Ghost Story

speech.

'I've come to quiz you, schoolteacher,' she said. 'There's been talk.'

'Already?' I asked.

'You make your ending in your manner of beginning, and how you begin is how you'll go on. I've heard from Mariana Birdwood that you tolerate misbehavior in your classes.'

'I don't believe I did,' I said.

'Her Ethel claims you did.'

I could not put a face to the name Ethel Birdwood, but I remembered calling it out-she was one of the older girls, the fifteen-year-olds, I thought. 'And what does Ethel Birdwood claim I tolerated?'

'It's that Fenny Bate. Didn't he use fists on another boy? Right in front of your nose?'

'I spoke to him.'

'Spoke? Speakin's no good. Why didn't you use your ferule?'

'I don't possess one,' I said.

Now she really was shocked. 'But you must beat them,' she finally got out. 'It's the only way. You must ferule one or two every day. And Fenny Bate more than the rest.'

'Why particularly him?'

'Because he is bad.'

'I saw that he is troubled, slow, disturbed,' I said, 'but I don't think that I saw that he was bad.'

'He is. He is bad. And the other children expect him to be beaten. If your ideas are too uppity for us, then you'll have to leave the school. It's not only the children who expect you to use the ferule.' She turned as if to go out. 'I thought I would do you the kindness of speaking to you before my husband hears that you have been neglecting your duties. Mind you, you'll take my advice. There's no teaching without beating.'

'But what makes Fenny Bate so notorious?' I asked, ignoring that horrific last remark. 'It would be unjust to persecute a boy who needs help.'

'The ferule's all the help he needs. He's not bad, he's badness itself. You should make him bleed and keep him quiet-keep him down. I'm only trying to help you, schoolmaster. We have use of the little extra money your allowance brings us.' With that she left me. I did not even have time to ask her about the peculiar man I had seen that afternoon.

Well, I had no intention of doing further damage to the town scapegoat.

(Milly Sheehan, her face puckered with distaste, set down the ashtray she had been pretending to polish, glanced at the window to make sure the drapes were closed and edged around the door. Sears, pausing in his story, saw that she had left it open a crack.)

3

Sears James, pausing in his story and thinking with annoyance that Milly's eavesdropping was becoming less subtle every month, was unaware of an event which had occurred that afternoon in town and would affect all of their lives. This was unremarkable in itself, the arrival of a striking young woman on a Trailways bus- a young woman who stepped out of the bus on the corner of the bank and the library and looked around with an expression of confident satisfaction like that of a successful woman returning for a nostalgic look at her home town. That was what she suggested, holding a small suitcase in her hand and smiling slightly in a sudden fall of brilliant leaves, and you would have said, watching her, that her success was the measure of her revenge. She looked, with her long handsome coat and her abundance of dark hair, as if she had come back to rejoice discreetly over how far she had come-as if that were half the pleasure she felt. Milly Sheehan, out shopping for the doctor's groceries, saw her standing by the stop as the bus rolled away toward Binghamton and thought for a moment that she knew her; as did Stella Hawthorne, who was having a cup of coffee beside the window of the Village Pump restaurant. Still smiling, the dark-haired girl strode past the window, and Stella turned her head to watch her cross the town square and go up the steps of the Archer Hotel. Her companion, an associate professor of anthropology at the nearby SUNY college, named Harold Sims, said, 'The scrutiny one beautiful woman gives another! But I've never seen you do it before, Stel.'

She, who detested being called 'Stel' said, 'Did you think she was beautiful?'

'I'd be a liar if I said I didn't.'

'Well, if you think I'm beautiful too, I guess it's all right.' She smiled rather automatically at Sims, who was twenty years younger than herself and infatuated, and looked back at the Archer Hotel, where the tall young woman was just negotiating the door and disappearing within.

'If it's all right, why are you staring?'

'Oh, it's just-' Stella closed her mouth. 'It's just nothing at all. That's the sort of woman you ought to be taking to lunch, not a battered old monument like me.'

'Jesus, if you think that,' Sims said and tried to take her hand beneath the table. She brushed his hand aside with a touch of her fingers. Stella Hawthorne had never appreciated being fondled in restaurants. She would have liked to have given his paw a good hard slap.

'Stella, give me a break.'

She looked straight into his mild brown eyes and said, 'Hadn't you better get back to all your nice little students?'

In the meantime the young woman was checking into the hotel. Mrs. Hardie, who had been running the Archer Hotel with her son since the death of her husband, emerged from her office and came up to the lovely young person on the other side of the desk. 'May I help you?' she asked, and thought how am I going to keep Jim from this one?

'I'll need a room with a bath,' the girl said. 'I'd like to stay here until I can find a place to rent somewhere in town.'

'Oh, how nice,' said Mrs. Hardie. 'You're moving to Milburn? Well, I think that's real sweet. Most all the young people here nowadays just can't wait to get out. Like my Jim, he'll take your bags up, he thinks every day here is another day in jail. New York is where he wants to go. Would that be where you're from?'

'I've lived there. But some of my family lived here once.'

'Well, here are our rates, and here's the register,' said Mrs. Hardie, sliding a mimeographed sheet of paper and the big leather-bound register across the counter to her. 'You'll find this a real nice quiet hotel, most of the folks here are residential, just like a boardinghouse really, but with the service of a hotel, and no loud parties at night.' The young woman had nodded at the rates and was signing the register. 'No discos, not on your life, and I have to tell you straight off, no men in your room past eleven.'

'Fine,' the girl said, turning the register back to Mrs. Hardie, who read the name written in a clear elegant handwriting: Anna Mostyn, with an address given in the West Eighties in New York.

'Oh, that's good,' said Mrs. Hardie, 'you never know how girls will take that these days, but'-she looked up at the new guest's face, and was stopped short by the indifference in the long blue eyes. Her first, almost unconscious thought was she's a cold one, and this was followed by the perfectly conscious reflection that this girl would have no trouble handling Jim. 'Anna's such a nice old-fashioned name.'

'Yes.'

Mrs. Hardie, a little disconcerted, rang the bell for her son.

'I'm really a very old-fashioned sort of person,' the girl said.

'Didn't you say you had family here in town?'

'I did, but it was a long time ago.'

'It's just that I didn't recognize the name.'

'No, you wouldn't. An aunt of mine lived here once.

Her name was Eva Galli. But you probably wouldn't have known her.'

(Ricky's wife, sitting alone in the restaurant, suddenly snapped her fingers and exclaimed, 'I'm getting old.' She had remembered of whom the girl had reminded her. The waiter, a high-school dropout by the look of him, bent over the table, not quite sure how to give her the bill after the gentleman had stormed off, and uttered 'Huh?' 'Oh get away, you fool,' she said, wondering why it was that while one half of high-school dropouts looked like thugs,