by Louise Hawes
“It went a little fast for me, sir,” the prof told him. Fenshaw looked awkward, folded into that gym chair, his small poetry book on his knees. “I couldn’t think of anything.” He wasn’t wearing a jacket tonight, and he even had his shirtsleeves rolled up. He seemed younger, but not more relaxed.
“Whatever you do, Charles, don’t think.” Rufus turned to all of us now, only half smiling. “I mean it,” he said. “The thing about music? It reaches you without whys and wherefores. So you need to come at it with your heart before it gets to your brain.”
“Stones,” someone said from the back of the room. We all turned around, and saw how flushed, how shy, Margaret looked. “The bass made me feel like someone was dropping stones on wet leaves.” She paused. “Is there a word for that?”
Rufus let his smile graduate to a grin. “Now that’s just what I mean,” he said. “This young lady heard a picture. She didn’t stop to ask if it made sense, she just heard it.”
Margaret glanced quickly at us, then lowered her head.
“This time”—our poet turned the player back on himself, smiling proudly at me when he got it right—“if you see a picture in your head, just stay with it. Ride it like a wave, okay?”
The violins were my favorite part. They were like a light thread woven through the darker, sturdier percussion. And suddenly, Fry’s ugly words, his wounded tone, vanished, and I pictured children, little kids running suddenly into a roomful of adults. Under my closed lids, I let them scamper around the grown-ups’ party, chasing each other, knocking over tables of food, laughing, and not caring at all what kind of trouble they got into.
When Rufus stopped the player a second time, the kids in my head froze, as if they were playing musical chairs. Then, when the music didn’t come back, they just folded their arms, put their heads down, and went to sleep. It made me kind of sad, all that fun and energy sucked into quiet, into nothing. They weren’t even real, those little devil-angels, but I didn’t want to let them go. I wanted to give them permission to keep right on playing forever.
“Okay,” Rufus told us. “Let’s keep those pictures by turning them into words. Write down what you can. No full sentences, just quick notes, like catching a dream when you wake up.” He grinned. “Write fast before it fades away.”
We scribbled for a few minutes and then he played more music and we made more pictures. Then we did it again. And again. (Rufus had passed Technology 101, and was swiping almost gently now!) Sometimes, as I wrote, the hard words got in the way: Maybe I’m allergic to twisted. Sometimes they threatened to stop the pictures, break the flow. But almost always, like those little kids on a rumpus, I wrote right through them.
Our poet went around the room, asking us what we’d seen and felt. I told him about my wild children, and he nodded. “I like that a lot. But then you always take me by surprise, Sarah.”
H, who was sitting close enough to hear, pumped his fist and grinned at me. Behind him, though, I couldn’t help but see Thatcher. Our resident moose smiled; correction, he leered. And did something I didn’t even want to think about with his tongue. I turned away, remembered Fry telling me kids were talking. It’s getting old, Sarah.
When class was over, we’d all written down four pictures, four word sketches we could use for a poem. We talked about how we might stitch them together, and how some of them might make a whole poem all by themselves. “I’d like to make a book of these,” Rufus told us.
“I’ve been reading the poems y’all have given me so far. And I want to go through the rest, put them together for us to remember.”
“Do you mean an actual published book?” Coral Ann Levin, who wasn’t easily impressed, was taking notice. “As in a real, copyrighted, library-type book?”
Rufus laughed. He leaned back in the couch, relaxed and easy in a way he hadn’t been since before the accident. “Well, that might come later,” he told Coral Ann. “For now, I just mean a book for us. I’ve been trying to think of a title.”
I raised my hand. “How about Good Poems from Bad Kids?” I asked.
Now everyone in the room laughed, especially Rufus. He said he thought it was one of the best titles he’d ever heard, and he brushed away little laugh-tears with the sleeve of his shirt. “We’ve got only two more classes,” he reminded us. “So if we want to get this book in shape, you’ll need to do another assignment for me.”
We knew the drill, and by now we also knew it wouldn’t hurt.
“This one’s about touch,” Rufus told us. He fumbled in the pocket of the sweatshirt Shepherd had helped him put on. He pulled out one of the black, silky blindfolds we’d used last class. “So the blinkers have to go back on.”
I don’t know how many people heard Thatcher’s stage whisper about touching in the dark, but almost everyone looked at the clock. It was way past time to leave.
“Now?” someone asked, and then our poet caught on.
“Course not,” he said. “Y’all choose the time and the place. But I want you to be at home, somewhere familiar. Could be your room.
“Cover your eyes and touch all the things you think you know by heart.” (A not-so-quiet laugh, probably from the Vogel Neanderthal again.) “Your wall, maybe. Your desk or your rug. Even your floor. One at a time, go wherever those things take you. Each texture will put you in a different country, a different geography, of touch.”
“Should we give these countries names?” one girl asked. I couldn’t tell if her question was serious, but Rufus treated it that way.
“Sure, why not?” he said. “In fact, you might use those country names to title your poems. Write as few or as many as you want. But here’s the catch: Keep your eyes covered while you write.”
“Do we have to use pencils? Can’t we type?”
Someone almost always asked that, and Rufus usually said no. But this time was different.
“Yep. Just keep your eyes closed.”
“Type with our eyes closed?!!”
“Think you can’t do it? I’m here to tell you that you can.” The patented grin. “If y’all don’t believe me, go on and sneak those blindfolds off. Take a peek every ten minutes or so.”
“Got to love it,” I heard a kid behind me whisper. “A teacher who gives you permission to cheat.”
Jumping, jiving, wiggling free
gyrating, migrating everywhere
are little kids freer than big ones?
Are big ones scared to let go?
Pull it out like taffy, man,
spin it out like glass
go tell your momma, go tell your papa dad
laughing music makes them us giggle
good music makes them us bad
trays are breaking, babies waking
mommies getting mad, mad, mad
don’t want to stop,
don’t want to go to bed
keep that singsong going
don’t want to be down, down down
ashes ashes we all fall down
slow, so slow, no, no no!
I’m not sleepy, mommy
one more drink, one more word,
one more life, please, please, please
Wanda Meets Her Idol and Forgets Her Name
The first one to leave, same as every class, was Thatcher Vogel. Which was fine with me, since I didn’t relish fielding questions about Fry, or dealing with the hulk’s R-rated sign language and dirty looks. By the time we’d all turned in our poems and Dr. Fenshaw, who’d taken to staying late and asking question after question after question after—well, you get the idea—by the time even the prof had left, there was Shepherd, still watching from the back of the room. “Were you there the whole time?” Maybe I sounded like a rude brat, but I was shocked that my father might have sat (or stood) still for a whole poetry lesson!
“Figured I’d like to see what all the fuss was about.” Shepherd leaned close, whispered. “I’m kind of hoping this will stay between us, though, Sarah.” He grinned. “I’ve got a rep, you know?�
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I laughed. I could just imagine what my mother would think of Shepherd in poetry school. And that was when I remembered my mother’s dinner party! (I would have bet my Sarah Bernhardt posters that she was calling it a soirée when she told people about it. And I would have bet my program from Les Mis that she was telling everyone.)
I’d forgotten all about my mother’s plans. And about inviting Wanda to join us. But Rufus’s day had been too long as it was. Someone would have to phone Wanda and tell her she’d need to wait to meet the Great One. Worse, someone would have to tell my mother to unset the table. And worst of all, class, that someone was me.
I explained to Shepherd and Rufus about the dinner that wouldn’t be. About how I had to walk home right away and soothe ruffled feathers. My father understood. He said he had everything under control, he was planning on making an omelet for supper. Rufus, who looked grateful (and finally, very tired), said he loved omelets.
I made sure they liberated Carmen, who came tearing out of the bedroom and then refused to pay attention to anyone. I’d said good-bye and closed the door before I wished I could turn around and go right back in: Thatcher hadn’t actually left yet. He was standing beside his T-top, back braced against the passenger door. A group of his thug friends were with him, and unless I opted to turn around and walk the wrong way, I’d have to run the gauntlet.
I wasn’t ashamed that the Great One was my friend as well as my teacher. Even then, I knew it was something I’d probably tell my kids and grandkids about one day. But I couldn’t help being sorry that Thatcher was always within earshot when Rufus singled me out or asked for help. I was even sorrier that, as I walked by him now, Mr. Brawn for Brains was patting his butt again and giving me that smile that was three-quarters leer. “Hey, Sarah,” he told me. “Way to snow the old fart.”
Now, looking at that smirking mutant, it all made sense. Thatcher and Fry, their matching tool belts at cleanup. Their consultations about hammers and crowbars and things that go bump, that tear and claw. Who would be in a better position to whisper filth into Fry’s ear? Who would be so callous, so stupid?
Okay. So Rufus wasn’t the only one who’d had a long day. A picture of my poet lying on the kitchen floor flashed in my head or heart or maybe it was my stomach: I felt like I’d lived on a steady diet of fear and worry from first thing that morning to right this minute, when four grinning apes were pushing me to the limit.
“What old fart?” I asked Thatcher. I felt the anger, like a rush of adrenaline. “You mean the man who’s famous and loved by people in places you can’t even spell?”
Thatcher was still smiling broadly, still processing what I’d just said. I figured that dumb grin was the same one he’d worn when he spread rumors about Rufus and me.
“You mean the man who’s won four Pulitzers and will be remembered after you and your whole family are feeding worms?”
“Hey, wait a minute—”
“I guess you mean the man who feels and thinks more in one poem than you ever will in your entire pathetic life?”
Thatcher’s smile had faded, and there was just a line down the middle of that wide, thought-free brow. I didn’t usually—okay, I never talked like this. The moose and his friends were probably all in shock, and so was I. It was as if someone else had taken over my body and my mouth; someone stronger, someone you wouldn’t want to cross. I walked past those boys now, one by one. None of them said anything, not a single word. So I kept right on walking. I felt a little nasty. A little mean. And a whole lot better!
* * * *
My mother was, as predicted, deeply disappointed. But a broken bone is a broken bone, and even she didn’t feel we had thwarted her on purpose. If Rufus couldn’t come to her house, she decided she would go to his. She and Aunt J. would fix a dinner and bring it over to him whichever night he chose. He chose Sunday.
Which gave me only a few more beach days before the big night. The sun was on my side, and the waves, too. Between us, we convinced my love interest to mellow out, not to listen to morons. Fry, tanner and leaner than he’d been all year, gloried in the water and in surfing for the clusters of tourists that had begun to form whenever he took to the waves. Between the kisses and the pepperoni slices; between toweling him off when he came out of the water, and cheering him on when he went in, all was eventually forgiven. Yes, I was spending more time with Rufus than I’d reported; and yes, some evolutionarily challenged throwbacks were talking. But when push came to touch and touch and touch, we still had a good thing going. And if we stayed away from conversational hot buttons like poetry, poets, and my mother, Fry and I both knew it. We agreed to disagree. “It’s a lot more fun fighting with you,” Fry told my left ear under our beach towel, “than being angry by myself.”
Which may explain why we got so much work done at our third cleanup. Fry and H opted to join the painting team with Margaret and me instead of setting pavement stones with Thatcher and his goon squad. You know by now that I’m not a Home Depot, do-it-yourself fan, but even I was proud of how the house looked after we’d finished the last interior coats. Nothing fancy, no Dark Melon or Burnt Umber, no sponge patterns or swirls. We settled for pale-lemon and off-white walls, and it made the rooms look larger, softer. I wasn’t sure whether we were supposed to show Rufus our handiwork, but I knew he’d like what we’d done.
Of course, I still didn’t mention morning pages to Fry. And neither did H. Yes, there were two of us keeping that secret now. Because Rufus, who insisted on writing every morning, “hell or high water, one leg or two,” invited H to join us. In fact, he invited anyone in class who wanted, to walk right into the house without knocking (or setting off that symphonic doorbell) each morning at eight o’clock. Granted, a lot of my classmates felt the way Fry did about voluntary visits with a teacher, no matter how famous, not to mention getting up with the sun. But I knew Margaret would come, and judging from the way she beamed when Rufus issued his invitation, I was afraid there’d be no keeping Coral Ann Levin away.
Sure enough, I usually had plenty of company at morning pages from then on. Carmen met everyone with the same surly discontent, and more often than not, got banished to the bedroom.
Those mornings always began with Shepherd’s coffee. He made it stronger and hotter than Rufus . . . or anyone, for that matter. He always added a pinch of salt and, don’t ask me why, it changed everything. The coffee was foamier, less bitter, and the aroma? It was nutty. Deep. Like sniffing toast and late-afternoon sun.
We kept the extra chairs H had picked up at the college, and sometimes sat in them to write. Mostly, though, people took their mugs and their tablets outside in the garden or (if Carmen was in exile) found a comfortable place inside on the floor. We worked silently and freely, letting ideas and feelings rush us, for half an hour. Rufus wrote right along with us, his leg propped up on a cushion, his tablet catching the sun from the window behind the couch.
Sometimes I’d finish a poem, sometimes not. But I usually came away with a secret high, a moist, new beginning. I wasn’t sure it would ever become a poem; sometimes it was more like a curtain going up, an opening, a way in. I hate to admit it, but H said it best. “I always feel like I’m surfacing from a dive,” he told me one day. “Like I’ve been somewhere secret, you know?”
I knew.
* * * *
“Sunday is wonderful!” Wanda was, no surprise, free on the day that Rufus had chosen for dinner. It could have been any day of the week, of course, and any time: I could just as easily have invited her to join us for a midnight snack or a 4 a.m. breakfast—it was all the same to her, so long as she got to meet her idol.
My mother and Aunt J. arrived promptly at six, which meant Shepherd left promptly at five thirty. Before she did anything else, Mom insisted that Carmen, who had greeted her none too politely, be “put where she can’t spoil the party.” Next, she presented Rufus with the small silver-plated dinner bell she kept in a curio cabinet in our living room. “Now, you’re not to
move a muscle,” she told him sternly. “You just ring if you need the least little thing, you hear?”
Rufus, who had been making great progress and was already maneuvering his crutches like a master, just smiled. “Thank you, Katherine,” he told her. “I can’t say I’m much at home in the role of helpless invalid. Who knows? Perhaps persnickety overlord will suit me better.”
Once Mom had stuffed too many pillows behind her host, so that he looked like a rather uncomfortable sultan, and after she’d placed a tall glass beside him, insisting that “Those also serve who only drink sweet tea,” we got to work. I helped her set the table, and Aunt J. filled the cottage’s tiny stove to bursting with casseroles and pans. Jocelyn and I had just succeeded in persuading my mother that five guests did not require place cards, when the doorbell rang. In order to cut short the symphony and put Carmen out of her misery (she howled each time the bell rang), I raced into the living room and opened the door on our very excited, very overdressed guest.
Wanda’s bright hair was an electric halo, and her yellow silk tee shimmered with sequins. She wore a snake-shaped arm bracelet and peacock feather earrings, exotic notes that didn’t quite fit her wide, little-girl smile.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said, racing ahead of me to the couch, where she held out her hand to Rufus and got swept into a double handshake. “If I had to wait a minute longer, I would have expired on the spot.”
“Well, if you had, young lady,” Rufus told her as if they’d known each other forever, “you would have missed what promises to be a deeply satisfying meal.”
Wanda, who refused to give up either one of her host’s hands, held them both and continued pumping, up and down, faster and faster. “Oh, Mr. Baylor”—shake, shake—“you can’t imagine how much I admire your work.” Shake, shake. “I mean, your recording of ‘The Sorrowful Villanelles’? I could listen to it forever! Of course, I know I’m not the first person who’s told you that.” Shake, shake. “And not the last, wouldn’t you say?”