Old School by Tobias Wolff Read Free Book Online Page A

us to a degree that was almost respectful. Frost would serve as the perfect bludgeon. I caught Bill White’s eye—we both knew what was coming.
    But no. Instead the headmaster told a story of how, as a farm boy completely ignorant of poetry, he had idly picked up a teacher’s copy of
North of Boston
and read a poem entitled “After Apple-Picking.” He approached it, he said, in a surly humor. He’d done more than a bit of apple-picking himself and was sure this poem would make it fancy and romantic and get it all wrong. Yet what struck him first was how physically true the poem was, even down to that ache you get in the arch of your foot after standing on a ladder all day—and not only the ache but the lingering pressure of the rung. Then, once he’d assented to the details, he was drawn to the poem’s more mysterious musings. What was that pane of ice about? Which part of the poem was dream, and which part memory? When he borrowed the book he’d had no idea where this act would lead him. Make no mistake, he said: a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.
    That was all. He came back down the steps. No recitation of Frost’s honors and awards, no witty, polished reminiscences from the Amherst years. I had never before heard the headmaster speak of himself as someone with a particular past, and never did again; with us it was all books and ideas and what he liked to call, quoting Jane Austen, the compliment of rational opposition. He was married but hard to imagine in his wife’s arms, because he seemed consecrated to a relationship with the world that yielded nothing to the flesh, whose unremitting satisfaction I conceived to be the point of marriage. He was a mystery to us and, like great generals and actresses, he guarded that mystery like the power it was.
    He helped Frost up the winding steps and then, instead of returning to his chair, joined us in the pews. This left Frost alone at the front of the church, in the high pulpit. He arranged his books and some loose papers in a certain order, then rearranged them, the papers rustling loudly under the microphone. At this he stopped to inspect the mike as if the device were new to him. He tapped it suspiciously. This produced a resounding knock, and he shied back a little. He picked up a book, rifled through the pages, set it down again, and peered out at us.
    Can you hear me? You can hear me, you boys in the back? Well then. Good. That’s good. I suppose I should read you a poem. But I was just thinking about something Shelley said . . . you know Shelley, fellow who wrote “Ozymandias”—it’s in your books. Friend of Byron, friend of Keats. Wife wrote
Frankenstein.
Anyhow, Shelley liked to say that we poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. They used to speak like that in those days—by the pound. Unacknowledged legislators of mankind. Wonder if it’s true. Wonder what it
means.
Does it mean we’re dangerous, like your headmaster says? What does your man Kellogg think? Is Mr. Kellogg here tonight?
    Frost waited, gazing out at us until George stood up, a couple of seats to my right. He looked furtive and damp. He looked like a sinner in a Last Judgment painting, about to get his due.
    And Frost, Frost looked like Himself up there in the pulpit. He was standing below one of the chandeliers, whose wintry light silvered his hair and made shadows on his weathered face. He didn’t look old; he looked eternal.
    He took George in. So, he said. Mr. Kellogg. That was quite a piece of legislation you wrote. Bet you had some fun with it too, holding the old man’s feet to the fire. Good for you, good for you. Old men should have their feet held to the fire—keeps ’em awake.
    All right, boys, they’ve brought me down here to sing for my supper, so I’d better do some singing. Here’s one for you. No snow in here, Mr. Kellogg, but maybe we can find you some later on. I wrote this one when I was lonely for home, many