No hands went up.
Mr Ricker nodded. Rather grimly, it seemed to Pete. ‘Time has decreed that Mr Greene is not-stupid while Mr Maugham is … well, not exactly stupid but forgettable. He wrote some very fine novels, in my opinion – The Moon and Sixpence is remarkable, my young ladies and gentlemen, remarkable – and he also wrote a great deal of excellent short fiction, but none is included in your textbook.
‘Shall I weep over this? Shall I rage, and shake my fists, and proclaim injustice? No. I will not. Such culling is a natural process. It will occur for you, young ladies and gentlemen, although I will be in your rearview mirror by the time it happens. Shall I tell you how it happens? You will read something – perhaps “Dulce et Decorum Est,” by Wilfred Owen. Shall we use that as an example? Why not?’
Then, in a deeper voice that sent chills up Pete’s back and tightened his throat, Mr Ricker cried: ‘“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge …” And so on. Cetra-cetra. Some of you will say, This is stupid. Will I break my promise not to argue the point, even though I consider Mr Owen’s poems the greatest to come out of World War I? No! It’s just my opinion, you see, and opinions are like assholes: everybody has one.’
They all roared at that, young ladies and gentlemen alike.
Mr Ricker drew himself up. ‘I may give some of you detentions if you disrupt my class, I have no problem with imposing discipline, but never will I disrespect your opinion. And yet! And yet!’
Up went the finger.
‘Time will pass! Tempus will fugit! Owen’s poem may fall away from your mind, in which case your verdict of is-stupid will have turned out to be correct. For you, at least. But for some of you it will recur. And recur. And recur. Each time it does, the steady march of your maturity will deepen its resonance. Each time that poem steals back into your mind, it will seem a little less stupid and a little more vital. A little more important. Until it shines, young ladies and gentlemen. Until it shines. Thus endeth my opening day peroration, and I ask you to turn to page sixteen in that most excellent tome, Language and Literature.’
One of the stories Mr Ricker assigned that year was ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner,’ by D.H. Lawrence, and sure enough, many of Mr Ricker’s young ladies and gentlemen (including Gloria Moore, of whom Pete was growing tired, in spite of her really excellent breasts) considered it stupid. Pete did not, in large part because events in his life had already caused him to mature beyond his years. As 2013 gave way to 2014 – the year of the famed Polar Vortex, when furnaces all over the upper Midwest went into maximum overdrive, burning money by the bale – that story recurred to him often, and its resonance continued to deepen. And recur.
The family in it seemed to have everything, but they didn’t; there was never quite enough, and the hero of the story, a young boy named Paul, always heard the house whispering, ‘There must be more money! There must be more money!’ Pete Saubers guessed that there were kids who considered that stupid. They were the lucky ones who had never been forced to listen to nightly arkie-barkies about which bills to pay. Or the price of cigarettes.
The young protagonist in the Lawrence story discovered a supernatural way to make money. By riding his toy rocking-horse to the make-believe land of luck, Paul could pick horse-race winners in the real world. He made thousands of dollars, and still the house whispered, ‘There must be more money!’
After one final epic ride on the rocking-horse – and one final big-money pick – Paul dropped dead of a brain hemorrhage or something. Pete didn’t have so much as a headache after finding the buried trunk, but it was still his rocking-horse, wasn’t it? Yes. His very own rocking-horse. But by 2013, the year he met Mr Ricker, the rocking-horse was slowing down. The trunk-money had almost run out.