Hoping he wouldn’t take offense—after all, I was about to again stick my oar in when I hadn’t been asked—I told him about Stan, who could read music but didn’t know much about playing his guitar, and about Jimmy, who could only play what he’d heard or felt. About Hal, who wanted to play harmonica, and about Nate, who could play his so sweet it made a body want to cry.

I said, “I was thinking maybe you might set up a class where they could teach each other, along with anybody else who wants to sit in. I know it wouldn’t be real school stuff, but they’d be learning something, which would be better than lying around grousing all the time, which is becoming a real problem, and—”

I broke off because I hadn’t meant the suggestion to sound like I was asking for help.

In no time, knocking on doors around Monroe, Mr. Romsteder rounded up an assortment of beat-up instruments that played pretty good despite their looks, and the 597th got a band going. Everyone was welcome, even the ones who stuck to shakers and drumming on upside-down trash cans.

Then T. J. Brunel allowed as how he’d done some leather tooling, and that led to several fancy belts getting started and even one saddle.

One of the LEMs offered to teach engine repair to anybody interested, and Apple jumped on that.

A dozen guys, including Melvin, began quietly attending a basic reading class, and if anybody thought it was funny seeing seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds toting around second-grade readers, they didn’t say.

And before I knew what happened, Mr. Romsteder had me teaching a dozen guys the Morse code and explaining how radios worked.

That was Tuesday nights. Mondays and Wednesdays, he had Sam and me in his Great Works of Literature class. We were reading Hamlet, a fellow with some family problems worse than ours.

And Sam was taking a couple of other courses, too, to earn his high school diploma.

Of course, Mr. Romsteder got a nickname: Teach. More than one guy said he was the nicest teacher they’d ever run into, once you got past his shyness.

The only person unhappy with the program was Compton. His nose was out of joint because Mr. Romsteder had told Captain Hakes whose idea the music program was.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Compton told me. “The captain knows even losers get things right once in a while.”

Part III

Chapter 27

Meanwhile, we’d got our first look at the conservation work ahead of us.

I’d been so occupied with the day-to-day doings of the camp and with trying not to annoy Hakes more than I could help, I’d pretty much put the camp’s mission out of my mind. But now it came back to me, the reason I was in the CCC beyond needing the job.