New Boy excerpt: Mackie’s Class

A dozen wooden armchair desks flanked three walls of the classroom, and a long slate chalkboard ran the length of the fourth. In front of the chalkboard was a double-pedestal oak desk whose top was bare, save for a tidy stack of notebook papers folded lengthwise. Behind the desk, at a window in the corner farthest from the door, stood a man with his back to the room. He was tall and lean with narrow shoulders and dark, straight hair. As the boys filed in, he remained motionless except for his right hand, which held a red marking pen that he used to slowly tick the time against the palm of his hand.

The bell rang just as Henry entered the room. He stopped briefly to consider the two remaining empty chairs then took the one farther away from the teacher’s desk, next to a pudgy, round-faced, black kid whose right leg bounced nervously up and down.

Mackie continued to stare out the window, keeping time as Henry put his backpack under his seat and pulled out his notebook.

“Palmer, you’re late.”

Henry started. He had no idea Mackie had seen him, let alone that he knew who he was.

“Sorry — ”

Mackie held up his red pen and slowly rotated his head, owl-like, in Henry’s direction. His two large, brown eyes — already magnified by the pair of thick-rimmed glasses that sat on his great, curved beak of a nose — seemed to bulge with anticipation as they came to rest on Henry Palmer.

“When the bell rings you are to be in your seat — not inside the door, not on your way to your seat, but sitting down — sessio — eyes forward and poised to tackle the English language. You have ten minutes to get here from Mr. Theobald’s World History class. That’s plenty of time, isn’t it Palmer? Ten minutes? Does it take you that long to walk from the lobby of the Carolina Country Club to the first tee?”

“Sir?” Henry didn’t play golf, but how did Mackie know his family belonged to the country club? Or that he was from Raleigh? Or that he’d just had history class?

“No more free passes, boys. No more pats on the head. No more A’s for effort or sincerity. We are here to learn to write a proper English sentence, and by sentence I mean a subject and a verb, and by proper I mean spelling according to Merriam Webster and grammar according to Warriner’s. You can have the noblest sentiments in the world, but in this class if you express them with five or more grammatical mistakes you will get an F.”

Mackie stepped to the front of his desk while he let the threat of an ‘F’ sink into the skulls of these coddled boys.

“I suspect many of you do not know what an F means, but I can assure you that at some point during this year — and sooner rather than later, I hope — you will become acquainted with that letter and its meaning. It means ‘fail’,” and Mackie slapped the top of his desk with his hand, “and ‘flunk’,” and he slapped it again, “and oh my God what am I going to tell my ‘father’.” One last slap. “Well, you’re going to tell him that you still have a lot to learn in English. Now, I have your summer reading assignments here, and if you would be so kind as to come forward as I call your name.”

Mackie picked up the papers on his desk and read the names he had written on the back pages. “Jobe … Cutbert … Basset ….” As he read each name another boy shuffled forward to receive his mark. “Wales …” The black boy sitting next to Henry got up from his desk, and when he returned, Henry stole a glance at his paper and saw written on the back page an “A-” in red pen. Henry breathed a sigh of relief — the man gave A’s after all.

“Palmer.” Henry stepped forward and reached for the paper in the teacher’s hand, but before he could grasp it, Mackie pulled the paper back, caught Henry’s eye, and said, “The sand and surf days are over, Mr. Palmer.” Then he placed the paper into Henry’s hand and called the next student’s name.

Henry turned the paper over and written on back was, “F — Over 5 grammatical errors.” Henry felt like the floor had fallen out from under him. He’d never received an F in his life. When he got back to his seat he slipped the paper into his notebook as casually as he could manage then glanced around the room to see if anyone else looked devastated. What are ‘sand and surf days’? Henry thought to himself.

Mackie stepped to the opposite side of his desk and wrote ‘The Sick Rose’ on the blackboard then faced the class.

“I want everyone to open his book to page 272. Please read the poem to yourself, and then we will discuss it.”

Henry rummaged through his backpack and found a copy of Sense and the Imagination. It was a used copy. Gordon had given it to him before he’d left home. There were underlined passages and notes written in the margins. At the time, Henry had taken one look at the book and handed it back to Gordon.

“No thanks,” he’d said.

Gordon had pushed the book back on his brother. “I had Mackie in tenth grade. This has everything we talked about.”

Henry had opened it at random and read his brother’s comments next to a poem called, “Ozymandias”. “Nothing lasts,” Gordon had written. Henry wasn’t impressed. He’d handed the book back to his brother. “I’d rather read it for myself.”

“Just take it, Henry. Do you really want to make mom and dad buy you a new book?”

Henry thought he’d managed to put his brother off, but he’d found the book when he’d unpacked his bag yesterday. He suspected Gordon had somehow snuck it into his things yesterday, but he couldn’t be sure that his mother hadn’t put it there. Maybe they did want to save some money on books? God knows, the school cost a fortune — at least that’s what Gordon told him.

“Henry Palmer, what does the author mean by ‘the invisible worm’ in the first stanza?”

Henry looked up and found Mackie seated behind his desk but leaning forward and pointing the red pen directly at his nose.

“Pardon?”

“The first stanza. ‘The invisible worm’. What does it mean?”

Henry looked around the room and saw the other boys had their books open.

“I’m sorry. What page did you say it was?”

“What is a worm, Palmer?”

“Pardon?”

“A worm,” Mackie said.

“It’s a bug or an insect thing that lives underground.”

“Is that the kind of worm the poet is writing about here.”

“I s’pose.”

“Do worms ‘fly in the night’?”

“A flying worm?” Henry asked.

“That’s what the poem says.”

That didn’t make sense to Henry. He looked at the kid’s book next to him to try to figure out where they were. He felt Mackie’s attention bearing down on him. He felt the blood rushing to his face. Any second now and he was going to start sweating.

“What page did you say we were on?”

“We are on page 272. Try to keep up, Palmer, will you? What about you, Wales? Can you help Palmer out?”

Wales had kept his head down in hopes of not being called on. Now the blood rushed to his face, and his cafe au lait cheeks turned reddish brown. Wales’s head dipped lower towards his book. “Worms don’t fly,” he said, without looking up.

“Thank you for that bit of scientific information about the invertebrate phylum, but I was hoping for something that bears a relation to this poem.”

Henry opened his book to page 272 and found The Sick Rose by William Blake.

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

Gordon had circled the word ‘worm’ and written ‘penis’ in the margin. Henry closed his book quickly.

“Do you think, Mr. Wales, that William Blake did not understand that worms — the same worms that appear on sidewalks on rainy days and that robins pull from the ground in the spring — don’t fly?”

“Everybody knows that worms don’t fly,” Wales offered weakly.

“Even poets writing in the 18th Century?”

“Sure. He probably knew.”

“Then why did he write, ‘The invisible worm / That flies in the night’?”

“Maybe he meant some other kind of ‘flies’,” another boy piped out.

Mackie swiveled his attention to the other side of the room where a dough-faced boy with long ears and a sweet, unintelligent expression, gazed back at him.

“Well that’s interesting. What ‘other kind of flies’ might he have meant, Mr. Grimes?”

“Green flies …. Bottle flies …. House flies …. You know, flies.” Bobby Grimes spoke the words like it was the simplest thing in the world, and he was happy to be of use.

Mackie smiled at the boy’s demonstration of stupidity.

“Now that is very helpful, Mr. Grimes. I thank you for that, because your comment raises a fundamental question of English grammar. And as I said at the outset of class, grammar — or I should say the proper use of grammar — will be our main focus this year. Unlearning the bad habits that you’ve all grown accustomed to and in their place learning good, proper, American English, the sort that will distinguish you from the common, lowbrow know-nothing that you will find yourself surrounded by when you leave these hallowed grounds. Can anyone here tell Mr. Grimes how we know that William Blake did not mean a blue-bottled house fly when he wrote ‘flies’ in this poem?”

Mackie looked around the room, and finding no volunteers he called on Bob “Wobbly” Wembley, who was holding his book up in front of his face in a pathetic effort to conceal himself. Wobbly slowly lowered the book to his desk, and as he lowered his book he also lowered his gaze, to avoid making eye contact with Mr. Mackie.

“Well, Mr. Wembly?” Mackie repeated.

“Because they didn’t have those kinds of flies back then?”

His words were spoken more like a question than a declaration, and they seemed to send a jolt of electricity through Mackie, and his right forefinger shot up to the heavens then suddenly struck down hard onto the open page of his book. “From this poem, Mr. Wembly! What in this poem tells us that William Blake wasn’t talking about horseflies or deerflies or houseflies when he wrote ‘flies’?”

Wobbly looked back down at the page in front of him and then across the room at Henry. His lips moved, and Henry imagined that he was asking for help, but Henry dared not say anything. Finally Wobbly looked back at Mackie and shrugged his shoulders pathetically.

Mackie smiled cruelly. He relished that look of abject surrender. “I’ll give you a hint,” he said. “Grammar.”

“Grammar?” Wobbly asked.

Mackie nodded, but Wobbly said nothing.

“I’ll give you another hint. Parts of speech.”

Wobbly stared at him but said nothing.

“Do you know what a verb is, Mr. Wembly?”

Now Wobbly felt that Mackie was making fun of him, and his spirits rallied. “Yeah,” he said with a slender note of defiance.

“What is it?”

Wobbly hesitated. It occurred to him that this might be a trick question. Then he wondered whether he actually knew what a verb was. Mackie waited. “It’s an action, like kicking or eating,” Wobbly said finally.

“Correct. And what’s a noun?”

“It’s a thing, like a book or a table.”

“Very good. And what’s a housefly, Mr. Wembly?”

“It’s a black bug that rubs its legs together and washes its face.”

Mackie hesitated long enough for Wobbly to realize that something bad was about to happen.

“Spent some time staring at houseflies, have you Wembly?”

Several of the boys laughed, and Mackie smiled because he felt like the boys appreciated that he had pinned Wobbly to the wall like a specimen.

“I meant as a part of speech. What part of speech is a housefly?”

“Noun,” Wobbly said, uncertainly.

“Correct. And in this poem” — Mackie again poked the page in front of him — “what part of speech is ‘flies’?”

Wobbly looked down at his book and read over the poem. “It’s a verb,” he said finally.

“Right. So was Mr. William Blake talking about houseflies or about the act of flying when he wrote ‘flies’ ?”

“The act of flying.”

“Correct. So Mr. Wembly, I ask you, do you think that our poet here failed to understand that earthworms don’t fly?”

“No. I think he knew they don’t fly.”

“So why do you think that he wrote, ‘The invisible worm / That flies in the night’ ?”

“He meant a different worm?”

Again, Wobbly spoke the words more as a question than an answer, but this time Mackie greeted his answer with enthusiasm. He pointed his red pen at the nose in the middle of Wobbly’s face and jabbed the air twice. “Exactly!” Mackie said. And he turned his attention away from Wobbly and toward the rest of the class.

As soon as Mackie looked away Wobbly exhaled. He congratulated himself for handling Mackie’s questions so well and glanced around the room to see who else had admired his performance.

Meanwhile, Mackie had decided he’d played with Wobbly long enough, and he looked about the room for his next mouse to torture.

“Does anyone have any idea what sort of worm Mr. William Blake meant?”

“A flying worm?” one of the boys said.

Mackie rolled his eyes. “Literally, yes. That is what he wrote. And what, pray tell, is a flying worm?”

Mackie looked around the room, but there were no takers. Henry kept his eyes down. He wasn’t going to say the word written in the margins of his book, and he didn’t understand how that could fly, anyway.

“Wyrm,” Mackie said. “W-y-r-m. Wyrm. Have any of you worms read The Hobbit?”

Wales raised his hand in an unfortunate reflex of enthusiasm — he was an avid fan of Tolkien — then quickly tried to lower it before Mackie spotted him, but he was too late.

“Mr. Wales. What is called “Worm” in The Hobbit?”

Wales nervously tilted his head sideways and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Go — ”

“Not Gollum,” Mackie interrupted. “It flies, like this ‘invisible worm’.”

“The dragon,” Wales said.

“Excellent. The dragon, Smogul, flies. Thank you, Mr. Wales.”

Wales decided that Mackie’s thanks were sincere this time, and he acknowledged the thanks by nodding to his teacher — all the while making a mental note to himself to suppress all enthusiasms in the future.

“The ancient word, wyrm — W-y-r-m,” Mackie said, “is another word for dragon in Olde English. Now do you think, Mr. Wales, that the author meant a dragon?”

Wales looked back at the text and tried to imagine an invisible dragon flying through the night. “Possibly?”

“Really?” Mackie arched his eyes and looked at the boy skeptically.

“Or not,” Wales said. He tried to feign indifference in order to mask his fear — Wales had already learned that fear stimulated Mackie’s attention. Maybe if Mackie thought he was bored, Mackie would leave him alone.

“Great big Smogul flying to a bed? Smogul is quite large, isn’t he Mr. Wales?”

No such luck, Wales thought. He nodded. Yes, Smogul was large. That was a safe answer.

“Bigger than this room, wouldn’t you say? About the size of half this building?” Mackie raised his arms and pointed at the walls and ceiling of the room.

“About,” Wales muttered, sensing some trap being laid.

“It’s hard to imagine something that big flying to a bed, isn’t it, Wales?”

Wales nodded miserably, fearing the inevitable.

“Or being invisible for that matter — the poem does say that the worm is ‘invisible’, doesn’t it?”

Wales looked down at the page. He already knew the answer, but maybe if he acted like he didn’t understand what Mackie was talking about Mackie would move on to another boy.

“How can a dragon be ‘invisible’ Wales?”

Wales now had the sinking feeling that Mackie had latched onto him and none of the other boys was going to come to his aid.

“Magic?” Wales said reluctantly.

“What in this poem suggests magic to you, Mr. Wales?”

Wales again looked down at the page. “The dragon?” Wales asked.

“But is the worm really a dragon?” Mackie asked slowly, and the sound of his voice grew quieter, more menacing.

Now Wales felt sure that misfortune was about to strike.

“I don’t know,” he said carefully. “You said — ”

“A dragon wouldn’t fly to a bed, would it? Did Smogul seem to be the romantic type to you, Wales?”

Wales shook his head, and a bead of sweat dripped from his hairline, down his forehead, to the tip of his nose.

“A bed is a bed, is it not, Mr. Wales?”

“I s’pose,” he said quietly.

“And what is ‘thy bed’? Whose bed does the worm fly to?” Much to Wales’s relief Mackie looked around the room, but none of the boys showed any sign of recognition. Mackie frowned.

“Help them out, Wales. Whose bed is the author talking about?”

“Rose’s?” he muttered.

“Exactly!” Mackie exclaimed. “And who is Rose?”

Wales looked down at the poem then back up at Mackie. That, he thought, was a stupid question. How was anyone to know who Rose was from the poem?

“I have no idea,” Wales said, with some spunk finally.

“Well of course we don’t know who Rose is.” Mackie seemed to laugh at the thought with Wales. “The poem doesn’t provide us with any biographical information, does it? But what do we know about Rose?”

“She has a bed,” Wales said.

“Yes. And that’s she’s a ‘she’ — a girl or a woman — which do you think, Wales, girl or woman?”

“I don’t know,” Wales said.

“Really? No idea?”

Wales shook his head.

“What about ‘crimson joy’?”

“What about it?”

“Help him out, Palmer.”

Henry jumped at his name and looked up from the book. “What?”

“What is her ‘crimson joy’?”

Mackie’s eyes were getting bigger again. Henry looked back at the text. Gordon hadn’t written anything there. “I don’t know,” he said.

“It’s in her bed, right?”

“Whose bed?”

“Palmer, you need to try to keep up,” Mackie said dismissively. “Whose bed are we talking about, Wales?”

Wales groaned inwardly. “Rose’s,” he said softly.

“Right. And what is her ‘crimson joy’?”

Wales looked down at the floor and his blush deepened, revealing a flush of acne down the back of his neck.

“Wales? ‘Crimson joy’?” Mackie said.

There was silence in the room as all of the boys seemed to share in Wales’s embarrassment. Mackie let the silence linger and the discomfort grow. Several of the boys stole glances at one another as if begging for someone to break the silence and come to Wales’s aid.

“’Crimson joy’, ‘dark secret love,’ ‘thy bed’. Obviously, gentlemen, the poet is writing about coitus, sex, and its bloody aftermath.”

There was a low murmur as several of the boys struggled to suppress their laughter. Mackie pretended to ignore that.

“Which takes us back to ‘the invisible worm’, Wales. Have you given that any more thought?”

Wales was paralyzed with embarrassment. He stared at the floor and could not lift his head.

“Come now, Mr. Wales. Surely you’ve figured that out by now.”

Wales clinched his teeth and shook his head.

“Anyone?”

Henry avoided eye contact. Wobbly had his book up in front of his face again. Grimes stared absently out the window.

“Obviously, the ‘worm’ is a penis — ”

“Aaaaahrrg!” At the word a shout rang out, a desk crashed to the floor, and Tom Wales ran out of the room.

There was silence as all of the boys turned to Mr. Mackie to get a read on his reaction. He stood in front of the window with his head turned to the door. At first he appeared genuinely surprised by the turn of events, and he held the red pen to the tip of his chin as he contemplated the discomfort that must have prompted Wales to flee the room. Slowly his lips stretched into a narrow, unpleasant smile, and a sharp cackle burst from the sides of his mouth as he glanced from boy to boy with a look of genuine amusement. “A bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”

Most of the boys laughed as all their pent up anxiety of the last several minutes suddenly released. Several of the boys sat quietly with a sense of relief that the ordeal was finally over. Others, like Henry, felt sympathy for Wales and anger towards Mackie, thinking an injustice had been done. Still others, like Wobbly, concerned themselves only with self-preservation and were already considering how best to parry their next encounter with the man, who seemed likely to become more vicious as the year progressed.

Mackie returned to his desk at the front of the room. “For the remainder of the period, I want you all to read The Rocking Horse Winner,” he said “It’s at page 83 of your textbook. And please come to class tomorrow prepared to discuss why Paul rides his horse.”

When the bell rang, all the boys fled the classroom. Henry leaned down and picked up Wales’s backpack — maybe he’d see the boy in the cafeteria. As he walked out he looked back at Mackie, who now had his back to the door and was staring out the window at a giant Chinese chestnut tree.