Ray Bradbury
http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal
A Story of Love
1951
That was the week Ann Taylor came to teach summer school at Green Town
Central. It was the summer of her twenty-fourth birthday, and it was the summer
when Bob Spaulding was just fourteen.
Every one remembered Anna Taylor, for she was that teacher for whom all the
children wanted to bring huge oranges or pink flowers, and for whom they rolled
up the rustling green and yellow maps of the world without being asked. She was
that woman who always seemed to be passing by on days when the shade was green
under the tunnels of oaks and elms in the old town, her face shifting with the
bright shadows as she walked, until it was all thing to all people. She was the
fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereals
on a hot early-June morning. Whenever you needed on opposite, Ann Taylor was
there. And those rare few days in the world when the climate was balanced as
fine as maple leaf between winds that blew just right, those were days like Ann
Taylor, and should have been so named on the calendar.
As for Bob Spaulding, he was the cousin who walked alone through town on
any October evening with a pack of leaves after him like a horde of Halloween
mice, or you would seem hem, like a slow white fish spring in the tart water of
the Fox Hill Creek, baking brown with the shine of a chestnut to his face by
autumn. Or you might hear his voice in those treetops where the wind
entertained; dropping down hand by hand, there would come Bob Spaulding to sit
alone and look the world, and later you might see him on the lawn with the ants
crawling over his book as he read through the long afternoons alone, or played
himself a game of chess on Grandmother's porch, or picked out a solitary tune
upon the black piano in the bay windows. You never saw him with any other child.
That first morning, Miss Ann Taylor entered through the side door of the
schoolroom and all of the children sat still in their seat as they saw her write
her name on the board in a nice round lettering.
"My name is Ann Taylor." She said, quietly. "And I'm your new teacher."
The room seemed suddenly flooded with illumination, as if the roof had
moved back; and the trees were full of singing birds. Bob Spaulding sat with a
spitball he had just made, hidden in his hand. After a half hour of listening to
Miss Taylor, he quietly let the spitball drop to the floor.
That day, after class, he brought in a bucket of water and a rag and began
to wash the board.
"What's this?" She turned to him from her desk, where she had been
correcting spelling papers.
"The boards are kind of dirty." Said Bob, at work.
"Yes. I know. Are you sure you want to clean them?"
"I suppose I should have asked permission." He said, halting uneasily.
"I think we can pretend you did." She replied, smiling, and at this smile
he finished the boards in an amazing burst of speed and pounded the erasers so
furiously that the air was full of snow, it seemed, outside the open window.
"Let's see." Said Miss Taylor. "You are Bob Spaulding, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm."
"Well, thank you, Bob."
"Could I do them every day?" He asked.
"Don't you think you should let the other try?"
"I'd like to do them." He said. "Every day."
"We'll try it for a while and see." She said.
He lingered.
"I think you'd better run home." She said, finally.
"Good night." He walked slowly and was gone.
The next morning he happened by the place where she took board and room
just as she was coming out to walk to school.
"Well, here I am." He said.
"And do you know." She said. "I'm not surprised."
They walked together.
"May I carry your books?" He asked.
"Why, thank you, Bob."
"It's nothing." He said, taking them.
They walked for a few minutes and he did no say a word. She glanced over
and slightly down at him and saw how at ease he was and how happy he seemed, and
she decided to let him break the silence, but he never did. When they reached
the edge of the school ground he gave the books back to her. "I guess I better
leave you here." He said. "The other kids wouldn't understand."
"I'm not sure I do, either, Bob." Said Miss Taylor.
"Why we're friends." Said Bob earnestly and with a great natural honesty.
"Bob --" She started to say.
"I'll be in class." He said.
And he was in class, and he was there after school every night for the next
two weeks, never saying a word, quietly washing the boards and cleaning the
eraser and rolling up the maps while she worked at her papers, and there was the
clock silence of four o'clock, the silence of sun going down in the slow sky,
the silence with the catlike sound of erasers patted together, and the drip of
water from a moving sponge, and rustle and turn of papers and scratch of a pen,
and perhaps the buzz of a fly banging with a tiny high anger the tallest clean
pane windows in the room. Sometimes the silence would go on this way until
almost five, when Miss Taylor would find Bob Spaulding in the last seat of the
room, sitting and looking at her silently, waiting for further orders.
"Well, it's time to go home." Miss Taylor would say, getting up.
"Yes'm."
And he would run to fetch and coat. He would also lock the school-room door
for her unless the janitor was coming in later. Then they would lock out of the
school and across the yard , which was empty, the janitor taking down the chain
swing slowly on his stepladder, the sun behind the umbrella trees. They talked
of all sorts of things.
"And what are you going to be, Bob, when you grow up?"
"A writer." He said.
"Oh, that is a big ambition: it takes a lot of work."
"I know, but I'm going to try." He said. "I've read a lot."
"Bob, haven't you anything to do after school?"
"How do you mean?"
I mean, I hate to see you kept in so much, washing the boards."
"I like it." He said. "I never do what I don't like."
"But nevertheless."
"No, I've got to that." He said. He thought for a while and said "Do me a
favour, Miss Taylor?"
"It all depends."
"I walk every Saturday from out around Buetrick Street along the creek to
Lake Michigan. There's a lot of butterflies and crayfish and birds. Maybe you'd
like to walk, too."
"Thank you." She said.
"Then you'll come?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Don't you think it'd be fun?"
"Yes, I'm sure of that, but I'm going to be busy."
He started to ask what, but stopped.
"I take along sandwiches." He said. " Ham-and-pickle ones. And orange pop
and just walk along, taking my time. I get down to the lake about non and go
back and get home about three o'clock. It makes a real fine day, and I wish you
come. Do you collect butterflies? I have a big collection. We could start one
for you."
"Thanks, Bob, but no, perhaps some other time."
He looked at her and said. "I shouldn't have asked you, should I?"
"You have every right to ask anything you want to." She said.
A few days later found an old copy of 'Great Expectation', which she no
longer wanted, and gave it to Bob. He was very grateful and took it home and
stayed up that night and read it through and talked about it the next morning.
Each day now he met her just beyond sight of boarding house and many days she
would start to say "Bob --" and tell hem not to come to meet her any more, but
she never finished saying it, and be talked her about Dickens and Kipling and
Poe and others, coming and going to school. She found a butterfly on her desk on
Friday morning. She almost waved it away before she found it was dead and had
been placed there while she was out of the room. She glanced at Bob over the
heads of her other students, but he was looking his book; not reading, just
looking at it.
It was about this time that she found impossible to call on Bob to recite
in class. She would hover her pencil about his name and then call the next
person up or down the list. Nor would she look at him while they were walking to
or from school. But on several late afternoons as he moved his arm on the
blackboard, sponging away the arithmetic symbols, she found herself glancing
over at him for a few second at a time before she returned to her papers.
And then on Saturday morning he was standing in the middle of the creek
with his overalls rolled up to his knees, kneeling down the catch a crayfish
under a rock, when he looked up and there on the edge of the return stream was
Miss Ann Taylor.
"Well, here I am." She said, laughing.
"And do you know," he said "I'm not surprised."
"Show me the crayfish and the butterflies." She said.
They walked down to the lake and sat on the sand with a warm wind blowing
softly about them, fluttering her hair and the ruffle of her blouse, and he sat
a few yards back from her and they ate the ham-and-pickle sandwiches and drank
the orange pop solemnly.
"Gee, this is swell." He said. "This is the swellest time ever in my life."
"I didn't think I would ever come on a picnic like this." She said.
"With some kid." He said.
"I'm comfortable, however." She said.
"That's good news."
They said little else during the afternoon.
"This is all wrong," he said later "and I can't figure out why it should
be. Just walking along and catching old butterflies and crayfish and eating
sandwiches. But Mom and Dad'd rib the heck out of me if they knew, and the kids
would, too. And the other teachers, I suppose, would laugh at you, wouldn't
they?"
"I'm afraid so."
"I guess we better not do any more butterfly catching, then."
"I don't exactly understand how I came here at all." she said.
And the day was over.
That was about all there was to the meeting of Ann Taylor and Bob
Spaulding, two or three monarch butterflies, a copy of Dickens, a dozen
crayfish, four sandwiches and two bottles of Orange Crush. The next Monday,
quite unexpectedly, though he waited a long time, Bob did not see Miss Taylor
come out to walk to school, but discovered later that she had left earlier and
was already at school. Also, Monday night, she left early, with a headache, and
another teacher finished her last class. He walked by her boarding house but did
not see her anywhere, and he was afraid to ring bell and inquire.
On Tuesday night after school they were both in the silent room again, he
sponging the board contently, as if this might go on forever, and she seated,
working on her papers as if she, too, would be in this room and this particular
peace and happiness forever, when suddenly the courthouse clock struck. It was a
block away and this great bronze boom shuddered one's body and made the ash of
time shake away off your bones and slide through your blood, making you seem
older by the minute. Stunned by that clock, you could not but sense the crashing
flow of time, and as the clock said five o'clock Miss Taylor suddenly looked up
at it for a long time, and then she put down her pen.
"Bob." She said.
He turned, startled. Neither of them had spoken in the peaceful and good
hour before.
"Will you come here?" She asked.
He put down the sponge slowly.
"Yes." He said.
"Bob, I want you sit down."
"Yes'm."
She looked at him intently for a moment until he looked away. "Bob, I
wonder if you know what I'm going to talk to you about. Do you know?"
"Yes."
"Maybe it'd be a good idea if you told me, first."
"About us." He said, at last.
"How old are you, Bob?"
"Going on fourteen."
"You're thirteen years old."
He winced. "Yes'm."
"And do you know how old I am?"
"Yes'm. I heard. Twenty-four."
"Twenty-four."
"I'll be twenty-four in ten years, almost." He said.
"But unfortunately you're not twenty-four now."
"No, but sometimes I feel twenty-four."
"Yes, and sometimes you almost act it."
"Do I really."
"Now sit still there, don't bound around, we've a lot to discuss. It's very
important that we understand exactly what is happening, don't you agree?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"First, let's admit that we are the greatest and the best friends of the
world. Let's admit I have never had a student like you, nor I had as much
affection for any boy I've ever know." He flushed at this. She went on. "And let
me speak for you -- you've found me to be the nicest teacher of all teachers
you've ever know."
"Oh, more than that." He said.
"Perhaps more than that, but there are facts to be faced and an entire way
of life to be considered. I've thought this over for a good many days, Bob.
Don't think I missed anything, or been unaware of my own feelings in the matter.
Under any normal circumstances our friendship would be odd indeed. But then you
are no ordinary boy. I know my self pretty well, I think, and I know I'm not
sick, either mentally or physically, and that whatever has evolved here has been
true regard for your character and goodness, Bob; but those are not the things
we consider in this world, Bob, unless they occur in a man of certain age. I
don't know if I'm saying this right."
"It's all right." He said. "It's just if I was ten years older and about
fifteen inches taller it'd make all the difference, and that's silly," he said
"to go by tall a person is."
"The world hasn't found it so."
"I'm not all the world." He protested.
"I know it seem foolish." She said. "When you feel very grown up and right
and have nothing to be ashamed of. You have nothing at all to be ashamed off,
Bob, remember that. You have been very honest and good, and I hope I have been,
too."
"You have." He said.
"In an ideal climate, Bob, maybe someday they will be able to judge the
oldness of a person's mind so accurately that you can say 'This is a man, though
is body is only thirteen; by miracle of circumstances and fortune, this is a
man, with a man's recognition of responsibility and position and duty'; but
until that day, Bob, I'm afraid we are going to have to go by ages and heights
and ordinary way in an ordinary world."
"I don't like that." He said.
"Perhaps I don't like it, either, but do you want to end up far unhappier
than you are now? Do you want both of us to be unhappy? Which we certainly would
be. There really is no way to do anything about us -- it is so strange even to
try to talk about us."
"Yes'm."
"But at least we know all about us and the fact of that we have been right
and fair and good and there is nothing wrong with our knowing each other, nor
did we ever intended that it should be, for both understand how impossible it
is, don't we?"
"Yes, I know. But I can't help it."
"Now we must decide what to do about it." She said. "Now only you and I
know about this. Later, other might know. I can secure a transfer from this
school to another one --"
"No!"
"Or I can have you transferred to another school."
"You don't have to do that." He said.
"Why?"
"We're moving. My folks and I, we're going to live in Madison. We're
leaving next week."
"It has nothing to do with all this, has it?"
"No, no, everything's all right. It's just that my father has a new job
there. It's only fifty miles away. I can see you, can't I, when I come to town?"
"Do you think that would be a good idea?"
"No, I guess not."
They sat awhile in the silent schoolroom.
"When did all of this happen?" he said, helplessly.
"I don't know." She said. "Nobody ever knows. They haven't known for
thousands of years. And I don't think they ever will. People either like each
other or don't, and sometimes two people like each other who shouldn't. I can't
explain myself, and certainly you can't explain you."
"I guess I'd better get home." He said.
"You're not mad at me, are you?"
"Oh, gosh no, I could never be mad at you."
"There's one more thing. I want you to remember, there are compensations in
life. There always are, or we wouldn't go on living. You don't feel well, now;
neither do I. But something will happen to fix that. Do you believe that?"
"I'd like to."
"Well, it's true."
"If only." He said.
"What?"
"If only you'd wait for me." He blurted.
"Ten years?"
"I'd be twenty-four then."
"But I'd be thirty-four and another person entirely, perhaps. No, I don't
think it can be done."
"Wouldn't you like it to be done?" He cried.
"Yes." She said quietly. "It's silly and it wouldn't work, but I would like
it very much."
He sat there a long time.
"I'll never forget you." He said.
"It's nice for you to say that, even though it can be true, because life
isn't that way. You'll forget."
"I'll never forget. I'll find a way of never forgetting you." He said.
She got up and went to erase the boards.
"I'll help you." He said.
"No, no." She said. "You go on now, get home, and no more tending to the
boards after school. I'll assign Helen Stevens to do it."
He left school. Looking back, outside, he saw Miss Ann Taylor, for the last
time, at the board, slowly washing out chalked words, her hand moving up and
down.
He moved away from the town the next week and gone for sixteen years.
Though he was only fifty miles away, he never got down to Green Town again until
he was almost thirty and married, and then one spring they were driving through
on their way to Chicago and stopped off for a day.
Bob left his wife at the hotel and walked around town and finally asked
about Miss Ann Taylor, but no-one remembered at first, and then one of them
remembered.
"Oh, yes, the pretty teacher. She died in 1936, not longer after you left."
Had she ever married? No, come to think of it, she never had.
He walked out to the cemetery in the afternoon and found her stone, which
said "Ann Taylor, born 1910, died 1936." And he thought, twenty-six years old.
Why I'm three years older than you are now, Miss Taylor.
Later in the day the people in the town saw Bob Spaulding's wife strolling
to meet him under the elm trees and the oak trees, and they all turned to watch
her pass, for her face shifted with bright shadows as she walked; she was the
fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereals
on a hot early-summer morning. And this was one of those rare few days in time
when the climate was balanced like a maple leaf between wind that blow just
right, one of those days that should have been named, everyone agreed, after
Robert Spaulding's wife.