A Place so Foreign Part 6

"That's fine with me," Oly said and glared at me.

The other kids were milling around, and Mr Adelson gave us both a look that could melt steel, then rang the bell.

I could hardly concentrate in cla.s.s that day. My Mama getting married? A new Pa?

It couldn't be true. But in my mind, I kept seeing my Mama and that Johnstone kissing under the mistletoe, and him sitting in my Pa's chair, drinking his whiskey.

Oly's desk was next to mine, and he kept shooting me dirty looks. Finally, I leaned over and whispered, "Cut it out, you idiot."

Oly said, "You're the idiot. I think you got your brains scrambled in France, James."

"I'll scramble your brains!"

"Gentlemen," said Mr Adelson. "Do you have something you'd like to share with the cla.s.s?"

"No sir," we said together, and exchanged glares.

"James, perhaps you'd like to come up to the front and finish the lesson?"

"Sir?" I said, looking at the blackboard. He'd been going through quadratics, an elaborate first-principles proof.

"I believe you know this already, don't you? Come up to the front and finish the lesson."

Slowly, I got up from my desk, leaving my slate on my desk, and made my way up to the front. Some of the kids giggled. I picked up a piece of chalk from the chalk-well, and started to write on the board.

Mr Adelson walked back to my seat and sat down. I stopped and looked over my shoulder, and he gave me a little scooting gesture that meant go on. I did, and by the end of the hour, I found that I was enjoying myself. I stopped frequently for questions, and erased the board over and over again, filling it with steady columns of numbers and equations. I stopped noticing Mr Adelson in my seat, and when he stood and thanked me and told us we could eat our lunches, it seemed like no time at all had pa.s.sed.

Mr Adelson looked up from my essay. "James, I'd like to have a chat with you.

Stay behind, please."

"Sit," he said, offering me the chair at his desk. He sat on one of the front-row desks, and stared at me for a long moment.

"What was that mess this morning all about, James?" he asked.

"Oly and I had an argument," I said, sullenly.

"I could see that. What was it about, if you don't mind my asking?"

"He said something about my Mama," I said.

"I see," he said. "Well, having met your mother, I feel confident in saying that she's more than capable of defending herself. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Then we won't see a repeat?"

"No, sir," I said. I didn't plan on talking to Oly ever again.

"Then we'll say no more about it. Now, about this morning's lesson: you did very well."

"It was a dirty trick," I said.

He grinned like a pirate. "I suppose it was. I wouldn't have played it on you if I didn't have every confidence in your abilities, though." He leaned across and picked up my essay from his desk. "It was this that convinced me, really. This is as good as anything I've seen in scholarly journals. I've half a mind to send it to the _Idler_."

"I'm just a kid!"

"You're an extraordinary boy. I'm tempted to let you teach all the cla.s.ses, and take up whittling."

He said it so deadpan, I couldn't tell if he was kidding me. "Oh, you can't do that! I'm not nearly ready to take over."

He laughed. "You're readier than you think, but I expect the town council would stop my salary unless I did _some_ of the work around here. Still, I think that's the most active I've seen you since you came to my cla.s.s, and I'm running out of ideas to keep you busy. Maybe I'll keep you teaching maths. I'll give you my lesson plan to take home before school's out."

"Yes, sir."

Mr Adelson gave me a stack of papers tied up with twine after he dismissed the cla.s.s for the day. I went home and did my ch.o.r.es, then unwrapped the parcel in the parlour. The lesson plans were there, laid out, day by day, and in the centre of them was a smaller parcel, wrapped in coloured paper. "Merry Christmas," was written across it, in his hand.

I opened it, and found a slim book. "War of the Worlds," by Verne. For some reason, it rang a bell. I thought that maybe it had been on our bookcase in 75, but somehow, it hadn't made it back home with us. I opened it, and read the inscription he'd written: "From one traveller to another, Merry Christmas."

I forced myself to read the lesson plans for the next month before I allowed myself to start the Verne, and once I started, I found I couldn't stop. Mama had to drag me away for dinner.

My trip back to 1975 wasn't planned, but it wasn't an accident, either. We'd gotten a new load of hay in for our team, and Mama added stacking it in the horsebarn to my ch.o.r.es. I'd been consciously avoiding the horsebarn since Pa had disappeared. Every time I looked at it, I felt a little hexed, a little frightened.

But Mama had a philosophy: a boy should face up to his fears. She'd been terrified of spiders when she was a girl, and she told me that she had made a point of picking up every spider she saw and letting it crawl around on her face. After a year of that, she said, she never met a spider that frightened her.

Mama had been sending me to the store more and more, too, and having Mr Johnstone over for dinner every Friday night. She knew I didn't like him one little bit, and she said that I would just have to learn to live with what I didn't like, and if that was the only thing I learned from her, it would be enough.

I preferred the horsebarn.

I worked close to the door the first day, which is no way to do it, of course: if you blocked the door, it just made it harder to get at the back when the time came. The way to do it is to first clear out whatever hay is left over, move it out to the pasture, and then fill in from the back forward.

Mama told me so, that first night, when she came out to inspect my work. "You sure must love working out here," she said. "If you do it that way, you'll be out here stacking for twice as long. Well, you have your fun, but I still expect you to be getting your homework and regular ch.o.r.es done. Come in and clean up for supper now."

I jammed the pitchfork into a bale, and washed for supper.

The next afternoon, I resolved to do it right. I moved the bales I'd stacked up by the door to a corner, and then started cleaning out the back. Before long, I'd uncovered the door into 1975. "James," Mama called, from the house.

"Dinner!"

I took a long look at the door. The wood on the edges had aged to the silvery-brown of the rest of the barn-boards, and it looked like it had been there forever. I could hardly remember a time when it wasn't there.

I went in for supper.

The next morning, I picked up my lunch and my schoolbooks, kissed Mama good-bye, and walked out. I stood on our porch for a long time, staring at the horsebarn.

I remembered the brave explorers in Verne's books. I looked over my shoulder, at the closed door of our house, then walked slowly to the horsebarn. I swung the door open, then walked to the back. The triple-bolts had rusted somewhat and took real shoving to slide back. One of them was stubborn, so I picked up the rake and pried it back with the handle, thinking of how ingenious that was.