After the Parade (16 page)

“When will the bus be here?” he asked.

“I thought we'd walk today. What do you think?”

“Isn't it far?” He did not want to disappoint her, but school had started six weeks earlier and he could not afford to be any later.

“It's two and a half miles,” his mother said. “I checked the odometer when we followed Mr. Rehnquist out yesterday. We've got plenty of time.”

He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth twice, cleaned the crumbs from his trousers, and presented himself to his mother, who stood waiting on the front steps. He could tell that it was early by the way it smelled outside. She set off briskly, and he ran after her, his satchel banging against his leg. They walked single file along the road, his mother in front while he stared at the ground, taking inventory:
four dead snakes, a rotting skunk, and a turtle, still alive but with a large crack across its shell. They did not speak.

On the outskirts of town, several split-level houses were being built, and across from them were trailers lined up in neat rows. “What does that sign say?” he asked, and she read it to him: “Mortonville, population four hundred twenty-eight.”

Thirteen years later when he left, this sign would be the same, though the sign south of town, which he and Walter would pass on their way out, would say 441. “I wonder if they counted me and my mother,” he would say, because the second sign had been erected after their arrival. “I suspect it's not a terribly accurate reckoning,” Walter would reply. “Nor do I imagine anyone will be out changing the signs tonight once they realize you've gone.”

A woman in front of the school began waving at them when they were still half a block away. “That must be Miss Meeks,” said his mother, lifting her hand with its chewed-up pink fingernails to wave back. He waved also, but the woman kept waving, and he turned to look behind them. There was nobody there.

“The new boy!” Miss Meeks said when they stood in front of her, declaring dramatically, “The new boy has arrived.”

“You must be Miss Meeks,” his mother said, placing her hand on his shoulder, which meant that something was expected of him.

“Good morning, Miss Meeks,” he said. He swung his satchel hard against his leg, but his hands were slick with sweat and it slipped and landed near Miss Meeks's feet.

“Oh, goodness,” said Miss Meeks. “The new boy is nervous.”

“I'm Aaron,” he said.

As they entered the school, Miss Meeks turned to him with a severe look on her face. “We do not run in hallways,” she said, and Aaron, who was walking sedately behind her, nodded. They paused outside the classroom, and Miss Meeks turned to his mother. “I recommend that parents say good-bye at the door—to discourage outbursts.”

He had pictured his mother entering with him, the two of them enduring his classmates' stares together. “Fine,” said his mother, and she left.

He walked in with Miss Meeks, who took him over to where several children stood in front of easels. “This is Ralph Lehn,” said Miss Meeks, gesturing at a boy who had painted a large truck and stick figures holding giant soup cans over their heads. “His father drives the garbage truck in town.” Her lips pursed in what Aaron would come to think of as her
vowel lips,
a poutiness that occurred when she exaggerated her vowels or disapproved of something. “Mr. Lehn, say hello to the new boy.”

“Hello, new boy,” said Ralph Lehn. He dipped the tip of his brush into the black paint and jabbed it at the paper, creating a series of black specks above the truck. “Flies,” he explained, looking at Aaron for the first time.

“Ralph, why don't you show the new boy where to hang his jacket, and then I'll help him with his cubbyhole.” She left, and he and Ralph Lehn stood looking at each other.

“My name is Aaron,” said Aaron. “I'm new.”

“So?” said Ralph Lehn. “What's the big deal about being new?”

“Nothing,” said Aaron.

“You put your stupid jacket over there. What else do you want to know?”

“What does your father do with the garbage after he picks it up? Does he bring it to your house?”

“Why would we want everyone's stinking garbage at our house?” said Ralph Lehn. “He takes it to the landfill and dumps it in a big hole, and then a cat covers it up with dirt.”

Aaron loved cats. His neighbors in Moorhead had had two cats that used to climb over the fence and defecate in his sandbox. He rarely played in the sandbox, so he did not mind, particularly as he had admired how neat and focused they were, crouching with their tails erect and twitching, then turning to sniff at what they had created before covering it with sand. He tried to imagine a cat so large that it could bury a truckload of garbage.

“Are you allowed to pet the cat?” he asked Ralph Lehn. His father had forbidden him to pet the neighbors' cats, but he had done it anyway when his father was at work.

“It's not a real cat. It's a Caterpillar. Don't you know nothing about machinery?”

Aaron thought that caterpillars made even less sense than cats, but he did not ask Ralph Lehn any more questions. He was not interested in machinery. He hung his jacket on an empty hook and took his satchel over to Miss Meeks, who showed him his cubbyhole. When he had finished arranging his school supplies inside it, she pointed to a table and said, “You're at table five.” He sat down and waited, and finally Miss Meeks clapped, and everyone else sat also.

“We'll begin Show and Tell today with the new boy,” Miss Meeks said, pointing at Aaron. “This is Aaron Englund. He just moved to Mortonville with his mother.” She sat down at her desk, hands clasped atop it. “Aaron,” she said, “you may take over.”

“You better go up,” whispered a boy at his table.

“Mr. Englund, please come to the front. Your classmates have questions for you.”

Aaron rose and went to the front. “Questions for the new boy?” Miss Meeks said, scanning the room.

“Moo,” said a thin boy with great feeling, and Miss Meeks ordered him into the corner.

A bored-looking girl in a cowgirl outfit asked, “What did you do this summer?” Her nose was turned up so that her nostrils appeared gaping.

“I went to the Paul Bunyans, the sitting-down one and the standing-up one. We stayed at a motel. Mainly, my father drove a lot, and I was in the backseat.”

“Did your father come here with you?” asked a girl with black glasses and a small, curious face. She was from his table.

“My father died,” he said. Everyone was listening now. “Then my mother had to go to the hospital. I stayed with my uncle and aunt and cousins. They also have a Foster.”

“How did your father die?” asked the girl with glasses, kindly.

“He was in a parade with some other policemen, and they were on a float. My father fell off and hit his head.”

His new classmates stared. Even the boy in the corner turned
around and stared, and the girl with glasses took them off as though they had become too heavy for her face. Miss Meeks stood and rapped on her desk. “Aaron Englund, you may return to your table. That's enough Show and Tell for one day.”

When he sat down, the girl with glasses leaned toward him. “My puppy died,” she said. “The hired hand ran him over with the combine. We buried him by the barn.”

“Were you sad?” he whispered.

“Class,” said Miss Meeks, “we would expect the new boy to be more interested in making a good impression than in carrying on side conversations during precious class time. But perhaps rudeness is common where he comes from.”

“I'm sorry, Miss Meeks,” he said, but she did not respond to his apology except to hold up a large cutout of the letter
V
made from green construction paper, the two legs framing her face as though a giant frog were doing the splits in front of her.

“This is our letter for today. Can anyone tell me what letter it is?”

Several children raised their hands. Miss Meeks called on the pug-nosed girl. “V,” said the girl. “V as in Valentine.”

“That is correct, Kimberly. Valentine starts with V.” Miss Meeks faced the class, panting “vuh, vuh, vuh” at them, and they repeated it: “Vuh, vuh, vuh.”

“V-v-valentine,” said Miss Meeks. “Who can think of another word that starts with V?”

“Vegetable,” said the girl with the dead puppy, almost apologetically, which made Aaron like her even more.

“V-v-vegetable,” said Miss Meeks. “Good.”

“Vickie,” shouted the boy who had sat happily in the corner during Show and Tell. Everyone turned to look at a girl at Aaron's table who had bread crumbs dusting her mouth and what appeared to be dried egg yolk on her chin.

“Vickie,” said Miss Meeks, “can you come up and write your name on the board for us?” The girl shook her head, scattering crumbs. Miss Meeks said, “Fine,” as though it were not really fine. “Other words, class?” she asked.

A very tall girl said, “Veterinarian,” which Aaron had never heard of, but when Miss Meeks said, “Does everyone know what a veterinarian is?,” the class nodded, so he did not ask.

He raised his hand shyly, and Miss Meeks said, “Remember, it must start with V.”

“Vacancy,” he announced.

“Vacancy,” said Miss Meeks. “Perhaps the new boy would like to explain his word to the class.” He did not understand why she was mad, only that she was. She noted his confusion and looked pleased, and he realized that Miss Meeks did not think he knew what
vacancy
meant. His eyes burned.
It means when there's room for you,
he wanted to say.

“Remember, children,” Miss Meeks said, “in my class there are no show-offs.”

His mother was waiting for him after school. On the way home, she walked far ahead of him, only turning once to ask how his day had gone.

“Okay,” he said, and she said, “Just okay?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What did you do?”

“I answered questions,” he said.

“Questions about what?” He could tell that she was interested.

“Moorhead,” he said. “Paul Bunyan.” He did not say his dead father.

*  *  *

Aaron did not know where his mother went after she left him at school each morning, but she was always back at noon, waiting for him on foot as the other children boarded the bus and rode home. This routine—walking, school, walking—became the order of their days, one he grew to appreciate because his mother seemed happiest as they walked. Their afternoons also followed a new pattern. When they arrived back at the house, his mother went into her bedroom and closed the door, and he waited—at the kitchen table or in his bedroom—while she rested. She never offered to make lunch first, but he did not mind because he knew that she was tired. Besides, he
liked to prepare his own lunch. He always made the same thing, saltine crackers dipped in ketchup.

“I'll have a dozen today,” he would say, out loud, to himself.
Dozen
was the word for twelve. He would count out twelve crackers, which he lined up around the rim of the plate like fallen dominoes. In the middle, he squirted the ketchup. After he finished eating, he drank a glass of water, gulping loudly, a sound that had always angered his father.

“How am I supposed to eat with you making that goddamn noise?” his father used to yell. “It's like listening to a clogged drain.” One time, his father had jumped up from the supper table and retrieved a red plastic bottle from under the sink. Gripping Aaron's head in the crook of his elbow, he tried to force Aaron's mouth open as he held the red bottle above it. What had frightened Aaron most was the way his father trembled.

“Jerry, stop,” his mother had said, her voice low and scared. His father had stopped. Years later, when Aaron asked his mother about that night, she explained that it was Drano his father had threatened to pour down his throat. “He never would have done it,” she assured him. “He was just like that, always trying to scare people into changing.”

Mr. Rehnquist was part of their new routine also. On the first day of each month, he came by after supper to pick up the rent check. During these visits, he seemed awkward, not jolly and at ease as he had been the day they met him. Aaron's mother said that it probably made him shy to be a guest in the house that he'd lived in as a boy. “Why?” Aaron had asked, and his mother said, “Well, there are things that happen in a house, things you don't always like to think about. Maybe Mr. Rehnquist remembers those things when he comes here.”

Mr. Rehnquist's visits always ended at the kitchen table with the adults drinking coffee while Mr. Rehnquist quizzed Aaron about school, about what he was learning and how he was getting on with Miss Meeks, the latter a question to which Aaron gave brief replies because he did not want Mr. Rehnquist to think less of him for failing to win over his teacher.

“How's crazy Betty behaving?” Mr. Rehnquist asked one night in the silence after they'd finished discussing school.

“You'll have to ask Aaron,” his mother said. “They're good friends, you know.”

Aaron realized only then that Mr. Rehnquist was referring to Betty Otto, who lived in the house behind them, but he did not understand why his mother would say they were friends. It was true they sometimes chatted, but he did not think that chatting constituted a friendship, though he did not really understand what friendship involved. His mother said it was natural to want the company of others, sounding almost suspicious of those who did not, despite her own friendlessness.

“She still busy with that garden?” Mr. Rehnquist asked him.

“Yes,” Aaron said.

“She's also busy shooting off her gun,” his mother said.

“She shoots squirrels because they ruin her garden,” Aaron said.

This garden lay on the other side of a row of tall pine trees that served as a boundary marker. When they first moved in, Aaron had often knelt on the bed in his new room, staring out the window at the garden and the house beyond. He soon discovered that a woman lived there, thin with milky skin and curly hair as red as a clown's. She had a dog that she usually kept tied to a pole beside the doghouse, which sat in front of the real house like its shadow. Aaron always noted the dog's location because he was afraid of dogs. Those first several weeks, he had spied on the house as he waited for his mother to finish resting, until one afternoon he knew that he could not stay inside even one second longer. He rose and went out into the front yard, where he paced with frantic anticipation. When nothing happened, he walked around to the backyard and stood in the knee-high grass beside the pine trees.