Kurtz

For English class, I had Miss Kurtz, an ancient lady who wore shapeless dresses and kept her hair pinned back in a bun. She was severe in her discipline but harmless, really. We read Beowulf and Shakespeare, which was OK, I guess, out of which I got nothing. But the girl in the seat next to me was pretty and sweet looking. Her name was Debbie and she had brown hair and a way of looking up at you with her very brown eyes that was disarming. She wore short print dresses that were not immodest but which showed the soft skin of her legs that were perpetually pinned together at the knees. She radiated kindness, I believed, and she was always nice to me when we talked before class. I thought I might be in love with her, but that is as far as it went. Each day I would see her in class, and we would speak a few words.  And that was it.

She was in a social club, the Tri-Hi-Y, and knew just about everybody. There was that group--the "student body"--of which I was not a part. I wasn't sure how one got to be part of that group, but I knew I had neither the resources nor the attitude for it. It seemed to require a juvenile behavior that I could not muster, the silly sameness of knowing looks and hearty handshakes, and clothing that I could not afford. And so I hung somewhere, suspended in the netherlands between this and that, belonging, I thought, to a small group composed of one.

But I thought about Debbie, too, and her sweetness, and somewhere my body ached, for I was sweet as well. That is not how others thought of me exactly, for it was well known that I hung with an older, more nefarious crowd, but I imagined somehow that Debbie knew.

And so each day, I looked forward to Miss Kurtz's class and her rendition of Beowulf and later Shakespeare.

And the light played upon the lawn, dancing away the days, the falling away of summer into autumn, the shadows growing long, the sound of marching bands practicing in the distance and the promise of tradition. The old world with its old ways seemed unimpeachable. It would always be this way.  So it seemed.