The Trouble with Joe

by Emilie Richards

  He was a knight on a white horse, Corey’s personal knight. No one, Carol Simpson or any other teacher Sam knew, would willingly take on Joe. Intimidating was a bland word for the expression on his face.

  “You went to bat for Corey,” she said in the parking lot.

  “Of course I did. I live with the kid. I know what she’s about, and she’s not disturbed. She’s coped better with poverty and rejection and sudden changes in her life than any kid could be expected to. They try to put her in a special school, they’ll have me on their doorstep.”

  “I think you made that abundantly clear.” She took his arm. “Now, relax. You’ve got to be all smiles tonight.”

  He looked at his watch. He turned, his eyes full of regrets. “Now I really don’t have time to go home and still get back for the beginning of the hot-dog roast.”

  “You’re dressed appropriately, but I’m not. I’m going home to change, then I’ll come back and join you. Save me a hot dog?”

  “If you’re smart, you’ll grab something to eat at home and pass on the dogs. I know what the pep squad spent. If there was ever any real meat in those things, it just wandered through on its way somewhere else.”

  She made a face. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “But I’ll save you anything that looks good.”

  “You look good.” She rose on tiptoe to kiss him. “I could have handled Ray alone if I’d had to. But it was a lot more fun watching you take him down a notch. Thanks for caring about Corey.”

  “I wouldn’t do what I do for a living if I didn’t care about kids.”

  “I know.” She kissed him again, lingering over it this time. “But I think Corey’s growing on you.”

  His eyes were opaque. “Don’t get any ideas, Sam. Nothing’s changed.”

  But it had. She didn’t know exactly what or how, and she certainly had no insight into where it might lead. But something had changed. The man in Ray’s office had been the Joe she’d married. She welcomed him back with a third kiss before she left him standing in the parking lot.

  * * *

  COREY HAD NEVER heard so much noise. She had been to football games with Miss Sam and Mr. Joe, so she was used to the band. But tonight they were louder than they’d ever been before. Some of the instruments were bigger than she was, and they rumbled and blared until her ears felt as if they were going to fall off her head. There was a lot of yelling, too. People jumping up and down, cheerleaders clapping their hands and doing cartwheels. She had yelled a time or two herself, and nobody had told her not to.

  “Come on, let’s go under the bleachers.” Mary Nell motioned for Corey to follow her.

  Corey looked around, to see if it was all right.

  “Come on, my mom knows,” Mary Nell said. “All the kids do it.”

  Corey wondered if she should tell Miss Sam, then she decided against it. Miss Sam hadn’t paid her much attention since the bonfire began. She had been up front with Mr. Joe, laughing and shouting and clapping. She looked at Mr. Joe like he was the president or something, like he was a king. Corey knew what that look meant. It meant that Miss Sam didn’t need a little girl to keep her happy. She just needed Mr. Joe.

  The night was cold, but Corey’s jacket was warm, warmer than anything she’d ever owned. She threaded her way across the seats, hopping from one row to another after Mary Nell until they were on the ground. The bonfire still burned brightly at the edge of the football field, but the cheerleaders had stopped dancing around it a while ago. Now some of the football players, dressed like cheerleaders in red-and-gold skirts, were out on the field pretending to do cheers while the crowd roared and clapped. One football player-cheerleader threw his pom-poms into the air and they landed on another one’s head. They started a pretend fight.

  Corey covered her ears as the noise grew louder. She saw Mary Nell beckoning her, and she ran along behind her. The noise was loud under the bleachers, too, because Corey could hear the feet stomping above her.

  “Why’d you want to come here?” Corey shouted.

  “Looking for friends.”

  “Oh.” Corey looked around. She didn’t see anybody else dumb enough to come down here. “I don’t see nobody.”

  “You want to look for candy bar wrappers?”

  “Yeah!” Corey and Mary Nell had started saving wrappers. One company, maker of several different brands, was giving away prizes for fifty or more wrappers. Corey had to save two thousand to get a bike, but she already had ten.

  The noise receded. Corey began to pick over the trash under the bleachers. She wished there was more. The floodlights on the field shone in narrow strips between bleacher seats, and she couldn’t see very well.

  “Look! I found one!” Mary Nell held it up.

  “Ain’t... Isn’t the right kind.”

  “I know, but it’s a clue. There’ll be more.”

  Corey went back to looking. At the back of the bleachers, where they had come in, she saw three little girls approaching. She turned to tell Mary Nell, but she was up at the front now, poking through the litter there with her foot.

  Corey recognized all three girls. They were in Miss Simpson’s class, too, and one of them, Ann Grady, was the teacher’s pet. None of them liked Corey.

  Ann reached her first. “What are you doing here?”

  “Playing.” Corey stood her ground.

  “Playing what?”

  “Looking for candy bar wrappers. You can save ’em and get prizes.”

  “Ick. That’s dirty, going through other people’s trash.”

  “I wash my hands.”

  “Corey’s going through the trash,” Ann told the other girls. “She likes trash.”

  Corey turned away. There was no use in trying to explain anything to these girls. They were never going to be her friends. She wanted to find Mary Nell and go back up where Miss Polly and Mr. Harlan were sitting. Or she wanted to find Miss Sam. Then she remembered that Miss Sam hadn’t hardly looked at her that night.

  “Corey likes trash,” one of the other girls said. “My mama says Corey is trash, and so was her mama.”

  Corey turned back to her. “That’s a mean thing!”

  “I know Miss Simpson doesn’t think you belong in her class. Maybe you belong in the trash can!” Ann danced with glee at her own joke.

  “Stop it!” Corey said.

  “Don’t have to!”

  Corey pushed her. Not hard, just hard enough to make her point. “Leave me alone!”

  “Ooo... Your hands are dirty, trash girl. Don’t touch me.”

  Corey pushed her again. Mary Nell appeared magically at her side. “Stop, Corey. What’s wrong?”

  “She called me trash girl!”

  “Why’d you go and do that?” Mary Nell asked Ann.

  “She’s your friend, you’re a trash girl, too.” Ann didn’t look quite so brave now that the odds were evening out. She had two friends with her, but Mary Nell was bigger than anyone there.

  “Take it back,” Mary Nell said. “Right now!”

  “Not going to.”

  Corey pushed Ann again. “Take it back!”

  “Not going to!” But now Ann’s eyes were frightened.

  “Oh, leave her alone, Corey,” Mary Nell said. “She can’t think of anything else to say ’cause she’s got no brains and no manners. Come on, let’s go.”

  Corey wanted to push Ann again. It felt good to scare her a little after she’d gone and said bad things about Mary Nell and all. She had started to follow Mary Nell out from under the bleachers when she heard Ann speak again. Quietly this time.

  “My mama says Miss Sam’s trash for letting you live with her.”

  Corey couldn’t answer. Her voice wouldn’t work, as if somebody had just reached in and shut it off. Her han
ds began to shake, then her knees. She had Ann on the ground under her before she even knew what she’d done.

  “Corey!” Mary Nell tried to get her off Ann.

  Ann began to scream, and the two other girls screamed with her. Mary Nell tugged at Corey again. “Stop, Corey.” She managed to drag her off Ann. “You’ll hurt her!”

  “I wanna hurt her!”

  Ann jumped to her feet, but instead of running, which is what Corey had expected, she ran at Corey with her head lowered and aimed right at Corey’s chest. In a moment they were a tangle of arms and legs on the ground.

  “Corey!” Mary Nell yelled once more.

  “Take it back!” Corey said, punching Ann again and again. “Take back what you said!”

  “Miss Sam’s trash!” Ann yelled.

  Mary Nell heard her that time. She joined in the fight, grabbing Ann’s hair. One of the other little girls jumped on her. The other one took off running.

  The rest passed in a blur. Corey thumped Ann’s shoulders against the ground, but Ann got her hair and pulled it till Corey’s head felt as if it was on fire. Beside her she could hear Mary Nell and the other little girl thrashing and banging on the ground.

  Then strong hands pulled her off Ann and stood her on her feet. “Just what are you doing?” an angry voice demanded.

  Corey looked up and saw a strange man, his eyes blazing and his face contorted in anger.

  “She called me—”

  “I don’t care what she called you!” He bent to lift Ann to her feet. A crowd began to gather. First just one or two people, a man who separated Mary Nell and the other girl and a woman Corey had seen somewhere before.

  Corey clung to Mary Nell, frightened for the first time. More grown-ups were coming. Somebody dragged her and Mary Nell out from under the bleachers. Somebody else separated them.

  Corey saw Miss Polly at the edge of the crowd, trying to make her way through. Then she saw Miss Sam.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Miss Polly asked. Corey tried to reach her, but there were too many people in the way.

  “That girl there started a fight with my Ann,” the man who had pulled her off Ann said. “Ann says she just jumped on her and started hitting her. That’s what she was doing when I found them.”

  Miss Polly looked in Corey’s direction. Her eyes said that this was a very serious matter.

  Some people drifted away; the band was still playing and the pep squad was still shouting cheers.

  Miss Sam reached her, but she didn’t take Corey in her arms. She just stood beside her, several feet away.

  “She hit me. I didn’t do anything.” Ann was crying now, her shoulders shaking. “She hates me. I didn’t do anything.”

  “You called me names!” Corey started toward her. “That’s not true, you called me and...” She didn’t want to finish. She didn’t want anybody to know what Ann had said about Miss Sam.

  “Mary Nell? Who started the fight?” Miss Polly asked.

  Mary Nell looked miserable. She hung her head.

  “Did Corey start the fight?”

  “Ann called her names,” Mary Nell mumbled, loyal to the end.

  “That’s not enough of a reason to hit somebody,” Miss Sam said. Corey could tell Miss Sam was angry, even though Miss Sam wasn’t looking at her. Worse, Miss Sam was disappointed. Corey felt as if there was a hole inside her and all the good things were just draining out.

  “We’ll take care of this,” Miss Sam said, still not looking at Corey. “In the meantime Corey will apologize.”

  Corey saw Mr. Joe approaching. She wondered if every single person at the football field knew about the fight. Her head was beginning to hurt, and she had a scratch on her knee. She looked down and saw that her pants, the nicest Miss Sam had bought her, were torn.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “There was a fight,” Miss Sam said.

  The woman, who had her arm around Ann, spoke. “Yes, that child you’re taking care of attacked my daughter.”

  Corey realized Ann’s mother was the lady from the drugstore. Corey glanced at Mary Nell, and Mary Nell rolled her eyes. Corey felt a little warmer inside.

  “Corey attacked your daughter?” Mr. Joe turned to her. He had the same mixture of expressions on his face as Miss Sam. “Is that true?”

  “I’ve already taken care of it, Joe,” Miss Sam said. “Corey’s going to apologize, then we’ll straighten this out at home.”

  “Mary Nell will apologize, too,” Miss Polly said. “Right now.”

  Mary Nell, looking at the ground, mumbled something that could have been the pledge of allegiance. Corey didn’t know. But everyone seemed to think it was good enough. Then all eyes were on her.

  “Not going to.” She scuffed her toe in the dirt.

  “Corey.” Mr. Joe’s voice was firm.

  “Didn’t do nothing wrong,” Corey said, not looking at him. “It was her.”

  “Did you hit her?” Mr. Joe asked.

  Corey nodded.

  “Then apologize.”

  Corey looked up. She saw the expression on Ann’s face, and she knew if she said she was sorry now that she would never be able to face her again. Ann and her friends would never leave her alone. “Not sorry,” she said. “And it’d be a lie if I said so.”

  She turned her gaze to Mr. Joe because she was way too scared to look at Miss Sam. Something had changed in his expression. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought maybe he’d liked her answer just a little, teeny bit.

  “At least she’s honest,” he told Ann’s parents. “We’ll take this matter up at home.”

  “Mr. Giovanelli, from now on keep that child away from our daughter,” Ann’s father said. “Or I’ll hold you responsible.”

  “Teach your daughter not to call Corey names, and I can guarantee that Corey won’t have anything to do with her.”

  The man made a sound low in his throat, like a cough. Then he and his wife walked away with Ann between them.

  Miss Polly marched Mary Nell up the bleachers, and the other little girl and her mother disappeared. Corey was left alone with Mr. Joe and Miss Sam. By now, everyone else had gone.

  “I’ve got to get back out front,” Mr. Joe said, kissing Miss Sam’s cheek. “Are you going to take her home?” he asked, as if Corey wasn’t even there.

  “Right away.”

  “It’s all right, sweetheart.” He touched Miss Sam’s arm. “These things happen.”

  “In front of the whole town?”

  “Yeah, why embarrass us in private when it’s much more fun in public?”

  Corey hung her head. She realized that she had made a terrible mistake. She should have lied. She still couldn’t even look at Miss Sam. Miss Sam started to walk away, and she realized she was supposed to follow. She wanted Miss Sam to put her arm around her. She wanted somebody to understand.

  But Miss Sam just kept walking, and finally Corey followed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  JOE WATCHED COREY out of the corner of his eye. She picked at her dinner, as if food no longer interested her. Her appetite had dwindled since the night of the bonfire a week before. Sam thought that since Corey had gained some much-needed weight, her appetite was tapering off to a normal level. But Joe wasn’t so sure that was it.

  “Want some cranberry sauce to go on that?” he asked. “Or are you just getting tired of turkey?”

  “I’m tired of it,” Sam said when Corey shook her head and didn’t speak. “We’ve had it four nights in a row since Thanksgiving. The rest of the leftovers go in the freezer.”

  “Tinkerbelle deserves a holiday treat,” Joe said.

  “Got you. The rest goes to Tink.”

  “It was nice of your mother to pack this up and send it home
with us. I’ll give her that.”

  “Wonderfully generous, even if she didn’t have to cook it or pack it herself.” Sam got up and began to carry dishes to the sink. “And the fact that roast turkey is to Mother like stewed roots and grass is to the rest of us doesn’t detract a bit.”

  “Give her credit. When she found out we were coming she made sure we had the traditional dinner.” He didn’t add that Kathryn obviously had pulled out all the stops just for Corey’s sake. Kathryn, for all her faults, had made an attempt to include Corey in all the festivities. Even Fischer had mended his ways and addressed occasional booming questions in the little girl’s direction.

  Only Corey had refused to enter into the spirit of the gathering.

  “Next year we eat at Mama Rose’s house with everybody else.” Sam returned for more dishes. “If my parents want to spend the holiday with us, they can come, too.”

  “No leftovers that way. There’s never anything left over after my family gets through.”

  “More reason to go there.” Sam stacked Corey’s plate on top of the others. “Corey, will you help me with the dishes?”

  “I got homework.”

  “Not enough to get you out of doing the dishes. Come on, Mr. Joe put out the dinner, so we’ve got to clean up.”

  “Can I feed Tinkerbelle?”

  “Sure.”

  Sam had answered just a little too fast. Joe knew that, even though she wasn’t admitting it, she was worried about Corey, too. But then, he and Sam didn’t talk about Corey. They could talk about almost anything else now, but not Corey.

  He stood to help them clear off the table, but Sam waved him away. “You’ve got work, don’t you?”

  “Just some papers I’ve got to look over.”

  “Why don’t you do that now?”

  Then there’ll be time tonight for other things. The words were as clear as if Sam had said them out loud. She was looking straight at him, her eyes a smoky blue. He sent her half a grin and began to look forward to having Corey asleep.

  In his study he sat back in the soft leather chair that had been last year’s Christmas present and leafed through the papers he was supposed to review. He was tired, and the words blurred in front of his face. He set them on the desk and rose to lift his grandfather’s mandolin off the wall. He strummed a chord, then another. He had never mastered trilling, the quavery, signature strum of the instrument. He remembered how the same mandolin had sounded under his grandfather’s tender ministrations. Much, much better.