Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(22)

Come ahead.

She got up and walked to the front and began to read rapidly from her papers without ever once looking up, a stream of uninflected talk that would have bored even her, even as she uttered it, if she weren’t so terrified. About Cornwallis, evidently. The Battle of Yorktown. She didn’t get as far as the surrender. Suddenly she was finished. She turned her paper over and there was nothing on the other side. She looked at Guthrie. I told you I wasn’t ready, she said.

She stood facing him, then she advanced and handed him her papers and went back in a rush to her seat in the middle of the room, her face hotly red, and sat down and peered into the palms of her hands as though she might discover some explanation or at least some form of consolation and succor there, and then she looked at the girl next to her, a large brown-haired girl who gave her a little nod, but it didn’t seem to be enough because lastly she hid her hands under her skirt and sat on them.

At the front of the room at his desk Guthrie made a note and consulted the list of names before him. He called the next one. A big boy in black cowboy boots rose up and stomped forward from the back of the room. Once he got started he talked haltingly for something less than a minute.

That’s it? Guthrie said. You think that just about covers it?

Yeah.

That was pretty short.

I couldn’t find anything, the boy said.

You couldn’t find anything about Thomas Jefferson?

No.

The Declaration of Independence.

No.

The presidency. His life at Monticello.

No.

Where did you look?

Everywhere I could think of.

You must not have thought very long, Guthrie said. Let me see your notes.

I just got this page.

Let me see that much.

The big boy handed over the single sheet of tablet paper and stomped back and sat down. Guthrie watched him. The boy had sulled up now. He was staring straight ahead. The room was quiet, the students all waiting and watching him. He looked away and stared out the window. The trees along the curb in front of the school still showed sunlight at the tops; in the slanting afternoon sun the trees cast the thinnest of shadows as though they had been sprayed onto the street and the brown grass. For weeks it had been very dry and in the nights there were hard freezes. He turned back and called Victoria Roubideaux to make her speech.

When she came forward she was in a black skirt and a soft yellow sweater and her coal black hair fell down her back, and he noticed that her hair was cut off squarely and neatly at the bottom in a straight thick line. She looked better now, better kept. She stopped in front of the class and turned slowly and began at once to speak very softly. He could barely hear her.

Could you talk a little louder, please? Guthrie said.

From the beginning? she said.

No. From where you are.

She began to read from the notes again in a voice that had scarcely more volume. He watched her in profile. The girl was staying in Maggie Jones’s house now. Maggie had told him about it. That was better. She already looked better. Probably Maggie had been the one to trim her hair that way.

Then there was a commotion in the room. Abruptly she stopped reading because somebody had said something from the back of the room and now all of the girls were turned in their seats looking at Russell Beckman. He sat at the very back corner, his red curly hair combed down over his forehead, a big boy wearing a tee-shirt under his red and white Holt County Union High School jacket.

She wouldn’t start reading again. She was still staring out at their faces, holding her papers before her. She looked as though she were in a kind of panic.

What’s wrong? Guthrie said.

She turned her head and looked at him, her eyes guarded and dark.

What’s wrong here?

She would not speak nor make any complaint, but turned back toward the class, the rows of suddenly blank faces staring back at her, and looked over their heads toward the Beckman boy who sat at the back row cramped in his desk and who gazed forward blankly, his hands folded on his desk as though he were no more responsible for any disturbance than he was for the setting of the sun. At the front of the classroom the girl watched him. Then without saying any word at all she started walking across the front of the room. By the time she reached the door she was running. Behind her the door crashed against the wall and rebounded and they could hear her rapid steps diminishing in the tiled hallway.

The students sat looking at the door, which was still shuddering. Guthrie rose from his desk. Alberta, he said. Go catch up with her and see what you can do.

A small blond girl in front stood up. But what if I can’t find her?

Go look for her. She can’t be far.

But I don’t know where she went.

Just go look for her. Go on now.

She hurried out of the room into the hall.

Guthrie walked back in the aisle between the desks toward Russell Beckman who still sat with his hands folded. The other students turned to watch as Guthrie passed. He stopped and stood over the boy. What did you say to her?

I didn’t say nothing to her. He made a gesture with his hand. He was brushing something away.

Yes you did. What was it?

I wasn’t even talking to her. I was talking to him. He ducked his head sideways toward the boy next to him. Ask him.

Guthrie looked at the boy in the black cowboy boots in the next desk. The boy stared straight ahead with a sullen look on his face. What’d he say?