I can’t really say what sort of news it was. Surprising news. It was notification that my contract was going to be renewed for the next year. The term wasn’t over, but the school board recognized my circumstances as unusual and wanted to give me ample notice; they were eager for me to return in the fall. My temporary teaching certificate could easily be extended, especially if I had intentions of working toward certification. It was a personal letter written on behalf of the entire board and signed by someone I knew of but had never met, a Mr. Leacock. His letter cited my popularity with the students and commended me for my “innovative presentation” and “spirited development of a relevant curriculum.” It didn’t mention contraception or Mrs. Josephine Nash or the ozone layer. I wondered how much they really knew; it made me nervous. I kept looking sideways at that word “spirited.” After knocking myself out to be accepted, I’d finally flown off the handle in a seditious direction, and won a gold star. “We are all aware of the difficulties of engaging teenagers in a vital course of academic instruction,” wrote Mr. Leacock. Someone apparently felt I’d succeeded in this endeavor. I was going to be named something like teacher of the year. Teachers and kids all voted, secret ballot.
I was stunned. I stuck the letter into the pocket of my corduroy jumper and went out for a walk. I tramped quickly down the hill past Mr. Pye’s green roof and Mrs. Nuñez, who sat in a rocker on her front porch, leaning precariously forward out of her chair, trying to nail a fast-moving spider with the rubber tip of her cane. She lifted the cane and stabbed the air sociably as I passed by; I waved back. I wondered about the lab work Doc Homer had mentioned in his delirium. Was she really waiting for someone far away to examine her cells or her blood and pronounce a verdict? Or was this history, a sentence she was already serving?
In town, the 4-H Club had set up a display of rabbits and fancy chickens in cages in front of the courthouse. A little county fair was planned for Easter weekend. The rabbits were of an odd-looking breed but all exactly alike, fancily marked with black-tipped ears and paws and a gorget under the throat, and it occurred to me how much simpler life would be if people were like that, all identically marked. If I were not the wrong breed. I corrected an old habit of thought: both my parents were born in Grace, and their parents before them. Possibly Doc Homer was right-I’d believed otherwise for so long it had become true; I was an outsider not only by belief but by flesh and bone.
Children knelt by the cages and talked to the rabbits in high voices, poking in sprigs of new grass from the courthouse lawn. Some shoppers had strayed over from their errands across the street. Mary Lopez, a middle-aged woman I knew from Stitch and Bitch, waved at me. She was there with her mother, a very short, broad woman with a long black braid down her back. The old woman leaned over the rabbit cages like a child. Mary rested a hand on the back of her mother’s neck, a slight gesture that twisted my heart. I turned up the road toward Loyd’s house. I knew he was home, or would be shortly. He was on a fairly regular schedule these days, running the Amtrak to Tucson and back. We stayed in touch.
The air had a fresh muddy edge, the smell of spring. I had several choices of route, and on a whim I took a less familiar road. I found myself walking through a neighborhood that wanted to pull me into it: the dirt shade of salt cedars, the dogs that barked without getting up. A woman and her husband argued congenially while they picked grapefruits off the tree in their backyard. The fruits rustled solidly into grocery bags while the woman talked in a low, steady voice and the man answered, on and on, a cycle of gentle irritation and love that would never be finished.
“Gee, you’re pretty. Are you the new schoolteacher?”
I turned around, startled by a man on a moped. I’d never laid eyes on him before, but I was completely charmed by his line. I felt like Miss Kitty in Gunsmoke.
“Well, yes,” I said.
“You want a ride? There’s a wicked pair of brindle bulldogs up at the corner.”
“Okay.” I gathered my skirt and straddled the back of his bike. We buzzed smoothly uphill past the putative wicked bulldogs, who lay with their manifold chins on their paws.
“My son Ricky’s in one of your classes. He says you give them a pretty good round.”
“They give me one, too,” I said.
He laughed. “You’re Doc Homer’s girl, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. Homer Nolina of the white trash Nolinas. He married his second cousin for mad love.” I’d been lying to strangers all my life, and no wonder. Here was the truth and it sounded like a B-grade fairy tale. But I wanted to know if Doc Homer was right-if everyone had forgotten.
“I never heard that,” my driver said. “I just heard she was dead.”
“She’s dead all right. But she was born and grew up right here. You’re around the same age I am, you wouldn’t remember her, but it’s the truth. Her family thought unkindly of my daddy, so they ran off for a while and he put on an attitude.”
He laughed at that, but said, “You oughtn’t to talk bad about a man like him.”
“Oh, I know. Doc Homer’s inclined to be useful. But I swear it looks to me like he’s been running his whole lite on vengeful spite.”
“I got me an old Ford that runs on something like that.”
Ten seconds later he let me off at the base of the path up to Loyd’s house. Loyd was sitting outside, drinking coffee under the huge mesquite that shaded his front yard. He was just out of the shower, wearing only a pair of soft gray sweatpants. His damp hair lay loose on his shoulders. He looked very happy to see me but also unsurprised; typical, maddening Loyd. Jack betrayed excitement in his thumping tail, but Loyd made no sudden movements. He let me come to him, bend over to kiss him, sit down in the chair beside him. I was oddly conscious of his skill with animals.
“You want coffee?”
“No thanks.”
He sat looking at me, smiling, waiting.
“Guess what,” I said finally, handing him the letter. He read it, grinning broadly.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “I still can’t stay.”
“It does mean something. It means they want you, whether you stay or not. It means you’re real good at what you do.”
I took the letter back and looked at it, not at the words but the object itself. “I guess you’re right,” I said. “I don’t think anybody ever told me that before. Not in a letter. I guess that’s something.”
“Sure it is.”
“I was thinking of it as just one more choice I’d have to make. A complication.”
“Life’s a complication.”
“Sure,” I said. “Death is probably a piece of cake by comparison.”
We looked at each other for a while. “So tell me about your day, honey,” I finally said. We both laughed at that.
“Another buck in the bank, doll.”
“Is that it? Do you like driving trains? You never talk about it.”
“You really want to hear about it?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. Yeah, I like driving trains. Today I went out on a dog catch.”
“Not the Amtrak?”
“No. A special mission.”
“You had to catch a dog?”
“A dog catch is when you go out to bring in a train after the crew’s died on the main line.”
“The whole crew died?” I was visited by the unwelcome thought of Fenton Lee in his sheared-off engine, after the head-on collision. I knew this couldn’t be what Loyd meant.
He smiled. “Died on the hours-of-service law. They’d worked a full twelve hours but there were holdups somewhere and they still hadn’t gotten to a tie-up point. You can’t work more than twelve hours straight because you’d be tired and it would be dangerous; it’s federal law. So you just stop where you are, and wait for a relief crew.”