[2016] The Practice House

by Laura McNeal

  He was such a sneak, but really when you thought about it, who wasn’t a sneak when it came to internal matters. But today, him sneaking up to her room, that was a surprise. A delicious one, though, because she’d stolen up there for her own reasons and there he was, and wasn’t it perfect that she could expose him over dinner and in one fell swoop make him the likely suspect. She was glad that Neva had said that about the tornado and made Aldine laugh, and she was glad he’d gotten out of it with his puppy love intact, because that game was just beginning.

  She’d begun wiping the dishes dry. She was anxious now to be done before Clare brought the separator. She wanted to ring up Opal and tell her and anyone else listening what she’d gotten for Christmas. She would tell them how it was made by the Eschle Company in the Black Forest and she would wind it up and hold it close so they could all hear it and then she would ask Opal if she knew what sonata it was or at least what composer but of course she wouldn’t so then she would tell her and anyone else listening that it was Mozart. And then when that fun was all played out, she would arrange to meet with Opal somewhere in private so she could tell her—she’d already worked out the phrase—what strange turns a scheme might take.

  29

  The days passed, and weeks, and then, on a bitter-cold day near the end of January, something happened. Ansel was in the barn. Outside, the wind was a long, slow, ceaseless moan that sometimes, if he closed his eyes, could put him in mind of a distant train passing, which was strangely comforting and, in any case, the best you could do with a sound like that. From time to time the wind struck the side of the barn as if with a huge flat hand, and the barn shook and made a rumbly sound. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon but his father had built the barn without windows—a mistake that Ansel meant one day to correct—so the dimness made it feel later, almost night. He’d gotten a fire going in the old burner near the workbench and fed in a lump of coal and a few cobs. Artemis had slinked in, ribby and ancient seeming, and settled herself by the fire. “Where’s your Lottie, old girl?” Ansel said gently. “Have you lost your Lottie?”

  This morning Jimmy Sweeton had stopped by with his center-door sedan filled with everything he could carry. He’d had the haunted look for a while now so it was no surprise. He pointed to an ancient caned rocker roped to the roof. “My mother brought that across the prairie,” he said. “Now I’m hauling it to California.” His face was a windburned red and he was trying to grin but his eyes were dull and lay deep in his face. He said, “When will you be heading out?”

  Ansel said, “Well, it wouldn’t be now.” He would’ve added, Or ever, which was the truth, but he didn’t want to make Jimmy Sweeton feel any worse than he did. Jimmy’s wife and children had already gone by train. There was nothing for it now but to go. Ansel reached forward and shook his hand. “I’ll be looking for you when the drouth ends, Jimmy,” he said, which was what he said to everyone who was leaving.

  Before starting the hack again down the lane, Jimmy Sweeton pulled something out of his pocket to give to Ansel.

  “A spark plug?”

  Jimmy nodded. “Except this one comes with a primer valve attachment. Makes starting a Ford easier when it gets cold . . . as it sometimes does hereabouts.” He was again trying to grin. “Won’t need it where I’m going.”

  For how long Ansel had been staring into the fire, he didn’t know, but when he heard the Scottish girl’s voice, it gave him a turn.

  “Mr. Price?”

  She was peering into the darkness of the barn with the wind to her back, so it gave the impression of her having been blown there, and under the beret her face was a luminous circle.

  “Over here,” he said, but as she approached, he turned and poked the fire, afraid to look at her further. He had begun to have dreams about the girl, strange, unbidden dreams, and they stayed in his body all day, like a bird inside a darkened cage.

  Aldine stepped forward uncertainly. “My heel broke,” she said, and took in the adjustment in warmth, the dog by the fire, the scent of horse and straw and machine oil. His, she thought. More than any other place on the farm this was his, and she felt out of place. Though her heel had truly broken, and it really did need fixing, and she surely couldn’t pay the cobbler. She’d taken Neva inside the house because she wasn’t feeling well—coughing again—and she’d looked for Charlotte but hadn’t found her. She didn’t want to bother Mrs. Price—that was what she told herself—so she’d walked out to the barn. Besides, if they were alone, she could ask him some questions that were rightly hers to ask. “I thought you might have glue or tacks,” she said.

  He motioned her closer to the stove and lamp. “Here. Let’s have a look.”

  Aldine sat down on a sawhorse to unlace the boot. She felt him watching her, felt it keenly. Deep beneath her heavy coat she felt her heart beating a little too fast. And what did it mean that she wished her wool stocking less shapeless and ugly? But it was clean, and mended, so there was at least that. She handed Mr. Price the dusty boot and he sat down with it on an old backless chair. While he turned it in his hands, she looked about and, beyond the stove and sleeping dog, she found a surprise: beneath a hanging lightbulb a book lay open on the workbench, a thick book, and something about it—its size, its situation here on his workbench in the barn, the desperation of their circumstances—made her take it for a Bible, but then she saw that the edges of its cover were red, unquestionably red, and it was in the exact moment that she knew it was the Riverside Shakespeare that she felt something within her lifting as if in defiance of gravity. The book, laid open as it was under the soft light, seemed a secret she only now realized she’d been in search of. She needed to pull her eyes from the book—now! this instant!—but she could not.

  Ansel, looking up from the boot, following her gaze to the book, felt a sordid humiliation suffusing him and then rising through his skin in the form of sweat. Explain yourself, he thought. Tell her why you brought it out. But he could not. He could not tell her that he wasn’t quite sure what all the exotic phrases meant and that he needed to parse them slowly, one word at a time. Vanity, and he knew it. It would be the same as announcing himself a fool, and that was worse than being suspected one, as he supposed he was now. So he said nothing and rustled noisily through several boxes before coming up with a bottle of glue.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  “Good,” Aldine said, the wind and her heart so loud she could barely hear her own voice. A rush of wind sent a tremble and moan through the barn. She could feel the pressure of her other boot through her knit stockings, the uneven wood of the sawhorse beneath her hands and legs. She tried not to look at him. The things she’d been hoping to ask this man—what Clare would do next by way of schooling, whether Neva was more than routinely sick, whether the other children, too, would catch it, and, the one big question, whether there had been any news regarding her unpaid wages—all fell silent within her.

  Mr. Price cleaned the boot with a rag dipped in rubbing alcohol, took pains brushing the glue onto the sole and heel, then pressed the two back together. He set the boot on the bench and slid a small sledgehammer into the boot for weight. He pressed down on the hammer, which gathered his body into something more condensed and muscular.

  Through clenched teeth he said, “I think you might be worried about your salary.”

  Something in her went out to him, thinking of her when things were so bad for his own self.

  “A bit, surely,” she said.

  Mr. Price grimaced and shook his head but looked at her only momentarily. “I’m sorry. Do you need money for anything? I mean, in particular?”

  “No,” Aldine lied. She needed postage stamps and something for the dryness of her skin and every kind of underthing, but she wasn’t going to mention that. He’d turned aside, was tightening the lid on the glue, and she glanced again at the book lying open there. She wished she could paint. It was the kind of soft illumination and exalted image someone should paint.

&nb
sp; “You don’t have to stay,” Mr. Price said. He did not look at her. He was arranging things in the cupboard. “Working without pay—it’s not fair to you, and you’re under no obligation.”

  “But who would teach them?” She closed her eyes, listened to the wind, thought of the book there.

  “I suppose they’d find someone,” Ansel said gruffly. He didn’t know why he said “they.” Probably he’d not be a part of the school board after this. He thought the music and poetry Aldine brought to the class were wonderful, perfect, exactly what these children needed, but Josephson complained without end that Emmeline was receiving poor preparation for high school. Ansel moved slightly so that he stood now in front of the book, which was almost as foolish as bringing the damned book out in the first place. When he glanced at the girl, she seemed to be opening her eyes and he wondered why she might have had them closed, and for how long. She said, “But we’ve worked so hard on the Winter Entertainment.” Her eyes rose to his. “I couldna’ go now.”

  Ansel lifted the boot a little and studied it. “Probably should have tacked it first. The glue might not be enough.” He searched some boxes, found particular tacks that suited him, and knocked them in with quick, efficient taps of a hammer. “It needs to dry for twenty minutes,” he said. “Do you want to wait here?”

  Did he want her to? Should she, if he did? Or was he merely being kind, thinking about the discomfort of walking through the cold wind in the clarty chicken yard with only one boot? She mumbled about needing to study up for the geography lesson she was teaching tomorrow, make sure she knew the capital of South Dakota.

  “Pierre,” he said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s Pierre, South Dakota.”

  Embarrassed, she nodded, and withdrew the book from her bag. “You see my need.”

  As she stared at her book, Ansel walked over to the tractor and began fiddling with the carburetor. A problem with the air valve was what he thought, because it almost always came down to the dust. He damped a cloth with kerosene and began clearing the dirt and sludge. He toggled the choke, wondered about taking it down to the vapor control. He dared not look at the girl. He kept thinking of her but he dared not look. Time passed, the wind moaned and slapped and tugged, and once or twice Aldine’s book crinkled under her fingers as she turned a page. Once, amidst the whuffing and creaking, he thought he heard a sound from the stalls, something other than the normal whisking of rodents. He peered into the darkness, but nothing stirred, and when he glanced over at Artemis, always alert to out-of-the-way sounds, the dog continued to sleep. And then before he could stop himself, he was looking at the girl, sitting on the stool in the firelight, with her thin legs extended. It seemed to him a scene from another century, a time when the convergence of warmth and reading and a lovely young girl and an old dog might suggest the simplest, purest pleasure that a planet had to offer. She did not look up and he let his eyes settle on her as he had never before, until at last she shifted just slightly and shot through him an alarm almost electrical, and he went straight back to work. He tapped free dust from the vapor control, cleaned it, and had nearly completed the reassembly when he saw her stand finally and walk over to the boot.

  “It looks dry,” she said.

  Mr. Price wiped his hands with a rag and stood up, and as he approached did not look at her but kept his eyes narrowly on the boot. He had written the note. She was sure of it. The arrow that had pointed to Clare had all at once changed course. It was aimed now at him. Mr. Price. Which changed its nature entirely, made it more than a boyish notion.

  “Do you think it would be better if I went to board somewhere else?” she asked suddenly. Not that she knew who’d take her. Not the Josephsons. Not the Wrights. Perhaps funny old Mrs. Odekirk, who kissed her on the cheek at church and kept asking if Aldine was enjoying her time here. People said Mrs. Odekirk had another house in Emporia that she rented to a doctor, which was why she was so well off. “I could ask Mrs. Odekirk.”

  “No,” Ansel said, with more force than he expected. But he knew why the vehemence. He had done nothing wrong, and he would do nothing wrong. She needn’t run away.

  Aldine lowered her eyes and raised them in a long slow blink. She leaned against the sawhorse and poked her foot down hard into the boot, which seemed too small now that her foot had thawed. She struggled with it for a moment and then he said, “Let me help.”

  She meant to say no, but before she could say anything at all, he was kneeling down in front of her and she was looking down at his thick shoulders, his long narrowing back, his wavy head of hair. She had been lonely and homesick for a long time, and something in his tone when he said no was echoing inside her. That he should want her there—that anyone should want her—flooded her with strange thoughts, and he seemed, as he knelt there, to be as full of longing as she was. The boot slipped over her heel, and Mr. Price began to tighten the laces, slowly and firmly. She felt herself trembling and willed herself to stop. She wouldn’t come near him again—she couldn’t, not after this.

  “How’s that?” he asked lightly, but when he looked up at her, he failed to make himself look away from her mouth and eyes. It was like permitting himself a drink of water after days of thirst. He didn’t move, but kept his hand on the top of her foot.

  She wanted to put her hand on his head or his cheek but she didn’t quite, managed to extend it only halfway. They were together like that, his hand clasping her boot, her hand outstretched, when the dog raised his head suddenly and then, ambling toward them from the rear of the barn, Charlotte said, “Hullo, Dad.”

  Ansel stood up abruptly and turned to his daughter. “Hello, Lottie.”

  She fixed her eyes on her father. “I wondered if you were ready for supper,” she said slowly, and it was the slowness that held meaning. Aldine wondered if Charlotte had just come in, or if she’d been in the back of the barn all along. It was like the evening when she’d come out for a tarry and then, when she’d had her first good draw, Charlotte, out of nowhere, was there.

  “My boot heel came off,” she said to Charlotte, then turned to Mr. Price. “Thank you for fixing it.” It sounded like a lie even though it wasn’t, and that was Charlotte’s fault.

  “I’ll go in the house now,” she said, her face hot with shame, both for what she had felt and for what Charlotte seemed to think.

  She picked up her books and turned to the barn door. She wanted to run, and had to keep herself from it. All through supper (squirrel again) Charlotte’s cheeks seemed newly pink, her muddy blue eyes bright with a sense of discovery. Mrs. Price said Neva’s cold was the second one this month and that she was going upstairs to tape the windows again.

  30

  On the Wednesday afternoon leading up to the Winter Entertainment, a work party had been called for setting the stage. It wasn’t much, in Clare’s opinion, mostly just a matter of hanging a curtain. But he and Neva had cooked up the idea of the block and tackle, and that could be something to remember. He bet it would in fact. He hadn’t expected his father to approve, but he did, and Aldine, too, though its purpose was not to be revealed to the general public until the night of the performance. That was the part Clare liked about the plan. The surprise element.

  He had come this afternoon to help with the stage-setting, along with his father, and the two younger Josephson girls had stayed after school as well. Neva wanted to be there, but was too sick. This morning she’d lied about not feeling sick just so she could go to school and stay for the work party but her coughing had given her away and so she had been kept home, crying and coughing a gurgly cough and wailing about the unfairness of the world. That was when his father volunteered himself and Clare, as if that would somehow make Neva feel better, which was faulty thinking, in Clare’s opinion, not that he would say so.

  At the moment, he was setting a pulley to the schoolroom’s ridge beam, a job that required his perching atop a tall stepladder. The ladder was rickety, so his father stood holding it
. Clare was glad he’d been allowed to set the pulley—usually his father wanted to take the lead in such things, especially when women were present, and today Miss McKenna (as Clare thought of her in the schoolhouse) was here, the most important presence of all.

  Clare had poked a long heavy screwdriver through the eyebolt and was using it to crank the bolt tight, an aching job that required him to stretch and reach with each turn and though he wanted to stop and rest, he wouldn’t, because he wanted neither his father nor Miss McKenna to see him giving up. He was relieved when one of the Josephson girls needed his father’s help with a knot.

  “Just hold still,” his father said to him, and stepped away.

  He sat. The whole room seemed different from up here, looking down at his father working at a knotted bag and at Berenice and Melba shaping clumps of wool and pasting them on the curtain that had once hung in Mrs. Wright’s living room, before having been stored in the cellar. Charlotte had shaken off the mouse droppings and washed them and sewed them together for the stage curtain. Charlotte had said she would do that much and by that implied she would do no more. She hadn’t come to the work party, though she could have come easy enough. Emmeline Josephson was absent, too. He’d seen her walking away when they were driving up. Maybe as soon as a female got to a certain age she couldn’t like Aldine, and maybe that was because once a male got to a certain age he couldn’t help but like her. He bet it was all one and the same.

  Clare stared at the curtain and the wool, then squinted his eyes. The curtain was supposed to look like a winter sky with snowy clouds but even when squinting, all it looked like was an old curtain, with funny lines of sun-fading and lumps of uncarded wool on top.

  His father had brought some wood for the stove so the work party would seem cheerier, and it did seem cheerier for the warmth and also for the fact that Miss McKenna had taken off her long heavy cardigan sweater and now when she stretched and knelt and leaned you could see the smooth contours of her body beneath her long thin dress.