On The Wings of Heroes (9 page)

. . . we'd gone out of the frying pan into the fire. Miss Landis had been too young to teach us. Miss Titus was too old to live.

It took us a while to adjust to her. We weren't used to a teacher who looked like a walnut with a mustache. With those specs, her eyes were bigger than she was, but you couldn't tell where she was looking. Maybe around corners.

The girls found out they missed Miss Landis. She'd worn a different outfit every day, and they'd drawn her dresses in their notebooks instead of learning. Miss Titus wore the same shroud every day. She wouldn't have had to paint her legs. They were nowhere in sight.

We supposed she'd be a bear on diagramming, but she said, “I gather you can all diagram sentences. Let's see if you can write one.”

Composition? Hands smacked foreheads all over the room. Beverly stirred.

Beverly was biding her time. She'd run one teacher off, and this one looked like she already had one foot in the grave. “Lady,” I personally heard Beverly mutter to herself, “I'll have you in the nursing home by Thanksgiving.”

Our first composition was to be:

While we wrote, I chanced a look Beverly's way. She was drawing a lopsided skull and crossbones across the page.

“Can we use the dictionary?” somebody asked.

“You better,” Miss Titus said.

Wednesday was her day to supervise recess. We were to leave by rows, which was a new one on us. But even Beverly went quietly. Miss Titus left her pocketbook behind on the floor by her desk, sticking out. Great big cracked-leather handbag.

Hoyt Albers pointed it out. “Better not,” he said, but Miss Titus didn't seem to hear.

After recess, she manned the outside door to see that we came back in one at a time. I remember Beverly brushing past her because they were the same height. Then we heard screaming from inside school, echoing down the halls. Big screams.

Teachers looked out of their classrooms. The screams came from ours.

Doreen was up by the teacher's desk, wringing her hands. Janis was on the floor at her feet, back arching, flailing around, howling. Something heavy was clamped to her hand, and she was banging it on the floor.

Another odd thing about Miss Titus, she could move like greased lightning. In a twinkling, she was at the front of the room, crouching over Janis. She grabbed her flopping hand and held it up.

We made a circle and gaped. All four of Janis's fingers were mashed into a big spring-action patented rattrap. It was a businesslike trap, though rusty. Her fingers sticking out were gray, and her nails were blue. Taking her time, Miss Titus sprung the trap open and took it off Janis. “Get my pocketbook,” she told Doreen.

Janis was wracked with sobs, a weird sound coming from her. Jungle Dawn Pink lipstick was all over her face. She was one big smear, and her feet kicked. You'd hope there'd be some blood, but there wasn't. Still, her fingers were real flat.

Doreen collected Miss Titus's pocketbook from over in the corner where it had skidded. You could see how it happened. When Janis reached in to rifle the purse, the rattrap inside it got her. This was a surprise, and she jumped. The purse went flying.

“My stars,” Miss Titus remarked. “I wonder how on earth a thing like that could have happened.” She stood. “In your seats,” she said, and we settled. Beverly too, looking around in her desk to make sure it hadn't been tampered with. The whole classroom could be a minefield.

Miss Titus told Patty MacIntosh to go with Janis to the girls' restroom to soak her fingers. We stirred.

Patty paled.

But her arm was in a sling, so she and Janis made a good match. One had a good arm, the other a good hand.

Beverly bolted. She and her stooges were never parted. It was a rule of theirs. She snapped a finger at Doreen, who was looking the other way. Then Beverly was lumbering up the aisle, heading for the door and Janis. Suddenly she was nose to nose with Miss Titus.

“What business is this of yours?” Two magnified eyes bored into Beverly.

Beverly fell back. A first. The tide of classroom war began to turn.

 

The whole business was a real good lesson about not stealing. And after she quit sobbing, what could Janis say? That a rattrap out of an old barn jumped up and bit her as she happened to be passing?

Some people thought baiting a rattrap with your purse wasn't the way a teacher should act. But nothing teacherish worked with Beverly or Doreen or Janis. Anyway, there was a war on, so you needed to bring out your big guns and your secret weapons.

When Patty MacIntosh and Janis came back, Miss Titus said to get ready for a lesson in first aid, as per the instructions on a wall chart. We were all in either Brownies or Cub Scouts by now, working on our bandaging badge, so we got busy on Janis, stretched out once more on the floor.

Her hand didn't look too bad, but she wouldn't be slapping anybody around with it for a while. Still, she hollered the place down every time you went near it. She was a lot bigger sissy than we'd realized.

With Miss Titus showing us how, we bandaged Janis up one side and down the other. She was a dead ringer for an Egyptian mummy by the time Miss Howe looked in on us, following Janis's screams. Miss Howe saw us at our patriotic best, working over Janis as volunteer victim, with actual tears.

“Very realistic,” Miss Howe said, and withdrew.

. . . and Miss Titus called out, “Scooter Tomlinson? How are you in arithmetic?” The wisp of scant hair atop her head seemed to form a question mark.

“A grade or two ahead,” Scooter estimated.

So she put him and Hoyt Albers behind her desk, to take our money and issue the War Stamps, which they liked.

We were all used to returning to our desks by way of Doreen's row, to drop our dimes on her. But today Miss Titus was standing right over her. The first one down her aisle, Darryl Dillman, was ready with his dime. But there was Miss Titus, standing guard, all eyes. Doreen held her palm out, below the corner of her desk. But Miss Titus could see around corners.

“What's that dime for?” she demanded, loud enough for all.

“He . . . owes it to me,” Doreen said in an all-new, mousy voice.

“What for?”

“. . . For about a week,” Doreen mumbled into her grubby shirtfront.

“Move on,” Miss Titus told Darryl, and the line of dime-droppers behind him melted away.

“Nobody owes you a red cent, sister,” Miss Titus said, over Doreen's head. But her buggish gaze swept the room and fell all over Beverly.

Beverly sizzled. An ugly flush rose up her brawny neck. She looked like she might burst into flames.

As one more of her stooges bit the dust. First Janis in the rattrap. Now Doreen without a dime.

 

Soon after, we got back our HOW WE, THE YOUNG OF AMERICA, ARE WINNING THE WAR essays. Scooter wrote about two boys who found a mutant form of milkweed growing in a barn, and they won the Congressional Medal of Honor for their discovery. Scooter liked using words such as
mutant
. Miss Titus wrote on his page that “It read well for fiction” and gave him a 94.

I wrote about a couple of boys who found a brass bed in a spooky attic and got a pair of movie tickets out of it. None of my participles dangled, but I'd written:
when I should have written:

She graded me down for that. Way down. Down, down, down. But it cured me.

Beverly got an F for her skull and crossbones, and stalked out of the room without her coat.

“Where's she going?” somebody said.

“Who?” Walter Meece said.

Where she went was Raycraft's Drug Store to order a cherry Coke she didn't pay for. She was nabbed going out the door with a bottle of eyedrops, a pair of dress shields, and a roll of Tums down her shirtfront, which must have been the first things she happened to see. All this came out later.

But Beverly sulked into school the next morning, and Miss Titus said nothing.

Then we got company again. They should have put a revolving door in for all the company we got. Beverly's mom was back, steaming like a kettle. The tails on her big bandanna vibrated, and she kicked the door on her way in. She was one burly woman.

We were doing fractions, and Miss Titus turned from the blackboard. Beverly's mom skidded to a stop. Nobody'd told her about Miss Titus, who would come as a surprise to anyone. For a moment, she might have thought this was Miss Landis after two months of us.

“Beverly's parent?” Miss Titus's eyebrows rose over her specs.

“Yes, and I'm on a cigarette break from the plant. What do you mean turning her loose to waltz out of sch—”

“I let her go,” Miss Titus said.

“Why in th—”

“Because it was high time I saw you,” Miss Titus said. “I can't picture you at a PTA meeting.”

Beverly's mom simmered, but said, “Well, I can see you're no better than the last so-called teacher.”

“Possibly worse,” Miss Titus said. “They had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find me. They had to burn the woods and sift the ashes. There's a war on, you know.”

The nutcracker jaw on Beverly's mom clamped shut. Threats weren't going to work.

“You give her an F. It . . . upset her.”

“An F's for not trying,” Miss Titus said. “In this class you learn, or the police get involved. What's it going to be?”

That too slowed down Beverly's mom, way down. But she turned over a big hand. “Oh well, me and school never got along either.”

“You mean school and I never got along either,” Miss Titus said, correcting her. “Don't use bad English in front of my pupils. They need all the good examples they can get.”