Chapter 3 — Massive Learning Experience
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he first hours of school were confusing both to Billy and to Gus, but by 11 o’clock in the morning, the old timers had settled into the patterns of former years, and even to the new boys, it seemed as if school had been under way for a month. Gus’s classes went smoothly enough although that ninth grade did seem a little restless and talkative. Billy actually enjoyed an English class with Mr. Floyd; just managed to cope with a beginning algebra class; was completely overwhelmed by a French class in which no word of English was spoken, and in Gus’s history class was utterly bored by a summary of Indo-European migrations and their effects on the language, culture, and religion of the Greeks of Homer’s time. He sat next to Johnny, and while looking studiously at his notebook, contrived a game of tic-tac-toe with him and then one of Battleship. Johnny had a rubber band, and he used it with practiced accuracy on the neck of Henry Phillips in the row ahead. Billy tried, missed, and nearly got caught; but the air of injured innocence, which had worked so well at home, scored another success. “Who, me? Oh, no, sir.” The afternoon was a little frightening. He was required to strip to be weighed and measured. Then he was given a red school T-shirt, a pair of short pants, and a sweatshirt. Jimmy, the man who passed out the equipment, dangled a strange-looking piece of clothing in front of him and asked, “You want a jock?” Billy didn’t know what it was and shook his head. “Never mind. You ain’t got nothin’ to put in it yet. You’ll come to it.” Billy left, mystified, was assigned a locker; required to put on the new clothes and hustled on to the field to join the ill-assorted XY soccer team. Gus showed them how to kick the ball with the top and side of the foot, not the toe, but Billy just kicked it like most of the rest of them. It didn’t last too long. Supper was good – great; but it seemed to be the custom to growl about it. Johnny declared that last year he had bitten down on a horseshoe nail in the stew, and it was a well-known fact that the milk was liberally dosed with saltpeter. Study hall started off like Fun Night until the bell rang. Then Mr. Johnson, known to Billy only as “Coach,” his universal nickname, glared fiercely at two who were slow to stop talking. On a tour of the room he snatched a comic book from behind an atlas and established such an attitude of silent terror that Billy really tried to do his algebra for a while. But he soon gave it up to read Of Mice And Men, which had been assigned in English. He read way ahead, letting the consequent feeling of excessive virtue eclipse his failure even to think about algebra, history, science, or French. When they got back to Chelsea House though, Billy found that Johnny had been thinking about history. “You watch. Tomorrow old Gus is goin’ to get it.” But he refused to elaborate. That evening, after the dormitory had quieted down, Gus dropped in to Peter’s study to discuss his first experiences as a teacher. Peter seemed to take it calmly, relaxed now at the end of the day in his shirtsleeves, but Gus was still excited and became stimulated all over again in telling the story. “I was really full of butterflies when those ninth graders came in for the first class. They were OK though and sat down more or less attentively as if I were a real teacher. I asked their names, checked them off on the list, and passed out the books just as you said. There was a good deal of chatter while that was going on, but I couldn’t see that that was doing any harm. Then the rest of the period I set up the background for fifth century Greek civilization. You know those Greeks came from central Asia and pushed out the original inhabitants so lots of their language is like that of the modern Germans. Take the word for 14
