Agnes Mallory Read Online Free PDF

budding canopies of trees, I imagined myself, slouched on a throne, wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt I particularly liked with blue horizontal stripes. In trooped the population of the earth to stand before me. With a slight tilt of my scepter I sent them left or right. Good guys into the dawn of a magical new era, mobsters et al into a black room where a red ray made them dance in agony for a while and then dissolved them. Frankly, it all seemed to be going like clockwork … and then the next thing I knew, I was sitting in my combination chair and desk, inwardly cowering as Miss Truxell prowled up and down the classroom aisle. It had somehow become two-thirty – the morning was suddenly dreamed away. We were doing Reports – Reports! for the pity of sweet heaven. We were supposed to have one prepared today on one of our Founding Fathers. Mine was supposed to be on Jefferson and I knew exactly nothing about him except that he had a ponytail and spent a lot of time gazing off into the horizon. I slouched and ducked and trembled as Miss Truxell went up the aisle right past me and down the next aisle right past me on my other side. Monstrous with her razor smile, her blackboard stick, her frizzy hair receding from a high forehead that was mottled and stained. Scanning the rows of neatly trimmed heads for someone to call on next. There seemed no hope the schoolday could end before she saw through my attempts to become invisible and singled me out to die the death of the ignorant and ignominious.
    And yet, minute by minute, three o’clock came. Susan smugly proclaimed the life of Hancock, Freddy mumbled his way through Franklin – and the bell rang and I was free. By three-thirty, I was out on the baseball field, shouting manly encouragement to the baserunners, settling disputes. Striding around with my arm outstretched toward the trouble spots, trying to keep things fair for one and all.
    I figure it was about six-thirty, and just beginning to get dark, when I finally set out for home.
    There was no homework that Friday so I wasn’t carrying any books – God knows what I was planning to do about Thomas Jefferson. I walked with my hands in the sidepockets of my windbreaker. Daydreaming mostly, then sometimes taking notice of things. The air was a little cooler now, but it still had that hankering spring smell in it. There were robins pecking around some of the lawns and sparrows perching here and there on the telephone wires.
    I went up Bunker Hill a block, then cut across Warwick past Jay Friedman’s house just for a change of scene. The sidestreet was shaded over by budding oaks and maples so the light was already reddish here and dusky. But even on Piccadilly Road up ahead, the day was growing pale. Still, it was brighter when I reached the corner and stepped out from under the trees. I cut across the lawn of the nearest house, and was just coming down onto the sidewalk, when I heard a car door thunk shut behind me. I glanced back casually down Piccadilly and then away – and then looked back again, surprised. There was my father.
    He had just stepped out of the brown Cadillac. It was parked at the curb about a block away. I stood still and watched while he came around the front of it. He hadn’t seen me, and I thought if I was careful and crept up quickly I might be able to shout boo and spook him. As soon as he had his back to me, I started forward, smiling in anticipation, crouching low.
    Then Dad did a sort of odd thing. As I was creeping up on him, he walked straight over the sidewalk onto a lawn and headed between two houses. Piccadilly wasn’t lined with trees like Bunker Hill was. There were more lawns, more open spaces. The houses on the south side, though, where he was, across from me, had trees in back, a thick stand of tall hickories, maples and dull-green pines. Behind these, and down a short slope, was a stream. Not much of a stream, a run-off of some kind that flowed