"Marvelous. We'll see you at the 8:30 bell, then. And James --" he paused,
waited until I met his gaze. His eyebrows were at rest. "I'm sorry about your
father. I'd met him several times. He was a good man."
"Thank you, sir," I said, unable to look away from his stare.
#
The first half of the day passed with incredible sloth, as I copied down
problems to my slate and pretended to puzzle over them before writing down the
answer I'd known the minute I saw the question.
At lunch I found a seat at the base of the big willow out front of the school
and unwrapped the waxed paper from the thick ham sandwich Mama had fixed me. I
munched it and conjugated Latin verbs in my head, trying to make the day pass.
Oly and the fellows were roughhousing in the yard, playing follow-the-leader
with Amos Gundersen out front, showing off by walking on his hands and then
springing upright. Amos' mother came from circus people in Russia, and all the
kids in his family wanted to be acrobats when they grew up.