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. Glen glanced up as the paper touched the desk, to find Jerry’s eyes on him. Like two fighters, or strange dogs, they studied one another, mentally sniffing, weighing the situation and one another.
“Finished already?” Glen asked. The class period was only three quarters over, the entire period having been given over to the exam.
“Yeah,” Jerry answered flatly. The strange blending of emotions had gone from his eyes, leaving them dull and listless. He paused for a second, waiting for any further comment. Then, slowly, almost regretfully, he turned and made his way back to his seat.
Glen sat for a moment staring at his desk. Finally, wondering if his curiosity were too apparent, he reached for the paper Jerry had left.
The test was limited to five questions, but they were not simple ones. They required essay answers, some of them lengthy ones intended to show how well his students had grasped the content of their subject rather than their ability to memorize. The first three answers on Jerry’s paper were of little significance, brief and with little evidence of any interest on his part in the subject matter. The third, to his surprise, was lengthy, nearly two pages of writing.
The question had been one of comparison, the literature of today weighed against the literature of previous periods. Glen read the cramped, painfully small script slowly, his lips pursed thoughtfully.
“...early writers had several advantages. In the first place, they had the best ideas first, the first chance at plots and peoples. In the second place, the bad things they wrote have been forgotten, and only the better works still exist. But today’s writer has the advantage of writing about what people today know, and how they live and think. I like the old writers best....”
It wasn’t profound, and yet, there was merit to it. The boy had thought, and thought well on his subject. Without realizing it, Glen smiled. He turned back to the first page, wrote a large B at the top, then added a plus sign. It was, he knew, probably more than the work merited on its own. On the other hand, taken in context with the bulk of Jerry’s work, it was a singular effort, one well deserving of a reward which might well be regarded as an investment.
The bell rang, sounding the end of the period. The students shuffled about, some of them hurriedly finishing their tests and bringing them up to the desk, others crowding toward the door that led to the hall. Jerry was slow to leave, only starting toward the door when the room was almost emptied.
“Jerry,” Glen called impulsively, noting the sudden tension when the boy stopped. “Got a minute?”
The boy came without an answer to stand in front of the desk. Glen dropped his eyes to the test paper, still in his hand.
“Tell me,” he began, lifting his eyes to Jerry’s. “Do you like English?”
“Some of it,” Jerry answered after a pause. It was hard to tell whether he was being evasive or not.
“The classics? I gather from your test that you prefer the older writers.”
“Some of them,” Jerry shifted his weight, changing his books from one arm to the other.
“Why?” It was like swimming upstream against the current, Glen was thinking. He was getting nowhere, making no contact with the mind of the boy. Jerry only grimaced and shrugged in answer to the question.
“Better go along,” Glen told him, returning the test paper to the stack. “You’ll be late for your next class.”
“How did I do?” Jerry asked without moving.
Glen looked up again, surprised by the question and the interest it implied. “Very well. I think you can do a lot better, but it’s good. I gave you a B plus on it.”
Jerry blushed and grinned, a pleased yet bashful smile. He turned then and started toward the door. Puzzled, Glen looked away, wondering what the grin had really meant.
“Mr. Sanford?” Jerry was at the door, half in, half out of the room. “Thanks,” he said simply. Then he was gone.
Glen stared after him for a minute or two. Then, putting the papers carefully into the drawer of his desk, which he locked, he got up and made his way to the hall. This was his free period, ordinarily a time devoted to grading the various papers accumulated on his desk throughout the morning. Instead, he made way down the hall to the administrative offices. Mrs. Devraux was there, seated at her cluttered desk just outside the office of the principal.
“Good morning, Mr. Sanford,” she greeted him, flashing a too-sweet smile at him.
“Morning,” he answered briskly, not eager to become involved in one of her gossip-ridden conversations. “Can I see the file on the Allen boy—Jerry Allen?”
Mrs. Devraux stood and crossed to the large files behind her desk, rifling through them. She pulled out a manila folder and brought it to the counter. “Here you are,” her curiosity all too apparent. “Any trouble with him?”
“Not particularly,” Glen told her, opening the file. Seeing no promise of interesting
