Mr. Souffard, My High School History Teacher,
Is Saying He Flunked Two Kids Last Year Because in the Final Written
Exam on the American Revolutionary War They Stopped Writing About History
and Started Writing Nasty Rumors About Him, Thinking He'd Never Read
Their Essays
(So We'd Better Be Careful, He's Warning Us)
(continued)
The Battle of Bunker's Hill, as it is called, actually took place
on Breed's Hill, a site nearer to Boston than Bunker's. The morning
on which it took place, June 17, 1775, was dreadfully hot. The Americans
were low on everything: gunpowder, morale, bullets, water. Some of them
had even made homemade bullets from the lead pipes of a Cambridge church
organ. Speaking of low morals... The eastern sky lifted, soft and revealing
over the horizon like a cheerleader's skirt, and the British started
their arduous assault on the American battlement that had been dug into
Breed's Hill the night before. "Breed's" Hill — ha! Get
it? Anyway, they're saying the whole thing took place for years in the
snack bar because he was the track coach and the faculty member in charge
of keeping the snack bar stocked and locked up. Come to think of it,
one year she did work in the snack bar as a student aide. Oh, man! What
if it's true? The British, led by General William Howe, landed easily
and began the difficult climb up Breed's Hill, each soldier carrying
about one hundred pounds of equipment, trying to get in position for
a final bayonet charge, and I can see them, yes. Even though I wasn't
there and I find it difficult to believe, I can see them, yes, even
though I don't want to. I can see them pushing on up, wrestling up on
top of the snack bar counter after hours, the lights off, the doors
locked, panting with desire and lugging one hundred pounds of stupid
dreams, trying to get in position for that final charge, knocking away
jumbo-sized plastic jars of Milk Duds and Cherry Super Rope Licorice,
her heels kicking at the gushing and clicking soft drink spigots. And
now I can't shake the picture of it in my head, the accidental shushing
of Coke and 7-Up, his paunchy shirtless back, hairy like an orangutan's,
and the pushing, pushing, pushing up the hill astride his white charger,
the grunting, the weight, the blood, the sweat, the strain, and it was
all for glory! Freedom, glory, and power! And the great American dream!
I can see him, pushing on up the hill, his musket primed and ready,
pushing on up, waiting to see the whites of her eyes that look up into
his and say, Yes, but I'm dreaming, Yes, but this can't be happening,
his labored breaths whumping like British cannonades in her ears. I
can't believe this is happening, it took the British three bayonet charges
to be successful, this can't be happening, it took me seventeen years
to build my life, I'm only seventeen, and right now, right now, my life's
over and his is over. Yes, but we're both thinking that, somehow, our
lives have just begun, but they're over. I know it. It's over. It was
over shortly thereafter, but at heavy British losses. When the gunpowder
smoke finally settled over Bunker's Hill, Breed's Hill, and Charlestown
Neck like the last sigh of an overweight history teacher, it was clear
that the British had been victorious. However, over 1,200 British soldiers
were wounded, and 226 were killed, including Major Pitcairn, whose troops
had fired on the Lexington militia. Losses on the American side were
light, but heavy enough to let everyone know that he's a pigheaded ape,
that this was real. This was war.
On Christmas night (December 25, 1776) over two hundred years before
a virgin conceived in a high school snack bar in some northwestern jerkwater
town, and thus, gave up the fight, the American army in long river boats,
led by General Washington, crossed the Delaware in a sneaky and brave
counterattack on the Hessians in Trenton. The night was bitterly cold.
Chunks of ice floated in the river, which made the passage slow. Some
of the men were wearing threadbare civilian clothes, and some had no
shoes. They marched, barefoot, on the icy roads to Trenton in the early
morning light, leaving bloody footprints in the snow as they went. At
eight o'clock in the morning (December 26, 1776) to the surprise of
the sleeping Hessian army, Trenton was taken by Washington and his ragtag
troops.
This was a boost for the Americans. On Friday, last week, which was
over two hundred years after General Washington on January 3, 1777,
using artillery and small charges, surprised Cornwallis at Princeton
with a flanking attack, I went down to the library, just because I was
curious, you know, just to look through some of the old high school
yearbooks they have on the shelves down there. I just had this hunch.
I wanted to see if there was anything to it, okay? Anything cosmic or
fatalistic, you might say. So, after looking through a couple of them,
I found what I was looking for. There he was: my history teacher, right
in this yearbook in my hands. The year was 1961. His picture, which
was in black and white, showed him monkeying around for the camera.
His eyes were wide open, kind of boggled-looking, and his tongue was
waggling out of his mouth. He looked pretty much the same: square head,
ape face. And even though he was a little thinner and had a full head
of hair, which was sheared up in a tight crew cut, I could still tell
it was him. His name and some activities were next to his picture: Dennis
Souffard. Varsity Track: 1, 2, 3, 4. Varsity Basketball: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Varsity Football: 2, 3, 4. Debate: 3, 4. Student Council: 3, 4. And
then, looking at the picture, staring into the pugnacious, young monkey
face of my history teacher — the same face that one day, years
later, must've given Amy Bendix the eye, the "I want you"
eye, the "yes, you" eye, the eye that must've been reserved
all along just for Amy Bendix, who's a cute girl, who's a gorgeous girl,
a girl we all wanted, a girl we all wanted to want us, a girl who was
a friend of ours, who was one of us (you know what I'm saying?), a girl
who, like us, must've been dreaming about a way out, looking for a new
direction, looking for a new life, a girl who once she saw the "I
want you" eye must've found it impossible to do anything else but
turn away and hug her textbooks more tightly against that knockout physique
and start thinking about how much sleep she was going to lose —
I realized how fatalistic and deterministic life must've suddenly felt
to her. Surrender or attack, it must've felt pointless for her to fight.
And tragically so. At that moment, all must've seemed lost. Where will
it happen? she must've wondered. Where? The snack bar? The locker room?
She must've felt doomed, trapped, like Cornwallis when he realized that
General Washington, contrary to Cornwallis's best second guessing, had
actually marched back to Morristown and not to New Brunswick. As a result,
on January 6, 1777, General Washington and his renegade army took Elizabethtown
and Hackensack instead. It must have been a critical moment.
