My American by Stella Gibbons

Author:Stella Gibbons
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448103362
Publisher: Random House

PART TWO

CHAPTER XVI

THE OLD ROAD to Alva was a rutted track bordered by willow trees. On either side of it uncultivated fields rolled away to the mountains. The road was hardly used since the Depression hit Alva some years ago; in the winter it got blocked with snow and in the rainy weather it stood under water, and no-one cared except the few farmers who used it to send their vegetables and milk into Alva, and the pupils of the Jabez Culver Infant School, which provided education for the children in this lonely district. The children knew the old road well. They went bumping down it to school in the family Ford, or loitered home along it on the fall afternoons, picking golden rod and asters.

The air smelled wonderfully sweet on a spring night three years later, and the old road was beautiful in the moonlight.

Miss Ridgeway, of the Jabez Culver Infant School, was very busy about nine o’clock that evening. The curtains had just fallen on the last Tableau of the series given by the School at the End of Term Party, and the parents were still clapping and cheering. In this tableau Sally Best, aged seven, had appeared as Liberty in a white robe, a silver cardboard halo and a gold cardboard torch, bestowing a gold casket labelled Prosperity on Joe Murphy as The American Worker (wearing a boiler-suit and a white shirt), while Marguerite Frost, aged nine, stood on the one side impersonating Culture (pink robe, wreath of bay leaves from the Frost backyard), and Ruth Pittson, aged eight, stood on the other as Progress (blue robe, crown of golden stars) with a fat finger pointing unsteadily at a portable radio. The three little girls and the boy stood quite still, at first, against the background of the Stars and Stripes but as the fathers and mothers burst into murmurs and applause, the younger children began to wobble and bite their lips in their attempts not to laugh, and only The American Worker stood still as a statue. When the curtains swung back for the third time to display the tableau, Sally Best piped:

“Say, Miss Ridgeway, can Joe take Prosperity now? My arms is aching awful!”

—and the curtain came down for the last time amid a shout of delighted laughter from the parents.

“Joe, Sally, get your things off quickly and pack them away and wait for me in the hall, I won’t be long.” Miss Ridgeway dropped her hand for a second on the shoulder of The American Worker as the children moved off the stage. Miss Ridgeway had leanings to the Left which the Depression had not lessened, and Joe’s dress and character had been her contribution to the tableaux planned by her sister. “Then I’ll run you home, both of you.”

A few minutes later the boy and the little girl came out into the hall, where Miss Ridgeway stood with her sister saying good-night to the parents as they slowly streamed out of the schoolhouse, and receiving their congratulations.

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