That these parlor games were taken seriously by some people was an inexplicable but inexorable fact of life in the twentieth century. Edel had yukked his way through scholarships, college admissions, faculty appointment and promotions and had never thought the examination worse than a bad cold. Before maturity set in, in the frat house, they had eased his qualms about psychometric testing with the ancient gag “You ain’t a man until you’ve had it three times.”
Brave of him, pretty brave at that, to back up Fuqua—if Roland could find six others.
Roland came to him at four o’clock to say he had not even found one other. “I don’t suppose— No. I’m not asking you to, Dave. Two—it wouldn’t be any good.”
He went into the principal’s office.
The next day a bright young substitute was teaching biology in his place and his student advisees had been parceled out among other teachers. Mr. Edel found that young Foster had now become his charge.
The seventy-two pupils in his English 114 class sat fascinated and watched the television screen. Dr. Henley Ragen was teaching them Macbeth, was teaching about nine hundred English 114 classes throughout the state Macbeth, and making them like it. The classroom rapport was thick enough to cut and spread with a shingle. The man’s good, Edel thought, but that good? How
much is feedback from their knowing he’s famous for his rapport, how much is awe of his stupendous salary, still nowhere equal to nine hundred teachers’ salaries?
Dr. Henley Ragen, el magnifico, portentously turned a page; there was grim poetry in the gesture. He transfixed the classroom (nine hundred classrooms) with Those Eyes. Abruptly he became Macbeth at the Banquet prepar’d. With nervous hilarity he shouted at his guests, “You know your own degrees; sit down! At first and last, the hearty welcome!” Stockstill at a lectern he darted around the table, bluffly rallying the company, slipped off to chat, grimly merry, with the First Murtherer at the door, returned to the banquet, stood in chilled horror at the Ghost in the chair, croaked, “The table’s full.”
Mr. Edel studied the faces of his seventy-two English i i4ers. They were in hypnotic states of varying depths, except Foster. The Fireball was listening and learning, his good mind giving as well as taking. The intelligent face was alive, the jaw firm, and around him eyes were dull and jaws went slack. Foster could speak and write an English sentence, which perhaps was the great distinguishing mark between him and the rest of English 114. Blurted fragments of thought came from them, and the thoughts were cliches a hundred times out of a hundred.
Dr. Henley Ragen growled at them, “We are yet but young in deed . . .” and his eyes said the rest, promising horrors to come. He snapped the book shut like a pistol’s bang; the i i4ers popped out of their trances into dazed attentiveness. “Notebooks!” said Ragen (qua Ragen) and, seventy-two gunfighters quick on the draw, they snapped out books and poised their pens. Ragen spoke for ten minutes about the scene; every so often Those Eyes and an intensification of That Voice cued them to write a word or a phrase, almost without glancing at the paper. (Later each would look at his notes and not be surprised to find them lucid, orderly, even masterful summations of the brief lecture.)
As Dr. Henley Ragen bluffly delivered a sort of benediction from the altar of learning, Mr. Edel thought, Well, they’ve got the Banquet Scene now; they’ll own it forever. The way they own the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, the “Ode to the West Wind,” Arroiusmith. A good deal better than nothing; pauca sed matura. Or so he supposed.
That afternoon from three to five Mr. Edel was available to his advisees. It was a period usually devoted to catching up on his paperwork; beyond making out the students’ assignment schedule, a task traditionally considered beyond the capacity of the young, he had done no advising in years. And Foster appeared.
His handshake was manly, his grin was modest but compelling. He got to the point. “Mr. Edel, do you think I could swing an Enrichment Project in English?”