"You are really getting screwed up in the head, Mary Anne. You've always been a little screwed up but now it's beginning to look like you have a terminal case."
"I never thought of this, Ben, but it must be hard on you. I mean everyone in school coming up and saying to you, 'Hey, aren't you the brother of that genius and beauty queen Mary Anne Meecham?' That must be a terrible thing to live in my shadow for your whole life."
"It's been awful, Mary Anne. But I try to accept my lot."
"You're sort of like a wart on my fanny. I just got to carry you along wherever I go. Oh, by the way, golden boy, I guess you loved it when all those tacky cheerleaders bounced around you."
"No, I hated it, Mary Anne. I hated having those luscious, gorgeous hunks of womanflesh throwing themselves on me. I would have preferred ugly male midgets."
Mary Anne walked to the window and stared out at the river. "Do you know, Ben, if I had friends I would love this town. I love this house. I love the river, the trees, the privacy. Everything. It's the most beautiful place we've ever lived. If I had friends I'd never want to leave this town. It would be a good place to die."
"Why are you talking about dying?"
"I think about dying all the time."
"Why?"
"What else is there to think about?"
"Living."
"That shows a basic difference between you and me, Ben."
"What's that?"
"I have more depth."
Chapter 22
On the Monday after the West Charleston game, Ogden Loring stopped in front of Ben's desk, removed his glasses and began cleaning them with his silk paisley tie. Mr. Loring had a vulnerable, rubicund face with eyebrows arched into constant and natural inquisitiveness. He was a small-boned man with thinning red hair and elegant clothes. In class as he lectured on poetry or the arts, he smoked long, thin cigarettes that he pulled individually from a silver case in his coat pocket. He wrote on the blackboard with pieces of yellow chalk. Absently and when a subject had so consumed and excited him, he would write with the cigarette and smoke the chalk. He accepted the laughter and derision of his students with an embarrassed charm and a touchingly astonished grace. Bull Meecham had met Ogden Loring at a PTA meeting and had come home with a single remark:" Any man who teaches a girls' course like English is bound to be a pansy. "But Ben had been coming to a gradual and reluctant realization that Ogden Loring was the best teacher he had ever had.
It was difficult at first. Being educated in Catholic schools was, in some ways, like being educated in another country. Nuns and priests were enforcers of a classroom absolutism that tolerated no opposition. Ben had heard more noises in the basements of funeral homes than in some math classes taught by the icy ladies who swept down the aisles with their habits whipping up Antarctic drafts in their wake. Ben was accustomed to silence when enclosed by windows and blackboards. Learning was an abstraction that took place beneath the stares and approbation of the Catholic S.S. that had goose-stepped through the classrooms of his youth. One nun, Sister Saint Ann, had been the kindest woman and the best teacher he had ever had until Ogden Loring, but even her classroom was a limbo where the children had floated in the horse latitudes of their own suppressed energy. All nuns and priests who had ever taught Ben and all Marines and their wives who had ever loved or advised him could step into Ogden Loring's senior English class and know they were in enemy territory.
His opening words to the class at the beginning of the year had been," I am a man of strange parts," and he had then set out on an erratic odyssey and with a demonic single-mindedness to prove it. Each day when his students entered his manic kingdom, they heard music emanating from a stereo behind his desk. Sometimes the music would be classical: Brahms, Beethoven, Saint-Saens, or Bach. Other times there would be Negro Spirituals sung by Odetta or folk songs rendered by Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, or Woody Guthrie. For one full week, Mr. Loring played rock and roll beginning with Bill Haley and continuing in a kind of inauthentic historical overview through Buddy Holly until it stopped abruptly with Roy Orbison. Ben paid little attention to the music until the first test of the semester when a quarter of the questions dealt with the identification of the music Mr. Loring had played the first two weeks of school. As Ben agonized over a blank memory, Mr. Loring busied himself by walking around the room removing scraps of paper that were wadded and thrown under each desk in the room. The class was openly hostile after the test was over. It was then that Ogden Loring had cheerfully revealed that the answers to all the test questions were printed on the wads of paper he had gathered under their desks and any of them would have been free to make use of these hidden aids if they had only taken the time to find them. "Animules," he had said," idgits who live in the valley of the shadow of death. Be attuned to your environment. Know what is going on about you. Make yourself aware."
On other occasions, he pinned the answers to tests in obscure corners of the bulletin board. If he put up a print of a painting he had collected from the Louvre or the Prado on one of his summer journeys to Europe then it was certain that the print would appear on a future test. When Jim Don Cooper whined that he just couldn't get excited over literature, Mr. Loring brought in the varsity cheerleaders and had them lead exuberant cheers for Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, and J. D. Salinger. Instead of using textbooks, he subscribed to the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and the Sunday Edition of the New York Times for his seniors. "Protozoa," he would announce to his class," I want to introduce you to some other voices in the outside world before life sinks her claws into you."
He was a starling-voiced orator who could bring his antiques to school and deliver impassioned, enraptured lectures on the exquisiteness of Waterford crystal or the fragility of the first edition books he would pass around the room. Two of his books were signed by Oscar Wilde. His Tess of the D'Urbervilles was a numbered edition signed by Thomas Hardy.
The class listened to one opera each month—at least made some effort to listen over the thunder of groans and barely suppressed expletives from the athletes who populated the last row of seats. But Ogden Loring seemed unconcerned whether his class applauded his material or not; he merely tested them on every single facet of classroom life. He assigned a three-hundred-word essay every Friday afternoon without fail and issued a list of twenty vocabulary words on which they would be tested the following Tuesday.
"Good morning, cracker trash," he had begun one Monday morning. "I believe in oligarchy," and thirty pencils wrote an approximation of the word" oligarchy," knowing that it would appear on some test at some future time.
On Fridays, he would often show slides of his trips to Europe, pausing lovingly over pastoral scenes in England. "Oh, lawdy, lawdy, lawdy," he would sigh," Sweet England. Sweet, gentle England. Sweet, sad, and gentle England."
"You're bats, Loring," a voice would call in the darkness.
He showed slides of a bullfight in Spain and his voice would choke up when the bull was felled. Then he would come close to actual weeping when he described to the class the death of Manolete which he had studied exhaustively while in Spain. On Wednesday afternoons, three of the girls in the class would go to his house where he taught them some of the mysteries of French cooking for extra credit. Extra credit was the bullion he used to bribe the indolent scholar. For every book read Mr. Loring ladled out an indeterminate amount of extra credit, making some arcane notation in his grade book that in theory counted for something during those critical nights when he evaluated the performance of each student.
The truly admirable thing about Ogden Loring was that he did not care at all that the entire town of Ravenel, South Carolina, believed that he was at least half crazy.
In every class, Ogden Loring took the abuse of students, heard taunts thrown at him, and endured the bile and venom of students who could not or would not speak up in other classes. At first Ben was appalled by the lack of respect for the man and by the man's ability to disregard the stockpiled vitriol st
acked on him by his students. Every day, the first minutes of class would be filled by harsh salvos of criticism aimed at Mr. Loring's round, assailable figure leaning against his lectern. It was part of the routine, like the Pledge of Allegiance. Sometimes he teased back, lashed out, or screamed in rage at his attackers, but mostly he smiled during the morning wars and listened as students who never spoke in another class joined the hunt. But the strangest thing of all to Ben was the singular realization that Ogden Loring was the most popular teacher in Calhoun High School. He had seen Jim Don Cooper almost fight Art the Fart after practice one day when Art made a disparaging remark about Mr. Loring. He knew that Sue Ellen Rogers was enrolled in Mr. Loring's Wednesday afternoon cooking classes. It was very strange to a boy weaned on the fists and calluses of Catholic schools. But soon, through talking to Sammy and Emma Lee, he learned that Ogden Loring was a genuine property, a bona fide character, an heirloom, and for ten years his reputation had incubated throughout the town, had been passed on from brother to brother, sister to sister, and it was part of the glory and the gold of high school, the dross and the pyrite of high school, to pass through the doors of Ogden Loring's class on the way to life.
Each week a steady stream of former students returned to his class, the sad flotsam of men and women who had tasted the other side of graduation and found it wanting. Their eyes spoke of failure and they came back to Ogden Loring like ships looking for a safe harbor. It took years in the crucible of human experience to value the gentle people one meets in the eye of the storm. Almost daily they came back to Ogden Loring. A man in uniform or a woman with two or three scrubbed, shining children would appear and these old students would rush to embrace the nervous unobtrusive man who blushed deeply and was almost moved to tears so touched he was to be remembered and visited.
Ben had gone to complain to Mr. Dacus about the teaching of Ogden Loring during the first two weeks of school. Mr. Dacus had listened to Ben's complaints very patiently, then suggested that Ben wait until a month had passed before he made any final decision about the quality of Ogden Loring's teaching. If, at the end of a month, Ben still thought Loring was a poor teacher, then he, Mr. Dacus, would personally break Ben's neck and kick him out of his school.
"Pissant," Mr. Dacus had said," it isn't very often you come across a holy man. But you have. And this one has a genius for teaching pissant. So go on back to his class and I'll accept your apology later after you decide that Og is the best teacher you've ever had."
It was weeks before Ben could gather up the crosscurrents shifting through the English class commanded by the flaccid, bird-nervous man and arrive at some theory that appeased his glandular requirements for what was and was not acceptable for the last English course he would take before college. When Ogden Loring had cast burning eyes over the students before him, shook his head sadly and said," It is a pity. An absolute pity that some of you have not read at least ten thousand books. Then, perhaps, we could begin to have a conversation," Ben felt himself wanting more than anything in the world to sit before Ogden Loring, ten thousand books glowing in his memory like rubies, and carry on a conversation that had no boundaries, no arbitrary purlieus. Ben Meecham would dazzle this man with shimmering images and razor-cut metaphors lifted from the great works of every century. Without his knowledge, Ben had been ensnared by a single sentence, one of thousands that Loring would drop during the course of the year with the unshakable credo that the leitmotif of his class was intellectual voyage. A student could accompany him on all voyages or only a few. It was a simple matter of choice, predilection, and a passing grade.
After he polished his glasses, Mr. Loring put them back on and stared unsteadily at Ben. It had been a day of undiminished triumph for Ben so far. A single basketball game had given him a name, a face, and an identity. He had been invisible in the halls of Calhoun High for too many months not to enjoy it.
"I reckon you just think you are plain wonderful, don't you, animule?" Mr. Loring said.
"Pardon me, sir," Ben answered.
"I bet you just woke up this morning, looked at your wonderful self in the mirror, and gave yourself a standing ovation. Admit it, creeter. You think you're the cat's meow now that you're the big basketball jock."
"No, sir."
"A jock," Mr. Loring sneered. "A worshiper of muscle? A salesman of speed? I think it's absurd. Yes, absurd. Here I am, Mr. Meecham, teaching my guts out, trying to the best of my ability to make a scholar out of you, and in one night's time, I discover that you are a jock. A resident of those smelly, nasty locker rooms, trained by those brainless chimps called coaches. Extraordinary. I think I'll faint. I might just die. Or sing a song to the Lord. I just think it's wonderful that you think you're so wonderful."
"We're going all the way to State this year if Ben keeps up the good work," Philip Turner said, sitting directly in front of Ben.
"All the way to State!" Mr. Loring gasped. "I'll just expire if we don't get all the way to State. Yes, I must go there myself. I must go to State."
"You know what I mean, Mr. Loring," Philip said.
"Everybody in this town thinks you're as crazy as Crowder peas, Mr. Loring," Sue Ellen Rodgers said.
"That's right," Jim Don Cooper said from the last row. "My daddy wants to kill ol' Loring with his bare hands. Just strangle him until his eyes pop out of his bald ugly head."
"My mama says they ought to lock up ol' Loring and throw the key into the Pacific Ocean," Sue Ellen said.
Mr. Loring, unperturbed, answered Sue Ellen with calm and dignity. "It is because my students love me that I can remain in this bleak town teaching the King's English to creatures damaged geographically beyond repair the very moment of their birth. I remain here because some of you idgits will go from this class with a rather vague notion that there is a small difference between a verb and a spark plug."
"I want to learn some real English, Mr. Loring," Philip said. "We haven't diagramed a single sentence all year. I'm getting worried about the College Boards."
"Yeah, all we do is memorize these three million dollar words that I can't even pronounce," Sammy Wertzberger said.
"Quit pretending you're stupid, Samuel. Of course you can pronounce them and they'll be valuable in the future," Emma Lee Givens scolded.
"Uh oh. The daughter of God has spoken," Pinkie said. Emma Lee Givens was a stern-visaged, bespectacled daughter of an Assembly of God preacher. Her face was pretty and her sense of humor more finely developed than she revealed to most of her classmates. She sat across from Sammy and made no secret that she thought he was hilarious. Ben had found out from Philip that she was the senior class's runaway valedictorian with Philip himself an earnest but distant second.
"Yeah, why do we have to learn all these big words? Us people with normal brains. Not geniuses like Emma Lee and Philip," Sue Ellen said.
"Because you are verbal cretins," Mr. Loring shouted," and because I have tyrannically and arbitrarily decreed it, and because you will not graduate if you don't."
"I'm going to incarcerate you, Loring. Then I'm going to decimate you," Jim Don cried out, utilizing the only two words from the vocabulary list he could remember.
"My mommy told me that Loring is one of those things," said Carol Huger, sitting across from Jim Don.
"I feel grievous when I ruminate about your idiosyncrasies, Loring," Pinkie called out proudly.
"Don't listen to them, Mr. Loring. They are less than thee," Emma Lee Givens said in a voice full of pronouncement.
"You sound like a letter to the Ephesians, Emma Lee. Who do you think you are?" Sue Ellen flared.
"No friend of yours, Sue Ellen," Emma Lee said quietly.
"You're always defending that thing," Carol Huger called from the rear of the room.
"I like him," Emma Lee said," and I would appreciate it if you would let him teach me. And thee."
"Thank you, Emma Lee," Mr. Loring said," but you do not have to defend me against the poor creeters."
"I didn't
understand the assignment last night, Mr. Loring," Sammy said. "And when a brilliant scholar like me doesn't understand it you know it's got to be complex."
"Samuel," Emma Lee whispered and Ben overheard, "you know you did not read the assignment."
"Creeter," Mr. Loring said speaking to Ben again, "you think you are just wonderful this morning. You think you are the greatest thing that ever hit this high school, don't you? Admit it, so we can get on with this class. What did you think when you looked at yourself in the mirror this morning?"
"He's the star," Sue Ellen announced and Ben winced with a small pain and an exquisite, consuming pleasure.
"The star?" Mr. Loring hooted. "The star? My word. Lawdy, lawdy. The star? Here in my room. Little ol' Og Loring teaches a star. I thought stars were parts of constellations and galaxies. I didn't know they could sit in classrooms. I thought they were heavenly bodies that gave off light and heat and energy. I thought they had to be studied through telescopes. To think I'm standing up here and gazing at a star less than ten feet away. How blinding. What did you think when you woke up and looked in the mirror this morning? Were you surprised to see a star?"
"I didn't think anything, Mr. Loring. I just gave myself a standing ovation."
After he had laughed, cleared his throat, and cleaned his glasses one more time, Ogden Loring began the class.
"Animules, cracker trash, and star," he began, "today I will continue to show you how teaching can be an art form."
Chapter 23
From long experience in deciphering the arcane ways of nuns and after hearing Sister Loretta end two successive catechism classes with the admonition," And remember, boys and girls, your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost," and the sudden descent into hushed reverent tones when she mentioned the last CCD meeting before the Christmas holidays, Ben and Mary Anne knew that the cloven-hoofed topic of sex waited in the wings for its sordidly concupiscent introduction.