[00:00.00]Lesson Fourteen Text
[00:04.60]Cipher in the Snow
[00:07.94]Jean E. Mizer
[00:11.10]It started on a biting cold February morning.
[00:15.96]I was driving behind the Milford Corners bus
[00:20.51]as I did most snowy mornings on my way to school.
[00:26.07]It stopped short at a hotel, and I was annoyed,
[00:32.55]as I had to come to an unexpected stop.
[00:36.91]A boy staggered out of the bus, stumbled,
[00:41.35]and collapsed on the snowbank at the curb.
[00:45.79]The bus driver and I reached him at the same moment.
[00:50.16]His thin, hollow face was white even against the snow.
[00:57.00]"He's dead," the driver whispered.
[01:01.15]I glanced quickly at the scared young faces staring down at us from the school bus.
[01:07.32]"A doctor! Quick!"
[01:10.58]"No use. I tell you he's dead."The driver looked down at the boy's still body.
[01:18.73]"He never even said he felt bad,"he muttered,
[01:23.59]"just tapped me on the shoulder and said,quietly,
[01:28.87]I'm sorry.I have to get off at the hotel.'That's all. Polite and apologizing.
[01:37.33]"At school, the giggling morning noise quieted as the news went down the halls.
[01:45.27]I passed a group of girls."Who was it?Who dropped dead on the way to school?"
[01:52.93]I heard one of them half-whisper."Don't know his name;
[01:59.38]some kid from Milford Corners" was the reply.
[02:04.63]It was like that in the faculty room and the principal's office.
[02:09.91]"I'd appreciate your going out to tell the parents,"the principal told me.
[02:15.47]"They haven't a phone and,anyway,somebody from school should go there in person.
[02:22.63]I'll cover your classes.""Why me?" I asked.
[02:28.79]"Wouldn't it be better if you did it?"
[02:32.27]"I didn't know the boy," the principal admitted.
[02:36.71]"And in last year's sophomore personalities column
[02:41.15]I notethat you were listed as his favorite teacher."
[02:45.69]I drove through the snow and cold down the bad road to the Evans place
[02:52.54]and thought about the boy, Cliff Evans.
[02:57.11]His favorite teacher!I could see him in my mind's eye all right,
[03:03.88]sitting back there in the last seat in my afternoon literature class.
[03:10.35]He came in the room by himself and left by himself.
[03:14.90]"Cliff Evans,"I muttered to myself,
[03:19.76]"a boy who never talked a boy who never smiled."
[03:25.32]The big ranch kitchen was clean and warm.
[03:29.68]I blurted out the news somehow.
[03:33.34]Mrs.Evans reached blindly toward a chair.
[03:37.60]"He never said anything about being ill. "His stepfather said impatiently,
[03:44.55]"He has said nothing about anything since I moved in here."
[03:49.30]Mrs.Evans pushed a pan to the back of the stove and began to untie her apron.
[03:55.36]"Now hold on," her husband said angrily.
[04:00.04]"I've got to have breakfast before I go to town.Nothing we can do now anyway.
[04:06.57]If Cliff hadn't been so dumb, he'd have told us he didn't feel well."
[04:12.50]After school I sat in the office and stared at the records spread out before me.
[04:19.37]I was to close the file and write the obituary for the school paper.
[04:24.49]The almost bare sheets in the file mocked the effort.
[04:29.95]Cliff Evans, white, never legally adopted by stepfather,
[04:36.79]five young half-brothers and sisters.
[04:40.95]These bits of information and the list of grades
[04:46.09]were all the records had to offer.
[04:49.85]Cliff Evans hadsilently come in the school door in the mornings
[04:54.90]and gone out the school door in the evenings,and that was all.
[05:00.46]He had never belonged to a club.
[05:04.12]He had never played on a team.He had never held an office.
[05:10.07]As far as I could tell,he had never done one happy,noisy kid thing.
[05:16.84]He had never been anybody at all.
[05:20.39]How do you go about making a boy into a zero?
[05:24.65]The grade school records showed me.
[05:28.31]The first and second grade teachers' notes read
[05:32.85]"sweet,shy child""timid but eager."
[05:38.18]Then the third grade note had opened the attack.
[05:43.04]Some teacher had written in a good,firm hand,
[05:47.72]"Cliff won't talk. Uncooperative.Slow learner."
[05:52.86]The other academic sheep had followed with " dull";"slow-witted";" low I. Q. "
[06:00.23]They became correct.
[06:03.28]The boy's I. Q. score in the ninth grade was listed at 83.
[06:09.03]But his I. Q. in the third grade had been 106.
[06:14.20]The score didn't go under 100 until the seventh grade.
[06:19.25]Even shy, timid, sweet children have resilience.
[06:24.10]It takes time to break them.
[06:27.47]I went angrily to the typewriter
[06:31.24]and wrote a savage report pointing out what education had done to Cliff Evans.
[06:38.18]I slapped a copy on the principal's desk and another in the sad file.
[06:44.74]I banged the typewriter and slammed the file and crashed the door shut,
[06:50.98]but didn't feel much better.
[06:54.33]A little boy kept walking after me,a little boy with a thin, pale face;
[07:01.88]a skinny body in faded jeans;
[07:05.93]and big eyes that had looked and searched for a long time
[07:13.01]and then had become veiled
[07:16.77]I could guess how many times he'd been chosen last to play sides in a game,
[07:23.61]how many whispered child conversations had excluded him,
[07:29.67]how many times he hadn't been asked.
[07:33.54]I could see and hear the faces and voices that said over and over,
[07:39.78]"You're dumb.You're nothing,Cliff Evans."
[07:44.54]A child is a believing creature.Cliff undoubtedly believed them.
[07:50.60]Suddenly it seemed clear to me:
[07:54.54]When finally there was nothing left at all for Cliff Evans,
[07:59.19]he collapsed on a snowbank and went away.
[08:03.45]The doctor might list "heart failure" as the cause of death,
[08:09.22]but that wouldn't change my mind.
[08:12.67]We couldn't find ten students in the school
[08:17.03]who had known Cliff well enough to attend the funeral as his friends.
[08:22.07]So the student-body officers and a committee from the junior class
[08:28.84]went as a group to the church, being politely sad.
[08:34.30]I attended the service with them
[08:37.85]and sat through it with a lump of cold lead in my chest
[08:42.71]and a big resolution growing through me.
[08:46.79]I've never forgotten Cliff Evans nor that resolution.
[08:52.24]He has been my challenge year after year,class after class.
[08:58.10]I look up and down the rows carefully each September at the new faces.
[09:04.26]I look for veiled eyes or bodies scrounged into a seat in an unfamiliar world.
[09:11.50]"Look, kids," I say silently,
[09:14.95]"I may not do anything else for you this year,
[09:18.92]but not one of you is going to come out of here a nobody.
[09:23.96]I'll work or fight to the bitter end
[09:28.32]doing battle with society and the school board,
[09:32.58]but I won't have one of you coming out of here thinking himself into a zero."
[09:38.53]Most of the time not always, but most of the time I've succeeded. |