the other half resembled physicists. 'Oh, here, better give me the bill before you faint.')
Jim Hardie kept sneaking looks at her all the way up the stairs, and once he had opened her room and put her suitcase down offered, 'I hope you're going to stick around a good long time.'
'I thought your mother said you hated Milburn.'
'I don't hate it so much anymore,' he said, giving her the look which had melted Penny Draeger in the back seat of his car the previous night.
'Why?'
'Ah,' he said, not knowing how to continue in the face of her total refusal to be melted. 'Ah, you know.'
'I do?'
'Look. I just mean you're a goddamn great-lookin' lady, that's all. You know what I mean. You got a lot of style.' He decided to be bolder than he felt 'Ladies with style turn me on.'
'Do they?'
'Yeah.' He nodded. He couldn't figure her out. If she was a nonstarter, she would have told him to leave at the beginning. But though she let him hang around, she wasn't looking interested or flattered-she wasn't even looking amused. Then she surprised him by doing what he had been half hoping she would do, and took off her coat. She wasn't much in the chest department, but she had good legs. Then, entirely without warning, a total awareness of her body assaulted him-a blast of pure sensuality, nothing like the steamy posturing of Penny Draeger or the other high-school girls he had bedded, a wave of pure and cold sensuality which dwindled him.
'Ah,' he said, desperately hoping she would not send him away, 'I bet you had some kind of great job in the city. What are you, in television or something?'
'No.'
He fidgeted. 'Well, it's not like I don't know your address or anything. Maybe I could drop in sometime, have a talk?'
'Maybe. Do you talk?'
'Hah. Yeah, well, guess I better get back downstairs. I mean, I gotta lot of storm windows to put up, this cold weather we got…'
She sat on the bed and held her hand out. Half reluctantly, he went toward her. When he touched her hand, she placed a neatly folded dollar bill in his palm. 'I'll tell you what I think,' she said. 'I think bellboys shouldn't wear jeans. They look sloppy.'
He accepted the dollar, too confused to thank her, and fled.
(It was Ann-Veronica Moore, thought Stella, that actress at John's house the night Edward died. Stella allowed the intimidated boy to hold her fur coat. Ann-Veronica Moore, why should I think of her? I only saw her for a few minutes, and that girl really didn't resemble her at all.)
4
No, Sears continued, I was resolved to help that poor creature, Fenny Bate. I didn't think there was such a thing as a bad boy, unless misunderstanding and cruelty were to make him bad. And that you could redress. So I began a little reclamation program. When Fenny tipped over his desk the next day, I righted it myself, much to the disgust of the older children; and at lunchtime I asked him to stay inside with me.
The other children filed out, buzzing with speculation-I'm sure they thought I was going to cane him once they were out of sight-and then I noticed that his sister was lurking in the dark rear corner. 'I won't hurt him, Constance,' I said. 'You can stay behind too if you wish.' Those poor children! I can still see both of them, with their bad teeth and tattered clothing, he full of suspicion and resentment and fear and she simply fearful-for him. She crept into a chair and I went to work to try to straighten out some of Fenny's misconceptions. I told him all the stories of explorers I knew, about Lewis and Clarke and Cortez and Nansen and Ponce de Leon, stuff I was going to use later in class, but it had no effect on Fenny. He
Back in the dark corner, Constance giggled-giggled without any humor. That laugh of hers sent chills through me-it conjured up pictures of a nearly bestial life. Of course, that was what they had; and all the other children knew it and as I found out later, it was much worse, much more unnatural, than anything I could have imagined.
Anyhow, I raised my hands in despair or impatience, and the wretched girl must have thought I was going to strike him, because she called out, 'It was Gregory!'
Fenny looked back at her, and I swear that I've never seen anyone look so frightened. In the next instant he was off his chair and out of the schoolroom. I tried to call him back, but it was no good. He was running as if for life, off into the woods, sprinting in the jack-rabbit country way. The girl hung in the doorway, watching him go. And now she looked frightened and dismayed-her whole being had turned pale. 'Who is Gregory, Constance?' I asked her, and her face twisted. 'Does he sometimes walk by the schoolhouse? Is his hair like this?' And I stuck my hands up over my head, my fingers spread wide-and then she was off too, running as fast as he had.
Well, that afternoon I was accepted by the other students. They'd assumed that I had beaten both of the Bate children, and so taken part in the natural order of things. And that night at dinner I got, if not an extra potato, at least a sort of congealed smile from Sophronia Mather. Evidently Ethel Birdwood had reported to her mother that the new schoolmaster had seen reason.
Fenny and Constance didn't come to school the next two days. I stewed about that, and thought that I'd acted so clumsily that they might never return. On the second day I was so restless that I paced around the schoolyard during lunchtime. The children regarded me as they would a dangerous lunatic;-it was clear that teacher was supposed to stay indoors, preferably administering the ferule. Then I heard something that stopped me dead and made me whirl around toward a group of girls, who were sitting rather primly on the grass. They were the biggest girls and one of them was Ethel Birdwood. I was sure that I'd heard her mention the name Gregory. 'Tell me about Gregory, Ethel,' I said.
'What's Gregory?' she asked, simpering. 'There's no one with that name here.' She gave me a great cow-eyed look, and I was certain she was thinking of that rural tradition of the schoolmaster marrying his eldest female pupil. She was a confident girl, this Ethel Birdwood, and her father had the reputation of being prosperous.
I wasn't having it 'I just heard you mention his name.'
'You must be mistaken, Mr. James,' she said, dripping honey.
'I do not feel charitable to liars,' I said. 'Tell me about this Gregory person.'
Of course they all assumed that I was threatening her with a caning. Another girl came to her rescue. 'We were saying that Gregory fixed that gutter,' she said, and pointed to the side of the school. One of the rain gutters was obviously new.
'Well, he'll never come around this school again if I can help it,' I said, and left them to their infuriating giggling.
After school that day I thought I'd visit the lion's den, as it were, and walk up to the Bate home. I knew it was about as far out of town as Lewis's house is from Milburn. I set off on the most likely road, and walked quite a way, three or four miles, when I realized I'd probably gone too far. I hadn't passed any houses, so the Bate home had to be actually in the woods themselves, instead of on their edge as I had imagined. I took a likely-looking trail, and thought I would simply tack back and forth toward town until I found them.
Unfortunately, I got lost. I went into ravines and up hills and through scrub until I couldn't have told you where even the road was anymore. It all looked appallingly alike. Then, just at dusk, I was aware of being watched. It was a remarkably uncanny feeling-it was like knowing a tiger was behind me, about to pounce. I turned around and put my back against a big elm. And then I saw something. A man stepped into a clearing about thirty yards from me-the man I had seen before. Gregory, or so I thought. He said nothing, and neither did I. He just gazed at me, absolutely silent, with that wild hair and that ivory face. I felt hatred, absolute hatred, streaming from him. An air of utter unreasonable violence hung about him, along with that peculiar freedom I had sensed earlier-he was like a madman. He could have killed me off in those woods, and no one would have known. And trust me, what I saw in
