Echoes in the Darkness Read Free Page B

it a try from time to time ana was just about the only one at Upper Merion who ever did. For one thing, she'd turn him (town when he came around with army paperwork that needed typing. He was going for colonel then with a good shot at becoming a general before he retired.
    She'd say, "No, I'm far too busy to do the army's work." And he'd simple turn and walk quietly away.
    It became apparent though that neither Ida nor anyone else was going to put him in his place. He had a quick mind and a sharp tongue and wouldn't hesitate to draw blood if he was crossed.
    He could speed-read and remember whole chunks of books. He virtually memorized the yearbook, and astonished students by addressing them by name. He loved using arcane words on troublesome faculty members when they bothered him with petty problems.
    One of those troublesome faculty members was Bill Bradfield, whom Ida liked as much as she disliked Jay Smith. Ida thought that Bill Bradfield was handsome and manly and she liked the way he'd come in and give her a hug and a smile and a cheery hello.
    Sometimes Bill Bradfield as teachers' representative had occasion to start ragging the principal about a teacher who'd received an unsatisfactory notice and thought it unfair.
    Jay Smith would simply fix him quietly with those eyes and say something like "I find your reasoning a bit periphrastic."
    Bill Bradfield would have to scamper for a dictionary, thereby leaving Jay Smith to do his customary vanishing act.
    One semester the principal gave Ida an unsatisfactory notice and she marched straight into his office and told him that she'd never received an unsatisfactory notice in her entire career and she was not about to take one without an explanation, a written explanation.
    Jay Smith sat there and stared vacantly with those eyes and nodded and wrote his explanation. The report indicated that by bringing in candy every day and putting it on her desk, Ida Micucci was encouraging teachers to loiter around the principal's office. And furthermore, Ida Micucci was attracting "bugs and other vermin."
    That did it. Jay C. Smith had a very angry senior secretary on his hands. And one day he called her in and apologized for the report. And not just a few times. He apologized every time he happened to glance at the candy jar. She thought he was going to spend the remaining years of her career apologizing.
    He'd be handing her something to type six months after the bugs-and-vermin report, and he'd suddenly say, "Please forgive me, Ida."
    Put he never apologized to another soul for anything. And pretty soon, he got tired of dumping words like "sesquipedalian" on his unfortunate faculty. He started inventing words for the likes of Bill Bradfield when he dared to match wits with Jay Smith.
    Once when the teachers' representative came reeling out of Jay Smith's office unable to find a word like "ransmigrifold" in any dictionary, the principal sat and chuckled mirthlessly and finally had to share his secret.
    "I'm inventing words for them, Ida," he informed his secretary. "Those pseudo-intellectuals need the exercise that I provide."
    Jay Smith would bring his trash to work. Nobody could believe it at first, but it was so. He'd bring bags of trash from home and transfer it from his car to the school Dumpsters. Even the custodians were asking what the hell was going on! Didn't they have garbage pickup in his neighborhood?
    And that wasn't all that the custodians were wondering about. They noticed him hanging around school at night when everyone else had gone home. Late at night. Once, a janitor saw the principal strolling out of his office on the way to the lavatory. It wouldn't have caused concern except that Jay Smith was wearing nothing but underwear.
    Then there was the matter of his meeting and greeting prospective teachers. One of them was a new member of the English department, a young woman, recently widowed.
    Jay Smith had a full, smooth speaking voice and always enunciated crisply. His