The speech clocked 2:59. It was masterly; none of the other impromptus heard that morning came close to it.
“And,” said Mr. Edel at lunch to his semi-crony Dr. Fugua, biology, “between classes I riffled through the grade cards again and found I’d marked him F. Of course I changed it to A. The question is, why?”
“Because you’d made a mistake,” said Fuqua absently. Something was on his mind, thought Edel.
“No, no. Why did I make the mistake?”
“Well, Fured, in The Psychology of Everyday—”
“Roland, please, I know all that. Assume I do. Why do I unconsciously dislike Foster? I should get down on my knees and thank God for Foster.”
Fugua shook his head and began to pay attention. “Foster?” he said. “You don’t know the half of it. I’m his faculty adviser. Quite a boy, Foster.”
“To me just a name, a face, a good recitation every time. You know: seventy-five to a class. What’s he up to here at dear old Tricky Dicky?”
“Watch the funny jokes, Edel,” said Fuqua, alarmed.
“Sorry. It slipped out. But Foster?”
“Well, he’s taking an inhuman pre-engineering schedule. Carrying it with ease. Going out for all the extracurricular stuff the law allows. R.O.T.C. Drill Team, Boxing Squad, Math Club, and there I had to draw the line. He wanted on the Debating Team too. I’ve seen him upset just once. He came to me last year when the school dentist wanted to pull a bad wisdom tooth he had. He made me make the dentist wait until he had a chance to check the dental requirements of the Air Force Academy. They allow four extractions, so he let the dentist yank it. Fly boy. Off we go into the whatsit. He wants it bad.”
“I see. Just a boy with motivation. How long since you’ve seen one, Roland?”
Dr. Fuqua leaned forward, his voice low and urgent. “To hell with Foster, Dave. I’m in trouble. Will you help me?”
“Why, of course, Roland. How much do you need?” Mr. Edel was a bachelor and had found one of the minor joys of that state to be “tiding over” his familied friends.
“Not that kind of trouble, Dave. Not yet. They’re sharpening the ax for me. I get a hearing this afternoon.”
“Good God! What are you supposed to have done?”
“Everything. Nothing. It’s one of those ‘best interests’ things. Am I taking the Spiritual-Values Directive seriously enough? Am I thinking about patting any adolescent fannies? Exactly why am I in the lowest quarter for my seniority group with respect to voluntary hours of refresher summer courses? Am I happy here?”
Edel said, “These things always start somewhere. Who’s out to get you?”
Fuqua took a deep breath and said in a surprisingly small voice, “Me, I suppose.”
“Oh?”
Then it came out with a rush. “It was the semester psycho-metrics. I’d been up all night almost, righting with Beth. She does not understand how to handle a fifteen-year-old boy—never mind. I felt sardonic, so I did something sardonic. And stupid. Don’t ever get to feeling sardonic, Dave. I took the psychometric and I checked their little boxes and I told the goddamned truth right down the line. I checked them where I felt like checking them and not where a prudent biology teacher ought to check them.”
“You’re dead,” Mr. Edel said after a pause.
“I thought I could get a bunch of the teachers to say they lie their way through the psychometrics. Start a real stink.”
“I’d make a poor ditch digger, Roland, but—if you can get nine others, I’ll speak up. No, make that six others. I don’t think they could ignore eight of us.”
“You’re a good man,” Dr. Fuqua said. “I’ll let you know. There’s old McGivern—near retirement. I want to try him.” He gulped his coffee and headed across the cafeteria.
Edel sat there, mildly thunderstruck at Fuqua’s folly and his
own daring. Fuqua had told them the kind of bird he was by checking “Yes” or “No” on the silly-clever statements. He had told them that he liked a drink, that he thought most people were stupider than he, that he talked without thinking first, that he ate too much, that he was lazy, that he had an eye for a pretty ankle —that he was a human being not much better or worse than any other human being. But that wasn’t the way to do it, and damned well Fuqua had known it. You simply told yourself firmly, for the duration of the test, “/ am a yuk. I have never had an independent thought in my life; independent thinking scares me. I am utterly monogamous and heterosexual. I go bowling with the boys. Television is the greatest of the art forms. I believe in installment purchasing. I am a yuk.”