Rook & Tooth and Claw by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

front of the class. “Did anybody else notice that Tee Jay was acting strange?”
    “He started bringing me down for being Jewish,” said Sherma Feldstein – a dark, plump, pretty girl with a beauty spot and thick black eyebrows. “He kept saying there was only one religion and that was his. He said that all Jews were – well, he used a rude word.”
    “Did he tell you what his religion was?” asked Jim.
    Sherma shook her head. “He tried to explain it. He kept on talking about crows and mirrors and candles; and there was something about dust, too. Breathing in dust.”
    “Could you make any sense of that?”
    “Unh-unh,” said Sherma. “And he wouldn’t explain himself, either. He said if I didn’t understand it now I never would.”
    “I noticed something else, too,” put in Beattie McCordic. “He was out playing that game where you throw one of those round things over a net. It was hot and he stripped off the thing he was wearing on his top. He had all these marks on his back.”
    “You mean a tattoo?” Jim asked her.
    “No, no. Like lumps, when you cut yourself. What do you call them?”
    “You’re talking about scars?”
    “That’s right, scars. In all these kind of like circles.”
    “Well, I guess if anybody wants to have circles on their back, who are we to say that they can’t? He’s probably had them for years.”
    “No, he hasn’t. They’re really new. Like they’re still red-raw and all.”
    Sharon Mitchell put up her hand. Sharon was as militant about black rights as Beattie was for women’s rights. She was strikingly pretty, but she was very tall, almost 6ft 1ins, and she had suffered all of her life for being gawky, and black, and a girl. She always signed her essays ‘Sharon X’, in honour of the Black Muslims, and Jim never called her anything else. This was a time in their lives when his students needed to be taken seriously, no matter how rebellious and irrational they seemed to be. They felt bad enough about themselves as it was. They didn’t need anybody else making fun of them.
    Sharon said, “Some people in Africa do that. It’s a manhood thing. It’s supposed to show that a boy can put up with pain; but also it shows what spirit you belong to.”
    “I don’t follow you.”
    “Well, some tribes have these guardian spirits who are supposed to look after them all of their lives. The same as godparents, you know. When a boy reaches manhood, the elders choose a spirit for him, and that spirit is supposed to protect him and give him good advice and kill his enemies for him.”
    Kill his enemies
? thought Jim, remembering the dark-suited figure coming out of the boiler-house. He said, “That’s interesting, Sharon. I’d like to know some more about that.”
    “I’ve got plenty of books at home. I’ll bring them to college and you can read them for yourself.”
    Jim looked around the class. “I’ll be going to see Elvin’s parents later today, and I’m sure that you’d all like me to take a message of condolence. Tomorrow I’d like you all to pool your efforts and make a sympathy card, so that you can all sign it.
    “I’ve been thinking all night of what I could say to you today about Elvin. But I believe the best I can do is read you these words by Emily Dickinson.”
    He picked up a book and opened it. The class was so quiet that he could hear them breathing.
    “ ‘Because I could not stop for Death,
    He kindly stopped for me;
    The carriage held but just ourselves
    And Immortality.
    “ ‘
We passed the school, where children strove
    At recess, in the ring;
    We passed the fields of gazing grain
    We passed the setting sun.
    “ ‘
Since then ‘tis centuries, and yet
    Feels shorter than the day
    I first surmised the horses’ heads
    Were toward eternity
.”
    He lowered the book. Sitting right in front of him, Jane Firman had tears trickling down her cheeks. She and Elvin had both suffered from dyslexia, and they had spent hours together, struggling