Chapter 2 - The Offer
“Well, the good news is,” said Erik as he cleaned a pint glass with his towel, “is that you didn’t lose a kidney. And you got your wallet and keys back, if not your dignity. And, kind of on a technicality, you don’t have to pay double the price for this beer.”
Dave was staring at the bar, and snapped up out of his despondent reverie. “Wait, what? You’re not still doing that, are you? It seems...unethical.”
Erik laughed, his belly heaving under his plaid shirt. Dave couldn’t remember: Did Dave ever wear plaid when he was teaching? Did he have a beer belly? Was he ever this happy? Probably no on all counts.
“It’s all semantics, my man,” Erik proclaimed. “What we tell people is that teachers get half off beers during the school year.” He shook his head as he picked up another glass, the grin still on his face. “We don’t tell them it’s just twice as much during the summer.”
Dave looked around. For a hot July day, this brewery’s Venezuelan pricing on beer didn’t seem to be dissuading anyone from coming. “Seems to be working OK.”
“Oh, man. The sheer—” he waved his hands in the air, seeking a word as only a former history teacher could, “euphoria of summer makes teachers just laugh about it. No visits from the Better Business Bureau yet. Hey, and of course, since you’re sittin’ here waiting for a thanks-for-trying call, first one’s on me, anyway. What would you like?”
Clearly, Dave would end up getting the Staff Meeting Pilsner (“Everyone’s Forced to Drink It!” said the beer listing), but he, of course, hemmed and hawed. Late Start Coffee-Infused Ale? IEP Stout (“Gets to Take Its Time”)? Is this why no one hired him? Did he exude decision weakness?
Erik waited, both hands on the bar, with a coach’s face that had coerced thousands of high schoolers to hurry up and say something. After waiting another beat, he asked, “The Pilsner?”
Dave didn’t look up. “Yes, please.” He waited, not wanting to admit another small triumph of Erik’s will over his own. After all, Erik had been a staff all-star at Oak Valley High when Dave had student-taught under him. Dave would watch him go around the classroom, getting every single kid to work on a Rome essay or Chinese dynasty speech, cajoling and manipulating them with his uncanny connection to every kid, pushing each of them bit by bit without ever spilling the tray. Then, after well-wishing each student at the door, Erik would sit down in the nearest available desk-chair combo and put his forehead against the bacteria-ridden desktop. In the first few days of the experience, Dave would try to pester him about his pedagogical choices and expert differentiation. Erik’s responses were less than enlightening. Or, to take the long view of education, more.
“It’s killing me, kid,” said Erik, more than once.
“If I could teach, like, one-twentieth as well as you—” Dave sat, notepad at the ready.
“It is taking years off my life, Dave. You’re the future. I need to find another line of work.”
“My Secondary Pedagogical instructor says,” and Dave knew it was a dumb, naive thing to say, even as it slipped out of his mouth, “the day you wake up and don’t want to teach, is the day you should quit.”
Silence. Erik had kept his head on his desk.
Dave tried to walk it back, “I mean—”
“Second day of school, kid,” said Erik. “Every teacher would quit on the second day, and the inmates would be running the asylum.”
In the end, Dave completed his student teaching, graduated, and shuffled through various unfulfilling sub jobs. Erik, who could teach ballet to a class of manatees and who probably had to change his number to stop the flood of full-time offers, had quit to start his brewery, The Co-Curricular. And here they were.
“One Staff Meeting, on the house.”
Dave took a long drink. It was good, of course. Actually, it was a great pilsner: clean, with no tinny aftertaste. Not strange that Erik was good at brewing beer, too. If Dave made a beer, they’d use it to feed pigs or something.
“Do administrators ever come in for a beer? Are they offended by ‘Everyone’s Forced to Drink It?’”
“Ah, see, that’s the beauty,” said Erik. “I never have to worry about pissing off a principal. Ever. Again.”
As if on cue, Dave’s phone began to vibrate and ring. A 763 number—it must be Maple Valley. He scooted quickly off the barseat and made for the outside, allowing that brief bit of hope. What if they actually offered him a job? It was better this way, before the phone call started, and the assistant principal told him how impressed they were by his interview, and how sorry they were that it wasn’t going to work out.
But now, in this moment, as he made to angle his way through the door and answer the call at the same time, it was like those Christmas mornings all those years ago, when the boxes under the tree could hold—anything. Mechanical dinosaurs, Star Wars Lego sets—before you got to them, in that instant, your mind contemplated playing with these impossible toys every single day, until you opened up the box and surveyed the digital alarm clock radio, as Mom said from her chair through a puff of cigarette smoke, “Well, you’re always talking about how you love music, so now...you can listen to any station you want. Merry Christmas, and don’t thank me too much.”
He paused for an instant, standing in the sun, taking in the moment, and then sighed as he held the phone to his ear.
After a few minutes, he came back in, eyes on his shoes as he approached his pilsner at the bar. Erik quickly shoved a few pint glasses down at the end of the bar and made his way back over, leaning both arms on the bar in the way that powerful men do.
“Well, d’ya get it?”
Dave looked up, unable to contain his smile. “They offered me the job, Erik. I’m a teacher! Full time! A full-time Maple Valley Mammoth!”
“Hey!” exclaimed Erik, grabbing Dave’s shoulders with both hands and giving a hearty shake. “Congratulations!” Then he paused—strangely so, had anyone been watching in the July heat. “You sure had me fooled for a second, kid. You could be an actor.”
All smiles, Dave picked up his beer, fully intending to swallow the whole thing down in several gulps. After the first one, though, he coughed up beer all over his old Twins T-shirt. Erik reached all the way over the bar and gave him a hearty slap on the back.
“Hey, Mr. L,” he said, “don’t spit up that beer. You’re paying full price for it now—those are the summer pricing rules for real teachers!” He paused, as natural speakers are wont to do before uncorking the heady mix of inspiration and reality. “Remember that a teacher is nothing if society does not continually take a dump on him.”
Dave tried to smile, but his eyes just watered. He grabbed the beer for another sip, and managed to croak out, “Then consider me the outhouse of the world.” After another drink and some happy not-uncomfortable silence, he added, “I was starting to think I’d never get hired. Like, ever, Erik.”
“Yeah,” said Erik. Dave didn’t want him to mention it, but he did. “Does it give you pause at all that the last time you were there, you tried to leave the school after the interview and got the third-world militia treatment from...”
“From a group of invisible people in a spooky, dark gym?” Dave did not sip now, but stared at the light yellow column of pilsner. “Yeah. But here’s the thing. All those other interviews when I haven’t gotten the job, I’ve had a very conventional, easily explained exit from the building. So if some kind of terrestrial alien abduction is what it takes to get hired, then it’s worth it. I just need to remember not to sub in gym class during power outages, or at 3 in the morning.”
“Hey,” Erik said, catching his eye. Dave wondered briefly what parts of the human brain were dedicated to capturing the attention of other human brains. If there were some anatomical structure, he thought, it must be naturally developed in great teachers like Erik, people from whom you always felt like you were being imparted a critical secret.
“Yeah?”
“Just remember, when you’re getting on your high horse about education: those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” He grabbed another glass to wipe, and smiled. “Mr. Legnagyszerübb.”