got up close and saw her in her profile, her profile with its little bit of a snarl to it, that I started to smell the trouble that had snuck its way into the room through the chinks in the shed wall while I had stood there in my teacher dress and teacher shoes, while I stood there with my chalk and letters and chair in the corner to sit on. I smelled the trouble, but still I looked down at what she had marked on her slate. She tried to hide it away from me but I saw it before she did. It was a pig dressed as a teacher. Thick of middle and long of snout. A pig to switch off to market. To stick and hang. To have its hairs scalded off. To butcher into its portions of truth. It was easy to see even at a quick glance that she had some talent with an image, that the rendering was fair. I went back and stood in front of them for a minute. Only I wasn’t in my teacher’s dress and my teacher’s shoes any longer, and my old teacher had left me to myself and I could feel the weight of Zinnia’s pig-slop hat on my head.
“She’s crying,” one of them said.
I hadn’t known it. But I was.
The shed had a little door to its back, behind the chalkboard. I stood there and cried a stretch longer then stepped through it. I went around the side of the shed and bent and picked hard at my ankle, then stood and smacked my face into its wall.
She was nice to me afterward, the one who had drawn the pig on her slate. She grew all the way up and got married to a blacksmith who put her into nice dresses and got her a nice carriage to drive around. I used to see her at the church. She died some time ago. Not of anything special.
It wasn’t any length of time after I had left off playing schoolteacher and gone back to the scrub brushes and oatmeal that my employer Lucious Wilson called on me to keep him some company. He was drifting through his days and wanted someone to latch an anchor to them, is what he told me. He also told me I had a glow on me that he admired the sheen of. His children favored me. They had cried when I stopped being their teacher. They were always hollering for more of my stories. My stories that weren’t about black bark or wet dough. Just those good old ones about falling down wells and burning boots and girls with long golden hair. He wanted to know was I committed elsewhere. Did I have any company I was keeping or hoping to keep? Was anyone waiting on me wherever it was I had come up from? He knew the answer to this but asked it anyway. He was young then. He bowed a little with his head when he talked and didn’t look at me too long in the eyes.
He made me this little speech and question as we walked out in the west flatlands where they kept the cattle back then. Everywhere you looked there were beasts working the green. A young bull came up and snuffled Lucious Wilson’s fingers. Turkey buzzards lolled circles above the north woods. There was sun on it all. A good sun. Lord of days, a glow to me, the pig lady from Charlotte County that the water doesn’t want, I thought.
I kept a kind of company with Lucious Wilson for a time then. For a time, after it was dark and his children were asleep and it was only me and the drafts in the halls, I would trip along to my employer’s room and take off my bonnet and, at his bidding, crawl into his bed. Night after night and time after time I would trip up the stair and down the corridor and tap on his door. There was things I thought as I made that passage, and times the trouble that had found me out in that school shed found me out in that passage, and it took me to turn around midway and run back to my own room and hide under the covers and scratch at my ankle with a paring knife. Times as I walked that my legs grew longer and my feet heavier and my chest as big as a barrel and my head the size of a salt block. My hands would swing like slabs of hard stone and I would walk down that corridor, ahead and alongside of myself with a different door in mind. Here I am
“She’s crying,” one of them said.
I hadn’t known it. But I was.
The shed had a little door to its back, behind the chalkboard. I stood there and cried a stretch longer then stepped through it. I went around the side of the shed and bent and picked hard at my ankle, then stood and smacked my face into its wall.
She was nice to me afterward, the one who had drawn the pig on her slate. She grew all the way up and got married to a blacksmith who put her into nice dresses and got her a nice carriage to drive around. I used to see her at the church. She died some time ago. Not of anything special.
It wasn’t any length of time after I had left off playing schoolteacher and gone back to the scrub brushes and oatmeal that my employer Lucious Wilson called on me to keep him some company. He was drifting through his days and wanted someone to latch an anchor to them, is what he told me. He also told me I had a glow on me that he admired the sheen of. His children favored me. They had cried when I stopped being their teacher. They were always hollering for more of my stories. My stories that weren’t about black bark or wet dough. Just those good old ones about falling down wells and burning boots and girls with long golden hair. He wanted to know was I committed elsewhere. Did I have any company I was keeping or hoping to keep? Was anyone waiting on me wherever it was I had come up from? He knew the answer to this but asked it anyway. He was young then. He bowed a little with his head when he talked and didn’t look at me too long in the eyes.
He made me this little speech and question as we walked out in the west flatlands where they kept the cattle back then. Everywhere you looked there were beasts working the green. A young bull came up and snuffled Lucious Wilson’s fingers. Turkey buzzards lolled circles above the north woods. There was sun on it all. A good sun. Lord of days, a glow to me, the pig lady from Charlotte County that the water doesn’t want, I thought.
I kept a kind of company with Lucious Wilson for a time then. For a time, after it was dark and his children were asleep and it was only me and the drafts in the halls, I would trip along to my employer’s room and take off my bonnet and, at his bidding, crawl into his bed. Night after night and time after time I would trip up the stair and down the corridor and tap on his door. There was things I thought as I made that passage, and times the trouble that had found me out in that school shed found me out in that passage, and it took me to turn around midway and run back to my own room and hide under the covers and scratch at my ankle with a paring knife. Times as I walked that my legs grew longer and my feet heavier and my chest as big as a barrel and my head the size of a salt block. My hands would swing like slabs of hard stone and I would walk down that corridor, ahead and alongside of myself with a different door in mind. Here I am
Similar Books
