Free The Spyglass Tree by Albert Murray

and boys on the block used to fall silent and then just look at each other and shake their heads and also about how the windup gramophone record that went with the way she walked was the one with the words that said, I want to go where you go and do what you do then I’ll be happy
.
    But I didn’t name any names because that was not what was expected. All you had to do was admit that there was somebody. So I just said that there was somebody who decided that was the way she was going to help keep me out of trouble and finish high school and win my chance to go to college as so many people by that time had come to expect me to do.
    Well, good for her, she said, and as we came back into the bedroom you could also hear the wind rising and whirring through the bare branches outside the shutters again. She all right with me whoever she is and wherever she may be these days, she said, waiting for me to put everything back on. I hope you know how lucky you been and I am pretty sure you do and that’s another reason you all right with me with your little old cute, sly fox, narrow-eye smile.
    Then as she hooked her arm into mine and we came on along the hall to the head of the stairs, she also said, I know you know good and, well, I ain’t just talking about controlling your nature because I’m satisfied I don’t have to tell you ain’t nobody going to be complaining about no wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am in no house like this. Now if I was to be talking about some tough-ass old hens want you spend all night with them, that’s another thing.
    She said, When it come to all of that what I mean is, you might know how to do what you supposed to do with that nice sweet thing all night, but the first thing you better know is when you supposed to keep it in your pants. So the one that schooled you about that deserve a lot of credit, she said.
    And then she said, What I’m trying to tell you right now, that you all right with me because whoever she was she didn’t spoil you so rotten that you go around acting like somebody supposed to feel like you doing them a big favor just because you having something to do with them. I’m just trying to tell you how much a woman can appreciate you for being so nice on top of all that other stuff. So now just get on out of here and I hope I see you again before long.
    I didn’t realize that all of that had anything to do with her in any sense that was directly personal and private until she told me what she told me about herself that next time, which was also the Old Trooper’s last treat and so also the end of the orientation leeway he had allowed his two trail recruits to get themselves zeroed in on campus and in certain outlying regions as well.
    So what I remember thinking about as we whistled our way through town and then came on across the highway and into the district that night was about how in the letter with my roommate’s February allowance (and the treat), the Old Trooper had used the word triangulation, not orientation. Both were about map making and map reading and also about personal adjustment, but triangulation was also a military term that was very much about target practice.
    That was what was on my mind when I rearrived in the district on my third visit that Thursday night. It was not as if I didn’t also remember everything that had been said the time before. After all, I had repeated it verbatim to my roommate the following morning. But one reason that I hadn’t stopped to think much less to consider about any of it was that by that time I had become so used to having people talk to me about such things that most of it usually sounded like reiteration rather than information.
    Not that I ever really closed my ears to any of it. Not me. Not Miss Melba’s Scooter. Not Miss Tee’s Mister. Because for all the clichés, platitudes, and sometimes downright mushy sentimentality about making folks proud (mostly without any mention whatsoever of envy, resentment, backbiting,