Read Online 14 Stories by Stephen Dixon - Free Book Online

of eleven- and twelve-year-old recording stars, after having removed the instructional record I’d put on to improve their typing speed. One girl sitting on my desk brushing her hair suddenly yelled “Hey Mr. Teacher, Terry’s molesting me—get him to stop!” I said” I’ll be there in a second, honey—Terry, lay off!” and looked for the blond bony face in the rows of individual photos of the entire ninth-grade graduating class at the end of the book, thinking she shouldn’t be too hard to find among so many dark faces and black hairs and half the class male and about a fifth of them with eyeglasses. And there she was. Unmistakably the same girl. Long thin face, hair combed back the same way, no smile, same neck, ears, eyes, forehead and mouth. Judy Louis her name. 7th­grade treasurer. Voted prettiest girl in the 8th grade. Best sense of humor in the 9th. Fencing club, Dramsoc, Quill ‘n Ink, citywide and intramural girls’ track-team star. High school she’s going to attend: Mind, Spirit, Beauty and the Creative and Performing Arts. College she hopes to attend: School of Hard Knocks. Ambition: dancer, actress, gourmand and paid somnivolent. Favorite sports and hobbies: eating and dreaming. Pet peeves: hard mattresses, cooked okra, bad theater acoustics and a slippery splintery stage. Favorite adage: There’s no yesterday and tomorrow never was.
    Maybe I’ll look up her address in the phone book when I get home and go and see where she lives. Her building’s probably on the same number street as mine but the next block over. But what if she has a front apartment and recognizes me through the window as the man she sees every weekday morning on her way to wherever she’s going, which is probably school? She might become alarmed, tell her parents, who she’s most likely living with, and even if it’s only her mother who’s at home she might come out and ask who I am and what’s my interest in her daughter and their building and the police could be called. No matter how adept I might be in talking myself out of the situation, my school could learn of the incident and I could be fired and also lose my license. Substitute teaching pays me better than any job I’ve had when I worked at it steadily as I’ve been doing and I can pick it up and drop it whenever I want. So forget the girl. Crazy idea, looking up her address. She’s just a kid. Or at least, compared to my age, much too young.
    The bell rings. Chairs are knocked down as the students clamber over one another to leave through either door. I tidy up the room, scour the floor for typewriter parts and check which keyboards the keys belong to and fit them back on, lock the cabinets and doors and go to the general office where I see the other typing teacher waiting with half the teaching staff for three o’clock to come.
    â€œSome picnic upstairs,” I say.
    â€œAnd you see? I bet like most people here you thought we’ve the cushiest job in the school. What are you doing for the summer?”
    â€œThey must have driven that poor woman I replaced right to the hospital she’s at.”
    â€œNo, she was pretty effective. Always a strong lesson prepared and perfectly timed so they didn’t get bored. And most of her playful darlings she had a certain charm with or through a stream of letters and phone calls home got them right under her thumb.”
    â€œWhen I was a student in the seventh grade—”
    â€œDearie, all of us except the youngest teachers say that.”
    â€œRight? P.S. 9, just a few blocks from here. We used to sit with our hands folded if we finished a lesson before anyone else. And after school we’d cross the street if we saw any one of our teachers coming, only afraid they might stop and say hello.”
    â€œThings change. Civilizations and schools notwithstanding. Like this place was the model school of the city when it