The Troubled Air by Irwin Shaw Read Free Book Online Page A

were thinking of him. Especially the girls. (“Why, he’s bald! A true, historic, ancient, old crock.”) He must remember, Archer thought, waiting for the bell, and regarding the class with hostility, not to keep rubbing the naked top of his head. Keep that ammunition, at least, out of the hands of the remorseless imitators in the class.
    Then a tall boy wearing a bow tie had sauntered in, holding hands with a pretty girl. That was Herres. The boy and girl had seated themselves in the last row of chairs, on the end. They were expecting to talk about a lot of other things besides history for the next five months, that far away from his desk, Archer thought grimly, and looked at Herres closely. Flunking material, he decided. Then he saw that the boy had a big raw bump on the bridge of his nose and a black eye. Unreasonably, he was annoyed with the boy, as though it was deliberately rude to approach Louis the Fourteenth and Robespierre with a black eye. Also, he was wearing a better suit than Archer. And rather than disfiguring him, the swelling on his nose and the purple lines around the eye socket gave him a dashing and mocking appearance. A wealthy rowdy, Archer judged, probably with an open roadster of his own, and a big hand with the campus girls and the waitresses downtown. And thick straight blond hair, cut very close, to crown it all. And the girl next to him looking up at him as though she was ready to melt into her seat at a kind word from him. The secret stresses that instructors were exposed to, that no course on education ever took into account.
    Then the bell rang and the year began and Archer called the roll. Herres answered with a clipped, “Here” and Archer remembered the name. Quarterback on the football team, another mark against him. Probably there’d be a hearty, embarrassed visit from Samson, the coach, in a month or two, with a plea to keep the boy eligible until Thanksgiving, even though he cut half his classes. Not this time, Samson, old boy, Archer resolved in advance, not for this particular young hero in a bow tie. He can come in with both eyes closed and swinging on crutches after scoring twenty touchdowns on Saturday afternoon, but I won’t give an inch.
    That was how he saw Vic and Nancy Herres, who was then Nancy MacDonald, for the first time.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” Archer had said, after reaching Zimmerman on his alphabetical list and ascertaining that Mr. Zimmerman was present and ready for knowledge, “ladies and gentlemen, we are all the captives of history. In a double sense. First, we are all here in this room on this pleasant afternoon, when we would prefer being some place else, because this is a required course and autumn has officially begun.” There had been the usual tentative polite chuckles, although not from Herres or his girl, and Archer went on. “And second, because, here in the middle of America, in 1935, all our actions are in some measure the result of certain decisions made in Paris in 1780 and certain books written by dead foreigners in the early part of the nineteenth century …” Well, it was all banal enough, but you had to begin somewhere, and every teacher of anything had his own standard openings to lead the way into the routine of a term.
    Herres had surprised him. He cut no classes, listened carefully, whispered very seldom to the pretty girl at his side while others were talking, seemed to take no notes, but answered swiftly and easily in his cool, confident voice, was witty on occasion without being a clown, and obviously had read a great deal more on the subject than anyone else in the class. Archer was first surprised, then suspicious, and finally grateful to have someone like that in his class. He began to look forward to History 22 and prepare it more thoroughly than any other of his courses and allow many more digressions and tangential debates because the whole class seemed to learn more quickly and interestedly because of Herres’ lead.