Chapter 19 — The Headmaster’s Bad Dream

Mrs. Ellen Sawyer, the Headmaster’s wife, felt satisfied with her achievement as she sat with her six guests around the living room fire after dinner. She had had serious doubts about the party beforehand, but now everyone seemed at ease and the dinner had actually exceeded her expectations. Her brother Stanley and his wife Deanna had come to visit for the weekend. Stanley was a lawyer with the distinguished Boston firm of Bartlett, Jones, and A.P. Butterworth. Deanna, a tall, masterful woman, thin to the point of emaciation and stylish almost to arrogance, was a gourmet cook. She had generously undertaken to cook the Saturday night dinner. Ellen Sawyer had been steam-rollered into acceptance, but nourished doubts that anyone else could or should invade her kitchen and cook for her guests. However, Deanna had promised to do her famous baked stuffed lobster, and who could decently refuse that? Getting ready for Deanna had been a good piece harder than cooking a dinner. Many of the necessary ingredients – Deanna had sent a list – were not on her kitchen shelves and some of the spices were not available in the Bath supermarket. The wine for seasoning had to be French Chardonnay. The salad fixings had to be of the highest quality. Those little hard, pink golf balls of supermarket tomatoes were unacceptable. The cucumbers had to be unwaxed, the avocadoes of the precise degree of ripeness, the lettuce oh-so-crisp. Deanna, surveying the result of Ellen’s two-day scavenger hunt, spent a good part of Saturday morning scouring the shops of Bath to repair deficiencies in quality and to procure a few items she had wanted to select herself. Right after lunch at school – pea soup and corn bread – Ellen, Stanley, and Deanna had driven down to Steve Cushing’s wharf at Small Point for eight lively 1 1/2-pound lobsters. Steve had led them out of the close little store on the wharf, stuffy with smells of bait, wet wool, tar, tobacco and oil stove, and had lifted the lid of the lobster car. He reached in with his dip net. “I want that one over there in the corner,” said Deanna, “and that one that just backed into the crowd on this side.” Steve patiently and skillfully maneuvered the designated creatures into his net and dropped them snapping into the basket on the scale. One was pronounced inferior and was returned for a better one. When eight had been selected and passed inspection, they were weighed and dumped into a cardboard beer carton. The visitors picked their ways up the icy gangway, Deanna holding her fur coat tightly around her in the bitter wind, and hurried to the car. Ellen stepped into the house on the wharf with Steve to pay for the lobsters. “I’m sorry to be so fussy,” apologized Ellen,” but she’s my sister-in-law and a gourmet cook who writes books about it. So far as I’m concerned, at this time of year a lobster’s a lobster and they all taste the same.”

“Well,” answered Steve, “I don’t mind. If you’re going to deal with the public, you have to be pretty damned accomodatin’, even in the winter.” Despite the difficulties of the oven not being just right, the plates not being quite hot enough and the wine – Stanley had brought the wine from Boston – quite cold enough, the dinner had been a great success. Now, over coffee, Coach Johnson was expatiating on the World Series, what the manager of the Cardinals should have told his batter to do in the ninth with one out and a man on first. Stanley was intensely interested and suggested the proper defensive shift for the Yankee outfield. Mrs. Johnson was dutifully attentive. Fritz Bauer, Head of the History Department, was profoundly bored as was Judy Bauer, neither of whom knew a shortstop from a doorstop. Deanna had shot her bolt. She lay wilted on the couch. 84

Ben Sawyer, Headmaster, blinked and braced to keep his eyes open and tried to participate as a good host should, but it had been a long day. After a busy morning with telephone and dictating machine, he had had to attend a special meeting of the Disciplinary Committee on the case of Butch Hummelman, who had, admittedly and beyond question, set a fire in his English classroom. His teacher, Mr. Evanston, insisted that Butch be on the next plane to Lemon Blossom, Florida. Probably he was right. However, as the story unfolded, the Headmaster’s attitude wavered. Two weeks ago, before the examination, Mr. Evanston had exhorted his class to go beyond the mere satisfaction of requirements, to learn for the exhilaration of learning. “Anyone can earn a B in English,” he said,” but an A was to be achieved only by extra effort, by a cup of perspiration seasoned by a soup༉on of inspiration. An A student did more than enough. In Biblical terms, “walked the extra mile, carried the extra burden, gave his coat and his cloak also.” On this morning, Mr. Evanston had returned the mid-year examination bluebooks. Butch had received an E, a failing grade, because, said Mr. Evanston loudly and publicly for the edification of the class, Butch had failed to follow directions. The directions had said, “Write on ONE of the following topics.” Butch, eager to go the extra mile, had written on both of the topics. He had protested, but Mr. Evanston was adamant. He said, in fact, that he had not even read the paper when he saw that Butch had failed to follow directions. During the rest of the period Butch had seethed with outrage and disappointment. He had slowly torn his examination book into narrow strips, prolonging each tearing action as long as he could. Mr. Evanston had ignored the insult. When the bell rang, Mr. Evanston had ordered Butch to put the scraps in the wastebasket. He did, all except for the last one. Butch “flicked his Bic,” set it afire, and dropped it flaming into the wastebasket and walked out. Butch had imperiled the lives and property of many people and had, with malice and premeditation, insulted a member of the faculty. Under any system of law and morality, declared Evanston, Butch must be expelled. Yet the Committee had discussed heatedly the extenuating circumstances versus the enormity of the crime for two hours, Mr. Whitmore declaring that in the same circumstances, if he had had the nerve, he would have done the same thing. Leaving the matter unresolved, the Committee adjourned to meet again on Monday. After the meeting, a brisk run on skis around the cross country course had helped to restore the Headmaster’s enthusiasm, but the warm room, the lobster stuffing – rather too rich for his digestion – and the necessity for eating and liking everything, had left him a bit confused behind his belt buckle and not deeply concerned with what would have happened if Shorty Gomez had caught that line drive in the third inning of the second game. Judy Bauer, determined to change the subject at any cost, kicked Fritz’s ankle so he jerked awake. “That nice new boy, Hummelman, went by my kitchen window this afternoon looking as if he wanted to cry. I wonder if the poor boy is homesick.” “When was it?” broke in Coach Johnson. “About four o’clock? He was on his way back from a Disciplinary Committee meeting and is on his way back home right now – or he ought to be.” Fritz came alive at once in defense of the humanitarian point of view and of one of “his” boys. Stanley was interested in the legality of firing a boy. Coach Johnson, always ready to pontificate on any subject on earth or the seas thereof, stood before the fire and pronounced sentence. “Evanston is right. Hummingbird has to go. You can’t have people setting fires and insulting masters irregardless of the provocation. Search every civilized society on the globe and you will find that arson is invariably a crime. And you, as Headmaster, Ben, must back up your faculty.” “The provocation was immense,” replied Bauer. “If you fire Butch, the whole school will see it as gross injustice and as a whitewash of a teacher’s error. I don’t care what the rules say. This is one case where mercy must season justice.”

“Besides,” broke in Stanley, “when you took the boy’s tuition payment, you entered into a contract to educate him. You can’t break that contract simply because he needs more education.” “But the school catalogue says,” said Johnson too loudly, “and I quote, ‘Any student whose conduct flagrantly violates Academy rules or fails to reflect favorably the purposes and principles of the Academy may be asked to leave.’” “That does not affect the boy’s basic right to an education, be it academic, athletic, or moral in return for his money, returned Stanley. “In the case of–” “Let’s get back to fundamentals,” said Johnson, striding back and forth like an Admiral on his quarterdeck. “Society has rules which are enforced for the good of its members. These rules, this system of law, must be supported or society reverts to barbarism. Sure, some people get hurt. Sure, we are sorry for Hummingbird. But he was the one who insulted Evanston. He was the one who lit the fire. Of course he doesn’t want to be expelled. But he should have thought of that before he did it. “What we need in this school is a predictable system of justice whereby in every case of crime, a punishment would invariably and automatically be applied. Then we wouldn’t have any crime. That’s the trouble with this modern milk-and-water permissive attitude. For the good of the school and the good of the boy, Hummingbird must go.” “In the first place,” observed Fritz quietly but with no little emphasis, “the boy’s name is Hummelman, not Hummingbird. Next, you must remember that he is a young fourteen from a small town in Florida. He is in a strange place among strangers and he is a very small boy, physically. He is strongly independent, very imaginative, and an actor. He is always acting a part. That’s how he got the nickname Butch. He isn’t tough. When he came, he was acting the part of a tough kid in self-defense. Ask Walter Edgehill. Yesterday he was outraged by an obvious injustice and he took the role of a protester, a guerilla warrior if you will, and he acted the part very well. Yes, he broke the rules, but he is no moral cripple. There is nothing dishonest, mean, or self-seeking about him. He must learn not to set fires. He must learn to respect his teachers, even if, as in this case, they don’t deserve respect. But you won’t help him and you won’t help the school by expelling him, however legalistic your reasons. If you want to expel someone, expel Evanston.” The discussion continued with increasing heat, Johnson insisting on the necessity for severe and immediate punishment to support the rules, the rules, the rules, Bauer insisting on the necessity for considering the “human equation,” and Stanley offering to take Hummelman’s case to court and defend him to the hilt. Ben Sawyer listened intently, for these were the three points of the case which had haunted him since the facts first came out in the meeting that afternoon. He forgot temporarily about his digestive commotion. But that night the lobster stuffing rose to distress Mr. Sawyer. He did not sleep well at all, got up once to take a pill, and finally dropped into an uneasy doze in which he dreamed vividly. A new Headmaster was addressing the School at assembly. He was a precise, disciplined little man in a neat blue suit with a neat, white handkerchief jutting from his breast pocket. His immaculate white shirt and precisely-tied bow tie were echoed by his highly polished black shoes. He spoke in a high, sharp voice with an electronic twang to it. From now on, there would be no nonsense at the Academy. Teachers were to teach, students were to study, coaches were to coach. All discipline, all mechanical details, most administrative duties were to be handled by computer. All grades, averages, rank-in-class figures and report cards were to be computerized. Each student, each teacher was to have a number. Names were superfluous to a computer. Television cameras and screens were installed all over the school so no corner was unseen by the machine. The machine itself, early in its life dubbed Horrible Horace by an unregenerate student, was installed in the faculty lounge, for which of course there was no longer any need. If Horace sensed a boy in the eighth grade smoking under the stairs, he would file it in his prodigious

memory under the boy’s number and type it on his college recommendation four years later. Every grade, every comment, every criticism, each and every aberration from normal was recorded. School policy was determined by the Headmaster and was punched into the machine by his secretary. No single hair on a boy’s head was to be over two inches long. Bread must be broken into three pieces before being buttered. No pushing in the cookies and milk line and no more than two cookies to a customer. Acceptable excuses for lateness, absence, and failure to do assignments were punched in. A flat tire, flood, fire, and pestilence were acceptable excuses. ‘The dog ate it,’ ‘my alarm clock didn’t go off,’ ‘I lost my car keys’ elicited from the machine an immediate and painful electric shock. The year started beautifully. Boys and teachers were punctual in a manner hitherto unprecedented. No longer was a teacher to be seen running for class with a plastic coffee cup in his outstretched hand. Laggards were hustled by a vast electronic voice bidding Smith to proceed with greater speed to the Physics lab and admonishing Jones for pausing to talk with Brown on the stairway. Minor crime vanished, for when Austin in mischievous mood made to overturn a fire extinguisher and squirt his classmates ascending the stair, he was arrested in mid career by the flash of a camera taking his picture and a computerized bellow bidding number 634 to cease and desist at once. At the same instant he was treated to an electric shock, which raised him off the floor. Intellectual activity was improved in an unprecedented manner, for the sleepy were awakened and the bored were stimulated. Athletic teams achieved enormous success, for every play was analyzed by the computer, its weakness noted, correction recommended, and a proper defense devised. Horace knew that Androscoggin was going to pass on the next play before the Androscoggin quarterback knew it, and Horace directed the defense. The school leaped at once to a sound financial basis because so much money was saved; and an unforeseen advantage accrued when the business manager and the Assistant Headmaster resigned because there was nothing for them to be frustrated about any more. It was Utopian. All through the winter Horace sat in the faculty lounge and hummed contentedly, extending his electronic tentacles into every corner of school life. Teachers taught, students studied, hockey players played hockey, malingering ceased, and the Headmaster raised money, all as slick as a fox in a henhouse. But early in the spring came the first crack in the system. Merton was tall and thin – rather hastily put together by a deity who made up for all his deficiencies with an overdose of good humor, good intentions and ingenuity. Merton was careless, impulsive, forgetful, a procrastinator, and not very brilliant, but he was the kind of person things happen to – unusual things. It all started innocently enough when he was asked by his geometry teacher to do a proof on the board after class because he had not done it properly for homework. Horace took note of the assignment, excused him from study hall, set up a circuit to call the teacher in ten minutes and settled down, purring, to write college recommendations. Merton drew an isosceles triangle on the board as the book directed, but instead of making the base horizontal, he tipped it sharply to the right. It seemed to be falling over so he supported it with two legs. Because they looked skinny, he put hockey pants and skates on them. Then a pair of plumy wings seemed necessary and a spherical owl-like head. He thought of adding a nest for the bird when Horace recalled the teacher. Being human, the teacher roared with laughter. Being inhuman, Horace skipped a few beats, attempted to classify the drawing, flashed a red light, and went down. However, the trouble was soon located, circuit breakers snapped back, and Horace was restored to health. Merton was haled before the Head. The Headmaster hid the ghost of a smile and bade Merton return to his studies forthwith. On the first warm day in April, Merton was sharing a six-pack of Pepsi with Austin and Brown. Austin squeezed the first empty can flat, bent it in the middle, and lofted it into the wastebasket. Merton tried to squeeze the can he was holding, but it resisted. He squeezed harder. He squeezed with both hands. The can exploded,

blowing Pepsi all over the room. Horace responded with a vigorous shock and an admonition to Merton for spilling his drink and demanded an explanation. Merton’s response: “I didn’t know it was loaded,” put Horace out of action again. He had not been programmed to deal with a boy who didn’t know that one squeezes empty cans only. The human variable was too much for him. Merton’s Latin class varied its pedestrian journey through vocabulary, forms, syntax, and translation with projects on Roman life. Merton elected to make a model of Mt. Vesuvius with Pompeii and Herculaneum at its foot. At the snap of a switch, the volcano was to erupt and bury the cities. Mr. Whitmore wisely insisted that the eruption take place outdoors. It did. Instead of the planned lava flow and shower of volcanic ash, Vesuvius blew itself to atoms in a shower of red and yellow stars to the surprise and delight of the assembled class. Again Horace went down, his absolute dependence on a programmed response unable to deal with the infinite imaginative capacity of the human mind. And so it went. Over and over again the unprogrammed event, the human variable, jarred Horace and delighted the school. Playing first base, Merton deserted his post one windy day to chase a girl’s handkerchief into right field and at the crack of the bat, turned to pick a whistling line drive out of the air, almost by mistake, for the winning out. Horace didn’t know whether to roar at him for playing out of position or applaud him for a stellar play. The coach, not bound by programmed logic, did both. Merton was late to school because he stopped to watch a fish hawk dive in the river, dropping like a feathered bomb into the still water. No program fitted that excuse. He was late to lunch because he got interested in a Latin comedy and came in chuckling while Horace was berating him – a quite unprogrammed reaction. He missed athletics one afternoon, leaving Horace short-circuited unable to digest the excuse that he was writing a poem for his mother’s birthday. Finally, when the weather became warm and blue, the grass green, and the apple trees a vision of pink and white, when purple lilacs lined the paths, Merton did Horace to death. All in one day, he was late to his English exam, he wrote little, and what he wrote was verse and not expository prose; seized by an uncontrollable impulse, he tossed a sneaker into the open study hall window during a Physics exam, devoted the rest of the afternoon to various forms of impulsive and riotous living and gave at last his excuse “I’m in love.” With a shriek of shredded transistors, a burst of flaming lasers, and a soft sigh of burned-out amplifiers, Horace, unable to cope with the human equation in infinite unknowns, expired. Ben Sawyer awoke with a start to the familiar clang of the breakfast bell and ruminated on Butch Hummelman and the human equation in infinite unknowns. As he shrugged into his well-worn jacket, he decided regretfully that a Headmaster could not tell his dreams to his faculty.