A Place so Foreign, Cory Doctorow [famous ebook reader .TXT] 📗

my backside.

Mama's breath fumed angrily out of her nose. "You go straight to your room and stay there. We're going to see Mr Adelson first thing tomorrow morning."

"What about my chores?" I said.

"Oh, don't worry about that. You'll have plenty of chores to do when I let you out."

I went to my room and stripped down, and lay on my tummy and cracked my window so the icy winter air blew over my backside. I cried a vale of tears, and rained down miserable, mean curses on everyone: Mama, Pa, and especially the lying, snaky, backstabbing Runnyguts Adelson.

#

Mama didn't get any less mad through the night, but when she came to my door at cock-crow, she seemed to be holding it in better. My throat and eyes were sore as sandpaper from crying, and Mama gave me exactly five minutes to wash up and dress before dragging me out to the horsebarn. She'd already hitched up our team and refused my hand when I tried to help her up.

I'd been angry and righteous when I woke, but seeing Mama's towering, barely controlled fury changed my mood to dire terror. I stared out at the trees and farms as we rode into town, feeling like a condemned man being taken to the gallows.

Mama pulled up out front of the Academy and marched me around back to the teacher's cottage. She rapped on the door and waited, blowing clouds of steam out of her nose into the frosty morning air.

Mr Adelson answered the door in shirtsleeves and suspenders, unshaved and bleary. His hair, normally neatly oiled and slicked, stuck out like frayed broom-straw. The muscles on his thin arms stood out like snakes. He blinked at us, standing on his doorstep. "Mrs Nicholson!" he said.

"Mr Adelson," my mother said. "We've come to discuss James' report card."

Mr Adelson smoothed his hair back and stepped aside. "Please, come in. Can I offer you some coffee?"

"No, thank you," Mama said, primly, standing in his foyer. He held out his hand for her coat and kerchief and she handed them to him. I took off my coat and struggled out of my boots. He took them both and put them away in a closet.

"I'm going to have some coffee. Are you sure I can't offer you a cup?"

"No. Thank you, all the same."

"As you wish." He disappeared down the dark hallway, and Mama and I found our way into his tiny parlour. Books were stacked every which where, dusty and precarious. Mama and I sat down in a pair of cushioned chairs, and Mr Adelson came in, holding two mugs of coffee. He set one down next to Mama on the floor, then smacked himself in the forehead. "You said no, didn't you? Sorry, I'm not quite awake yet. Well, leave it there — there's cream in it, maybe the cat will have some."

He settled himself onto another chair and sipped at his coffee. "Let's start over, shall we? Hello, Mrs Nicholson. Hello, James. I understand you're here to discuss James' report card."

Mama sat back a little in her chair and let hint of a sardonic smile show on her face. "Yes, we are. Forgive my coming by unannounced."

"Oh, it's nothing."

Mr Adelson drank more coffee. Mama smoothed her skirts. I kicked my feet against the rungs of my chair. Finally, it was too much for me. "What's the big idea, anyway?" I said, glaring daggers at him. "I don't deserve no F!"

"Any F," Mr Adelson corrected. "Why don't you think so?"

"Well, because I did all my homework. I gave the right answers in class. I passed all the tests. It ain't fair!"

"Not fair," my Mama corrected, gently. She was staring distractedly at Mr
Adelson.

"What you say is true enough, James. What grade do you suppose you should've gotten?"

"Why, an A! An A-plus! Perfect!" I said, glaring again at him, daring him to say otherwise.

"Is that what an A-plus is for, James? Perfection?"

"Sure," I said, opening my mouth without thinking.

Mama shifted her stare to me. She was looking even more thoughtful.

"Why do you suppose you go to school?"

"'Cause Mama says I have to," I said, sullenly.

"James!" Mama said.

"Oh, I suppose it's to learn things," I said.

Mr Adelson smiled and nodded, the way he did when one of the students got the right answer in class. "Well?"

"Well, what?" I said.

"What did you learn this semester?"

"Why, everything you taught! Geometry! Algebra! Latin! Geography! Biology!
Physics! Grammar!"

"I see," he said. "James, what's the formula for determining the constant in the second derivative of an equation?"

I knew that one: it was one of Newton's dirty calculus proofs. "It's a trick question. There's no way to get the constant of second derivative."

"Exactly right," he said.

"Yes," I said, and folded my arms across my chest.

"Where did you learn that?"

"In —" I started to say 1975, but caught myself. "In France."

"Yes."

"Yes," I said. The fingers of dawn crept across my comprehension. "Oh."

Mama smiled at me.

"But it's not fair! So what if I already knew everything before I started? I still did all the work."

"Why are you in school, James?" Mr Nicholson asked me again.

"To learn."

"Well, then I think you'd better start learning something, don't you? You're the brightest student in the class. You're certainly smarter than I am — I'm just an old sailor struggling along with the rest of the class. But you, you've got it. You've been marking time in class all semester, and I daresay you haven't learned a single thing since you started. That's why you got F's."

"Mr Adelson," Mama said. "Am I to understand that James performed all his assignments satisfactorily?"

It was Mr Adelson's turn to squirm. "Yes, but madam, you have to understand —"

Mama waved aside his objections. "If James satisfactorily completed all the work assigned to him, then I think he should have a grade that reflects that, don't you?" She took a sip of her coffee.

"Yes, well —"

"However, you do have a point. I didn't send my son to your school so that he could mark time, as you put it. I sent him there to learn. To be taught. Have you taught him anything, Mr Adelson?"

Mr Adelson looked so all-fired sad, I forgave him the report card and spoke up.
"Yes, Mama."

Mama swiveled her head to me. "Really?"

"Yes. He taught me what I was at school for. Just now."

"I see," Mama said. "This is very good coffee, Mr Adelson."

"Thank you," he said, and sipped at his.

"James," Mr Adelson said. "You've learned your first lesson. What do you propose your second should be?"

"I dunno," I said, and went back to kicking the rungs of the chair.

"What is it that you have been doing since you came back to town, son?" he asked.

"Hanging around in the attic, mostly. Reading. Tinkering. Like my Pa."

"My husband's machines and journals are up there," Mama explained.

"And his books," I said.

"Books?" Mr Adelson looked suddenly interested. "What kind of books?"

"Adventure stories. Stevenson. Wells. Some of it's in French. We have all of
Verne."

"Well, perhaps that can be your next assignment. I would like to see an original composition of no less than twenty pages, discussing each work of Verne's, charting his literary progress. Due January fifth, please."

"Twenty pages!" I said. "But it's the holidays!"

"Very well. Whatever length the piece turns out is fine. But be sure you do justice to each work."

#

By the time I got through with the assignment, it was thirty-eight pages long. I never thought I could write that much but it kept on coming, new thoughts about each book, each scene, the different worlds Verne had built: the fantastic slopes of Barsoom, the sinister Island of Dr Moreau. . . Each one spawned a new insight. I felt like the Verne's detective, Sherlock Holmes, assembling all of the seemingly insignificant details into some kind of coherent picture, finding the improbable links between the wildly different stories the Frenchman told.

Mama was thrilled to see me working, papers spread out all around me on the kitchen table — I could've used Pa's study, but it felt like an invasion, somehow — writing until my wrists cramped. She let me get away without doing my chores, rising early to milk the cow, bringing in the eggs from the henhouse, even chopping the kindling. Just so long as I was writing, she was happy to let me go on shirking my responsibilities.

Even on Christmas Eve, I was too distracted to really enjoy the smells of goose and ham and the stuffing Mama spent days preparing. I was still writing when she told me to go change and set the table for three.

"We're having Mr Johnston to dinner," she said.

I made a face. Mr Johnston was the only one in town that I could have talked to about my time in 1975, but I never did. He had a way of bossing a fellow around while seeming to be nice to him. He still ran Pa's store, using ladders to reach the high shelves that Pa had just plucked things off of. I had to see him when Mama sent me on errands there, but I made sure that I left as quickly as I could. Mama kept saying that I should ask him for a job, but I was pretty good at changing the subject whenever it came up.

I put away my papers and changed into my Sunday clothes. I'd been hinting to Mama lately that a boy just wasn't complete without a puppy, so I put an extra shine on my shoes and said a quick prayer that I wouldn't find socks and picture-books under the tree.

Mr Johnstone arrived with a double-armload of gifts. Well, he did run my Pa's store, after all, so he could get things wholesale. I took his parcels from him and set them under the tree. Then that dandified sissy actually kissed my Mama on the cheek, lifting a sprig of mistletoe up with one hand. When Pa and Mama stood together, she'd barely come up to his shoulder, while Mr Johnstone had to stand on tiptoe to get the mistletoe over their heads. "Merry Christmas, Ulla," he said.

She took his hands and said, "Merry Christmas, James."

I wanted to be sick.

#

Mr Johnstone had a whiskey in our parlour before we ate, sitting in my Pa's chair, smoking a cigar from my Pa's humidor. Mama ordered me to keep him company while she set out the meal.

"Do they call you Jimmy?" he asked me, staring down his long, pointy nose.

"No, sir. James."

"It's a fine name, isn't it? Served me well, man and boy." He made a face that was supposed to be funny, like he'd bit into a lemon.

"I like it fine, sir."

"Are you having any problems adjusting, now that you're home? Finding it hard to relate to the other fellows?"

"No, sir."

"You don't find it strange, after seeing 1975?"

"No, sir. It's home."

"Ha!" he said, as though I'd said something profound. "I guess it is, at that. Say, why don't you come by the store some time? I just got some samples from a new candy company in Oregon, and I need to get an unbiased opinion before I order." He gave me a pinched smile, like he thought he was Santa Claus.

"Mama doesn't like me eating sweets," I said, and stared at my reflection in my shoes.

Mama rescued me by coming into the parlour then, looking young and pretty in her best dress. "Dinner is served, gentlemen."

We followed her into the dining room, and Mr Johnstone took my Pa's seat at the head of the table and carved the goose. Even though the bird was brown and juicy, I found I didn't have any appetite.

"I have word from Pondicherry," Mr Johnstone said, as he poured gravy over his second helping of mashed potatoes.

"Yes?" Mama said.

"Who's he?" I asked.

"Your father's successor," Mr Johnstone said. "A British officer from New Delhi.
A fat little man, and awfully full of himself."

I repressed a snort. For my money Mr Johnstone was as full of himself as one man could be. I