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Fiction Short Story

by  Harriet Cooper

Lord of All He Surveys

Adam Grant's buttocks spilled over the edge of his chair. His arms rested on an oversized desk, littered with the minutiae of a life spent in teaching. Pens and pencils lay in heaps across a pile of papers, and books sprawled across the desk and onto the floor. A half-filled coffee cup leaned drunkenly against a book, ribbons of cream congealing across its oily surface.

While his students struggled with a grammar exercise on the intricacies of present perfect versus past tense, Adam retreated into the distant past. Immersed in a book on naval history, he stood on the deck beside Admiral Nelson and directed the English fleet to victory over the French. With success clearly within reach, he grunted his satisfaction and closed the book.

Returning to the present, he faced his own daily battle, fought with words rather than cannon. Twenty-five heads bent over workbooks saluted him. A few radiated gray hairs, but the rest sported the blonde, brown and black from a diverse group of nationalities and ages. Most days, the class resembled a mini-United Nations.

Two students in the back row whispered to each other, comparing answers, while the majority worked quietly. Rodrigo, a young man who had been in the class less than a week, stared out the window and hummed tonelessly.

The sound grated on Adam's ears, but he wasn't ready for battle yet. He'd have his chance later. Young men always made such interesting targets. Breaking them provided what little enjoyment he still got from teaching.

Adam waited three more minutes before clearing his throat. He stood up and walked to the front of his desk. As he moved, breadcrumbs that dotted his mustache fell onto his chest. He brushed them off with sausage-like fingers. His large belly strained against the confines of his mustard-stained shirt.

He held a copy of the exercise the students had worked on. "Who wants to begin?"

One hand went up. The other students kept their heads and hands down. A smile creased Adam's face, but he remained silent. Tension grew, fanned by the single waving hand.

"Come on, it's not that hard."

Adam ignored the waving hand and glanced around the room, pretending to ponder his selection. Although he had already chosen his victim, the anticipation made the game so much more enjoyable. "Rodrigo, read the first sentence."

Rodrigo turned his gaze back to his worksheet and began to read, a Spanish accent giving his English a lilt. "I lived in here since May."

"Wrong." Adam's voice registered his scorn.

Rodrigo jerked his head up, but kept his lips tightly closed. The owner of the waving hand smiled. The other students, who had seen the game played out before, avoided looking at either Rodrigo or Adam.

Once more ignoring the overeager student, Adam addressed the rest of the class. "Who can help poor Rodrigo? Wasreen? Mykolo? Kristina?" As each student in turn failed to give the correct answer, Adam's breathing grew heavier until the sound filled the room.

Adam settled his bulk against the edge of the desk. "Present perfect. You need to use present perfect with the adverb 'since.' This is an intermediate level class. I shouldn't have to go over this again, but obviously I do. Listen and learn." He smacked his lips, dislodging a few more crumbs from his mustache. "I 'have' lived here since May." His voice took on a singsong quality while his meaty hand pounded the table each repetition. "Have. Have. Have."

He waited a minute, and refocused his glare on Rodrigo. "Now do you understand? Perhaps if you spent more time working and less time looking out the window, you might learn something in this class. "

Rodrigo continued to look ahead, his gaze never quite meeting that of Adam. "Si, yes, I understand." A flush crept along his cheeks and his pencil beat a fast tattoo on the desk.

Adam smiled, pleased to have hooked his fish for the day. Now he could reel him in. "Good. Then you'll have no problems doing the next question and all the other questions in this exercise."

Rodrigo stumbled his way through the pronunciation, halting at each question, but he carefully inserted the required "have" when needed. After he finished, he inclined his head and gave Adam a half nod.

Adam opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut. As the class waited, he pushed himself off the desk. The movement upset the coffee cup, spilling cold coffee all over his papers. "Shit." The single word exploded from his mouth.

Moving faster than his bulk implied, he grabbed the dripping pages and flicked droplets of coffee onto the floor. An older Korean woman in the first row ran forward with some tissues. She mopped up the mess on the desk, while the other students busied themselves with their work.

The bell rang as she patted the last page dry. The rustle of papers and the squeak of chairs filled the room as students packed their notebooks and supplies for the day and stood up. Many of them worked evenings, while others rushed to schools to pick up their children.

The quickest student had just reached the door when Adam's voice boomed out. "Not so fast. I have an announcement."

Everyone turned to face him.

"Next week is the end of first term. You're all invited to my house for a Christmas party. If you're going to live here, you need to know how real citizens behave. It's potluck." He paused, contemplating the sea of puzzled faces. "That means you have to bring food. I'll have a sign-up sheet tomorrow so you can all let me know what food you'll be preparing." He waved a hand in the general direction of the door. "Now you're dismissed."

Students left the class in two and threes, the small groups whispering among themselves. Rodrigo strode ahead of the others, not joining in the chatter.

First thing the next morning, an oversized sign-up sheet graced the class bulletin board. As students came in, Adam directed them to the sheet. Like dutiful sheep, one after another they wrote their name and the name of the dish for the party in the neatly numbered spaces. By five to nine, only one space and one chair remained vacant.

Adam glanced at the clock, a half smile on his face. Four minutes passed. With each sweep of the minute hand, Adam's smile widened. As the hand began its fifth and final sweep before the bell rang, Rodrigo slipped into the classroom.

Adam swallowed the words he had saved to berate Rodrigo for being late. No longer smiling, Adam pointed to the sign-up sheet. "I believe you've forgotten something."

Rodrigo waited a heartbeat before replying. "A thousand pardons but I am no permitted, I mean, no able to attend. I have made other plans already. That is correct? I have made?"

For the first time since Rodrigo joined the class, he held Adam's gaze. Adam broke off eye contact first. He turned away, not answering the question, and strode toward the blackboard. A laugh, quickly transforming into a cough, broke the silence, soon followed by the rustle of paper as students opened their notebooks.

As Adam wrote on the blackboard, chalk clenched between whitened knuckles, Rodrigo looked out the window and hummed.


About the Author
When not writing, Harriet Cooper is an English as a Second Language instructor in Toronto, Canada. Her work (articles, personal essays, poems and fiction) has been published in newspapers, magazines, newsletters, anthologies, websites, and a coffee can. One of her essays aired on radio. This story grew out of encounters with several teachers who should have retired a long time ago.