Read Online After Sylvia by Alan Cumyn - Free Book Online

him.
    â€œWhat did that class do in Japan?” he asked.
    â€œThey went to temples. They learned Japanese!” Horace said. “I forget the details.”
    The whole family worked on the campaign over the weekend. Andy found important information about Japan, such as the fact that Samurai warriors were able to slice through armored bodies with a single stroke of their swords, and that airplanes flying to Japan might have to crash land in the Pacific Ocean if there was ice on the wings.
    Leonard made a big banner that read
School Doesn’t Have to Be So Boring
in black and red Japanese-style lettering.
    Margaret worried over Owen’s election suit. His jacket and pants that had been fine just a few months earlier had tightened hopelessly. But Andy’s suit would do as long as Owen rolled up the cuffs and wore two sweaters underneath and a strong belt.
    â€œI don’t think I need to wear a tie,” Owen said, frowning in front of the mirror. It was going to be hot in the two sweaters, and he hated the scratchiness of a collar snug around his neck.
    â€œOf course you have to wear a tie,” Horace said. “Little things make the difference. How are you going to raise thousands of dollars to get to Japan if you aren’t even willing to wear a tie?”
    Owen wrote out his speech on foolscap sheets. Then, following Andy’s direction, he transferred it onto Margaret’s recipe cards using the tiniest printing he could manage and eliminating the spaces between words. In the end Owen’s hand ached but he had managed to get every word of the speech onto four little cards. Each card now looked like an inky, meaningless congestion of letters.
    â€œBut I can’t read it!” Owen said in despair.
    â€œYou aren’t supposed to,” Andy said. His eyes looked full of extra years of learning. “All this printing helps you memorize it.”
    Owen practiced his speech in front of the mirror.
    â€œSome people are content to confine their education to little portable classrooms,” he said; “Others have shown us that Japan has classrooms, too, and we could go to school there for a time, and eat rice, and if there was an earthquake we wouldn’t have to read about it in the newspaper because we’d be right there for once.” He tried to look serious and confident, like the man who read the television news.
    At school on Monday morning nobody else was wearing a suit. Michael Baylor had on an argyle sweater with a stiff-collared shirt, but no tie, and Dan Ruck was in an old brown sweatshirt that smelled like it might have been used to towel down horses, and Martha Henbrock was in a gray dress she’d worn many times before. Her shoes, however, were shiny black patent leather with silver buckles.
    Owens dress shoes didn’t fit so he had just slipped on his classroom shoes, a pair of desert boots handed down by Andy months before. Both laces had been snapped and re-tied with tiny knots, such that it now took great skill to tighten the laces without breaking them again.
    Owen sat at his desk and tried to conjure up Sylvia. It took a great deal of concentration now to summon her, to make her eyes blue enough, to keep her face from turning into Miss Glendon’s. He thought of how they had walked together to the river and she had told him how her father had hurt his back playing tiddlywinks. He thought he could hear her voice in his head telling the story again, but realized with a start that it was Miss Glendon’s.
    â€œMartha Henbrock,” she was saying, and the class was applauding, and Martha walked slowly to the front.
    She too had tiny cards that she gripped against her belly like a life preserver.
    â€œMiss Glendon, fellow classmates and candidates, thank you for this opportunity to share my views,” she said, pronouncing each word painfully, as if moving her jaw through too much toffee. “Every year, children die of terrible