A Place so Foreign Part 4

"James!" Mama said.

"Oh, I suppose it's to learn things," I said.

Mr Adelson smiled and nodded, the way he did when one of the students got the right answer in cla.s.s. "Well?"

"Well, what?" I said.

"What did you learn this semester?"

"Why, everything you taught! Geometry! Algebra! Latin! Geography! Biology!

Physics! Grammar!"

"I see," he said. "James, what's the formula for determining the constant in the second derivative of an equation?"

I knew that one: it was one of Newton's dirty calculus proofs. "It's a trick question. There's no way to get the constant of second derivative."

"Exactly right," he said.

"Yes," I said, and folded my arms across my chest.

"Where did you learn that?"

"In --" I started to say 1975, but caught myself. "In France."

"Yes."

"Yes," I said. The fingers of dawn crept across my comprehension. "Oh."

Mama smiled at me.

"But it's not fair! So what if I already knew everything before I started? I still did all the work."

"Why are you in school, James?" Mr Nicholson asked me again.

"To learn."

"Well, then I think you'd better start learning something, don't you? You're the brightest student in the cla.s.s. You're certainly smarter than I am -- I'm just an old sailor struggling along with the rest of the cla.s.s. But you, you've _got it_. You've been marking time in cla.s.s all semester, and I daresay you haven't learned a single thing since you started. That's why you got F's."

"Mr Adelson," Mama said. "Am I to understand that James performed all his a.s.signments satisfactorily?"

It was Mr Adelson's turn to squirm. "Yes, but madam, you have to understand --"

Mama waved aside his objections. "If James satisfactorily completed all the work a.s.signed to him, then I think he should have a grade that reflects that, don't you?" She took a sip of her coffee.

"Yes, well --"

"However, you do have a point. I didn't send my son to your school so that he could mark time, as you put it. I sent him there to learn. To be _taught_. Have you taught him anything, Mr Adelson?"

Mr Adelson looked so all-fired sad, I forgave him the report card and spoke up.

"Yes, Mama."

Mama swiveled her head to me. "Really?"

"Yes. He taught me what I was at school for. Just now."

"I see," Mama said. "This is very good coffee, Mr Adelson."

"Thank you," he said, and sipped at his.

"James," Mr Adelson said. "You've learned your first lesson. What do you propose your second should be?"

"I dunno," I said, and went back to kicking the rungs of the chair.

"What is it that you have been doing since you came back to town, son?" he asked.

"Hanging around in the attic, mostly. Reading. Tinkering. Like my Pa."

"My husband's machines and journals are up there," Mama explained.

"And his books," I said.

"Books?" Mr Adelson looked suddenly interested. "What kind of books?"

"Adventure stories. Stevenson. Wells. Some of it's in French. We have all of Verne."

"Well, perhaps that can be your next a.s.signment. I would like to see an original composition of no less than twenty pages, discussing each work of Verne's, charting his literary progress. Due January fifth, please."

"Twenty pages!" I said. "But it's the holidays!"

"Very well. Whatever length the piece turns out is fine. But be sure you do justice to each work."

By the time I got through with the a.s.signment, it was thirty-eight pages long. I never thought I could write that much but it kept on coming, new thoughts about each book, each scene, the different worlds Verne had built: the fantastic slopes of Barsoom, the sinister Island of Dr Moreau. . . Each one sp.a.w.ned a new insight. I felt like the Verne's detective, Sherlock Holmes, a.s.sembling all of the seemingly insignificant details into some kind of coherent picture, finding the improbable links between the wildly different stories the Frenchman told.

Mama was thrilled to see me working, papers spread out all around me on the kitchen table -- I could've used Pa's study, but it felt like an invasion, somehow -- writing until my wrists cramped. She let me get away without doing my ch.o.r.es, rising early to milk the cow, bringing in the eggs from the henhouse, even chopping the kindling. Just so long as I was writing, she was happy to let me go on shirking my responsibilities.

Even on Christmas Eve, I was too distracted to really enjoy the smells of goose and ham and the stuffing Mama spent days preparing. I was still writing when she told me to go change and set the table for three.

"We're having Mr Johnston to dinner," she said.

I made a face. Mr Johnston was the only one in town that I could have talked to about my time in 1975, but I never did. He had a way of bossing a fellow around while seeming to be nice to him. He still ran Pa's store, using ladders to reach the high shelves that Pa had just plucked things off of. I had to see him when Mama sent me on errands there, but I made sure that I left as quickly as I could. Mama kept saying that I should ask him for a job, but I was pretty good at changing the subject whenever it came up.

I put away my papers and changed into my Sunday clothes. I'd been hinting to Mama lately that a boy just wasn't complete without a puppy, so I put an extra shine on my shoes and said a quick prayer that I wouldn't find socks and picture-books under the tree.

Mr Johnstone arrived with a double-armload of gifts. Well, he _did_ run my Pa's store, after all, so he could get things wholesale. I took his parcels from him and set them under the tree. Then that dandified sissy actually _kissed_ my Mama on the cheek, lifting a sprig of mistletoe up with one hand. When Pa and Mama stood together, she'd barely come up to his shoulder, while Mr Johnstone had to stand on tiptoe to get the mistletoe over their heads. "Merry Christmas, Ulla,"

he said.

She took his hands and said, "Merry Christmas, James."