Chatsworth removed his glasses and rubbed a hand across his face. ‘I love my boy, Mr.
Smith. I only want the best for him. Help us out a little if you can.’
‘I’ll try.’
Chatsworth put his glasses back on and picked up Johnny’s resume again. ‘You haven’t taught for a helluva long time. Didn’t agree with you?’
Here’ it comes, Johnny thought.
‘It agreed,’ he said, ‘but I was in an accident.’
Chatsworth’s eyes had gone to the scars on Johnny’s neck where the atrophied tendons had been partially repaired. ‘Car crash?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bad one?’
‘Yes.’
‘You seem fine now,’ Chatsworth said. He picked up the resume, slammed it into a drawer and, amazingly, that had been the end of the questions. So after five years Johnny was teaching again, although his student load was only one.
2.
‘”As for me, who had i … indirectly br . .~. brog … brought his death upon him, he took my hand with a weak grip and smiled his for… forgiveness up to me. It was a hard moment, and I went away feeling that I had done more harm in the world than I could ever ma make up to it.”,
Chuck snapped the book closed. ‘There. Last one. in the pool’s a green banana.’
‘Hold it a minute, Chuck.’
‘Ahhhhhhh.. .’ Chuck sat down again, heavily, his face composing itself into what Johnny already thought of as his now the questions expression. Long-suffering good humor predominated, but beneath it he could sometimes see another Chuck: sullen, worried, and scared. Plenty scared. Because it was a reader’s world, the unlettered of America were
dinosaurs lumbering down a blind alley, and Chuck was smart enough to know it. And he was plenty afraid of what might happen to him when he got back to school this fall.
‘Just a couple of questions, Chuck.’
‘Why bother? You know I won’t be able to answer them.’
‘Oh yes. This time you’ll be able to answer them all.’
‘I can never understand what I read, you ought to know that by now.’ Chuck looked morose and unhappy. ‘I don’t even know what you stick around for, unless it’s the chow.’
‘You’ll be able to answer these questions because they’re not about the book.’
Chuck glanced up. ‘Not about the book? Then why ask em? I thought…’
‘Just humour me, okay?’
Johnny’s heart was pounding hard, and he was not totally surprised to find that he was scared. He had been planning this for a long time, waiting for just the right confluence of circumstances. This was as close as he was ever going to get. Mrs. Chatsworth was not hovering around anxiously, making Chuck that much more nervous. None of his buddies were splashing around in the pool, making him feel self-conscious about reading aloud like a backward fourth grader. And most important, his father, the man Chuck wanted to please above all others in the world, was not here. He was in Boston at a New England Environmental Commission meeting on water pollution.
From Edward Stanney’s An Overview of Learning Disabilities:
‘The subject, Rupert J., was sitting in the’ third row of a movie theater. He was closest to the screen by more than six rows, and was the only one in a position to observe that a small fire had started in the accumulated litter on the’ floor. Ru pert J. stood up and cried
“F-F-F-F-F -” while the people’ behind him shouted for him to sit down and be quiet
.
‘”How did that make you feel?” l asked Rupert J
‘”I could never explain in a thousand years how it made me feel,” he answered. “J was scared, but even more than being scared, 7 was frustrated. I felt inadequate, not fit to be a member of the human race’. The stuttering always made me feel that way, but now I felt impotent, too.”
“‘Was there’ anything else?”
‘”Yes, I felt jealousy, because’ someone’ else would see’ the’ fire and you know -‘”Get the glory of reporting it?”
‘”Yes, that’s right. I saw the fire starting, I was the only one. And all I could say was F-F-F-F like a stupid broken record. Not fit to be a member of the human race’ describes it best.”