Breakheart Hill (6 page)

Now, when I think of Edith, it is as a figure seated in the witness stand, her voice barely audible as she answers the questions put to her by Mr. Bailey. She is wearing
what she must have thought of as appropriate courtroom dress, absurdly formal, complete with a dark pillbox that she’d no doubt borrowed from her mother. I can see her eyes dart nervously as Mr. Bailey questions her:

And where did you see the defendant, Miss Sparks?

Coming out of the woods
.

Whereabouts?

Right there at the top of Breakheart Hill
.

What was he doing?

He was wiping off his hands
.

With what?

A handkerchief
.

Do you remember the color of the handkerchief?

It was white
.

Could you see what he was wiping off his hands?

Yes, sir
.

What did it look like, Miss Sparks?

Blood
.

It was then that she’d glanced over to the defense table, then quickly back to Mr. Bailey, carefully following along as he led her toward that climactic moment when she pointed her trembling index finger squarely at the accused, and in a voice just loud enough for the room to hear it, uttered her final answer:
Him
.

I still see Edith around Choctaw from time to time. She has aged prematurely, as farm women often do, with liver spots across her brow and the backs of her hands. She wears her hair in a bun and clothes herself in homemade dresses. We nod when we see each other. Her smile is as shy as it ever was, though now it reveals a scattering of stained teeth. We never speak. Still, as she passes by, I find that I cannot help but wonder if she ever hears the whir of a pickax as it slices through the summer air, or relives a single moment of her time upon the stand, the one instant in her life when the town actually took notice of her.

But on that first day of school so many years ago, I
found no reason to pay much attention to Edith Sparks, nor ever expected to find any. Certainly I felt no sense that another human life might someday rest within her primly folded hands.

“I’m glad you got here a little early, Ben,” Mr. Arlington said when he finally turned away from the blackboard. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.” He leaned toward me, both hands resting on his desk. “What would you think of being this year’s editor of the
Wildcat
?”

The
Wildcat
was the school newspaper, and as far as I could remember, Allison Cryer had always run it pretty much by herself.

“I thought Allison was the editor,” I said.

“Allison’s family has moved to Huntsville,” Mr. Arlington told me. “That’s why I’m looking for someone to take over for her.” He hesitated a moment, as if reluctant to pay a compliment. “I noticed some of your writing in class last year, and I think you can handle it.”

I said nothing, so Mr. Arlington added, “Editing the
Wildcat
’s not much work. And there’ll be a faculty adviser. A new teacher, a Miss Carver. She’ll give you all the help you need.”

I shrugged. “Okay,” I said unenthusiastically, though in fact I felt honored at being chosen, grasping as I did in those days for any hint of recognition.

“Good,” Mr. Arlington said as he began to gather up his things. “You’d better get to the assembly now.”

There were no more than a hundred people in Choctaw’s senior class that year, and according to custom, they occupied the first two rows of the assembly hall. Luke sat only one row in front of me. He winked playfully when he saw me take my seat with the other juniors.

The assembly hall was a large auditorium, complete with a curtained stage. It was the scene of almost all the school’s communal gatherings, everything from the pep rallies before the Friday night football game to the inspirational
speeches of visiting guests. A wooden lectern rested at the center of the stage, and after everyone was seated, the school’s principal stepped up behind it.

“I want to welcome all of you to Choctaw High School,” Mr. Avery said. His eyes swept down upon the first two rows of seats. “Especially to the senior class.”

There was a raucous cheer, then an almost grudging return to silence as Mr. Avery continued, droning on about the coming year, ticking off the lengthy list of responsibilities that would be placed upon us. It was an exercise that seemed unbearably monotonous to me at the time, but which I have since recognized as Mr. Avery’s effort to form us into something solid, mold our misty, insubstantial personalities into the stuff of character.

“So you will be challenged in many ways this year,” he said in conclusion, “and I hope that you will learn how to face challenges and be victorious over them.”

Once he’d finished, Mr. Avery introduced the president of the senior class. Todd Jeffries was undoubtedly the “catch” of his class, the one all the girls swooned over, though none had been able to sway him from his devotion to the dark-haired beauty, Mary Diehl. He was tall, with short sandy hair and blue eyes, and for as long as anyone could remember he had been the school’s unchallenged superstar in both football and basketball. But he was also modest and studious, with an air of something tentative about him, as if distrustful of his own high status.

“I’m not much of a speaker,” he said as he shifted uncomfortably behind the lectern that morning, “but I just want to give a special welcome to the new freshman class at Choctaw High this year.” He smiled warmly, but a little self-consciously as well, the way handsome men and beautiful women often smile, quickly and discreetly, futilely trying not to dazzle the rest of us. “You may feel a little lost at first,” he went on, “but it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it, and I’m sure you’ll feel right at home before long.”

There was quite a burst of applause when Todd sat down, along with some hooting and whistling from his football teammates, a display that appeared to embarrass him a little.

There were a few more speakers after that, various club presidents and student council officials. Then, at the end of the assembly, a girl named June Compton gave a kind of eulogy for Allison Cryer, as if, in leaving Choctaw High, Allison had died rather than simply moved to Huntsville. During the course of her little speech, June mentioned Allison’s long editorship of the
Wildcat
. Almost as an aside, and looking down at a hastily scribbled note, she announced that “Ben Wade” had been selected as the new editor.

With that, the assembly ended and the entire student body made its chaotic way out of the auditorium. Near the door, Luke caught up with me and gave me a slap on the back.

“So, you’re doing the
Wildcat
,” he said brightly.

“Mr. Arlington made me,” I told him a little sourly, not wanting to appear as if in any sense I welcomed the job.

“Maybe you can turn it into something,” Luke said. He laughed. “All Allison ever did was print sports scores and gossip from the Turtle Grove crowd.”

Once we’d passed through the door, Luke took a sharp turn and headed down the stairs, while I went into the main building to my first class.

The teacher came in just behind me, and when I first saw her, I thought she must be a new student at Choctaw rather than a new teacher. This was the Miss Carver who would be helping me edit the
Wildcat
, a pale, thin young woman with reddish hair, the sort that always appeared brittle and unruly.

She took her place behind the desk. “I’m Miss Carver,” she told us in a high, clear voice, then drew a large plastic bag onto the top of the desk, opened it and
pulled out a stack of papers. “I’ve mimeographed copies of the reading list,” she said as she stepped around the desk and began to distribute them.

When she’d finished, she returned to the front of the room and gave the class a quick, tentative smile. “This is my first year teaching, so I’ll probably make a few mistakes. I hope you’ll be patient with me.” The smile broadened, but awkwardly, as if unable to find its proper place on her face. “I’ll also be in charge of the school play at the end of the year, so from time to time I’ll be asking for ideas from you about what play we should do.” She continued on, talking quietly, outlining what she hoped to do in the coming months. She mentioned various books that we’d soon be reading, and I remember her saying that
Wuthering Heights
would be the first of them and
Ethan Frome
the last. These books were among her personal favorites, she told us, because they dealt so powerfully with what she called “doomed love.”

It was the sort of opening statement I had grown accustomed to over the years, teachers forever trying to convince their students that there was something to be gained from learning what they taught. Faithful to my “smart kid” image, I tried to pay close attention to Miss Carver, but after a time, my eyes began to wander about the room, first from one side of the blackboard to the other, then up the wall and along the molding at the ceiling and finally back down again, drifting up the row of desks at the opposite end of the room, cruising the listless faces of my classmates until they stopped at Kelli Troy’s.

She was not exactly transfixed as she sat in the back corner of the room listening to Miss Carver’s plans for us, but she was attentive and strangely serious. No one had introduced her, as they usually did with new students, and I found out later that Kelli had specifically asked not to be singled out. She was wearing a light blue short-sleeved blouse and a plaid skirt that fell just below her knees, a style of dress hardly distinguishable from the other girls in
the class. In fact, only one thing set her apart. On her finger she wore a slender wedding band of tarnished silver, which seemed a strange thing for a young girl to have.

I pulled my eyes away and concentrated on Miss Carver.

“I think that people can learn a lot from reading about what other people have gone through,” she said. “That’s the most important thing reading can do for you.”

No one in the class gave the slightest hint that anything she’d said was worth hearing, and in response, Miss Carver fell silent for a moment, her eyes lowering somewhat, as if she were searching for the key that might unlock us. In that pose, she looked terribly young, hardly more than a girl, frightened and unsure of herself, as if waiting for us to leap at her, to tear her limb from limb. Later it would strike me that a deep innocence had surrounded her that morning, that it was like the soft sheen I have since noticed in newborn skin, and that because of it, it would never have occurred to me that she was far more knowing than she seemed to be, more able to discern the hidden pathways and secret chambers within those she came to know, or that through the dense, hovering gloom that shrouded Breakheart Hill, Miss Carver would be the first to glimpse the truth.

T
HE REST OF THAT FIRST SCHOOL DAY WENT BY IN A STIFLING
, muggy haze. It was the first week of September, and as usual in the Deep South, the weather had remained quite hot. The school had high windows, and the teachers kept them open to give us what relief we could get from the limp breezes that sometimes wafted through them. But there were no fans in the school, and certainly no air-conditioning, so that by the end of the day, when the final bell rang and we staggered out into the open air again, we
felt as if some long, dull torture had at last come to an end.

Luke was standing beside his truck when I reached the parking lot. He pulled off his cap and wiped his forehead with his bare arm. “Can you believe this heat?” he asked.

I shook my head at the hellishness of it.

“I thought they might let us out early, but hell no, we had to go through the whole day.”

I nodded. “I saw that girl,” I told him. “The one in the park when we were playing tennis.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Luke said. “In the hall a couple of times.”

“She’s in my English class.”

Luke grabbed the collar of his shirt and tugged it from the skin around his throat. “I can’t believe they didn’t let us out early,” he said again. “Anyway, let’s go down to Cuffy’s and get something cold.”

We got into Luke’s truck and seconds later pulled out of the parking lot. I glanced toward the school as we went by it, already hoping, I suppose, for a glimpse of Kelli Troy, but letting my gaze settle on the school as well. It seemed unbearable that I still had two years to go, and I know that when I drew my eyes away, it was with the disquieting sense that my imprisonment within its high brick walls and gabled rooms would never end.

I see it differently now, from the viewpoint of a different kind of prison. It has been closed for nearly twenty years, replaced by the much larger and more modern building my daughter attends, one with sleek, unblemished halls, state-of-the-art lighting and winking computer screens. No plans exist either to reopen it, or to tear it down, so it continues to stand where it always has, an abandoned ruin at the foot of the mountain, though now adorned by the flower garden that Luke, in his continuing effort to beautify Choctaw, has planted on its broad front lawn.