A boy passed him in the hallway and greeted him by name, a nice-looking boy with longish-blond hair and an armful of books.
“Now your name is—” Warden said. He did not know the boy.
“Russell Phillips.” A thin boy, but looking fit.
Warden asked why he wasn’t on dorm.
“I cleaned my room before breakfast,” said Russell Phillips. “Too cold to walk back to Kean House.”
Warden teased him by pointing out the healthful benefits of a brisk walk in chilly weather.
“I’d rather die,” said Russell Phillips. Then he continued on his way to the stairs.
The words startled Warden so much that he forgot momentarily where he was going.
SCENE 4
Although Horace Somerville had happily occupied the same classroom in Fleming Hall for all thirty-eight of his teaching years at Montpelier, this morning he felt the sameness wearing him out. He was tired of looking at that same map of the ancient world he’d brought down with him from Boston in 1952, those same portraits of the Civil War generals he had put up in 1960, the same cracked old blackboard where he continued to scrawl his assignments. All the fresh paint and the new carpeting (never mind that the carpet was new ten years ago; a decade was still new for Montpelier and for Somerville) and these fancy metal desks that slid around the room instead of remaining firmly planted like the old benches: all this modernism was just superficial cosmetic change. Somerville was having the same damnable conversation he’d had with slovenly students every week of his life since the year Eisenhower was elected president. He was tired of these lazy little ignoramuses who refused to listen to his advice, which at the moment he was dispensing with increasing asperity.
“Learn the dates!” he said for the several dozenth time to the boy in front of him. “Learn the dates! Then you can get to the fun part of history.” Little bastard was practically yawning in his face. Somerville would wake him up with a cattle prod.
“Yes sir,” said the boy. He was a third-former named Wallace, with straight brown hair cut as though someone had put a bowl over his head and a necktie carelessly tied with the knot too big, the back strand longer than the front. Somerville himself was wearing a starched white shirt and a knit tie. For a while in the 1960s, he had gone through a bow tie phase because he’d hated the paisley alternatives. Now he was happy to see the world returning to something resembling sartorial common sense, though this boy had obviously never shined his shoes since the day his extravagantly indulgent mother had bought them for him.
“We offer a fine version of this course in summer school,” said Somerville.
“Yes sir.”
He was glad to see Wallace squirm a bit, but then the boy astonished him by picking up his books as if their conference were over. Somerville impounded the books and placed them on his desktop, then stared at his student as if the boy were some particularly grotesque piece of unidentifiable offal dragged home by a hunting dog.
“Don’t ‘yes sir’ me. Just learn the dates.”
“Yes sir.”
It was 10:25, ten minutes into the mid-morning recess. Somerville knew what a charming sight they must make for the random observer: the mop-headed little ninth-grader slouching a bit (“Sit up, boy!”) in the straight wooden chair beside Somerville’s desk, and the experienced old instructor—bright eyes, thick-lensed reading glasses, thinning white hair, basset hound jowls, and overgrown ears-patiently working him through his lessons. Those officious imbeciles in the development office were frequently sneaking photographers over here to catch him in a Norman Rockwell pose, the archetype of the gruff but loving grandfather. Hogwash. Somerville had kept Wallace after class for failing to do his homework assignment over the Thanksgiving holiday. There was nothing wrong with this boy that a little grit and motivation and intellectual awakening couldn’t fix, but the child seemed perfectly content to accept Somerville’s finest invective with only a token bit of cringing. Somerville wondered whether he was losing his touch.
“You’re probably ready to go now, aren’t you?” he said to Wallace.
“Yes sir.”
“You’d like to get to your room before it’s inspected.”
“Yes sir.”
“Before somebody sticks you for demerits.”
“Yes sir.”
“1485.”
Somerville noted with pleasure that the boy seemed to lose some height as he realized that he was not yet free.
“Well?” said Somerville.
The boy hesitated. “The Battle of Hastings?” he said.
“That was 1066. 1485.”
“The end of the Wars of the Roses?”
“Correct. What was the battle?”
Ben Warden interrupted by knocking on the open door. The boy looked to the doorway at Warden and grinned.
Damn, what a time for Ben to appear. “Answer the question,” said Somerville.
“Shrewsbury?”
“That was 1403! Learn the dates!” said Somerville. “Now get along off to your dormitory. You’re lucky I need to see Mr. Warden.”
The boy picked up his books and passed Warden in the doorway. On the threshold he paused and turned back to Somerville. “Well, what was the battle?”
“That’s what I’m asking you!” said Somerville. “Learn the dates!”
Unfazed, the boy turned and asked Warden.
“I believe it was the Battle of Bosworth Field,” said Warden. “That’s what Shakespeare tells me, anyway.”
Somerville rewarded both his auditors with a miniature explosion.
“It wasn’t Shakespeare who taught you that date,” he said. “I did.” He told Wallace that Warden had been his history student in this very course twenty years earlier. “And he was just as miserable at history as you are until I shook some sense into him.”
“Neat,” said the boy.
“What was that?”
