Todd knew that even if he aced the final he would
end up with no better than a B. Too many evenings spent watching Nick
at Night and a basic lack of interest in the subject had added up
to mediocre performance for the past four months. On the other hand,
even if he really screwed up the test, he wouldn't come out with any
less than a C in the class. Good enough to get by.
The course was entitled "Western History from
1848 to 1898: The Great Expansion." Todd had chosen it because it fulfilled
an upper-level liberal arts requirement that he needed to graduate.
The University's lousy telephone registration system had given him a
crummy time again, and this was about the only thing left that would
meet the requirement. His only other choice had been "Combination and
Dissolution: A History of Yugoslavia," and he felt his inability to
keep Serbia and Slovenia straight was a sign that he should avoid that
selection.
Todd entered the classroom on the fourth floor
of Boyer Hall and found a seat in the back. The room was half full,
with most of the earlier arrivals clustered near the front. He dumped
his backpack next to his seat and took out the necessary supplies: two
#2 pencils, a sharpener, a Pink Pearl eraser and a squeeze bottle of
water. He panicked for a second when he didn't find a blue book, then
saw a trace of color among the debris at the bottom of the pack and
withdrew the bedraggled examination book.
He wondered how many identical blue books he
had filled up in his almost four years of college. There was the giant
University seal on the front, and the spaces provided were big enough
for the course number and the date, but too short for his and Professor
Wilmot's names. Inside were sixteen pages of blue-lined paper that always
made him think of third grade and Miss Lavennis. She had been the first
to tell him to apply himself, when she figured out that he was getting
by without really trying.
Todd surveyed the room. On the board were written
the words "WESTERN HISTORY 1848-1898 FINAL EXAM," so that any idiot
who wandered into the wrong room would figure out that they had done
so and walk out again. About three quarters of the seats had filled
up. Susy Silver sat in the second row with a grave look on her face.
She was having trouble in the class. Early in the semester, they had
gone out together for a while. Then Todd had grown tired of her, so
he had managed not to be available when she wanted to see him, until
she got the point. He hadn't had to do any emotional work, and had felt
only a little guilty about it. Now he and Susy acted like casual acquaintances.
The proctor was some grad student who looked
a little like a young Tony Randall. Except, Todd thought, that no one
has ever seen a young Tony Randall; he was born middle-aged. The proctor
was removing the tests from their manila envelope. He distributed them
around the room, wandering from desk to desk and personally placing
each one face-down on its designated surface. At every third desk or
so, he mumbled, "Don't turn it over," like some litany of the Church
of Test-Taking. Finally he was done, and he returned to the front, set
a stopwatch, and quoted the sacred words: "You have fifty minutes. You
may begin." Todd suspected that the guy would have an orgasm if he ever
got to proctor a test with a little round seal to break.
Todd looked up at the clock on the front wall.
It said 10:05, and the minutes were already dribbling away, the second
hand stagger-stepping around the dial.
He could smell the questions before he could
see them. No matter how many modern photocopy machines the University
acquired, Todd could always count on getting at least one final produced
on an ancient mimeograph machine. He looked around, saw no one was looking,
and sniffed his test. There was a short rush; once again he recalled
Miss Lavennis' classroom at P.S. 119, and her method of dealing with
unruly students: throwing erasers at them. Her battle-cry was, "Regina,
get me my erasers," and the teacher's pet would dutifully do so.
Todd got down to business. Two questions, both
essays. Essay questions were one reason Todd hated liberal arts courses.
His natural preference for engineering was reinforced by technical professors'
predilection for short-answer questions. True-false, multiple-choice,
fill-in-the-blanks: it didn't matter to Todd, as long as he had only
to write five words or less. Solving technical problems was OK too.
It was only when he needed to produce whole sentences that he put any
work into his answers. But not too much.
Todd read the questions. He knew right away that
he would be able to dump everything he knew about the course material
onto the paper in some sort of semi-coherent order, get a B in the class,
and immediately forget everything he had learned. The questions were:
1. Compare and contrast Western expansion from
1848 to 1898 in the northern part of the West (from Nebraska northward)
with that in the southern part of the West (from Kansas south).
2. Explain the role of each of the following
in Western expansion from 1848 to 1898:
(a) the railroads.
(b) immigrants.
(c) the Indians.
(d) the military.
Todd started his dump. He had no idea where he
was going with what he was writing, but experience told him that it
would eventually take enough shape to get him by. He compared and contrasted
for about fifteen minutes, filling up several pages with his engineer's
all-caps block printing. He rested for a minute when his hand cramped
up. How much had he written? The little blue number in the bottom left-hand
corner of the page was a 4. That struck Todd as funny. Since when were
there little numbers in the bottom corners of blue-book pages? But there
was a little blue 5 in the bottom right corner of the opposite page,
and when he checked the book, he found numbers on all the pages. Why
hadn't he ever noticed these before? He wanted to check his backpack
to see if maybe there was another blue book to compare against. But
if Tony Randall up there saw him rummaging around in his pack, Tony
would probably accuse him of something, so Todd took a squeeze from
his water bottle and went back to work.
He wrote another half page and reached a temporary
blank. Knowing that if he waited a few seconds, more subject matter
would float into his head, he took the opportunity to sharpen his pencil.
As he did, he glanced at the blackboard, and he read again what was
printed there. "WESTERN HISTORY FROM 1848 TO 1898: FINAL EXAM." Todd's
talent for remembering minutiae told him something was wrong. Had the
words "FROM" and "TO," as well as the colon, been there before? Todd
could swear they hadn't. So he figured that the proctor, not having
anything better to do, had modified the verbiage. Yeah, yeah, that was
it.
More knowledge of Western expansion snapped into
Todd's consciousness. He dumped this, too, and was pleased that the
thing seemed to be taking some sort of form. Of course, he had known
it would. He was already on page 8.
Page 8? How had he written so much so quickly?
He looked back and discovered that pages 6 and 7 were blank. This was
disconcerting. After once skipping a couple of pages in a blue book
during his freshman year, he had trained himself to carefully rub the
corners of the pages with his fingers as he turned them, to avoid just
this sort of thing. He knew that he had done his rubbing as he finished
page 5. Hadn't he? Todd suspected that he was not having enough liquid
refreshment. He must be a little dehydrated, and his mind was therefore
playing little tricks on him. He took a long swig off his squeeze bottle.
But not too long, because he hated having to go to the bathroom in the
middle of an exam.
Todd heard talking up front. Two students, one
familiar to him and one not, had wandered into the classroom and were
getting test materials from Tony. The clock up front said 10:28. How
did these people expect to finish in time?
He wrote another paragraph and decided he was
done with the first question. A quick rereading of what he'd written
showed that it was adequate, except for one nonsensical sentence. It
read "although the early expansion into California animal resources
giving Native American 1874." Todd had no idea what he'd intended when
he wrote that, but quick work with his eraser and pencil made it into
something at least semi-intelligible. He decided not to waste any more
time on question one and to start on the next one. He reread it.
2. Explain the role of each of the following
in Western expansion from 1948 to 1998:
(a) the railroads.
(b) illegals.
(c) Native Americans.
(d) the military.
Todd knew, he was absolutely sure, that the question
had read differently when he'd looked at it earlier. As it stood now,
it was nonsense. But who to ask? The proctor wouldn't know anything.
To ask anybody else would be to invite accusations of cheating.
Or maybe it wouldn't. Because in at least three
spots around the room, students were having conversations. In the row
ahead of him, two young women he vaguely knew were discussing question
one. The proctor looked right at them, smiled, and went back to his
crossword puzzle. The two students evidently got their answers straight,
and went back to writing. Meanwhile, other conversations had popped
up, and no one seemed to mind.
Todd wondered if the mimeograph juice had been
spiked. He figured if he talked to anyone, he would be the one
to get yelled at. He decided to answer the question based on the way
he remembered it from before. Except for the dates, it wasn't that different.
He tackled (a) the railroads. Lots of stuff there
to draw from, and he whipped up some prose that he knew was sufficient.
Then (b), originally immigrants, now illegals.
He figured that the latter term was Professor Wilmot's little joke,
given the insensitivity to minorities the Prof had shown all semester.
Probably the first time Todd had read through the question, he'd seen
the word and automatically translated it to a more acceptable term.
He scribbled some random stuff he remembered and made it look nice.
Acceptable.
(c) was Indians, Native Americans, whatever.
This was easy, a no-brainer.
(d) was the military. He repeated some of part
(c), but phrased it differently, threw in a bit of new stuff, and knew
it would suffice. It was 10:41.
OK, now what? He looked up and saw the two students
that had wandered in late handing in their papers to Mr. Randall. How
could they have finished so quickly? Maybe they were in the wrong room
and it took them thirteen minutes to figure it out. Then Susy Silver
stood up and handed in her blue book, too. She turned around, smiled,
then stuck her tongue out at him. What the hell was that supposed to
mean? Again he remembered Room 204, Miss Lavennis' room, and how Bonnie
Kubiak, his best friend in elementary school and junior high, had always
stuck her tongue out at him, and how he'd always giggled when she did
it. He wasn't giggling now.
Time to check his answers, then get out of there.
He reread question one, then his response. It looked good. Until he
came to "although the early expansion into California animal resources
giving Native American 1874." Had he spaced out when he thought he was
repairing it? Conjecture was useless at this point. He fixed it again.
Rereading question two, he was not surprised
to see that it now read the way it had the first time, with "immigrants,"
"Indians," and the proper dates. A good thing he had answered it based
on that version. Except he discovered he hadn't quite answered it. There
was half a blank page where the answer to (d) should had been. The only
thing still there was the one sentence that was not simply a restatement
of stuff he had already used. Quickly he put down a few more random
facts. He wasn't even sure they had anything to do with the military.
Then he looked at his test again, and discovered
question three.
3. Discuss the significance of the work ethic
among various ethnic groups in the West from 1848 to 1898. Be sure to
include the Serbs and the Slovenes.
It hadn't been there before. Had it? He glanced
over at a neighboring desk, but the student there was covering all his
papers like they were atomic secrets. Which, at this point, Todd would
not have been surprised to find that they were.
10:48. What did he know about the work ethic
in the West? He pieced together some random knowledge and laid it out
in the blue book. Fill up two pages or so, he thought, and
you'll get by. He went back into dump mode and used up the required
space. What time was it now?
Still 10:48. Had the clock stopped? No, it was
still doing its stagger-step.
He looked at the blackboard. Written there was
"YUGOSLAVIAN HISTORY FROM 1848 TO 1898: FINAL EXAM."
And under that: "STRESS ANALYSIS IN COMPLEX COLUMNS:
FINAL EXAM."
Todd looked down. There was another mimeographed
sheet on his desk. It was the final for his Stress Analysis class. At
the bottom were the words "SMELL ME."
He grabbed his blue book. His answer to question
one was still there. The nonsense sentence was back. He changed it yet
again. The answers to questions two and three looked intact.
Todd took a long drink from his water bottle,
then decided to proceed with his Stress Analysis test. Except he didn't
have another blue book.
He eyed the blackboard. It said "USE THE SAME
BOOK." At the front desk, Young Tony Randall had become Young Jack Klugman.
Todd looked down again. There were sixteen blank
pages in his book, numbered 17 through 32. He glanced up. It was 10:52.
He looked down and discovered that his blue book had turned into a black
book. As he furiously shuffled through it, he also discovered that he
had not skipped pages 6 and 7.
When he surveyed the room again, he saw that
everyone had a black book. By this time, "everyone" meant five or six
people.
Todd went through all thirty short-answer questions
on his stress analysis test. They were easy, and when he was done it
was 10:53.
He started on the first problem. Something about
shear loads in a freeway underpass. Right. He breezed through this,
too. When he was done, he saw that the dull black cover of his answer
book had turned glossy. His exam book was mutating. It was 10:54.
Now, the second and last problem. Some skyscraper
in an earthquake. Simple enough. Finished, he closed the book and looked
up at the clock. 10:55. A bell rang.
He picked up his exam book. It was thicker now,
about a quarter of an inch, and the glossy black of the stiff cover
was broken by a pattern of white speckles. The University seal was gone,
replaced by the word COMPOSITION. Inside, all the pages were blank,
except for the blue lines.
He glanced to his right. Bonnie Kubiak was sticking
her tongue out at him. The rest of the third grade students were laughing
hysterically. From the front of the room came a voice. "Todd, you'll
never succeed in life if you don't apply yourself. Just getting by won't
get you anywhere," Miss Lavennis said. "Regina, get me my erasers."
This was the second story I sold, but the first to see print. It appeared
in Tales of the Unanticipated #13, Spring/Summer/Fall 1994. Copyright
© 1994 Nathan Walpow.
