Lightspeed: Year One

Those kids are all so dumb about ordinary things. Every single one of them has been kept back a grade. I don’t know how they can walk around looking so snooty. It’s as if they think being dumb is better.

Marietta is awful in school, too. The teacher asked her who was the vice president and she didn’t know. So the teacher asked who was president and she didn’t know that either.

That gave me the courage to ask her if she wanted help. But then she said her mother doesn’t want her to be friends with any of us and I said my mother says the exact same thing. Finally she laughs, we both do, and she says, “Shoe Dad, if we can keep it secret.”

(Those kids never say “Okay.”)

She says, “But I shouldn’t be too smart either. We don’t want anybody to notice us.”

So far I don’t think she has anything to worry about in that direction. I don’t say that, though. What I say is, “You’re getting noticed for the opposite reason. You need my help.”

I’m really curious about her house, but she wouldn’t dare invite me and I wouldn’t dare go there. And she can’t come to my house because Mom would be horrified. Too bad they look a little bit different otherwise Mom would never know. So we mostly meet in the woods by the railroad tracks where the bums used to hide out back when there were bums. Mom doesn’t like me to go there either. She thinks maybe there might still be bums around. Marietta and I always scope out the place first, not for bums, but because boys sometimes go there to smoke.

I discovered Marietta was so bad at math because she was used to writing out the problems in an entirely different way. Once I got that straightened out she got a lot better. But she said Huxley told her there was no need for her ever to know who was president here now. I said, “Why not?” She started to say it wasn’t important but she stopped in the middle. Then she said, it was just that there were some things she wasn’t going to bother knowing.

She tells me she really likes Judson Jesperson, but she says she’s not supposed to go outside her own group. And me, I like Huxley Jones, but Marietta says he can’t go outside their group either. She’s supposed to like Huxley and I’m supposed to like Judd. I asked her if this was some sort of religious thing? I didn’t dare say racial but Judson has very dark hair and eyes though his skin is just like hers. She said, no, it was something entirely different and she wasn’t supposed to talk about it. She said it would be very dangerous for any of her group to marry outsiders. She said, “Who knows who would be president in a couple a hundred years if Judd and I got married?”

So anyway, we’re unhappy together and I can tell her all about Judson’s family but she can’t tell me anything about Huxley.

A dozen more families of the tall people move into town. They can’t take the best houses because they’re already gone, but when they get through with the second best houses, they turn out be almost as good except for not being on top of a hill and next to the lake.

The first group of kids is getting a little friendlier. Huxley even let himself get talked into being on the basketball team but he didn’t know how to play and had to be taught from scratch. Judd says they’re sorry now. All he has going for him is being tall.

I don’t care, I like him. I like his stooped over posture. As if he doesn’t want to be that tall. I like his kind of scholarly face. I like his pixie grin. At first he was always frowning at all of us, but pretty soon he wasn’t and especially not at me.

The first thing I said to him was, “I like your name,” and he actually did smile.

By now everybody is saying Shoe Dad.

Then we have the first snow and a snow day. It’s so beautiful. I want to see Marietta right away, but no school so I start out towards her house. I’m not going to disobey Mom. Besides, that’s our only good hill for sledding. Everybody will be up there.

And there everybody is, with sleds and garbage can lids and folded up cardboard boxes. Some kids even have skis. The new kids are even more excited about the snow than we are. They act as though they’ve never made snowmen and never thrown snow balls. They’re like little kids. Well, actually we all are.

Those new kids have skis and fancy boots. But not a single one knows how to ski.

Marietta’s there. I knew she would be. She says first off, “Look . . . these great boots . . . ”

She has the fancy kind you can’t walk around in. They’re white with dozens of black buckles. I admit they’re beautiful. I say, “Shoe Dad.”

“ . . . and they only cost five hundred dollars.”

She’s always saying things like that. Everything is cheap to her. I wish something was cheap to me. I’d like to say, “Evolve!” but I don’t want to make her feel bad. I say, “Bite the . . . oh yeah, bite the ski boot.”