“Speak up, General Lee, nobody can hear you,” he said, and a wave of giggles went through the girls.
Stung, Lennie blared out, “Sir, in yielding this weapon I give you the sword of the South, but not its soul.” He clapped his hand to the hilt, gave a vicious tug, and spun himself clear around. The sword remained fast in the scabbard.
He was astounded. Once more he wrenched at the weapon; it would not budge. The audience was tittering. He took a deep breath. “Sir, in yielding you this weapon,” he yelled, “I give you the sword of the South, but not its soul.” With both hands on the hilt he heaved at it and pulled the belt halfway up his chest, hauling up his jacket and shirt so that his naked chest showed. But the sword did not come out.
“Never mind your soul,” said Herbie in a flash of inspiration. “I'll settle for the sword.”
There was a deluge of laughter. Mrs. Gorkin was almost shouting from the dressing room: “Unbuckle the belt! Unbuckle the belt!” Lennie lost his head, tugged and tugged at the sword, and began to swear. Mr. Gauss rose to take action. Herbie, emboldened by success, suddenly held up his hand and bawled, “One moment, General.”
The laughter stopped and Lennie looked at him wonderingly. Herbie reached over to General Lee's side, seized the hilt, and drew out the sword as easily as if it had been greased. The audience gasped in astonishment. Herbie turned to his orderly and blandly said, “Give General Lee a cup of coffee. He seems to be weak from hunger.”
Amid the roars and handclapping which followed this coup, Mr. Gauss stepped forward and shook his hand. The play was over, and was acknowledged a great hit.
Lennie lay in ambush near 1075 Homer Avenue from four until seven-thirty that evening, waiting for Herbie to come home. The only result was that he missed his dinner. Herbie came home at six, via the basement of 1042 Tennyson Avenue and a connecting passageway to his own cellar. General Garbage outmaneuvered General Lee to the end.
Promotion Day
The enmity between the two boys was now established forever, apparently. Yet at the hot noontide of a sweet-smelling day in June, only a week later, Lennie and Herbie were sitting together on the granite steps of a stoop on the shady side of the street opposite P.S. 50, eating ice cream turn and turn about out of one paper cup. Lennie was on a lower step, looking up humbly at Herbie. It was he who had paid for the ice cream, and each time he passed the cup up to Herbie it was like a peace offering.
Every phenomenon, however remarkable, has an explanation. This was the first day of promotion tests. Lennie was trying, in one hour, to suck the honey of six months of wisdom accumulated by Herbie on the subject of English grammar.
“Tell me again,” he said, “what the difference is between a phrase an' a clause.”
“Well, a clause is like a sentence inside a sentence, see,” said Herbie patiently, “an' a phrase only has a preposition an' a noun.”
“What the blazes is a preposition again?”
“Well, like ‘on,’ ‘in, ’ ‘to,’ ‘of’—you know.”
“‘If’?”
“Heck, no, ‘if’ is a conjunction.”
“Well, how do you tell 'em apart? Don't a preposition always have two letters?”
“Lennie, for cryin' out loud, don't you ever do homework? Two letters! Holy smoke, there's ‘from,’ ‘toward,’ ‘into,’ ‘under’—”
Lennie crushed the empty paper cup in a callused hand and slung it angrily into the gutter. “I'm skunked for sure.”
“Look, Lennie, it's a cinch. A clause always has a verb in it. A phrase never has.”
“A verb. You mean like ‘run,’ ‘jump,’ ‘fly’?”
“Right.”
“Well, O.K. Gimme an example.”
“Sure. ‘He threw me the ball an' I caught it on the run.’ Pick out a clause.”
“‘On the run,’” said Lennie promptly.
“No, no, that's a phrase.”
“You're crazy. It's got a verb in it—‘run.’”
“That ain't a verb.”
“Look, you little punk, make up your mind. You said a minute ago it was a verb.”
“Well, see, sometimes it is, sometimes it ain't. English is funny.”
Lennie's eyes became slits. “You wouldn't be tryin' to mix me up an hour before the test, would you, General Garbage?” he said, grasping Herbie by the shirt.
“Look, Lennie, I could be studying' by myself if I wanted, couldn't I? That was a bad example, that's all. Here's an easy one. ‘I walk while he runs.’ Which is the clause?”
Lennie paused, looked at his tutor suspiciously, and said, ‘While he runs.’”
“Right! Lennie, you got it now.”
The bigger boy brightened. “Well, if that's all there is to it I'll be O.K. Say, will we get any of them dumb poetry questions?”
“Sure as you're alive.”
“She's got a nerve. None of the other 7B classes got that stuff.”
“I know, but she's bugs on poetry. Anyway, it's easy, Lennie. All you got to know is the difference between dactyl, trochee, and iambic.”
“That's all, huh? What the hell is the difference?”
“Well, it's all rhythm, see? Dactyl is one long and two shorts. Trochee is one long and one short. Iambic is one short and one long. There's a thing called anapest, too, but she said we ain't gonna get that on the test.”
Lennie yanked a baseball covered with black tape out of his pocket and smacked it from hand to hand, his head hanging. “I couldn't remember that stuff if I spent the whole lunch hour on it. I guess I flunk that question.”
“Listen, you gotta know it.” Herbie pondered a moment, his eyes following the movements of the baseball. He snapped his fingers and said, “Hey, here's an idea. See if you can remember it this way. ‘Outfielder’ is a dactyl. ‘Shortstop’ is a trochee. ‘Yer out!’ is a iambic.”
“That's more like it!” Lennie slapped the ball sharply into his right fist and put it away. “‘Outfielder’ dactyl, ‘shortstop’ trochee, ‘yer out!’ iambic. Got that. But how'm I gonna—”
“Wait a second. She'll give us a line o' poetry on the blackboard, see? Read it to yourself. If it sounds like ‘outfielder, outfielder, outfielder,’ put down dactyl. If it goes ‘yer out, yer out, yer out’—iambic. An' so on. That's all there is to poetry.”
Lennie mumbled the magic formula to himself several times. “Boy, I got that cold. I hope the whole lousy test is poetry.”
“Now, y'oughta know something' about participles—”
“Aw, can it a minute, Herbie. I'll get some more ice cream.”
The athlete sprinted to the ice-cream wagon at the comer and returned in a matter of seconds, breathing easily, with another paper cup. For a second time that day the foes ate ice cream together. This was the closest they had come to truce in all the lifelong war between them. Herbie, forgetful of years of bullying, felt almost an affection for the enemy he was helping. Lennie, for his part, was ready to forgive Herbie his quick wits, now that they were useful to him.
“Say, Herb,” said the bigger boy, as the cup shuttled, “how come you know that stuff? You sure don't study much. You're always foolin' around down by the candy store at night, same as me.”
“Shucks, Len, how come you run so fast and can chin fifteen times? It comes natural, don't it? Same with me.”
Lennie smelled sophistry. “Now, hold on. I like athletics, that's how come I'm good. You ain't sayin' you like grammar?”
“Are you nuts? I hate it,” said Herbie stoutly. To confess his guilty pleasure in the machinery of language would have been as bad as admitting a taste for opium; in fact, Lennie would have been much readier to forgive the opium. “It just comes easy somehow.”
Lennie considered the matter. “Well,” he said at last, “I sure as anything would rather be like me and play good ball than be a teacher's pet like you an' know about clauses an' participles.”
“Anybody would,” said Herbie humbly, “but I can't help it. What should I do—answ
er a lot of questions wrong on every test? That still wouldn't make me run fast.”
This put things in a new light. It occurred to Lennie that his enemy might not be depraved, after all, but simply constituted badly. “Look, Herb,” he said, “sometimes you're almost a regular guy. You're not so bad at stickball, f'rinstance. Only why ain't you interested in the same things all the guys are? Baseball teams, now. I bet you don't even know who's leadin' the National League.”
Herbie did not answer.
“I bet—no, this is impossible—you do know the Yankee lineup, don't you?”
“Sure. Babe Ruth plays right field 'n' bats fourth, Lou Gehrig plays first base 'n' bats third, and—and—” The stout boy broke off lamely.
“Boy, you even got that wrong. Gehrig's fourth and Ruth's third. Herb,” said Lennie kindly, “that's awful.”
Herbie nodded, his face red with shame. It was his turn at the ice cream, but his appetite was gone and he declined it.
“Why, Herb, even Bunny Lipman, that stoop, knows the leadin' ten battin' averages in both leagues. See, there is somethin' wrong with you.”
“I wish I knew what it was, Len, honest,” said Herbie, out of the depths of humiliation. It was true, he had always had this mysterious blind spot toward baseball. Boys who were fools in the classroom could juggle names and figures by the hour: “Rabbit Maranville batted .235 in '26, Wilcey Moore pitched one shutout in '27,” and so forth forevermore, it seemed, while he knew nothing. He had tried in vain to study the sports pages of the newspapers. The figures evaporated from his brain like sprinklings on a hot pavement in July.
“It ain't too serious,” said Lennie. “With your brains, if you really wanted, you could get to be a regular guy in no time.”
“So help me, Lennie, I'm gonna try,” Herbie said, and made a mental note to spend the summer studying the baseball scriptures, Spalding's Handbook. He forgot about it five minutes later, but at the moment it was an iron resolution, and he felt thankful to Lennie for showing him the straight path. He resumed his coaching with a will, and with such good effect that Lennie came to Mrs. Gorkin's classroom muttering all the necessary secrets of English sentence structure.
The sternness of promotion time was marked by the legal-length yellow sheets lying on each desk. The majestic, oversize sheets seemed instruments of judgment. To add to the frightfulness of the tests as well as to make prearranged cheating harder, the seating order of the children was scrambled. Herbie found himself in the last seat but one in a former girls' row, and Lennie, by dextrously putting himself before the teacher at the right moment, managed to be placed directly behind him.
Mrs. Gorkin read the articles of war. She described to the grim-faced children the horrid penalties for talking, signaling, or looking anywhere but at blackboard or desk. No more than the class did she regard a promotion test as a simple examination. It was battle. On the children's side, a half year of life was at stake; on the teacher's, revenge for stupidity and indifference. She would show no mercy; they would have no scruples. Detection in crime meant being left back. All this was clear.
“Now,” said Mrs. Gorkin, “I shall raise these maps that cover the blackboard. Do not start writing until I give you permission.”
Africa and Asia rolled up at her touch, revealing the naked face of Fate. Ten questions were hand-printed on the board in blood-red chalk. White chalk was good enough for every other day of the year —in fact, it was much more readable than the colored—but the scarlet queries added a nice touch of terror.
“Begin!” barked the teacher. Thirty small hands dipped thirty new steel pens in thirty freshly filled inkwells, and on the yellow sheets the answer to the first question took form in thirty different scrawls.
Herbie Bookbinder danced through the examination in half the allotted time. His frivolous mind, barren of the useful facts of batting averages and league standings, was a weed patch of foolishness like infinitive clauses and subjunctive moods. He settled back to enjoy the luxury of doing nothing while others sweated. Suddenly from behind him came a hardly audible “Pss-s-st!” With the caution of a cat preparing for a steep jump, he very slightly leaned back his head to acknowledge the signal.
“Herbie,” came a desperate whisper, “what the hell is a dactyl, again?”
Now, Herbie was not used to cheating. Most school children develop a callus over that area of their souls, as a horse will where the harness galls him, but Herbie had always done well without it, and his conscience was still tender. When he had entered the first grade, his father had taken him aside to say, “Son, whatever you have to do, do it as good as you can. Don't cheat. Fail. But don't cheat.” He had never forgotten.
“Herbie, for Pete's sake, can't you hear me? WTiat's a dactyl?”
The whisper was louder now—dangerously loud. Mrs. Gorkin looked straight at Herbie, and he felt his face flush. Then she turned her glance elsewhere.
“Herbie, are you a regular guy or ain't you? What's a dactyl?”
Since Cain and Abel were young, what boy has been able to resist the challenge, “Are you a regular guy?” Whatever the crime involved—cheating, stealing, lying to parents, cruelty to the weak, or worse—what boy has the courage to refuse to be “regular”? Herbie pretended to resume writing his test. Carefully he extracted a scrap of paper from a trouser pocket and wrote the word “outfielder” on it. He leaned back and dangled his arm at his side. Lennie's hot, perspiring hand came groping for the paper, and seized it.
The voice of Mrs. Gorkin came through the air like an arrow of ice.
“Herbert Bookbinder and Leonard Krieger, stand!”
A thrill of horror ran down Herbie's spine. He and Lennie leaped to stiff attention in the aisle, arms hugged to sides.
The red-headed teacher strode to the vacant desk, and after a short search pounced on the crumpled bit of paper lying under Herbie's seat. The rest of the class watched with saucer eyes as she smoothed it out and read it. Upon seeing the single baseball term she looked so comically astounded and foiled that several children laughed aloud. A burning glance around the room withered them.
“Go back to your work, everyone who doesn't want to join these two!”
Twenty-eight heads bent low over desks.
Mrs. Gorkin looked long and hard at “outfielder.” Then she stared at the boys, who stood dumb and rigid. Then she turned the paper over. Then she turned it back and surveyed it upside down. Then she held it up against the light. But there was only one piece of intelligence to be gleaned from it: “outfielder.” She turned and walked to her desk, muttering, “Outfielder—outfielder—outfielder?” Snatching paper and pencil, she scrawled half a column of gibberish like fielderout, outerfield, fieldouter, outrefield, and so forth, studied her work for a moment, crumpled it, and dashed it into the waste-basket.
“Outside with you!” she snapped at the standing boys. “Faces to the wall and not a word, not a sound, do you hear?”
Herbie led Lennie out of the room, with the sense that his young life was coming to an unnatural end.
For fifteen torturing minutes the boys stood in the silent hall, their faces to the plaster. At last the school gong rang the end of the hour. A shuffle of feet and rustle of paper could be heard inside the classroom.
Lennie broke silence with a whisper, “She can't do nothin' to us.”
Herbie said nothing.
“Betcher scared.”
No answer.
“I ain't. That's a lotta bull about gettin' left back.”
No answer.
“What's the difference if we do get left back? We'll skip right back up in a month.”
Silence.
“Whatsamatter, Herb?”
“Sh-sh,” spoke up Herbie at last. “Ain't we in enough trouble?”
“I thought so,” snarled Lennie. “You're yellow. Just plain yellow, that's all you are. Yellow.”
Herbie was enraged. “You're as scared as me, Lennie Krieger. I can hear your voice shakin'. You're just sh
owin' off like you always do. Shut your big trap.”
“O.K., General Garbage. I'll remember that. Gettin' all ready to snitch on me, ain'tcha?”
The classroom door opened.
“About face!”
Herbie and Lennie wheeled. Mrs. Gorkin confronted them with the scowl of a destroying angel.
“Now, then, Master Bookbinder, just what is the meaning of ‘outfielder’?”
“Why, ma'am, it's a guy on a baseball team who lays back of the bases—”
“Don't you play the fool with me! I want an explanation of this!” She thrust the paper scrap toward him.
Lennie interjected, “I never seen that paper.”
“Silence, you! Herbert Bookbinder, why did you pass the word ‘outfielder’ to Lennie?”
“That's—that's what I want to play on his softball team—outfielder, ma'am. We were talkin' about it at lunch.”
Mrs. Gorkin seized him by the ear. “Are you trying to tell me that in the middle of a promotion test you (yank) the fattest of all the little fat boys I have ever seen (yank) were thinking about athletics?”
“Ow! I finished my test, ma'am. I guess it was bad for me to pass a paper, but I sure don't have to cheat, ma'am, an' what good could ‘outfielder’ do Lennie?”
Mrs. Gorkin stared at him. He returned his best cherubic look. She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. “I would give a week's salary for the answer to that question,” she said. “Your papers are both forfeited. Return to your seats.”
After school Lennie whispered to Herbie, as they left the play yard, “She won't do nothin' to us, Herb. You'll see. Thanks for bein' a regular guy.”
Herbie often read in Sunday supplements about the end of the world. The fright which seized him at the thought that a comet might strike the earth, or the moon fall into the ocean, or the sun grow cold was not unlike the fear with which he now waited for promotion day. Each morning he woke to a sinking of the heart as he knew himself one day closer to being left back. But the ignorance that makes boys easy to terrorize also gives them hope of miracles. Herbie awaited his doom, nursed a secret faith in a last-minute pardon from the Governor or the President, and said nothing to his parents about his misery.