Free Bread Upon the Waters by Irwin Shaw

application.”
    “What if he could get a scholarship for a year, even two—one of the good preparatory schools—where the—ah—influences are healthier? Could he be improved to a point where a college would be ready to give him a chance?”
    Strand shrugged. “That would depend upon his attitude, of course. Right now, except for the fact that he’s done a surprising amount of reading on his own—more often than not in fields that have very little relation to the courses he’s taking—he’s just about like the other students in the school. That is to say he’s scornful of authority, immune to discipline, suspicious of the intentions of his teachers…”
    “ Your intentions, too?”
    “I’m afraid so,” Strand said. “He delights in provoking me. When I lecture, following the curriculum, as I have to do, he often just gets up and walks out of the room.”
    Hazen shook his head sadly. “All that money, all that effort, all that good will going into our schools,” he said, “and what do we get for it?”
    “Rebellion,” Strand said. “Sometimes concealed, very often open.”
    “I can imagine the difficulties,” Hazen said. He shook his head. “Still, we can’t just wash our hands of the whole thing, can we?”
    Strand wasn’t sure just which “we” Hazen meant and by what process he, Allen Strand, might be included in the plural.
    Hazen stared soberly ahead of him as he walked, seemingly oblivious of the curious stares of the passersby at his ski cap and battered face. “We can’t just abandon a whole generation or a good part of a whole generation to nihilism—that’s the only word for it—nihilism,” Hazen said, an oratorical gravity in his voice. “The best of them have to be saved—and I don’t care where they come from, the slums, farms, great estates, ghettos, anywhere. This country is in for some terrible times and if our leaders are going to be ignorant, uneducated, we are heading for catastrophe.”
    Strand wondered if Hazen was voicing long-held beliefs or had suddenly seen some handwriting on the wall that had been hidden from him before his scalp had been opened by a piece of pipe. He himself, involved in the daily struggle with the young, found it more comfortable not to look far ahead, and he felt that the present state of the nation could hardly be worsened, regardless of the education or lack of it of its leaders.
    “Ah, well.” Hazen spoke in his normal tone. “We’ll do what little we can. If you think it would be of use to talk to the boy, do so. And let me know what he says.”
    “I’ll give it a try.”
    Almost as though he knew what Strand was thinking as they walked side by side, Hazen said, “Have you ever thought of getting out of the public school system? It must be dispiriting, to say the least—year after year. Perhaps teaching somewhere out of the city, in a small private school where the rewards, anyway intellectually, would be more commensurate with the effort you put in?”
    “My wife talks about it from time to time,” Strand said. “I’ve thought about it, yes. But I was born in New York. I like the city. I’m a little old to tear up roots.”
    “What degrees do you hold?”
    “M.A.,” Strand said. “I took it at night in New York University, while I was teaching during the day.”
    “Any writing in the field?”
    “Not really,” Strand said. “I’m more of a reader than a writer.”
    “You know,” Hazen said, “if I were a trained historian some of the things you were talking about last night—the theory of randomness, especially—would tempt me to examine various periods in that perspective. It could lead to some amusing speculation on how differently great events could have turned out with just the smallest alteration of the elements involved…”
    “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,” Strand said, “for want of a shoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the kingdom was lost. That sort of thing?”
    “More or