The Annie Year. Stephanie Wilbur AshЧитать онлайн книгу.
complaining to Clive Liestman, one of John Mueller’s farmhands, about who knows what, but Clive was looking at me instead of Howie. Mueller, who is my best client, walked out of the bathroom and then Clive pointed at me and soon all three of them were looking at me.
I decided to keep my coat on.
Doc and Huff held up the west wall by the famous picture of Gerald throwing the state-winning shot put in high school, back when he fit into tiny yellow shorts. Huff leaned toward Doc and whispered something to him. I could see Huff’s puffy lips flapping, how he bounced from one bowed leg to another. Doc listened with his spindly tobacco arms crossed, staring me down.
Then Dieter Bierbrauer, the high school principal, waved me over. He was standing with the new Vo-Ag teacher under the ANNIE sign.
And there he was: ponytail, bright red work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tight faded jeans, man clogs, and that belt.
Dieter said, “This is the new Vo-Ag teacher and Future Farmers of America adviser,” and said his name too, “Kenny Tischer,” and then, “Tandy is a great lover of the theater.”
The Vo-Ag teacher said, “Is that right?” and smiled widely. His teeth were very white, like in a commercial for toothpaste. “Do you love all the arts, or just the theater?”
“I give a hundred dollars every year to the Theater Boosters,” I said.
Dieter nodded so fast his white-blond combover flapped.
The Vo-Ag teacher said, “Principal Bierbrauer here was asking me about my belt... Tandy.”
He said my name slowly, in what you might call a deliberate way. It sounded like he thought my name was special, like it was full of potential.
No one had ever said my name like that before.
“It is an unusual belt,” Dieter said. He was looking at the Vo-Ag teacher’s crotch.
Perhaps this is okay with people like you, for a man to look at another man’s crotch, but this was brand new to me. Dieter actually bent down to get a closer look. And then, I don’t know why—I can’t explain it except to say this is the kind of effect the Vo-Ag teacher had on people, because I don’t think I could have helped myself, or maybe I was just a weak person then (I’m stronger now)—but I bent down to get a closer look.
There I was, thirty seconds into meeting him, bending toward his crotch.
I must say, though, that it was an unusual belt. It was made of cloth, not leather, and it had red, black, and green patterns and a row of tiny shells stitched along one edge. There was no buckle and no holes on the ends of the belt. Each end was stopped up with a tiny fringe, and the Vo-Ag teacher had simply tied these fringed ends together in a knot above his zipper so the ends waved out like some sort of cotton butterfly.
Maybe you see these kinds of belts all the time where you live. I do not.
I said that too. “I have never seen a belt like that before,” I said.
I wanted to say, Why are you here? Why would a person like you with a belt like this and a ponytail like that and man clogs ever come to a place like this? But I didn’t.
The Vo-Ag teacher squinted at me. He said, “I got it while I was serving in the Peace Corps in the country of Benin, in Africa. For the Yoruba people there, shells were once currency and art medium. The Yoruba believe art is inseperable from life.”
Dieter and I nodded fast and hard like pecking chickens. Dieter’s combover flapped like a flag.
The Vo-Ag teacher said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
A stranger who tells you how beautiful his own belt is?
I nodded in the direction of his clogs. They were wool. His feet would get very wet this winter, I thought. He should get himself a good pair of boots if he’s going to stick around. I had never heard of the Yoruba. I had never even met a person from Africa. I had only been to Des Moines a couple of times.
Dieter sucked in a big breath, put his big white hands on his thick waist, looked over to somewhere else and then walked there.
“So, what do you do... Tandy?” The Vo-Ag teacher did that thing with my name again, and that time I heard what was under it. I’m not such a dull tack.
It was a mocking thing.
“I’m a CPA... Kenny,” I said, and I looked him right in the eye.
He raised his eyebrows nearly to his hairline, like he was overly surprised, like he was in some sort of play himself right then. He chuckled. He said, “Is that right?”
I said, “That’s right.”
He said, “Well, I’m terrible with money.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I guess we both know what’s right then.”
He was exhausting. Certainly you can see that!
“It must be fascinating to be a CPA in this town,” he said. “You must know the money secrets of everyone sitting in this auditorium.”
One of the big cafeteria doors swung open but it was not my husband, Gerald, just Jenny Finch, the checkout girl at Hy-Vee with the big boobs.
The Vo-Ag teacher leaned toward me, and I could feel a tickle in my ear from his whisper, “So who’s loaded around here? Bierbrauer? That farmer, Mueller? That crazy lawyer, Huff?”
I think that fight-or-flight thing they talk about on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom is true because I almost hit him, but the cafeteria door swung open again and Gerald came barreling in like a semi.
Gerald could be good like that.
I left that Vo-Ag teacher standing alone, doing a little tap dance in his clogs like some sort of hippie elf.
Gerald was too fat to fit in his seat. It used to be that his body fit into that seat the same way ice cream folds over a cone poured by a poorly trained Dairy Queen girl. But not last year, not that Annie year. I put my hands on his shoulders and I pushed down as hard as I could but that just made everyone in the auditorium laugh.
“Did these chairs get smaller?!” Gerald said extra loud, for everyone’s benefit. Huff piped up from two rows back—“Put him on the stage!”—and of course Dieter did. And of course Gerald walked right up to it and slowly backed himself into it like his ass was a dump truck. And of course everyone cheered him on.
There isn’t a single person in this town who did not like Gerald, except perhaps the high school students who rode his school bus that year.
I sat in my usual seat with quiet and normal-sized Bud Sweitzer on my right and Gerald’s empty seat on my left. Mueller, who is indeed loaded with money, sat silent behind me. Then the lights faded and Gerald’s face dissolved and Mrs. Scarsdale, the band teacher and mother of last year’s Annie, counted down 1, 2, 3, 4, and the high school band blew the first notes of the first song like a trickle, all wobbly, and then somewhere in the dark the voice of Mrs. Scarsdale’s ninth-grade daughter, Dee Dee Scarsdale, oozing fake innocence, sang out: Maybe far away, or maybe real nearby—
I pinched the skin on my right wrist hard. The stage lights came up, and I thought for a moment that maybe having Gerald onstage would actually be better because I wouldn’t have to look at the production itself. But I saw that though Gerald’s hands were still latched around his gut, his eyes were closed, and his head had already sunk into his chins.
I closed my eyes too. I tried not to look at our Annie.
And then a bump and a stumble and then hands on my knees and then hands around my shoulders, and I opened my eyes and just above my nose was the colorful cotton butterfly of the Vo-Ag teacher’s belt.
Just like that we were