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“I got plenty of faith in you,” Peggy Listrom joked, standing up and gathering her notebook and pencils. “But I don’t know about myself yet.”

  “I can’t believe you said that,” Julie teased. “Didn’t I hear you bragging at the beginning of class that you were able to sound out some of the street names on the signs in town this week?”

  When Peggy grinned and picked up the infant who was napping in the chair in front of her, Julie sobered and decided a little reinforcement was needed to keep them going at this early stage. “Before you all go, maybe you should remind yourselves about why you wanted to learn to read? Rosalie, what about you?”

  “That’s easy. I want to go to the city where there’s plenty of jobs and get off welfare, but I can’t get a job because I can’t fill out an application form. Even if I could figure out a way to get by that, I still couldn’t get a decent job unless I could read.”

  Two other women nodded agreement, and Julie looked at Pauline. “Pauline, why do you want to learn to read?”

  She grinned a little sheepishly. “I’d sort of like to show my husband he’s wrong. I’d like to be able to stand up to him just once and prove I’m not stupid. And then . . .” she trailed off self-consciously.

  “And then?” Julie prodded gently.

  “And then,” she finished on a winsome sigh, “I’d like to be able to sit down and help my kids with their homework.”

  Julie looked at Debby Sue Cassidy, a thirty-year-old with straight brown hair, luminous brown eyes, and a quiet demeanor who’d been pulled out of school repeatedly by her itinerant parents before she finally dropped out of school in the fifth grade. She in particular struck Julie as being unusually bright and, from what little she’d said in class, very creative and rather well spoken. She worked as a maid; she had the studious demeanor of a librarian. Hesitantly, she admitted, “If I could do anything after I learn to read, there’s just one thing I’d do.”

  “What’s that?” Julie asked, smiling back at her.

  “Don’t laugh, but I’d like to write a book.”

  “I’m not laughing,” Julie said gently.

  “I think I could do it someday. I mean, I have good ideas for stories, and I know how to tell them out loud, only I can’t write them down. I—I listen to books on tape—you know, for the blind, even though I’m not blind. I feel like I am sometimes, though. I feel like I’m in this dark tunnel, only there’s no way out, except maybe now there is. If I can really learn to read.”

  Those admissions brought an outpouring of other admissions, and Julie began to get a clearer picture of the life these women were relegated to living. Each of them had no self-esteem; they clearly took a lot of bullying from the men they lived with or were married to, and they thought they deserved nothing better. By the time she closed the classroom door behind her, she was ten minutes late for dinner and more resolved than ever to get the money she needed to buy the sort of classroom aids that would help them the fastest.

  12

  TED’S SQUAD CAR WAS PARKED in front of her parents’ house when Julie pulled up, and Carl was walking up the drive, talking to him. Carl’s blue Blazer, which he insisted she take to Amarillo instead of her less reliable car, was parked in the driveway, and Julie pulled in beside it. Both men turned to wait for her, and even after all these years, she still felt a glow of pride and astonishment at how tall and handsome her brothers had grown up to be and how warm and loving they had remained to her. “Hi, Sis!” Ted said, wrapping her in a hug.

  “Hi,” she said, returning it. “How’s the law business?” Ted was a Keaton deputy sheriff, but he’d just earned his law degree and was waiting to get the results of his bar exams.

  “Thriving,” he joked. “I gave Mrs. Herkowitz a citation for jaywalking this afternoon. It made my day.” Despite his attempt at humor, there was a thread of cynicism in his voice that had been there for the past three years, since the failure of his brief marriage to the daughter of Keaton’s richest citizen. The experience had hurt and then hardened him, and the entire family knew it and hated it.

  Carl, on the other hand, had been married for six months and was all smiles and optimism as he gave her a bear hug. “Sara can’t come to dinner tonight, she still isn’t over her cold,” he explained.

  The porch light was on and Mary Mathison appeared in the open doorway beneath its glow, an apron around her waist. Except for some gray strands in her dark hair and the fact that she’d slowed a little since her heart attack, she was still as pretty and vital and warm as ever. “Children,” she called, “hurry up! Dinner’s getting cold.”

  Reverend Mathison was standing behind her, still tall and straight, but he wore glasses all the time now, and his hair was almost completely gray. “Hurry along,” he said, hugging Julie and patting his sons on their shoulders as they shed their jackets.

  The only thing that had changed about Mathison family dinners over the years was that Mary Mathison preferred to use the dining room and treat these meals as special occasions, now that all three of her children were grown and had places of their own. The dinners themselves, however, hadn’t changed; they were still an occasion for laughter and sharing, a time when problems were occasionally mentioned and solutions offered. Conversation passed around the dinner table along with platters of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and fresh vegetables. “How is construction going on the Addelson house?” Julie’s father asked Carl as soon as they’d said grace.

  “Not great. In fact, it’s driving me crazy. The plumber connected the hot water to the cold water taps, the electrician connected the porch light to the switch above the disposal, so when you turn on the disposal, the porch light goes on—”

  Normally, Julie was extremely sympathetic to the trials and tribulations of her brother’s construction business, but at the moment, Carl’s predicament struck her as more humorous than distressing. “Where did he put the switch for the disposal?” she teased.

  “Herman connected that to the oven fan. He was in one of his ‘moods’ again. I honestly think he’s so glad to have work that he deliberately messes it up so that he can make it last longer.”

  “In that case, you’d better make sure he didn’t connect the line for the dryer to something else. I mean, it would be a shame if Mayor Addelson moved in, turned on the dryer, and blew up his built-in microwave ovens.”

  “This is not completely a joking matter, Julie. Mayor Addelson’s attorney insisted on putting a penalty clause in the building contract. If I don’t have his place finished by April, it could cost me $150 a day, unless there’s an act of God that prevents it.”

  Julie struggled to keep her face straight, but remnants of laughter lingered in her eyes at the image of Mayor Addelson flipping the switch on his porch light and having his disposal roar to life instead. Besides being mayor, Edward Addelson owned the bank, the Ford dealership, and the hardware store, as well as much of the land that lay to the west of Keaton. Everyone in Keaton knew about Herman Henkleman; he was an electrician by trade, a bachelor by choice, and an eccentric by genetic heritage. Like his father, Herman lived alone in a tiny shack on the edge of town, worked when he pleased, sang when he drank, and expounded on history with a vocabulary and knowledge that would have done credit to a university professor when he was sober. “I don’t think you have to worry about Mayor Addelson invoking a penalty clause,” Julie said with amusement, “Herman definitely qualifies as an act of God. He’s like hurricanes and earthquakes—unpredictable, uncontrollable. Everyone knows that.”

  Carl laughed then, a deep throaty chuckle. “You’re right,” he said. “If Mayor Addelson takes me to court, a local jury would rule in my favor.”

  The moment of silence that followed was filled with shared, if unspoken, understanding, then Carl sighed and said, “I don’t know what got into him. When Herman’s not in one of his ‘moods,’ he’s the best electrician I’ve ever seen. I wanted to give him a chance to get back on his feet with some money in his pocket, and I figured he’d be ok