The Whistling Season (21 page)

Maybe it was her way of marking our last day of flag duty, but that final morning she worked herself into more of a huff than ever. No sooner had Damon and Toby scooted into the schoolroom and she and I plucked the flag out of its drawer than she gibed, "You'd think people with a housekeeper could get up earlier."

"Don't nag." My tone was as cross as hers. "Next thing, you'll be whinnying."

"Ha ha ha. You are such a pest. Watch you don't drop the flag again."

"Look who's talking, rumble fingers. Come on, let's just get this done." We marched to the flagpole as if shackled together. The rope would not behave straight when I untied it, so I had to try to undo that while distracted by her yakking at me.

"Mr. Morgan marked me down on the question
Use logical inference to determine an antipodean analogy of 'Noel,'
" she was telling me, as if that was my fault too. "I said
'summer holiday.'
What did you put?"

'"Leon.'
See, on something like that you need to think backward and that gives you—"

"What's that supposed to mean? Aren't you ever going to get over that backwards warrior business?"

"Contrary, damn it."

"Don't you swear at me."

"I'm not. That was an interjection. Look it up."

If looks could kill, there would have been a double slaying at the flagpole. At least the rope finally was under control. Still glowering at each other, we fastened the flag with fingers that knew the job automatically by now, yanked the rope for all we were worth, and without a backward look finished our civic tour of duty together.

Thank goodness, Vivian was the first that morning to heed the call of nature. When she slipped back in from the outhouse, she headed straight for Morrie's desk and whispered in his ear. I heard him murmur, "The what, Vivian?"

Just after that, Morrie instructed all the grades to carry on with what they were doing while he made a trip to the supply cabinet. "Carnelia and Paul, help me a minute, please."

We trailed him out to the cloakroom. He turned to us with his arms folded on his chest, never a good sign from a teacher.

"You two are in distress, I take it?"

I give Carnelia full credit. She batted her eyes enough for both of us and caroled, "Not any more than usual, Mr. Morgan. Why?"

"Then how do you explain this?"

Morrie flung open the outer door. We stared at the flagpole. It was evident that what Vivian had whispered must have been something very like, "The fwag is fwying upside-down."

I tried to contribute. "We were awful busy, uh, talking."

Morrie's expression was steely. "I wonder if you have any notion of the woe that will come down on me, and that I in turn will bring down on the two of you, if anyone comes by and spies Old Glory standing on its head?"

As if in harness, Carnelia and I raced out, hauled down the flag, and put it upright in record time. Morrie herded us back into the schoolroom. Only Vivian was paying us any attention and when Morrie put his finger to his lips, she nodded.

Accordingly, I was not prepared at all for the miscarriage of justice—wasn't this called double jeopardy?—at the end of the day when Morrie dismissed everyone else and levied on me:

"Paul, I would like to see you, after."

There was something elegiac about the reaction in the schoolroom:
But oh, my foes, and oh, my friends—
In rapid succession, Carnelia looked panicked, furtive, relieved, then was out the door. Eddie Turley stopped for a good, long smirk. Graver pushed his glasses into place as if to reflect full sympathy. Toby was overcome, already staggered with the drama of telling Father, "
Paul got kept after!
" Damon went out of the schoolroom looking back at me in mystification, as if he had missed something in me.

I grumpily stayed at my desk. Morrie busied himself at his, squaring up papers and putting away books, for an interminable few minutes. Finally he looked up at me and in what I recognized as his philosophical tone began: "Now then—"

Now then
nothing! My outrage could not be held in while he pontificated. "This isn't fair! Why didn't you keep Carnelia after instead of me? It was more her fault."

"Think about that," he said not unkindly. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man teacher cannot be alone with a schoolgirl on the brink of womanhood."

Carnelia?

"Besides," he added, leaving me no time to ponder that, "the flag mishap is not why I asked you to stay after. Paul, it's your schoolwork."

This was the one heresy I was totally unprepared to hear. In vain I tried to think of any subject that was giving me trouble. To my astonishment, Morrie bundled them all for me:

"You're hopelessly ahead in everything here. You know every lesson before I can give it, and you know you do. No, don't even try to play dumb on this. It's not in you."

He likely had a point there. If I couldn't feign successfully during school, I probably was no better at it while being kept after. But I needed to mount some kind of defense.

"Maybe once in a while in arithmetic, or I guess grammar, or more like geography, I know a little more than I let on. But—"

"That is exactly the sort of thing I mean." Morrie spread his hands helplessly. "Can't you see the position this puts me in? Here I am, a teacher with a pupil who is already chockful of what I am supposed to be teaching him. Every minute of that, I'm holding you back from where an ability such as yours ought to be taking you." He drew quite a breath to speak the next. "Paul, I have been around prodigies before and you are one. I
see nothing to do but skip you past this grade and the next. You are ready for high school."

"You can't! I mean, please don't."

"Why ever not? You could catch up in high school courses in no time, and you're socially advanced for your age."

The reasons seemed to me beyond numbering. I babbled the first few that came to mind. "I'd—I'd need to lodge in town. I mean, I wouldn't be at home anymore. And Father—there are times he needs me for things. Mr. Morg—Morrie, I'd like to wait. Really I would."

"Well, if I at least were to advance you to the eighth grade—"

"
No!
" Anything but the jungle of galumphing eighth-graders. "Please, not that either." How many dooms did I have to fight off? "Can't I just be in the grade I'm already in?"

Morrie gestured to the vacant half of the double desk that constituted the seventh grade. "You and Carnelia, forever and always?"

"Maybe I could just sort of sit out of the way and read." That sounded feeble even to me.

He folded his arms across his chest, but not in commanding fashion this time, and sat there studying me. At last he said, "You are a challenge, Paul, a palpable challenge." Uneasily I watched the signs in the features of his face, the twitch of his mustache, the lighting-up in his eyes. Morries mind was making one of its balloon ascensions. "A teacher would not dare to wish for a more ardent student," he propounded, "on those occasions when something manages to catch your interest. Therefore it is a matter of bringing your imprimatur more steadily to bear.
Omnia vincit ardor,
let us proclaim."

"Wh-what's that mean?"

"You shall see."

"T
HIS HAD BETTER NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH FIST
-fighting or horse racing," Father warned as I sidled into the kitchen with Morrie close behind me.

Obviously he'd had an earful of report from Toby or Damon or more likely the duet of them, even though they had no more idea than he did about what my offense might have been. The one other time I had ever been kept after school was the first day in the second grade, for a raging argument with Carnelia over the territorial division of our desk. Now, with Father giving me a look that would have put a blind person on notice, I had some tall explaining to do again. Was it going to make sense to anyone besides Morrie and me? All the long way home with Morrie riding in bouncy dude fashion next to me, as he rehearsed the case to be made on my behalf I sat in my saddle like a zombie. What if Morrie's enthusiasm was wildly misplaced? What if I was getting in over my head? What if Father said no?

"Father, I—" The faces of the waiting audience there in the kitchen outdid my expressive ability. Father was stuck at the stove stirring beans and ham hocks that were more hock than ham, but the distance across the room did not temper the ominous gaze he had fastened on me. Parked front and center at the table were the twin heralds of my detention, Toby owl-eyed, Damon about to faint from curiosity. "Morrie, you tell them."

"Goodness, you two." Rose popped in through the doorway, untying her apron to go home but obviously not before she had her say. "Paul of all people. Morrie, really, you are going too far with this. When boys behave some way that doesn't suit you, can't you make them wash windows or some such rather than keeping them in after? That's what I would do."

Yielding to the trend of things, Father suspended cooking for the time being and drew a chair up for Rose. He shifted Toby into sharing half of Damon's chair and indicated the vacated seat to Morrie, then gravely sat down at his cup-worn spot at the head of the table. I took my place, uneasy with the fact that my case had escalated into a conference. Even Houdini padded in from the other room as if taking an interest.

Palms of his hands flat on the oilcloth, as if a seance were about to start, Morrie squarely faced Father at the far end of the table. "Unaccustomed as I am to this particular kind of excess in a student," he began, alarming me, but then in reasonably short fashion brought the matter down to how far ahead I was in my studies.

Father looked relieved, but puzzled. Rose nodded diagnostically, as though she had always figured blindsight led to something like this.

"You're the doctor," Father granted Morrie. "But can't you just—forgive me this, Paul—pile more homework on him? Even if he does it in class, it'll keep him occupied."

"That is scattershot, if I may say so," Morrie responded, shaking his head. "Paul needs aim; he does not need to be dispersed more than he is in several different directions." I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, wishing this could be conducted in writing. Morrie, however, was just hitting his stride. "From all that I can observe, Paul manages to stay on top of things here at home: chores, and helping you, Oliver, any of that. The ordinary run of schoolwork, I award him absolute top marks there too. But there is a neglected area, tucked away in that mind of his, that it would greatly help him to become fluent in." Here Morrie paused so long for drama's sake that even Rose puckered in impatience. When he was certain he had us all on the edge of our seats, he delivered:

"
Paul est omnis divisus in partes tres,
if I may slightly recast a pertinent phrase, Oliver. To make best use of that third realm, I firmly believe he must now plunge in and cross the Rubicon."

Enough silence met that to drown a barbershop quartet in.

Shifting my eyes around the table, I could see Rose and Damon and Toby were in need of an interpreter. Father was not.

"Latin? You want him to take
Latin
? But good grief, Morrie, for that he'd have to be in high—"

He broke that off with a glance toward his two other sons. Toby still looked blank. Damon had caught up and then some; his mouth tightened.

"Oh dear," Rose let out, winning even more of my heart. Our early-morning talks together obviously tugged at her as much as they did at me.

The entire room seemed to have been unsettled by Morrie's prescription for me. Looking troubled, Toby whispered something in Damon's ear. "It's like that jabber the Drobnys talk to each other, is all," I heard Damon whisper back.

Morrie tapped his fingertips on the tabletop as if calling the bargaining table back to order. "Not necessarily," he asserted,
addressing Father's apprehension that Latin would take me out of the household. "My censorious sister notwithstanding, there's always after school."

Father sat forward and turned directly to me. "Paul? You're sure you want to take this on?"

Until that exact moment my mind was not truly made up. "Divided into three parts" probably understated my condition. I heard my decision along with the rest of them.

"More than anything."

Now came the part that worried me most. Father was all too aware, and I sensed it along with him, that this carried the same sort of financial risk as dealing with postal box 19 in Minneapolis had. "Morrie, straight out, all right? I can't pay you much." He cast a whimsical glance toward Rose, who right then was refusing to meet the eye of anyone but Morrie. "I'm already laying out wages to a housekeeper, aren't I. I don't know what the going rate for a tutor is, but—"

Morrie erased that in midair. "This is on the house, Oliver. I could stand to sharpen up some, myself, on ablatives and such. If you can spare Paul for an hour after school every day, I'll give him a running start in life beyond Marias Coulee. Fair enough?"

"That's where he's headed, I know," Father said softly. "Fair enough."

Shortly the gathering broke up, Morrie declining to stay for supper with the excuse that he had a sage hen awaiting in marinade and Rose saying she would have a bite as usual with George and Rae. I remember I went through our meal and the rest of that evening in a state of unnatural excitement, as if everything inside me was on tiptoes. At bedtime Father surprised us, Toby most of all, by saying: "Tobe, you don't look that sleepy, nor am I. How about a game of Chinese checkers? Houdini can be on your side."

Damon and I climbed the stairs in tandem, Father watching us all the way. As soon as we were in the bedroom, we halted and stood there face-to-face. Damon attempted a grin. "You want to go to school
after
school? How loony can you get?"

"I need to, is all." I made a floundering gesture in the direction of where his scrapbooks were forever spread open. "This is something like those. Only in my head." Still looking at me, Damon shrugged, which could have been yes or no. "You're gonna have to be in charge of Tobe, coming home," I blathered. "When it's really stormy I won't stay after, I'll come with—"