A Simple Thing by Kathleen McCleary

Author:Kathleen McCleary [McCleary, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062106247
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

The next morning Hood and Baker stopped by to get the kids on the way to school. Hood was wearing a green T-shirt that read “I’m Going to Thoreau Up.”

“Lovely,” Susannah said.

Hood grinned at her and winked. “Thoreau was a poet.”

That afternoon the fresh applesauce cake she’d made was warm in her hands on the walk to school. Gold and red leaves from the bigleaf maples carpeted the ground, and a few late apples, pitted with holes by the woodpeckers, still hung in the top branches of the trees. The apples had been so plentiful this year that Susannah had looked up as many recipes as she could find, and made apple butter, apple ketchup, apple pie, apple crisp, and tons of applesauce. Her cake would not be the only apple-related treat at the party today.

Susannah slipped off her shoes and walked to the food table to lay down her cake. All the chairs were pulled into a circle for the event, and desks and tables, now laden with pizza, salads, cupcakes, and other homemade dishes, were pushed against a back wall. The six posters Susannah had made hung across the blackboard at the front of the room.

With fifteen students, their parents, and Jim, there were more people than chairs, so Susannah stood in the back next to Betty. She scanned the room. She knew everyone by now and even had most of the names straight. She saw Evelyne Waters with her parents. Quinn sat next to Declan O’Meara, the youngest of the O’Meara clan of five children. Barefoot stood in a corner, head covered in a blue bandanna, and an unlit pipe clenched between his teeth. Susannah wondered if he used it to smoke anything other than tobacco. An excited buzz spread around the room as Jim stood at the front of the room to welcome everyone.

“Thanks for being here,” he said. “This is my first Pizza and Poetry Day as a Sounder teacher, and I’m excited. I want to acknowledge, too, our other first-timers, the Delaney family—Katie and Quinn—who have been a wonderful addition to our classroom, and their talented mother, Susannah, who created the posters you see up here.” Jim smiled at her. He went on to thank the other parents who had helped out.

“As we all know, there’s no such thing as a bad poem on Pizza and Poetry Day,” Jim said. “We laud all efforts, and we all appreciate the difficulty of writing a good poem.” He introduced Declan, who stood to applause and read his poem quickly, finishing with a bow. Jim continued around the circle. When it was Quinn’s turn, Susannah was thrilled at the way he stood and spoke out, the corners of his blue eyes turned up in a smile, heartened by the laughs of the crowd at the funny bits in his poem. After Quinn came Evelyne, then Katie.

Susannah leaned forward to hear. Katie had pulled her long brown hair out of its usual ponytail, and she shook her head a little, so it covered the sides of her face.

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