Free Ghost Story by Peter Straub Page A

misunderstanding and cruelty were to make him bad. And that you could redress. So I began a little reclamation program. When Fenny tipped over his desk the next day, I righted it myself, much to the disgust of the older children; and at lunchtime I asked him to stay inside with me.
    The other children filed out, buzzing with speculation—I'm sure they thought I was going to cane him once they were out of sight—and then I noticed that his sister was lurking in the dark rear corner. "I won't hurt him, Constance," I said. "You can stay behind too if you wish." Those poor children! I can still see both of them, with their bad teeth and tattered clothing, he full of suspicion and resentment and fear and she simply fearful—for him. She crept into a chair and I went to work to try to straighten out some of Fenny's misconceptions. I told him all the stories of explorers I knew, about Lewis and Clarke and Cortez and Nansen and Ponce de Leon, stuff I was going to use later in class, but it had no effect on Fenny. He knew that the world went only about forty or fifty miles out from Four Forks, and that the people within this radius were the world's population. He clung to this notion with the dogged stubbornness of the stupid. "Who in the world told you this, Fenny?" I asked. He shook his head. "Did you make it up yourself?" He shook his head again. "Was it your parents?"

    Back in the dark corner, Constance giggled—giggled without any humor. That laugh of hers sent chills through me—it conjured up pictures of a nearly bestial life. Of course, that was what they had; and all the other children knew it And as I found out later, it was much worse, much more unnatural, than anything I could have imagined.

    Anyhow, I raised my hands in despair or impatience, and the wretched girl must have thought I was going to strike him, because she called out, "It was Gregory!"

    Fenny looked back at her, and I swear that I've never seen anyone look so frightened. In the next instant he was off his chair and out of the schoolroom. I tried to call him back, but it was no good. He was running as if for life, off into the woods, sprinting in the jack-rabbit country way. The girl hung in the doorway, watching him go. And now she looked frightened and dismayed—her whole being had turned pale. "Who is Gregory, Constance?" I asked her, and her face twisted. "Does he sometimes walk by the schoolhouse? Is his hair like this?" And I stuck my hands up over my head, my fingers spread wide—and then she was off too, running as fast as he had.

    Well, that afternoon I was accepted by the other students. They'd assumed that I had beaten both of the Bate children, and so taken part in the natural order of things. And that night at dinner I got, if not an extra potato, at least a sort of congealed smile from Sophronia Mather. Evidently Ethel Birdwood had reported to her mother that the new schoolmaster had seen reason.

    Fenny and Constance didn't come to school the next two days. I stewed about that, and thought that I'd acted so clumsily that they might never return. On the second day I was so restless that I paced around the schoolyard during lunchtime. The children regarded me as they would a dangerous lunatic;—it was clear that teacher was supposed to stay indoors, preferably administering the ferule. Then I heard something that stopped me dead and made me whirl around toward a group of girls, who were sitting rather primly on the grass. They were the biggest girls and one of them was Ethel Birdwood. I was sure that I'd heard her mention the name Gregory. "Tell me about Gregory, Ethel," I said.

    "What's Gregory?" she asked, simpering. "There's no one with that name here." She gave me a great cow-eyed look, and I was certain she was thinking of that rural tradition of the schoolmaster marrying his eldest female pupil. She was a confident girl, this Ethel Birdwood, and her father had the reputation of being prosperous.

    I wasn't having it "I just