The Ferryman (3 page)

“What's funny, Mr. Bairstow?” Christi asked.

“Ah, they speak!” David replied.

He studied the girl, trying not to be aware of how sweet she looked in her St. Matt's uniform. It was a constant struggle, teaching seniors, particularly the brighter ones. But he was thirty-three, and knew full well the difference between admiration and perversion.

“Give me that show of hands again,” he asked.

The hands shot up. Again he shook his head.

“I just want to thank you all,” David told them. “I mean, here you are cruising toward graduation. I'm heartened to see you have enough respect for me to give me the courtesy of lying.”

Dry chuckles all around, though very few students would meet his gaze. For her part, Christi looked miffed at the mere suggestion, as did Gordon Libertini, who was likely to be valedictorian of the class when all was said and done.

“Cards-on-the-table time,” David went on. “Melville was a semi-great writer.
Moby Dick,
though, is dense and excruciatingly boring. Do you think my brain is wired so differently from all of yours that I don't know that? So, listen, who really read the book?”

Christi. Gordon. Half a dozen others.

“Bravo to you,” he told those faithful few. Then he glanced around the class at the others. “For the rest of you ... nothing I can say will make you read the book. So what I'm going to do instead is answer my own question. I'm going to tell you what fascinates me the most about
Moby Dick
from the point of view of story and structure.”

He glanced at Gordon. “Who is the protagonist of the novel?”

Christi's hand shot up, but it was clear the question was for Gordon, who replied in a tone that suggested it was an insultingly simple question.

“Ahab.”

David nodded slowly. “And who is the hero?”

In the back of the class, Ashley Garbarino shot up her hand and spoke without being called on. “Aren't they the same thing?”

“Are they?” the teacher replied.

“I get it!” Christi said quickly.

With a soft, proud smile, David nodded toward her. “Christi? Go ahead.”

“The way the story is structured, Ahab is the protagonist and the whale is the antagonist. But what you said before? About language? Melville always describes Ahab as this, like, dark devil, storming around the deck, terrifying his men. And the whale is this pure, white, innocent creature. Almost, like, angelic or something. So even though they function like that—”

“In those traditional roles,” David prompted.

“Exactly,” the girl said quickly. “Even though they function in those traditional roles, the language is telling you it isn't true, that Ahab is the villain, and Moby Dick is the hero.”

David smiled broadly. “Bravo,” he said, and offered her a little golf clap.

Though he was pleased both with himself and with Christi's intuitiveness, he could see that the class was slipping away from him again. And who could blame them? They were supposed to be discussing a literary classic whose density and archaic language were a chore for all but the most devoted literary scholars.

He clapped his hands together loudly. “All right. Everyone clear on what Christi was just saying about
Moby Dick
? It's going to be on the final.”

Groans all around.

David walked around behind his desk and grabbed the cart upon which sat the TV and VCR he had retrieved from the audio-visual department.

“However, there's more to it than that.You are all, at the very least, going to skim
Moby Dick
for its essence, and for its structure. But it gets better. I am also going to introduce you to a modern example of the very point Christi just so eloquently expressed. We'll spend our next few class meetings viewing a film in which the traditional protagonist/ antagonist structure and relationships exist, but in which you will also find that the director and cinematographer have purposely used the language of film—music, camera angles, lighting, et cetera—to undermine those traditional roles and give us a very different idea about who is the hero and who the villain.”

David turned to face the class. Even Brad Flecca was awake now, and staring at him with an expression of surprise that was almost absurd in its childlike honesty.

During that single school year, David had blazed through Greek and Roman mythology, Poe, Shakespeare, Robert Frost, James Bald-win, Raymond Chandler, and John Irving, all to teach them about the nature of stories. But this was the first time he had brought in another storytelling medium.

Olivia Costa raised her hand.

“Yes, Olivia?”

“What's the movie?”

David smiled, savoring the question. “It's called
Blade Runner
.”

 
In the teachers' lounge, Lydia Beal scraped the last spoonful out of her plastic yogurt container and shook her head in amazement. “I swear to God, David, I do not know how you get away with it every year.”

They sat together at a small round table, one of several in the room where the teachers congregated during free periods and in shifts at lunchtime. Much like the old granite school itself, the room was a featureless, rectangular box. There were three windows on one side and Catholic school-themed posters on the one opposite, a television and VCR, a microwave oven, a coffeemaker, and a refrigerator.

The microwave oven timer dinged loudly and he rose to retrieve the popcorn he had made. The smell of it filled the room, rich with butter and salt. Half the pleasure of the stuff was the scent, as far as he was concerned.

“Get away with what?” he asked as he returned to the table.

“That movie,” Lydia replied, narrowing her eyes. “Every year.”

“Hey.
Blade Runner
is a classic.” David popped a few pieces of microwave popcorn into his mouth to cover his grin.

Lydia rolled her eyes.

The only other person in the room was Ralph Weiss, an enormous, fiftyish man with thinning hair, thick glasses, and a mountainous gut. Weiss was an officious man of intimidating size who lectured his students and thought that was the same thing as teaching.

Weiss had been perusing a magazine on American military history—probably for things to read aloud in class—but perked up at Lydia's remarks. It would have been impossible for him not to have overheard the conversation, and it was just as impossible for him to keep his opinion to himself. He settled his reading glasses on top of his head, where his graying rust-colored hair had receded like the lowest of low tides, and he scratched thoughtfully at his beard.

“Miss Beal is correct, Mr. Bairstow,” Weiss intoned. “You have a responsibility to teach those children until such time as they have graduated.”

“I
am
teaching them,
Ralph,
” David replied curtly.

Weiss flinched. He was an old-fashioned sort of man, but only when it suited him. One of his eccentricities was that he insisted upon addressing nearly everyone—and certainly everyone younger than he—in formal fashion. He always seemed to put particular emphasis on this quirk with David, who imagined it had to do with the fact that Weiss had taught
him
world history so many years before.

Though the last thing David wanted to do was ruffle feathers, he could not bear the older man's condescension. Yet he was forced to fight back in small ways. Calling him Ralph, for instance. Drove the big man absolutely crazy.

“What you are doing, Mr. Bairstow, is wasting valuable class time by letting these children sit and watch a science-fiction movie that has nothing to do with teaching English. In addition, the film contains violence and nudity, not to mention profanity. I have no idea why Sister Mary allows it, but I suspect if the archdiocese were aware of it, they would be scandalized.”

At David's side, Lydia Beal inhaled sharply, her teeth whistling a tiny bit. “Mr.Weiss, maybe you should take that up with—”

“No, Lydia. It's fine,” David interrupted.

He glanced at her, saw the worry in her eyes, and knew she feared that he would overreact. A tiny smile lifted the edges of his mouth. Those who knew him well would have realized there was no humor in it, nor even a trace of amusement. David Bairstow prided himself on being a good guy, but part of that included not backing down from a fight. Not ever.

“Y'know, Ralph,” he began, “maybe you're right. Maybe I should go in there every morning and do them the favor of
reading Moby Dick
to them like they're still in grade school.”

Angry lines appeared on Weiss's forehead along with a few drops of sweat as he bristled at David's words. In almost surreal fashion, David noticed that one of the drops of sweat was magnified by the thick reading glasses propped on the enormous man's head.

“Mr. Bairstow,” he began, with the same reproachful tone he had used when David was in the tenth grade.

“
Mis-ter
Weiss,” David replied pleasantly. His smile twitched ever so slightly.“I don't tell you how to teach history—though God knows someone should—so I would appreciate it if you wouldn't try to tell me how to teach English.”

Practically spitting in rage, Weiss stood up. His chair scraped the floor and nearly tipped over; only by some miracle did it remain upright. He grabbed his books and the magazine he had been reading from his table, folded his glasses and slid them into his pocket, then crossed the space between them in two strides.

The door to the teachers'lounge opened and Annette Muscari came in with several other teachers.The group were chatting happily amongst themselves and did not at first notice the tension in the room. David glanced at them only once, but he knew the very moment they realized something was going on, for their voices trailed off almost instantly.

“You, sir,” Weiss began, towering over him and glowering dangerously. “You, Mr. Bairstow, are a blemish on the face of Catholic education. An embarrassment to this school and to the archdiocese.”

David nodded slowly. “That may be so, Ralph. But if so, we've got a lot more in common than I ever realized.”

Weiss opened his mouth, perhaps about to attempt a sharp retort, but all that came out was his dragon breath, which stank as though he had been eating putrefying meat. He pursed his lips, his face growing redder, a few more beads of sweat popping out on his forehead.

Then he simply groaned, turned on his heel, and left the room. He banged the door shut behind him like a petulant teenager.

“Holy shit,” Lydia muttered under her breath.

David snickered. “You're in a Catholic school, Lyd.”

She laughed and buried her head in her arms on the table. Annette came over immediately, eyes wide with fascination.The other teachers, including Clark Weaver, a meek, bespectacled man who had been at St. Matthew's even longer than Weiss, kept to themselves. They spoke in cautious tones; David imagined they were speculating about what had happened, but none of them were friendly enough with him just to ask.

Except Annette, of course. The two of them had started the same year and become fast friends. She was a lesbian, cute and waifish and just a little butch, but she and the school administration had established their own Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, so despite the archdiocese's position on homosexuality, it had never been a problem. Sister Mary did not necessarily see eye-to-eye with the cardinal.

Thank God,
David thought.

“What was that all about?” Annette asked cattily as she pulled up a chair. “I don't think I've ever seen Ralphie that pissed off.”

“You didn't have him as a teacher,” David reminded her.

“True,” she admitted. Her green eyes sparkled beautifully, her blond bob giving her an almost elfish countenance.

David stuck a hand into the bag of microwave popcorn, which had cooled enough now that the so-called butter on it was a thin layer of grease. Not that that would stop him from eating it.

Annette grabbed his wrist. “Talk to me, Dave,” she commanded. Her eyes ticked toward Lydia. “What happened?”

“Blade Runner,”
Lydia replied calmly, her tone grave, as if those two words were enough to explain it all.

Oddly enough, they were.

Annette started laughing. At the table nearest the windows, the other teachers now turned to pay attention to the proceedings. David caught them looking and offered a tiny shrug. Mr. Weaver seemed to chuckle a bit as he pulled a banana out of a brown paper bag. It was an endearing response, and David liked him a great deal more in that moment than he ever had before.

“I can't believe Sister Mary lets you get away with that every year,” Annette told him.

“I just said the same thing,” Lydia noted.

David raised an eyebrow at Annette, wondering if she was aware of the irony of her questioning the things Sister Mary indulged from
him
.

“Look, it's a legitimate teaching tool. All right, so it's got some questionable content. But they're seniors. Seventeen- and eighteen-year-old American kids. I'm pretty sure they've seen worse. The first year, Sister Mary dragged me down to the dungeon afterward and read me the riot act. Then I explained what I was getting at, what the lesson was that I was trying to teach about storytelling. She thought about it, and she agreed with me.”

Lydia put a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide in a scandalized expression that would have been tiresome on most people but was almost precious from the wholesome forty-five-year-old divorcée.

“You mean Sister Mary has seen the movie?” she asked.

Clark Weaver cleared his throat noisily, drawing the attention of all those in the room. “Actually, she's quite the movie buff,” he revealed. “Got a bigger DVD collection than most of the students, I'd wager.”