of the books I read; it was what I proved with my own quiet life. And at the end of many years I heard again from Mac Leonard—a scenic postal card marked Uvalde, Mexico.
Characteristically laconic, the message was: '—and wife.' That and his signature was supposed to be all I wanted to know about him and his fortunes since we had parted at commencement.
Hoping that he would not already be gone—who but a tourist would write on a scenic postal card?—I mailed a long letter giving my own story to date and demanding his.
His answer came very much later, three months or more, from Council Bluffs, Iowa:
Dear Vulcan, [the nickname in reference to my slight limp]
So the plumy anaconda has found his forked tongue after these long years? I should be hurt at your neglect of me—failing to write when a simple matter like not knowing my address stood in your way. You're right—I was on my honeymoon in the vastly overrated country of Mexico. And she is a very nice girl, in a rowdy sort of way.
I'm still playing with paper boxes and numbers. The chair of mathematics at one of our little high schools out here is all mine, and very uncomfortable it is. Still, Civil Service is nothing to be sneezed at in these troubled times.
My life seems to have slipped into a slap-happy routine of examination papers and recitations; the really heart-breaking part is that none of my excessively brilliant students get my jokes. Aside from that all is milk and honey. I live in a bungalow with my wife—seems damned strange to write that down; as though it never really happened!—and we are like a pair of larks in the springtime. Whenever quarrels come I demonstrate by the calculus of symboic logic that she's wrong and I'm right, and that settles the matter. Theoretically, at least.
Honestly, old dish towel, I'm happy—a truly representative specimen of that rarest work of God, the man who is contented with his lot in life. It may sound idiotic to you, but I hope I never change from what I am. If time stood still this very minute I wouldn't have a kick coming in the world.
Mac
Other letters followed that; there was an erratic quality to his correspondence that made it completely delightful. I found in my mailbox or resting on my doorstep anything from postal cards to bundles of year-old exams in Geometry One, neatly rated with mean, average and modes. For three years it kept up; at one time we were waging half a dozen chess games simultaneously as well as a discussion of Hegelian dialectics. 'One of these days' he kept carelessly promising, he would blow into the city to see me.
Then, abruptly, he did. And it wasn't as an honored guest but as a man fleeing from disgrace. Never a coward, not one now in the nastiest position that any man could face, he sent me a note giving the arrival-time of his bus. And he enclosed a bunch of clippings from the local press.
To say that I was shocked would be putting it mildly. He had been no angel in his college days, but a man grows out of that, especially when he marries. The clippings didn't make it any easier. With an obscene, missish reticence oddly combined with the suggestive vulgarity that is the specialty of the tabloid press, they told the sordid and familiar story of a male teacher in a co-ed school—you know what I mean. It happens.
I met them at the terminal. He was the picture of a hunted man, eyes sunken and hair lank down his temples. He'd kept his shape; there wasn't a sign of the usual professorial pot-belly. But his mouth was very tight. His nose wrinkled as though he could still smell those headlines.
Yes, they were so nasty they actually stank.
He mumbled a brief introduction, and I smiled wildly at his wife in acknowledgment. No self-respecting woman would—
They came to my apartment to get their luggage settled. They were traveling light. He explained, as we all three lit cigarettes, that he had left his bungalow in the hands of an agent, and that when the business died down somebody would buy it furnished and ready for occupancy.
'But,' he added grimly, 'that won't be for a long while.'
'Do you want to talk about it?' I asked, with my damned morbid curiosity.
'You saw the papers. To correct a popular misconception, which our journals tended to foster, she was not fifteen but nineteen. Big and dumb. And despite their hinting, she was the only one. And anybody in the school could have told you that I wasn't her first boyfriend—as it were.'
'I'm sorry, Mac. It's a lousy thing to happen. I know how it is—' That peculiar noise was me, making like I was broad-minded. But I still didn't see how anybody in his right mind would do a thing like that. I shot a glance at his wife, and luck would have it that she met my eyes squarely.
With the Midwest twang she said: 'I can see that you're wondering what I think about the whole matter.' I took a good look at her then, my first.
She wasn't a very beautiful woman. Her face was the kind you call intelligent. She had a figure that, with cultivation, could be glorious; as it was it was only superb. But I'm easy to please.
'My husband made a fool of himself, that's plain enough. If he learned his lesson as well as he teaches—it's over. Am I right, Len?'
'Right,' he said dispiritedly.
'I'll make some coffee,' I said, rising, beginning to walk across the floor.
I felt the way the lame do, her eyes on my twisted right foot. She had reached the kitchen door before I was well under way.
'Please let me,' she said. 'You men will want to talk.'
'Thanks,' I said, wondering angrily if she was going to be sickeningly sweet and sympathetic about my very minor disability. 'Go right ahead.' I sat down facing Mac. 'Not many women would be that understanding,' I said.
His answer nearly paralyzed me. He leaped across the distance between us, his face desperate and contorted, whispering: 'We're going to some hotel. I'll come back and see you tonight. Have to explain. You don't know—'
'Coffee!' gaily announced Mrs. Leonard, carrying in the tray.
I rose gallantly, and very much surprised. 'How in Heaven's name did you make it so quickly?' I demanded.
'You don't think I made it with that fancy glass thing of yours, do you?'
she laughed. 'I have more sense than that.'
'But you couldn't have had time to boil the water!'
'Silly—there was a pan of water seething. Oh!' Her hand flew to her mouth. 'I hope there wasn't salt or anything in it!' I seemed to remember something about water boiling—perhaps I had meant to prepare a hot cloth for my ankle before going to meet the bus.
'And this,' she said, pouring, 'is Iowa pan coffee the way my grandmother made it in a covered wagon.'
I got a mouthful of grounds and swallowed convulsively. 'Those pioneers had courage,' I said inanely.
Working on a learned monograph revealing factors in the sociology of the Bronx that Fordham University had not even touched, I was baffled by what I had written a few months later. It was done in the style peculiar to some textbooks and degree themes; that is, it was no style at all but an attempt to set down without emotion or effect certain facts in their natural order.
That was the effect which Mac's talk with me that night had. He had come about nine o'clock, panting from the climb up the stairs and perspiring profusely. He wouldn't take anything to drink but water.
'It was partly drink that got me into trouble in Council Bluffs,' he said.
'I'm never going to touch it again.' He looked up at the indirect light from the ceiling and blinked. 'Would you mind—?' he asked inarticulately. 'Eyestrain—'
I turned off the big light and lit a table-lamp which spread a bright pool on the console, leaving the rest of the room obscured. 'Now shoot,' I said. 'And I'm not making any promises about anything tonight. Not one way or another.'
'Don't worry,' he almost snarled. 'I'm not after your damned money.'
As I started up angrily—and God knows I had a right to be angry—he buried his face in his hands. I sank back into my chair, inexpressibly shocked to hear him weeping.
'Easy,' I muttered. 'No need to go on like that, Mac. What would Nicholas Butler say to hear a Columbia man crying?' The ridiculous joke didn't stop him; he sobbed like a child. No; sobbed like a man, from the diaphragm, where it hurts as if your ribs are being torn out one by one.
He looked up, his eyes streaming, and wiped his face. Returning the handkerchief to his breast pocket, he said
