Man of the Hour Read Online Free PDF Page A

speak the language or just didn’t give a damn. After all these years, David accepted that triage went on in the classroom. You helped the ones who were going to make it and made the best deal you could with the ones who wouldn’t. And once in a while, you found a gem in the gravel. There’d be a kid like Kevin Hardison, of no special promise, yet somehow you could find a way to buff him up and make him shine. You could signal him that there were life and ideas and mystery on the other side of the great divide of adulthood; it wasn’t all just driving on the expressway, flipping burgers at Mickey D.’s, and selling drugs on the corner. High school was the last chance at true democracy, where everyone stood more or less equal. So you went to the wall for these kids. You bought extra books for them, went to their Friday-night basketball games, talked to the social workers when they had problems with their parents, took their phone calls from Rikers when they got in trouble with the law.
    He’d offered to give this Nasser mat kind of attention, thinking he’d seen something unusual in him. But the boy had stalked out before they could even make an appointment.
    The real enigma here was how this Nasser’s little sister, Elizabeth, could then turn out to be one of the best students he’d ever had.
    David pulled over an empty chair and sat down. “So how have you been, anyway? What have you been up to?”
    “I am good. I am very good. I am excellent, in fact” Nasser pulled on his tie nervously. “I am driving for the car service. I am doing very well. I’m making the money.”
    “I’m glad to hear it. Sounds like your English is better now too.”
    “Is still very difficult for me.” He rolled the tie around his finger and stared out at the patriotic bunting draped in the halls, pride and embarrassment wrestling on his face.
    “So the governor is coming next week—to share his sincere concern with the children and teachers of this state, no doubt.” David brought his chair close so they were almost knee-to-knee, like passengers on a train. “What brings you back? You thinking about getting your GED?”
    The boy looked over to meet David’s eyes. “No,” he said. “But I have something very serious to discuss.” The tie unrolled, the Adam’s apple bobbed behind the buttoned collar. “I must talk to you about my sister.”
    “Elizabeth?”
    Nasser put his briefcase flat across his lap, almost defensively.
    “What about her?” asked David. “She’s terrific. She’s a world-beater. She got fifteen hundred on her SATs. She can write her own ticket to any college she wants.”
    “This is not appropriate. For a girl like this to write her ticket.”
    “Why not?”
    Nasser frowned, straightened his tie, and picked at his raggedy briefcase. So much tension. David thought about offering him a cup of coffee, but then decided he’d better not. The kid was wired enough already.
    “A girl like this should stay home and make a good marriage,” Nasser said firmly. “A girl like this should help raise a Muslim family.”
    A part of David rebelled, hearing that. Why did everyone want to control these kids and put them in a box? Sometimes it felt like half his job was breaking these boxes open.
    But he tried to finesse the point here. “Well, what makes you think she can’t get married if she goes to college?” he said, opening up his big palms.
    “No.” Nasser shook his head vigorously. “This will not work. There are things in the world.”
    “Things?”
    “Bad things. Things she shouldn’t be exposed to. The immorality and lasciviousness. I drive around this neighborhood, I see the drugs and prostitutes on the boardwalk. Every day, girls like this are raped in the newspaper. People are shot for being in the wrong place. For no reason at all. This is a terrible thing.”
    As Donna Vitale squeezed between them with a wink, a pile of secondhand Jane Eyre s in her arms, David found himself