Authors: Richard Ford
With difficulty I guided my front wheel up the sandy tire track. Charley’s old Higgins wobbled and wiggled over the stones and gravels, and pedaling uphill wasn’t easy. Though as soon as I topped the rise where the vacant house sat, giving a view to miles around, the school or what had to be the school lay straight down the road in plain view at the bottom of the hill’s other side—a large, square redbrick building, with four stories, sitting by itself on a low place on the prairie—not very different from the way Great Falls High School would’ve looked if it had been set down there. But I knew the instant I saw the building what “wayward” meant. It meant what Berner and I would’ve been if juvenile authorities had come and taken us. Orphans. Only orphans would be in a place like this.
The wide square of ground the school sat on had been rescued from pasture land beside a narrow dry creek. Wheat grew on the bench above it. Spindly trees were planted on the lawn and there were figures—the wayward girls, I believed—dotting the grass. The sharp October sun—tingly on my sweaty neck—made the school appear barren and still. I almost turned and coasted back to the highway. It would never be a place with big oak trees and a football field and boys my age to accept me—the way I’d almost had it in Great Falls. This would never be what I wanted. It was Canada.
Still, I’d come that far. So I just let the bike coast down the bumpy hill. I guessed it was one o’clock. Two hawks circled slowly high in the sky. As I began to pedal where the road became flat at the level of the school, some of the girls sitting on the grass, talking in ones and twos, and several who were walking the perimeter of the lawn, noticed me. Very few people, I thought, would ride a bicycle all the way to here, since there was nothing to do but go back.
A tall nun in a black gown with a white head covering stood on the school steps, supervising the yard. It was after lunch. She was talking to one of the girls, who was laughing. The nun saw me and began watching me across the distance of the lawn.
Where the school ground bordered the road, a tall barred gate stood by itself with no fence attached—which was strange, since anybody could leave or go that wanted to. Not like what I thought an orphanage was. The road entered the grounds farther on. I could see where cars were parked along the side of the building. The gate’s barred doors were chained and padlocked, and up above them, connecting the brick gateposts, a metal banner with a gold figure of Christ, his arms outstretched, welcomed people through the gate in case it ever opened.
I sat on my bicycle, sweating, though a chill wind ran along the road I’d just coasted down. I would have to struggle into it when I rode back. I didn’t see a boy anywhere inside the gate or even working on the lawn. There would have to be a boy somewhere, I thought. There weren’t places where no boys were wanted or needed.
Two of the girls inside the yard had walked to where I was sitting on my bike outside the gate, just looking in. One was tall and skinny and had a bad complexion and a hard, wrinkled mouth that made her look grown up. The other was ordinary sized, with plain brown hair and a square, not-pretty face, and had one arm that was smaller, though not shorter, than her other one. She had a nice smile, I was glad to see, and she trained it on me through the fence bars. They were both dressed in the same shapeless light blue dresses and white tennis shoes and green ankle socks.
HOLY NAME
was stitched in white where a breast pocket would’ve been. They were like the clothes my mother had worn in jail the last day I saw her.
“What do you think you’re here to do?” the tall, older-looking girl said in a hard, unfriendly way as if she wanted me to leave. Her long body loosened up when she spoke. She cocked her hip, as if she expected me to say something smart back, like Berner would’ve done.
“I just came out to see the school,” I said and felt conspicuous being there. I was not in America. I had no business coming to a school I knew nothing about. I thought I should probably ride away.
“You’re not allowed in here,” the nice girl with the skinny arm said. She smiled at me again, though I could tell it wasn’t friendly. It was sarcastic. One of her side-front teeth was gone and a space was dark inside her mouth, which ruined her nice smile. Both girls had bitten-down fingernails and scratches on their arms and measly bumps around their mouths, and hair on their legs, like mine. It wouldn’t ever be possible to be friends with them.
Far behind the two girls the tall nun was coming down the front steps from where she’d been standing. Her robes billowed around her ankles in the breeze. Other girls in the yard stood and looked at the three of us at the gate, as if a disturbance was taking place. The nun swung her arms as she came toward us, her long legs striding out. I wanted to leave before I had to have words with her and she called the authorities. Both girls looked around but didn’t seem to care about her. They smiled at each other in a mean, pleased way they’d practiced.
“Do you have some kinda girlfriend?” the older girl said. She put her hands through the bars and waggled her fingers at me. I moved back away from her. The Chinese girl in Fort Royal wouldn’t waggle her fingers at me.
“No,” I said.
“What’s your name?” the smaller girl with the skinny arm said.
I gripped the handlebar and set my foot on the pedal, ready to push off. “Dell,” I said.
“You shoo away! You shoo!” the nun had begun shouting as she came in her long strides over the lawn, a beaded harness around her waist, a big cross swinging side to side, her scrubbed-white face and mouth and eyes and cheeks and forehead tightly enclosed in starched white material. “Shoo away, boy,” she shouted.
The two girls looked around at her again and exchanged cruel looks.
“You man, get away. What do you think you’re doing here?” the nun was shouting. It was as if she thought something awful was about to happen or already had.
“That old whore,” the older girl said and seemed natural saying it.
“We hate her. If she died, we’d like it,” the smaller girl said. She had tiny, narrow, dark eyes, and when she said that, she widened them as if she was shocked by herself.
“Dell’s a monkey’s name where I come from. Shaunavon, Saskatchewan,” the older girl said, unbothered by the nun who was quickly approaching. The girl suddenly reached her long arm farther through the gap in the bars and fastened a terrible grip on my wrist, which I tried to get away from but couldn’t. She began pulling me, while the other girl laughed. I was tipping sideways, my right leg and just my shoe heel holding me up, but beginning to fall.
“Don’t touch them,” the nun was shouting. I wasn’t touching anybody.
“He’s afraid of us,” the smaller girl said and started walking away, leaving the older girl imprisoning me through the bars. She was staring at me, torturing me and liking it. She dug her little stunted fingernails into my wrist skin, as if she wanted to tear it.
“Turn him loose, Marjorie,” the nun shouted, almost to the gate. “He’ll injure you.” She couldn’t move easily because of her heavy skirts.
I was being pulled off my bicycle and up against the bars of the gate. “Stop,” I said. “You don’t need to do this.”
“But I just want to.” Marjorie was pulling me against the bars to do something to me. Beat me up, I thought. She was much stronger than Berner and she was bigger. Her face was calm, but her large blue eyes were trained hard on me, and her jaw muscles were clenched as if she was straining. She was younger than I was. Fourteen, I thought, for some reason. “I want to make a man out of you,” she said. “Or make a mess.”
Then the nun arrived and immediately grabbed Marjorie’s shoulder and pulled her back, though Marjorie kept holding on to me. The nun took hold of the girl’s chin and turned her head to the side away from the gate. “Wrong, wrong, wrong,” she said angrily through her pale, stiffened lips. Her black robes made everything difficult for her. The nun’s eyes worked to me, through the bars. “Why are you here?” she said. Her face was getting red. “You don’t belong here. Get away.” She was also very young. Her face was smooth and clear, even though she was angry. She wasn’t much older than Marjorie or me.
A bell had begun to ring at the school. I was all the way off my old bike but hadn’t yet fallen. Marjorie still had her burning grip on my arm and no expression on her face. With my left hand I pried in under her tough fingers—where gouges were opening in my skin. I forced one finger up and then another one. I didn’t want to hurt her. Then I was loose. I stumbled backward away from her into my bicycle and fell on the gravel and knocked the breath out of myself.
“Who
are
you?” The nun was glaring down at me through the bars. Her face was scrubbed and shiny and furious. She now had a strong grip on Marjorie’s shoulders. Marjorie had begun smiling at me on the ground, as if I’d done something funny. “What’s your name?” the nun said.
I didn’t want to say anything about myself. I began to get up and raise my bicycle off the gravel.
“His name’s Dell,” Marjorie said. “It’s a monkey’s name.”
“Why are you here?” the nun said, still holding Marjorie’s shoulders.
“I just wanted to go to school.” I felt ridiculous kneeling on the ground, reduced in size by being here.
“It’s not
for
you.” She had an accent different from anybody else’s I’d ever heard. She spoke fast and spit her words at me. Her dark flat eyes were furious—furious against me. “Where are you living?”
“In Partreau,” I said. “I work in Fort Royal.” All the girls in the school yard were walking toward the front steps, organizing themselves into a line to go inside. Another nun—short and heavy-set—was now at the top of the steps, her hands folded in front of her. Marjorie was still smiling at me through the bars as if I was pathetic.
“I wanted to kiss you,” she said to me dreamily. “You didn’t want to kiss me, though, did you?”
“Go back inside,” the nun said, and turned loose of Marjorie’s shoulders and shoved her away. Marjorie threw her head back and turned dramatically and laughed out loud and began walking to catch up with her friend.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t want to see you ever here again,” the young nun said through the gate. She shook her head at me and pushed her face forward and glared to make sure I understood. “If you come out to here, I will call the constables. They take you away. Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I wanted to say something else but had no idea what it could be. I didn’t know what desperate was, but I felt desperate. The young nun was already walking away, her heavy black gown swaying in the sunlight. I had my bicycle up on its wheels, and got it turned in the gravel. I climbed on and began my ride back up the hill into the wind toward the highway and Partreau.
F
LORENCE LA BLANC DROVE OUT TO PARTREAU IN
her little pink Metropolitan and left a bulky manila envelope leaned against the door of my shack. It had been sent from America with the words
Pass On to Dell Parsons
scrawled on the bottom, in handwriting I didn’t recognize. It was just days after I’d gone on my bike to the wayward girls’ school, and the week I was to move from Partreau to Fort Royal because more Sports were arriving. Charley had been told to install one of the Sports onto the other cot in my shack, and it wasn’t thought (by Florence, I learned) “good” for me to sleep alone in a room with a grown stranger. Charley had smirked about this and said the old drunk goose shooters could “get lovey” after midnight. There was a tiny “monk’s mop closet” on the third floor of the Leonard, down the hallway from Remlinger’s rooms. I was given this room to sleep in and the use of the downstairs bathroom with the roughnecks and railroaders, and a white enamel pot for the middle of the night. Charley would collect me in his truck for my goose duties. It was beginning to be colder and windier, and I was happy to quit pedaling to town and sleeping in my drafty cabin and seeing no one. This way, I would be more available, once the goose cleaning was finished, to run errands for the Sports for tips and to hang around the bar at night. If I was busy and had less time by myself, I once again didn’t think about my parents and school and Berner—all of which were important to me, but left me feeling sad as a result.
I’d had little contact with Florence La Blanc. Charley had told me she owned a greeting card store in The Hat and was a widow and once had been a local beauty who’d been free with her charms when her husband was defending Hong Kong in 1941. She looked after her elderly mother. But she was also an artist and enjoyed drinking in the hotel and playing cards in the gambling room, where she was not supposed to be let in. Everyone liked her. Her arrangement with Arthur Remlinger suited her because he had money and good manners and was handsome, in spite of being private and an American and younger than she was. She went back to The Hat when she got tired of him.
Periodically, when I was in my shack, I would look out and see Florence with her painter’s easel established at various locations in Partreau—once near the back of town, facing the caraganas through which the oil pumper and the white bee hives were visible. Another time, she stood out on my street painting Charley’s trailer and his Quonset. I was strictly forbidden to intrude on Arthur Remlinger’s privacy. But there’d been no mention about Florence, who’d acted friendly to me at a distance, and I felt I was at liberty to talk to her. Again, no one came to Partreau. I talked to very few people on any given day. I thought she wouldn’t mind. So, when I saw her seated on her wood stool in a brown smock and a soft black cloth hat, painting in the street that ran in front of the empty Partreau post office, I walked over through the weeds and clutter where houses had stood, to see what a person did to paint a true picture—not just paint-by-numbers, which I knew didn’t constitute genuine painting or art.
When she saw me coming—it was the afternoon she’d left the manila envelope—Florence held up her long paintbrush and waved it back and forth like a metronome. I took this to be a signal that she recognized me—though she kept her eyes on her painting, as if it was important to keep it in view.