234: Porky arrived . . .
Little Follies, “The Young Tars,” Chapter 17 continues
Porky arrived at the door of the coach’s office and reached for the knob. He stopped. He seemed to be confused by what he saw through the pebbled glass. I decided that I’d better keep going while I had a good head of steam.
“Before I actually resign,” I said, “I’d like to take this opportunity—my last opportunity—”
Porky leaned closer to the window. He shaded his eyes with his hand. He turned the knob slowly.
“—to read you the story I wrote for you,” I went on. I flipped through my copy of the manual to the “Tales for Tars” section. The Tars were playing the part of an eager audience. It would be fair to say that the gymnasium was hushed.
Porky pulled the door of the coach’s office open. Into the hush came the sound whoomp, then smack, then yow! Then laughter.
“It’s—um—called ‘Mutiny,’” I said. I turned in the direction of the coach’s office. So did everyone else.
“What the hell is going on?” said Porky, into the doorway.
Mr. Summers’s voice came from the office. We could hear the anger in it, but we couldn’t make out much of what he said, just “—discipline—humility—your own business.” Then whoomp, smack, and yow! A Ping-Pong ball bounced through the doorway, and the door slammed shut.
“It starts on—uh—page thirty-nine of the manual,” I said, turning back toward the bleachers, “and—I’d like to—”
No one was paying any attention to me. Porky picked up the Ping-Pong ball and walked back toward the bleachers. His mouth was open.
“I’d like to—um—read it to you,” I said, almost as distracted as my audience.
A group of parents wearing quizzical looks gathered around Porky. He scratched his head and began talking in a low tone. I listened. Everyone was listening. I heard, as well as I remember, “—a nut—some kind of gun—Ping-Pong balls—lined up bare-assed—kind of jostling and jiggling—like a row of piglets at a feeding trough—or maybe more like a row of ‘Spaldeens’—”
Porky’s audience looked toward the door of the coach’s office. I didn’t seem to have an audience anymore. “Well!” I said. “What do you say we get started?” I slapped the manual with my open hand, but no one seemed to hear me. Everyone was still looking toward the door. “Larry had had about as much as he could take of summer camp,” I read, as loudly as I could.
The door of the coach’s office opened, and Mr. Summers stuck his head out. He looked at the cluster of parents and then pulled his head back in. The parents looked at one another.
“Larry had made the mistake of becoming Camp Historian,” I went on, almost shouting.
The door of the coach’s office opened again, and the Precious Metals began filing out. They looked the way they always did after a humility session: humiliated. Their eyes were down, and they shuffled along. Mr. Summers followed, walking stiffly, his demeanor stern.
“Pervert!” called one of the mothers in the front row.
Mr. Summers twitched. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I must have misheard you—”
“Humiliator!” cried another of the parents.
Other voices rose from the crowd, one by one, and some of the braver Tars joined in, too. Memory can be tricky, of course, but I seem to hear them calling—
“Ridiculer! Mocking your Scribe’s unwillingness to cut corners!”
And all the people assembled in the gym cried, “Shame!”
“Demeaner! Heartlessly belittling your Scribe’s conviction that there is a right way of doing things!”
And everyone cried, “Shame! Shame!”
“Treacherous instructor! Falsely counseling that good enough is good enough!”
And they all cried again, “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
—but maybe I’m wrong about that. Wishful thinking may be rewriting my memory. Maybe they were calling something else, something like:
“Prendergast!”
Another father had cried out, leaning over the railing at the base of the bleachers, shaking his fist.
Mr. Summers looked puzzled. Frankly, everyone looked pretty puzzled. “I’m not quite sure that I understand you—” he began, but the red-faced fury of the man made him close his mouth in mid-sentence, and he began inching along the wall.
Porky whispered into the ear of the red-faced man, who said, “Oh,” and frowned in embarrassment. “Sorry,” he said. “I mean, ‘Pederast!’”
Mr. Summers shook his head and said, “Now, just a minute! ”
But more voices came from the crowd—another, and another, and another. Mr. Summers turned to me. His hair was wild, his eyes were wide. He seemed to want me to tell him what was going on.
I shrugged. “I didn’t do it,” I said. “Honest.”
A murmurous bunch of parents began advancing from the bleachers. Mr. Summers took one wild look around the gymnasium and broke into a run. In a moment he was up the stairs and out the door to the parking lot. A spooky silence filled the gym for a moment.
“Well,” I said, returning to the manual and “Mutiny.” “Where was I?”
My words were lost in a wild outburst. Everyone surged toward the door through which Mr. Summers had fled—everyone, that is, but me.
[to be continued on Monday, April 11, 2022]
In Topical Guide 234, Mark Dorset considers Shame and Shaming and Good and Evil from this episode.
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