Home from the Hill (10 page)

The following afternoon Mr. Statler received at work an envelope addressed
TO THE PRINCIPAL OF THE HIGH SCHOOL
, and containing this message, without salutation:

Please call this afternoon at four.

H. Hunnicutt
.

“Call” did not mean “telephone.”

It was an adventure that left the poor man so flabbergasted he had to call a special meeting of the school board next day for support.

In the first place, she had kept him waiting for nearly three-quarters of an hour. When she appeared, she said not one word in greeting, did not ask him to resume the seat he had stood up from, just sat herself across from him and looked him up and down silently, smiling such a smile as she might have used on a tattle-tale child, and as if he was a sufficient comment in himself on her son's failure in his school.

Finally he presumed to say that she had asked him to call in order to discuss Theron's school work?

There was not to be much discussion. He was, he understood, to limit himself to the facts of the case. They were, then: that her son was failing in every course—even history, in which he was making an A as far as class discussion went—because he had turned in none of the written assignments. To which her response had been, “Surely you don't doubt that he could do them, if he wanted to?”

It really was a question. She expected an answer to it. One answer. He assured her he had no doubt whatsoever of Theron's native abilities. For which she thanked him in so very dry a tone that he wondered just what did she want?

Also: he had been absent a total of seven days without excuse during the term.

She asked why he had allowed the number to grow that large before coming to see her about it.

“And why did you?” maliciously asked one of the school board members.

“Because I was afraid to, if you must know,” said Mr. Statler. “And she knew it, too!”

“Well, and what did you tell her?”

That he had supposed the boy to be ill, and supposed she had been just too taken up to write the excuses.

Well, so he had supposed he was ill. And he no longer supposed so?

He did not. Theron had been reported seen, in good health, on two of those days, leaving town early, headed towards the country with a truckload of hounds. He was forced to conclude that he had been playing—he started to say
hookey
, but chose the more proper word
truant
.

She was grateful to him for his vigilance, and did not question that such close surveillance was just what most of his students required. “But Theron has not been playing hookey”—she used the word as if
she
could afford to—“if by that you mean skipping school without his parents' knowledge,” she said. Plainly he did not follow. She made herself explicit. “I have always told him he might stay out whenever he felt like it,” she said.

Reporting it to the school board, Mr. Statler paused a whole minute at that point, to let the full incredibility of it sink into their minds.

When he had recovered himself, he said, “Well, perhaps you know best, Miz Hannah. Perhaps the best way to cure him of this craze of his is to indulge him in it.”

She disliked having anyone presume to understand her motives, especially when he came near the mark, and she disliked having anyone discuss her son at all, except to praise him, especially to dare prescribe for him. And she resented his word
craze
. But she said, “I am glad you see it that way, because I have told him he needn't go back at all this semester. Or in fact ever, if he doesn't want to.”

“Not go back at all!”

“Not go back at all. If he doesn't want to.”

“But he's within a year of graduation! Why, there's a compulsory education law in this state!”

“He is over the age. But if there is any unpleasantness I know I can count on you to take care of it for me.”

She rose.

“Melba,” she called.

He got to his feet.

“Thank you so much for dropping by,” she said.

The night before she had been sitting in the parlor with Theron when Wade came in. He was early and she wondered with long-accustomed bitterness what had brought him home, when, passing their door, he said, “Son, I'd like to have a talk with you,” and continued down the hall to his den.

Not only did her curiosity demand to know what this was about, but she was also instantly nettled that he should have anything to discuss with Theron that he wanted her not to hear—something, moreover, already existing between them, already excluding her. For Theron showed no surprise at this summons; a look of understanding passed over his face as he got up from the couch. Resentment mounted in her as she listened to his steps going down the hall and as she heard the den door close behind him.

She got up and went out into the hall and stood looking down it at the closed door. What was the meaning of it? She hesitated, ashamed of the impulse, only for a second; then slipping out of her shoes she tip-toed down the hall.

She knelt, and peering through the keyhole saw a scene that maddened her. Theron sat hunched up in the fireside armchair, looking abashed, ashamed, contrite—miserable; while his father stood on the hearthstone facing him with his hands behind his back and his legs spread, looking stern, disapproving, shocked—paternally disappointed. How dared he! He—with all he had to be ashamed of! She did not yet even know what it was over; perhaps something for which the boy deserved his part in this classic father-son scene. It did not matter; she could not abide it. For, though she herself could be firm with him, the idea of his father's reprimanding him was intolerable to her. She rose and laid her hand on the doorknob. Then she saw her stockinged feet.

She went quickly back along the hall. Her fingers trembled so with anger at what she had witnessed that she could not get the second shoe on. While she fumbled she heard the door of the den open and heard Theron, in a small, humbled voice which swelled her heart with pity and indignation, say, “Yes, sir.” Then she heard him coming along the hall. She jammed her foot into the shoe and ran to her seat. He looked her way as he passed the door and gave her a sickly smile, then averted his eyes. She started up, but stifled her question. She would not ask
him
, not force him to confess whatever ignominy he had been put to. He passed on and she heard his foot on the stairs, a heavy humbled tread, then his feet and legs came into view and she watched them ascend out of sight.

Her disarming, hot befuddlement abated, and, tempered by determination, she reached the door in iron control of herself. “What has happened?” she demanded, shutting the door behind her.

He was squatting on the hearthstone, poking the low fire. He twisted about and looked up, trying to smile. “Happened? Nothing,” he said.

“If it's nothing then it wasn't worth keeping from me,” she said.

He stopped trying to smile. He turned back to the fire and give it a final jab, then stood up and returned the poker to its stand. He faced her. “Well,” he said, “it's something that Theron would be happier if you didn't know about until you have to.”

“He's not in the habit of having things he would rather I didn't know about,” she said.

The firelight leapt up, yet seemed actually to darken the room, withdrawing it still farther from the early dusk remaining out of doors. He did not answer at once, but stepped to the endtable beside the armchair and switched on the lamp. Still bent, his face close over the lampshade, he squinted at her and said, “This was something both of us thought you might as well be spared until you had to know.” He flushed. “Why will you put a man in the position of having to tell you he has tried to be thoughtful of you?”

By way of reply she sat down and folded her hands, waiting to be told all.

He leaned against the mantelpiece and said, “Well, Jim Statler came to see me this morning. He says Theron is failing in every course in school. He's not doing the work, and he's been playing hookey. To go hunting, of course. Jim has spoken to him about it, but it hasn't done any good, and now he's so far behind there's no hope of catching up.”

Somehow it added to her irritation to see that he was genuinely distressed over it. She half admitted that this was sheer ill-will, and knew she would have been much more irritated had he seemed not to care. But as it was, it violated an exclusive right she felt she had earned.
She
had fretted over Theron's hunting, the danger, the absences from her it meant, his single-minded absorption in it. It was rather late for
him
, Theron's model in it, to commence to worry. But it was not mere perversity that caused her now to take the opposite side from her husband; for the boy's sake she was capable even of agreeing with him. She said, “He shall be taken out of school tomorrow.”

“Now don't get mad at the school because he's failing,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” she repeated.

There was no heat in it. He saw she was cold sober. She meant it. “Well, this is funny,” he said. “Anybody would have expected it to be the other way around. I thought this would bother
you
even more than it does me.”

Bother her that her son was failing in public school? It was simply another proof of Theron's superiority. She had always considered school a waste of his time—had indeed, as she later told the principal, looked with no great disapproval on his occasionally skipping for his sport. She was not exactly opposed to the cultivation of the mind, but she did think it was definitely middle-class. Education: the acquirement of useful knowledge. What use did a gentleman have for that? He could buy brains, could buy the industrious grubbers after knowledge. Oh, she had encountered people who were education-proud, and knew that snobbery for what it was: sour grapes for the lack of gentility and birth. A gentleman was idle, spent his time hunting. Why should he go to school along with every till-keeper's son and learn arithmetic to count pennies?

There was just one thing that might have kept her from her present course. Unfortunately, as even she had to admit, the embodiment of her ideal, certainly Theron's model in it, was his father. But finding him, as he himself had just said, on the opposite side of the matter from what anybody might have expected was suddenly exciting. Hunting was what Theron had shared with his father. Now his father had reneged on him. It was an opportunity to make hunting something Theron owed to her.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“I won't try to deny my share of responsibility in it up to now, but this is your doing. I'm against it.”

“That surprises me,” she said, and he took her meaning.

He said quietly, “I'd like my son to be better than I am.”

“He is better than you,” she said. “In every way.”

“Do as you please,” he said. “But remember that I was against this.”

“My doing. Yes,” she said. “Don't
you
forget it.”

It hurt her to think of Theron alone in his room, humbled, ashamed, miserable at the prospect of her finding out, of having to go back to the school he detested. To think that he had suffered in the belief that she would be disappointed in him, that he had suffered still more—as she knew he would—at having to conceal anything from her. Not to be able to come to her with it, when something had hurt him! She would go up at once and set his mind at ease.

Poor kid, he must be feeling pretty low, thought the Captain. How miserable he had looked, hunched up in that chair! Too miserable to see how unconvincing a job his father was doing with his part in the act. He had not lacked sincerity of conviction; but “do as I say, not as I do,” supported by no matter how much earnestness of belief, is a sermon not to be orated without some feeling of warmth around the collar. He wanted the boy to profit by the mistakes he had made, to unlock and pass through doors that had been closed to him. And he would see to it that he did. This interruption was temporary, and meanwhile it was impossible for him to be quite as unhappy about it as he might have been had Theron's truancy been from any other cause. Hannah amazed him. Let him live to be a hundred, he would never understand Hannah. But understand her or not, he knew how to appreciate her. You would not find many women who would go so far in understanding what a thing like hunting could mean to a boy his age. It would be a load off Theron's mind to know she knew, much less to know how she had taken it, and that he need not go back to school but could take a long holiday in the woods. However, it was going to puzzle him, the way his father had reversed himself—or been reversed by his mother. A child liked consistency in his parents, and according to the Captain's views, liked to see the father the master in the house. He knew how much the boy looked up to him—so much so that sometimes it got to be rather a burden. Perhaps he had better go up there and break it to him himself. That would be better than hearing it from his mother. It would be a pleasure anyway. If he desired to save face, he could in all honesty say that in this case that was no selfish motive. Surely a son did not enjoy seeing his father lose face.

Hardly had she knocked when the door flew upon, and there, instead of the dejected boy she had imagined, stood one rapturously happy. He flung both arms around her, grabbed her up and swung her feet off the floor and spun around with her into the room, laughing and thanking her in between loud kisses he planted on her cheeks and neck. She had been anticipated.
He
had taken all the credit. Theron's thanks were for allowing herself to be persuaded against her inclination. She forbade herself to say anything, but it was another drop in her already brimming bitter cup.

To Mr. Statler's amazement, the affair presented no problem whatsoever to his school board; nor was their decision in doubt for a moment. Unanimously they agreed that Theron Hunnicutt was to be given an “Incomplete” rather than a “Failure” for his work of the year and to be given a legal excuse from school attendance for the rest of the term and until such time as he got ready to come back, and in reply to Mr. Statler's plea for a reason to give the County Superintendent, one member said, “Simple. Excused on the grounds he wants to go hunting.”