All His Soldiers

Professor Frank wore a camo jacket and dog-tags. He had a bronze eagle mounted on the wall behind his desk. If you slammed the door to his classroom too hard, he’d jump and reach for a phantom gun at his hip. Professor Frank didn’t have students; he had soldiers.

This week, his soldiers had failed him.

It wasn’t uncommon for a few kids to fail a test from Frank. He asked questions that weren’t in the reading and never gave extra credit. This week was worse than usual. We had all failed, every single one of us. Frank wasn’t happy.

He hurled insults like an arrow volley across the classroom. Pin-point attacks struck the laziest students. He hit the rest of us with broad attacks against today’s youth.

Surviving a rant like this from Frank was trench warfare. You had to keep your head down, trying to pretend you couldn’t hear the bullets zipping past. It’s important to protect yourself, but you also had to make progress. You had to advance.

“How did any of you maggots expect to pass this test?” spit flew from Frank’s mouth.

“We didn’t.”

There was silence. Frank turned towards me with an icy gaze.

“What was that, grunt?”

“I said, we didn’t expect to pass. The test was too hard. You didn’t do enough to prepare us. We all knew we were going to fail, because you failed us.”

I swear I heard gunfire and screams behind Frank’s eyes. His scowl turned to a frown, and he started looking just a little to my left, like something was watching him from over my shoulder.

The bell rang. Class was over. I retreated.