The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (13 page)

“Sure, go ahead,” she said. She unlocked his
office, turned on the light, and waved me inside.

The manual typewriter was big and black and
sitting on a small table with rollers on the legs. Bond paper was
stacked neatly on a shelf below the typewriter. I was glad Dr.
Graves was so organized. I pulled the table close to his chair and
sat down. I inserted a sheet of paper and rolled it around the
platen. I typed, “A nosy young fellow named Gary.”

That should be enough. I pulled the paper out
of the machine, got up, and went out of the principal’s office.
Carol was unlocking filing cabinets, getting read for a day’s
work.

I said to her, “I changed my mind. The
message is too complicated. I’ll talk to Dr. Graves later.”

“I’ll tell him you came by.”

I wanted to say not to bother, but that
wouldn’t sound right. I waved to Carol and went to the
cafeteria.

I worried about Sylvia all morning. At
lunchtime, I carried my tray into the cafeteria and looked for her.
At first I didn’t see her and thought she hadn’t arrived yet. Then
I spotted her at the far end of the room, in the corner underneath
the raised section reserved for teachers. She was sitting
alone.

I ran the gauntlet past a noisy sea of faces.
It was easy to imagine that they were all looking at me to see if I
was going to sit with Sylvia, although, of course, this wasn’t the
case. Very few of them even knew who I was. Or cared. I climbed
over the bench on the opposite side of the table from Sylvia and
sat down. She looked very solemn, a far cry from her usual cheerful
self. But she also looked very determined.

I tried to think of something pleasant to say
and failed. “How was your morning?”

“Don’t ask.”

“That bad, eh? And Natalie?”

“Natalie ignored me, which is fine by me.
Most people did. I suddenly feel like a new student in a strange
school where I don’t know anybody.”

“That’s how I felt a week ago. Until I met
you. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still feel that way.”

“And now the tables are turned. Thanks for
sticking by me.”

I saw Barney Weiss coming in our direction
and remembered that he had been scornful of the standard reaction
to the news about Mr. Doran, but I was still surprised when he
worked his way along the narrow aisle between benches, placed his
tray on the table beside Sylvia’s, and sat down. He was an
independent thinker, but he and Sylvia had appeared to be enemies,
at least during the nim incident with Natalie.

After the three of us said hello, Barney said
to Sylvia, “I’m glad to see you back. Don’t let the mob dictate
what you can and can’t do.”

“You certainly don’t,” Sylvia said.

“No, I don’t. And I always thought you didn’t
either. Stick it out. Things will get better.”

“They couldn’t get much worse.”

Ed Drucquer appeared on my side of the table
and sat down next to me. I assumed he did it because I was there,
but the first words out of his mouth were directed at Sylvia.

“You’re a brave girl. But I just want you to
know that you have friends. I learned about your Tom Jefferson in
England, and I always thought he had guaranteed that this sort of
thing wouldn’t happen.”

“Don’t get too close to me,” Sylvia said.
“You might catch the black plague.”

As if to emphasize that, a chant of “commie,
commie” started on the other side of the center aisle of the
cafeteria. The teachers had left; nobody would have dared to do
this sort of thing while they were here. None of us even bothered
to look in that direction, and the chant soon died down, perhaps
because the chanters didn’t get the attention they sought.

“I’m a newspaper reporter,” Ed said to
Sylvia. “I’m immune to diseases. I go everywhere and talk to
everyone. Sometimes I test the first amendment. Gary knows about
that.” He looked at me. “Or wasn’t I supposed to say that?”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Sylvia knows
what happened. Barney might as well, too. To make a long story very
short, I was expelled from Atherton for publishing a scandal sheet
that was also critical of the school administration.”

“Join the crowd,” Barney said. “I think the
four of us have all crossed the line that society has drawn in the
sand from time to time.”

“We’re freedom fighters,” Ed said. “I’ve got
a lot of respect for your father, Sylvia. He realizes that society
has to change. Everybody should be treated equally. He has had the
guts to act on his convictions.”

“He quit the Communist party years ago,”
Sylvia said.

“Of course he had to appear to bow to the
dictates of society. Although society sometimes has a long memory.
But the idea of ‘from each according to his ability, to each
according to his need’ makes sense. And it’s fair.”

“Coerced giving isn’t freedom,” Barney
said.

“Under socialism, I’d goof off,” I said,
partly as a joke. I hadn’t won any medals for hard work.

“It isn’t fair for some people to be rich and
others poor,” Ed said.

“My father figured out that communism doesn’t
work,” Sylvia said. “And not just because of the murders of
millions of people. An ideal state of socialism, which is what
communism claims to be, can’t exist. Some people will always be
more equal than others. My father understands the value of a free
society. One without unnecessary wars or restrictions.”

“Cheer up,” Barney said to Ed. “In the United
States, everybody has the opportunity to get rich, which is more
than you can say about the USSR. At least we will if the government
doesn’t arrest us all for being communists.”

“Given the circumstances, getting rich is
exactly what I intend to do,” Ed said, with a bite in his
voice.

“Let’s not fight,” Sylvia said. “I want to
thank you guys for your support. I notice that no girls have rushed
to my defense.”

I had noticed it, too. Were they all under
the sway of Natalie and the cheerleader mentality? Suddenly Natalie
was no longer the most beautiful girl in the world. In fact, she
had become rather ugly.

“We need some humor,” Sylvia said. “Gary,
write a limerick about Barney.”

“A what?” Barney asked. “A limerick? Oh no,
anything but that.”

He put up his hands to shield himself from
me.

That was enough of a provocation to get me
going. I came up with this:

“
There is a young fellow named
Barney,

Who certainly is full of the blarney.

He beats us at nim,

With vigor and vim.

Perhaps he should work at a carney.”

Ed laughed and said, “I haven’t seen you
playing nim recently, Barney my boy. What’s the matter? Can’t take
getting beaten by a cheerleader?”

Barney didn’t smile. He said, “It’s Ed’s turn
in the barrel. Gary, what have you got for him?”

Inspiration didn’t shine down on me. But Ed
was the only overweight member of our little group. I struggled for
a couple of minutes and said:

“
There was a young fellow named
Ed,

Who dreamt he was eating some bread,

And pickles and ham,

And ice cream and jam,

And when he woke up he was dead.”

Ed grimaced. “Since we’re being skewered,” he
said, “what about Sylvia?”

“Gary’s already done me,” Sylvia said,
quickly standing up and lifting her lunch tray. “And it’s time to
go to class.”

***

I wanted to do something more to show support
for Sylvia, so I camped outside Mr. Plover’s room near the end of
sixth period, using a hall pass I had obtained with tactics learned
from her.

When the bell rang at the end of the period,
I collared the first two boys who came out of the room and started
asking them questions about Mr. Plover’s teaching techniques. They
were surprisingly open and told me the same things Sylvia had. He
worked from an old outline of the textbook that was
fill-in-the-blanks stuff, very dry, and bare-bones teaching at its
most extreme. They appeared to be royally bored with the class and
questioned whether they were learning very much.

As I was finishing up with them, a hand
tapped me on the shoulder. Turning, I saw Willie Rice, the
sophomore who had been drunk at the sock hop. Sober, he looked
quite handsome, his long hair neatly combed and wearing a clean
shirt with the top few buttons unbuttoned.

“Howzit going?” he asked.

“Good,” I said, ungrammatically. “How are
things with you?”

“Super. Glad to see you survived the
dance.”

I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to
bring up what he had done to me. Let bygones be bygones. We chatted
about inconsequential things for a minute, and then he said,
“There’s going to be a party at my house Friday evening. Why don’t
you come?”

Willie was fairly low on my list of people I
expected to be invited to a party by, so I must have showed some
surprise.

“Actually, it’s my brother’s party.
Dennis.”

Dennis was a senior. I hadn’t officially met
him and didn’t have any classes with him, but I knew him by sight.
At least he was in my age range. Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to
go. I hemmed and hawed. Willie said it was a casual party and I
could just drop in any time. He gave me the address.

***

When I got home from school, I went to my
room and pulled the folder containing the mysterious limerick out
of a drawer in my small desk. I compared the first line of the
limerick to the line I had typed on Dr. Graves’s typewriter, using
a small magnifying glass.

At first, I didn’t see any differences. But
on closer inspection, it became clear that the “s” in nosy was
darker at the bottom than the top on the sheet containing the
limerick. This wasn’t true of the “s” from Dr. Graves’s typewriter.
I noticed several other differences, including smudging of a few
letters in the limerick. The differences were more pronounced than
those that might be caused just by cleaning the typewriter.
Clearly, the samples had been typed on different machines.

I felt immediate relief. Dr. Graves wasn’t
threatening me. At least, not directly. But if he didn’t write the
limerick, who did? I had no idea. Or, perhaps, Dr. Graves had typed
it on another typewriter. Not likely, but possible. I could worry
myself to death. I decided to try to forget the whole thing.

***

The rest of the week was hard, but bearable.
Sylvia was still isolated, except for several of us boys and one or
two girls who apparently didn’t care what Natalie and her ilk
thought. I drove her to school and home afterward. On Thursday, she
conducted a student council meeting without incident. The teachers
didn’t speak out publicly either for or against her. At least, they
tolerated her.

Friday evening, I ate dinner with Aunt
Dorothy and Uncle Jeff. I casually mentioned that I might drop by a
party that evening, not quite asking permission. When Aunt Dorothy
asked whose party it was, I told her, but she didn’t know the Rice
family. It was probably just as well. I had behaved myself for two
weeks, and I had an urge to get out and let off steam before my
teenage hormones exploded. They were okay with me going. Uncle Jeff
told me not to drink and drive.

The party was at a small farm a few miles
away. I didn’t have any trouble finding it, even though it was dark
when I arrived. I parked on the front lawn where a number of other
cars were scattered. When I got out of my car, I could hear rock
and roll music coming from inside, even though the windows were
closed. I knew I was at the right place.

I didn’t think anybody would hear me if I
rang the doorbell, and the door was unlocked, so I walked in. The
music instantly became much louder. I followed the sound to the
living room where cigarette smoke curled lazily toward the ceiling.
A fire in an old brick fireplace produced more smoke, most of which
went up the chimney.

Several couples were dancing on a hardwood
floor, darkened with age, doing some version of the swing or dirty
bop. The music was coming from a phonograph playing 45 RPM records.
The girls who were dancing wore skirts with several crinolines
underneath, which flashed when they spun. I saw a couple of poodle
skirts.

The boys, who outnumbered the girls, were
dressed as their version of juvenile delinquents: blue jeans,
T-shirts with rolled-up sleeves and a cigarette pack on one
shoulder. A couple of them wore black leather jackets. Most wore
their hair long. I immediately felt out of place with my short hair
and neat clothes, especially because I didn’t recognize
anybody.

Then Willie materialized from someplace near
the table that had been set up as a bar and grabbed me by the arm.
He had a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth and had
obviously been drinking. He pulled me over to the table where I
recognized his brother, Dennis, larger and stockier than Willie,
but with the same hair.

When Dennis spotted me in tow of his brother,
I stuck out my hand and said, “Gary Blanchard.”

He shook my hand and said, “You’re the new
kid. Have a beer.”

He pulled a bottle out of a tub filled with
ice, opened it deftly, and handed it to me. I took a sip. It was
cold and slid down easily. One beer wouldn’t impair my driving
ability.

Although there were a few older boys and
girls there, including Dennis, who had probably flunked a grade or
two, I was willing to bet that most of the partygoers were under
eighteen. And that included me. There wasn’t a parent in sight. No
adults—just booze and broads.

It reminded me of a definition I had heard of
the difference between a good girl and a nice girl. A good girl
goes on a date, goes home, goes to bed. A nice girl goes on a date,
goes to bed, goes home. Although the saying was mostly wishful
thinking, as was most sex talk at the high school level, it was
tempting, if perhaps unfair, to imagine which kind these girls
were.