Читать книгу Waiting with Elmer - Deanna K. Klingel - Страница 14

Chapter Seven

“Willy, you hardly touch your supper, man, what be wrong with you? Growin’ boys need sustenance,” whined Drum with a worried expression on his face. “My mama say you got to have fuel in the tank or you got no get up and go.”

“Don’t feel hungry,” Willy murmured.

“Guess you got a case of nervous stomach, huh, Willy? Worrying over school tomorrow?”

Willy shrugged and glanced at Rake. It was Tuesday. He was nervous, he was worrying; he was even scared.

“At one school I was at they called me half-‘n’- half.”

“Half and half?”

“Yeah. My mama’s colored. My dad’s not.”

“Oh, I see,” said Drum. “So, you have a little trouble fittin’ in? Well, now, I don’t know a lot, Brother Willy, but this much I can tell you. Lots of folks look into their coffee cups and say ‘oh woe, my cup be half empty.’ But around here, we look in our coffee mugs and we say, ‘praise God, my cup is half full.’ So, you got to decide on your own, Mr. Half an’ Half, are you half full or are you half empty? Looks to me like you might have the best of two worlds. You got coffee and cream together. You might even have a full cup. Who’s to decide that? Only you.” Drum passed the bread. “You’ll figger it out.”

“Brothers, I suggest we have a sweet hour of prayer for our brother Willy tonight. He’s going to school tomorrow! What do you say about that?”

Willy felt his neck burning and his stomach tightened. When he turned around to see who’d spoken he was surprised to see it was the old man who sat in the swing.

“Amen, Brother Charles, amen,” they all said. They began to hum and move their chairs into a circle. Willy dragged his metal chair. His ears burned. He wished he could be anywhere but here. He’d sat in this prayer circle a few days ago when Skeet was going for a job interview at the tannery outside town. Elmer had brought Skeet a new work shirt and pants, and everyone had to pray about it. Now they’d be praying over him. He squirmed.

Rake watched the forlorn, worrying boy dragging his chair.

“You’ll be fine, Willy. You’ll be fine.” Rake gave Willy a real hug and Willy’s body went stiff as a board. No one hugged him, except Grandma, and she… Willy glanced at Rake who watched the shroud falling across Willy’s face.

One after another, the men offered their prayers for Willy’s first day of school. They prayed about his book learning, about friends he’d meet, and they prayed for his teacher. Willy listened and soon was joining in the group’s “Amen” at the end of each prayer. He never imagined there were so many things to pray about. His legs, tightly wound around the chair legs, unwrapped and stretched out in front of him. His stiff shoulders loosened up and his arms dangled loose in his lap. He stopped scowling and his headache went away. When they finished praying and singing, Willy was hungry.

“I’ll bet everyone would like a little dee-zert to-night,” shouted Rake. “Willy, you run out back to the ice box and get us a little ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” Willy ran out to the back room and swung open the ice box door. He returned with a bag full of ice cream cups and flat wooden spoons. The men took as long to savor their little ice cream cups as they’d spent over their entire supper. Before long someone called “Lights out!” and a voice responded, “Praise God.” Willy went straight to sleep without a worry.

The first voice he heard in the morning was Elmer’s. He heard the platform rolling up the orange ramp and Elmer’s booming voice singing good morning to everyone.

“I came to accompany our scholar this morning,” he said. Willy buckled his knickers, tied his shoes, and buttoned his shirt. He gathered books and pencils and grabbed a doughnut from the brown bag. The smell of unwashed men and strong coffee filled the kitchen.

“Well, now don’t you just look fit as a fiddle this mornin’,” Drum said cheerfully. Drum filled Willy’s lunchbox, and Willy went out the door. Elmer rolled down the orange ramp beside him. They were half-way to school before either of them spoke.

“This is an important day for you, Willy. I imagine you were sent off with prayer, am I right?” Willy nodded. “One thing all those men have learned while waiting is not to take on anything new, scary, or interesting, good or bad, without prayer. Prayer just makes the wait and the doing so much better, Willy.”

“Yes, sir, I’m starting to see it that way,” Willy answered.

“You aren’t alone today, Willy.”

“I know.” Willy glanced over his shoulder and looked up at the large cross blinking in the morning sun. Then he gave a long look down the road ahead of him.

***

The men were all anxious to see Willy after school and hear his account of the first day.

“I got moved three times today. Each time the teacher said I was too old and not right for her class. The school nurse said I’m not ten. More like thirteen or fourteen. She said I got some pimples and I might be fifteen. She said everybody needs to know their own birthday. But I don’t. The kids laughed at me about that. After lunch I went to a different building that says Waitnsee Junior High School on the door. But now I got to do things I don’t really know how to do. I have to do algebra. I don’t even know what that is. I have to do history and biology. I don’t know how to do any of that stuff, so maybe they won’t let me come back. Tomorrow I might get moved again. I got homework to do. I guess this is how you do school. My stomach hurts. I’ll probably just be sick tomorrow.”

Willy heard the wheels rolling behind him in the gathering room. “Hi, Elmer, what are you doing here?”

“Came to see you and hear about your school day.”

“Oh, that. Well, I won’t do very good at it, Elmer. I don’t know how to do any of the things. It’s all new.”

“Wonderful!” Elmer clapped his hands. “There! Just like I said, the teachers would sort it out and put you where you needed to be.”

“No, you got that wrong, Elmer. They moved me around, but I ended up in the wrong place. Now I’m in a class where I don’t know how to do anything. And I have to do homework, too, and I don’t even know how to do that. The teacher asked me if I was used to homework and I told her I make my bed each morning, and I wipe down the tables, and I take my turn with scrubbing the pots and cleaning the sinks. That’s all the homework I know how. Oh, and sweeping off the porch, I forgot that.”

Elmer laughed and pulled Willy down to his platform. “When the supper gets cleared away tonight, you and I will use the table and we’ll talk about the homework, okay? You’re a lucky man, Willy. You’ve got tutors all around you.”

“Huh?” He looked around at the room full of hapless and homeless men. “What do I need a tu—whatever you said, for?”

“Chicken and dumplings,” called Drum. “Willy, you had such a fine day today, I think you should ask the blessing tonight.”

“Aw, no, Drum. Not me. I don’t know how to do prayin.’ I’m only good at the Amen part. I only know how to do our-father-who-are-in-the-heaven. Ask somebody else.”

“I asked you.” The metal chairs scraped around the big table and Drum walked around behind the men, dropping heaps of chicken and dumplings onto their tin plates. The tray of bread and butter was passed around the table. Then it was quiet. All the men bowed their heads and waited. Willy peeked up and Drum had one eye open peeping at him; he nodded at Willy. Willy gulped.

“Our Father who are in the heaven, thank you for being there in heaven where we can find you, and thank you for Drum knowing how to make chicken and dumplings, and for the bakery lady that brings our daily bread every morning, so she doesn’t have to throw it away. And she said to say thank you that her boy got a job driving a truck, so thank you for that. Thank you for Elmer getting me these pants, because one boy has holes in his and the kids made fun about that and it hurt his feelings pretty bad. His stomach hurt from being made fun of. Can you please fix that up for him, so he won’t have to miss school tomorrow? And that girl, Betsy, we need to thank you for Betsy who gave him a Kleenex and told him to forgive them and just waitnsee and everything would be fine. And I think we need to say thank you for all those teachers over there at that school, because, God, I found out they come to school earlier than we do, and they clean up their classroom, and they don’t even get to go home ’til suppertime. And then thank you for my lunch that Drum made for me. I blessed about that before I ate it, too, and I saw a couple of them thinking that was funny and I wanted to punch them, but Elmer told me that time when the paper boy got in a fight with another kid, that fighting wasn’t how you wanted me to take care of business, and I needed to fight the temptation instead, so I didn’t punch them; but maybe you could make them sick or something, and deliver us from their evil, and thank you for Elmer telling me all that.” Willy sucked in a little breath.

One by one, men opened their eyes and looked at each other, but no one said anything. A few feet shuffled impatiently on the cement floor under the table. One man cleared a little tickle from his throat. Willy continued.

“I didn’t know we should give thanks for the freight train, but when it rumbled past the school today the chalk in the tray bounced around and the ink bottles shook in their little holes and the teacher had to stop talking about diagramming sentences because we couldn’t hear her anyway, and she said, “God bless those trains to kingdom come!” so I reckon we should bless those trains, and…”

“Amen,” shouted Drum, “amen.”

“Yes, amen,” added the others, shaking their heads. “Yes, indeed, God bless those trains!” They dove into their chicken and dumplings and chewed slowly. Their supper had completely cooled; grease pooled around the edges of their plates.

“Well, well, Willy, looks to me like you’ll do right well in recitation class.” The others laughed. Willy shrugged, unsure what was meant by that, and looked a bit disappointed.

“I didn’t get to the part about thy will be done.”

When the supper was cleaned up, Elmer, Rake, and Willy sat at the table and looked over Willy’s home work.

“Charles,” Elmer called. “Looks like you got yourself a job. Willy’s got some algebra.” Old Charles hobbled off the swing and out to the table.

Willy whispered to Elmer. “Charles? Him? But he’s just a—

Elmer’s eyebrow shot up and Willy swallowed his words.

“You know algebra, Charles?” Willy’s voice cracked with surprise.

Elmer laid his arm over Charles’ shoulder. “Willy, my man, meet the math teacher of the year, in his heyday. Can you come out of retirement and help this man, Charles?”

“Let’s get to it.” He rubbed his hands with enthusiasm. “Let’s get to it!” The evening went quickly as Willy soaked up the world of algebraic expressions from the old math teacher.

“How come you know about algebra, Charles?”

“Well, sir, I was a teacher, years back. My students turned out to be the finest in their field. Engineers, accountants, teachers, scientists… yes, sir, I was a good teacher, if I do say so myself.”

“Why aren’t you a teacher anymore?”

“Because they say I’m too old. Folks think if you get old you aren’t worth anything anymore.”

“Well, you just taught me. I think you could teach our whole class. How come you live here? Don’t teachers have real houses?”

“I did. Once.”

“Lights out.”

“Praise God.”

Willy and Charles crept off to bed. Willy held on to his unanswered questions about Charles, who was much more than he seemed. Willy was well prepared for tomorrow, thanks to Old Charles.

Charles smiled to himself as he snuggled beneath his blanket. “Thy will be done,” he whispered.