and until 8:00 p.m. Please save all complaints for Mr. Holloway on Monday.
Other important bits of note:
The first meeting of the Valentine Rose Club will be held tonight, 7:00 p.m., at the Methodist Church Fellowship Hall. Vella Blaine will head the meeting and wants it stressed that all denominations are welcome and there will be no passing of a collection plate.
Jaydee Mayhall has formally declared his candidacy for city council. Thus far he is the first candidate to declare intentions of running for the seat being vacated by long-time member Wesley Fitz-water, who says he is tired of the thankless job. Mayhall invites anyone who would like to talk to him about the town’s needs to stop by to visit with him at his office on Main Street.
Mayor Upchurch has ten Valentine town flags left at city hall, for anyone who wants to fly one outside their home or shop. The flags are free; the only requirement is a proper pole high enough that the flag does not brush the ground.
Two
Looking in the Wrong Direction
“How long has he been missing?” Principal Blankenship demanded of the teacher standing before her.
“Since lunch recess,” Imogene Reeves answered, wringing her hands. “I don’t care if he is retarded and looks like an angel. He knows how to slip away. He is not just wanderin’ off.”
The principal winced at the word retarded spoken out loud. There were so many unacceptable words and phrases these days that she couldn’t keep up, but she was fairly certain the term retarded fell in the unacceptable category. She checked her watch and saw it was going on one o’clock.
She headed at a good clip out of her office, asking as she went, “Has anyone spoken to Mr. Starr…checked the storerooms?”
It could very well be a repeat of that first time, she thought, calming herself. It had been Mr. Starr, the custodian, who had found Willie Lee the first time. That time the boy had been all along playing with a mouse in the janitor’s storeroom. This had been upsetting—a little fright that the mouse might bite and the boy get an infection—but it was better than the second time, when the boy had gotten off the school grounds and all the way down to the veterinarian’s place a half-mile away. That time Principal Blankenship had been forced to call the boy’s mother, because the veterinarian was a friend of the boy’s mother.
Oh, she did not want to have to tell the mother again. Marilee James wrote for the newspaper. This would get everywhere.
Imagining what her father, a principal before her, would have said, would have yelled, Principal Blankenship just about wet her pants.
The storeroom had been searched and the custodian Mr. Starr consulted; involved with changing out hot water heaters, he had not seen Willie Lee since the beginning of the school day. The closets were searched, and the storerooms a second time, and the boys’ bathrooms.
At last the principal resorted to telephoning down to the veterinarian’s office.
“I haven’t seen Willie Lee,” the young receptionist at the veterinarian’s told her. “And Doc Lindsey has been out inoculatin’ cattle since before noon.”
The principal, with a sinking feeling, went along the corridors of her small school, peeking into each classroom, searching faces, hoping, praying with hands clasping and unclasping, for Willie Lee to appear.
In her heart she knew that Willie Lee had escaped the school grounds a second time, but she did not want to think of such a failure on the part of one of her teachers. Or herself. And truly, she didn’t want anything to happen to the child.
She did wish he could go to another school.
At last, with pointy shoulders slumping, she broke down and spoke over the school intercom: “Attention, teachers and students. Anyone who has seen Willie Lee James since lunch recess, please come to the office.”
In Ms. Norwood’s fourth-grade class, Corrine Pendley heard the announcement of her cousin’s name. Face jerking upward, she stared at the speaker above the classroom door. Then she saw all eyes turn to her.
Her face burned. Bending her head over her notebook, she focused her eyes on the lined paper in front of her and concentrated on being invisible.
The teacher had called her name several times before Corrine was jolted into hearing by Christy Grace poking her in the back with a pencil. “She’s callin’ you.”
Corrine looked up at the teacher, who asked if Corrine had seen Willie Lee. Corrine said, “No, ma’am.” She wondered at the question. Maybe the teacher thought she was a little deaf. Or else she thought Corrine would lie.
Why didn’t everybody mind their own business and quit looking at her?
Bending her head over her math problems, she made the numbers carefully, trying to concentrate on them, but thinking about her cousin. Willie Lee was only eight, and little for his age.
He was slow, but this did not mean he didn’t know about some things. One thing he seemed to know was how to get away when he wanted to. Corrine wished she had gone with him.
Her anxiety increased. She felt responsible. She should have been looking out for him. She was older, and he didn’t have any brothers or sisters, just like she didn’t.
All manner of dark fantasies paraded through her mind. She hoped he didn’t get run over. Or fall in a muddy creek and drown. Or get picked up by a stranger.
Her pencil point broke, startling her.
Carefully, she laid the pencil down, got up and walked as quietly as possible, so as not to become too visible, to the teacher’s desk to ask in a hurried whisper to go to the rest room.
In the tiled room that smelled strongly of bleach, she used the toilet and then she washed her hands. She kept thinking about the front doors. When she came out of the rest room, she turned left instead of right and walked down the hall and right out the double doors. She did this without thinking at all, just following an urge inside.
All the way down the front walk, she felt certain a yell was going to hit her in the back. But it didn’t. Then she was running free, running from school and then running from herself, scared to death to have done something that was very wrong and would make everyone mad at her.
She would have to find Willie Lee, she thought. If she found him, no one would be mad at her. The sun felt warm on her head and the breeze cool to her face.
At that very instant, when finding her cousin and being a hero seemed totally possible, she looked down the street and saw her Aunt Marilee’s brilliant white Jeep Cherokee coming.
The Jeep’s chrome shone so brightly, Corrine had to squint. Still, she saw Aunt Marilee behind the wheel. Corrine stopped in her tracks, and her life seemed to drain right out her toes.
Likely she was going to get it now. And she deserved it. She never could seem to do things right.
The vehicle pulled up beside her, and the tinted window slid down. Aunt Marilee said, “Where are you goin’?”
Corrine, who could not read her aunt’s even
