Miss Edmunds would play her guitar and let the kids take turns on the autoharp, the triangles, cymbals, tambourines, and bongo drum. Lord, could they ever make a racket! All the teachers hated Fridays. And a lot of the kids pretended to.
But Jess knew what fakes they were. Sniffing “hippie” and “peacenik,” even though the Vietnam War was over and it was supposed to be OK again to like peace, the kids would make fun of Miss Edmunds’ lack of lipstick or the cut of her jeans. She was, of course, the only female teacher anyone had ever seen in Lark Creek Elementary wearing pants. In Washington and its fancy suburbs, even in Millsburg, that was OK, but Lark Creek was the backwash of fashion. It took them a long time to accept there what everyone could see by their TV’s was OK anywhere else.
So the students of Lark Creek Elementary sat at their desks all Friday, their hearts thumping with anticipation as they listened to the joyful pandemonium pouring out from the teachers’ room, spent their allotted half hours with Miss Edmunds under the spell of her wild beauty and in the snare of her enthusiasms, and then went out and pretended that they couldn’t be suckered by some hippie in tight jeans with makeup all over her eyes but none on her mouth.
Jess just kept his mouth shut. It wouldn’t help to try to defend Miss Edmunds against their unjust and hypocritical attacks. Besides, she was beyond such stupid behavior. It couldn’t touch her. But whenever possible, he stole a few minutes on Friday just to stand close to her and hear her voice, soft and smooth as suede, assuring him that he was a “neat kid.”
We’re alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds. Beautiful Julia. The syllables rolled through his head like a ripple of guitar chords. We don’t belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me. “You’re the proverbial diamond in the rough,” she’d said to him once, touching his nose lightly with the tip of her electrifying finger. But it was she who was the diamond, sparkling out of that muddy, grassless, dirty-brick setting.
“Jess-see!”
Jess shoved the pad and pencils under his mattress and lay down flat, his heart thumping against the quilt.
His mother was at the door. “You milk yet?”
He jumped off the bed. “Just going to.” He dodged around her and out, grabbing the pail from beside the sink and the stool from beside the door, before she could ask him what he had been up to.
Lights were winking out from all three floors of the old Perkins place. It was nearly dark. Miss Bessie’s bag was tight, and she was fidgeting with discomfort. She should have been milked a couple of hours ago. He eased himself onto the stool and began to tug; the warm milk pinged into the pail. Down on the road an occasional truck passed by with its dimmers on. His dad would be home soon, and so would those cagey girls who managed somehow to have all the fun and leave him and their mother with all the work. He wondered what they had bought with all their money. Lord, what he wouldn’t give for a new pad of real art paper and a set of those marking pens—color pouring out onto the page as fast as you could think it. Not like stubby school crayons you had to press down on till somebody bitched about your breaking them.
A car was turning in. It was the Timmonses’. The girls had beat Dad home. Jess could hear their happy calls as the car doors slammed. Momma would fix them supper, and when he went in with the milk, he’d find them all laughing and chattering. Momma’d even forget she was tired and mad. He was the only one who had to take that stuff. Sometimes he felt so lonely among all these females—even the one rooster had died, and they hadn’t yet gotten another. With his father gone from sunup until well past dark, who was there to know how he felt? Weekends weren’t any better. His dad was so tired from the wear and tear of the week and trying to catch up around the place that when he wasn’t actually working, he was sleeping in front of the TV.
“Hey, Jesse.” May Belle. The dumb kid wouldn’t even let you think privately.
“What do you want now?”
He watched her shrink two sizes. “I got something to tell you.” She hung her head.
“You ought to be in bed,” he said huffily, mad at himself for cutting her down.
“Ellie and Brenda come home.”
“Came. Came home.” Why couldn’t he quit picking on her?
But her news was too delicious to let him stop her sharing it. “Ellie bought herself a see-through blouse, and Momma’s throwing a fit!”
Good, he thought. “That ain’t nothing to cheer about,” he said.
Baripity, baripity, baripity.
“Daddy!” May Belle screamed with delight and started running for the road. Jess watched his dad stop the truck, lean over to unlatch the door, so May Belle could climb in. He turned away. Durn lucky kid. She could run after him and grab him and kiss him. It made Jess ache inside to watch his dad grab the little ones to his shoulder, or lean down and hug them. It seemed to him that he had been thought too big for that since the day he was born.
When the pail was full, he gave Miss Bessie a pat to move her away. Putting the stool under his left arm, he carried the heavy pail carefully, so none of the milk would slop out.
“Mighty late with the milking, aren’t you, son?” It was the only thing his father said directly to him all evening.
The next morning he almost didn’t get up at the sound of the pickup. He could feel, even before he came fully awake, how tired he still was. But May Belle was grinning at him, propped up on one elbow. “Ain’t ’cha gonna run?” she asked.
“No,” he said, shoving the sheet away. “I’m gonna fly.”
Because he was more tired than usual, he had to push himself harder. He pretended that Wayne Pettis was there, just ahead of him, and he had to keep up. His feet pounded the uneven ground, and he thrashed his arms harder and harder. He’d catch him. “Watch out, Wayne Pettis,” he said between his teeth. “I’ll get you. You can’t beat me.”
“If you’re so afraid of the cow,” the voice said, “why don’t you just climb the fence?”
He paused in midair like a stop-action TV shot and turned, almost losing his balance, to face the questioner, who was sitting on the fence nearest the old Perkins place, dangling bare brown legs. The person had jaggedy brown hair cut close to its face and wore one of these blue undershirtlike tops with faded jeans cut off above the knees. He couldn’t honestly tell whether it was a girl or a boy.
“Hi,” he or she said, jerking his or her head toward the Perkins place. “We just moved in.”
Jess stood where he was, staring.
The person slid off the fence and came toward him. “I thought we might as well be friends,” it said. “There’s no one else close by.”
Girl, he decided. Definitely a girl, but he couldn’t have said why he was suddenly sure. She was about his height—not quite though, he was pleased to realize as she came nearer.
“My name’s Leslie Burke.”
She even had one of those dumb names that could go either way, but he was sure now that he was right.
“What’s the matter?”
“Huh?”
“Is something the matter?”
“Yeah. No.” He pointed his thumb in the direction of his own house, and then wiped his hair off his forehead. “Jess Aarons.” Too bad May Belle’s girl came in the wrong size. “Well—well.” He nodded at her. “See you.” He turned toward the house. No use trying to run any more this morning. Might as well milk Miss Bessie and get that out of the way.
“Hey!” Leslie was standing in the middle of the cow field, her head tilted and her hands on her hips. “Where you going?”
“I got work to do,” he called back over his shoulder. When he came out later with the pail and stool, she was gone.
THREE
The Fastest Kid in the Fifth Grade
Jess didn’t see Leslie Burke again except from a distance until the first day of school, the following Tuesday, when Mr. Turner brought her down to Mrs. Myers’ fifth-grade class at Lark Creek Elementary.
Leslie was still dressed in the faded cutoffs and the blue
undershirt. She had sneakers on her feet but no socks. Surprise swooshed up from the class like steam from a released radiator cap. They were all sitting there primly dressed in their spring Sunday best. Even Jess wore his one pair of corduroys and an ironed shirt.
The reaction didn’t seem to bother her. She stood there in front, her eyes saying, “OK, friends, here I am,” in answer to their openmouthed stares while Mrs. Myers fluttered about trying to figure where to put the extra desk. The room was a small basement one, and five rows of six desks already filled it more than comfortably.
“Thirty-one,” Mrs. Myers kept mumbling over her double chin, “thirty-one. No one else has more than twenty-nine.” She finally decided to put the desk up against the side wall near the front. “Just there for now uh—Leslie. It’s the best we can do—for now. This is a very crowded classroom.” She swung a pointed glance at Mr. Turner’s retreating form.
Leslie waited quietly until the seventh-grade boy who’d been sent down with the extra desk scraped it into position hard against the radiator and under the first window. Without making any noise, she pulled it a few inches forward from the radiator and settled herself into it. Then she turned once more to gaze at the rest of the class.
Thirty pairs of eyes were suddenly focused on desktop scratches. Jess ran his forefinger around the heart with two pairs of initials, BR + SK, trying to figure out whose desk he had inherited. Probably Sally Koch’s. Girls did more of the heart stuff in fifth grade than boys. Besides BR must be Billy Rudd, and Billy was known to favor Myrna Hauser last spring. Of course, these initials might have been here longer than that, in which case…
“Jesse Aarons. Bobby Greggs. Pass out the arithmetic books. Please.” On the last word, Mrs. Myers flashed her famous first-day-of-school smile. It was said in the upper grades that Mrs. Myers had never been seen to smile except on the first and the last day of school.
Jess roused himself and went to the front. As he passed Leslie’s desk, she grinned and rippled her fingers low in a kind of wave. He jerked a nod. He couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. It must be embarrassing to sit in front when you find yourself dressed funny on the first day of school. And you don’t know anybody.
He slapped the books down as Mrs. Myers directed. Gary Fulcher grabbed his arm as he went by. “Gonna run today?” Jess nodded. Gary smirked. He thinks he can beat me, the dumbhead. At the thought, something jiggled inside Jess. He knew he was better than he had been last spring. Fulcher might think he was going to be the best, now that Wayne Pettis was in sixth, but he, Jess, planned to give old Fulcher a le-etle surprise come noon. It was as though he had swallowed grasshoppers. He could hardly wait.
Mrs. Myers handed out books almost as though she were President of the United States, dragging the distribution process out in senseless signings and ceremonies. It occurred to Jess that she, too, wished to postpone regular school as long as possible. When it wasn’t his turn to pass out books, Jess sneaked out a piece of notebook paper and drew. He was toying with the idea of doing a whole book of drawings. He ought to choose one chief character and do a story about it. He scribbled several animals and tried to think of a name. A good title would get him started. The Haunted Hippo? He liked the ring of it. Herby the Haunted Hippo? Even better. The Case of the Crooked Crocodile. Not bad.
“Whatcha drawing?” Gary Fulcher was leaning way over his desk.
Jess covered the page with his arm. “Nothing.”
“Ah, c’mon. Lemme see.”
Jess shook his head.
Gary reached down and tried to pull Jess’s hand away from the paper. “The Case of the Crooked—c’mon, Jess,” he whispered hoarsely. “I ain’t gonna hurt nothing.” He yanked at Jess’s thumb.
Jess put both arms over the paper and brought his sneaker heel crashing down on Gary Fulcher’s toe.
“Ye-ow!”
“Boys!” Mrs. Myers’ face had lost its lemon-pie smile.
“He stomped my toe.”
“Take your seat, Gary.”
“But he—”
“Sit down!”
“Jesse Aarons. One more peep from your direction and you can spend recess in here. Copying the dictionary.”
Jess’s face was burning hot. He slid the notebook paper back under his desktop and put his head down. A whole year of this. Eight more years of this. He wasn’t sure he could stand it.
The children ate lunch at their desks. The county had been promising Lark Creek a lunchroom for twenty years, but there never seemed to be enough money. Jess had been so careful not to lose his recess time that even now he chewed his bologna sandwich with his lips tight shut and his eyes on the initialed heart. Around him conversations buzzed. They were not supposed to talk during lunch, but it was the first day and even Monster-Mouth Myers shot fewer flames on the first day.
“She’s eating clabber.” Two seats up from where he sat, Mary Lou Peoples was at work being the second snottiest girl in the fifth grade.
“Yogurt, stupid. Don’t you watch TV?” This from Wanda Kay Moore, the snottiest, who sat immediately in front of Jess.
“Yuk.”
Lord, why couldn’t they leave people in peace? Why shouldn’t Leslie Burke eat anything she durn pleased?
He forgot that he was trying to eat carefully and took a loud slurp of his milk.
Wanda Moore turned around, all priss-face. “Jesse Aarons. That noise is pure repulsive.”
He glared at her hard and gave another slurp.
“You are disgusting.”
Brrrrring. The recess bell. With a yelp, the boys were pushing for first place at the door.
“The boys will all sit down.” Oh, Lord. “While the girls line up to go out to the playground. Ladies first.”
The boys quivered on the edges of their seats like moths fighting to be freed of cocoons. Would she never let them go?
“All right, now if you boys…” They didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. They were halfway to the end of the field before she could finish her sentence.
The first two out began dragging their toes to make the finish line. The ground was rutted from past rains, but had hardened in the late summer drought, so they had to give up on sneaker toes and draw the line with a stick. The fifth-grade boys, bursting with new importance, ordered the fourth graders this way and that, while the smaller boys tried to include themselves without being conspicuous.
“How many you guys gonna run?” Gary Fulcher demanded.
“Me—me—me.” Everyone yelled.
“That’s too many. No first, second, or third graders—except maybe the Butcher cousins and Timmy Vaughn. The rest of you will just be in the way.”
Shoulders sagged, but the little boys backed away obediently.
“OK. That leaves twenty-six, twenty-seven—stand still—twenty-eight. You get twenty-eight, Greg?” Fulcher asked Greg Williams, his shadow.
“Right. Twenty-eight.”
“OK. Now. We’ll have eliminations like always. Count off by fours. Then we’ll run all the ones together, then the twos—”
“We know. We know.” Everyone was impatient with Gary, who was trying for all the world to sound like this year’s Wayne Pettis.
Jess was a four, which suited him well enough. He was impatient to run, but he really didn’t mind having a chance to see how the others were doing since spring. Fulcher was a one, of course, having started everything with himself. Jess grinned at Fulcher’s back and stuck his hands into the pockets of his corduroys, wriggling his right forefinger through the hole.
Gary won the first heat easily and had plenty of breath left to boss the organizing of the second. A few of the younger boys drifted off to play King of the Mountain on the slope between the upper and lower fields. Out of the corner of his eye, Jess saw someone coming down from the upper field. He turned his back and pretended to concentrate on Fulcher’s high-pitched commands.
“Hi.” Leslie Burke had come up beside him.
He shifted slightly away. “Um
ph.”
“Aren’t you running?”
“Later.” Maybe if he didn’t look at her, she would go back to the upper field where she belonged.
Gary told Earle Watson to bang the start. Jess watched. Nobody with much speed in that crowd. He kept his eyes on the shirttails and bent backs.
A fight broke out at the finish line between Jimmy Mitchell and Clyde Deal. Everyone rushed to see. Jess was aware that Leslie Burke stayed at his elbow, but he was careful not to look her way.
“Clyde.” Gary Fulcher made his declaration. “It was Clyde.”
“It was a tie, Fulcher,” a fourth grader protested. “I was standing right here.”
“Clyde Deal.”
Jimmy Mitchell’s jaw was set. “I won, Fulcher. You couldn’t even see from way back there.”
“It was Deal.” Gary ignored the protests. “We’re wasting time. All threes line up. Right now.”
Jimmy’s fists went up. “Ain’t fair, Fulcher.”
Gary turned his back and headed for the starting line.
“Oh, let ’em both run in the finals. What’s it gonna hurt?” Jess said loudly.
Gary stopped walking and wheeled to face him. Fulcher glared first at Jess and then at Leslie Burke. “Next thing,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “next thing you’re gonna want to let some girl run.”
Jess’s face went hot. “Sure,” he said recklessly. “Why not?” He turned deliberately toward Leslie. “Wanna run?” he asked.
“Sure.” She was grinning. “Why not?”
“You ain’t scared to let a girl race are you, Fulcher?”