A Place so Foreign
Page 8
want to fight with you, James. Iwas just tellin' you what my Mama said."
"Well, your Mama ought to mind her own business," I said, baiting him.
That did it. He stepped over and popped me one, right in the nose. Oly and I hadbeen chums since we could walk, and we'd had a few fights in our days but thistime it was different. I was so _angry_ at him, at my Mama, at my Pa, at NewJerusalem, and we just kept on swinging at each other until Mr Adelson came outto ring the bell and separated us. My nose was sore and I was limping, and I'dtorn Oly's jacket and bent his fingers back, so he cradled his hand in the crookof his arm.
"Boys!" Mr Adelson said. "What the hell do you think you're doing? You'resupposed to be friends."
His language shocked me, but I was still plenty angry. "He's no friend of mine!"I said.
"That's fine with me," Oly said and glared at me.
The other kids were milling around, and Mr Adelson gave us both a look thatcould melt steel, then rang the bell.
#
I could hardly concentrate in class that day. My Mama getting married? A new Pa?It couldn't be true. But in my mind, I kept seeing my Mama and that Johnstonekissing under the mistletoe, and him sitting in my Pa's chair, drinking hiswhiskey.
Oly's desk was next to mine, and he kept shooting me dirty looks. Finally, Ileaned over and whispered, "Cut it out, you idiot."
Oly said, "You're the idiot. I think you got your brains scrambled in France,James."
"I'll scramble your brains!"
"Gentlemen," said Mr Adelson. "Do you have something you'd like to share withthe class?"
"No sir," we said together, and exchanged glares.
"James, perhaps you'd like to come up to the front and finish the lesson?"
"Sir?" I said, looking at the blackboard. He'd been going through quadratics, anelaborate first-principles proof.
"I believe you know this already, don't you? Come up to the front and finish thelesson."
Slowly, I got up from my desk, leaving my slate on my desk, and made my way upto the front. Some of the kids giggled. I picked up a piece of chalk from thechalk-well, and started to write on the board.
Mr Adelson walked back to my seat and sat down. I stopped and looked over myshoulder, and he gave me a little scooting gesture that meant go on. I did, andby the end of the hour, I found that I was enjoying myself. I stopped frequentlyfor questions, and erased the board over and over again, filling it with steadycolumns of numbers and equations. I stopped noticing Mr Adelson in my seat, andwhen he stood and thanked me and told us we could eat our lunches, it seemedlike no time at all had passed.
Mr Adelson looked up from my essay. "James, I'd like to have a chat with you.Stay behind, please."
"Sit," he said, offering me the chair at his desk. He sat on one of thefront-row desks, and stared at me for a long moment.
"What was that mess this morning all about, James?" he asked.
"Oly and I had an argument," I said, sullenly.
"I could see that. What was it about, if you don't mind my asking?"
"He said something about my Mama," I said.
"I see," he said. "Well, having met your mother, I feel confident in saying thatshe's more than capable of defending herself. Am I right?"
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Then we won't see a repeat?"
"No, sir," I said. I didn't plan on talking to Oly ever again.
"Then we'll say no more about it. Now, about this morning's lesson: you did verywell."
"It was a dirty trick," I said.
He grinned like a pirate. "I suppose it was. I wouldn't have played it on you ifI didn't have every confidence in your abilities, though." He leaned across andpicked up my essay from his desk. "It was this that convinced me, really. Thisis as good as anything I've seen in scholarly journals. I've half a mind to sendit to the _Idler_."
"I'm just a kid!"
"You're an extraordinary boy. I'm tempted to let you teach all the classes, andtake up whittling."
He said it so deadpan, I couldn't tell if he was kidding me. "Oh, you can't dothat! I'm not nearly ready to take over."
He laughed. "You're readier than you think, but I expect the town council wouldstop my salary unless I did _some_ of the work around here. Still, I thinkthat's the most active I've seen you since you came to my class, and I'm runningout of ideas to keep you busy. Maybe I'll keep you teaching maths. I'll give youmy lesson plan to take home before school's out."
"Yes, sir."
#
Mr Adelson gave me a stack of papers tied up with twine after he dismissed theclass for the day. I went home and did my chores, then unwrapped the parcel inthe parlour. The lesson plans were there, laid out, day by day, and in thecentre of them was a smaller parcel, wrapped in coloured paper. "MerryChristmas," was written across it, in his hand.
I opened it, and found a slim book. "War of the Worlds," by Verne. For somereason, it rang a bell. I thought that maybe it had been on our bookcase in 75,but somehow, it hadn't made it back home with us. I opened it, and read theinscription he'd written: "From one traveller to another, Merry Christmas."
I forced myself to read the lesson plans for the next month before I allowedmyself to start the Verne, and once I started, I found I couldn't stop. Mama hadto drag me away for dinner.
#
My trip back to 1975 wasn't planned, but it wasn't an accident, either. We'dgotten a new load of hay in for our team, and Mama added stacking it in thehorsebarn to my chores. I'd been consciously avoiding the horsebarn since Pa haddisappeared. Every time I looked at it, I felt a little hexed, a littlefrightened.
But Mama had a philosophy: a boy should face up to his fears. She'd beenterrified of spiders when she was a girl, and she told me that she had made apoint of picking up every spider she saw and letting it crawl around on herface. After a year of that, she said, she never met a spider that frightenedher.
Mama had been sending me to the store more and more, too, and having MrJohnstone over for dinner every Friday night. She knew I didn't like him onelittle bit, and she said that I would just have to learn to live with what Ididn't like, and if that was the only thing I learned from her, it would beenough.
I preferred the horsebarn.
I worked close to the door the first day, which is no way to do it, of course:if you blocked the door, it just made it harder to get at the back when the timecame. The way to do it is to first clear out whatever hay is left over, move itout to the pasture, and then fill in from the back forward.
Mama told me so, that first night, when she came out to inspect my work. "Yousure must love working out here," she said. "If you do it that way, you'll beout here stacking for twice as long. Well, you have your fun, but I still expectyou to be getting your homework and regular chores done. Come in and clean upfor supper now."
I jammed the pitchfork into a bale, and washed for supper.
The next afternoon, I resolved to do it right. I moved the bales I'd stacked upby the door to a corner, and then started cleaning out the back. Before long,I'd uncovered the door into 1975. "James," Mama called, from the house."Dinner!"
I took a long look at the door. The wood on the edges had aged to thesilvery-brown of the rest of the barn-boards, and it looked like it had beenthere forever. I could hardly remember a time when it wasn't there.
I went in for supper.
The next morning, I picked up my lunch and my schoolbooks, kissed Mama good-bye,and walked out. I stood on our porch for a long time, staring at the horsebarn.I remembered the brave explorers in Verne's books. I looked over my shoulder, atthe closed door of our house, then walked slowly to the horsebarn. I swung thedoor open, then walked to the back. The triple-bolts had rusted somewhat andtook real shoving to slide back. One of them was stubborn, so I picked up therake and pried it back with the handle, thinking of how ingenious that was.
I gave the door my shoulder and shoved, and it swung back, complaining on itshinges. On the other side was the still-familiar dark of our 1975 apartment.
Istepped into it, and closed the door behind me.
"Lights," I said, and they came on.
The old place was just like the day we left it. It wasn't even dusty, and as Iheard the familiar trundle of the robutler, I knew why. My Pa's easy chair satin the parlour, with a print-out of the day's _Salt Lake City Bugler_ folded onthe side-table. I walked to one wall and laid my palm against it, the familiarcool glassy stuff it was made of. "Window," I said, and wiped a line across thewall. Wherever my hand wiped went transparent. It was a sunny day in 1975 --1980, by