A Story for Eloise

by Robert James Allison

“Tomorrow!” Doc screamed. “Mike, I'm not even sure I can come up with this stuff. How do you expect me to find it and get it to you overnight? And what town? I don't know where you are.”

  “Oh yeah. Sorry. I'll give you the address.”

  “Just a minute, Mike. Hang on,” Doc said and reached for a note pad.

  After writing down the address Doc asked, “Found yourself yet, Mike?”

  “No, Doc, I don't think so.”

  Doc smiled into the phone and said, “I think you have, you just don't know it yet.”

  “What's that mean?”

  “You'll figure it out someday and when you do remember that this is your home.”

  “Whatever you say, Doc. I'll check tomorrow on the package. Thanks. I got to go.”

  “Now wait! I didn't say I could get them to you by tomorrow!”

  “Sure you can, Doc. You're a country doctor and they can do anything,” Mike finished and he hung up just as Doc was just opening his mouth to respond.

  Doc heard the dial tone and closed his mouth. Well, he thought, I’d better get to the library.

  ~*~

  Mike was smiling to himself as he hung up the phone and walked over to the owner who was standing at the counter drinking a cup of coffee. That ought to give Doc a little snap in his step, Mike thought.

  “Be a package coming in tomorrow for me,” he said to the owner. “Could you sign for it and I'll come in to get it late tomorrow?”

  “Sure thing. Your birthday or something?” the owner questioned.

  “Or something,” Mike said casually and walked out the front door.

  He climbed in the old pickup that Jake had loaned him and as he started to head for the farm he noticed the gas tank read empty. He stopped at the gas station on the corner and filled it up. Probably the only fill up the station attendant had performed all week by the look on his face. Mike was willing to bet that Jake had never seen this gas gauge on full before, either and smiled again to himself.

  Twenty minutes later, he pulled the old truck carefully into the equipment shed behind the barn and saw that Jake was in the barn overhauling some harness.

  He stepped into the barn and said, “I'll need to run in to town tomorrow and pick up a package, Jake.”

  “You might be runn'n at that,” Jake responded casually, “Weren't hardly enough gas in that old truck for that trip.”

  “Yea, I noticed, so I filled her up whilst I was in town,” he responded easily.

  “Filled her up!” Jake exclaimed. “Why that old truck ain't never seen a whole tank of gas. Why it's liable to burst at the seams. Probably won't be worth a hoot for driving no more,” he finished lightly with a smile. The first genuine smile Mike had ever seen on his face.

  “I expect it will bear up, Jake. Seems like a good old truck to me. I had a couple of extra bucks put back and I figured I might as well put some gas in her. That a way might be you'd let me borrow her again if'n I needed.”

  “Sure, Mike, anytime you want, but I thought you didn't even have gas money for that motorcycle of yours,” Jake said pleasantly.

  “Last night I ran across some money I forgot I had hidden in my sleeping bag lining,” Mike said easily and continued, “oh and I did some work after everyone went to bed. I wrote out some alphabet charts for us to go over later tonight. Everyone else will think we are just tinkering out here.”

  “Okay. If you say so, but I got to tell you, I tried to learn that alphabet one time and I got lost a'fore I got started,” Jake said dismally.

  “Was anyone helping you?”

  “No. I sneaked one of Eloise’s books out to the barn here a few years ago.”

  “Well, it makes a difference when someone is helping you. Take my word for it.”

  “Sometimes you don't talk like just an ordinary wandering worker. Who are you? Where you really from? What really brought you here?” Jake asked earnestly.

  “I’m nobody special, going nowhere special. I’d just like to be your friend and it don't matter much where I'm from. I'll teach you to read, if you're willing to work.”

  “I'd be mighty beholden to you if'n you can. You don't know the times I dreamed of read'n a story to my babies, but they ain't babies no more and I'm almost too late now,” he said sadly.

  “Ain't never too late to learn, Jake. You should know that better than anyone.”

  “I reckon you're right, and I meant no offense about who you was or where you was from,” he said meekly and continued, “but I am curious as to just what brought you here?”

  “You brought me here, Jake, and no offense taken,” Mike said as the dinner bell resounded throughout the yard and ended the conversation before he had to elaborate further.

  ~*~

  Later that night after the kids were in bed, Mike and Jake sat in the barn going over the alphabet charts. He is catching on fast, Mike thought, we’ve only been at this an hour and already he is recognizing a lot of the letters with few errors. He is intelligent. Mike recognized that was the shame of situations like this. Sometimes the most intelligent people went through life without ever having had the opportunity to use their intelligence. In this case it wasn’t Jake’s fault. He had been given no choice, but he was smart enough to make sure his children had the choice he never had.

  “A,” Jake said with pride, then, “E”.

  “No, that’s ‘F’ Jake,” Mike said gently and continued, “those two are tough to distinguish for a while. The ‘E’ has three lines and the ‘F’ only two. You’ll get it. You’re doing great. When we get the CDs and you start listening to the sounds of the letters and how they are put together it will get easier.”

  “I know you been to high school, but how far’d you really get in school?” Jake asked.

  “Eighteenth,” Mike answered hesitantly, not wanting to cause despair in Jake.

  “Eighteenth!” Jake exclaimed. “I didn’t know they went that high. Eighth is all I knowed about until Jamie got to high school. Can you get to eighteenth in high school?” Jake asked with awe in his voice.

  “Well, they don’t call it eighteenth, Jake. They call it a master’s degree and it’s after high school. After high school you can go to college and then after that they call it post-graduate work. I did two years of post-graduate work and they call that a master’s degree, if you pass.”

  “What good did it all do you, Mike? You’re as broke as I am and you just ride around working for meals and such.”

  “You can’t look at it that way, Jake. It ain’t what education does for you, it’s what you do with education that counts. I have a choice you see. I don’t have to ride around and work for meals. I could do something else, but right now I don’t want to. The point is I have a choice.

  “My Pa always told me he didn’t care what I did so long as it was legal and honest. He didn’t care if I dug ditches or hauled garbage or became a rocket scientist, just so long as it was legal, but he made sure I was educated and could make the choice.

  “Take Jamie there. You are making sure that he is educated and he will have a choice. Maybe he will decide to stay on this farm forever and farm with you and after you are gone, but the point is he has a choice. You are giving him that choice. He isn’t going to stay on this farm just because he has to or because he doesn’t know anything else. Jamie will stay if he wants to and he will leave if he wants to. That is his choice and you are giving him the ability to make that choice.

  “Someday he’ll thank you, if he hasn’t already.”

  “He has.”

  “Good. That’s more than I did for my father.”

  “Guess you could still do it.”

  “No. He’s dead. Been dead a long time, but that’s beside the point. The point is...both Jamie and Eloise deserve the chance to leave here and go out on their own. Right or wrong. Mistakes and all.

  “That’s the terror parents face. They give their kids the choice to go or stay and sometimes they go. But that is the way of things. You wouldn’t want them
to stay here against their will. You won’t fail to see they are educated just so that they will never leave. What kind of a father would do that?

  “So you see, Jake. It isn’t what education does for you so much, but it’s what you can do with education. If you choose. Knowledge is freedom. I’m happy doing what I’m doing even though I have a master’s degree. What else matters?”

  “Okay, Mike, but there’s more to you than that. I won’t ask no more though. You are a good man, but not an honest one. I’ve felt it from the start. You aren’t what you say you are. I ain’t much, but I can figure some things pretty good. Why you’ve lied to me I don’t know, but I have the feeling it wasn’t for a bad reason. I appreciate what you are doing for me. Your business is your business, but one honest man is worth ten educated men.”

  “I’m just a poor traveling man, Jake.”

  “You can cut the malarkey. I know you aren’t poor hill folk like me. I can’t pay you for what you are giving me, if ever you need something from me just ask. If I kin do it I will. I got no money to pay for education like you’re giving me, but I can do some stuff,” he said earnestly.

  Mike thought about the look on Jamie’s face when they first talked and just smiled to himself and said, “no problem. The pay is taken care of already.”

  Jake made no response and bent his head once again to the alphabet charts looking closely at the ‘E’ and the ‘F’.

  A few minutes later Mike said, “you’re right, Jake. I’ve lied to you. I’m not what I said I was. I never worked on a farm or ranch in my life. In fact, I’ve never worked in my life. Not real work. Not like you do.

  “I’m not poor, either, Jake. I got money. Lots of money. I have so much money that I could buy this farm of yours 100 times and still have plenty of money left.”

  Jake was thunder struck and said, “I knowed your story wasn’t true, but I never thought you had money, especially money like that. How’d a man with money like that come to be a wandering motorcycle bum?”

  “It’s a long story, Jake and I’m not sure I could tell you the reason. I just am.”

  “Found out didn’t you?”

  “Huh?”

  Jake smiled, waved his hand around at the inside of the barn and said, “found out that all the money in the world can’t buy you this. This is a good life. Hard, but good. I got no money and I never will have, but I got a good life. I got a good family and an honest job. Money can’t buy you that, Mike. For an educated man you ain’t so smart.”

  Mike thought a minute and answered, “Right again, Jake. That may be the reason all right. Like I told you. There’s more than one kind of education.”

  “But why ride around on that motorcycle if you figured that out. Get you an honest job like I have and a nice family. It’s better than money. It really is.”

  Mike said dismally, “Had a family, once. Nothing left now but ghosts. Got no place to go and nowhere to go back to. I just ride now, that’s all there is.”

  Jake said no more and went back to his letters. After a while Jake looked up at Mike and said, “Mike, it’s starting to get mighty cold in this here barn. Come tomorrow I’m going to have Janice fix up the loft for you so you can move in there where it’s warmer. We can still come out here a while at night and putter,” he finished with a wink.

  “I’d appreciate that. I really would. Getting so these blankets just aren’t enough out here. Sorry I lied to you, Jake, but I meant you no harm.”

  “I believe you, Mike, that’s why I’m inviting you in to my house. I meant it when I said I thought you was a good man. Besides, I’m going to be starting deliveries pretty soon and I’d feel better if’n you was inside the house looking out after my family. Sometimes I get snowed in and don’t get back for a night and I worry about them being alone. With you in there I’ll feel better if it happens.”

  “I’m honored at your trust in me and I’ll watch out for your family. Don’t you worry, and thanks. Not only for the warm house, but for the education. I think maybe I’m learning as much from you as you are from me.”

  After a moment’s hesitation Jake asked, “Mike…do you think I can learn to read by a month from now?”

  “It’s my intention that you will be able to. But why do you ask?”

  “Well…I gots me a speed’n ticket some time back and I got to get my license renewed in a little over a month. I got to be able to read good enough to get those answers right on the test. I got to be able to read!” he finished with anguish in his voice.

  It was now clear to Mike what Jamie meant by there being no time to go to school and he responded, “Don’t you worry, Jake. I plan to have you reading good enough by then. We will use the ‘Rules of the Road’ book as a reader later on. That way you will even be familiar with the words they use.”

  Jake had relief all over his face. “Thanks, Mike! I’d be forever in your debt.”

  “Let me tell you how you can pay that debt right now. You stop pushing those kids away from you and start making some time for them. That’s all I ask. Deal?”

  “Okay, but you know why I been a doin’ it. It ain’t cause I don’t like them. It’s cause I’m scared they will find out how stupid I am.”

  “You’re not stupid, Jake.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know your kids are tougher than you think and I know they ain’t going to stop loving you just because they find out you can’t read. You don’t seem to realize that there is more to being a good father than being able to read, but we’ll do our best to make sure they don’t find out. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And by the way, Jake. Just in case you don’t pass that driver’s test you don’t have to worry. I can drive and you can show me where to make the deliveries. We’ll do that if we have to, until you can read good enough to pass that test. But I still plan on you being able to pass the first time.”

  “Okay. You’re a good man, Mike…the best.”

  “Some would disagree with that statement. More than some I’m sure.”

  “They better not around me. Besides I know you’re a good man. You worry about how I act around my kids. Only a good man would be that way.”

  “Maybe, or one with first-hand experience.”

  Jake was silent for a long time studying his letters and then he asked, “Who’d you learn about being a man from if it weren’t your father?”

  Mike looked at him evenly and then said, “see Jake. You’re no dummy. You figured that out all by yourself and pretty quickly, too. You’re right. My father pushed me away and I learned a lot of the wrong things from the wrong people, but that’s history and we are studying English.”

  “Mike?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d you make all that money you got?”

  “Not like you, Jake. Not honest work. Oh, I didn’t steal it, but I didn’t always earn it nicely, either. I used people and things to put together big deals. I cashed in on those deals pretty big. A lot of people got hurt financially though and that was the problem. I never cared who got hurt as long as it wasn’t me.

  “Like I said, it wasn’t really honest work, but it wasn’t illegal, either. Still, it was the way I did it. I was smarter and quicker and sharper than the other guy and I made that work for me. It was legal, but it wasn’t moral. I’ll bet you pretty much figured that out for yourself though. Right?”

  “Pretty much, but I wondered if you knew it.”

  Mike replied dismally, “Yeah. I knew it, or at least I know it now.”

  ~*~

  The next morning bright and early, Jake was up and in a better mood than he had been since he got that ticket. He felt like Mike could really teach him to read. After just one evening he knew most of the letters already and he was amazed at how easy it had been. Knowing your letters and reading must just be about mostly remembering, he thought. I’m good at remembering cause I can’t read, so I have to remember a lot more.

  He went out to bring in some wood fo
r the stove and noticed that Mike was already up and probably milking the cows. He’s a good worker, Jake decided, despite what he had confessed last night. How he came to be here in this place as educated as he was still mystified Jake. It seemed to him as if Mike was wasting a good education riding that motorcycle around. Especially when he knew what his past errors had been and could correct them.

  But he had said he had nowhere to go back to. Jake could not relate to that. What could be so wrong that you couldn’t go back?

  When he went back inside with the wood, Janice was cooking breakfast and he could hear the kids stirring around getting ready for school.

  “Janice, fix up the loft today for Mike. Getting mighty cold out in that barn and blankets ain’t going to do the trick much longer.”

  “Bout time, Jake. That poor man must have near froze to death a couple of times last week,” she said with a chastising voice.

  “I know, but I had to be sure I could trust him,” he said defensively.

  “Well, he seems like a right nice man to me and if you hadn’t let him in pretty soon you would have heard about it from me,” she said sharply.

  He walked over and gave her a hug and said, “yea, I figured as much, so to avoid your tongue lashing I thought I better tell you to fix up the loft.”

  She pulled away and with a smile took a swipe at him with the spatula she had in her hand, saying, “Jacob Sadler, I ought to smack you for that.” He ducked quickly and with a chuckle returned to stacking the wood.

  “What’s all the racket?” Jamie said, as he walked in from his bedroom.

  “Nothing Jamie, just your Ma trying to whup on me this morning. Thought she’d catch me while I was still half asleep, but she didn’t,” he said, with a sly smile and a wink.

  ~*~

   Mike knocked and walked in saying, “Good morning.”

  “Morning, Mike. Perfect timing. Janice has just about got the breakfast burnt clean through,” Jake chuckled.

  “Jacob Sadler! I’m going to smack you yet!” Janice screamed in a friendly manner.

  Mike just smiled and set the pail of milk down on the table where Eloise, who was just coming into the room, could easily reach it.

  “Jamie,” Jake said, “you get home tonight from school you get on that homework quick. We got work to do. Lots of wood to chop and haul. Bout time you started pulling your weight around here. Us two just can’t handle it all anymore. Right, Mike?”