Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve known him all my life.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “Not really. Not like you mean. But he’s kind of fun to talk to. He’s really smart.”

  “He’s not very cute.”

  “He’s not so bad.”

  “I don’t think he’s cute at all.” Verla was looking across the little library room. One table was filled with boys, most of them seniors. They were playing a game, like hockey, with pencils and a wad of paper. Mrs. Shurtliff, the librarian, had been to their table twice already, warning them that they could lose their study hall privileges. But they were at it again. They kept laughing and watching out for Mrs. Shurtliff.

  “Those boys are so ridiculous,” Verla said. “They never take anything serious.”

  “Most of the seniors who amounted to anything dropped out to go into the service last year.”

  “That Nealey boy—Duane—he’s kind of cute.”

  “He’s dumb as a fence post, Verla. I’d never go out with him.”

  “Since when did you care about that? Is that what you like about Reed—that he’s an A student?”

  “How did you guess?” LaRue said, and she laughed. But she decided that maybe she should get a little reading done for her English class. That was the hardest class for her to fake her way through. She opened her copy of Silas Marner. “I’ll tell you the truth about Reed,” she said. “He does his homework, so he gets pretty good grades. But he’s not a whole lot smarter than that basketball he bounces around.”

  Verla giggled. She was a tiny girl with hair that looked reddish in the sun, but here in the library it seemed less than blonde, too light to call brown. She had pale, almost colorless skin, except for a smattering of freckles. But she did have a cute round face, with big eyes, and a lively sort of smile. She was not beautiful, but she was very popular. She never missed a school dance even though she didn’t have a steady boyfriend.

  “If I looked like you, LaRue, I’d pick out the best-looking boys in the whole school—and wrap them around my little finger.”

  “Hey, I’ve got Reed wrapped up, nice and tight. And there are some other guys waiting in line.” She laughed, and then she breathed on her fingernails and rubbed them in a polishing motion on her sweater. In some ways she liked this image of herself. On an impulse, she stood up. “Watch this,” she said. “I’m going to test my powers on those boys.”

  “Oh, brother. Look out,” Verla said, and she giggled.

  LaRue walked across the room toward the table where the seniors were sitting. As she approached, all six heads came up. “Young men,” she said, and she gave them a sly smile, “you are distracting those of us who want to take our studies seriously. How can we girls think when all you big strong boys are over here drawing our attention away from our books?”

  “Come here,” a boy named Tom Denkers said. “Sit down by me, LaRue, and I’ll study you—or I mean study with you.”

  That got a big laugh from the boys. But LaRue waved her finger at him and said, “Naughty. Naughty. Now that’s just what I’m talking about. We need a lot less laughing around here and a lot more attention to the things that matter.”

  “I can see what matters,” a boy named Brig Evans said. “I’m giving it all my attention.”

  She stepped closer and began to pet his hair. “You’re such a cute little kitty,” she said. “Let me hear you purr.”

  He leaned his head against her side and made a buzzing noise. All the other boys howled with laughter, and suddenly Mrs. Shurtliff was on her way. LaRue decided she’d better make her getaway. She added a little extra swing to her stride as she walked back to Verla—and she knew that she had twelve eyes locked onto her. When she sat down, Verla asked, “What did you say to those guys? They’re all about falling out of their seats.”

  “It’s not what you say, Verla. It’s how you say it.”

  “LaRue, you’re really something. I could never do anything like that.”

  LaRue laughed, and she did enjoy the sense of her own power. But when study hall ended and she walked down the hall to her next class, Brig caught up with her and tried to pursue the little conversation. The problem was, his attempts at wit were obvious and stupid, and now she knew that she would be getting phone calls from him—and invitations that would force her to lie. Sometimes she thought she would be better off to announce that she was going steady with Reed. But that would get back to her father and cause a fuss, and it would also lead to more and more tedious evenings with the boy. The only problem was, she really didn’t think she knew anyone else at East High she wanted to go with.

  That afternoon, when LaRue got home, she did resolve that she was going to dig into Silas Marner and at least get enough read to give herself a fighting chance on the test the next day. But she had been reading for only a few minutes when someone knocked at the front door. Beverly yelled up the stairs, “LaRue, it’s for you.”

  LaRue had an idea she knew who it was, and she was surprised at how pleased she felt. She walked downstairs. “Hi, Cecil,” she said when she saw him through the screen door. Beverly had left him standing on the porch.

  “I wondered, would you like to go for a walk?” Cecil asked. “It’s pretty warm outside.”

  All the snow was off the ground now, and even though the trees weren’t budding out, hyacinths and tulips had begun to stick up from the ground. LaRue liked the way the earth was beginning to smell, like winter’s back was finally broken.

  “I’d better not,” she said. “I need to get a book read for English. I have a test tomorrow.”

  Cecil laughed. “When LaRue Thomas turns you down for a book, you know you’ve gotten the brushoff,” he said. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

  LaRue was disappointed he had given up so easily. “Let’s sit on the porch for a minute,” she said. “But not long. I’ve got this whole book I should read tonight. I was supposed to start it about two weeks ago.”

  “Which one is it?”

  “Silas Marner.”

  “Hey, it’s short. It won’t take you two hours to read.”

  “Apparently I don’t read as fast as you do, Cecil.”

  “Do you want to know the plot?”

  “Sure.” Suddenly LaRue realized she had a good thing going.

  “Okay. Go for a walk with me, and I’ll tell you the whole story—complete with the symbolism Mrs. Drake will find in it, and the likely essay questions, with answers.”

  “Cecil, my boy, just let me grab my coat.”

  LaRue ran upstairs, got her spring coat from her closet, and ran back down. She told herself she didn’t care who saw her. Cecil would only add a little complexity to her image. “Okay, tell me the whole story,” she said, as she stepped out the door.

  “All right.” He grinned. “Silas is an old weaver with bad eyes. He’s been hoarding up gold all his life. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, these two brothers, who are rich and spoiled, get into a lot of gambling debt and . . .”

  He told the story in dazzling—but rather confusing—detail. LaRue could hardly follow it all.

  “So this poor woman is wandering around or something, and she dies, and her baby daughter toddles off to Silas’s house. He thinks she’s his bag of gold, but—”

  “What?”

  “Remember, he’s got bad eyes, and she has golden hair.”

  “Are you making this up?”

  “No, no. He raises this little girl, and then the rich brother wants her back. But the little girl—Eppy—she sticks with Silas, and she marries her childhood friend. Oh, and they empty the pond for some reason, and Silas gets his gold back.”

  “You must be kidding.”

  “No. It’s not so bad. Mrs. Drake will ask you to describe the ‘theme’ of the book, and all you have to say is that Silas is a simple, pure man—be sure to use that word—and he receives his just reward, which is far better than gold. He finds out gold doesn’t mean a thing compared
to his love for his lovely Eppy.”

  “Oh, brother. It’s lucky you came along,” LaRue said. “I could have actually read that book.”

  “I shouldn’t make fun of it, really. It’s not one of my favorites—as you can tell—but it’s not as bad as I make it sound.”

  “I’d rather go to the movies.”

  Cecil laughed. LaRue could see he was looking up toward Parley’s Canyon, probably thinking how beautiful the snow was. She didn’t care. She just wanted spring to come, and golden summer, when she would be out of school.

  They walked east, and then south on Thirteenth East, past town, and out toward the farms and orchards that lay beyond. LaRue loved the clear air, the feel of the sun on her face and hair, but she wondered what the walk was doing to her new saddle shoes. She wished she had changed them before she had left the house.

  Cecil talked mostly about essay questions that Mrs. Drake might come up with. LaRue pretended to be excited about all the information, but in truth, she felt guilty. She knew exactly what her MIA teacher, Sister Galbraith, would say about her cheating this way.

  Cecil was wearing a gabardine jacket that made him look like an old man. He took if off after a time and swung it over his shoulder. And then, obviously trying to sound casual, he asked, “So what’s happened to that boyfriend of yours, LaRue? The one at the USO?”

  The question took LaRue by surprise. “How do you know about him?”

  “I don’t know. Someone told me you had a boyfriend from the East somewhere.”

  “He was just someone I danced with. I didn’t care that much about him—until he left.”

  “Do you write to him then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds kind of serious.”

  “I don’t know.” LaRue was starting to get warm too. She unbuttoned her coat to let a little more air in. “He was really nuts about me, Cecil. I think he actually does love me. Reed might have a crush on me, but it’s all kind of kids’ stuff. Ned wanted to marry me.”

  “At your age?”

  “It was stupid, in a way. But it was pretty nice to have someone feel that way about me.”

  “So what’s going to happen? Is he going to come home after the war and take you away?”

  “I doubt it. For a while, I thought maybe I’d be interested in him. But his letters are full of spelling mistakes.”

  “Oh, no!” Cecil leaned his head back and laughed. His voice was strong, usually, but when he laughed hard he made high-pitched little squeaks that delighted LaRue.

  “No, wait,” LaRue said. “You didn’t let me finish.”

  “Oh, all right. But for a girl who doesn’t like to read, and who likes movies better than literature, you’re suddenly sounding a lot like Mrs. Drake.”

  “I don’t care about the spelling exactly. I probably misspell words in my letters too. But it just reminds me that he’s probably never going to go to college, never make anything

  of himself. If I ever get married, I want a husband who’ll let

  me . . .” She wasn’t sure whether she should finish her sentence. She thought it over and then said, “Okay, I’m going to tell you the truth.”

  “All right.”

  “I want to be rich. And I want to get that way myself. I want to own a company and run it—like my dad, only something bigger than his little plant. I want to be the boss. And I want to live in a fancy house and have tons of nice clothes. And I want to go on trips to Europe and have a cook and a housekeeper and . . . I don’t know. All the things rich people have.”

  “Maybe you’d better read Silas Marner after all.”

  “It’s too late. I want all the gold I can get. My dad wants to bring my brothers into his business. But he never thinks about Beverly and me. So I want to start my own company and make his look like small potatoes. The problem with Ned is that he’s just going to get a job somewhere and work all his life. I want more than that.” She looked at Cecil and smiled. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That I’m shallow.”

  “Well, yeah. But I already knew that.”

  She turned and punched him in the shoulder—hard.

  Cecil pretended to suffer from the blow, but he was at his worst when he tried to play around. He just didn’t know how to do it, and he ended up looking goofy. To make things worse, he put his jacket over his shoulders without slipping his arms into the sleeves, as if trying to look like a movie star. But he was looking serious by then, and he said, rather carefully, “But now I’ll tell you the truth about me. I’m just as shallow.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “But not quite in the same way.”

  “Not so good.”

  “I want to be famous. I want to be a scientist and make some incredible discovery that will put my name in history books forever. And it’s all about revenge. I want to come back here to Sugar House someday, walk down the street, and have my old school friends say, ‘Look. It’s Cecil Broadbent, the famous scientist. I actually went to school with him.’”

  “Their kids will all want your autograph.”

  “Hey, that’s a great touch. I’m going to add that to my fantasy.”

  “Reed Porter’s fourteen empty-headed sons, all stars of various sports teams, will say, ‘Dad, you actually knew him?’”

  “No. They won’t be smart enough to understand what I’ve done.”

  LaRue laughed at that, but she felt guilty again. She knew that Reed was no genius, but he was sweet—and he read more books than she did. She knew she had no right to make fun of him.

  “Do you want to know my whole plan?”

  “Sure.”

  “First, I don’t want to go to the U. I want to get away from here. That’s one of the reasons I study so hard. I need a scholarship. I want to go to Harvard or MIT or maybe Columbia. I want to live in Cambridge or New York, and I want to be around people who won’t mind if I’m smart. I never want to live here again after next year.”

  “But you’ll make a trip here once in a while, just to be admired.”

  “Yeah. I guess. But the main thing is, I want out. And I want to do something really big with my life. I know I’ll probably get stuck in the war for a while, but I think someone will decide to put me behind a typewriter, not in a tank, and I’ll get through that.”

  “All that sounds good to me, Cecil. Maybe that’s what I should do.”

  “Go to war?”

  “No. Study. Get a scholarship. Go away to college.”

  “How are your grades so far?”

  “My grades aren’t all that bad,” she said. “I just don’t know anything. Maybe I’ll start reading my assignments.”

  “Silas Marner?”

  “No. I don’t want to be that pure and good.”

  Cecil chuckled. He pointed down at a muddy spot in the pathway. They were beyond sidewalks now. LaRue walked around the mud, and then she looked off toward the west where a cherry orchard, the limbs of the trees still bare, made crooked scrawls against the fading blue horizon. She wanted time to pass, wanted the leaves to bud out, and then she wanted a year—no, two—to pass away quickly. She wanted the war to be over, and she wanted to qualify for real life. What she didn’t know was how she would live, exactly, when all the choices were up to her.

  That suggested another question. “What about the Church?” she asked Cecil.

  “What about it?”

  “Is it going to be part of your life?”

  “I don’t know. To me, right now, it’s just part of this place I hate so much—what I want to get away from. I’m not religious, to tell the truth. But maybe I’ll feel different about that someday.” He hesitated and then added, “Your dad would be shocked if he heard me say that.”

  “It doesn’t take much to shock him,” LaRue said. But she was thinking about Cecil’s dreams. She didn’t struggle with her dad as much as she used to, but the idea of being on her own, of making decisions without answering to her parents�
�it all sounded appealing. Maybe she would try to go away to college too.

  “What about you? How do you feel about the Church, LaRue?”

  LaRue knew that she believed in guilt, in God, and in prayer, more or less in that order, and that she had even felt moved a few times in her life by the presence of something refined and right—especially at Gene’s funeral. She knew she believed in a life after death, and that Gene still existed. But the Church, for LaRue, was meetings and rules and Dad. Right now she thought she could settle for a little less of all three.

  An image came to LaRue’s mind: she saw herself with those senior boys in the library earlier that day. She had loved that moment when she had basked in their attention, manipulated their reaction to her. But she didn’t like that side of herself, however much she played upon it. She liked herself immensely better when she was with Cecil. And yet he, finally, was not the answer either. She longed to feel that she was not faking, not exploiting, not trying to satisfy someone else. She had no idea what it would take to feel that, entirely, but she had an idea that getting away from home might be the right first step. And it wasn’t only rebellion. Maybe she would finally get to know God if he weren’t sitting on the stand at Church every week, wearing a white shirt and tie.

  “My problem isn’t with the Church,” she said. “Not exactly. It’s mostly with me.”

  They walked for some time in silence after that. And then Cecil said, “LaRue, I’ll say this much. You’re not shallow.”

  She smiled, and she nodded, and then she took hold of his arm.

  Chapter 10

  Alex and Otto rested, even slept a little, and watched as the sun came up. They had parachuted into a field during the night, early Monday morning, on March 19, and then they had retreated to the woods and buried their parachutes. For a time they had worked their way through the forest, moving steadily toward their objective: a village called Brünen, near the town of Wesel. But they had come to an open area, with a village in the middle, and they knew better than to be caught moving about in the night. So they waited for morning. Once the sun was up, and they saw people stirring at a farm not far off, Alex and Otto hurried out to the road and then walked on through the village.