Read A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room for Free Online Page B

of the rich black earth of the
forest. Even in the cab it reached him, the fine dust, the flesh of
the earth the wind carried away from the raw-scoured wounds he left
behind.
    “I’m a poor man, an ignorant man. I work, I sleep, I
eat. Such is my life.” He nodded, eyes on the horizon, perhaps
seeing out past the smog to the forest. The forest he loved. The
forest he leveled to buy their food and clothing, to buy her
books.
    Bone weary, he sighed, eyes barely open. “I know
nothing but how to work—only to work. But you, Solange, will be
much more than I. This I know.” Suddenly came a flash of blue-white
and a rattling, rumbling, booming of such power that she hid
herself against him, secure in the smell of his sweat.
    Against the swollen bruise of dark cloud wheeled
specks of dazzling white. Around and around they hurtled under the
heavy ceiling of cloud.
    He raised a black arm. “There, see the gulls, they’re
not afraid.
    You, Solange, are one of those.” So many words had
tired him. He said nothing more. Solange faced the cracking sky,
doing her best to be brave. She loved him that day so hard it
scalded her heart.
    The next day he rose in the dark and caught the bus
to the forest.
    He never came home.
    A two hundred foot mahogany crushed the cab of his
Komatsu, its two steering levers impaling him through the chest. He
died quickly, they said.
    After the funeral, a short service with a priest
reeking of wine in a mud-stained church on the edge of the forest,
Solange slipped off into the jungle, drawn to see the wrecked
machine. Alone, good white shoes ruined in the sucking mud, she
climbed into the mangled steel cage. There, as he lay dying, in the
thick layer of dust on the diamond plate floor, her father had
traced her name.
    • • •
    She looked up to find O’Connel beside her in the
quiet hall, long hair wet from the shower. “You don’t like
thunder?” She looked up, eyes narrowed, on her guard.
    Just how much could he see? “I like it, why?”
    “You looked a little sad for a second, that’s all.
Come on, it’s lunch time.” He led the way down the hall toward the
teacher’s lounge.
    Dreading this, she hung back. “Oh, I didn’t know, I
should have looked at the schedule. I brought my lunch, I’ll eat in
my car.” He turned back, smile mocking her. “Afraid to mix with the
hoi polloi?”
    “No,” she said, voice rising slightly in
exasperation. “I just don’t see any reason to subject them to it.”
Or herself.
    “To what?” She sighed. Could he be that stupid? “To
having me there.”
    “Why? You chew with your mouth open?”
    “You know how they feel about me.” He shrugged. “You
don’t seem like the type to run and hide. Are you?” Their eyes
locked. He was first to look away. “I didn’t think so, come on, it
might be fun.” Fun for whom, she wondered, following reluctantly.
This, she was sure, was a very bad idea.
    “Ms. Gonsalvas,” O’Connel said, “you remember Karl
Calandra, Sid Lott, Myrtle Sparrow, Aurora Helvey.”
    “Solange,” she said awkwardly. “I’m still just
Solange.” Myrtle peered up through thick glasses and smiled,
drawing out an arm’s length of yarn from the bag at her feet.
“Well, well,” she bellowed, “what a nice surprise, we don’t see you
much any more. How’s life in the big city?” Solange sat, leaning
over to hug her. “Oh, Myrtle, I miss you.
    You sure I can’t bribe you to come downtown?” Myrtle
hugged her back, then pushed her away playfully with a big flabby
arm. “Oh, stop it, now,” she said, blushing. “I wouldn’t last a
week around all those bigwigs. It wouldn’t be long and I’d be
telling one of them to put his head down on his desk and shut his
big fat mouth.” Solange cocked her head, smiling. “That might not
be so bad.” How she’d missed this lovely old woman.
    “Hey, everybody,” Myrtle said, wrinkled hand pressed
over Solange’s, “I want you all to know this woman is the best
damned