The Bear
Chapter 1 The Bear
Ron Dowling, the Reedy High guidance counselor, was halfway to the principal's office when he heard the abrasive roar of Mr. Langdon's voice boom out from the closed doors of the auditorium, and he turned around and headed back to the guidance office. He had intended to discuss an urgent matter with Mr. Langdon, the principal. But from the sound of Langdon's voice, he was on the warpath today and it was wise to stay out of his way.
J. D. Langdon was a huge man in his late fifties. His white hair was parted down the middle, and he had worn it that way for so long that it had finally come back in style. The wire frame glasses that were the windows of his little beady blue eyes had come back in style in the late 1960s and had gone back out of style again. The same story on the narrow tie and his wing-tipped Oxfords. Langdon didn't keep up with changes in fashion, and nobody had the nerve to enlighten him on the subject.
Langdon was a physical man. If he liked you, he would pat you on the back and massage your shoulder as he talked and joked with you. (He never massaged Ron Dowling's shoulder.) He was a walking volume control to the vociferation of the school. As he moved through the school, the quiet moved with him, and when he left, the quiet left with him. Just the sight of him, be you student or teacher, was enough to congeal a lump of fear in your throat. It was a cold lump of ice that came suddenly, then dripped down into your stomach for ten minutes.
They called him the Bear, but they did not use the term within earshot of the man, and it was not a term of endearment as with Alabama's late Coach Bear Bryant. J. D. Langdon had earned the nickname in many heats of rage, and it was bestowed on him in a spirit of conspiracy, acknowledgement of the fact that you had to ridicule the man at a safe distance. You didn't dare do it to his face.
Inside the auditorium, J. D. Langdon stood in front of the stage and looked down on the senior class. His face, beet-red with anger, was contorted into an evil scowl. The veins along his neck and face swelled and constricted as the volume of his voice rose and fell. His squinty little eyes were like blue coals of fire and the eyelids fluttered nervously over them as if to fan them.
He had called the senior class into the auditorium to talk to them about lining up a band for the junior-senior prom, but the students had piled into the auditorium in such festive spirit, "like a bunch of orangutans on a picnic," as Langdon had put it, that he was upbraiding them about their attitude, and the original purpose of their gathering in the auditorium was all but forgotten.
"This is the last time you're going to come in here like a bunch of damn monkeys," he screamed, "or you can forget about having a prom."
Joel Grey was sitting on the front row directly in front of the Bear, and he was getting sprinkled with spittle. Coach, Joel was thinking, if you're going to give me a shower, the least you can do is furnish me a towel. But he dared not reach up and wipe the flecks of spittle from his forehead.
It was the spring of 1984, and South Carolina sat at the eve of the Education Improvement Act of 1984, legislation that would, among other things, tighten the credentials for administrators. Before the landmark reform act, the traditional path to principalships in that state had been through coaching. Langdon had been head coach at Reedy High until three years ago and the students still called him "Coach" (to his face).
Two rows back, Amy Miller was nursing a headache, and the Bear's tirade wasn't making her feel any better. They've misnamed him, she was thinking. He doesn't growl; he bellows. They should have called him the Bull.
Finally Langdon wound up his tirade the same way he would up all his tirades, whether he was talking to students or teachers, by saying, "I'm going to run this school the way I see fit, and if anybody in here doesn't like it, you can pack up and get the hell out of here right now."
Well, nobody liked it, but nobody got up and walked out until he dismissed them, still without settling the issue of selecting a band for the prom.
Langdon stood and watched them march meekly back to class, thinking, That's more like it. The tirade had taken the fury out of him, and he was like a winded athlete.
Langdon left the auditorium and walked across the hall to the main office. He entered his private office and shut the door. He reared back in his chair, folded his hands behind his head and thought, How the hell did I let myself get stuck in a dipshit job like this?
