Edenville Owls (10 page)

I
was walking Joanie to her house. The Ford Tudor was nowhere in sight.

“Did you hear Miss Delaney say
bastard
?” Joanie asked.

“And he called her a bitch,” I said.

We walked past the school. Dark now and perfectly still.

“Do you think she had a knife?” Joanie said.

“That’s what it sounded like.”

Along Church Street, the lights were on in the windows of houses. People were safely inside reading, listening to the radio, playing bridge.

“You think she was married to Reverend Tupper?” Joanie asked.

“I guess so,” I said.

“She’s got a baby,” Joanie said.

“I know.”

“You think they’d fire her if they knew?” she said. “I mean, Mrs. Wood is married.”

“She’s the only one,” I said.

“Mr. Welch is married. He has a little kid.”

“That’s different,” I said. “He’s a man.”

“So?”

“So women when they get married have their husband to take care of them,” I said. “If they work after they’re married, it’s not fair. They’re taking the job from a guy who has to support a family.”

Joanie didn’t say anything for a time.

Then she said, “I guess so.”

“Besides,” I continued, “I never heard of a divorced teacher.”

“And,” Joanie said, “they could say she lied to them when they hired her.”

“Right.”

Joanie’s house was ahead.

“Let’s walk a little more,” I said.

“Yes.”

We turned and walked along Water Street. The smell of the harbor was strong and cold. Ice had started to crust around the edges of the eel pond.

“It’s not exactly right that a father can’t see his son,” I said.

“Would you want Reverend Weirdo for a father?” Joanie asked.

“No.”

“He threatened her at the end,” Joanie said.

“I know.”

“And he hit her at least twice.”

“I know.”

“I wonder what she knows about him,” Joanie said.

“She knows his real name.”

“I wonder why she ever married him,” Joanie said.

I shook my head.

“I hated hearing her cry,” Joanie said.

“Yes,” I said. “Me too.”

“How are we going to stop him?” Joanie asked. “Make him leave her alone?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “We need to figure it out.”

IT
had started to snow about an hour after school started. The first snow of the winter. I was sitting in the back of the classroom looking out the window at the snow, which was soft and steady. There had been a lot of times when

I’d said how I’d figure things out
later.
Now it was
later.
I needed to figure out why I felt safer with Joanie. I needed to figure out a lot about how Joanie made me feel. I had to figure out what to do about Nick and Joanie. But most of all, I needed to figure out what to do to help Miss Delaney. I was only fourteen, I had time for the other stuff. But there might not be too much time left to figure out Miss Delaney and her problem.

At least I had an idea what her problem was. Maybe I felt safe with Joanie because I knew I could be brave for her. Even brave, I couldn’t go against a grown man. Some of the older guys, war veterans, would probably have been happy to help. But then Tupper would blab, and Miss Delaney would get in trouble. Maybe I felt brave with Joanie because she was brave. Her hair smelled really nice. I had to focus on Miss Delaney. I couldn’t let Joanie keep popping in. I could think about Joanie later, once I’d figured out what to do about Miss Delaney. It was funny, every other girl I thought about sex. I didn’t know a lot about it. And I’d never done it. But I thought about it. Except Joanie. With Joanie, I thought about Joanie. How were we going to get Tupper to leave Miss Delaney alone? I wondered why he changed his name. Did he change it before he got the Medal of Honor? Richard Krauss.

Russell reached over and punched me in the ribs.

“Miss Delaney’s talking to you, Dumbo,” he said.

“Thank you, Russell,” Miss Delaney said.

“I’m sorry, Miss Delaney,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I said the education is going on up here. There’s nothing to be learned out the window.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Have you read
Gulliver’s Travels,
Bobby?”

“I saw the movie,” I said.

Several people in the class snickered. Miss Delaney shook her head.

“The book is better,” she said. “Marilyn, have you finished the assignment?”

“Yes, ma’am…”

I concentrated on the snow again.

Nick and I hadn’t been quite as easy with each other since I started being friendlier with Joanie. He was my friend, but Joanie was too. Even though she was a girl, I liked her better. The snow came straight down, and quiet. It wasn’t a blizzard or anything, just the quiet steady downfall of big white flakes. If I helped Miss Delaney, the reverend would hurt her. If I didn’t help her, the reverend would hurt her.

The thought that Miss Delaney had been married was kind of odd. She had a kid. That meant she’d had sex. That was almost suffocating to think about. I thought about sex a lot when I thought about Miss Delaney. I never thought about sex when I thought about Joanie. I daydreamed about her. I thought about rescuing her from kidnappers or finding her when she got lost in the mountains and killing a grizzly bear to save her. In my daydream I killed it with a knife. She was very grateful.

I looked at Miss Delaney. I looked at the snow outside. My mind kept jumping around. I had to concentrate. Forget about killing grizzly bears with a hunting knife. I had to concentrate on saving Miss Delaney from Oswald Tupper.

AFTER
school Nick asked me to come across the street to the bicycle shed with him so we could stay out of the snow and talk.

“Joanie says she doesn’t want to go out with me anymore,” he said when we alone in the shed.

I kept my face still.

“How come?” I said.

“She says she’s too young to get serious about dating.”

I nodded.

“I guess we all are, probably,” I said.

“She been dating you?”

“No.”

“I asked her out twice last week,” Nick said. “And she said she couldn’t and then the second time I saw her later, you were walking her home.”

“I just ran into her,” I said. “And we were talking and I walked to her house with her.”

It was funny how words were, I thought.
Walking her home
seemed to mean the same thing as
walking to her house with her.
But it didn’t.

“Are you going out with her?” Nick said.

Sometime, way back, the bike shed had probably been some kind of horse stable. It still smelled sort of horsey.

“No,” I said. “We’re friends.”

“She likes you,” Nick said.

“I like her,” I said. “We’ve known each other all our lives, you know.”

“So have we,” Nick said.

“Yes.”

“We played ball together since we were little,” Nick said.

I nodded.

“I showed you how to shoot a jump shot,” Nick said.

“Except you showed me wrong,” I said.

“Okay, so it was off the wrong foot. But you were still trying to shoot both hands before me.”

I nodded.

“Joanie likes you,” I said. “She told me you were cute and nice, and not grabby.”

Nick smiled. He looked embarrassed.

“Can you talk to her?” Nick said. “About me?”

“I don’t know if it will do any good,” I said.

“You could try,” Nick said.

“Sure,” I told him. “I’ll try.”

We both were quiet for a time. The snow kept coming steady and quiet. It looked like some kind of white curtain across the open front of the shed.

“Joanie is pretty sure about stuff,” I said. “She makes up her mind, it’s kind of hard to get her to change it, you know?”

“Do you not want to talk to her about me?” Nick asked.

“No, it’s not that,” I said. “But I don’t know how much good it’ll do.”

“I know that,” Nick said. “And if you don’t want to talk to her about it, that’s okay.”

“I do,” I said. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Because I think you’re hot for her too,” Nick said.

“We’re friends,” I said.

“That’s crap,” Nick said. “You’re as hot for her as I am.”

I started to say something, but Nick pushed past it.

“And that’s okay. You got a right. We’re friends. We been friends all our lives. If I don’t get her and you do, okay. We’re friends, we’ll stay friends.”

“Nick,” I said. “I…”

“Forget it.” Nick was shaking his head. “I said what I wanted.”

He put out his hand. I shook it.

“Owls for all,” Nick said, “all for Owls.”

And we laughed.

IN
the school yard at recess, Joanie was with her girlfriends and I was leaning on the wall with the Owls. She saw me, and waved for me to come over. I walked over. I could feel Nick looking at me. She met me halfway.

“Meet me at the bandstand after school,” Joanie said. “I got things to tell you.”

“Me too,” I said.

She smiled and nodded.

“Want to come back to my friends with me? We’re talking about boys.”

“That’s funny,” I said. “We were talking about girls.”

Joanie laughed and went back to her friends.

“You say anything to her?” Nick said to me in a half whisper.

“This afternoon,” I said.

Nick nodded.

“Who we playing Saturday?” Billy asked.

“Wickford Junior High,” Russell said. “They’re undefeated.”

“So are we,” I said.

“So far,” Manny added.

The bell rang and we went back in. I could never decide if I hated school most in winter. In winter it was hot in the classroom and everything reeked of the steam heat in the banging iron radiators. The windows were all closed. Your clothes were too warm. The teachers, even Miss Delaney, seemed locked into hell with you and droned on while you thought about other stuff.

Eventually it was over, and I walked down through the clean white landscape to the bandstand. It was pretty now. Most of the snow was still fresh. In a few days it would be ugly. But not yet.

No one had shoveled a path in, so I had to wade through a foot of snow to get there, and had to wipe off a lot of snow to sit on the bench. Joanie came a few minutes after. She was always later because she went home to change into play clothes. She came in through the snow, carefully stepping in the trail I had broken, and sitting on the bench where I had brushed away the snow.

“I went to the library and asked Old Lady Coughlin if there was a list of Medal of Honor winners from the war,” Joanie said as soon as she sat down. “I told her I was doing a special project in school. And she said that she didn’t think the library had a list, but she was pretty sure
The Standard Times
would have one. And I asked how I could get it, and she told me I could call the research department at the paper. I asked if they would give it to a kid, and Old Lady Coughlin said maybe not, and she would call for me, and she did.”

“And they sent you the list?”

“Yes. She called my house last night and told me.”

“What?” I said. “Is he there?”

“Yes,” Joanie said.

“Oswald Tupper?”

“The medal was awarded to Oswald Tupper…posthumously.”

“Yeah, but…” I stopped. “He’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?” I said.

“That’s what it said on the list,” Joanie said. “That’s what posthumous means.”

“And he didn’t get it as Richard Krauss?”

“Richard Krauss wasn’t on the list,” Joanie said.

“So who was Oswald Tupper?” I said.

“And how did the reverend get his medal?” Joanie said.

“And his name?” I said.

A seagull came and landed in the snow a few feet from the bandstand and looked at us, tilting his head one way and then the other. He had eyes like black BBs. The end of his beak had a little hook in it. We looked at him and didn’t say anything, and I thought about what Joanie had found out.

“You have any idea what to do now?” I asked.

“No.”

“Maybe if we talk about other things…,” I said.

“Okay,” Joanie said.

“I talked with Nick,” I said.

“About me?”

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you?” Joanie said.

“He said you broke up with him.”

“I couldn’t
break up
with him,” Joanie said. “He was just a cute boy I went to a party with. He was getting too serious.”

“That’s what he told me,” I said.

“Was he mad at me?” Joanie said.

“No. He was a little sad, I guess.”

“How about you,” Joanie said. “Was he mad at you?”

“No. He said we were friends all our lives and we’d keep on being friends. He was pretty nice about it.”

“Yes,” Joanie said. “He is nice.”

“You and I been friends all our lives too,” I said.

“I know.”

“You’re the only girl I was ever friends with,” I said.

“I know,” Joanie said. “Why is that, do you think?”

“I guess I’m kind of shy with girls.”

“Except me,” she said.

The seagull must have decided we weren’t going to feed him. He spread his wings quite suddenly and flew off.

“What if I got serious?” I said.

My voice sounded kind of small to me. I didn’t look at Joanie. I watched the seagull head out across the harbor.

“We’re different,” Joanie said.

“But what if I did?” I said.

“Are you getting serious?” Joanie said.

“No.”

I stopped watching the seagull and looked at her.

“But what if I did?” I said.

Joanie smiled.

“We’ll see what happens when you do.”

There was something in her face that made her seem completely grown-up.