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Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
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show surprise, “You'll never guess what I have in this!” A moment of silence, then Nada's hesitant murmur, which I couldn't hear. Then the woman cried out with a horrible, ugly triumph I can still remember, “Look at this! I found where that bastard has been hiding it all!”
And I took every chance and looked up. Yes, entranced by her frenzy, I raised my head to peer through the window, to see the woman holding open a brown leather ice container stuffed with bills.
“Thousands! Thousands! A million maybe!” she said, panting.
Some of the bills spilled onto the floor. I could see the woman's saliva in the bright morning sunshine, and the sight so unnerved me I lost my balance and fell a yard or two to the ground.
So you see? Cash like that. And other forms too, in tiny books and stamped on pieces of paper. Oh, it was wonderful, wonderful, and in a way I wish I still had access to it. If I wanted to stuff myself with money and die in that unique way I couldn't; I don't have enough cash. But I want to tell the story of Fernwood, and cash is only part of it. It is the foundation of it, yes, but we like to rise above our foundations, our muddy beginnings. We like to rise without looking back because that is perhaps declasse, and when there are no true classes, what greater horror than becoming declasse, unfit for even the classless society?
11
My school was a private school by the name of Johns Behemoth Boys' School, not affiliated with any religion, pure and Anglophile, like all these schools, with an unmarked bus to take care of the few “town boys” who did not board at the school. The school was one of the old estates (I promised that your heart would swell to see one), and surely no mortal human beings had ever lived in that big main house. No, I like to think that giants had lived there, archangels or monsters. And up behind it, terraced into a hill, was a garden of exquisite beauty tended by a deaf-mute, whose only justification in life was to keep the blown petals swept up off the grass, the roses trimmed, the rhododendron spiced with acid, the rich soil tilled, the insects at bay. Any monstrous hero would have cultivated this beauty as a delicious contrast to his own degradations.
The buildings were covered with ivy, very staunch and brittle. A bit ugly, like all these schools. The architecture was solid and masculine, squat, unimaginative, English and prisonlike in an easy combination. Graveled walks for the boys to bicycle upon, and a series of waterfalls set up for visitors and parents and magazine photographers. (The water was
verboten
to us boys.) Rather narrow, cheerless dormitory rooms, but built solidly, with good solid imitation antique furniture. Country English. Down in the classrooms the floors were smooth and polished as if by a hundred years of feet, caressed by boys impatient for learning. Small classrooms; a table and chair for the teacher instead of a desk; desks were—shall I guess?—declasse because the public schools had them. We boys wore ties every day of our anguished little lives, and blazers, and we worked hard, very hard. I am not joking. The school started with seventh grade and took in all of the high-school grades, but Fernwood's conservative parents had been blocking and graphing out their boys' careers for over a decade before they entered Johns Behemoth. Public-school students matured before we did in every way except intellectually; the typical Johns Behemoth boy was undersized, lank, intense, nervous, and given to sarcasm and superb, automatic manners. In the presence of girls he regressed to early childhood. I believe about thirty percent of my classmates were in analysis, a good many of them with the same man, Dr. Hugg, who specialized indisturbed adolescent boys. I never advanced that far because I was kicked out of the school in a few months.
Of all the ugly things I have to tell, stored up ripe and rotting in my memory, being expelled from that school is in a way
And I took every chance and looked up. Yes, entranced by her frenzy, I raised my head to peer through the window, to see the woman holding open a brown leather ice container stuffed with bills.
“Thousands! Thousands! A million maybe!” she said, panting.
Some of the bills spilled onto the floor. I could see the woman's saliva in the bright morning sunshine, and the sight so unnerved me I lost my balance and fell a yard or two to the ground.
So you see? Cash like that. And other forms too, in tiny books and stamped on pieces of paper. Oh, it was wonderful, wonderful, and in a way I wish I still had access to it. If I wanted to stuff myself with money and die in that unique way I couldn't; I don't have enough cash. But I want to tell the story of Fernwood, and cash is only part of it. It is the foundation of it, yes, but we like to rise above our foundations, our muddy beginnings. We like to rise without looking back because that is perhaps declasse, and when there are no true classes, what greater horror than becoming declasse, unfit for even the classless society?
11
My school was a private school by the name of Johns Behemoth Boys' School, not affiliated with any religion, pure and Anglophile, like all these schools, with an unmarked bus to take care of the few “town boys” who did not board at the school. The school was one of the old estates (I promised that your heart would swell to see one), and surely no mortal human beings had ever lived in that big main house. No, I like to think that giants had lived there, archangels or monsters. And up behind it, terraced into a hill, was a garden of exquisite beauty tended by a deaf-mute, whose only justification in life was to keep the blown petals swept up off the grass, the roses trimmed, the rhododendron spiced with acid, the rich soil tilled, the insects at bay. Any monstrous hero would have cultivated this beauty as a delicious contrast to his own degradations.
The buildings were covered with ivy, very staunch and brittle. A bit ugly, like all these schools. The architecture was solid and masculine, squat, unimaginative, English and prisonlike in an easy combination. Graveled walks for the boys to bicycle upon, and a series of waterfalls set up for visitors and parents and magazine photographers. (The water was
verboten
to us boys.) Rather narrow, cheerless dormitory rooms, but built solidly, with good solid imitation antique furniture. Country English. Down in the classrooms the floors were smooth and polished as if by a hundred years of feet, caressed by boys impatient for learning. Small classrooms; a table and chair for the teacher instead of a desk; desks were—shall I guess?—declasse because the public schools had them. We boys wore ties every day of our anguished little lives, and blazers, and we worked hard, very hard. I am not joking. The school started with seventh grade and took in all of the high-school grades, but Fernwood's conservative parents had been blocking and graphing out their boys' careers for over a decade before they entered Johns Behemoth. Public-school students matured before we did in every way except intellectually; the typical Johns Behemoth boy was undersized, lank, intense, nervous, and given to sarcasm and superb, automatic manners. In the presence of girls he regressed to early childhood. I believe about thirty percent of my classmates were in analysis, a good many of them with the same man, Dr. Hugg, who specialized indisturbed adolescent boys. I never advanced that far because I was kicked out of the school in a few months.
Of all the ugly things I have to tell, stored up ripe and rotting in my memory, being expelled from that school is in a way
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