The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,20

one rush.

“I wrote the principal at the high school and he said I could matriculate in September, though I may have to work harder than the others to catch up. I’m ahead in reading and not that far behind in numbers. I might be able to graduate in a year and a half if I work hard. Then I could be of help to you in business and when we have children I can teach them at home even before they go to school.”

Alan shook his head as I knew he would. “Please?” I said, and hated myself immediately since it was so nearly like begging.

“In September?”

“The garden will be done then, you’ll be going on your trips to the city so I’ll often be alone. It isn’t hard to get there. I can ride Bonnie to the train station and take the local.”

This time he really thought about it, I could tell by the serious way he squinted into the sun. He did not want to hurt me and yet it was difficult for him to say yes and so he ended up saying what I knew he would all along.

“I’ll ask Mother and Father what they think of your notion and if they say yes then you can.”

We collected Asa Hogg in the buggy and drove him to town. During the ceremony I could see Alan whispering to his parents but it was impossible to tell anything from their expressions. They drove off immediately afterwards but we stayed on for the picnic and ball game. We got home in the dark and I went in ahead with the lantern while Alan unhitched the horse.

I knew right away something was different, the violated sensation was waiting for me the second I crossed the threshold and by instinct I ran straight into the parlor to my books. They were gone, every last one of them. The Dickens, the textbooks, the poetry. There was no sign of them, the bookcase was gone, too, and in its place, for an insult, was a huge brass spittoon.

Alan came in now and I turned on him all my fury.

“Your parents did this. Your father. No, your mother.”

“Beth—”

“I am going to high school in September. You can agree with this or not but I am going and no power on earth can stop me.”

“Of course you can go. Of course, Beth. Why, it’s a swell idea. You can give it thirty days to see if you like it or whether it’s too hard.” He nodded, proud of himself for coming up with a compromise. “Thirty days seems perfectly reasonable.”

“I will graduate head of the class,” I said, not bragging, but like a statement of fact I had to make, not to him, not even to his parents, but to myself.

I took the spittoon and carried it out to the porch, determined to throw it in the stream. There on the lawn, deliberately trampled, was one of the poetry books the librarian had given me. I picked it up, wiped the mud from the covers, held it close to my breast and took from it, not the comfort I usually found, not the escape, not the friendship, but courage.

Vera stooped to read the last paragraph, and for the last line, tucked well down into the dusty corner, she had to kneel. The words were spaced closer together the nearer the floor they dropped. The girl, Beth, had obviously been very determined to fit in as much as she could. The script that had started off so neat and prim changed toward the bottom. The ink was blacker, as if she had pressed harder on the pen; the dots on the i’s and the crosses on the t’s had drifted right from the beginning, but now they often blew over into the next sentence.

Vera got back up and touched the wall again, as she had many times while reading. The words seemed warm, or at least she fooled her fingers into sensing warmth. If she closed her eyes, concentrated, she could feel the shallow, all but imperceptible, gouges left by the nib of Beth’s pen.

She would have liked to uncover more, starting on the wall to the right, but she was too tired now, not only her wrists but her understanding. Taking the putty knife she peeled back a strip near the top, just to assure herself there were indeed more words. Who had written them was plain enough now, the girl had gone to great lengths