Arslan Read Free Page A

sure that things were squared away in all of the rooms, and the intercom working. I said a few words to each class, and a few more to each teacher privately. Last of all, I brought Betty Hanson out. There was a lone soldier in my office now. We stood in the empty corridor. She hadn't been crying for a while, from the looks of her, but she was shaking. I squeezed her arm, and she took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. “How old are you, Betty?”
    “Twenty-three.”
    “That makes you our youngest faculty member. But remember, Betty, there are about three hundred people in this building who are younger than you. A lot is going to be demanded of you, but a lot is being demanded of them, too. They're my responsibility, and they're your responsibility, and every teacher's here. You understand that, don't you?” She nodded. She'd stopped trembling, and a little color was coming back into her fragile face. “Nobody's asking us to do anything heroic, Betty. I'm just asking you to remember you're a teacher. I expect you to behave accordingly. Will you promise me that?”
    She took another shuddering breath. “Yes, Mr. Bond.”
    “Good girl. I know you will.” I put an arm around her and shepherded her into the office, which comforted her and saved me from having to look at her directly. She was too young and too scared—too pretty, aside from the temporary effects of the tears. Arslan's hands had looked very hard.
    It was mainly to provide cover and comfort for Betty that I pried loose Maud Dollfus and Jean Morgan from the cooking. Perry Carpenter had been helping the janitor bank down the old furnace. As shop teacher and coach Perry hadn't had much to do all day, and he was pretty nervous. The six of us waited in the office, and at first nobody spoke.
    “Franklin,” Jean said sharply, when she saw me watching her, “if you're wondering whether to tell me that they took Hunt, I already know about it. But that's all I know, so if there's anything else, for Pete's sake tell me.” Her chin was up and her voice firm. I didn't need to worry about Jean Morgan.
    “You know as much as I do, then, Jean. Hunt's a levelheaded boy.”
    “That's what I'm telling myself,” she said doggedly.
    The soldier lounging at the door came to eager attention. “Here it is,” I said. But Arslan didn't bother to enter the office; he just returned the soldier's salute and gestured us towards the cafeteria. Two of his followers dropped off to herd us down the hall after him.
    The tables bristled with liquor bottles. The folding doors stood wide open, and we threaded our way through into the gym. It was filling up fast with soldiers. The moment Arslan appeared, they raised a shout of joy. There was no doubting the spontaneity of that cheer. He waved his arms and shouted back at them. He loved it; and to all appearances they loved him.
    They were streaming in from the back door, filling the gym and starting now to flow on into the cafeteria, so that Arslan, in his progress toward the stage, breasted the full stream of them. They opened a path for him, closing in again in little eddies around us, and as he passed they laughed, shouted, shook their fists triumphantly. It was an impressive thing to walk through.
    They were fresh and spruce. They didn't look as though they'd been in any battles very recently, but it was a dead certainty they'd been in battles. Not a man of them but looked older and grimmer than their general, though there was nothing grim about their mood at the moment. In one word, they looked tough—not the desperate boy-toughness I'd seen in so many American veterans, but the unpretentious toughness of professionals.
    Near the back door we were halted by the pressure of the stream. Arslan stood flushed and laughing—shaking hands, slapping backs, waving over shoulders at faces beyond. In half a minute we were cut off from him by the swarm, and gradually forced backwards. I steered us up against the wall, and we stuck there