Chapter 25 — Graduation
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fter Parents’ Day the school year rushed to its conclusion. The routine of classes and athletics was broken by the last baseball game, the last crew race, and the last track meet. When the last high fly was caught, the last “You’re out!” pronounced, the ball team was suddenly no longer a team. When Butch called, “Way enough” for the last time, and Cap closed the boat house door behind them, the first boat was no longer a smooth, strong, disciplined unit but five good friends who would never forget that final sprint when five men and a shell fused together like quicksilver, a single organism with a single will, the river singing underneath. The last classes met and dispersed, teachers trying to distill the wisdom from a year’s study of mathematics or science, of literature or history, into a single 40-minute cup – and failing. Then came the final examinations, the English examinations first. A passing crow looked down on the morning of that event with amazement at what appeared to be a huge centipede, a vast caterpillar armored with shining scales and protected with prongy horns. It was a procession of boys, each carrying over his head a tablet armchair from a classroom to the gym, pro tem examination room. It happened twice a year at midyear and at finals, and every time Peter Floyd was reminded of Jesus carrying his cross and of captives forced to dig their own graves, but he shook off the thought. The chairs were ranged in rows on the gym floor, covered for today with canvas smelling strongly of something like creosote – an examination smell. Pencils, pens, erasers arranged on writing arms, a bluebook slapped down on every arm, teachers moving up and down the aisles each passing out his own mimeographed examination papers to his own classes. “Gentlemen, your attention please,” announced Mr. Floyd in his formal voice. “On the English IV examination, page 2, line 6, the final word should be ‘alarm’ ‘Ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm.’ On the English VI examination write on three of the five topics. You have a choice. This examination will close at 11:15, two hours from now. You may begin.” A proctor wrote “11:15” in letters two feet high on a portable blackboard and under it, “You have _____ minutes remaining” and filled in the blank every 15 minutes. Silence fell, broken by little things. Proctors paced slowly up and down the aisles. One of Mr. Edgehill’s shoes squeaked. Someone opened a window. A hand shot up. A whisper, “Sir, does this mean I can write on any author I want?” A finger pointed at the question paper. “Read the directions!” A gull screamed over the river. A dog barked. Feet shuffled. “Sir, may I sharpen my pencil?” The pencil sharpener growled. The proctors paced. One plied eraser and chalk. “You have 1 hr. 15 min. left.” Joe Rotch, bent over his bluebook, pen laboring line by line, was answering question II: “Write a brief and specific essay distinguishing between poetry and mere verse with reference to the poems of 20th century American writers.” Joe was badly entangled in MacLeish’s Ars Poetica and was struggling to extricate himself. Sam Reed was “on a roll,” knocking out an Instant B essay on the linked analogies in Moby Dick. “Gentlemen, this examination will close in ONE HOUR,” pronounced Mr. Johnson, in tones Monhegan’s fog signal might envy. The time on the blackboard shrank to 40 minutes, to 30 minutes. Billy Edwards was trying desperately to identify ten of the following: pathetic fallacy, Sid Thaxter, Piggy… Hand up. An alert proctor moving quickly up the aisle. Hand extended. Bluebook put in it as a nurse 115
