W
es could always make Jocie feel better. He didn’t tell her what she should be doing. How she should be feeling. He didn’t tell her Edwin Hammond was right just because he was a teacher. That’s the way most grown-ups thought. If there was a problem between a teacher and a student, then it had to be the kid’s fault. Nobody ever thought the teacher might be doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. Like trying to teach when it was obvious he couldn’t.
When she had tried to tell her father that, he’d given her his stern look and said she should be worrying less about what Mr. Hammond might be doing wrong and more about what she might be doing wrong. That was after Mr. Hammond called to complain about her setting him straight on the “God helps those who help themselves” thing. You’d think a teacher would appreciate knowing how something really was, instead of teaching it the wrong way.
It didn’t matter all that much who started that thing about God helping them, though. The Lord did help you. A lot of times whether you helped yourself or not. And maybe her father was right. Maybe she should think about what she’d done wrong to get on Mr. Hammond’s bad side.
She wasn’t perfect in school. She talked out of turn. She sometimes forgot to hide her yawns when a teacher droned on and on about something that everybody had known since second grade. She couldn’t keep from giggling when one of the boys acted up in class. But she didn’t act up. She did what she was told. She behaved properly. But Mr. Hammond said she didn’t.
As Jocie helped Wes and her father finish printing the pages of ads and fillers, she tried to remember the first time Mr. Hammond had given her that evil eye. It was before the “God helps those who help themselves” thing. But it wasn’t right at first, when he’d come to finish out the year for Mrs. Wickers after she’d had to take time off because she was expecting a baby. That was in October.
He’d seemed nice enough then. An exciting change. Paulette said he was a dreamboat, and some of the girls clapped their hands over their hearts and practically swooned when he walked past them in the hall. He did look like somebody out of a book. Mysterious. Exotic. Not at all like the other teachers. He wore black all the time, even on warm days, and he never wore a tie. The other men teachers did. But Mr. Hammond wore T-shirts under his suit jackets.
She’d asked him about that in the new-teacher interview for the
Banner
the second week he was at Hollyhill High. He said a tie was a noose some depraved person had designed to keep a man from being able to soar free and realize his potential. She had the whole idiotic answer written down word for word in her notes somewhere. Maybe that’s where she’d gone wrong. Writing the new-teacher article. When she thought about it, it was after the article came out in the
Banner
that he’d started marking up her papers and inventing things she’d done wrong.
Later, back at the house after she helped Aunt Love wash the supper dishes, Jocie dug through the stack of old papers out on the porch and found the one with Mr. Hammond’s new-teacher article. Her father had put the piece on the bottom fold of the front page. The picture she’d taken of the man wasn’t bad. He looked sort of like a young Sherlock Holmes without the pipe or the hat. It was the most flattering picture of the four she’d taken. She remembered.
She skimmed through the words in the article under the picture. He’d taught in Cincinnati last year. Spent some time in New York City before that. Planned to write literary novels someday. Was sure being part of a small town like Hollyhill would expand his horizons. Maybe someday he’d put them all in a book. Hoped to marry and have children in the near future. His mother was in the Peace Corps. Jocie had left out the part about the tie. She’d left out a lot. She hadn’t written anything that could upset anybody.
Of course Mr. Hammond hadn’t wanted to answer her questions at all. When she’d asked him about doing the interview, he let out a weary sigh and said, “A necessary evil, I suppose. I’ll give you fifteen minutes after school today, so have your questions ready. I could probably write out the answers and give them to you without even hearing your questions, but we’ll carry through the usual farce.”
Jocie had written out her questions in history class. And they were the usual, but that was what people wanted to know. Where he was from. Why he had taken the job at Hollyhill High. Et cetera.
After the last bell rang that day and all the other kids had exploded out the doors toward home, Jocie had hurried back to Mr. Hammond’s classroom. The hallways seemed twice as big and spooky quiet without all the kids pushing toward their classes. Earlier at her locker, she had heard the muffled sounds of bouncing basketballs and the coach’s whistle from back in the gym where the boys were practicing, but even those sounds faded away as she went down the hall past all the closed classroom doors. Her footsteps echoed on the tile floor. She should have asked Charissa to stay with her and keep her company while she talked to Mr. Hammond.
He looked up from his desk at her when she knocked on his open door and motioned her in with a long slender finger. “I’ve got the questions ready,” she told him holding up her notebook. “But if it’s okay, we can do the pictures first.”
“Whatever.” He looked bored with the whole idea, but he sat still while she snapped four pictures.
“Great,” she said as she dropped the camera back against her chest and scooted into the student’s desk right in front of his desk. She didn’t know why she was nervous. She’d interviewed a half dozen of the teachers in the school for this or that story in the
Banner
already this year. Interviews weren’t hard. She just asked the questions and wrote down the answers.
“I wasn’t aware the school had a student paper,” he said.
“We don’t. This is for the local paper. The
Hollyhill Banner
.” Jocie opened up her notebook and pulled her pencil out of her purse.
He frowned. “You work for the local paper?”
“I don’t really work for the paper. I just help out. My father is the editor, so he lets me do the school news.” She gave Mr. Hammond what she hoped was a dazzling smile.
He didn’t smile back. “I thought you said your father was a preacher.”
“Right. That too.” Their first assignment from Mr. Hammond had been to write a page about themselves. She’d written that her father was a preacher and an editor, but a teacher couldn’t be expected to remember every word every student wrote.
“Interesting.” Mr. Hammond leaned back in his chair, made a steeple with his long index fingers, and studied Jocie over them. “Are you sure you are capable of doing a proper interview?”
“I’ve done a lot of interviews.” Jocie let her smile drain away and plastered her best serious look on her face as she gripped her pencil until her fingers hurt. The man’s eyes bored into her as if he didn’t believe a word she was saying. “You can read the final copy before it comes out in the
Banner
if you want.”
“Oh well, it won’t matter all that much. Your news rag is hardly the
New York Times
.” He waved his hands in a dismissive gesture before he picked up a pen and began twirling it back and forth between his fingers. “So on with it. Ask.”
When she started reading her first question about where he was from, he stopped her. “Wait. Let’s shorten this. Please. I’ll give you the capsule info. I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My mother taught eighth grade math. My father was a policeman. He was killed in the line of duty when I was fifteen. My mother joined the Peace Corps last year and is somewhere in South America helping the poor unfortunates there learn how to add and subtract, I suppose. No brothers or sisters.”
He paused to take a breath, and Jocie said, “I’m sorry.” When he looked at her as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, she added, “For your father dying.”
“Why? Nobody else was. Certainly not me. He wasn’t a nice man.” He didn’t miss a twirl.
“Oh.” Jocie thought about saying she was sorry again— this time because his father wasn’t a nice man—but she decided against it. Instead she concentrated on writing down what he’d said while the silence in the room pushed against her ears. Finally she looked up and said, “And you say your mother is in the Peace Corps.”
“Oh yes. Inspired by our late president’s fiery oratory about asking what we can do for our country. God and country. I can almost hear the national anthem playing, can’t you? My dear mother always committed to the greater good. She never worried a lot about what the greater good was for those closest to her.”
“Oh,” Jocie said, not sure what he expected her to say to that. “Well, it must be pretty neat, though, having a mother in the Peace Corps.”
“Neat. That’s as good a word as any.” He looked bored as he went on. “And what else do you want to know? Let’s see. People usually want to know where I taught before, as if last year had anything to do with this year. Different schools. Different reluctant minds to pry open. Same parts of speech to pour in.” He let out an elaborate sigh. “At any rate, last year I taught in Cincinnati. My first position was in New York. I don’t like staying in one place for long.”
Jocie asked, “Why?”
“Why what?” He stopped twirling his pen and stared at her.
“Why don’t you like staying in one place for long?”
“I am a writer. A writer needs to experience new things, fill his mind with characters in all sorts of situations to people his stories. No doubt Hollyhill will help fill my reservoir of odd characters to the brim.”
“Is that why you are an English teacher—because you like to write?” Jocie glanced up at him from her scribbled notes. He was looking at her as if she’d just asked the dumbest question ever.
“I don’t
like
to write. I
do
write.” He sounded insulted as his eyes narrowed on her.
“Oh, okay. Sorry.” Jocie looked down at her notepad, but she could still feel him frowning at her. “What do you write?”
“Whatever my muse suggests. I doubt you even know what a muse is.”
“Your inspiration to write?” Jocie said.
“Go to the head of the class.” His frown was replaced with an amused look. “I’ll wager you have dreamed of being a writer yourself someday. Oh, the somedays that we might have.”
Jocie’s cheeks felt warm. She ducked her head and scribbled some notes as she answered, “I write for the newspaper already.” She wasn’t about to tell him about her journals and how she liked to write down people’s stories. He’d laugh for sure.
“So you do. Does your father give you bylines?”
“He probably will for this story,” Jocie said.
“Amazing. I’m the reason for a byline for a child of what? Thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Fourteen.” Jocie searched through her notes for a question to get the interview back to business. His business. She cleared her throat and asked, “So are you inspired to write stories? Or maybe poems?”
“Literature. I write literature.” He leaned forward in his chair and hit the end of his pen down hard on the pile of papers on his desk in front of him. Jocie couldn’t keep from jumping. “Shakespeare. Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Poe. They surely didn’t have to start out this way—marking papers. Alas, what depths a man must sink to before he reaches his destiny!”
For a moment Jocie thought he might leap up and start reciting Shakespeare or something. She shrank back in her seat. The man was strange. Plain and simple. Or not so simple. She licked her lips and managed to say, “Right.” Her eyes strayed over to the door.
“Right?” he shot back at her. “What do you know about destiny?”
“I guess everybody has one,” Jocie ventured.
“Again you have an answer.” Mr. Hammond pointed his pen toward her. “But have you thought about your destiny? Whether you are destined for greatness or destined to grow up, live out your life in this small hamlet, and never do anything of note. I believe a person can plan out his own destiny. Shape his life. Not that a detour doesn’t occur at times. Such as this year in Hollyhill. But perhaps even here destiny awaits. Perhaps I will find the love of my life or write my first literary masterpiece. Do you think that’s possible?”
“I guess so.” Jocie grabbed at his last remark as a way to get back to a semblance of a normal interview. “So you aren’t married?”
“You knew that already.” He looked smug now as if he’d caught her in some mistake and it pleased him. “Every girl in the school knew I wasn’t married before the end of the first day I was here. Single and available. Be sure to put that in your article. Who knows? The love of my life might be one of your subscribers. And it could be that I want to get married.”
“Why?” Jocie was sorry she asked as soon as the word was out of her mouth. She should have just mumbled “right” again and said thank you before making her escape out the door. That’s what it was feeling more and more like. As if she needed to make an escape.
“Vietnam.” He looked angry for a moment. Then he took a deep breath and started twirling his pen again as he said, “Our noble president is allowing our country to be sucked into that conflict on the other side of the world. In the name of freedom, he says. But there is little freedom for draft-age men. Uncle Sam says go, then go you must. But Uncle Sam is less demanding of married men with children.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe. Sort of.” Jocie glanced up at the clock over the chalkboard. Her fifteen minutes were up and then some. She had enough to write her piece. Leigh would be out front waiting for her. Leigh was taking off work early so they could make Christmas cookies to take to church.
“In a hurry?” Mr. Hammond asked, his amused look back in place.
“You told me I only had fifteen minutes. I was trying to keep to your schedule.”
“But you haven’t asked me your questions.”
“You answered some of them already.” Jocie looked down her list.
“But surely you had some personal questions. Perhaps my favorite writer. Or about my mode of dress.”
“So who is your favorite writer?”
“Hemingway, both on the page and off the page. He knew how to live. And die.”