J R

  —Ask Mister Leroy, that’s his baby.

  —Right. You mention education and they grab for their wallets. Now here’s thirty-two thousand six hundred and seventy for blacktopping the parking lot over to the tv studio.

  —That’s the only bid that came in.

  —And there’s this twelve thousand dollars item for books.

  —That’s supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand should be paper towels. Besides, there’s already that bequest for books for the library.

  —Did it say books in so many words? No. It’s just a bequest for the library.

  —Use it for a pegboard. You need a pegboard in a library. Books you don’t know what you’re getting into.

  —Right. Remember Robin Hood? That man Schepperman . . .

  —Schepperman! That reminds me that lettering over the front door, Gibbs’ idea . . .

  —It’s worked so far but it can’t work forever, sooner or later somebody will show up who reads Greek. Then where are we?

  —Up the creek, Miss Flesch obliged with a promptness that lost her some coffee down her chin,—like the smut mail.

  —There’s an issue. The smut mail rise.

  —My boy sent off for a ball glove and what he got back in the mail was . . .

  —Mouthpiece puller, sleigh bells, strobotuner, choir risers, tympanies, marching bell and stand, two thousand five hundred and . . . what’s all that for?

  —Breakage. Here, replacing glass, repairing doors, painting, refinishing and so forth, thirty-three thousand two eighty-five. Thirty-three thousand dollars for breakage, isn’t that what we’re really talking about? Plain unvarnished vandalism? And another fourteen thousand plus item down here, repairs and replacement, chairs, desks, project tables, pianos, same thing isn’t it? Breakage . . .?

  —But two thousand dollars for filmstrips and five more on filmstrip projectors, movie projectors, record players, tape recorders, projection carts . . .

  —It’s already on the books . . .

  —That’s what I mean books, Miss Flesch scattered seeds.—All this audio-visual bla bla bla and we’ve practically promised Duncan and Company a textbook order to Mister Skinner for . . .

  —Thirty-three and fourteen, that’s forty-three, forty-seven thousand on breakage.

  —Waffle iron, sixty dollars?

  —Predictable, deliberate, you might even say prescheduled breakage . . .

  —And doing a very fine job, too.

  —I see it at the corporate level all the time. Now, getting back to the point, how about Friday for bringing your mobile tv over for a looksee at my shelter, get across the remote capabilities of microwave transmission with a good cable system . . .

  —But not Friday, Friday we’re getting a visit from the Foundation. They’re sending out a team, a program specialist and a writer, to give our whole in-school television setup here the real once over for a book. I don’t hardly need to say that the point in all this is to show them how we’re using, utilizing this new media to motivate the cultural drive in these youngsters should give things a nice boost right up their . . .

  —Up their alley, check. My shelter . . .

  —My Ring . . . Miss Flesch got in at a bite.

  —My wife . . . ventured Mister diCephalis, who had been busy responding to Mister Pecci’s stylish appearance by squaring the handkerchief in his own breast pocket, leaving it with apparent satisfaction and a clean margin showing between the pocket’s edge and the line of dirt that had distinguished the initialed fold on view there now for some weeks.

  And as though calculating the effect, Hyde stepped from the window and reduced the figure behind the desk to the less pungent proportions of natural lighting.—The Foundation is committed up to its, it’s deeply committed. They’ve sunk seventy or eighty million into this school tv project nationwide and they’re not pulling out and leaving setups like this one holding the bag. The point like I’ve been saying from the start is that in-school tv, to be in-school tv, it has to be in-school tv with lessons piped into school receivers in school classrooms for school kids in school classes, a simple interference-free closed-circuit school setup where every Tom Dick and Harry can’t tune in on the kind of open-circuit broadcast you’ve got now and write letters telling you off on the new math.

  —Educationwise it isn’t hurting us PRwise, I’ll say that, Miss Flesch said it, and mashed out her cigarette.

  —Now the Senator here, Assembleyman Pecci that is, he has a bill he’s introducing that makes all this mandratory, it will get this in-school television out of the community entertainment field and back into the school, and the only squawk we’ll get from the Foundation is because they stuck you with this whole open-circuit setup in the first place.

  —I don’t get mail telling me off . . . Miss Flesch threatened with a buttered thumb.—I get all this mail . . .

  —She gets all this fan mail.

  —All this fan mail you could call it even, she pursued from the desk top to Mister Pecci who seemed, just then, to realize that from where he sat he might appear to be looking up her skirt, and lowered his eyes to adjust a gold tieclasp representing an unfurled American flag to match his cufflinks.—Not just mail from kids’ parents but from shut-ins, jobless, old retired people and everybody like just last week I got this letter of commendation from the Senior Citizens, you need popular support to run a school system and you don’t get that without the support of the community look at this budget vote coming up and all that bla bla bla, they want to see where their money goes. I got nothing to hide, she came on, and pinioned a passing eye with the barest movement urging—my Ring, you take my Ring . . .

  —We take her Ring, Pecci responded to this invitation, and then raised his eyes to the others,—there might even be some way to tie it into the cultural, something cultural?

  —Let’s give Pecci here an A for breakthrough. Tie it in with this Culture Center, locating it here, bring in your Spring Arts Festival expanded with a few remote specials stressing the patriotic theme, you might even do one on my shelter, what America’s all about, waste disposal and all, and wrap it all up with the whole in-school television program once that’s on a good interference-free closed-circuit system bring in a little Foundation backing and you’re on your way.

  —Once we have their confidence . . .

  —Now whether or not a campaign . . .

  —I think nationally . . .

  —PRwise . . .

  The telephone rang.—Hello . . .? Oh. Yes. Long distance, for you Mis . . .

  —Me? Oop! my coffee . . .

  —My office . . . Pecci inclined across the desk avoiding the puddle.—I told them where to reach me if . . . Hello?

  —And something else, Whiteback reclined with a squeak,—this young man what’s his name, Bast? He’s a composer, he writes music, he’s here from the Foundation or rather they placed him here, in this pilot program. Handed to us on a platter, he’s ahm . . .

  —Me? paid to me? No, it was paid to the law firm, my partner. Just say twenty-five thousand paid for consultation, representation, and what? No, say legal services, rendered by Ganganelli during this legislative session in conjunction with . . . no, conjunction, conjunk, junk . . .

  —Motivating the music appreciation drive in these youngsters, we have him helping out Miss Flesch while we work something up for him maybe with the high school band.

  —In conjunction with certain amendments to the state law relating to highway construction standards, just say standards in highway construction.

  —I talked to him about it on the way over this morning, motivating this cultural drive and seeing it pay off in mass consumers, mass distribution . . .

  —No, standards. I said standards, standards, with a d . . .

  —Like automobiles and bathing suits.

  —Law! They can’t pull that law on him tell him, it wasn’t even passed till after he wasn’t reelected . . . Goodbye, call me if there’s any snag.

  —On her R
ing, yes and, and doing a very fine job . . .

  —He helps some, rehearsing and all that stuff and junk but he hasn’t got much personality for it . . . here, gimme one of those, will you? She swooped at Mister diCephalis quietly disposing of a cigarette package in the wastebasket.

  —No, I . . . they’re candy, he blurted.—The children’s. I picked them up by mistake, they look just like mine, the package . . .

  She laughed at him.

  The telephone rang.

  —Hel . . . oh, what? Now? They’re here from the Foundation? They can’t be, this isn’t Friday. Well try and stall them . . .

  —Gimme the phone, my . . .

  —My boy’s in this thing of hers, Hyde dropped to Pecci,—quite the little musician. No piano or violin, nothing pansy. Trumpet.

  —My wife’s taping something this morning, Mister diCephalis got in abruptly.—A resource program . . .

  —Let’s just turn on the tube and see what we’ve got to show them.

  —Taping? what, said Miss Flesch over the rim of the telephone.

  —A resource program. On silkworms, she has her own Kashmiri records . . .

  —If your Ring isn’t ready, your Wagner, what is there?

  —My Mozart. She hung up the telephone and dialed again.—No answer, I’ll call and see if my visuals are ready . . . and she found her bun, washed in another bite with cold coffee and chewed into the mouthpiece, listening.

  ——gross profit on a business was sixty-five hundred dollars a year. He finds his expenses were twenty-two and one half percent of this profit. First, can you find the net profit?

  —What’s that? demanded Hyde, transfixed by unseeing eyes challenging the vacant confine just over his head.

  —Sixth grade math. That’s Glancy.

  ——percent this would be of the entire sales, if the sales were seventy thousand dol . . .

  —Sixth? That?

  —Glancy. They’re doing percents.

  ——merchant, and this merchant sold a coat marked fifty dollars at ten percent discount . . .

  —Glancy reading cue cards. You can tell.

  —Don’t show them that, just Glancy writing on a blackboard.

  ——that this merchant still made a twenty percent profit, let’s find the cost of the original . . .

  —Try switching to thirty-eight.

  ——original cost of the . . . combustion in these thousands of little cylinders in our muscle engines. Like all engines, these tiny combustion engines need a constant supply of fuel, and we call the fuel that this machine uses, food. We measure its value . . .

  —Even if the Rhinegold is ready it’s Wagner, isn’t it? But if the Mozart is scheduled the classroom teachers, they’re ready with the followup material from their study guides on the Mozart. They can’t just switch to the Wagner.

  ——the value of the fuel for this engine the same way, by measuring how much heat we get when it’s burned . . .

  —That’s a cute model, it gets the idea right across. Whose voice?

  —Vogel. He made it himself out of old parts.

  —Whose.

  —Parts?

  —Some of them might never even have heard of Wagner yet.—No, the voice.—That’s Vogel, the coach.

  ——that we call energy. Doing a regular day’s work, this human machine needs enough fuel equal to about two pounds of sugar . . .

  —If they thought it was Mozart’s Rhinegold and get them all mixed up, so you can’t really switch.

  —He put it together himself out of used parts.

  ——fuel in a regular gasoline engine, and converts about twelve percent into the same amount of real work.

  —To forty-two, try forty-two.

  ——that the engine has an alimentary system just like the human machine. When you pull up at the gas pump and ask for ten gallons the fuel is poured through an opening, or mouth, and goes into the gas tank, the engine’s stomach . . . who earns a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month pays four percent of it to the Social Security . . .

  —I said forty-two, try forty-two. I think Mrs Joubert has something.

  ——how much he’s paid to the Social Security Board at the end of ten years, and . . . American Civil War, that was fought to free the slaves, and . . . in the carburetor, where the fuel is digested and . . .

  —Omigosh! Miss Flesch erupted into the mouthpiece. Her free hand dug for a tissue—they’re what? Over at the temple? Not the Rhinegold, the Wagner no, the . . . No m, m like Mary. O. Yeah like zebra . . . she wiped her mouth,—What do you mean will I play the piano the only prop I’ve got is a . . . no a book, a book . . . A book yeah so it looks like I’m reading from this book and don’t forget the music for my singalong, I always sign off with a singalong . . .

  —Go back to whatever that was about the Civil War, I think that’s history . . .

  ——that we wouldn’t like the taste of gasoline but luckily our car engine . . .

  —Or Social Studies.

  ——the American Indian, who is no longer segregated on the reservation, but encouraged to take his rightful place at the side of his countrymen, in the cities, in the factories, on the farm . . .

  —Just hang on, I’m coming over there anyway. Yeah, driving, I’ll get a ride over if . . . she banged down the phone, dismounting the desk in an open slide toward Mister Pecci.—Is Skinner’s car still out front? It’s a green one, this textbook salesman. He’ll ride me over . . .

  —My wife, said Mister Pecci withdrawing a knee from the sweep of her heel,—she was one of the original Miss Rheingolds, maybe she still has a specialty number she could help you out with introducing your Rhinegold story . . .?

  —See you all on the hungry eye, said Miss Flesch winking one of her own and threatening one of Mister Pecci’s with a sweep of the umbrella under her arm, and whether Mister diCephalis was making a last grab for it or fending it off was not clear as she passed him for the door that banged hollowly on her call to—Skinner, Mister Skinner, can you ride me over . . .

  Mister diCephalis had by now reached and dialed the telephone, where he kept in undertone—Yes I know it that’s why I’m calling, because . . . from the Foundation yes they’re here now, that’s what they’re coming for, to . . . what? The silkworms, yes, the Kashmiri . . . cultural aspect of . . . yes. But I do want them to see you, that’s why I’m calling . . .

  —They must be out there now they, we can’t keep them waiting . . . Whiteback inclined to meet the screen’s glassine stare with his own reaching the channel selector,—if there’s something on while we’re waiting for the, for Miss Flesch something in the, something . . .

  ——about money . . . to free the slaves and . . . typifying the grandeur of our natural resources and the national heritage that makes all of us proud to be Amer . . .

  —That’s good, there . . .

  —What is it Dan, what’s . . .

  —I’m cleaning up this coffee she wait, wait this must be hers this book about Mozart Mozart’s letters, she . . .

  —Look out you’re spilling those what’s all that it looks like her script, part of her script get it over to her, there’s a page under the . . .

  —Mind moving your foot . . .

  —There’s another one . . .

  ——the mighty Sequoia, which may reach a height of three hundred fifty feet and be almost thirty feet at the base. An age of a thousand years old is still young for the mighty Sequoia . . .

  —Wait the pages are getting mixed up she’ll be . . .

  —Let her straighten them out just get it over to her wait there’s one under the desk, have you got your car Dan?

  ——national parks. In the vast public domain, the federal government owns one hundred seventy million acres in our glorious west . . .

  —No just hurry Dan, hurry up or she’ll come in! We thought you’d never get here . . . and he opened the door full on the two figures standing there as the wall clock beyond them dropped its longer hand with a click for the
full minute and hung, poised to lop off a fragment of the next as Gibbs passed, looked up and saw that happen, fingering the change in his pocket on his way to the outside door and the cloudless sky filled with the even passage of the sun itself in brightness so diffuse no shadow below could keep an edge on shaded lawns where time and the day came fallen through trees with the mottled movement of light come down through water, spread up an empty walk, over gravel and empty pavement, and lawn again, lending movement to the child motionless but for fragmenting finger and opposable thumb opening, closing, the worn snap of an old change purse, staring in through the glass with an expression of unbroken and intent vacancy.

  Beyond the glass, the boy inside darted a glance from his newspaper out into the purse snapped open; snapped shut, he smoothed the porous fold of the obituary page away from him, nagged his lip with a pencil and then scratched his knee with it before his foot returned to forcing back, and forth, and back, the idle vent on a floor grating, shut, open, shut, as the light on his paper dimmed with the sun abruptly pocketed in a cloud and what shadow the child beyond had cast was lost beneath the trees where she sought the greenest leaves fallen from the pin oaks shading the grass around her. The largest she found, she folded its dark face in, creasing across the veins, then folded another as carefully chosen over it, pausing with one blown here from a maple and slightly discolored, the green already run from its edges but folded at last with the others stained back outside and snapped all together into the purse, as a wind rustled those on the ground around her and touched the trees above, the cloud past, their movement scattering the sunlight against the glass, never disturbing those within.

  —Rhine . . . G O L D! they howled into the glare of footlights, cowering round the empty table at the center of the stage.

  —Rhinemaidens! . . . The baton rapped sharply through their declining wail.—This is your shout of triumph. A joyful cry! Bast thumped out the theme again on the piano, missed a note, winced, repeated it.—Can’t you sound joyful, Rhinemaidens? Look, look around you. The river is glittering with golden light. You’re swimming around the rock where the Rhinegold is. The Rhinegold! You love the Rhinegold Rhinemaidens, you . . .