Chapter 12: The Dumb Boy
Roy stole a surreptitious look at the classroom window. The sun was shining brightly outside, and he thought wistfully of Riza, who was probably playing in her yard right now. He wished he was there with her, listening to her happy chatter and responding when she expected him to. He wished he was anywhere but here. His back was sore from bending over the reader, and his feet ached from dangling so long. He wanted to take Davell's shoes off, and he wanted to lie down in the grass, and he wanted to do just about anything but sit here, staring at a page of meaningless letters and pretending to learn a lesson that he could not understand, all the while feeling a growing knot of anxiety under his ribs as the time for the class to be heard by Miss Strueby drew nearer.
It had taken him a few days, but he was beginning to adapt to the small, complex world of Hamner School. The trick, he had learned, was to escape the teacher's notice. If he could manage to be the third or fourth pupil to deliver any given lesson, then he had a chance to learn it by listening to the others' recitation. It wasn't a perfect system, for the others didn't always get through the passages verbatim, but it did seem to mitigate the punishment for failure to perform. Occasionally, the teacher would call on him first, of course, and then he would be scolded for his laziness and sent to stand in the corner. Because he wasn't strong, this was a difficult castigation to bear, and every day he dreaded the chance that he would be thus singled out.
He had learned very quickly that he had to blend in. He had to pretend that he understood, even if he didn't. He didn't ask questions, and he was getting very good at knowing when to say "Yes, Miss", and when "No, Miss". He hated every dreary minute, and the only thing that kept him going through the long, difficult days was the knowledge that when it was over he could go back to the Hawkeye house. There, no one cared that he didn't understand his lessons. Riza was just as pleased with his rote recitations as she would have been had he read them. Hawkeye-sensei seldom bothered even to look at him. And Mrs. Hawkeye didn't seem to care anymore, one way or another.
As far as Roy was concerned, this was an improvement. Every morning she would wake him with one brusque; "You, boy, get up and eat your breakfast!" When he was done eating, she would force the horrid shoes onto his feet, shove Davell's dinner pail into his arms, and herd him out the door. After school, she never even seemed to notice he was there, and she never asked whether he was behaving himself. Roy was glad. He harboured a secret fear that if she found out about the times he spent standing in the corner, she would make good her threat to beat him.
The teacher cleared her throat, looking up from her table. "Roy Mustang, eyes on your work, please," she said, a clear warning in her voice.
Roy turned back to look at the page. There was a lot of writing on this one, in six skinny columns, and the picture was very boring: three bells on a ribbon that wound around the edge of the paper. The image on the opposite plate was more interesting: a handsome looking soldier was mounted on a rearing horse, the tails of his military coat rippling in the wind. He had a sabre at his side and a long pistol in his hand. He looked like what Riza called a Special Soldier, but even this picture was waxing banal. He had had nothing to do for the last ninety minutes but look at it and listen to the whisper of the big girls' pens as they worked on compositions.
Dexter snickered a little, and swung one leg so that the sole of his shoe scuffed against the floor. "Eyes on your work, please!" he hissed in a nasal whisper. Roy sighed. He didn't like Dexter. He was six years old and a bully. He picked on the girls, he picked on the littlest pupils, and he picked on his seatmate. Roy had bruises up and down his right side where the other boy had jabbed him with his elbow when Miss Strueby wasn't looking.
"Since the class has obviously tired of studying," the teacher said, frowning at Roy and his seatmate; "please come up to the front and form an orderly line."
Roy was startled by these instructions: ordinarily, they just clustered around the desk and stepped forward as needed. The other children didn't seem surprised, however, and he followed them as they made a queue parallel to the blackboard.
"I expect each of you to spell at least five words correctly," Miss Strueby said. "We will keep going until each of you have done that. Elsa, please spell 'fish'."
"Fish," said the blonde child. "Eff-aye-ess-aych. Fish."
Eff-aye-ess-aych, fish, Roy thought frantically, trying to commit the sounds to memory. Eff-aye-ess-aych, fish.
"Good." Elsa smiled happily, and moved to the back of the line. Everyone shuffled forward a little. "Leona, your word is 'boat'."
Roy's pulse quickened. The teacher had set a different lesson for Leona than she had for Elsa! How would he know which one he was supposed to recite?
"Boat. Bee-oh-ay-tee. Boat." Leona, too, moved to the rear of the line. Roy swallowed hard, realizing with mounting horror that he was not going to be able to do this. It sounded like another language entirely
"Norman, your word is a hard one. Please spell 'mouse'."
The boy grimaced a little. "Em," he said. "Em-oh..."
There was a long pause. Miss Strueby watched the boy expectantly.
"Em-oh..." Norman repeated, then said, very quickly; "Em-oh-ess-ee."
"I'm sorry Norman, no," Miss Strueby said. "Please go to the back of the line. Sally, can you spell 'mouse'?"
"Em-oh-you-ess-ee," the clever girl said, without hesitation. She was without a doubt the smartest in the class, and always knew the answer.
The next word was "ball", and the one after that was "today". Then it was Roy's turn. He steeled himself, not knowing what he would do. He didn't understand the gibberish sounds that the others used so easily.
"Roy, spell 'world'," Miss Strueby instructed.
"World," Roy said nervously, imitating the others. He paused. He didn't know what to say next. There had to be some kind of pattern to the way the sounds were used, but he couldn't decipher it. "W-world," he repeated, then closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and guessed. "Tee-you-bee-gee-ess-vee."
One of the older girls giggled. Miss Strueby blinked, a little perplexed. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
Roy couldn't. He said instead, "Dee-aych-aych-see."
This time, almost everyone laughed. Roy looked about helplessly, ashamed of his own stupidity. Miss Strueby's pretty face furrowed into a deep frown of disapproval.
"That's quite enough!" she said sharply, and the room fell silent. The teacher stood up. "Roy, if you do not wish to pay attention to your lessons, that is your concern," she told him. "If you wish to grow up stupid and ignorant and lazy, I cannot stop you, though it is my duty to try. But I will not tolerate disruptions of this kind in my school. You must learn that this is not the time or the place to be impudent."
Roy nodded anxiously. He had not meant to be impudent, he had only been trying to do what the other children were, but without any understanding of the concept behind "spelling". It was useless to protest.
The teacher picked up the long ruler that sat on the ledge of the blackboard. "Put out your hands and turn your palms up," she said.
Little Mary gasped from her place in the front row. From the corner of his eye, Roy could see strange, carnivorous grins on the faces of the older boys. Unsure what was about to happen, he obeyed.
The supple tool whistled through the air, and Roy cried out in pain. He leapt back, away from his attacker, and tried to run. Miss Strueby was too quick for him. She caught his shoulder and turned him around. "Be still," she said. "You wanted to misbehave, and now you have to take the consequences."
She held his hands in place with one of her own, and with the other, dealt him nine more sharp, stinging blows: a total of five to each palm. Roy tried not to pull away again, but he could not stifle a whimper of pain as the last smack struck home.
"Go and sit down," the teacher said sternly. "I will not have you disrupting the lesson again!"
Cheeks burning with shame and hands with pain, Roy shuffled hurriedly back to his desk. He slid up onto the hard seat, and hung his head, gnawing his lip and trying to control himself. He couldn't let the others see what he was feeling. He couldn't let them know that he was hurting. He had to look strong, even though he was hurt and frightened and so bewildered.
The spelling went on, and when at last it was over, the teacher dismissed the class for dinner. Roy did not move, certain that he was still being punished, until Miss Strueby expressly told him to go outside and eat.
He collected his dinner pail, hesitating for a moment before he dared to venture through the door into the purgatory beyond.
A strong hand grabbed his wrist, twisting his arm behind his back, while the assailant's accomplice wrenched the dinner pail from his hand. Roy didn't need to look to know who had been lying in wait for him: it was Dexter's older brother Karl, and his friend Wesley. They were a pair of towheaded thugs, the undisputed overlords of the schoolyard. Like Dexter, they preyed on the weaker members of the species, and of all their targets, Roy was a favourite.
"Hey, slope-eyes," Karl growled. "Anything good today?"
Roy didn't answer. Two months ago, he would have fought back, tooth and nail, until they let him go or beat him into a stupor, and then moved on to another village as soon as he could walk again. The nine weeks in the Hawkeye household, however, had robbed him of that option. He could not bear the thought of running away from Riza, and the warm blanket on the parlour sofa, and three proper meals every day. So he was trapped enduring whatever torment these bullies chose to mete out.
Wesley pried the lid off of Davell's dinner pail, and tossed it to the ground. He laughed. "Milk again! Baby needs his milk!"
Roy watched helplessly as the big boy opened the jar and poured out its contents. In less than half a minute, the nourishing liquid was nothing but a muddy mess amid the stems of wild grass. The bigger boy took out the piece of good brown bread that was the staple of Roy's meal, dropped it, and used the heel of his shoe to grind it into the dirt. Then he pulled out the lime—the prize around which this daily ritual was built--and dropped the dinner pail.
Dexter came sauntering up, sneering meanly. "Enjoy your dinner, dummy," he snickered, holding out his hand for his share of the bounty.
"Dummy," echoed Karl. "Old lady Strueby thought you were being funny, slope-eyes, but you know what I think? I think you don't know how to spell! You're nothing but a stupid gutter brat. You oughta go back to East City where you belong!"
Roy didn't speak. If he said nothing, they would tire of this and leave him be. Then he could pick up the shredded remains of the bread and at least eat something. He wasn't too proud to grub in the dust for his food, and after years of near-starvation he was hardly fastidious. He knew that it amused them to see him behaving thus, but his need to eat overrode his longing for dignity.
"Yeah, dummy," said Wesley, slurping loudly as he bit into another segment of the fragrant piece of fruit. How come they let trash like you into the school, anyway? Is it 'cause Crazy Hawkeye made them do it?"
"We're talking to you, dummy!" Karl said. He grabbed one of Roy's sore hands and dug his thumb deep into the bruised palm. Involuntary tears sprung to the child's eyes, and he tried to pull away.
"Hey, he's crying!" Dexter chortled. "Widdle baby Roy-Roy is cwying!"
"Roy-Roy the dumb boy's crying!" laughed Wesley.
Karl whooped in amusement. "Roy-Roy the dumb boy!" he chanted. "Roy-Roy the dumb boy."
A crowd of the others was gathering now, attracted to the scene like carrion-fowl to a slaughter.
"Roy-Roy the dumb boy!" little Tom from the primer class piped up. He was only five, and he was acting out of amusement rather than malice, but his exclamation opened a floodgate.
"Roy-Roy the dumb boy!" several others chanted, the cruel singsong gaining momentum. Roy stared down at Davell's shoes, trying not to care. It was no use. The cruel moniker cut into his lonely heart, leaving him miserable and still more isolated from his peers.
discidium
When the students were dismissed for the afternoon, Roy hurried from the schoolhouse as quickly as he could. It was no use. The taunts and the ugly, rhyming insult followed him as he made his way back along his habitual route. As he reached the rows of houses, his pursuers fell away for fear of reprimands from the adults, but the hurt lingered.
He always followed this same path, down the lane past Doctor Bella's surgery, through the square, and past the long rows of pretty houses to the Hawkeye home on the far edge of town. It was a long walk, and in the afternoons a busy one. Roy felt uncomfortable in crowds. All of the people, brushing past him and moving around him, seemed like potential threats. He knew that on the outside he looked no different from any other boy, but on the inside he was still a frightened runaway. He didn't really belong here, and if they ever found out, they would be angry, and he would be in danger.
He stopped in front of Doctor Bella's, because it felt nice to know that he was nearby someone who did not care that he was different, even if she was inside with her patients and too busy to have time for him. He almost jumped out of his skin when the door opened, and the object of his thoughts smiled out at him.
"I was hoping I could catch you," she said. "Come inside. I want to weigh you."
Roy was too surprised to speak, but he stepped inside. The front room of the doctor's house was very pleasant-looking. There were chairs and a big sofa with overstuffed cushions that looked much more comfortable than the hard, slippery horsehair couch in Mrs. Hawkeye's parlour. They didn't linger there, however, for the physician led him through to an inner room, where there was a high counter with a mattress on it, and shelves of books and strange-looking instruments.
"Here, give me those," Doctor Bella said, taking Davell's book, slate and dinner pail and setting them on the counter. "Step up here."
Roy obeyed, standing on a black pad. A white metal bar rose from it, and there was a balance on top. The doctor slid a bar slowly up the balance until it wobbled to and fro, then nudged it with her finger and waited. The bar levelled itself.
"Hmm," the doctor said. "That's good. You're almost as heavy as Riza now. We need to get you growing, my boy."
"Yes, ma'am," Roy said softly, though he wasn't quite sure how she meant to do that.
The doctor picked him up under his arms and lifted him onto the cushioned counter. She picked up a funny-looking black hammer. "I'm going to tap your knee," she said. To Roy's surprise, when she did so, his foot kicked, even though he didn't want to. "How's school?"
Roy considered the question. He could pour out the truth, and tell her how he didn't understand his lessons, and how the writing in the reader made no sense to him; how the teacher made him stand in the corner because he was stupid and lazy, and how the children called him names and stole his limes, and how today his hands had been beaten because he didn't know how to spell; and how much he wished he could just stay at the house and play with Riza. He could say all that, but then the doctor might think that he was wicked, and lazy, and stupid and ungrateful.
"It's good," he said, and he forced a smile onto his face, tucking his sore hands into Davell's pockets.
The doctor seemed pleased. "I'm glad to hear it," she said. "I was worried, you know. It's a big change for you. Open up."
Roy obeyed, and held very still while she ran her finger along his gums, checking for sores. He gasped as she touched a tender spot.
"Hmm," the physician said, trying to wiggle his front tooth with the tip of her thumb. It moved a little, and Roy felt a thrill of fear. The last time it had moved like that, it had kept getting looser and looser until it had fallen out. That had been very frightening, and he had been so happy when a new tooth had grown in to replace the old one. "Haven't you been eating your limes?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," Roy lied. He only had one on Saturday and one on Sunday now, for Karl and the others stole them during the week.
The doctor frowned, and he wondered if she had seen through the fib. But she only clicked her tongue thoughtfully against her teeth. "Well, maybe it's nothing," she said. "You'd better run along home: Mrs. Hawkeye will worry if you're late."
He didn't have a home, and Mrs. Hawkeye wouldn't worry if he was dead, but Roy didn't contradict the doctor. He let her lift him off of the counter, recovered Davell's things, and left the surgery to resume his miserable, solitary trek.