The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,17
thinks it’s a mile.”
When commencement night came Mrs. Hodsgon made a dress for me from muslin she found in her trunk. She tried her best, she looked startled and puzzled when she first saw it on me, but I loved it since I never had white to wear or anything so soft. I worked hard on my speech, I delivered it in a clear, strong voice, but it dissatisfied me terribly. It was about our futures and how bright they were, but when I looked down at the six graduates waiting to receive their diplomas, saw how dull and hopeless they looked, I knew it was all platitudes and I had chosen the wrong thing to say.
They were all going on to high school but not me. The Hodgsons were leaving for Ohio in July. My dress I would never wear again. I hate self-pity more than I do anything, but it was hard and I turned rudely away from people who congratulated me on my speech and tried not to cry. But that was only half how I felt. There was a tent set up and paper lanterns and banjo music and I saw the older boys staring at me in a way they never had before and for the first time ever I felt pretty and feeling this made me dizzy and I wanted to feel it even more.
That was one of those June evenings when the locust trees blossom even beyond what they manage normally, and the creamy tassels looked like decorations hung from the branches especially for us. They were the same color as my dress—I remember that, too. Behind the school was a grove of hemlock and we all knew that if you ducked your head and pushed through the branches you came to a secret path that led down to a soft little wildflower meadow where no one could see you. After a while people stopped congratulating me and I was alone. I could hear fiddle music starting and I was still feeling dizzy, only this time it was from the perfume of the locust blossoms which was overwhelming
Without really thinking about it, I began walking toward the hemlock grove, and without ever hearing him, I noticed Alan Steen walking right behind me. We came to the secret passage and stopped side by side. We still did not talk, though I could feel his eyes on my shoulders and the back of my hair. I knew that if I ducked through the branches and pulled the briars apart and walked down to the meadow he would follow after me, shy as he was. It did not seem just a meadow, it seemed like my future, and I was tired of always waiting for the future, always being frightened of it. That is why when Alan, getting up his courage before I did, stepped through the trees, held the branches back, reached his hand out, I took it, held it hard. I was fifteen and a half years old.
His parents decided that the wedding should be in August. The Hodgsons had left by then and so Alan’s maiden aunt walked me down the aisle, tsk-tsking with her tongue the entire way. It was only afterwards that I got to know Mr. Steen. Mr. H. always described him as a cross between President Taft and President Wilson—“lard topped with preacher.” And it is true, he is corpulent now, though in his younger days he had been a famous brawler and his face, solemn as it is, still bears scars. His skin is the color of old potato peels, his ears and nose are stuffed with briary red hair and his eyes always look frightened and confused without his meaning them to.
He has a business that thrives, buying up land and abandoned farm houses, ripping them apart and having Alan cart the planks down to the city where they fetch a good price. When Mr. Steen was young he had gone for wild times to Quebec and he had the fixed belief that Sherbrooke was going to be the next Montreal. If you took a ruler and drew a line on a map from Sherbrooke to Boston it went right through town, thereby assuring him his eventual fortune.
In the meantime he never worked very hard, but spent all his free time hating. He hates immigrants and Jews and Negroes and professors and Socialists and sissies and scientists and Democrats. None of these people demonstrate true Americanism in