Rules of Conduct

Jack Steele                                                                                                      4207 words

240 Regency Drive

Marstons Mills, MA 02648

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Rules of Conduct

By

Jack Steele

     He believed everything he read and almost everything his teachers and parents told him.  When his sixth grade teacher said that Stalin was a dictator and a dictator could do anything he wanted, he believed her.  He did not think to ask, as his friend did, if she meant that Stalin could make a person eat worms, or hop around all day on one leg, and when his teacher answered his friend in the affirmative, he wasn’t so sure she was right.  Or even if she knew.  She was the best teacher he’d ever had, his favorite for life, but that day, when she answered his friend’s question, he thought she seemed uncertain, which was not like her.  She was a big ugly woman, perhaps the ugliest woman he’d ever known.  Her face and body together made him think of an elephant, and the boys, referring to her body in motion, said she looked like a Sherman tank.  They might also have been thinking about her personality.  She came on as tough, no nonsense, and she could lose her temper.  There was a big crack in the gray concrete block wall at the back of the room, and the other kids said it was made when she banged a boy’s head against the lockers.  It was true, his mother reluctantly told him, that his teacher almost lost her job for slapping and shaking a boy.  She doubted, though, that she hit him hard enough to make a crack in the wall.

     For an hour most afternoons the class played Scrabble, and his teacher often sat in at the table where he played.  He beat her consistently.  At times she seemed irritated when she lost, at other times pleased.  It was difficult to predict her moods.  He and his two best friends were her favorites, and there were days when they could do no wrong.  She would laugh when they cut up.  Answer them back when they teased her.  Ignore the spit wads and the paper airplanes and the whispers and the notes passed back and forth.  But on other days she would turn red in the face and act like they’d been put on this earth just to torment her.  One day during the lunch period, the three of them were sitting around together in the almost empty class, doing nothing in particular, when the principal came in carrying a paddle.  “Just the three I was looking for,” he said.  “Follow me.”

     They were ushered into a storage closet.  There was barely room enough for all of them.  The boys had to sit on boxes of toilet paper and floor wax.  The principal told them that their teacher had complained about them, that they were making her life miserable, that she couldn’t control them, and he’d come to see if a good paddling might not convince them to behave.  He was a nice man.  He’d shown them how to plant a pecan tree.  He was friendly and outgoing when he filled in for the cashier at lunch.  And when the teacher was sick and he taught the class for her, he always made the lesson interesting, the discussion lively.  They had never seen him mad before, and his show of temper shocked them.  The paddle was the last resort, he said, but from what their teacher had told him, they deserved it.  He made a long speech, emphasizing that he didn’t really want to do it, but he didn’t think he had a choice, and the longer he talked, the madder he seemed to get.

     They didn’t say a word.  They knew that would only make it worse.  They didn’t like it, but there didn’t seem to be any way of escape, and then came a knock on the door.  It was the principal’s secretary.  He had a phone call.  “Don’t move,” he told them.  “I’ll be right back.”  He was gone for about five minutes, and when he came back he resumed his speech.  He didn’t understand how they could show their teacher so much disrespect.  He knew they weren’t bad boys, but they had certainly been behaving badly.  A good  teacher like theirs would come to him only as a last resort.  It had to stop.  He meant for it to stop.  They should be very ashamed of themselves for driving her to this extreme.  And then came another knock on the door.  “Don’t move.  I’ll be right back.” 

     Not until he was a grown man did it occur to him that the principal never had any intention of paddling them.  He had the paddle in his hand and his face was red.  Until he came back after the second interruption, he seemed really mad, almost like a different person, and it scared them.  He was also right about their behavior.  Their only defense might have been their teacher’s unpredictable moods, but that was far too complicated, and besides, they were guilty.  Period.  No two ways about it.  Best to keep their mouths shut and take it like men.  Try not to cry.  Try not to put their hands back there.  Those were the two most important rules of getting paddled.  Everyone knew them, even though he didn’t know anyone who’d ever been paddled.        

*****

     Two very strange kids were in his class.  One was a girl who ate ink.  Not every day, but several times he and his friends noticed that she had blue ink on her lips and all over her hands.  The other was a boy who dressed in overalls like a farmer and sat in a far corner of the cafeteria, as far away from everyone else as possible, and caught flies with his hands and ate them.  He and his friends talked about those kids among themselves and joked about them, maybe a little too loudly, but they never teased them directly.  There was a distance between the strange kids and everyone else, a separation that seemed to suit everyone involved.  He tried to imagine doing what they did, being how they were, but it was hard.  He didn’t think he would like the taste of ink or flies, but the worst part would be the attention.  He’d be ruined for life, as his mother said.

     Also separated were the project kids.  Their clothes were different and they came to school barefoot until the weather changed.  They were “rough,” yet another term he’d learned from his mother.  All the bullies in the school were project kids.  The project kid who made A’s was rare.  They often needed haircuts.  They were not always clean.  They caused trouble.  He had a fist fight back by the lockers with a project kid over the 1956 World Series.  If you were not for the Dodgers, the kid would hit you on the arm until you changed your mind.  No one, then, was not for the Dodgers, but he decided he couldn’t give in.  It was very simple, a matter of courage, and the rule was clear:  if you didn’t fight back, you were a coward.  He believed that and did not want to be a coward.  He was afraid of fighting, but he was more afraid of being a coward.  He had no idea even what a fight was, since he knew that movies were probably not a reliable guide.  He said Yankees, and the project kid looked at him as if he couldn’t believe it.  In his eyes there was doubt, hesitation.  Not fear, but he had not expected to hear Yankees.          Nevertheless, the kid hit him on the arm, one knuckle out to make it sting more, and knowing he couldn’t let himself think about it even for a second, he hit back.  They traded one or two more arm blows, and then it accelerated.  It became a real fight, but it didn’t last more than a few seconds.  They flailed at each other, aiming for the head, but neither connected very solidly, and then the project kid backed off.  Not enough to lose the fight, but enough to suggest a truce, and he took the hint.  No more flailing.  He was crying, but he hadn’t said Dodgers.  The project kid didn’t look happy, but he wasn’t crying.  He just shrugged his shoulders and walked away.  It was a victory of sorts, or at least a draw, a draw with a project kid, but he was ashamed of crying.

*****

     He went through a period of sitting in the front row of the movie theater and eating Tootsie-Rolls and popcorn together.  He chewed the popcorn up in a ball and then added a Tootsie-Roll or two for flavor.  About that time he started thinking about making left and right even.  If he touched something with his left hand, he had to touch something else with his right, and he had to apply exactly the same amount of pressure in both cases.  It fact, he needed to touch each in as similar a way as possible, as close as he could get it, and he had to get it perfect before he could stop.  Mostly, though, he did something a little different.  He counted with his fingers, either touching something or not, maybe just moving them, it didn’t matter, but he had to count up to the same amount on each hand.  For a while, he had difficulty not doing this, especially when he was alone at the movies.  Instead of getting lost in the movie, as he wanted to do, he was compelled to count and make it even.

     He did not know where that came from, or why he wanted to do it, but in Little League he did something that he knew was similar.  He prayed before every pitch that a ball wouldn’t be hit to him.  A quick prayer with an “amen” at the end.  He was a good first baseman.  So good in fact that he never missed a throw, even when it bounced in front of him.  Or a grounder.  Or a line drive.  Popups, though, were a problem.  He could never judge them right.  They always landed behind him no matter how much he told himself when the ball was in the air not to run in until it arched.  He couldn’t make himself do it.  He played the ball the way it looked, and then it was too late.  He could throw the ball up in the air and catch it almost without thinking about it, but real popups during a game were different.  Luckily, there weren’t many of them.  He knew then, all things considered, that his prayer was irrational, like making things come out even, that when the ball was hit to him, unless it was a popup, he would play it well, but he couldn’t stop himself.

*****

     Robert E. Lee was a flawed hero.  A man of impeccable integrity who made the wrong decision.  The Civil War was about two things.  The North wanted to abolish slavery.  The South was defending states’ rights.  Both, therefore, were right.  The South was wrong, however, to break up the Union, and Lee was wrong when he chose to support it.  That was his flaw.  He was too loyal to Virginia, blinded by his love for it to the greater good of preserving the Union.  His photograph, the kindly looking, portly man with the white beard, in full uniform, not unlike Santa Claus, showed everyone what was good about the South.  It was run by gentlemen, and yet the sword that hung at his side, like the pistol of a gunfighter, gave fair warning.  Here was a man who would defend himself, who would hurt you if given a good reason.

     Robin Hood, on the other hand, had no flaws, and although he enjoyed humiliating fools and cowards, he killed no one.  Robin Hood was a natural.  He could shoot a bow and arrow better than anyone who ever lived, and he was good-natured and smart.  When Little John knocked him into the water, he came up laughing and was so impressed that he invited Little John to join his Merry Men.  He was a good loser and knew how to turn defeat into victory.  In a way, his whole way of life was that.  When faced with death for shooting the king’s deer, Robin and his men disappeared into the green woods and created a life for themselves that was better than what they’d had before.  They lived hidden away in a beautiful forest, ate wholesome and succulent venison cooked on a spit over a fire, amused themselves with games that honed their physical skills and their cunning, and robbed from the rich to give to the poor.  He could not imagine a better life, and although he was glad for Robin when King Richard returned from the Crusades and put everything right again, he was sorry that the life in the forest had to end.

     There was no King Richard for Robert E. Lee and his rebels.  Only Lincoln and Grant and whatever scrap of dignity Lee might have preserved at Appomattox.  He liked Grant better than Lincoln.  Grant was a drinker and a fighter.  He wasn’t sure what to make of Lincoln.  He knew how to look at the face as if it were that of a saint.  Sad, ascetic and, the truth be told, boring.  He much preferred the handsome, robust figure of Grant, a smart man of action like Robin Hood.  Even Lee, with his tragic flaw, was not up to Grant.  Lee too was boring.  Too good, like Lincoln.  And Washington.  He liked his heroes to be bold and reckless, and a little bit mean.  Or at least mischievous.  He could tell by the way Grant sat in his camp chair, cocky and careless, legs spraddled and a drink in his hand, that he was that way. 

     The Sam Houston given to him at school was more like Lee and Lincoln, a little too good not to be boring, and everyone knew that Travis, with his line drawn in the dirt, was too strict and narrow-minded.  Davy Crockett was plenty wild, but too much like someone who might work on your car.  His grammar wasn’t good enough to be a real hero.  His man was Bowie.  A craftsman and a gentleman.  He even knew Spanish.  He’d been in duels, lived in New Orleans and dressed well.  He had a temper and was quick to fight, but he was fair and friendly to people who deserved it.

     The Alamo was the main event of history, far more important than Gettysburg or Valley Forge.  Even San Jacinto was an afterthought.  Victory was never as good at explaining how things were as defeat, and how things were, thanks to the Alamo, was very clear.  The Mexicans, the brown little men in their old-fashioned soldier uniforms, hordes of them, all wearing peaked hats and carrying rifles with bayonets over their shoulders, scrambled up ladders like bees or ants, not because they were brave or believed in anything in particular, but because they were afraid of their cruel and ridiculous little leader.  They might as well take their chances on the ladders, since if they turned back, Santa Ana would certainly have them shot.  That’s why the heroes died at the Alamo.  Unlike the little brown hordes, who’d probably been turned cruel by their master, like fierce dogs, savage yet cowardly, the men at the Alamo were brave enough to resist the tyranny of Santa Ana.  They stood for freedom.  They didn’t want Mexicans telling them what to do.  They wanted to decide for themselves, and they died for that cause, so that the other white people in Texas could throw off Santa Ana’s yoke and live in peace and freedom.

*****

When they first moved to the new town, his parents joined the church and were baptized together in the aquarium-like thing that held the water, located above and behind the pulpit.  They held their noses before being dunked, which washed their sins away, and for a while they all went to church every Sunday, but not for long.  It was too tempting to stay in bed and read the sports page and the funny papers in your pajamas.  On the way to church once, they saw a man in his bathrobe stooping over to get his Sunday paper, and his father said, “Now there’s a man who knows how to spend a Sunday morning.”  He saw his mother jab his father in the ribs for saying that, but it was too tempting for everyone in the family, although he went more often than his parents, usually just to Sunday School.  He liked Sunday School.  Both before and after he was saved, he was interested in what his teachers had to say, since he knew they talked about how things were, what was important and what was not.      

     He didn’t tell his parents that he was going to walk down the aisle the day he was saved.  He’d worked it out by himself that it was something he needed to do, and he was afraid they would try to talk him out of it if he told them.  Or even forbid him to do it.  “Wait until you’re older,” he could hear his mother saying.  And besides, it might not even be right to tell anyone.  It was his decision.  Everyone knew that and everyone was always saying it, especially the preacher.  His decision alone, and what it amounted to was whether he wanted to go to heaven or hell.  He had until he was twelve to decide, but he didn’t want to go for three years worrying about it, not the going to hell part, but the dread of walking up the aisle, the short conference with the preacher, and then being the absolute center of attention.  Too bad about that, but it seemed like life was full of things that required you to make yourself the center of attention, if you were ever going to amount to anything.  If you were going to join what everyone else joined, and be a leader, you had to prove your worthiness by embarrassing yourself in front of a lot of people.  That’s just how it was, and it seemed to him better to get it over with than to dread it.

     He had no trouble saying “yes” when the preacher asked him if he was ready to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.  He understood the question and he believed his answer.  He’d listened carefully to what the preacher said in his sermons and what his Sunday School teacher said, and he accepted as truth their unanimous opinion that being saved was absolutely necessary if a person was going to have a good life and go to heaven.  But Jesus didn’t speak to him.  He accepted him as his personal Savior, but he thought very little about Jesus, probably because everyone talked more about God the Father.  He worked it out in his head.  God made the law.  Jesus amended it a little, but he followed it, and when you accepted him, you agreed to follow it too.  After that it got too complicated, the part about Jesus dying for everyone’s sins, why his dying washed away all the sins of the world.  But he didn’t think he had to understand that, not yet.  What he had to do was walk down the aisle, say yes to the question, and submit himself to the undivided attention of a lot of grownups.  He knew that if he did that, the dread of doing it would leave him, and he’d never have to do it again.  And he was right.  The preacher leaned down and put his arm around him, whispered softly in his ear, and every grownup he could see was looking at him and smiling.

*****

     Of all the Ten Commandments the only one he thought he might have any trouble with was lying, but fortunately, lying was not something he was good at getting away with, and when he did, he felt so guilty that it was worse than if he’d told the truth.  Not for fooling people, he didn’t feel  bad about that, but for being afraid to tell the truth.  The temptation to lie was always cowardly. 

     Which was completely different from the first temptation he remembered ever having.  It had nothing to do with lying.  He was real little, perhaps in the second grade.  While everyone else napped on Sunday afternoon, he lay on the linoleum in the kitchen with a butcher knife.  He held it in both hands and pointed it at his chest.  He wondered what it would be like to push it into his body.  He did this and thought about it a lot.  He was curious.  So curious that he was tempted to try it, and he didn’t only because he lacked the courage.  He could feel the temptation in his hands.  His hands anticipated the pleasure of forcing, the downward plunge.  They were alive with it, which was a pleasure in itself.  And a pain.  The hands were impatient with him.  They wanted him to finish what he started.  They were not concerned with the consequences, and he had no clear idea himself what they would be.  He tried to think past it, but he couldn’t, which was part of both the appeal and the restraint.  Not fear exactly, but something very similar.  Perhaps he didn’t lack courage.  Surely, it didn’t take courage to sin.  Wasn’t it supposed to be just the opposite?  He ignored his hands, what they wanted to do, and put the knife back where he found it.  At the very least it would be an unacceptable act.  No one would like it.

*****

     His mother said that unless he wanted to be considered “rough,” he would use good English.   Not say “ain’t,” no double negatives, and no bad words, especially in front of girls.  A bad word in front of a girl can ruin your reputation for life.  It’s best to be extremely careful at all times.  Any reference to things having to do with bathrooms was strictly taboo.  He believed her, just as he believed everything else she said, and therefore found it puzzling when one afternoon at a girl’s house, all the girls giggled over a lampshade that showed a boy peeing.  So puzzling that he made a fool of himself.  The girl’s mother worked.  No one was there but kids.  Four or five girls and two or three boys.  It was exciting just to be in the house.  A house with no grownups.  Just kids, mostly girls.  This was a major event.  He expected it to be fun.  Girls liked him, and he liked girls, unless they were mean.  One girl had picked on him in the second grade, and since his mother had told him never to hit a girl, even if she hit you first, that it could ruin your reputation for life, he spent most of his recess trying to avoid her.  “She has a crush on you,” his mother said, which turned out to be true, but not really useful.  Most girls, especially those with a crush on him, weren’t mean.  They could be difficult, hard to understand, but not mean.  He didn’t expect to feel ganged up on by girls, even when the boys were in the minority.  Nor did he expect to be shocked.

     The girls went as a group into the parents’ bedroom and came out screaming and giggling.  He’d never seen that before.  Girls having fun by acting as if something was naughty and yet clearly enjoying it.  It was a new experience and he wasn’t ready for it.  Even before he went into the bedroom, he knew it didn’t fit with the way he thought the world worked.  Surely, girls couldn’t like something bad.  It wasn’t natural, and of course, new as it was, strange as it was, it excited him.  He had to see for himself.  He wasn’t invited to see, but he was allowed.  No one told him to go see.  That would be going too far, crossing the line.  But they didn’t stop him.  He was already embarrassed, he could feel himself blushing, either way.  Not to go would be cowardly, but going might be crossing the line of what was allowed.  No one would simply tell him what it was, but he knew it had to do with a lamp.  He looked around hurriedly after entering the bedroom, knowing he was where he shouldn’t be, and then he found it.  A lampshade, the lamp not lit, had a picture on it of a boy peeing.  On impulse, he pulled the cord, and when the shade turned, the pee seemed to move in a stream.  He ran out of the room.  He shouted, once he reached the living room, “You can see it coming out!”  He said it too loud, too fast, almost shrieking, and the girls went into hysterics.  They fell against each other as if about to faint.  They repeated what he said.  They pointed at him.  They wouldn’t stop laughing, and he wanted to disappear.  He defended himself, his face hot, by saying, “Well, you can.”  And they laughed even more.