Stone Lake: part 40

A Star Tribune serialized novel by Richard Horberg

Chapter 13 continues

The story so far: Allen critiques Annette's paintings — delicately.

When she came back she offered him coffee. Then she told him the story of her life in 300 words. She'd married her husband straight out of college — those two years she'd spent at Bemidji State. Ben was rugged and strong and smart. She thought he was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Now, she thought, he was the worst. He had a degree in forestry when she met him but was working in a hardware store. He told her that his hope was to move to Minneapolis, get a job in — and ultimately direct — some large lumber company, where he would be in a position to oversee and improve the environment.

Instead, he'd found what was supposed to be a temporary job in the lumber yard at Stone Lake. They bought a little house — temporary again — and had two children, sometime after which, realizing they were two different kinds of people, they had separated. She'd always thought that if they ever broke up — having a suspicion that it might happen someday — she would be the one to go to the city and he would stay in Stone Lake with the kids, whom he seemed to love. Instead it was the opposite.

"So here I am," she said, "stuck in Stone Lake. Working in a little women's clothing shop, of all places, where nothing interesting ever happens. Where no man ever comes in. Except you."

He smiled. "I have to admit that the place didn't look very exciting."

"I no longer know what the word means."

"You don't go to the basketball games?"

"Who would I go with? My sons aren't in the least interested."

He gulped. "I feel the same way."

"Anyway, I'm looking for a life. That's what I want. Not basketball. A real life. A full life." Her younger son, Ralph, she told him, was in ninth grade. Three more years. Three long years, three long winters. Making the best of it, he told her that when Ralph graduated from high school she would be free to head for the city herself. She could start a new life. She would still be a young woman.

"In three years I'll be … 40," she confessed.

He told her she didn't look more than 30. More tears came to her eyes.

Before he left, she showed him again the room he might have rented, that tiny room off the kitchen with a single window, a window which, he now saw, looked out on the lot full of old cars.

"I'm sorry," he said. "The truth is, I needed more privacy."

"You could have had kitchen privileges. Better than that, you could have had room and board both. Whatever my shortcomings, I'm a pretty good cook."

"You don't have any shortcomings," he said.

At which point she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a quick, happy kiss.

Allen's sophomore class was becoming a problem.

Not that there weren't some bright kids in it. There were. The trouble was that he didn't have time or energy to prepare decent lessons for them, nor was there anything in their textbook to supplement their classroom discussions.

The stories and essays in their text, in fact, were so dismal that he found it impossible to assign them. And the only novel available for them to read was "Silas Marner," which didn't take long.

So he ended up teaching them the rules of grammar, distinguishing between prepositions and conjunctions (as if anyone cared), giving them grammar tests and covering the blackboard every day with rules, more rules and, unfortunately, exceptions to the rules.

"Why are there so many exceptions?" a student asked one day.

"We can't expect English grammar to be logical," he told them. "English grammar is based on Latin grammar. Latin grammar is logical — all the rules make sense. But Latin is a Romance language and English is an Anglo-Saxon language. When you try to impose the rules of one on the other, they don't fit very well. Hence the exceptions. If I ask a tailor to make me a suit, for example, and Freddy Dahlquist there" — he pointed to one of his more likeable students — "admires it and asks the tailor to make one just like it for him, it would hardly fit him very well."

"I hope not," Freddy Dahlquist said.

Everybody laughed.

"Or take the parts of speech," he continued. He was interested even if no one else was. "English has eight parts of speech because Latin does. It doesn't work in a sentence, like this, for example." He wrote it on the board:

This is my hat

"The word my is both a pronoun — a personal pronoun (it's listed with the pronouns in all of the books) and an adjective because it modifies the word hat. So if anyone asks you what part of speech my is in that sentence, you can't be sure."

"You don't wear a hat, do you, Mr. Post," Johnny Fjerstad said.

He ignored the interruption.

"The trouble is that instead of classifying words on a single basis, we use a shifting basis, a triple basis: form, function, and meaning." He wrote the three words on the board. "So if we classify my on the basis of form, it's a pronoun, but if we classify it by function, it's an adjective. I could give you all kinds of other examples."

He decided it was profitless to try to teach grammar. But what could he do instead? They were hardly into the second semester and already he was out of material. He didn't want to fail his students entirely.

He decided to ask Superintendent Magnuson for help.

***

The superintendent commiserated, saying he was hoping to be able to reduce class size and teacher load in the future. But having no experience in the field of English himself, he had few suggestions to offer.

He advised Allen instead to talk to the other English teachers, Patty Porter and the librarian, Evelyn Wilson, who taught an occasional English class herself.

Reluctantly, Allen approached both of them.

"Crossword puzzles," Patty said. "They're easy to make up. I'll lend you a few of mine, if you like."

What could he say? He reminded her that this year's sophomores would be next year's juniors — and, if she taught juniors next year, they might think she had stolen the idea from him.

She put her hand on her head as if she were aghast at the possibility.

Evelyn merely suggested that he let them read all hour, as she did.

The next afternoon, he was sitting in the teachers' lounge during his free hour when old C.P. Arndt came in, smoking his ancient pipe. His white hair fell over his forehead, a little closely clipped mustache under his nose, a couple of stains on his necktie. Allen nodded to him, then buried himself in a book. He had not spoken a dozen words to the man all year.

To his surprise, C.P. Arndt addressed him. "I hear you like being an English teacher."

Allen put down his book. "Yes, I do. It's what life's all about, I think."

Tomorrow: Chapter 14 continues.