He had told Ann the truth, the truth that he had for years tried not to admit to himself. It wasn’t only her. It had always been this way, even as far back as high school. Star athlete, well mannered, popular, he had had his pick of the girls in school, and more than his share of opportunities.
A few times, with tramps like Carol Steward, everything had been all right—or pretty much so. It had been necessary to drink well past his usual limit, neck and pet almost to the bursting point, but it had worked. The other times, however, had been disastrous. Ironically enough, the inability that had forced him to retire from the campaigns at the crucial moments had earned him a reputation as a “gentlemen,” a “safe” date, and had in turn assured him of even more opportunities.
Always it had been the same—through college, through his marriage with Ann. He could still not remember their wedding night without a blush of humiliation, all of his efforts, including drinking himself almost to the oblivion, failing to produce the necessary results.
Pete Jennings was just parking his car when Glen got out of the convertible and started across the school parking lot. Glen waited for Pete to join him, and they started toward the school building together.
“Another Monday,” Pete announced in his loud, slow voice. “Seems to me like someone could design a calendar without Mondays.”
“The trouble is with your Sundays,” Glen informed him, his face relaxing into a grin. It was easy for him to relax with Pete, feel comfortable with the burly ex-football player who had barely managed to get through college and get his credentials to teach. “If you’d lay off the wicked life on Sundays, you’d find Mondays a lot easier.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Pete agreed with a contented grunt. “That’s the price a bachelor pays for his freedom.”
A bachelor, Glen thought, the word sticking in his mind. That’s what he’d be now, when Ann left, a bachelor again. In a sense, it would be a new experience for him; he’d never really lived by himself. Before, through high school and college, it had been his sister and her husband who had raised him, taking over after the death of his parents. He had lived with them, in fact, right up to the time when he had married Ann. He certainly couldn’t go back to them now, like running home to mother when things went wrong. Anyway, there was the house now, and maybe he’d enjoy being a bachelor.
“What’s it like?” he asked impulsively.
“What’s what like?”
Glen paused, realizing suddenly how silly his question would sound, and knowing that he didn’t want to discuss his marital problems, not with Pete, or anyone else, not just yet. He was trying to think of some logical statement to make when Pete looked beyond him and let out a yell.
“Okay, okay, what’s the big idea?” he demanded. Glen turned, following his gaze to the young man a few feet from them. “What’s with the cigarette? You know better than to smoke on school grounds, Jerry.”
Jerry, the young man, dropped his eyes to the ground and let the cigarette fall from his hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible despite the short distance. “I forgot.”
“You’d darned well better not forget again,” Pete boomed, his voice stern and commanding.
Glen watched the young man quicken his pace and hurry on his way ahead of them toward the school building. Jerry Allen was a student in one of his own classes. There was something about the tense, withdrawn way in which Jerry walked, the shoulders huddled closely together as though in protection from a nonexistent cold, that made him seem somehow forlorn and pathetic. The pretty, almost cherubic face that should have glistened with innocent youth was hardened and sullen, the supple, sturdy young body bent as though under a great weight.
“That one,” Pete snorted, resuming his own progress toward the faded brick building in front of them. “Someone ought to get hold of that kid and shake a string of knots out of him.”
“Jerry?” Glen asked. That’s silly, he thought as he said the name, who else could Pete be talking about? He blushed, for some reason he did not understand, and pulled his eyes from the retreating figure of Jerry Allen. “Why is that?”
Pete grunted again, a gesture that Glen knew from experience could mean happiness or displeasure, or anything in between. “Take a look at him. A young hood, that’s all he’ll be, going around with a king-size chip on his shoulder, all the time goofing off. And the worst of it is, he’s not dumb. Ever seen his I.Q. tests?”
Glen frowned thoughtfully. If he had thought of Jerry Allen at all in the past, it had been as an unhappy boy, not a young hood. There was, in the very sullenness that he wore so flagrantly, a rather frightening loneliness, a plea almost for understanding that remained, seemingly, unanswered. “No, I can’t say I have. Is he really bright?”
“Damn right he is. He could have the best grades in this school, if you could get him to do anything but sit and glare at you in class. You have him in English—am I right, or am I right?”
“You’re right, I guess,” Glen admitted after a moment’s reflection. “He doesn’t do much more than that in my class. Kind of sad, don’t you think?”
“Sad?” They were entering the big front doors of the building now, Pete’s voice echoing loudly in the halls that were already filled with students. “If it was up to me, that kid’s backside would have blisters on it.”
One or two students glanced at them in passing, no doubt wondering if Pete’s comment concerned themselves. Glen and Pete parted, Pete slapping Glen’s shoulder pleasantly as he left. Glen stopped at the office, checked his mail, and hurried on to his first class.
* * * *
The morning went quickly and smoothly. With the end of the school year drawing near, the efforts of both students and teachers were intensified. As a result, Glen had little time to think about Ann, or their problems, devoting his attention instead to his students and his subject matter. He was a good teacher, sincere and conscientious, if somewhat mechanical in his approach. He was respected by his students, although not greatly liked, and whatever criticisms they voiced of him among themselves generally took the line that he was too distant, too demanding.
It was not until his third period that he saw Jerry Allen again. Contrary to the impression that he had given Pete, Glen had noticed Jerry before. It would have been difficult not to notice the youth. An artist would have sighed in rapture at the delicate beauty of the sullen face, a sculptor might have chosen the thin, gracefully molded form for his model. Glen was neither artist nor sculptor, but a teacher and a man with a certain sympathy for the unhappiness of others, a sympathy perhaps springing from his own inability to come to terms with life. He had not, it was true, given more than a token concern to the boy’s unhappiness, and yet he had noticed. More than once he had looked up to find the large, silver-hued eyes fastened on him, their expression a puzzling one of defiant antagonism mingled with something else impossible to define, something that might almost have been a question. What, Glen had wondered, was the question they were trying to ask?
As a student, Jerry seemed neither brilliant nor ambitious. His contributions to the efforts of the class were few and more often than not disinterested. Yet there was something, an underlying impression of real potential, that Glen had discerned before. He had felt it, sensed it, and yet been unable to touch it or even define it successfully. Pete’s remarks of the morning lingered in his consciousness as he stared the length of the room at the young man, working, as was the entire class, at a test.
Glen took up the stack of papers before him, the assignments from Friday, and thumbed through them. Nothing from Jerry. He scowled, lifting his head as though to say something about it, then changed his mind. Instead, he took the first of the papers and began to read it, grading the answers rapidly and without pause.
Jerry was the third to finish the exam. He got up from his seat to approach the front of the room and place his work on the indicated corner of the desk.