Free The Writing on the Wall: A Novel by W. D. Wetherell Page A

those first weeks. He had moved often since leaving the army. This was his fourth teaching position in two years and each move brought him further north toward the edge of things. He rented a house out by the river. He liked trout fishing and he had a gramophone collection with lots of Rosa Ponselle. Along with his books this was enough to keep him happy. He told us more than once that lonely as things were here he wanted to make it his home.
    The trains ran more irregularly in the afternoon and I often got home after dark. Alan would meet me at the station and carry my books. He held them in a strange way, at arm’s length like they might hurt. He seemed confused by them, puzzled that I could find so much meaning in things he had always been frightened of.
    “Your thirty days are up today,” he said once we reached home. “I’m glad you had the chance to try. Maybe some time in the future you can go back.”
    I knew I had to keep my temper. They did not seem his words and I knew where they were coming from.
    “Tomorrow I go back. It’s only Thursday.”
    “Well, I’ll need to ask Mother and Father about that.”
    “A wonderful idea. Let’s invite them for Sunday dinner.”
    It was important to call their bluff but I regretted it once they came. Mrs. Steen went on an inspection tour of the house, frowning at all the fixing up still needing to be done. The fact the walls were not yet wallpapered especially bothered her—in her view of things a woman who lived in a house with bare walls was equivalent to a woman who paraded around naked. She touched the plaster as if smearing it with something dirty from her fingertips and later I went around scrubbing every single spot she touched.
    We had a little comedy when dinner started. Alan went to a side chair, leaving the position of honor at the head of the table for his father, but I got there before he could, held the chair back and said loud as I could, “Alan? Why don’t you sit up here?”
    So. There was a mood. Mr. Steen speared some roast off the platter, then started in on his favorite topic—the fine work they were doing down in Washington, rounding up foreign agents, throwing radicals in jail, putting a good healthy scare into people. Attorney General Palmer deserved a medal for standing up for real Americanism. Why, he could do good work right up here if someone alerted him to the situation. There were teachers in the high school who were stirring things up, trying to change things, importing foreign thoughts. He heard there was a new teacher who acted as their ringleader, a Mr. Ass or Mr. Rump or something unmentionable like that.
    Alan, who had sat silently eating his turnips, now looked up.
    “Mr. Sass. Beth has him for English.”
    I nodded. “He’s the best teacher there.”
    Mr. Steen stared over at me—the scars seemed to coil upwards from his cheeks to his eyes, narrowing them into purple slits.
    “He’s a Democrat,” he said, spitting out the word.
    “No,” I said calmly. “He hates Wilson and worships Teddy Roosevelt.”
    “He’s a radical.”
    “No. He was an officer in the Rainbow Division and fought in France.”
    “He’s a New Yorker.”
    “He was born in Bemidji, Minnesota where it’s even colder than here.”
    “A Jew.”
    “The son of a Presbyterian minister.”
    “I bet he thinks we’re descended from apes.”
    I was going to say something terrible but before I could someone interrupted.
    “He’s a bachelor!”
    Mrs. Steen said this, or, in her manner, croaked the words out her neck. She made it sound like the worst accusation yet. By this point I just wanted to laugh at them and I had to busy myself with the rest of dinner or perhaps I would have. When I came back from the kitchen Mr. Steen had switched his venom to an easier target. A librarian two towns over was stirring things up, handing out radical literature, giving young people dangerous ideas. When I asked him what sort of radical literature he frowned