Clair De Lune (5 page)

Dr. Ansel had a small blotch, roughly the shape of Iowa, over his left eyebrow, which tended to turn red whenever he got into an argument. It was an exercise to keep her eyes off it.

He could be tiresome and he was a little smug, being the only one among them with a Ph.D. But he wasn't entirely awful, and they had a few interests in common. Which was more than she could say for Mr. Pickering, who taught economics and looked indigestive, or Mr. Lord, the chemistry teacher, who had four or five kids and was always trying to flirt with her. Dr. Ansel was tolerable. He wasn't handsome, but not altogether ugly either. He was middlin'. Medium-tall, almost good-looking, fairly bright. Middlin'. That's the best she could give him. Well, he wasn't fat. And he had good posture.

Sometimes after school they had long discussions about Orson Welles or the teaching of Shakespeare or what the novel was coming to. It amused him that she had read
Ulysses
and looked into
Finnegans Wake
(loaned by one of her professors), while Ansel had scarcely heard of them. It riled him so. He always came back at her with the American Frontier or the novels of Harold Bell Wright. According to Ansel,
The Shepherd of the Hills
embodied the key ideas of the entire Western movement.

“It's okay,” she said, “for the kind of thing it is. Romance and sanctimony.” She added, just for the hell of it, “When he starts preaching and gets sentimental, that's when I run for Faulkner!”

That always got him up on his hind legs. He hated Faulkner. And they had a fine invigorating argument. At least you could argue with Dr. Ansel and talk about something besides which restaurant served the best lunch for the money.

Now and then they branched out onto Rooseveltian policy (Ansel was against it) or Hitler and how things were going in Europe. But Allen preferred their literary conversations.

One day in October, classes were cancelled, long tables set up in the gym, and the faculty, charged by the Selective Service Board, registered students, those over twenty-one, for the draft. Allen had quite enjoyed it. It was like a holiday, overlaid with a not-unpleasant sense of the gravity of it all, which none of them was quite convinced of.

“Roosevelt has said that no American boy will be sent overseas to fight.”

“And I think he'll stick with it, unless he wants to lose votes.”

Over a sandwich at noon, she and Ansel had had a solemn discussion of the implications. He leaned toward the isolationists.

“Look at it this way: we made the Declaration of Independence. We are absolved of any allegiance to the British Empire.”

“Well, I don't know,” she said and tried to defend the protection of British shipping.

But this was self-conscious talk and neither of them was on sure ground. In general, the Federal Theater and
Henry V
were as close as they came to politics and war.

On occasion they argued the merits of the Federal Writers Project and the effect of the Depression on the arts. At the time of the crash, she had not yet turned fifteen. Dr. Ansel, though he didn't come right out and say so, must have been all of twenty-five. He remembered the early Depression better than she did. But both of them bore the stamp of those years—a seriousness of purpose, the drive to achieve, born of necessity. They lived scared, knowing by observation the perils of joblessness. With much in common, the two of them got along well enough.

It was nearing Christmas when Ansel came to her room one afternoon with his feathers all ruffled.

“So!” he said, “Miss Liles is going to conduct a seminar next semester!”

“Not a seminar,” she said, “just a discussion group, reading and discussing. But I suppose,” she added (the term had a fine ring to it), “you could call it a seminar.”

“What's it on?”

“The modern American novel. We're going to read three or four that I consider important and discuss them.”

“Well, if you ask me it sounds like more work. I'm glad Frawley didn't ask me to do it.”

“He didn't ask me. I asked him.”

Ansel looked blank. “How come?”

“I'd been thinking about it for quite a while.”

“You mean it was your idea, this seminar, discussion group, whatever you call it? You never said anything about it.”

“I didn't think I should till I talked to Mr. Frawley.”

“Yeah, well, it sounds like a lot of extra work.”

“I think it'll be fun. And it's only for six weeks. Tuesday and Thursday, four to five.”

“Aren't many of these kids going to show up after four o'clock?”

“I don't expect many. Five or six at the most. But I've got a few kids in my classes who are really bright, who ought to be reading Hemingway and Fitzgerald—”

“And Faulkner,” he said with a sniff. “I suppose you think they should read him.”

“Sure I do.”

“Wait'll Dean Frawley finds out about that!”

“He's already found out. I showed him my list and he approved it.”

“Bet he doesn't know what he's getting into. Bet he's never read Faulkner.”

“You want to bet? We had a good talk about him. He drew the line at
Light in August
, but I wasn't going to use that one anyway.”

“Hm. Well…” Dr. Ansel's blotch was quite red. He stuck his hands in his pockets and made a couple of paces past her desk. “Who's going to pay for the books? How many of these kids can afford—”

“The school's buying them. We've already got them ordered.”

“Well! I'm surprised he's lettin' go of the money. He's so tight with it.”

“He thinks it's a good idea. It's an experiment. If it works, he says maybe next year we can do one on Greek drama. I'm going to bone up on Sophocles and Aristophanes this summer.”

“Well, good luck.”

“Thank you.”

She didn't tell him it was her mother's idea. It had come up at Thanksgiving, when she was home for the holiday. “You know, I've been thinking,” Mother said, “there must be some way you could distinguish yourself in this job. Oh, I know you're doing fine, I don't doubt that for a minute. But I don't want them to think of you as just another competent teacher. I want you to be noticed. Let them know you're somebody special. And I think I've got just the thing!”

“What do you want me to do?” Allen said with some apprehension.

“Why don't you start a discussion group!” Mother reared back from her pie-making with the rolling pin in her hand.

“You mean a community thing?”

“No, at school, as part of your job. A little discussion group after school in the afternoons.”

“Discussing what?”

“Well—
something
. We can work on that. Something that would interest enough of the students, add to their education. Your dean—what's his name?”

“Mr. Frawley.”

“He ought to be impressed by that, if he's as dedicated as you say he is.”

“He is. He's a wonderful old man.”

“Well, then, I'll bet if you went to him and talked it over, he'd help you set up a discussion session. It wouldn't be too much extra work, would it?”

“Well, it would be some, but I suppose I could handle it.”

“Something you know a lot about. My goodness, that could be anything!”

“Now Mother, what do I know a lot about?”

“Don't be so modest, Barbara Allen. Where's your self-confidence? You read a lot of books, there's got to be something you know more about than your students do.”

As a matter of fact, there was, and the more Allen thought about it, the more attractive it seemed. A discussion group wasn't such a bad idea, after all.

But maybe she
should
have told Dr. Ansel whose idea it was. It wasn't quite fair to take all the credit herself. Oh well. Her mother would never have suggested the subject she'd chosen.

With the exception of Dean Frawley, Dr. Ansel was the only man on the faculty whom she rather enjoyed. The dean was a scholarly old gentleman of great courtesy and an air of genuine kindliness. Now and then he dropped in on one of her classes and sat for a while, observing. This was his practice, as some of the other teachers explained. And all of them agreed that, rather than making them nervous, his presence was somehow reassuring.

During their friendly chat about her proposed seminar, he had told her that he was very pleased with her work. He felt it was his obligation to encourage young teachers, he told her. The conversation moved easily into their philosophies of education, and back and forth from teaching methods to favorite books, from primary sources as opposed to textbooks chosen by committee. A fine, satisfying talk. She went away well nourished and feeling quite scholarly.

The only other male of whom she took special notice was the men's gym teacher, coach of the basketball and football teams. He was blue-eyed and beautiful, without a perceptible brain in his head. But in his presence she went all over self-conscious and gawky, a state easily changed as soon as he left the room.

He reminded her of a boy from her undergraduate days who had sat next to her in Sociology II—a blond sonofagun with a lazy grin who copied her answers and called her “kid.” She had longed for him till she feared she was giving off fumes like a Bunsen burner. He never so much as noticed, until one summer night when she ran into him on the way home from the library. He said “Want a Coke?” and after that, strolled her over to his fraternity house, now largely deserted during the summer session, and on through to the backyard, where they sat in the dark and he told her how she had affected him in sociology class. Even if she didn't believe a word he said, it was nice to hear him say it. Then he started fumbling around till she decided she wasn't so crazy about him after all. She figured that, since she had a few things to learn, this was as good a time as any to start. A halfhearted start, not quite consummated, but instructional all the same. And though that put an end to her crush, she thought of him now and then with a certain gratitude.

It seemed it was often the good-for-nothings who attracted her. The rotters had most of the charm. There was a long precedent for that, going back to Satan. Since Genesis, when he appeared as a serpent, very few (not Milton and not Goethe) who cast him in human form had managed to make him wholly repulsive. Wholly evil, of course—of repulsive deed—but magnetic in himself, seductive and clever, “more knowing than any man,” according to Burton (who, being a clergyman, must have known quite a lot about Satan).

It was doubtful that the coach could “perceive the causes of all the meteors and the like,” but he was a bit of a devil and he sure as hell was magnetic. Trouble was, he was not often present. Since, like Miss Boatwright and Mr. Delanier, he divided his time between college and high school, he skillfully avoided meetings. It was a rare occasion when he showed up for anything except gym classes twice a week.

He had danced with her once, at the Halloween party. She was a chaperone, along with Miss Peabody and Mr. Lord and Dean Frawley, and chaperones, providing they knew how, were allowed to dance with the students. She was having a jolly time with a freckled freshman when the coach cut in and put her in such a dither she went into instant aphasia.

“How's it goin'?” he said, not giving a damn.

“Fine.” Well, that was one word.

He danced her around, looking over her head.

“I didn't know you were here,” she said.

“Just got here. Got to show up once in a while and keep Frawley happy. You come to these bops very often?”

“Oh yes! I'm nearly always here.”

“Zheesh!” he said in condolence.

“They're not so bad—I mean, it's only the kids, but—”

He was grinning down at her lazily out of one side of his mouth.

“Well, somebody has to,” she said, “somebody has to chaperone. It's just one of the duties. And I really don't mind it too much. I'd rather be doing this than—” Oh, shut up. Whatever she said wouldn't change it. She came to these dances because nobody asked her to any others. She danced with the kids, and what's more, she enjoyed it.

“You like the fights?” Coach said idly.

“The fights?”

“Prizefights.”

“I don't know, I've never seen one.”

“You haven't?”

“Do they have them around here?”

“In this burg? Kansas City's the closest place.”

“Do you go up there to see them?”

“Sometimes,” he said, adding offhandedly, “May go up tomorrow.”

Was he asking? She thought he was. She waited, dry of mouth.

But he danced her along in silence as if he'd forgotten that she was there at all. She might have been a coat slung over his arm.

“I'd love to see one sometime.”

Now
she
was asking and she could have cut her throat. She turned with relief as one of the bright boys from her English class cut in.