“AND FOR FURTHER REFERENCE, you might glance at the Stubble Rock case,” Kingsfield said and then sprang to his left and asked O’Connor to recite the facts of Taylor v. Cunningham.
“Which case, which case …” O’Connor moaned, looking through his book. O’Connor had been called on the day before. It was unusual to be called on twice in succession and he had been caught off guard.
Hart thought about Kingsfield’s passing allusion to Stubble Rock. He was the only student in class who would know that the obscure Stubble Rock case was about a house built over an old mine, that the foundation had given way, converting the house into a bomb shelter, three hundred feet below ground, which might have been all right, had not a mother and three children been killed in the process.
“Oh, Taylor versus Cunningham,” O’Connor said, “the case on page one thousand three. Right, I read that case.”
“Yes, that case and be quick about it,” Kingsfield snapped. “There’s a lot to cover today.”
Hart knew about Stubble Rock because he’d read Kingsfield’s article “The Blessings of Consideration,” published thirty years before. He’d looked up all Kingsfield’s articles and read them.
Thirty cases later, class ended. The people in the back of the room started out, some happy because Kingsfield had been in particularly good form and others sad because he hadn’t fallen from the podium. Hart got his materials together and looked for Ford.
As Hart watched, Ford’s notebook was knocked off the desk by a student with red hair, pushing to get into the aisle.
“Shit,” Ford said, and bent to pick up the pages that had worked loose and were lying in the dirty space under the seats.
“I knew about the Stubble Rock case,” Hart said absentmindedly. “It’s in an article Kingsfield wrote, ‘The Blessings of Consideration.’”
“So what,” Ford said. A boy in the next aisle stepped on one of Ford’s pages, leaving a black footprint of dirty snow.
“It’s just kind of wild,” Hart said. “It’s cool. I can really understand what he’s saying. Most of the people in this class don’t have any idea about Stubble Rock. I do; Kingsfield does. Don’t you see?”
“No,” Ford said. He was down on his knees now, under the bench top, getting the last pages.
“Man, my mind is really in his,” Hart said. “I know what he’s saying before he says it.”
“You’re sick,” Ford said angrily, standing up holding two crinkled pages. “Get your head together. The only important thing is getting out of this place in one piece. You’re getting as bad as the guys at lunch who tell stories about him. I mean, those guys are really sad. They’re in their second and third year, and instead of doing something healthy-fucking or something-they sit around and re-run what a terrible time they had in contracts. All they can talk about is Kingsfield.”
The classroom was almost empty. Outside, they could hear students coming up the stairs from the tunnels. In a minute, the room would be jammed. Ford shoved his papers into the notebook and started for the aisle.
“Don’t get pissed off,” Hart said, following him. “Do you think I’m trying to build myself up? Do you think I told you that because I wanted to impress you?”
“Forget it,” Ford said. They came to the door, and pushed out into the hall. “Let’s walk outside; the tunnels are crowded. I just mean, be yourself, all right? I get enough of Kingsfield in class.”