Dark Mother Earth by Kristian Novak

Author:Kristian Novak [Novak, Kristian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542016100
Published: 2020-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

11.

The teacher tugged her dark-red sweater nervously, and with a lot of hemming and hawing and clearing her throat, she spoke with Mom about how I was a nice boy, but I’d been confused and disturbed lately. They talked as if I weren’t there. All the other kids had already gone into the classroom, and from the hallway I could hear they were running riot, but this wasn’t why she was so tense.

“Ma’am, I know this is a difficult time for you after . . . after you’ve been left alone with the children . . . I don’t know what I’d do in your place . . . Really, it can’t be easy—”

“A person grows accustomed,” Mom interrupted her. Since the night I tried to throw Dejan into the river, she’d become much calmer. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she also never laughed, even when saying something funny, and she didn’t justify herself to anybody. “You can tell me, I see there’s a problem with Matija.”

“Well, you see, he’s . . . I know he and Dejan Kunčec wandered off a few weeks ago . . .”

“They ran away from home. No point in beating around the bush. Everybody knows it by now.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter—they’re children after all, as I always say. The problem’s this: Matija is not socializing with the other kids anymore. He’s alone most of the time.”

“So what? Other kids keep to themselves. Might just be their stinky feet.”

The teacher was thrown by this.

“Well . . . yesterday he came in all smeared with mud, bloody, in tears. Did you know that?”

“I did. On his way to school, he stopped by his granny’s and slipped and fell into the mud by the pigsty. He was scared of coming home like that, so he went on to school instead. That’s what I know.”

“Something’s going on with your boy. I’ve heard it said in the village that he threw a rock at an elderly gentleman, that he’s been crying and yelling for no reason, that he talks to himself . . . Somebody just this morning said two little kittens were killed and thrown into your neighbor’s garden . . . and then what happened with Dejan . . . Have you talked with him about his . . . dad?”

When I heard this I thought the teacher was going to ask Mom whether she’d confessed to me that they’d lied, that Dad would be back soon, that I hadn’t killed him after all.

“Yep . . . but I figure he . . . he ain’t made peace with that as of yet . . . He told me . . . Matija, why don’t you be off to the classroom?”

“Yes, Matija, time to join the class . . .”

I didn’t hear what else they said. The classroom was a terrible mess, which was a relief because nobody even looked at me.

I told Krunek that Dad and I had flown a plane. I told him Dad had been a helicopter pilot, but in Germany his friends at the airport let him fly a plane.

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