Long After Midnight (24 page)

 
          
"Yes."

 
          
"Senora"
said the Spanish
gentleman driving, breaking in on her thoughts. "It is a nice day, isn't
it?"

 
          
"Yes,"
she said, both to him and the thoughts in her mind.

 
          
The
old Spanish gentleman drove her directly to her hotel and let her out and
doffed his hat and bowed to her.

 
          
She
nodded and felt
her
^N
mouth move with
thanks, but she did not see him. She wandered into the hotel and found herself
with her suitcase back in her room, that room she had left a thousand years
ago. Her husband was there.

 
          
He
lay in the dim light of late afternoon with his back turned, seeming not to
have moved in the hours since she had left. He had not even known that she was
gone, and had been to the ends of the earth and had returned. He did not even
know.

 
          
She
stood looking at his neck and the dark hairs curling there like ash fallen from
the sky.

 
          
She
found herself on the tiled patio in the hot light. A bird rustled in a bamboo
cage. In the cool darkness somewhere, the girl was playing a waltz on the
piano.

 
          
She
saw but did not see two butterflies which darted and jumped and lit upon a bush
near her hand, to seal themselves together. She felt her gaze move to see the
two bright things, all gold and yellow on the green leaf, their wings beating
in slow pulses as they were joined. Her mouth moved and her hand swung like a
pendulum, senselessly.

 
          
She
watched her fingers tumble on the air and close on the two butterflies, tight,
tighter, tightest. A scream was coming up into her mouth. She pressed it back.
Tight, tighter, tightest.

 
          
She
felt her hand open all to herself. Two lumps of bright powder fell to the shiny
patio tiles. She looked down at the small ruins, then snapped her gaze up.

 
          
The
girl who played the piano was standing in the middle of the garden, regarding
her with appalled and startled eyes.

 
          
The
wife put out her hand, to touch the distance, to say something, to explain, to
apologize to the girl, this place, the world, everyone. But the girl went away.

 
          
The
sky was full of smoke which went straight up and veered away south toward
Mexico City
.

 
          
She
wiped the wing-pollen from her numb fingers and talked over her shoulder, not
knowing if that man inside heard, her eyes on the smoke and the sky.

 
          
"Y6u
know ... we might try the volcano tonight. It looks good. I bet there'll be
lots of fire."

 
          
Yes,
she thought, and it will fill the air and fall all around us, and take hold of
us tight, tighter, tightest, and then let go and let us fall and we'll be ashes
blowing south, all fire.

 
          
"Did
you hear me?"

 
          
She
stood over the bed and raised a fist high but
never
brought it down to strike him in the face.

 
          
That
was the week Ann Taylor came to teach summer school at Green Town Central. It
was the summer of her twenty-fourth birthday, and it was the summer when Bob
Spaulding was just fourteen.

 
          
Everyone
remembered Ann Taylor, for she was that teacher for whom all the children
wanted to bring huge oranges or pink flowers, and for whom they rolled up the
rustling green and yellow maps of the world without being asked. She was that
woman who always seemed to be passing by on days when the shade was green under
the tunnels of oaks and elms in the old town, her face shifting with the bright
shadows as she walked, until it was all things to all people. She was the fine
peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a
hot early-June morning. Whenever you needed an opposite, Ann Taylor was there.
And those rare few days in the world when the climate was balanced as fine as a
maple leaf between winds that blew just right, those were the days like Ann
Taylor, and should have been so named on the calendar.

 
          
As
for Bob Spaulding, he was the cousin who walked alone through town on any
October evening with a pack of leaves after him like a horde of
Hallowe'en
mice, or you would see him, like a slow white
fish in spring in the tart waters of tie Fox Hill Creek, baking brown with the
shine of a chestnut to his face by autumn. Or you might hear his voice in those
treetops where the wind entertained; dropping down hand by hand, there would
come Bob Spaulding to sit alone and look at the world, and later you might see
him on the lawn with the ants crawling over his books as he read through the
long afternoons alone, or played himself a game of chess on Grandmother's
porch, or picked out a solitary tune upon the black piano in the bay window.
You never saw him with any other child.

 
          
That
first morning, Miss Ann Taylor entered through the side door of the schoolroom
and all of the children sat still in their seats as they saw her write her name
on the board in a nice round lettering.

 
          
"My
name is Ann Taylor," she said, quietly. "And I'm your new
teacher."

 
          
The
room seemed suddenly flooded with illumination, as if the roof had moved back;
and the trees were full of singing birds. Bob Spaulding sat with a spitball he
had just made, hidden in his hand. After a half-hour of listening to Miss
Taylor, he quietly let the spitball drop to the floor.

 
          
That
day, after class, he brought in a bucket of water and a rag and began to wash
the boards.

 
          
"What's
this?" She turned to him from her desk, where she had been correcting
spelling papers.

 
          
"The
boards are kind of dirty," said Bob, at work.

 
          
"Yes,
I know. Are you sure you want to clean them?"

 
          
"I
suppose I should have asked permission," he said, halting uneasily.

 
          
"I
think we can pretend you did," she replied, smiling, and at this smile he
finished the boards in an amazing burst of speed and pounded the erasers so
furiously that the air was full of snow, it seemed, outside the open window.

 
          
"Let's
see," said Miss Taylor. "You're Bob Spaulding, aren't you?"

 
          
"
Yes'm
."

 
          
"Well,
thank you, Bob."

 
          
"Could
I do them every day?" he asked.

 
          
"Don't
you think you should let the others try?"

 
          
"I'd
like to do them," he said. "Every day."

 
          
"We'll
try it for a while and see," she said.

 
          
He
lingered.

 
          
"I
think you'd better run on home," she said, finally.

 
          
"Good
night." He walked slowly and was gone.

 
          
The
next morning he happened by the place where she took board and room just as she
was coming out to walk to school.

 
          
"Well,
here I am," he said.

 
          
"And
do you know," she said, "I'm not surprised."

 
          
They
walked together.

 
          
"May
I carry your books?" he asked.

 
          
"Why,
thank you, Bob."

 
          
"It's
nothing," he said, taking them.

 
          
They
walked for a few minutes and he did not say a word. She glanced over and
slightly down at him and saw how at ease he was and how happy he seemed, and
she decided to let him break the silence, but he never did. When they reached
the edge of the school ground he gave the books back to her. "I guess I
better leave you here," he said. "The other kids wouldn't
understand."

 
          
"I'm
not sure I do, either, Bob," said Miss Taylor.

 
          
"Why
we're friends," said Bob earnestly and with a great natural honesty.

 
          
"Bob—"
she started to say.

 
          
"
Yes'm
?"

 
          
"Never
mind." She walked away.

 
          
"I'll
be in class," he said.

 
          
And
he was in class, and he was there after school every night for the next two
weeks, never saying a word, quietly washing the boards and cleaning the erasers
and rolling up the maps while she worked at her papers, and there was the clock
silence of four o'clock, the silence of the sun going down in the slow sky, the
silence with the catlike sound of erasers patted together, and the drip of
water from a moving sponge, and the rustle and turn of papers and the scratch
of a pen, and perhaps the buzz of a fly banging with a tiny high anger against
the tallest clear pane of window in the room. Sometimes the silence would go on
this way until almost five, when Miss Taylor would find Bob Spaulding in the
last seat of the room, sitting and looking at her silently, waiting for further
orders.

 
          
"Well,
it's time to go home," Miss Taylor would say, getting up.

 
          
"
Yes'm
."

 
          
And
he would run to fetch her hat and coat. He would also lock the schoolroom door
for her unless the janitor was coming in later. Then they would walk out of the
school and across the yard, which was empty, the janitor taking down the chain
swings slowly on his stepladder, the sun behind the umbrella trees. They talked
of all sorts of various things.

 
          
"And
what are you going to be, Bob, when you grow up?"

 
          
"A
writer," he said.

 
          
"Oh,
that's a big ambition; it takes a lot of work."

 
          
"I
know, but I'm going to try,"
he^aid
. "I've
read a lot."

 
          
"Bob,
haven't you anything to do after school?"

 
          
"How
do you mean?"

 
          
"I
mean, I hate to see you kept in so much, washing the boards."

 
          
"I
like it," he said. "I never do what I don't like."

 
          
"But
nevertheless."

 
          
"No,
I've got to do that," he said. He thought for a while and said, "Do
me a favor, Miss Taylor?"

 
          
"It
all depends."

 
          
"I
walk every Saturday from out around
Buetrick
Street
along the creek to Lake Michigan. They're a lot of butterflies and crayfish and
birds. Maybe you'd like to walk, too."

 
          
"Thank
you," she said.

 
          
"Then
you'll come?"

 
          
"I'm
afraid not."

 
          
"Don't
you think it'd be fun?"

 
          
"Yes,
I'm sure of that, but I'm going to be busy."

 
          
He
started to ask doing what, but stopped.

 
          
"I
take along sandwiches," he said. "Ham-and-pickle ones. And orange pop
and just walk along, taking my time. I get down to the lake about noon and walk
back and get home about three o'clock. It makes a real fine day, and I wish
you'd come. Do you collect butterflies? I have a big collection. We could start
one for you."

 
          
"Thanks,
Bob, but no, perhaps some other time."

 
          
He
looked at her and said, "I shouldn't have asked you, should I?"

 
          
"You
have every right to ask anything you want to," she said.

 
          
A
few days later she found an old copy of
Great
Expectations,
which she no longer wanted, and gave it to Bob. He was very
grateful and took it home and stayed up that night and read it through and
talked about it next morning. Each day now he met her just beyond sight of her
boarding house and many days she would start to say, "Bob—" and tell
him not to come to meet her anymore, but she never finished saying it, and he
talked with her about Dickens and Kipling and Poe and others, coming and going
to school. She found a butterfly on her desk on Friday morning. She almost
waved it away before she found it was dead and had been placed there while she
was out of the room. She glanced at Bob over the head of her other students,
but he was looking at his book, not reading, just looking at it.

 
          
It
was about this time that she found it impossible to call on Bob to recite in
class. She would hover her pencil about his name and then call the next person
up or down the list. Nor would she look at him while they were walking to or
from school. But on several " late afternoons as he moved his arm high on
the blackboard, sponging away the arithmetic symbols, she found herself
glancing over at him for seconds at a time before she returned to her papers.

 
          
And
then on Saturday morning he was standing in the middle of the creek with his
overall rolled up to his knees, kneeling down to catch a crayfish under a rock,
when he looked up and there on the edge of the running stream was Miss Ann
Taylor.

 
          
"Well,
here I am," she said, laughing.

 
          
"And
do you know," he said, "I'm not surprised."

 
          
"Show
me the crayfish and the butterflies," she said.

 
          
They
walked down to the lake and sat on the sand with a warm wind blowing softly
about them, fluttering her hair and the ruffle on her blouse, and he sat a few
yards back from her and they ate the ham-and-pickle sandwiches and drank the
orange pop solemnly.

 
          
"Gee,
this is swell," he said. "This is the
swellest
time ever in my life."

 
          
"I
didn't think I would ever come on a picnic like this," she said.

 
          
"With
some kid," he said.