Chapter 20 — Undivided Share

As the last days of winter thawed into March, the course of good education ceased to run smoothly at Kennebec Academy. Almost everyone began to notice things going awry. Johnny sat in the library puzzling out a stuffy article in the encyclopedia on Joseph Conrad. The ninth grade class had been assigned to write a brief biography of the novelist, and the encyclopedia appeared to be the only easily available source. Johnny had had to wait and wait for it as each of his classmates extracted the nuggets of fact from the piles of prose. At last it was his turn and now he became aware that people were collecting books, picking up papers, putting on coats. The librarian was checking window locks, closing up his desk, and straightening magazines with one eye on the clock now creeping up to ten. In three minutes Johnny would have to turn in the book and then wait out the line again tomorrow. Quickly he slipped the volume on to his lap under the table, opened his knife and slit out the page. He folded it once and put it in his notebook. “Cloooooosing,” said the librarian. Johnny felt badly about the page when he got back in his room, but he soon talked himself into defense. “It’s really my book. Look at all I pay in tuition. Certainly I deserve to have one lousy page out of one lousy old book, so I can learn and study like anyone else.” He knew it was a poor argument, but he said it over and over again and believed it before he went to

sleep.

The next morning, livid with rage, Mr. Sanborn, the librarian, stood before the Assistant Headmaster’s desk, holding the mutilated book in his hand. “Look at that – deliberately, some kid took a knife and deliberately slit out that page. Just slit it out and ruined the book for everyone else. It was someone in Mr. Floyd’s class, I’m sure of it. I don’t know who, but I’ll wring that little rascal’s neck!” He choked and gasped with rage, pain, and indignation. “But sir, I couldn’t do the homework because someone cut the page out of the book.” “But sir – but sir – but sir.” The washbasin on the wall in the dormitory bathroom had served generations of boys at Kennebec as they shave their first fuzzy mustaches before the cracked mirror above it. The basin was a little loose on the wall and wiggled if you jarred it hard. Stan and his roommate, Bill, were horsing around in the bathroom. Sam soaked a washrag and slammed it at Bill. Bill picked it up to slam it back and ducked into one of the toilets. Bill threw a glass of water over the top. Stan wet a wad of toilet paper, burst out the door and slammed it back. Bill lurched back against the mirror. The basin moved, and a chunk of plaster fell off the wall next to it. Both boys saw it and each tried to shove the other against the basin again. Each time it grew looser, then hung like loose tooth by the pipes, and, at the next slam it fell completely clear, crashed to the floor, two geysers spurted from the broken pipes and the boys fled, laughing. When water began to drip through the ceiling in Mr. Johnson’s study, he ran upstairs, found the flood pouring from under the bathroom door, rushed in, found the valves and shut off the spouting water. The broken shards of the basin lay on the floor. Mr. Johnson seized all the towels in sight, tried to slop up the water, and wondered where the boys were. It wasn’t natural for them to miss a scene like this. He knocked on Josh Burns’s door. Josh was sitting at his desk, chin on hand, bending over a geometry book, apparently oblivious to Noah’s flood across the hall. “Oh sir, yes sir. I was doing geometry, 89

sir. I don’t know, sir. “I have no idea sir. No I didn’t hear anything, sir.” After Mr. Johnson had gone downstairs again, Bill said, “We shouldn’t have done that, Sam. We knew that thing would break off.” “Oh, the deuce with it. We’ve done enough for this school and my pa has given enough to this school to pay for one old washbasin that has been here since Grandpa was a kid. They needed a new one anyway. “Can you beat it?” said Mr. Johnson to the faculty room. “Those little scoundrels just smashed that basin off the wall – just bashed it to pieces. Then they all disappeared. No one had heard anything. They were all studying. Intensely. Yet Burns for one hadn’t written anything on his geometry paper. It is unthinkable that anyone would just smash up school property so. Just for devilment. I don’t understand it.” Spring crept a little bit closer, retreated in snow, and came back repentant in a burst of warm weather. A fire started in the lean-to at the foot of the ski hill but was fortunately extinguished. Someone unknown dumped half an ink bottle into the aquarium in the Bio lab and killed all the fish. The climbing ropes in the gym were cut off 8 feet above the floor – all but the end one. No one was caught. The faculty was enraged and frustrated, suspicious and hurt. Some boys were angry, some amused, and some outraged. The Headmaster ascended the rostrum steps on Friday and explained in careful detail the moral issues involved in damaging community property to the advantage of none and the detriment of all. He spoke of missing books in the library, bent table silver, shades yanked off their rollers, paths made across the lawns, ruined ceilings, broken windows and a host of other things. The school listened dutifully but nothing happened. Down in the Maintenance Shop there was tumult and rage. Cap listened to the others growling. “Damn those little rich kids. Ain’t they got no sense at all? Don’t they know if they stave up the place it won’t be fit to live in?” “Oh they don’t know nothin’ and they don’t care neither. Might’s well go sit on your hat as try to tell those little sticks anything.” “Well I’d like to get my hands on whoever wrecked that wash basin and flooded us out. There was no need of that. Ruined two ceilings, shorted out the wiring, soaked the tiles off the floor and generally raised hell.” Outside the shop where the March sun shone warmly on the mud of the dooryard stood the new dump truck. Johnnie found a rock loosened from the winter’s frost and idly tossed it into the truck. It made a most satisfactory noise so Stan threw one a lot harder. It took off a chip of paint and bounced around inside the body. Out the door came Cap on the sprint and before Johnnie could even wind up with the next rock, Cap had a trembling boy in each hand. He marched them into the shop. “By God, Cap, I’d warm their sterns for them. I’ll tell you right now that’s what my old man would do.” Johnnie and Sam shivered. “What did you heave a rock at our new truck for?” asked Cap in a gentle voice but with iron behind it. Johnnie put on his bold front. “For the tuition we pay we can afford to chuck a rock into the back of the truck. It’s practically my truck. We didn’t hurt it anyway.” “You think it’s your truck do you? Well you just sit right on those two nail kegs, young fellers and I’ll tell you whether it’s your truck. “Years back when my pa was a kid about fifteen, him and a black dog went crew with Cap’n Walter and Cap’n Tom on the old Rebecca. She was a little coasting vessel these two owned together. They went up to Boston for a load of coal. Cap ’n Walter did the navigation and give most of the orders and Cap ’n Tom took care of sails and riggin’ and steered some and handled the windlass and anchors, and my pa and the dog cooked and did all the work.

“Well, they had a load of coal for Bath and was coming up the River right by here on a pretty September day with just a light southerly astern and the very bottom of a low dreen tide. That means all the flats were out and the shoal places were pretty shoal. “Cap’n Walt was to the wheel, but Cap’nTom wouldn’t let him be. It was always, “Walt hadn’ t you better stand off here to the east’d a mite. You know the bar makes out by the buoy.” And “Walt, maybe you better favor her a bit to the west’d off the light and port a mite here and starboard a hair there.” “Walt stood it about as long as he could, and the dog was just lookin’ on. And then he says, “Tom, I’m steerin’ my half of the vessel. You get along forrad and take care of your half.” “Tom clumped down on his pipe, clumped forrad, took the maul, stood by the fo’csle hatch and knocked the pin out of the windlass. The anchor went over the side in a cloud of rust and a rumble, and old Rebecca swung around and just laid there. “Now,” says Tom, “I anchored my end of the vessel. Go ahead and steer yours wherever you’ve a mind to. “Pa and the dog figured they’d never get the load of coal to Bath at that rate. “Now, don’t you see you can’t divide up a vessel? She don’t go anywhere if one fellow anchors his

part.

“That isn’t your truck; it’s our truck. And don’t you ever let anyone heave rocks at our truck or spoil our ceilings or bust our windows. “Now get the hell out of our shop before I warm your stern!”