I stepped into the classroom and flipped the heavy black light switches, which, with an audible chunk and hum, caused the overheads to flare on, washing the room with a hard fluorescent light. A table and two dozen chairs with desktops sprang into view. Two whiteboards, a bookshelf half-filled with old paperback classics, and an enormous, ragged poster of Ernest Hemingway in profile, seated at his typewriter, completed the room.
I had just put my briefcase down on the desk at the front of the room and realized I didn’t have a whiteboard eraser, when there was a knock on the door and Sam Hodges looked in. He was dressed to the nines: blue shirt with cuff links, paisley tie knotted to perfection, blue blazer, and dress khakis.
“Hail, fellow, well met,” he said, a slight smile at the corners of his mouth.
I raised a hand in welcome. “Ave! Morituri te salutamus,” I said, quoting the ancient greeting of gladiators about to enter the arena. Hail! Those of us who are about to die salute you. As soon as I spoke the words, I regretted them. Not because of the content, but because Latin had been Fritz’s specialty. I thought of the photos in the hall upstairs, all the dead young men, and a great sadness fisted me just below the heart.
Sam laughed, unaware of my discomfort. “Aut disce aut discede,” he replied.
I smiled, feebly. “I used up most of my Latin with the first one.”
“Means ‘Either learn or leave.’ ”
“Fitting. You always up this early?”
“I get up around six every morning to grade and do paperwork.”
“Sounds fun.” I picked up a pen and tapped it on the surface of the table. “You ready for today?”
Sam crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. “You know, I’ve been doing this for thirty years, and I still get a little nervous on the first day.”
“That’s reassuring. I’m still trying to figure out what to say to them.”
“Well, you could be original and say, ‘Welcome to English Ten. I’m Mr. Glass.’ ”
I shook my head. “Too boring. Ought to be a bit more dramatic.”
“Says the novelist.”
I grinned. “Can you tell me where I can find an eraser?”
“I’ll bring one down after breakfast.” He started to step out the door and then looked back. “Break a leg,” he said, and gave me a thumbs-up sign before leaving.
I sat in my swivel chair and propped my feet up on my desk, surveying the rows of empty chairs. “Don’t screw this up,” I said to the empty room.
MY FIRST-PERIOD CLASS CONSISTED of fifteen fourth formers who sat in a sort of numb acceptance, as if they were on Novocain. Although it was early, their blank looks were largely an act. Before they unmasked themselves, they wanted to see whether I was going to be easy or hard, pleasant or difficult, forgiving or demanding. They were going to have to wait, because I hadn’t figured out what I was going to be yet.
“Welcome to English, gentlemen,” I said. All fifteen pairs of eyes turned dutifully toward me. I saw my advisee, Stephen Watterson, sitting at the back of the room. He grinned at me, and I smiled back. “Good to see you all. Hope you had a good summer. My name is Matthias Glass. I graduated from Blackburne in 2001 and went to the University of Virginia and then to NYU for grad school. I figured you might want to know the new guy’s credentials before he tried to teach you something.”
“He wrote a book, too,” Stephen said approvingly. “A novel. My mom read it. It was about this reporter who gets kidnapped by a bunch of South American terrorists.”
“Cool,” said another student, a gangly kid with a halo of curly blond hair. “Was it like a fictional novel?”
“That would be the definition of a novel,” I said. “A long, fictitious prose narrative. Let that be the first literary term we learn.” I was bemused when most of the students dutifully opened their notebooks and began writing down the definition. Then I noticed Paul Simmons, the headmaster’s son, sitting in the back and looking dully at his desk. His notebook wasn’t open.
“Are we going to read your novel?” another student asked.
“No,” I said.
“What’s it called?” asked the kid with curly blond hair, whose name, according to my roster, was Russell Andrew Scarwood, but he went by Rusty.
“The Unforgiving,” I said.
Now a small assemblage of students spoke up.
“Are you famous?”
“Was it like a best seller?”
“Can we be in your next book?”
“Gentlemen,” I said, raising my hands. “Here’s the deal. I wrote a novel, yes. It sold fairly well. I am not famous. I’m your English teacher, and I’m looking forward to this year, so let’s get down to it, okay?”
They settled down as I passed out the course syllabus. A not-insignificant weight seemed to roll off my shoulders. I’d wondered, perhaps with some self-importance, how this issue of my novel would go. At some level, I had been hoping it wouldn’t even come up. At another, more hidden level, I was thrilled that they were interested, which in turn made me feel slightly disgusted. In any event, now I could move on to the business of teaching.
LIVING IN A DORM of sixty boys, all fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds, became a constant exercise in self-control. The pranks, crude jokes, profanity, water fights, phone use after lights-out, shouts echoing in the stairwells, running showers, wrestling matches, drumming feet in the halls, and loud music were enough to try the patience of a nun. Mild-mannered Gray Smith, the dorm master on the Lawson side, swore he would kill someone before Christmas. Small episodes of dormitory insanity occurred throughout a very busy fall. A urinal on the third floor exploded for unknown reasons at six thirty one morning, flooding the bathroom for nearly two hours before the housekeeping staff showed up. Hal Starr got a half-full Coke and a bag of Doritos accidentally mixed up with his laundry, and the spilled Coke shorted out the dryer before blowing the entire circuit and plunging the Hill into darkness for an hour one Saturday evening. I made my way through the darkened dormitory and found Hal in his room, red faced and embarrassed in the beam of my flashlight as he shook soggy Doritos out of his half-dry laundry, most of which had been stained by the Coke. The following week, Brian Schue sucked his bedsheets into the hall vacuum cleaner “to see what it would do.” David Barnes ate soap on a dare and threw up on Jim Powell as they were walking to chapel, ruining Jim’s brand-new blazer.
But it was Ben Sipple, a blond-haired fourth former, who seemed destined to be my dormitory nemesis. He possessed the pale, amused face of a Flemish angel and the cunning of a demon from the ninth circle of hell. The analogy was not, in my opinion, all that extreme: Ben’s roommate, Robert Cummings, came to my apartment one evening and accused Ben of satanic worship.
“Ben says he’s going to call the devil into our room tonight, Mr. Glass. He’s got this old black leather book that’s huge—he calls it a demonomicon or something—and he says he’s going to conjure up the devil with it.” Robert was a starter on varsity soccer and generally implacable, but his face was pale and he was obviously shaken.
I went upstairs to Ben’s room. Ben was sitting at his desk, working out an algebra problem.
“Hello, Mr. Glass,” he said pleasantly.