by Louise Hawes
The truth, though, was that I needed the chance to tell our poet what I’d been trying to all along: I wanted to make sure he knew how sorry I was about what we’d done to his long-ago cottage by the bay. I hadn’t managed to apologize on that last visit with H, and I wanted another chance. It was an apology that wasn’t really meant for witnesses, anyway. It was just between Rufus Baylor and me.
I probably should have called first, the Hendricks’ number was sure to be in the Whale Point directory. But something told me Baylor was home. And something told me he wouldn’t mind company.
“Sarah!” I loved the way he said my name. As if he’d just opened his door on the best possible surprise. As if there were no one else he’d rather invite in. And offer tea. (I said, “No, thank you.”) And ask about school. (I stalled.)
“It’s all right, I guess.” I kept my eyes on Carmen while I answered. She was just as puffed-up and scary as I remembered, but she didn’t hiss at me this time. Instead, she kept her distance, sitting by Baylor’s chair, not like a normal cat, all cuddly and drowsy, but bolt upright, as if she figured she might have to fight off an attack any second.
I didn’t have the heart to tell our poet that the last week of school was almost always a wash. Both teachers and students knew we’d get nothing done, but, for very different reasons, we agreed to put in the time, anyway. I told him, instead, about Miss Kinney and how she adored every word he’d ever written. “She wrote a note to you,” I said, “and we’re bringing it to class tomorrow. I think it’s sort of a love letter.” I remembered the time (okay, the endless minutes that passed like hours while our beach day got shorter and shorter) our teacher had taken over her letter. “Only checked four thousand times for grammar and spelling.”
Baylor laughed. “I hope she doesn’t think poets use red pencils. I’m afraid I’d disappoint her in that regard, Sarah. I’m inclined to dangle participles, you know.”
He sounded as if he’d just confessed to teasing babies or stealing flowers, so I laughed, too.
It wasn’t long, though, before he figured out that school was far from my favorite topic. That was when he nodded at the book I was clutching like some sort of talisman, something that would help me say and do the right thing. “Would you like me to sign that for you?” he asked.
“You can’t, sir,” I said. “It’s a library book.”
He smiled. He did that a lot. And then he waited.
“It’s just, well, I had a question, Mr. Baylor.”
“Call me Rufus.” Still smiling. Still waiting.
I wanted to, really I did. But like I told you, I’d been raised to believe first names between adults and kids meant no holds barred, the end of civilization as we know it. “It’s about one of your poems, Ruf—Mr. Baylor.” I opened the book, leafed through until I found the page. “I was wondering how you made it say one thing and mean even more.” I held the book so he could read the poem. “I mean, it talks about poetry, right? But it could also be about everything else, too.” Was I wrong? Was I making a fool of myself? “Everything in the entire world.”
There wasn’t a nanosecond between my question and Rufus Baylor’s answer. So I had next to no time to feel foolish before I felt wonderful. “You bet, it is!” our poet said. “Put a poem or a sunset in front of some folks, and all they’ll do is try to figure out how they can own it, cut it down to size.
“Same goes for a good bottle of wine, a garden, or a friend.” He stood up, then stepped carefully around Mega Cat. “Now how about you and I have that tea you turned down a minute ago? It comes with cookies?”
I remembered how Span had said his friends would be impressed to know he’d shaken hands with Rufus Baylor. I figured even fewer people could say they had drunk tea with the Great One.
But I did. Or I almost did. My host was in the kitchen with Carmen, putting the water on, when the doorbell rang. That first time it was a pair of reporters. They didn’t look official, since they were wearing jeans, just like us. But they showed their press badges and acted way too full of themselves, so I figured they were genuine. They wanted to interview our poet about the first class he’d taught. And when they found out one of his students was visiting, they wanted to interview me, too.
“I’d be obliged if y’all would come back tomorrow,” Baylor told them when he joined us. The pair looked around the room, then stared hard at me, particularly the woman reporter. It was a greedy look she gave me, but with a lot of sneer thrown in for good measure. It made me feel like I’d won a contest I’d never even entered.
Finally, though, the news snoops asked what time would be good tomorrow, and Baylor told them around five. After they’d gone, I shook my head. “Isn’t five o’clock when we’ll be in class?” I asked.
Baylor grinned. “I think you’re right, Sarah,” he told me. But his smile wasn’t that much broader than usual, and his tone was so close to innocent, I couldn’t be sure whether he’d just made a mistake or given the media the slip.
Tea with Rufus Baylor, Part II, didn’t last much longer than Part I had. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang again. I have to admit, it was pretty annoying. Not just because our poet was so popular, but also because the sound the bell made was like an orchestra, not a normal doorbell. Baylor said he wished a whole symphony didn’t start up each time someone came to visit.
This time it was a woman from the bookstore. A young woman who had a lot in common with Miss Kinney, particularly her charter membership in the Rufus Baylor Adulation Society. She had a long dark braid, an armload of books, and lots of big plans for “the most amazing author visit Whale Point Books has ever seen.” (Which wasn’t actually surprising, since I couldn’t remember a single author ever appearing there, except a prof at the community college who’d published his own book about barnacles. No joke. Barnacles.)
Rufus signed and nodded, nodded and signed. By the time I had to leave, he’d agreed to a reading, a signing, and probably a dance routine. That last part is a joke, but from the earnest look on Book Lady’s face and the way our poet kept nodding, there’s no telling what he agreed to.
I should have been sorry that I didn’t have the chance to say what I’d come to say. That I still hadn’t apologized for my part (okay, my starring role) in the Destruction of Rufus Baylor’s Historically Preserved Summer Home. I should have been upset, too, that I didn’t get more time alone with our new teacher. But the truth is, I was too excited to care. After all, I’d just almost had tea with the most famous poet on Earth. And even though I was much too nervous to do it, said famous poet had asked me to call him Rufus!
I Gave a Poem to Two Women
The first took the poem and hung
it in her closet. “How nice,” she said,
leaving the door open, letting
the colors run out behind her.
“When I wear it, people will say,
‘Doesntthatpoemlookgoodonher?’
Thank you.”
The second woman took my poem
and sat with it, her face suspicious,
grave. At last, she poked it with one
finger, then gave it a sucker punch,
trying to catch it off guard. She
sniffed it, daring it, staring it down
nose to nose.
Suddenly, she shot out her tongue
and licked one side of the poem from
bottom to top. She took it in her arms
and squeezed it as hard as she could.
Next, she and the poem moved
around the room together, locked
like dancing bears.
After that first meeting, the poem
moved in with the woman. She set
a place for it at meals and dabbed it,
like perfume, behind her ears. She
dragged it everywhere, so it picked
up things like a sticky wrapper that
said CAREFREE SUGARLESS.
She didn’t protect the poem at all.
She scratched it and dropped it
and dribbled it and chewed it. She
put it under a magnifying glass
and under her feet. She slept with it
every night. And she never said
thank you.
The Second Class
Thursday afternoon was clear and sunny. It was a perfect beach day, soft, not steamy, with just enough breeze to keep a kite up. If we’d had kites. And if we’d been at the beach. Instead, of course, we drove to the community college. But Rufus (I could call him that in my head, even if I couldn’t manage it out loud yet) knew just what this weather was good for. And it wasn’t talk-talk-talking inside.
We met in the classroom, then formed a straggly parade, our poet at the front and Charles Fenshaw, Celebrity Shadow, bringing up the rear. We marched down the hall, out the rear entrance, and into the gardens the ag students had planted. I’d never been farther than the patio out back, but there was a lot more. The grounds stretched for acres and acres, so Fry and I stayed close to Rufus, in case he tripped on a stone or dropped his cane. Or worse, fell and, like those helpless old people on television, couldn’t get up. As it turned out, though, we didn’t need to worry.
Rufus had caught fire, become someone younger, someone barely related to that old man we’d seen in newspaper photos and news footage. He still carried his walking stick, sure. But it seemed more like a stage prop than anything he actually needed. He made his way up and down winding paths, over rocks and streams, and seemed at home wherever he went: If a bird flew overhead, he could tell by its shape and the way it moved its wings what species it was. If we passed a bush, he called it by name, in English and Latin. When a butterfly landed on Margaret’s shoulder, he told us not only that it was a female, but what kind of pollen it liked and how long it would probably live. He treated the whole world like a poem he knew by heart.
We followed him along a dirt path, then onto a shaded slope that overlooked the main garden. He walked straight to a giant tree, leaned his walking stick against the trunk, and, finally, sat down. The rest of us spread out in the grass around him. I counted, and yes, everyone, even Thatcher Vogel, of the perpetual smirk, was present and accounted for. Thatcher still looked like he thought this whole thing was a big joke, as though he had much better things to do than sit, his tattooed arms folded across his broad chest, in the grass under a tree, for God’s sake. At first, I wondered if Dr. Fenshaw agreed with him, because the prof didn’t join us on the grass, but stayed standing, one leg braced against the tree.
“I’d tell you the name of this big fellow,” our poet said, patting the bark of the tree, “but I’m afraid he doesn’t know it himself.” He looked up into the canopy of leaves above him, then into the placid face of the CC prof. “He can’t make up his mind, you see, whether he’s a hickory or a pecan.” A smile with some devil in it. “Just like Charles here, who can’t decide whether to stand up or sit down.”
The prof flushed, then took off his jacket, folded it into a neat square, and sat on it beside our poet, his back against the tree. Grass stains, apparently, scared him almost as much as Rufus Baylor did.
“Some folks call this tree a hican,” Baylor explained. “But mixed up or not, the nuts make fine pie.” Same smile, minus the devil. “Glad you could join us, Charles. And now, I’d like y’all to meet someone.”
He nodded toward the mounds of tiny purple flowers that spread from under the tree to the edge of its long shadow across the grass. “Allow me to introduce Lamium.” Our poet waved his cane toward the flowers. Their chalky, mint-green leaves had dark edges, as if a child had crayoned an outline around each one. Nestled in the leaves were pale purple blossoms, like tiny surprised mouths. “If you saw her in winter, you’d know why some folks call her dead nettle.”
He reached into the hican’s shadow to pick a handful of the miniature flowers, then twirled them between his fingers. “She withers away until you’d swear there was no life in her. Turns out, though”—I’m telling you he looked straight at me when he said this—“laid low doesn’t mean down for the count.”
He placed the flowers on the grass in front of him, then slipped a small brown notebook from his pocket. The tuft of Lamium he’d chosen had three small blossoms, already bedraggled and thirsty. They reminded me of Alicia, Marcia, and me, practicing my lines for that seventh-grade play. Alas! I wanted to tell the little flowers. You are poorly used.
“Let’s work on another poem.” Rufus opened the notebook in his lap, and I held my breath. I couldn’t believe he’d already started a new poem. Had we inspired him that much?
“It isn’t finished,” he told us. He took a pen out of his other pocket. “In fact, it isn’t even started.
“Thing is,” he said, taking his time, keeping us guessing, “I was hoping y’all would help me write this one.”
The class got quiet fast. Someone laughed nervously. Someone else swatted a no-see-um. (Twilight was those hungry little bugs’ favorite time of day, poetry or no poetry.) “You see, I had a visit from some reporters yesterday. In fact, Miss Wheeler was there, too.”
When Baylor looked at me, so did everyone else. I was half embarrassed, half thrilled. But it wasn’t until Fry caught my eye that I was ashamed. I’d never told him about my visit to Baylor’s house. Now I knew why.
“They want to interview me about what we’re doing in this class. And I’d like to tell them we’re making poetry, not just talking about it.” He studied us with those marble eyes of his. “Deal?”
Finally, Margaret raised her hand and our poet nodded. So she asked what most of us were wondering: “What should we write about, sir?”
“That doesn’t really matter, Miss . . . ?”
“Chasteen, sir. Margaret Chasteen.” Margaret, blushing furiously, turned almost as crimson as Fenshaw.
“Anything you write will be about you, Miss Chasteen,” Rufus told her. “And anything I write will be about me.” He glanced at the rumpled purple blossoms in front of him. “I could write about Lamium here, but most every word I say will have my mark on it. One-tenth Lamium, nine-tenths Rufus Baylor.”
He saluted Margaret now, with just a tap of his hand beside his head. “Thanks to Miss Chasteen, here, I think we’ve gone and found our poem’s subject.”
He put the notebook on the grass and leaned over those flowers as if he were going to inhale them. “I want y’all to take a good look now, up close and personal.”
We obliged, each of us focusing laser eyes on the wilting leaves and the straggly, fingertip-size blooms he’d laid on the grass. I kind of liked the stubborn little face I saw in one of them. It wasn’t a man in the moon, it was a girl in the flower. Under her pink, down-turned hood, two small, dark eyes peered out at me.
“What makes Lamium different?” our poet asked. “What words will let you take her home with you? Keep her always?”
He clicked his pen top, picked up the notebook. “Does the word ‘pretty’ measure her? Does ‘beautiful’?”
A few hands shot up, but Baylor didn’t call on anyone. “Feel before you talk,” he warned us. He glanced at the grass, where some petals had already worked their way loose from one of the flowers. “Y’all get one chance apiece, so make it count.”
And would you believe seventeen kids and two teachers sat, staring at a few flowers no bigger than a dime? Okay, maybe not seventeen. Maybe Thatcher Vogel and a few of his friends rolled their eyes when Baylor wasn’t looking. Or stared into space, communing with their own dumbness. But the rest of us? Solemn, silent as church for almost two minutes.
It was Coral Ann Levin, of the big hair and bigger mouth, who raised her hand in a way that cut through the silence. In a way that said, Case closed, I’ve got the answer and we can all go home.
Baylor nodded, asked her for her words.
She gave him just one. “Purple,” she said.
Again, our poet nodded. “What kind of purple?” he asked.
Coral Ann wasn’t expectin
g another question. She looked at the rest of us. Then, when it was clear we couldn’t help, she looked back at Rufus, who, without a word, pointed at the Lamium on the grass. Coral Ann had no choice now. She folded her arms and directed a stare at those tiny flowers that should have disintegrated them on the spot. Finally, she laughed, nervous. “You’ll think I’m silly,” she said.
Our poet just nodded the way he did. The way that let you know he had all the time in the world. That he wanted you to say everything you needed to.
“Well, this here Lamium? It’s the exact same pinky purple as the fancy smocked dress my mother made me in third grade.”
“She made you a dress?” Rufus smiled as if he didn’t believe her. “She didn’t buy it?”
“No, sir,” Coral Ann told him, looking sneaky proud. “She made it herself, every stitch. It was for my birthday, and it took her three days on account of all the gathers.”
Rufus didn’t say anything, just wrote in his brown notebook, then read us what he’d scribbled: “The color of my first dress, gathered with love.”
Coral Ann’s smile was bigger than ever. And the smug look, too.
Lots more got written in that notebook. Words and memories. Small things and big ones. A friend of Margaret’s told us the see-through petals made her feel scared, the same way she did around her grandmother, whose skin was so thin you could watch the pulse in her veins. “Is there a heartbeat in those purple veins?”
I could have talked about the tough little flower face I’d seen, how it felt like Sarah, not Sarai. How I planned to take my own stem of Lamium home and press it between the two thickest books I owned, my dictionary and the PDR. But I didn’t think our poet could fit all that onto one of those tiny pages. So I just told about the friends who’d helped me rehearse, and he wrote, “Three blooms, three friends, alas!” “And in case it makes any difference, Sarah,” he added, smiling over that magic book of his, “I would have given you the lead.”
Okay, maybe it’s silly. But just hearing that from someone so smart and honest and, well, famous, made me feel smarter, too. Taller, even prettier. Until I felt Fry staring at me and turned to face him. He was smiling, too, but not in the open, sunny way our poet had. His was much closer to an I-told-you-so look than a good-for-you grin. I guess Baylor noticed, too, because for the first time ever, he called on someone rather than waiting till they raised their hand. He nodded at Fry. “Do you have something you’d like to say about these flowers, young man?”