P.S. 187, a square brick building constructed on a wooden frame, looked like a fire station. Room 3-C belonged to every schoolhouse in North America. The cloakroom smelled of sour wool and rubber galoshes, and chalk and graphite salted every surface beyond; the first night, Jacob decided to spare his corduroy sportcoat and come to class from then on in flannel and denim. Dry-cleaning rates had gone up along with everything else.
The night-school crowd had to sit sideways at desk-and-chair sets designed for fifth-graders. A smudged geography lesson on the blackboard said the annual mean precipitation rate in the Andes was thirty to forty inches.
The instructor’s name was Tharp. He was a balding man in his forties who for some reason wore a varsity jacket from a high school in Buffalo and sneakers that squeaked on the linoleum floor; the noise was like an ice pick in the brain. The course description said he was a published poet. He lectured on theme in a voice that droned when it was audible at all. His listeners coughed and squirmed in their hard small seats and sneaked glances at the big electric clock mounted above a bulletin board shingled with crayon drawings of turkeys and pilgrims.
Jacob gave up taking notes. He’d never understood theme and never would. If he’d mentioned the subject to any of his editors, they’d have stared as if he’d just stepped off an alien spaceship on the cover of Astounding Science Fiction. “Theme, fuck’s that? Plot is God, kid.” (Every writer was kid to editors and agents, even if he had white hair and an ear trumpet.) “When the story bogs down, shoot somebody.”
The second night, he was asked to diagram a sentence. He understood syntax. He didn’t know a second predicate from First Communion, but he knew where to place the active verb in a sentence, even if he couldn’t explain why. But Tharp insisted his students apply rules to the English language that were better suited to math. When Jacob turned in his worksheet, it came back with a big red D-.
“Son of a bitch.” He stared at the grade.
“He is, isn’t he?”
He jumped. The woman seated across the aisle was leaning his way, an arm flung across the back of her chair, and had spoken low, behind the instructor’s retreating back. Jacob had noticed her before. She was about his age, pleasant-looking, with her red hair in a shoulder bob and one of those suits that made women look like Charles Atlas. This one had nice legs where her skirt caught them at mid-calf. She hadn’t paid him any attention until now, so he’d dismissed her as just another frustrated former defense worker done out of a job by a returning serviceman.
He was abashed. “Excuse my French. In high school I never scored lower than a B in Composition.”
“Tharp would say that’s the theme of today’s story.”
“This isn’t discussion time, people.” Tharp had come to the end of her row and turned to scowl at the pair.
“My fault, sorry,” Jacob said.
“If I were you, Mr. Heppleman, I’d save my energy for concentration. You’re getting a free ride, courtesy of the G.I. Bill. You should show your gratitude to the taxpayers by buckling down.”
The woman spoke up. “Pardon me, Mr. Tharp. What branch of the military did you say you served in?”
The man’s pasteboard face blossomed high on the cheeks. “I have an inner-ear condition, Miss Curry. I did my bit in the Civil Defense.” He laid the sheet on her desk and moved on.
She glanced at the sheet, turned it over. “Shit.”
“What’d he do to you?” Jacob was mildly shocked by her language. Something had happened to femininity while he was away.
“Me? Nothing. I’ve had my fill of these four-effers looking down on veterans because they weren’t smart enough to beat the system like them.”
“I meant what grade did he give you?”
“Does it matter? I’m just here to learn how to write a decent letter. Secretarial work’s all there is now.”
He grinned. “Aced it, didn’t you?”
“Not quite.” She tapped a row of scarlet-painted nails on the sheet, then smiled and turned it over. She had a crooked smile.
He looked. “B-plus. What are you, a math whiz?”
“Well, don’t say it like it’s a criminal record.”
He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I never learned to add, so I wrote for pennies.”
“You’re a professional writer? What have you written? Would I know it?”
The instructor chose that moment to address the class. Jacob was grateful for the timing.
“Going over your worksheets, I see some potential, some faint hope, and some despair for the race. This is an adult class, so I assume you all know where you belong in that scenario. During the next four weeks, we’ll be discussing characterization, motivation, mechanics, and plot development. At the end of that time, I’ll ask each of you to write a complete short story—I place the emphasis on short: By which I mean longer than two hundred words on how you spent your summer vacation, but not as long as Forever Amber; which on second thought would have spared the world a great deal of agony had it restricted itself to two hundred words. My time, judging by some of these exercises in construction”—Jacob swore he looked directly at him—“is a commodity I value more than some of you do yours. When I’ve read your contributions to culture, I’ll be in a position to say whether there’s hope for you or if you’re better suited to writing jingles for Burma-Shave.”
Jacob hoisted his briefcase and headed for the door. He hoped he gave Miss Curry the impression he was late for some appointment, not that he was ducking the subject of his body of work. (“No kidding, you’re that Jacob Heppleman? The author of ‘A Punk with a Rod’? I had no idea. Could I prevail upon you to autograph my copy of Double-Barreled Detective? Preferably in my apartment?”)
Right.
He went back to the Clock, rolled a sheet into the cranky Underwood on his desk—and began his first short story in nearly six years:
The Remington Streamliner portable was black, glossy, curved, with a sleek low profile like a Cadillac roadster.…
It was automatic writing, as if the spirit of Fergus Tunn, the mad poet, haunted his old machine. A down-at-heels scribe, unable to afford a typewriter, steals one from a shop. Terrified of discovery, he tries to turn himself in to end the agony, only to learn that the theft was never reported, and therefore officially no crime has been committed. Just when he decides to put the past behind him and become a productive member of the literary establishment, he’s arrested for the shop owner’s murder, which took place later, and of which he’s innocent. “The Typewriter” came in at 3,500 words and required little revising. It was as close to perfect as he’d ever come.
“F?”
“Very good, Mr. Heppleman. An understanding of the alphabet is the first sign you’ve shown of real literacy.”
He’d lingered at the teacher’s Noah’s-Ark desk until the rest of the class had filed out, holding the rolled typescript of his story crushed in his fist. Tharp had circled the failing mark in still more scarlet, as if to vent dissatisfaction with the finite nature of the grading process. Had there been a G, the circle suggested, he’d have put it to use. The instructor stood, putting papers in a tattered leather portfolio and tying the strings.
“What’s wrong with the story?” Jacob asked.
“Nothing, to the ill-read. It’s a competent work of plagiarism.”
“Plagiarism! I—” He stopped himself before confessing the story was based on experience.
“Victor Hugo and O. Henry would bear me out. It begins as Les Misérables and ends as ‘The Cop and the Anthem.’ I’m not incensed so much by the theft as by the assumption I’m unaware of the source material.”
“Listen, Tharp, I’m a professional. I’ve got more ideas than I know what to do with. I’ve got no reason—”
“Yes, I read your biography on the enrollment form. The rags who published you couldn’t have existed in Hugo’s day or O. Henry’s. It’s a sad fact of universal literacy that the public’s taste in reading has fallen so far. But to be charitable, let’s assume your assault on intellectual property was an unconscious act. If you can write a new story—emphasis on new—and turn it in Tuesday, I’ll give it a passing grade—if I like it—and we’ll pretend this little slip never happened. This is a very good deal I’m offering; a veteran’s benefit, let’s say.”
Jacob said, “I have a counter-offer.”
Sucking his skinned knuckles, he almost bumped into the redhead in the hallway. They’d hardly spoken since the second day of class. Her eyebrows were raised. “What was that?” She crushed out her cigarette against the frame of the open window at the end by the stairs. “Was someone moving furniture?”
“That was the sound of me dropping out of school. Let’s get a cup of coffee.”
“Whoa, mister. Wartime speed limits are still in effect.”
“I’ve stayed under them so far. I’ve asked you out for coffee the last four Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you’ve had somewhere to be every time. You don’t seem to be in a hurry tonight.”
“If you think I was waiting for you—”
“I need your answer, Miss Curry. When Tharp comes around, I may be wanted for assault and battery.”
She smiled and hoisted the strap of her handbag higher on one padded shoulder. “Call me Ellen.”