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witch. The time we tried to get some of them to testify that he was a neglected
child and should become a ward of the court, not a one would say a word
against her. She has them all terrified. After all, what would she do if he were
taken away from her? She's past cotton picking age. Keeley can do that much
and he actually supports her along with his ADC check from the Welfare. We
did manage to get that for him."
"So what can't be cured must be endured." Bennett felt a Friday yawn
coming on and stood up briskly. "This desk business. Let's go see it. I'm curious
about what makes him mark it all up. He hasn't done any carving on it, has
he?"
"No," said Miss Amberly, leading the way out of the office. "No. All he seems
to do is draw ink lines all over it, and stick blobs of stuff around. It seems
almost to be a fetish or a compulsion of some kind. It's only developed over the
last two or three years. It isn't that he likes art. He doesn't like anything."
"Isn't there a subject he's responded to at all? If we could get a wedge in
anywhere . . ." said Bennett as they rounded the deserted corner of the
building.
"No. Well, at the beginning of school, he actually paid attention during
science period when we were having the Solar System." Miss Amberly half
skipped, trying to match her steps with his strides. "The first day or so he leafed
through that section a dozen times a day. Just looking, I guess, because
apparently nothing sank in. On the test over the unit he filled in all the blanks
with baby and green cheese misspelled, of course."
They paused at the closed door of the classroom. "Here, I ll unlock it," said
Miss Amberly. She bent to the keyhole, put the key in, lifted hard on the knob
and turned the key. 'There's a trick to it. This new foundation is still settling."
They went into the classroom which seemed lonely and full of echoes with
no students in it. Bennett nodded approval of the plants on the window sills
and the neatness of the library table.
"I have him sitting clear in back, so he won't disrupt any more of the
children than absolutely necessary."
"Disrupt? Miss Amberly, just exactly what does he do? Poke, punch, talk,
tear up papers?"
Miss Amberly looked startled as she thought it over. "No. Between his wild
silent rages when he's practically impossible you know those, he spends most
of them sitting in the corner of your office he doesn't actually do anything out
of the way. At the very most he occasionally mutters to himself. He just sits
there, either with his elbows on the desk and both hands over his ears, or he
leans on one hand or the other and stares at nothing apparently bored to
death. Yet any child who sits near him, gets restless and talkative and kind of
well, what-does-it-matter-ish. won't work. They disturb others. They
They
create disturbances. They think that because Keeley gets along without doing
any work, that they can too. Why didn't they pass him on a long time ago and
get rid of him? He could stay in school a hundred years and never learn
anything." Her voice was bitter.
Bennett looked at Keeley's desk. The whole table was spiderwebbed with
lines drawn in a silvery ink that betrayed a sort of bas-relief to his inquiring
fingers. At irregular intervals, blobs of gum or wax or some such stuff was stuck,
mostly at junctions of lines. There were two circles on the desk, about
elbow-sized and spaced about right to accommodate two leaning elbows. Each
circle was a network of lines. Bennett traced with his finger two fine coppery
wires that were stuck to the side of the desk. Following them down into the
desk drawer, he rummaged through an unsightly mass of papers and fished out
two little metallic disks, one on each wire.
"Why those must be what he was looking for when he was so worked up last
week," said Miss Amberly. "They look a little bit like a couple of bottle caps
stuck together, don't they?"
Bennett turned them over in his hands, then he ran his fingers over the
marked-up desk, noting that the lines ran together at the edge of the desk and
ended at the metal table support
Bennett laughed, "Looks like Keeley has been bitten by the radio bug. I'd
guess these for earphones." He tossed the disks in his hand. "And all these
mysterious lines are probably his interpretation of a schematic diagram. I
suppose he gets so bored doing nothing that he dreamed this little game up for
himself. Where did he get this ink, though? It's not school ink." He ran his
fingers over the raised lines again.
"I don't know. He brings it to school in a little pill bottle," said Miss Amberly.
"I tried to confiscate it when he started marking things up again, but he
seemed inclined to make an issue of it and it wasn't worth running the risk of
another of his wild ones. The janitor says he can't wash the stuff off and the
only time I've seen any rub off was when I wiped away the wet marks today."
Bennett examined the metal disks. "Let's try this out," he said, half joking.
He slid into the desk and leaned his elbows in the circles. He pressed the disks
to his ears. A look of astonishment flicked across his face.
"Hey! I hear something! Listen!"
He gestured Miss Amberly down to him and pressed the earphones to her
ears. She closed her eyes against his nearness and could hear nothing but the
tumultuous roar of her heart in her ears. She shook her head.
"I don't hear anything."
"Why sure! Some odd sort of . . ." He listened again. "Well, no. I guess you're
right," he said ruefully.
He put the earphones back in the desk.
"Harmless enough, I suppose. Let him have his radio if it gives him any
satisfaction. He certainly isn't getting any out of his schoolwork. This might be
a way to reach him though. Next week I ll check with a friend of mine and see if
I can get any equipment for Keeley. It might be an answer to our problem."
But next week Mr. Bennett had no time to do any checking with his friend.
The school found itself suddenly in the middle of a virus epidemic.
Monday he stared aghast at the attendance report. Tuesday he started
grimly down his substitute list. Wednesday he reached the bottom of it.
Thursday he groaned and taught a third grade himself. Friday he dragged
himself to the phone and told his secretary to carry on as best she could and
went shaking back to bed. He was cheered a little by the report that the third
grade teacher had returned, but he had a sick, sunken feeling inside
occasioned by the news that for the first time Miss Amberly was going to be
absent.
"But don't worry, Mr. Bennett," the secretary had said, "we have a good
substitute. A substitute. He just got here from back east and he hasn't
man
filed his certificate yet, but he came well recommended."
So Mr. Bennett pulled the covers up to his chin and wondered, quite
irrelevantly, if Miss Amberly had a sunken feeling too, because he was absent.
Miss Amberly's seventh grade buzzed and hummed when at eight-thirty
Miss Amberly was nowhere to be seen. When the nine o'clock bell pulled all the
students in from the playfield, they tumbled into their seats, eyes wide, as they
surveyed the substitute. Glory May took one look at the broad shoulders and
black hair and began to fish the bobby pins out of her curls that were supposed
to stay up until evening so they would be perfect for the date tonight with a
seventeen-year-old high school man. The other girls stared at him covertly from
behind books or openly with slack-jawed wonder.
The boys, with practiced eyes, looked him over and decided that even if old
lady Amberly was absent, they had better behave.
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