Years by Lavyrle Spencer Read Free Book Online

Flustered, she glanced around the table to find Kristian had been watching the two of them. She flashed him a quick smile and said the first tiling that came to mind. “So you’re going to be one of my students, Kristian.”
    Everyone at the table stopped forking and chewing while an immense silence fell. They all looked at her as if she’d sprouted fangs. She felt herself blush, but didn’t know why. “Have I said something wrong?”
    The pause lengthened, but finally Kristian replied, “Yes. I mean, no, you ain’t said nothin’ wrong and yes, you’re gonna be my teacher.”
    They all fell to eating again, dropping their eyes to their plates while Linnea puzzled over the silence. Again she broke it.
    “What grade are you in, Kristian?”
    Once again everyone paused, startled by her interruption. Kristian glanced furtively around the table and answered, “Eighth.”
    “Eighth?” He had to be at least sixteen years old. “Did you miss some school — I mean, were you ill or anything?”
    His eyes were wide and unblinking as he stared at her and the color spread slowly up his chin. “No. Didn’t miss no years.”
    “Any years.”
    “Beg pardon?”
    “I didn’t miss any years,” she corrected.
    For a moment he looked puzzled, then his eyes brightened and he said, “Oh! Well, me neither.”
    She could feel them all looking at her but couldn’t figure out what it was they were so surprised about. She was onlymaking polite supper conversation. But none of them had the grace to pick up the conversational ball she’d thrown out. Instead, they all clammed up and continued to stuff their gullets, the only sounds those of ostentatious eating.
    Theodore spoke once, when his plate was cleared. He sat back, expanding his chest. “What’s for dessert, Ma?”
    Nissa brought bread pudding. Stupefied, Linnea watched everybody silently wait for their serving, then return to eating with reintensified interest. Glancing around, studying them, it finally dawned on her: eating was serious business around here. Nobody profaned the sacrosanct gobbling with idle chitchat!
    Never in her life had she been treated so rudely at a table. When the meal was over, she was surrounded by a chorus of belches before they all sat back and picked their teeth over cups of coffee.
    Not one of them said excuse me! Not even Nissa!
    Linnea wondered how Nissa would react if she requested a tray in her room from now on. Most certainly she was disinclined to join them at this table and listen to them all carrying on like pigs at a trough.
    But now, it seemed, the inviolable rite was done. Theodore pushed back and spoke directly to Linnea.
    “You’ll want to see the school building tomorrow.”
    What she really wanted to see tomorrow was the inside of a train taking her back home to Fargo. She hid her disillusionment and answered with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, “Yes, I’d like to see what books I’ll have to work with, and what supplies I’ll have to order.”
    “We milk at five and have breakfast right after. Be ready to go soon as breakfast is done. I can’t waste time comin’ in from the fields in the middle of the mornin’ to haul you down there and give you no tour.”
    “I’ll gladly walk. I know where the school building is.”
    He sipped his coffee, swallowed loudly, and said, “It’s part of what they pay me for, showin’ the new teacher the school building and telling him what his duties are soon as he gets here.” |
    She felt the damnable blush creeping up, no matter how she tried to stop it. And though she knew it would have been better to ignore his jibe, she couldn’t.
    “He?” she repeated pointedly.
    “Oh...” Theodore’s eyes made an insolent tour of her lopsided hairstyle. “She. I forgot.”
    “Does this mean I’m staying? Or do you still intend to dump me off on Oscar Knutson when you manage to run him down?”
    He sat back lazily, an ankle crossing a knee, and wielded the toothpick in a way