Atlantis: Three Tales

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The leadership and conduct of the war were on the one side in the hands of our city, on the other in the hands of the kings of Atlantis. At the time, aswe said, Atlantis was an island larger than Libya and Asia put together, though it was subsequently overwhelmed by earthquakes and is the source of the impenetrable mud which prevents free passage of those who sail out of the straights into the opensea. — PLATO, Critias I sometimes had pleasant nightmares in which I fancied that New York was being destroyed by an earthquake: its towers snapped like pine trees in a storm, a tidal wave poured through its streets... — MALCOLM COWLEY, Exile's Return On the top (third) floor, Hubert's was around the corner from Mount Morris Park. "I got to wash up." Sam put the suitcase on the rug's foot-faded red, looking around the first of the two small rooms. "Sure." With his shoe, Hubert pushed the wicker trunk under what would be Sam'sbed. "Unless you want to wait till later when we get over to Elsie and Corey's. They got hot water." "That's all right. I want to do it now. And change my clothes." i9 b S A M U E L R . D E L A N Y "All right." Hubert took the wash basin out from under the corner sink. "Here you go. But you got to hurry up, before Clarice gets here." Using Hubert's yellow bar of kitchen soap, lathering his arms, his buttocks, his knees, hopping now on one foot, hopping now on the other, Sam washed in cold water. Sometimes he glanced at Hubert, who sat in the wing chair: Hubert's forehead furrowed above his glasses, as, in the corner, he paged through a book. Views of... something. Hubert was one of three colored teachers recently hired to teach first grade in the colored all-boys public school, only six blocks from here, Hubert had explained to Sam. That tall body had cut tobacco in Connecticut; that strong body sat so straight when he studied. And there'd been "...Miss Hutchinson told me about a trick she used when she taught those rough boys in the colored schools outside Cincinnati. She said if it would work for a woman, it would certainly work for me. Just as she told me to do, before classes began I procured an old, cracked baseball bat, and on the first school day I brought it with me before any of the scholars arrived. Before going in, I hit it on the curb outside, till it cracked more. I then took it into my classroom and leaned it in the corner by my desk. When the boys came in —they were loud and lively and full of high spirits — within five minutes, while some of them were still taking their coats off and playing tag around the room, one of them asked rne, 'What's that for?' Sitting at my desk, I looked over my folded hands and said, in a firm and resonant voice: 'I had some trouble with one of the boys in my last class —and I'm afraid I broke my bat on his backside. And by the way, you must learn to call me "Sir."' They all turned around, eyes about to bulge out of their brown, round faces. And when I called them to order and they rushed to sit, you could see them squirming on their benches, each attached to the desk behind. Their eyes kept going to the bat in the corner, their little behinds stinging in anticipation. You knew they were wondering how it felt." About the bony wreckage of the Thanksgiving carcass, everyone was laughing too loudly for Papa to go on —as, here, he put down the letter a moment to touch his clerical collar. Mama took her wire-framed glasses off and dabbed her eyes with her napkin. 20 ATLANTIS: MODEL 1924 Sam hopped, and shook quickly from his mind another memory ("...an animal...!" The crate's slats smithereened across Hubert's shoulder, and dragging the chain across the gravel where the grass had worn from around the pump, Hubert cowered back: "Papa!No...!" He remembered his father's grunts, precise and ugly), hopped again and scrubbed at his groin — finally to squat among the splatters over the dark floorboards and maul the...