“Who is who?” asked Mrs. Kanz over her shoulder as we went back to the schoolhouse.
“Who is going to take care of her all her life?” I asked lamely.
“Well! Talk about borrowing trouble!” Mrs. Kanz laughed.
“Just forget about the whole thing. It’s all in a day’s work. It’s a shame your pretty blouse had to get ruined, though.”
I was thinking of Lucine while I was taking off my torn blouse at home after school. I squinted tightly sideways, trying to glimpse the point of my shoulder to see if it looked as bruised as it felt, when my door was flung open and slammed shut and Lowmanigh was leaning against it, breathing heavily.
“Well!” I slid quickly into my clean shirt and buttoned it up briskly. “I didn’t hear you knock. Would you like to go out and try it over again?”
“Did Lucine get hurt?” He pushed his hair back from his damp forehead. “Was it a bad spell? I thought I had it controlled-“
“If you want to talk about Lucine,” I said out of my surprise, “I’ll be out on the porch in a minute. Do you mind waiting out there? My ears are still burning from Marie’s lecture to me on ‘proper decorum for a female in this here hotel.’ “
“Oh.” He looked around blankly. “Oh, sure-sure.”
My door was easing shut before I knew he was gone. I tucked my shirttail in and ran my comb through my hair.
“Lowmanigh and Lucine?” I thought blankly. “What gives? Mr. Kanz must be slipping. This she hasn’t mentioned.” I put the comb down slowly. “Oh. ‘He makes it almost straight but it bends again.’ But how can that be?”
Low was perched on the railing of the sagging balcony porch that ran around two sides of the second story of the hotel He didn’t turn around as I creaked across the floor toward the dusty dilapidated wicker settle and chair that constituted the porch furniture.
“Who are you?” His voice was choked. “What are you doing here?”
Foreboding ran a thin cold finger across the back of my neck. “We were introduced,” I said thinly. “I’m Perdita Verist, the new teacher, remember?”
He swung around abruptly. “Stop talking on top,” he said. “I’m listening underneath. “You know as well as I do that you can’t run away-But how do you know? Who are you?”
“You stop it!” I cried. “You have no business listening underneath. Who are you?”
We stood there stiffly glaring at each other until with a simultaneous sigh we relaxed and sat down on the shaky wickerware. I clasped my hands loosely on my lap and felt the tight hard knot inside me begin to melt and untie until finally I was turning to Low and holding out my hand only to meet his as he reached for mine. Some one of me cried, “‘My kind? My kind?” But another of me pushed the panic button.
“No,” I cried, taking my hand back abruptly and standing up. “No!”
“No.” Low’s voice was soft and gentle. “It’s no betrayal.”
I swallowed hard and concentrated on watching Severeid Swanson tacking from one side of the road to the other on his way home to the hotel for his garlic, his two vino bottles doing very little to maintain his balance.
“Lucine,” I said. “Lucine and you.”
“Was it bad?” His voice was all on top now, and my bones stopped throbbing to that other wave length.
“About par for the course according to Mrs. Kanz,” I said shallowly. “I just tried to stop a buzz saw.”
“Was it bad!” his voice spread clear across the band.
“Stay out!” I cried. “Stay out!”
But he was in there with me and I was Lucine and he was I and we held the red-and-black horror in our naked hands and stared it down. Together we ebbed back through the empty grayness until he was Lucine and I was I and I saw me inside Lucine and blushed for her passionately grateful love of me. Embarrassed, I suddenly found a way to shut him out and blinked at the drafty loneliness.
“… and stay out!” I cried.
“That’s right!” I jumped at Marie’s indignant wheeze. “I seen him go in your room without knocking and Shut the Door!” Her voice was capitalized horror. “You done right chasing him out and giving him What For!”
My inner laughter slid the barrier open a crack to meet his amusement.
“Yes, Marie,” I said soberly. “‘You warned me and I remembered.”
“Well, now, good!” Half of Marie’s face smirked, gratified.
“I knew you was a good girl. And, Low, I’m plumb ashamed of you. I thought you was a cut above these gaw- danged muckers around here and here you go wolfing around in broad daylight!” She tripped off down the creaky hall, her voice floating back up the lovely curved stairway. “In broad daylight! Supper’ll be ready in two jerks of a dead lamb’s tail Git washed.”
Low and I laughed together and went to “git washed.”
I paused over a double handful of cold water I had scooped up from my huge china washbowl, and watched it all trickle back as I glowed warmly with the realization that this was the first time in uncountable ages that I had laughed underneath. I looked long on my wavery reflection in the water. “And not alone,” one of me cried, erupting into astonishment, “not alone!”
The next morning I fled twenty-five miles into town and stayed at a hotel that had running water, right in the house, and even a private bath! And reveled in the unaccustomed luxury, soaking Kruper out of me-at least all of it except the glitter bits of loveliness or funniness or niceness that remained on the riffles of my soul after the dust, dirt, inconvenience and ugliness sluiced away.
I was lying there drowsing Sunday afternoon, postponing until the last possible moment the gathering of myself together for the bus trip back to Kruper. Then sudden, subtly, between one breath and the next, I was back into full
