Franny pulled my face up close to hers and licked me once on my cheek, once on my forehead, once on my nose, once on my lips. “I can’t taste it anymore,” she said. “I got it all off you.”
We lay together in the ferns; it wasn’t boring, but it took a while for the practice to be over and for the first football players to come down the path. The third one stepped in it—a running back from Boston who was doing a postgraduate year at Dairy, basically to get a little older before he played football in college. He slid a short ways in it, but caught his balance; then he regarded the horror in his cleats.
“Poindexter!” he screamed. Poindexter, a slow runner, was well to the rear of the line of players heading for the showers. “Poindexter!” screamed the running back from Boston. “You turd, Poindexter!”
“What’d I do?” Poindexter asked, out of breath, forever fat—“fat in his genes,” Franny would say, later, when she knew what genes were.
“Did you have to do it on the path, you asshole?” the running back asked Poindexter.
“It wasn’t me!” Poindexter protested.
“Clean my cleats, you shit-for-brains,” the running back said. At a school like Dairy, the linemen, although bigger, were the weaker, fatter, younger boys, often sacrificed for the few good athletes—Coach Bob let the good ones carry the ball.
Several rougher members of Iowa Bob’s backfield surrounded Poindexter on the path.
They don’t have girls here yet, Poindexter,” said the running back from Boston, “so there’s nobody but you to clean the shit off my shoes.”
Poindexter did as he was told; he was, at least, familiar with the job.
Franny and I went home, past the token cows in the falling-down school barns, past Coach Bob’s back door, where the rusty fenders of the 1937 Indian were inverted on the porch—to scrape your shoes on. The motorcycle fenders were the only outdoor remains of Earl.
“When it’s time for us to go to the Dairy School,” I said to Franny, “I hope we’re living somewhere else.”
“I’m not going to clean the shit off anybody’s shoes,” Franny said. “No way.”
Coach Bob, who ate supper with us, bemoaned his terrible football team. “It’s my last year, I swear,” the old man said, but he was always saying this. “Poindexter actually took a dump on the path today—during practice.”
“I saw Franny and John with their clothes off,” Lilly said.
“You did not,” Franny said.
“On the path,” Lilly said.
“Doing what?” Mother said.
“Doing what Grandpa Bob said,” Lilly told everyone.
Frank snorted his disgust; Father banished Franny and me to our rooms. Upstairs Franny whispered to me, “You see? It’s just you and me. Not Lilly. Not Frank.”
“Not Egg,” I added.
“Egg isn’t anybody yet, dummy,” Franny said. “Egg isn’t a human being yet.” Egg was only three.
“Now there’s two of them following us,” Franny said. “Frank and Lilly.”
“Don’t forget De Meo,” I said.
“I can forget him easy,” Franny said. “I’m going to have lots of De Meos when I grow up.”
This thought alarmed me and I was silent.
“Don’t worry,” Franny whispered, but I said nothing and she crept down the hall and into my room; she got into my bed and we left my door open so we could hear them all talking at the dinner table.
“It’s not fit for my children, this school,” Father said. “I know that.”
“Well,” Mother said, “all your talk about it has certainly convinced them of that. They’ll be afraid to go, when the time comes.”
“When the time comes,” Father said, “we’ll send them away to a good school.”
“I don’t care about a good school,” Frank said, and Franny and I could sympathize with him; although we hated the notion of going to Dairy, we were more disturbed at the thought of going “away.”
“‘Away’ where?” Frank asked.
“Who’s going away?” Lilly asked.
“Hush,” Mother said. “No one is going away to school. We couldn’t afford it. If there’s a benefit to being on the faculty at the Dairy School, it’s at least that there’s someplace free to send our children to.”
“Someplace that’s not any good,” Father said.
“Better than average,” Mother said.
“Listen,” Father said. “We’re going to make money.”
This was news to us; Franny and I kept very still.
Frank must have been nervous at the prospect. “May I be excused?” he asked.
“Of course, dear,” Mother said. “How are we going to make money?” Mother asked Father.
“For God’s sake, tell me,” Coach Bob said. “I’m the one who wants to retire.”
“Listen,” Father said. We listened. “This school may be worthless, but it’s going to grow; it’s going to take on girls, remember? And even if it doesn’t grow, it’s not going to fold. It’s been here too long to fold; its instincts are only to survive, and it will. It won’t ever be a good school; it will go through so many phases that at times we won’t recognize the place, but it’s going to keep going—you can count on that.”
“So what?” said Iowa Bob.
“So there’s going to be a school here,” Father said. “A private school is going to go on being here, in this crummy town,” he said, “and the Thompson Female Seminary isn’t going to go on being here, because now the girls in town will go to Dairy.”
“Everybody knows that,” said Mother.
“May I be excused?” Lilly asked.
“Yes, yes,” Father said. “Listen,” he said to Mother and Bob, “don’t you see?” Franny and I didn’t see anything—only Frank, sneaking by in the upstairs hall. “What’s going to become of that old building, the Thompson Female Seminary?” Father asked. And that’s when Mother suggested burning it. Coach Bob suggested it become the county jail.
“It’s big enough,” he said. Someone else had suggested this at Town Meeting.
“Nobody wants a jail here,” Father said. “Not in the middle of town.”