Short Story: Part 1.
I have a little bit of an idea where I would like this to go, but I didn't have enough time this week to finish it in a way that I would like. So this is just the first part.
She was my teacher in school. Maybe that’s strange, maybe it isn’t. I was just sixteen, and she was eighteen. But our love was more real than mama and daddy’s. Kids really ain’t supposed to fancy their teachers in the way I saw her. It was like I couldn’t stay in my seat when she was around, wanted to be near her. Wanted her to help me figure my times tables. And then whenever I just thought of the word “figure” I’d have to step outside cause she made me crazy and the Lord don’t approve of such thinking. That’s before I left the Lord, back then. That was before.
In that old school house by the creek in Minnesota, you had to watch where you stepped cause if ya weren’t careful the boards would fall through and you’d find yourself real embarrassed with one foot half way to hell. Also had to watch where you stepped about Louisa, cause she didn’t much care for me comin’ at her. She’d straighten my plaid collar just like mama and hand me a smile that was a hundred years old. But still, I stayed after school every day and walked her to her little apartment downtown. Our town was one of those typical run-of-the-mill places. Everybody talked about everybody, more especially everyone talked about me. That’s what happens when women get old and their husbands lose interest, they just start talking about everybody else so they don’t forget they are still worth more than some of the “scum” around these places.
Louisa talked real polite, weather, social events around town, school. But one day , one glorious day, she started talking to me like we were friends. And that’s when I knew she was startin’ to fall, and I liked it. She had the most beautiful green eyes that God ever created and a small figure that’s pretty near fit every style of dress I’d ever seen her wear. I never could decide if she was either perfectly built, or if she had her dresses made for her. Either way it was a distraction from my studies, I’ll say. But at sixteen I was becoming far too old to be in school. Daddy needed me on the farm and book learnin’ really never did much for me. I decided I needed a way to see Louisa without goin’ to school and more. So a week or two after she became my friend, I took her home the long way so I could have some time to really talk.
“Louisa, I can’t go to school anymore,” I said, real serious like.
Her heart fell, I know it did. ‘Cause her rosy mouth kinda popped open to a little “O” shape. I imagined matching it to mine. She asked me why, and I told her.
“I’m too old, Louisa.” This time she rolled her eyes a little bit ‘cause I’m really not allowed to call her Louisa.
“No one’s ever too old to stop learning, Jett.”
And that impacted me. I wish I could say it changed me. But really it only made me want to change. I learned as I’ve grown up that to change, you have to do more than just want to.
But back to us—it wasn’t only that I was too old and really just tired of school that I wanted to quit. It was because I was tired of being Louisa’s student. I wanted to be her beau and maybe even her husband one day. How does someone go about sayin’ that to a woman anyway? I was too scared at the time so I just decided to save it for another day. Only I didn’t have too, cause Louisa started talkin’.
To be continued.............
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