs, lovely legs. Ronald suddenly decided he was in favor of stockings.

Yes, he was in favor of stockings. He looked again at her legs; they were long and slender. His eyes went up to the rose-colored sweater which plainly defined her pretty figure. Just at that moment she turned, caught him staring, and smiled. Yes, smiled distinctly. He glanced behind. No, it was plainly for him, that smile. Because at the desks in the rear heads were bent down over books or else turned toward the windows. His face grew quickly warm. He buried his own head in a book so no one would notice his feeling.

The bell rang. A boy was reciting but he was not even permitted to finish his sentence. This was hard for Ronald to understand. No matter whether a teacher or a student was speaking, the bell was always the signal for a turmoil of chair-scraping, book-thumping, and general clatter to begin immediately. Nobody ever waited for the speaker to finish. Some things about Abraham Lincoln High he knew he would eventually accept and find normal. This, never.

He lowered his head once more over a pile of books, his face crimson still. The boys and girls swept past and he hoped they wouldn’t look at him. He envied these boys their ability to talk to girls, to walk with girls, to stand around with girls naturally, never getting hot or red or embarrassed. At the Academy everyone got upset if they suddenly met a girl on Quad; everyone that is except the wolves. The wolves were on the lookout for girls all the time; they’d go downtown for a coke in the afternoon just to date the girls. Athletes weren’t wolves. If you played football you had no time for wolfing.

There was a faint smell of scent; pleasant, soft. She was standing beside him. Nice eyes, blue, large. Quite tall, and he liked tall girls. He rose. As he did, the pile of books on his desk slipped off and fell to the floor. She laughed and he had to laugh also.

“I’m Sandra Fuller. You don’t remember me, do you?”

From the door Stacey was looking back, shouting something over his shoulder, something that fortunately was lost in the noise. He mumbled a few words because he really didn’t remember; except vaguely that her face was a face he had seen before.

“I met you at the Junior Prom at the Academy last fall. Remember, I was with Eric Rodman.”

Remember! Why, of course he remembered; he remembered all right; he remembered a vision of white, a girl who had seemed even taller than this but no more attractive; he remembered a wonderful dancer, and most of all he remembered Eric’s sour grin as he kept cutting in.