October Suite

by Maxine Clair

  “In a minute,” she said.

  “October, I need to talk to you,” he said. Too, too somber.

  She dropped the wet pillowcase back into the basket and pulled his coat around her. “What’s the matter?”

  He smiled a little, but not enough for her heart to slow down.

  “Nothing. Just come on in the house.”

  She rushed ahead of him up the back steps and into the kitchen where it was warm, though now she was shivering. As soon he shut the door behind them and turned, she said, “Just tell me.”

  “Can we sit down?” he asked, pulling out a chair.

  “No,” she said. “Just tell me.”

  “I’ve been working this out in my head for a long time,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t want to make any promises I wasn’t sure I could keep....”

  “Leon, just tell me,” she said, trying to hold her mind still.

  He grinned a little. “I wanted to do it right,” he said, and he stuck his hand into the pocket of the overcoat she was still wearing. Her heart began switching gears but pumping just as fast.

  When he brought out his hand, it wasn’t holding anything she could have mistaken for a box. It was a piece of paper.

  “What’s that?”

  “Will you let me tell you?” he said. And he was definitely grinning now.

  “I’ve been writing something—this is the first page of it. I thought I wanted to surprise you with it.” He opened the sheet out. A sheet of music. “October Suite,” it said.

  He went on, “But just a while ago, when I sat down with it again, I knew I could never put everything into a piece of music, and then I knew. I was sure, and so I had to come over here.”

  She held her breath.

  His eyes were all over her face, telling and asking, and though she wanted desperately to wait for him to say the actual words, she leaped and threw her arms around him.

  “Wait! Wait!” he said. He held her so that he could see her face. “You’ll marry me, right? I mean, I haven’t bought a ring yet...”

  She told him, “Yes, you crazy man, I love you! Of course I’ll marry you.”

  And so as she sat on her porch being grateful for Leon, a sudden flood of the porch light made her jump and pull her robe together. Vergie opened the storm door and stepped onto the porch.

  “Sure is nice out here,” she said. “I’ll take morning air over air-conditioning any day.” Standing there with her back against the door and her arms folded, October could see Aunt Maude, and wondered what Carrie might have looked like if she had lived.

  Vergie and company were sharing the one bedroom she thought of as David’s. She had taken his picture down and put away the comic books: no need to set off bombs the first visit.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you-all up,” October said.

  “Not at all,” Vergie said, “You know, I don’t sleep too well away from home, but Gene and David don’t have that problem. They’ll be knocked out way after the sun is up.”

  “There’s coffee on the sink if you want some.”

  “Might as well,” Vergie said, and she went back inside. The porch light clicked off, and the paper man cruised up the block, tossing wadded papers at every porch. October went out to get hers and unfurled the headlines about more protests and boycotts and the National Guard. Below the fold, a picture of John F. Kennedy standing at the bow of a boat somewhere, looking away from the camera.

  When Vergie came back to sit with October, she wanted to know what and where and when for David. October had mentioned the Paseo swimming pool, where Cora took Eddy Junior, and where Leon knew one of the lifeguards. Vergie was scared of polio, and though October had sworn to her that nobody got polio anymore, and checked to be sure David had had all his shots, Vergie was wary. She needed to see the pool, and October would have to take her there this morning. Of course Vergie remembered Swope Park, but it wasn’t a pleasant memory, and with the protests and Emmett Till, and sit-ins and jailings, well, she wasn’t sure David should be anywhere where he wasn’t wanted.

  “You’ve got a record player, don’t you? And he can watch TV till the cows come home.”

  October promised her that if they did Swope Park, they’d only do Watermelon Hill.

  “Leon wants you-all to come eat lunch with him at the college,” October told her. “I think he wants to show off a little and test the waters with you about us getting married.”

  Vergie looked at her and half-rolled her eyes. “You’ll never be able to tell me nothing about a man who does music for a living. But you’re the one that has to live with him.”

  They sipped and talked until the sun exposed every detail of the houses across the street and turned the air sluggish. Inside again, October turned on the air and closed all the windows. In the kitchen, Gene sat with coffee, reading an old newspaper.

  October said how-do and gave him the day’s paper. “I hope you’re starving,” she said, “because I’m making everything you can think of for breakfast.”

  Gene grinned and nodded. To push him to chatting would be impossible, but he got enough across when he wanted to. October thought about the times—few—she had heard him and Vergie laughing together like girls. Love and old shoes by any name was a good fit.

  “We’re going to take a look at the swimming pool for David, and Leon wants us to eat lunch with him at his job,” Vergie told him.

  “Okay,” Gene said, and murmured something about waking up David, then said, “Oh I’ll let him sleep....”

  “Get him,” Vergie said. “It’ll take two or three shakings before he knows his name.”

  Between October and Vergie the feast grew: sausages, bacon, hash-browned potatoes, eggs, pancakes, fried apples, biscuits, orange juice, milk, and coffee—all the good stuff. They were laying it out when a blast of Ray Charles singing “I got a woman, way over town” came from the bedroom upstairs.

  David must have been awake enough to find KPRS on the radio dial. He stumbled into the kitchen dressed and yawning, eyes lighting on the food like he had never eaten.

  “Good morning,” Vergie said.

  “Hi, Momma, hi, Auntie,” he said. “I woke up thinking I was at home.”

  Silence. Bombs already? Everybody let it pass.

  October told him to sit on down, and Vergie told him, “We didn’t fix all this food to let it get cold.”

  He fell into the chair and he was still gorgeous in nothing but a plain white short-sleeved shirt and khakis. Gene said grace and they dug in. As they ate, David tried to tell knock-knock-who’s-there jokes and Gene stopped him. It seemed to October that telling jokes was David’s way of getting past the fact that they were leaving. But she didn’t dare say it.

  Late morning, hunkered down on 180 acres of land in Jericho Park, the dozen or so brick buildings of Missouri State College were mostly one story high, sprawling on the manicured grounds.

  “Right nice,” Vergie said, looking at the huge urns choked with geraniums at the entranceway to every building. October had parked the car, and as they crossed the quad, she saw it through their eyes: white-trimmed buildings, benches around tree trunks, black-eyed Susans like a yellow pond on the green. She thought of how Leon might see the four of them: a proud-looking woman in a pale blue shirtwaist dress, an older man studying the ground like the stones would roll out of their cement, a boy lumbering along on short legs, arms hanging too long at his sides, and bringing up the rear, a happy woman wearing a linen dress the color of smoke with a don’t-you-know red patent-leather belt and red sandals.

  October pointed out the buildings and steered them toward Fine Arts. Near the path across the quad, an art class sat sketching the buildings, and David stopped to watch them.

  “I’ll bet I can draw that,” he called.

  October and Vergie went on, and Gen
e stopped to wait for him.

  “I wish he’d get that excited about his arithmetic,” Vergie said. Just something to say. October didn’t give it much thought.

  “He’s nine, and they get more interested in other things,” she said. “As long as his grades don’t suffer too much.”

  They walked farther, slowly, looking back, Vergie quiet. At any minute October expected Vergie to start finding reasons for David not to stay. Better to talk about school.

  “How did he do for the year?”

  “He did all right,” Vergie said.

  October looked back and saw David trying to see over the shoulders of two students.

  Gene called him, told him to come on. But David started waving for Gene to come back.

  “Come on, David,” Vergie called, and he listened.

  Gene had caught up to them and they wandered through talk about school, October careful not to step on any toes. Grades were good.

  “He could have done better,” Vergie said. Real definite. “He’s smart enough, if he’d just stay with it.”

  October thought she remembered something about average marks in reading once, and found herself wondering if Vergie had let his laziness in reading spoil his other grades.

  She asked again, “He didn’t do too badly in arithmetic, did he?”

  “Well, he’s not making A’s,” Vergie said.

  Things were beginning to sound a little more like a problem. October wanted to know—exactly—what kind of grades David got. But tender toes and all, she wouldn’t press.

  They waited at the curb. Gene stood in the middle of the walk waiting for David. As they crossed the grass toward the street, Vergie said, “His grades were not that great.”

  This was new. Vergie had never let out this much about David. And October couldn’t have been more pleased. And more curious.

  “Did he fail anything?”

  Watch it. She could feel the air getting tight. Tread softly. “Because if he did,” she said, “he can catch up.”

  By the way Vergie placed one foot in front of the other and didn’t look up, October knew not to say another word.

  “Nothing like that,” Vergie said. And then she softened it. “But you know he pretty much did real bad in reading, and didn’t do a whole lot better in arithmetic. Music, gym, art, all that other stuff, he got S’s, but that stuff doesn’t count.”

  Should she say anything or not? Why was Vergie telling her so much and not enough?

  “It’s nothing me and Gene didn’t already know,” she said. “Me and Gene have been talking. I don’t care about him going to college. I mean, Aunt Maude and Gene did fine at the mill. But he does have to get a diploma.”

  Hearing that October had to breathe and think hard before she said anything.

  “You know, Vergie, that doesn’t have to be the case. Just because his grades are low one year doesn’t mean that he’s dumb.”

  “Oh, I know David is smart,” Vergie said. “But I’m just telling you why I made him bring his books. We read to him a lot. He needs to study his arithmetic and read his reader every night ...”

  David and Gene had caught up, and they changed the subject.

  “They were drawing,” David said. “I draw things right out of my head. I never copy stuff, I just think it up.”

  Wrong time to be getting excited about drawing.

  October had the bright idea that after lunch they should stop at the bookstore and she would buy David any book he wanted. Neither David nor Gene seemed to think that was a good idea, and Vergie was so-so.

  “I guess it’ll be all right, as long as it’s not a comic book,” Vergie said.

  Right then October decided she would see for herself. She wondered what the school had been giving him. Wouldn’t it be too good if, when Vergie and Gene came back, she had David interested in reading books? She could send him home with enough for the whole summer.

  Just as they got to the door of Fine Arts, Leon came breezing out, looking too good. White shirt with rolled sleeves, and linen slacks that October had never seen before.

  “Hey, everybody,” he said. “I saw you-all coming. That’s my office right up there,” and he pointed to his window. “October tells me you-all are headed for St. Louis.”

  “Yes,” Vergie said. She pasted on a smile. “We haven’t seen you since New York.”

  “Right,” Leon said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you-all hadn’t come.”

  Vergie smiled a real smile, remembering.

  “Right now I’m just another teacher at the college, trying to put my program over on the young rebels.”

  Vergie thought that was funny, and she laughed. October thought Vergie must be starting to like him.

  “Hi.” He smiled at October, too, and shook Gene’s hand, and, “Hey man,” to David.

  “I heard ‘Mood Man’ on the radio,” David said.

  Leon laughed. “You like it?”

  October had never heard of what must have been one of Leon’s songs.

  Leon said to Vergie, “He sure knows how to make a man feel good. Naming my tunes.”

  “Oh, he’s like that,” Vergie said. “Real quick when it comes to facts and figures.”

  Leon took them by to say hi to Kenneth, gave them the tour, and had finagled a picnic lunch out behind his building, where shade kept them cool and private. A nice easy lunch.

  It was not until they had gotten back to the house and had a good enough evening, not until Gene and David had settled down to snoozing in front of the TV and Vergie had begun repacking for St. Louis that October found the courage to mess with the peace.

  “I know you’re going to be worried about him,” October said Vergie was balling socks, and she tossed a pair onto the bed. She held up her hand as if to say, “Don’t say it.”

  “All I want,” Vergie said, “is that you keep him safe and make him read every day.”

  October heard the trembling. “I will,” she said.

  The next morning, Vergie and Gene left like they were going to the grocery store, not turning around to wave, not looking back.

  October let the morning go by just listening to David talk about anything. On his own, David had bathed, brushed his hair, and put on shorts and his favorite high-top tennis shoes. They had had pancakes and stories about his friends at home. And after lunch she thought she could make a system and keep her word to Vergie.

  According to the schedule she sketched out, each morning after breakfast she would sit at the dining room table, have a half-hour reading lesson, a short break, and half an hour of arithmetic. Then fun and lunch. And then, if he needed it, they could read another page or two in the afternoon or before bed. Otherwise, he was there to have fun. Eddy Junior was younger, but he knew the kids around the neighborhood. And there were Donetta and Kenneth’s kids, too. And Leon and swimming and the movies at the Lincoln.

  For the first day, thinking she’d be wise to start with something he could already do, she dusted off an old Heath reader. That would make him comfortable. Then she would push him. She pulled out tablets, pencils, dictionary, spellers, even old sets of flash cards with diphthongs and vowels. All kinds of tools.

  After lunch, David took his seat at the dining room table and waited for her to sit down beside him. He was definitely more quiet. Scared, she thought Okay. Open the venetian blinds, turn up the air conditioner, arrange the tablets, and she had the right mood. This was going to be serious school. But only for half an hour.

  She told him that she just wanted to see what kind of problems he was having and she opened the blue-backed Heath reader. Told him to choose a page to read aloud.

  He brought his hands from his lap to the book and said softly, “I haven’t ever seen this book.”

  “Yes, I know,” she s
aid. “It’s one of mine from years ago, but we can start with it. Then we’ll do yours if you want to.”

  David opened the cover and saw the issue stamp. “Is this your school?” he asked, stalling.

  “Why don’t you find a story, any story, and read me a few pages,” she said.

  “I don’t want to read any stories out of this book,” he said, but softly, babyish almost. And never raising his eyes.

  What to do? He needed to want to read, and she was making him unhappy. “You haven’t even looked at it,” she said.

  “It’s for little kids,” he said. Now his jaw was tight. He ran his finger along the joint between the halves of her shiny mahogany table.

  “It is for primary grades, but I thought we could start with something easy.”

  “I hate reading,” he said. He hugged his waist and bit his fingernail.

  She could hear his breathing. How could she get him to try? A few choice things buzzed through her mind, but she knew good and well that she wouldn’t be able to force him to do anything.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said, taking the book from his hands. “We’ll only do fifteen minutes today. Just fifteen minutes. This is supposed to be your vacation. We’ll work on one story in this book to get an idea of where to go from here.”

  “I’d rather read from my own book,” David said.

  Compromise and you get success. “All right, then,” she said, “choose something and read me a page.”

  David slipped his reader out of the stack and turned quickly to a story entitled “Ghost of the Lagoon.”

  The island of Bora Bora, where Mako lived, is far away in the South Pacific. It is not a large island—you can paddle around it in a single day—but the main body of it rises straight out of the sea, very high into the air, like a castle. Waterfalls trail down the faces of the cliffs. As you look upward, you see wild goats leaping from crag to crag.

  Amazing. He read with expression. Knew what he was reading.

  Mako had been born on the very edge of the sea and most of his working hours were spent in the waters of the lagoon, which was nearly enclosed by two outstretched arms of the island. He was very clever with his hands; he had made a harpoon that was as straight as an arrow, and tipped with five pointed iron spears. He had made a canoe, hollowing it out of a tree. It was not a very big canoe—only a little longer than his own height. It had an outrigger, a sort of balancing pole, fastened to one side to keep the boat from tipping over. The canoe was just large enough to hold Mako and his little dog, Afa. They were great companions, these two.