The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy Read Free Book Online Page A

what would you tell me?”
    â€œBody?” she asked in a tone intimating that she had incriminating evidence against my sanity.
    â€œYeh, body of water.”
    â€œI don’t know about no bodies,” she insisted.
    â€œForget about body. What ocean would you tell me I was walking by?”
    â€œLantic Ocean.”
    â€œAtlantic.”
    â€œAtlantic,” she repeated.
    â€œWhat ocean, everybody?”
    â€œAtlantic Ocean,” they shouted in unison.
    â€œAre you sure it’s the Atlantic Ocean?”
    â€œYeh,” they answered.
    â€œWell, it’s not.”
    They looked at me again like they had been placed under the jurisdiction of a functioning cretin.
    â€œThe real name of the ocean is the Conroy Ocean.”
    â€œNo,” they said.
    â€œYeh,” I said.
    â€œNo,” they said.
    â€œYeh, it’s the truth. My great-great grandfather was Ferdinand Conroy, a Spanish soldier of fortune, who swam from Europe to North America, a distance of fifteen million miles. Because of this singular and extraordinary feat, they named this huge expanse of water after him.”
    â€œWhat you say?” one of the twins asked me.
    â€œHe didn’t say nothen,” Cindy Lou said.
    â€œAnyway,” I continued undaunted, “from that day forward, it has been called Conroy Ocean.”
    â€œNo,” George said.
    â€œHow do you know?” I challenged.
    â€œJust ain’t. You said it is Atlantic.”
    â€œI’m a liar.”
    â€œYou’s a teacher.”
    â€œTeachers lie all the time.”
    â€œOh Gawd,” Lincoln said. I had been noticing whenever Lincoln was surprised or ecstatic he would use the phrase Oh Gawd.
    So the day continued and with each question I got closer and closer to the children. With each question I asked I got madder and madder at the people responsible for the condition of these kids. At the end of the day I had compiled an impressive ledger of achievement. Seven of my students could not recite the alphabet. Three children could not spell their names. Eighteen children thought Savannah, Georgia, was the largest city in the world. Savannah was the only city any of the kids could name. Eighteen children had never seen a hill—eighteen children had never heard the words integration and segregation. Four children could not add two plus two. Eighteen children did not know we were fighting a war in Southeast Asia. Of course, eighteen children never had heard of Asia. One child was positive that John Kennedy was the first President of the United States. Seventeen children agreed with that child. Eighteen children concurred with the pre-Copernican Theory that the earth was the center of the universe. Two children did not know how old they were. Five children did not know their birth dates. Four children could not count to ten. The four oldest thought the Civil War was fought between the Germans and the Japs.
    Each question I asked opened up a new lesion of ignorance or misinformation. A stunned embarrassment gripped the class, as if I had broken some unwritten law by prying into areas where I had no business, or exposing linen of a very personal nature. No one would look me in the eye. Nor would anyone talk to me. I had stumbled into another century. The job I had taken to assuage the demon of do-gooderism was a bit more titanic than anticipated. All around the room sat human beings of various sizes and hues who were not aware that a world surrounded them, a world they would be forced to enter, and enter soon.
    I now knew the score of the ball game. Or at least thought I did. The kids did not know crap.
    I walked up to Prophet. I put up six fingers and asked him how many fingers I had raised.
    â€œEight,” he answered.
    â€œYou only missed it by two, Prophet. Try it again,” I said.
    â€œTwo,” he whispered.
    â€œNo, Prophet. Now start at this first finger and count to the last