Horse sense

Eddy wanted to kick himself underneath the desk when he looked from the side of his eye and saw that Barbara girl still standing by the doorway. She was looking dead at him. She was watching his broad brown hands, watching his stern booming mouth, watching him circle and scrawl around everything that the Wilkes boy had fucked over on his essay. Eddy should have called out the names.

If Eddy had called out the names, he could still talk to the list of kids who were failing or cheating or coming to class all blitzed to shit, could help them untangle the christmaslights of ink around their eraser skidmarks, could talk to them. If he had made out a list of them. Then when he didn't call out Barbara's name, and she hung around at the door anyway instead of catching the bus, then the other kids would give her Looks and then maybe she would be tugged out the door by her own little strings.

Eddy hadn't, though. Next time he would.

"Where you get this essay done?" Eddy aimed the question at the Wilkes boy's paper, and only then did he look at him. He didn't talk and look at the same time. Eddy had a strong voice, and if he talked and looked at the kids at the same time it seemed to scare them. He never really looked them in the eye, either, "In the library? In your room?" for the same reason.

The Wilkes boy let his hands wiggle in his pockets. He was trying not to lick his lips. He was sweating, under his coat. "Kitchen table." He smelled like a restaurant booth.

Eddy could smell him, and he smelled like a restaurant booth. An infant mash of food and musketeer tang of silverware and nicotine and fake red leather. The Wilkes boy probably worked, probably bussing tables on top of school. Had lied and said he was eighteen, had thirty hours a week on top of school. Had probably pulled this essay out of his ass on his smoke break.

Eddy glanced up at the Barbara girl by the door. She could hear every word they were saying.

"Kitchen table?"

"Yesser."

"At home?"

"Yesser."

Eddy looked at him again. He didn't say anything. After a moment, the Wilkes boy rattled his throat and licked his lips, and only then did Eddy look away.

"Try it again. One more time. Look here - at the notes I got written down for you." Eddy found a free margin, and used his inkpen to matador a loopy red DON'T BULLSHIT ME. Then showed it to the Wilkes boy. "Alright?"

He licked his lips again. Then again. He was sweating, under his coat. "Ye-- uh, yesser."

"Freetime on the weekends?"

"A little, yesser."

"Try to get it to me on Monday."

The Wilkes boy nodded a few times at the floor. He had a sadly handsome face. The broad jaw and eyebrows of a redboned black boy. Redboned was what they called it. Or maybe it was just regular handsomeness, and Eddy was making it up to be sad all in his head, because of the circumstance and all.

Maybe, even, Eddy was just making the Wilkes boy up to be handsome, just so that Eddy could make it up to be sad. Eddy didn't like spinning his wheels over things like that though, so he let the thought slip out the door along with the boy. He was gone with a dry chuckleshuffle of his clearance sale coat. The restaurant smell, that took a little longer.

Eddy almost started talking to the Barbara girl, almost asked her what it was she wanted, but he didn't. Eddy ignored her. He knew what she wanted, anyway, just like he knew how she would lie about it. He began packing up his folders and his lunchbox into his tortoisebrown suitcase and ignored her.

"Mr. Burcher?"

He didn't say and kept packing his things, but he looked up. She was still over by the door. She was dressed up very fine, like a diningroom table, and she was holding herself like a torch, and she was looking at Eddy like he was the last cookie in the box. She wanted to come up on him hard and Eddy knew he was in trouble.

He wouldn't have, if last week, Barbara hadn't asked him over for dinner. To meet her parents. Her mama made a mean everything she told him, showing off her teeth. They were neat and her gums were berrypink. Everything. What did he like the most? Her parents would love to meet him.

It sounded like an alright idea, until she started rubbing his thigh with hers.

And though Eddy was a rational human being, with a conscience, and a will, and self-control, Eddy was also a human being, and goddamn if the girl didn't give him a taxing of nature. She wasn't quite pretty but they never needed to be. She was young and vibrant, and showed her teeth, and she was firm in the right places and soft in others, and she smelled like something that Eddy couldn't remember but knew was good.

"I didn't really understand the assignment today, Mr. Burcher." He felt her seizing him up: tracing the curtness of the ass in his slacks, the liquid anger of the posture of his spine, the pulleys in his neck. "You thought about dinner, any? You think you could help me out with it over dinner?"

Quickly she added "With my parents. They'd love to meet you." Her teeth were neat and her gums were berrypink.

Smiles weren't smiles for Eddy, though. They didn't put him at ease with people. Smiles were just bared teeth, smiles were a display of weaponry, and that was because of his grandaddy's horses. They smiled, too. They smiled when their manes and tails were tugged too hard.

Eddy remembered watching them, the redandwhite pintos and piebalds on his grandpa's little sharecropper slice of land, in Georgia maybe. He remembered ducking under the gate, remembered his nose stung by the horse smell and hay smell and also dirt. He would sit back and wait for the horses to see him. And they would turn their big fire engine bodies broadside, would flip their ears and watch, would twitch their skins while Eddy came up on them to play a devil with their manes and tails.

One of the big mares though, a swaggery, jittery, kidneycolored nag, she turned to face him head-on. He was maybe eight. And even though Eddy had never seen a horse turn head-on like that, had only seen them turn broadside or else saunter away and leave him be, something small and quiet yanked Eddy's wires to make him stop dead and back away. Once he was far enough the mare went back to grazing.

His grandaddy and a friend had been watching by the gate. They were gossiping and sucking on sugarcubes because they had used up the cigarettes. When Eddy stopped dead and backed away, the friend laughed, loud, one time, and slapped his thigh.

"You see that?" The friend pointed a finger that wouldn't quite straighten. "That, right there? That boy got a good head."

"Good common sense." Eddy's grandaddy never smiled much when he talked. He waved Eddy over and scrubbed his head. "Where they teach you horse sense in the city, huh?"

Eddy didn't know what to say to that. He asked for a sugarcube.

"Little man with horse sense deserves a sugarcube, I think." The friend grinned and offered one. Eddy ate it slowly. "You get a boy with good horse sense, he do alright."

Then the men watched the mare for a little while. Eddy wasn't sure what they meant, or what the mare had done, but the sugarcube tasted nice.

He tried to make like that mare, just then. In the classroom. He turned his body full-on at the girl and looked at her hard. His jaw swelled. His spine unfurled and his shoulders appeared, and his nostrils flared and his chin rose up to show the Roman column of his throat, and Eddy tried very very hard to make himself into a bigger thing.

She was coming up on him and maybe if he said something she would have stopped. He didn't, though. Next time he would.

"If you could explain," she told the buttons on his shirt. Her hand was cooking him, was burning holes in his slacks. "I just didn't really understand, is all." She smelled like something that Eddy couldn't remember.