Chapter 12 #6
“Nothing like that. I’ve got savings, but I wouldn’t mind stretching what I’ve got with some substitute work. I can’t teach full-time and still write.”
“Course not,” he said respectfully.
“My degree’s from Oklahoma, but…” I shrugged to show Oklahoma wasn’t in Texas’s league, but a man could hope.
“Well, you ought to talk to Deke Simmons. He’s the principal. Comes in for dinner most evenins. His wife died a couple of years back.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said.
“We all were. He’s a nice man. Most people are in these parts, Mr.—?”
“Amberson. George Amberson.”
“Well, George, we’re pretty sleepy, except on Friday nights, but you could do worse. Might could even learn to roar like a lion at halftime.”
“Maybe I could,” I said.
“You come on back around six. That’s usually the time Deke comes in.” He put his arms on the counter and leaned over them. “Want a tip?”
“Sure.”
“He’ll probably have his lady-friend with him.
Miss Corcoran, the librarian up to the school.
He’s kinda been sparkin her since last Christmas or so.
I’ve heard that Mimi Corcoran’s the one who really runs Denholm Consolidated, because she runs him.
If you impress her, I reckon you’re in like Flynn. ”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
15
Weeks of apartment-hunting in Dallas had netted me exactly one possible, which turned out to be owned by a man I didn’t want to rent from.
It took me three hours in Jodie to find a place that looked fine.
Not an apartment, but a tidy little five-room shotgun house.
It was for sale, the real estate agent told me, but the couple who owned it would be willing to rent to the right party.
There was an elm-shaded backyard, a garage for the Sunliner…
and central air-conditioning. The rent was reasonable, given the amenities.
Freddy Quinlan was the agent’s name. He was curious about me—I think the Maine license plate on my car struck him as exotic—but not unduly so.
Best of all, I felt I was out from under the shadow that had lain over me in Dallas, Derry, and Sunset Point, where my last long-term rental now lay in ashes.
“Well?” Quinlan asked. “What do you think?”
“I want it, but I can’t give you a yes or no this afternoon. I have to see a fellow first. I don’t suppose you’ll be open tomorrow, will you?”
“Yessir, I will. Saturdays I’m open until noon. Then I go home and watch the Game of the Week on TV. Looks like it could be a heck of a Series this year.”
“Yes,” I said. “It certainly does.”
Quinlan extended his hand. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Amberson. I bet you’d like Jodie. We’re good people around here. Hope it works out for you.”
I shook with him. “So do I.”
Like the man said, a little hope never hurt anybody.
16
That evening I returned to Al’s Diner and introduced myself to the principal of Denholm Consolidated and his librarian lady-friend. They invited me to join them.
Deke Simmons was tall, bald, and sixtyish.
Mimi Corcoran was bespectacled and tanned.
The blue eyes behind her bifocals were sharp, looking me up and down for clues.
She walked with the aid of a cane, handling it with the careless (almost contemptuous) dexterity of long use.
Both of them, I was amused to see, were carrying Denholm pennants and wearing gold buttons that read WE’VE GOT JIM POWER! It was Friday night in Texas.
Simmons asked me how I was liking Jodie (a lot), how long I’d been in Dallas (since August), and if I enjoyed high school football (yes indeed).
The closest he got to anything substantive was asking me if I felt confident in my ability to make kids “mind.” Because, he said, a lot of substitutes had a problem with that.
“These young teachers send em to us in the office like we didn’t have anything better to do,” he said, and then chomped his Pronghorn Burger.
“Sauce, Deke,” Mimi said, and he obediently wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin from the dispenser.
She, meanwhile, was continuing her inventory of me: sport coat, tie, haircut. The shoes she’d taken a good look at as I crossed to their booth. “Do you have references, Mr. Amberson?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did quite a bit of substitute teaching in Sarasota County.”
“And in Maine?”
“Not so much there, although I taught for three years in Wisconsin on a regular basis before quitting to work full-time on my book. Or as much full-time as my finances would allow.” I did have a reference from St. Vincent’s High School, in Madison.
It was a good reference; I had written it myself.
Of course, if anyone checked back, I’d be hung.
Deke Simmons wouldn’t do it, but sharp-eyed Mimi with the leathery cowboy skin might.
“And what is your novel about?”
This might also hang me, but I decided to be honest. As honest as possible, anyway, given my peculiar circumstances. “A series of murders, and their effect on the community where they happen.”
“Oh my goodness,” Deke said.
She tapped his wrist. “Hush. Go on, Mr. Amberson.”
“My original setting was a fictional Maine city—I called it Dawson—but then I decided it might be more realistic if I set it in an actual city. A bigger one. I thought Tampa, at first, but it was wrong, somehow—”
She waved Tampa away. “Too pastel. Too many tourists. You were looking for something a little more insular, I suspect.”
A very sharp lady. She knew more about my book than I did.
“That’s right. So I decided to try Dallas. I think it’s the right place, but…”
“But you wouldn’t want to live there?”
“Exactly.”
“I see.” She picked at her piece of deep-fried fish.
Deke was looking at her with a mildly poleaxed expression.
Whatever it was he wanted as he went cantering down the backstretch of life, she appeared to have it.
Not so strange; everybody loves somebody sometime, as Dean Martin would so wisely point out.
But not for another few years. “And when you’re not writing, what do you like to read, Mr. Amberson? ”
“Oh, just about everything.”
“Have you read The Catcher in the Rye?”
Uh-oh, I thought.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked impatient at this. “Oh, call me Mimi. Even the kids call me Mimi, although I insist they put a Miz with it for propriety’s sake. What do you think of Mr. Salinger’s cri de coeur?”
Lie, or tell the truth? But it wasn’t a serious question. This woman would read a lie the way I could read… well… an IMPEACH EARL WARREN billboard.
“I think it says a lot about how lousy the fifties were, and a lot about how good the sixties can be. If the Holden Caulfields of America don’t lose their outrage, that is. And their courage.”
“Um. Hum.” Picking plenty at her fish, but not eating any that I could see. No wonder she looked like you could staple a string to the back of her dress and fly her like a kite. “Do you believe it should be in the school library?”
I sighed, thinking how much I would have enjoyed living and teaching part-time in the town of Jodie, Texas. “Actually, ma’am—Mimi—I do. Although I believe it should be checked out only to certain students, and at the librarian’s discretion.”
“The librarian’s? Not the parents’?”
“No, ma’am. That’s a slippery slope.”
Mimi Corcoran burst into a wide smile and turned to her beau. “Deke, this fellow doesn’t belong on the substitute list. He should be full-time.”
“Mimi—”
“I know, no vacancy in the English Department. But if he sticks around, maybe he can step in after that idiot Phil Bateman retires.”
“Meems, that is very indiscreet.”
“Yes,” she said, and actually dropped me a wink. “Also very true. Send Deke your references from Florida, Mr. Amberson. They should do nicely. Better yet, bring them in yourself, next week. The school year has started. No sense in losing time.”
“Call me George,” I said.
“Yes, indeed,” she said. She pushed her plate away. “Deke, this is terrible. Why do we eat here?”
“Because I like the burgers and you like Al’s strawberry shortcake.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “The strawberry shortcake. Bring it on. Mr. Amberson, can you stay for the football game?”
“Not tonight,” I said. “I’ve got to get back to Dallas. Maybe next week’s game. If you think you can use me.”
“If Mimi likes you, I like you,” Deke Simmons said. “I can’t guarantee you a day every week, but some weeks there’ll be two or even three. It will all average out.”
“I’m sure it will.”
“The substitute salary isn’t much, I’m afraid—”
“I know that, sir. I’m just looking for a way to supplement my income.”
“That Catcher book will never be in our library,” Deke said with a regretful side-glance at his purse-lipped paramour. “Schoolboard won’t have it. Mimi knows that.” Another big bite of his Prongburger.
“Times change,” Mimi Corcoran said, pointing first to the napkin dispenser and then to the side of his mouth. “Deke. Sauce.”
17
The following week I made a mistake. I should have known better; making another major wager should have been the last thing on my mind after all that had happened to me. You’ll say I should have been more on my guard.
I did understand the risk, but I was worried about money.
I had come to Texas with something less than sixteen thousand dollars.
Some was the remainder of Al’s stake-money, but most of it was the result of two very large bets, one placed in Derry and one in Tampa.
But staying at the Adolphus for seven weeks or so had eaten up over a thousand; getting settled in a new town would easily cost another four or five hundred.
Food, rent, and utilities aside, I was going to need a lot more clothes—and better ones—if I was going to look respectable in a classroom.
I’d be based in Jodie for two and a half years before I could conclude my business with Lee Harvey Oswald.
Fourteen thousand dollars or so wasn’t going to cut it.
The substitute teaching salary? Fifteen dollars and fifty cents a day. Yeehaw.