"The Kid Nobody Could Handle" is a short story first published in The Saturday Evening Post on September 24, 1955[1] and reprinted in the collections Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968 and Complete Stories in 2017. It was adapted as a one act play in 1970 by Christopher Sergel.[2]
Plot Summary[]
Because his wife is away visiting relatives, George M. Helmholtz, the head of the music department at Lincoln High School, eats breakfast at a restaurant owned by Bert Quinn. Behind the restaurant a hill is being flattened that was once owned by Helmholtz but which he sold to Quinn ten years ago for $1000; Quinn is now selling it for a considerable profit. Helmholtz recognizes the 15 year old mopping the floors from his school whom Quinn introduces as Jim Donnini from Chicago, his "brother-in-law's kid by another marriage" left in the care of his sister, then foster homes, and finally Quinn himself. Quinn says Jim doesn't study and only seems to care about his boots ever since Quinn threw away the boy's knife collection. Helmholtz offers to drive Jim to school and tries to encourage him to find an outside interest like music. Jim is surly and non-responsive.
At school Helmholtz teaches band classes and attends a special faculty meeting on vandalism; the office of the head of the English Department, Harold Crane, was destroyed. That night, Helmholtz has a nightmare that the precious band bass drum is torn apart by a monster and is let into the band room at two in the morning by a nightwatchman to confirm that it's safe. While there, he finds Jim vandalizing the chemistry lab next door. Uncertain how to react, Helmholtz tries in vain to convey to Jim that schools are "the best thing human beings ever managed to do" because they give "hope that everybody will be glad he’s alive." Taking him into his office, Helmholtz begins calling the principle but stops and asks Jim if there's anything he cares about except his boots. Getting no answer, Helmholtz takes out his prized possession, a trumpet once owned by John Phillip Sousa, and tells Jim to smash it if nothing really matters. Jim sits confused and Helmholtz pushes him to the ground and takes off his boots and with them his socks. Jim stands barefoot and Helmholtz trades the trumpet for Jim's boots then drives him home.
The next morning, Helmholtz returns to Quinn's restaurant to find Jim mopping in a pair of brown Oxfords. Helmholtz's old hill behind the restaurant has been removed and is now "level as a billiard table." Quinn reveals that he knows about the events of the previous night and that he's sending Jim back to Chicago since he doesn't know what to do with him. Helmholtz is disappointed and refuses to take back the trumpet when Quinn forces Jim to return it. Instead, Helmholtz smashes it, saying that "life is no damn good." Quinn recognizes that Jim is looking at Helmholtz with pity and concern. Two weeks later the new semester begins with Jim playing a repaired Sousa's trumpet in the last chair of C Band.[3]
- ↑ "The Kid Nobody Could Handle", The Saturday Evening Post, September 24, 1955.
- ↑ The Kid Nobody Could Handle, Christopher Sergel, Dramatic Publishing.
- ↑ "The Kid Nobody Could Handle", Complete Stories, pp. 807-815.