"No. It's--"
"I'm refreshed. Not in trouble? Fancy that. The faculty has many
callers. Federal narcotics people. Parole people. Prison officials.
County police. Lawyers. Sometimes it seems that we turn out nothing but
criminals of all dimensions. I interrupted you."
"I don't want to impose on you. I can see how busy you are. I'm
gathering material about Timmy Warden. Ruth Stamm suggested I talk to
you."
He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "Timmy Warden. Gathering material.
That has the sound of a book. Was he allowed to live long enough to
give you enough material?"
"Timmy and some others. They all died there in the camp. I was there,
too. I almost died, but not quite."
"Sit down. I'm perfectly willing to talk about him. I take it you're
not a professional."
"No, sir."
"Then this, as a labor of love, should be treated with all respect.
Ruth knows as much about Timmy as any person alive, I should say."
"She told me a lot. And I got a lot from Timmy. But I need more. She
said you were interested in him."
"I was. Mr. Howard, you have probably heard of cretins who can
multiply two five digit numbers mentally and give the answer almost
instantaneously."
"Yes, but--"
"I know. I know. Timmy was no cretin. He was a very normal young man.
Almost abnormally normal if you sense what I mean. Yet he had a spark.
Creative mathematics. He could sense the--the rhythm behind numbers.
He devised unique short cuts in the solution of traditional class
problems. He had that rare talent, the ability to grasp intricate
relationships and see them in pure simple form. But there was no drive,
no dedication. Without dedication, Mr. Howard, such ability is merely
facility, an empty cleverness. I hoped to be a mathematician. I teach
mathematics in a high school. Merely because I did not have enough of
what Timmy Warden was born with. I hoped that one day he would acquire
the dedication. But he never had time."
"I guess he didn't."
"Even if he had the time I doubt if he would have gone any further. He
was a very good, decent young man. Everything was too easy for him."
"It wasn't easy at the end."
"I don't imagine it was. Nor easy for hundreds of millions of his
contemporaries anywhere in the world. This is a bad century, Mr.
Howard. Bad for the young. Bad for most of us."
"What do you think would have become of him if he'd lived, Mr. Leach?"
The man shrugged. "Nothing exceptional. Marriage, work, children. And
death. No contribution. His name gone as if it never existed. One of
the faceless ones. Like us, Mr. Howard." He rubbed his eyes again, then
smiled wanly. "I'm not usually so depressing, Mr. Howard. This has been
a bad week. This is one of the weeks that add to my conviction that
something is eating our young. This week the children have seemed more
sullen, dangerous, dispirited, inane, vicious, foolish, and impossible
than usual. This week a young sophomore in one of my classes went
into the hospital with septicemia as the result of a self-inflicted
abortion. And a rather pleasant boy was slashed. And last Monday two
seniors died in a head-on collision while on their way back from
Redding, full of liquor. The man in the other car is not expected to
recover. When Timmy was here in school I was crying doom. But it was
not like it is now. By comparison, those were the good old days, recent
as they are."
"Was Timmy a disciplinary problem?"
"No. He was lazy. Sometimes he created disturbances. On the whole he
was co-operative. I used to hope Ruth would be the one to wake him up.
She's a solid person. Too good for him, perhaps."
"I guess he was pretty popular with the girls."
"Very. As with nearly everything else, things were too easy for him."
"He mentioned some of them in camp. Judy, Ruth, Cindy."
"I couldn't be expected to identify them. If I remember correctly,
I once had eight Judys in one class. Now that name, thank God, is
beginning to die out a little. There have never been too many Cindys.
Yet there has been a small, constant supply."
"I want to have a chance to talk to the girls he mentioned. I've talked
to Ruth. Judy has moved away. I can't remember Cindy's last name. I
wonder if there is any way I could get a look at the list of students
in hopes of identifying her."
"I guess you could," he said. "The administration office will be empty
by now. You could ask them Monday. Let me see. Timmy graduated in
forty-six. I keep old yearbooks here. They're over there on that bottom
shelf. You could take the ones for that year and the next two years
and look them over, there by the window if you like. I have to get on
with these papers. And I really can't tell you much more about Timmy. I
liked him and had hopes for him. But he lacked motivation. That seems
to be the trouble with too many of the children lately. No motivation.
They see no goal worth working for. They no longer have any dreams.
They are content with the manufactured dreams of N.B.C. and Columbia."
I sat by the windows and went through the yearbooks. There was no Cindy
in the yearbook for '46. There was one in the '47 yearbook. I knew when
I saw her picture that she could not be the one. She was a great fat
girl with small, pinched, discontented features, sullen, rebellious
little eyes. There was a Cindy in the '48 yearbook. She had a narrow
face, protruding teeth, weak eyes behind heavy lenses, an expression
of overwhelming stupidity. Yet I marked down their names. It would be
worth a try, I thought.
I went back to the '46 yearbook and went through page after page of
graduates more thoroughly. I came to a girl named Cynthia Cooper. She
was a reasonably attractive snub-nosed blonde. I wondered if Timmy
could possibly have said Cynthy. It would be an awkward nickname for
Cynthia. And even though his voice by that time had been weak and
blurred, I was certain he had said Cindy. He had repeated the name. But
I wrote her down, too.
Ruth Stamm's yearbook picture was not very good. But the promise of
her, the clear hint of what she would become, was there in her face.
Her activities, listed under the picture, made a long list. It was the
same with Timmy. He grinned into the camera.