Chapter 10 — It’s Not Fair

Johnny Cluett sat at his study hall desk, oblivious of the rows of other desks bolted to the floor and occupied by rows of shirts and sweaters and uncombed heads – oblivious too of the Supervisory Presence of Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson, math teacher, unregenerate college athlete, down-the-line disciplinarian, was not at all oblivious of Cluett. He was suspicious of him, for Cluett was small, slight, and quick on his feet but had no interest whatever in formal athletics. He saw Cluett as a clever boy in a foxy sort of way, one who had a reputation as the leader of last year’s “eighth-grade Mafia,” a group constantly in and out of trouble and much discussed in faculty meetings. Mr. Johnson had never had Cluett in class but believed that he needed stepping on and suspected that he had escaped the consequences of many crimes. The Eye of Suspicion rested on Cluett. Johnny was deeply involved in his English paper. The assignment was to describe a rope ski tow. Johnny had seen one, had been plucked to the top of the hill at the Camden Snow Bowl last winter. He knew just how it worked. But to get it into words on paper was not easy. He began: “A rope ski tow is a long, long rope which goes up a hill and it goes over a big wheel and it goes over other wheels coming down and you hang on to it and go up.” He read it over. It was lousy. He hadn’t even said it was on a ski hill. He crumpled up the paper in frustration and threw it on the floor. “On a hill covered with snow…” “Cluett, pick up that paper and put it in the basket,” roared Mr. Johnson. “What do you think this is, a public dump?” Johnny returned with a jolt from the Snow Bowl to the study hall, picked up the paper and started down the aisle with it. Allen Merton stuck his foot out. Johnny saw it, stumbled over it noisily, and pitched the paper into the basket with a basketball motion. “Cluett, sit down! This is a study hall, not a basketball court.” “Yes sir. Sorry, sir.” Johnny returned to his seat, not daring to kick Merton’s foot again, and tried to get back to the Snow

Bowl.

“There is this steep hill all covered with snow. People want to ski down it but they don’t want to clime up it so there is a long rope that goes up it called a ski tow. You hang on to the rope and it hawls you up.” Dead stop! The springs of creativity were dry, but Johnny knew he had not done the job. “Kin I sharpen my pencil, sir?” “No, Cluett, you cannot disturb the whole study hall merely to sharpen your pencil! If you could perform the same operation on your wits, it might be worth it. Here, use my pencil but be sure I get it back. “Thank you sir. Yes, sir.” Back to the Snow Bowl. “The rope hasn’t got any end to it and just goes round and round over wheels and there is a motor at the bottom that makes it go and you have to have a ticket to get in line to grab it.” The spring was dry again, but this time Johnny was satisfied that he had it. He looked at the clock, slapped his notebook shut, and got a hard, level glance from Mr. Johnson. “One more outt of you, Cluett, and you get a handful of demerits.” It isn’t fair, thought Johnny. I haven’t done anything. There are plenty of other guys pulling stuff in here and old Johnson always has his eagle eye on me. Merton tripped me and he never said anything to Merton. Billy Edwards has been passing notes to Pete

all evening, and Jonesy is sitting in the middle of a ring of crumpled-up paper and he never said anything. Seems like I always get picked on. When the bell rang at last, Johnny picked up his books with a sense of innocence outraged and started for the door. “Cluett, you young brigand, bring back my pencil!” Johnny turned back, dropped the pencil on Mr. Johnson’s table without a word and went out, muttering something about a damned old half a wooden pencil. When the English class came into the room next morning, beside his desk stood Mr. Floyd, a small, precise m, neatly dressed as always in gray flannels, white shirt, dark tie and tweed coat. His gold-rimmed spectacles sparkled with literary enthusiasm. Johnny took his seat with a sense of conscious virtue. He had done his homework and done it well. Surely Mr. Floyd, who was a nice guy if somewhat picky about spelling, would like his ski tow piece. “All right, gentlemen, whip out your homework papers. I trust that these efforts are comparatively brief. Therefore I will look them over quickly while you continue your reading in Huckleberry Finn and we will discuss the more interesting offerings at the end of the period.” The papers rustled in. “Jones, I don’t seem to have one from you.” “No, sir.” “Why not? “I couldn’t seem to get it right. I tried and tried. Really I did, sir.” “Well, try again later. I grant you, it was a difficult assignment.” After a brief period of shuffling, the room settled down. Mr. Floyd sat at his desk, his red pen methodically slashing into the student prose, the pile of papers on his left resolving itself into two piles on his right. Most of the class was dutifully reading. Eddie and Pete appeared to be reading, but they each squared off a sheet of paper and were unobtrusively playing battleship. Jonesy was staring vacantly at a steel engraving of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was staring back from behind a thicket of white whiskers. Mr. Floyd had the portrait in his classroom, as he had said many times, to remind his students that a Maine man can make it in the literary world. But Jonesy was not thinking about Longfellow; he was not thinking at all. Billy Edwards started to read, but the broad Mississippi soon flowed into the tide-ridden Kennebec. The low November sun warmed the room, and outside, a congregation of crows cawed and chattered on the shore.

At length Floyd stood up, picked up the smaller pile of papers, and stepped to the front of the desk. “I have selected two papers which are of some interest. I read them, not to embarrass the authors, but to illustrate strengths and weaknesses common to many of you. First the effort of Mr. Cluett.” He read Johnny’s paper. “This reflects a serious effort to describe a ski tow, but unfortunately it is an inept one. The author has written not to his reader but to himself. He knows what he means by “a rope that hasn’t got any end to it,” but I am not sure that I do. His enthusiasm – or his desire to be done with the assignment – overcame him toward the end in a long run-on sentence into which he pitched indiscriminately all the remaining information that occurred to him, including the necessity of a ticket – not really relevant in the description of a ski tow. And I cannot emphasize too much the importance of spelling. ‘Climb’ ends in a ‘b’, not an ‘e’. ‘Haul’ has a ‘u’, not a ‘w’ in its midst. Finally, a period should mark gracefully the end of an English sentence.” Jonesy in the front row, unobtrusively handed a paper up to Mr. Floyd, who took it absently and put it on the back of the pile. “Now, the work of Mr. Phillips. This is apparently better. Not only is it mechanically correct, but it also embodies a precise use of the language. ‘A rope ski tow consists of a rope twice as long as the hill it ascends. The ends are spliced together,

forming a long loop, which is held in a vertical plane by wheels supported on poles about fifteen feet high. At the bottom of the hill is a motor with a winch head mounted on the shaft. Around this the rope is led in several turns so that when the motor is running, the lower part of the rope moves up the hill, over a wheel at the top, down over the wheels on the poles to the winch and so around again continuously. The skier seizes the rope as it moves up the hill and is thus lifted to the top.” “Neatly done, Henry. I could build a ski tow from your description if I knew how to make that splice. Now, what have we here?” He turned his attention to Jones’s paper. Johnny was devastated. He had really tried hard, he thought. Sorry about the spelling, but how can you look up a word in the dictionary if you don’t know how to spell it? And why should you look it up if you think it is right? And you do need a ticket to go on a ski tow. And anyway, that Henry Phillips is so darned bright he gives me a pain. I wouldn’t write like that even if I could. And he gets A’s and all I’ll get is a lousy C-. Mr. Floyd, obviously moved, put down the rest of the papers, holding only Jonesy’s. “Gentlemen, occasionally the Muse favors one of us with a flash of inspiration, of poetic insight. Here is the best description of a ski tow I have read in many years of giving this assignment. “A ski tow is a snake with his tail in his mouth, hissing up the snowy hill.” You can hear the ski tow, feel the ski tow, in that one sentence. And notice that the rhythm is exactly what is needed to perfect it. ‘A ski tow is a snake with his tail in his mouth, hissing up the snowy hill.’ I am delighted, Mr. Jones, that you were blessed with that revelation and that you were wise enough to recognize it.” Johnny knew it was good. He remembered how he had stood by the brown rope hissing through the rut it had worn in the snow beside the two ski tracks. He remembered how you had to handle it cautiously, letting it run through your mittens until your skis were in the tracks, one hand behind your back and the other ahead of you, and then clamp down on the rope and up you go, the view widening, until you glide out on the level summit over snowy Maine. It all came to him in that one sentence, but he couldn’t admit it. Just one sentence done in class and he’ll get an A, on it and I beat my butt off doing it in study hall last night. It isn’t fair. It just isn’t fair! A week later Johnny caught the Annual Cold. Almost everyone in school had it in some degree in the fall. Some were really sick, but Johnny was just miserable and went to the infirmary as much for sympathy as for aspirin. Mrs. Edgehill, R.N., administered both. She listened to Johnny’s story of his hard week. Not only had he been picked on by Mr. Johnson and treated most unfairly by Mr. Floyd, who hated him and loved that little brown-nose Jonesy, but he had been “dragged in” to Mr. Hanshaw’s office and dressed down handsomely for skipping athletics. “I told him I didn’t skip; I was just a little late.” “How late? “Only about 20 minutes and the attendance had already been taken, but I was there.” And then Cunningham had given him several demerits for talking after lights and other guys did it and he never said anything to them. To top it off, he had been banished from the art room by Mr. Benson and he hadn’t done a thing. “Billy Edwards threw a piece of clay at me and all I did was catch it so it wouldn’t go on the floor and he fired both out for a week.” And he had flunked a math test and now he had a cold from working off demerits lugging firewood in the rain, “And my old man will kill me when he gets my report card. It’s just not fair,” snuffled Johnny. Mrs. Edgehill had had about enough of self-pity for one day, although she knew it was a common symptom of juvenile colds. “Not fair?” she snapped back. “Of course it’s not fair! Who ever said it was supposed to be fair? Some fat cats on top of the world and make millions while lots and lots of other people work hard, live hard,

die hard and eat dirt. Where have you been that you haven’t found that out yet? Some kids learn without working and other kids work without learning. Why should the good die young and the rogues live to a fat and happy old age? You tell me! Not fair!” She yanked open the refrigerator door, brought out a big can of grapefruit juice, scooped a paper cup out of a drawer. “You take this and go in the sun room, and don’t you leave until every drop is gone. There’s two others in there that don’t deserve to be sick any more than you do.” Johnny mopped his nose with a Kleenex and joined the invalids. The juice, pleasant company, an idle afternoon and the television set helped to restore both health and spirits. In early December, winter came in “butt end first,” as Cap said. After a three-day northeaster which roared and rattled through bare branches and soaked down the remaining piles of dead leaves, the weather turned cold and clear. The northwest wind, blowing out of the arctic night,froze the puddles, sent long streaks of foam across the river, and polished the night sky where Orion, brave in sword and belt, strode after the Pleiades, followed by his brilliant dog star, Sirius. Baseball caps and hats gave way to woolen caps; warm-up jackets to down ski vests and mackinaws. The ground froze iron hard. After several days it moderated a little, but the low sun gave only a watery light and little heat even at noon, and the nights were long and cold. Fringes of ice formed on the salt water around the edge of Kenniston’s Cove and finally reached all the way across, although the main channel of the Kennebec was open. The fresh water pond above the old mill dam, where old Captain Kenniston and his crew used to cut ice to ship south in schooners years ago, finally froze hard and looked strong enough to skate on. Arthur Sikes, a fat ninth-grader, was persuaded to test it, urged on by an eager crowd. Arthur, booted, mittened, ear-lapped, not really understanding, cautiously slid his feet out on the ice. It held him. Sam handed him a hockey stick and told him to tap the ice with it ahead of him as he walked out. Arthur tapped tentatively. “Harder,” said Sam. Arthur hit harder and a little star appeared in the ice. “Go ahead,” said Sam, “but keep whacking with the stick.” Arthur shuffled out, whacking, making stars, pleased to be recognized by a big kid like Sam. When he was about five feet from shore, the stick went through. But Arthur, thinking perhaps that the stick held some sort of magic, and delighted at being the center of attention, kept right on. At the next step, one foot and then the other went through, and Arthur stood in ice water to his waist. Sam stepped out on the ice, which broke under him, grabbed the terrified Arthur by the collar of his mackinaw, and lofted him on to the bank. “You ding-a-ling!” he shouted, sloshing ashore. “When the stick went through, you were supposed to stop. That’s what you were pounding for. Now get back to the dorm and under a hot shower before you freeze to death. I didn’t know they came so dumb.” Arthur, understanding, shivering, overwhelmed and somehow a little pleased by the laughter of the crowd and Sam’s attention, departed. By the weekend, the pond had frozen hard and on Saturday afternoon a shinny game started itself, using shoes for goals. No one was quite sure who was on whose side or what position any one was supposed to play. A disorganized tag game infiltrated the shinny game, and the Cluett, Edwards, Merton, Jones axis was snatching hats. Could one take a distant and sentimental view, the confused scene might look like something Currier &Ives might have done a century ago. On the low ridge to the north of the pond where the old ice houses had once stood, Cap and a work squad were thinning out the young maples and birches which had grown up since the ice houses had collapsed. His chain saw snarled as it bit the logs into firewood lengths. Half a dozen boys were lugging brush to a growing pile, which would be burned after snow fell, and others were whacking away with axes, limbing trees for Cap’s saw or splitting the small logs. Occasionally Cap paused to look over at the pond,

knowing that wherever boys congregate, someone can get hurt. The short winter afternoon was fading toward dusk, the sun just clear of the trees and the cold steel of a winter night creeping up the eastern sky. The game had died out as groups drifted ashore, put on shoes and headed for bright rooms in the falling dark. The work squad had been dismissed, and Cap was picking up his maul and wedges. One last hockey player wound up for a slap shot and sent the puck sailing, saucering, up the pond toward where the brook came in and turned to look for his boots. Johnny Cluett, who would chase anything that moved, took after it. One of his skates caught. He looked down, saw water on the ice, tripped, fell flat. The ice bent like wet cardboard and let him in. He was shocked, amazed. He hadn’t even thought of falling in. He grabbed at the edge of the ice, kicking vigorously with his feet to stay afloat. The ice broke off in his hands as he tried to climb out. He noticed clearly that it was only about half an inch thick and brownish. He gasped, breathless, and kept kicking. Billy, his roommate, had been after the puck too and saw John go in. He turned for the bank, ran into the woods on his skates, grabbed a branch off the brush pile. Cap looked up, astonished. “Johnny fell in,” gasped Billy, and ran for the shore, dragging a branch, with Cap right behind him and gaining. Billy skated out toward Johnny’s head and arms, still showing through the incongruously shattered ice. “Lie down!” yelled Cap,bursting out of the bushes, skidding out on the ice in his boots. “Lie down!” Billy slid on to his stomach reaching out with the branch. “Butt end first!” shouted Cap. “He can’t hold on to twigs.” Billy turned the branch,shoved it nearer to Johnny, still kicking to stay afloat, not yet conscious of the cold. Billy slid ahead, Cap at full length behind him, holding his skate. Several others, who now realized what was happening, shuffled up. “Beat it,” shouted Cap. “Get away or we all go in.” Johnny grabbed the butt of the branch with both hands, security in a world terribly insecure. Billy and Cap wrlggled backwards. At first the ice broke under Johnny’s chest, but he soon reached harder ice, slid up on it, stood up, and skated toward shore. “Th–thanks, fellas,” he said. “Where’s the puck?” “To hell with the puck!” said Cap. “Where’s your shoes?” Johnny seemed all right. He skated briskly over to his shoes and sat on the log where he had taken them off. But he was breathless and his hands were too cold to untie the skate laces, which were already beginning to freeze. He shivered hard as the cold struck through his wet clothes. Cap pulled out his jackknife, cut the frozen laces, pulled off the skates and wet socks, and stuffed Johnny’s feet into shoes. “Now, Johnny, run! We’ll go up to my house. You too, Billy.” Before they had covered the hundred yards to Cap’s porch, Johnny’s pants were stiff with ice and pieces like glass fell off when he ran. Once inside house, stripped, dressed in a pair of Cap’s pants and a checked woolen shirt much too big for him, and holding a mug of hot tea in his hands,he felt OK. “Here,” said Cap, “put a little of the Old Lion in it. Good for the circulation.” He poured a tablespoon of red rum into the tea, and Johnny seemed none the worse for his dip. “Sure glad you guys came along. I just couldn’t get out.” “I know,” said Billy. “What some people will do for a drink of rum,” marveled Cap. When a rock falls in a pond, ripples spread. When a boy falls in, he makes waves. At first, no one but Billy noticed. The boy who had slapped the puck had done it as a final gesture to the game and turned away. The others had already quit, were looking for their shoes, or had already left. Allen Poole, looking up the pond at the trees sharp against the fading sky, had been shocked by the ragged black hole in the pond, something entirely out of keeping with the scene. “Someone’s fallen in!” he shouted.

Several boys shuffled over the ice in their shoes but were warned off by Cap. The next wave came when the news hit the school. “Someone fell in.” “Who?” “I dunno.” “If he did, he’ll freeze to death or drown.” “Hey, did you hear Arthur got drownded?” “No he didn’t, you nut! There he is at the next table.” “Well, who did get drownded?” “I dunno.” “Hey, did someone get drownded? Who?” The wave spread to the faculty. Mr. Johnson, man of action, headed for the pond on the run, alone, in the black dark. He found the silent hole in the ice, saw no one, turned and ran back to Cap’s house for help, where he discovered the corpse, now completely recovered. Mr. Hanshaw picked up the rumor, sought to thresh out the grain of truth in the bushel of talk without success and decided that the Headmaster either did know or should know at once. He pounded over the boardwalk to the Headmaster’s house and hammered the knocker. Surprised, Mr. Sawyer opened the door, heard the news and went into action. “Who was it?” “I don’t know.” “Did he get out?” “I’m not sure. I just picked up the rumor. The boys are all talking about it but no one seems to know for sure.” “Was there anyone in charge around the pond?” “No one was assigned.” “Wasn’t Cap cutting wood down there? I thought I heard his chain saw this afternoon.” “I don’t know.” “Sit down while I call him.” He dialed, talked with Cap, concluded, “No, Cap, you did just the right thing … Seems all right now does he? Well, send him back to the dorm when he’s ready and tell him to see me before he goes to supper. And Cap, wouldn’t it be a good idea to put a couple of horses and a plank across where the brook comes in until it’s frozen hard?” The Headmaster alerted Mr. Floyd, agreed that no great fuss should be made, and that wave subsided. In the next faculty meeting it was proposed that someone,not named, should check the pond to see that it was safe before anyone was allowed to skate; that someone, not named, should be assigned to be present whenever anyone was skating there; and finally that skating on the ice pond should be forever prohibited. Some of those present knew very well that extra assignments are disliked and often dealt with halfheartedly, that rules never prevented the adventurous or rebellious from getting into trouble, and that being a boy can be a dangerous experience. It was at long and repetitious length moved, seconded and voted that a life ring and a length of line be placed on a post at a prominent place on the bank – amended to two life rings, one at each end of the pond. A more distant wave struck the Chairman of the Board of Trustees when his nephew wrote him that “some kid fell through the ice and got drowned.” After some hasty telephone calls, that wave subsided. But the biggest wave broke against Johnny himself. Several nights after the rescue, he was leaning against Mr. Cunningham’s doorway. While he had been waiting for a shower stall to be free, he had idled, seen Mr. Cunningham sitting at his desk doing not much while the dorm settled down for the night. “Well, Johnny, you had a close shave on Saturday.”

“Oh, no. It wasn’t much. Billy shoved me a branch and hauled me out.” “Were you cold?” “Not really. Not until I got out.” “Didn’t you try to get out by yourself?” “Sure, but ice kept breaking off. Every time I took hold of it, it broke off.” “What did you feel like, not being able to reach bottom and with everything you touched breaking under your hands?” “I don’t know. I really didn’t think about it.” “What do you suppose would have happened if you had got so tired you couldn’t have kept kicking?” “I’d have had to just hang on to the edge of the ice.” “And if it kept on breaking off?” Johnny gulped. “I guess I would’ve been in trouble.” “And if it hadn’t broken at last, your feet would have gone in under the ice and you after them. Isn’t that an awful thought?” Gus shuddered. “For heaven’s sake, have one of these and forget it!” He tossed Johnny a green lime sour ball. Johnny, always the cool one, tucked it in his cheek. “Thanks, teach,” he said as he ducked around the corner into the shower. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, thought Gus. It just came into my mind and ran out of my mouth. He shivered again. That night, the lights out, Johnny thought about what it was like under the ice – dark, clutching cold, shut in by that black roof, airless. They could never get him out in time. And right now, instead of being here in bed, he might be dead and cold and buried. He shuddered in horror. Gradually over the weeks that passed, the horror faded. He never said anything to anybody about it because he didn’t have the words to say it; but he stopped complaining about being robbed and he did admit to Mrs. Floyd one Sunday afternoon when she had invited several of them in for cocoa and cookies that he had had his share of good luck.