“Clar-ence,” Neva said. “My big brother. He’s helping Dad drill seed. They never come in till later. Our hogs died last week.”
Aldine grimly added this information to Charlotte’s litany about the dust.
“God sent them a sickness, Mama said. So they wouldn’t suffer in Kansas anymore. Mama says California is like heaven so I think maybe they went to California. Do you think they could have?”
To her own surprise Aldine said, “If I could come here from Scotland, I guess a pig could go to California.”
Neva seemed pleased with this answer.
Aldine sat on the stool beside the water, her feet bare now, and ached to get into the water.
“You’re nicer than our last teacher, Mr. Geoph,” Neva said, reaching out to clack the black and yellow bracelets again, running her fingers across their slippery curves. “All he did was read the German newspaper and burn buckets of coal in the stove and shout at Yauncy that he was in for a hiding.”
Aldine asked who Yauncy was.
“Mr. and Mrs. Tanner’s only son. Yauncy’s slow and he can’t help it. He groans in class, which everybody was used to but not Mr. Geoph.” Then she said, “Before that we had Miss Pike, who wasn’t nice at all but she got married anyway, Charlotte says she doesn’t know how.”
Yauncy is slow. And he groaned. Which was why Mr. Tanner said that he was all done growing.
“And Yauncy will not come to school again?”
Neva looked at her quizzically, so Aldine repeated it more slowly.
“Oh. No, I don’t suppose so. Mr. Tanner’s awfully nice to Yauncy even though Mrs. Tanner isn’t really. Everyone says she has a case of nerves that won’t allow it, but Mr. Tanner is gentle with him and when Mr. Geoph gave him a hiding for groaning Mr. Tanner took him away and that was that. Yauncy’s not right, but he’s strong, he can pick up bales easy as you please, so he does that now.”
Aldine was relieved, though she wouldn’t say it. “And before that?” she asked. “Before Miss Pike who got married?”
“Don’t know. I was too little. You’ll have to ask Clare or Charlotte.”
Mrs. Price put her head in. “Neva,” she said. “Leave Miss McCandless to bathe in peace.” The smile she directed at Aldine was more dutiful than friendly. “When you’re finished, I have something for you to eat,” she said, and she took Neva with her when she closed the kitchen door.
Aldine was in the washtub, naked as a frog, when she heard a slamming screen door, then the voice of a man in a room that seemed inches away. She heard Neva say, “Daddy!” and a man’s voice, low and rumbly, “Hello, girly.” Aldine pulled her knees to her breasts and let the metallic water drip down over her face, holding the cake of Joro tightly as she heard Mrs. Price saying, “Well, that plan of yours worked, Ansel. There’s a schoolteacher here from New York City by way of Scotland.”
“She’s so pretty,” Neva said. “She’s perfect! Thank you, Daddy!”
“She’s here?”Ansel asked.
Aldine tightened her grip on her bare legs.
“She’s taking a bath on the back porch,” Mrs. Price said, her voice low but still audible. “Honestly, Ansel. We can’t afford a boarder right now. When is the school board going to start her salary, and where is she going to live?”
The voices moved farther off so that she could hear the humming but not the words. She reached over the side of the tub for a tin cup, and with the cup she poured the tepid water over her hair, her face, and her future, willing it all to become a burn that fed a river that fed an ocean that she could swim in all the way back to Ayr.
12
Of all the surprises in the world, none was more unimaginable to Clare Price than finding a comely young woman kneeling on the rug just before supper, helping Neva with her paper dolls. She wore a black dress printed all over with clamshells. The cloth was thin and shiny and seemed poured over her body. Her hair was black, too, and glossy where the curve of it touched her chin and caught the light. Over the crown of her head she wore a knitted cap of some kind, a flat disk with a black pom-pom. Her skin was freckled white, her arms were long and slender, and her fingers, which were busy folding and pressing a paper dress onto a paper Shirley Temple, reminded him of the naked bodies in the magazine Harry Gifford had given him before Gifford left on a freight train with two other boys who dropped out of school. He wondered how old she was. He wondered if her breasts were as white as her hands, or whiter.
“I’m Aldine McKenna,” the girl-woman said, popping up so quickly to shake hands that her bracelets clacked together. “You must be Clarence.”
Clay-dance. He barely recognized his own name when she said it—that was how exotic she made it.
“It’s Clare,” he said out of habit. “No one calls me Clarence.” From his lips the name sounded nasal and plain again. He looked down at his hands, oily from tractor work, and wished he’d done a better job of washing them.
“Not even the teachers?” Aldine asked, and then seemed to say, “Beggars thoust will be.”
“I’m sorry?” he said.
She said it again, confusing him more, but Neva said, “Because that’s what she is, Clare, our new teacher!”
“Oh,” Clare said. The young woman smiled and stayed on her feet, as if waiting for him to say more, but he couldn’t think of anything more to say. Neva kept dancing on her toes and pushing the black and yellow bangles on Aldine’s arm up and down, letting them fall and clack together until finally Aldine slipped them off and handed them to Neva, who pressed the bracelets to her eyes like spectacles and peered clownishly through them at Clare. “They’re Bakelite, Clare,” she shouted. “Like the telephone!” Then, to Aldine, she said, “Clare remembers things. He can tell you every one of Tom Mix’s injuries and recite all the presidents in order including vice presidents!”
She smiled at him. “Well, well. Is that true now, Clarence?” she said in a voice that seemed to flow through him like a warm liquid. “And how many injuries does Mr. Tom Mix have?”
“Twenty-six,” he murmured. “They go A to Z.”
“Do they now?” Aldine said, and he felt somehow that the friskiness in her tone was coming at his expense. He felt his cheeks going red. He wanted to keep looking at her in the worst way, but he couldn’t. He lowered his eyes and turned away.
When they were all seated at the table, Aldine answered questions while dishes were passed. With the bowls of chicken soup, there was a platter of pan rolls and bread. Clare helped himself to a pan roll before he realized there were only five, but he noticed that Aldine more quickly perceived the math problem before them, and took only a heel of bread before passing the platter.