There is nothing left to see. Feeling at once perplexed and a bit empty inside, I leave the Southern Hills neighborhood, walking slowly back to the corner of University and Yale. After waiting almost twenty minutes for a bus, I decide that they probably don’t run into the evening this far out of town. Everyone out here has a car, anyway, I realize as I watch the late-model Fords, Chevys, and Dodges roll by. So I give up and continue walking north on University to Evans, where I catch the westbound bus. Altogether, I have probably walked three or four miles since starting this adventure, and I did not think to wear walking shoes. After taking a seat, I slide my heels partially off my blistered feet. I stare out the window until the bus reaches my stop. Then I put my shoes back on, step off the bus, and make my way up Washington Street.
As I walk, I start to move my arms. Before I realize what I am doing, I am swinging my right arm as if I’m holding a tennis racquet. It actually feels rather satisfying to move my arm that way—and instinctive as well, like it’s something I have the natural strength and ability to do well. My feet don’t even hurt anymore; it’s as if I never even took that long walk tonight. I laugh at myself, shaking my head. Nonsense. It’s all nonsense; my head is playing tricks on me, and using my body as a clever prop.
It’s a crisp, just-start-of-fall evening, and some of my neighbors are out on their porches. “Hello, there, Miss Kitty,” Mr. Morris on the corner calls out. He is smoking a cigar and rocking back and forth in his decrepit wooden rocking chair with its cane back. He is close to a hundred years old. He migrated here from Ohio with his parents and sisters in the 1870s, went to one of the first secondary schools in Denver, and graduated from DU when it was in its infancy. He worked as a newspaperman, raised a family, and now lives with his widowed son, who is no spring chicken himself. Mr. Morris says that he remembers his daddy coming home from the Civil War—though you have to wonder, doing the math, if the man who showed up was actually the man who fathered him or not.
“Good evening, Mr. Morris.” I wave, but I don’t step up on his porch to chat, the way I sometimes do. I have too much on my mind.
Other neighbors also smile and greet me as I pass. I am well known in the neighborhood. I can imagine how someone from this area might describe me to a newcomer: Quirky old maid, to be sure, but nice enough, and she runs such a lovely bookshop on Pearl Street! Really, you should stop in and browse.
As I walk toward home, I can’t help noticing the contrast with Southern Hills. So much land out there, so much space between the houses. And so few tall trees. Most of the yards had a sapling or two, but none of the soaring spruces and cottonwoods that line my street.
Platt Park, the neighborhood I call home, has been here since the early part of the century. It was settled by religious families who emigrated from the Netherlands to Little Holland, as the area is still sometimes called. It shows in the Dutch-gabled roofs of many of the houses, not to mention the plethora of Christian Reformed churches. Nowadays this is mostly a blue-collar neighborhood, populated with maintenance and cleaning employees at the university, people who work in the factories on South Broadway, and some who, in the old days, would take the trolley to secretarial and retail jobs downtown.
These days, of course, folks take the bus. The bus that doesn’t run by our shop, and therefore doesn’t provide us with any customers.
I know that I should be pondering a solution to that problem. I know that Frieda, these days, is thinking of little else.
Still, I can’t get my mind off Springfield Street and those long, lean houses. I can see the appeal. All that space. All that air to breathe.
As I approach my duplex, I spot Greg Hansen out front. He is the son of my neighbors, who own the duplex. The Hansens’ only child, Greg is perhaps eight or nine years old. He is bouncing a large, red rubber ball against the brick side of the building—my side, I note with some annoyance. He better watch it around the windows.
Jeepers, I sound like a curmudgeon.
“Hi, Greg.” I climb the steps and retrieve my afternoon Denver Post from my doorstep. I’m a newspaper addict; one paper a day isn’t enough for me, so I read the Rocky in the morning and the Post in the evening.
“Hey, Miss Miller.” Greg continues bouncing.
“Whatcha doing?” I ask him, fishing in my purse for my keys.
He shrugs. “Ma sent me out. Says if I’m not going to do my homework, I might as well get out from underfoot.”
I find my keys and close the clasp on my purse. “Why aren’t you doing your homework?”
He shrugs again. “Don’t like it.” The ball bounces against the wall once, twice, three times. “Don’t like school, ma’am.” He peers up at the sky. “Wow, what a fine color the sunset is,” he remarks. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so orange.”
I set my purse on the green-and-yellow nylon-weave aluminum rocking chair that I keep on my side of the porch, then walk to the railing and lean over it. Greg is right; the sunset is brilliant tonight, the orange and pink hues weaving together to the west as the sun sinks in a scarlet blaze behind the mountains. But it seems an unusually keen observation for one so young, and for a boy. Perhaps, I muse, Greg is an artist in the making.
I take a good look at him. He is lanky, dark-haired, freckled. His grubby white T-shirt and dungarees hang loosely on his body. His bangs fall into his eyes.
“Greg,” I say. He glances at me, back at the sky, and then at the wall. “Are there any subjects you like in school?”
He considers this, and throws the ball again. “Math is okay. I do all right in math, sometimes.” Bounce, bounce. “The rest is really hard.”
“What’s hard? What do you find the hardest?”
He looks up at me. “Reading,” he says flatly. “I just . . . I don’t know, ma’am, I just don’t get it. I read real slow, and . . .” He looks away, embarrassed.
“Have you . . .” I am not sure how to word this. “Surely your teacher could give you some extra help.”
“Ma’am, no disrespect, but my teacher has a mess of kids in her class. I don’t know how many there are, but it’s lots. Sometimes she doesn’t even remember my name.”
I nod, thinking about that. I remember that feeling from my teaching days. So many kids, all needing so much from their schoolteacher, even if they were loath to admit it. All those eyes staring at the teacher. Some of them blank, a few of them not. A few of them following what the teacher is saying. But so many not.
But for all of them, regardless of their ability, the responsibility for their education falls to the teacher. And who can fulfill that for every single kid? What teacher is capable of that?
But what if Greg doesn’t learn to read? What does he have to look forward to, if he can’t even read?
“Greg,” I say firmly. “I’ve got some wonderful kids’ books in my apartment. Some swell books for boys. Hardy Boys—do you know those?—and some very funny books about a boy named Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy. Would you like to come over tonight and take a look at them? Perhaps we could look at them together and see if there is something you’d enjoy reading.” I smile at him. “I could help you,” I say quietly, coaxingly. “I think . . . I think it would be fun for both of us, actually.”
He bounces the ball a few more times, biting his lip. “Let me think about it.”
He doesn’t look at me. After a minute or two, I go inside and close my door.