To Hunt a Stranger
Chapter 14
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When Hobby laid eyes on his new teacher he felt the first churning of desire welling up hot somewhere in his chest. Miss Tartt was a beautiful, slender woman in her mid-thirties, her milky complexion framed by a severe bob of black hair. She introduced herself and he heard himself stammering a response from somewhere remote, floating high above himself and gazing down in horror at his own flushed cheeks. Haddie socked him in the arm and he snapped out of it.
“Pleased to meet you, Hobby,” Miss Tartt said with a knowing smile. “Madame Cleary told me you’re owed an education. Today I’m going to see what we’re working with. Sound like a plan?”
Hobby nodded his head vigorously, agreeable to anything she might say.
“Haddie, I’m going to have you work independently for a little while, okay? At least until I can figure out a way to integrate your lesson plans,” she handed Haddie a weathered workbook. “You’ll find a lovely little lesson on page 143. Covalent bonds. Remember those? When you’ve finished, come see me and we’ll move on to a math lesson.”
Miss Tartt led Hobby to a small table in the study, one of several boring rooms he’d already forgotten about, just as Haddie had said he would when she first showed him around. The place seemed to have infinite doors, after all. He took a seat to the left of his new teacher, trying to focus on the letters in front of him, but he kept getting distracted by the sweet scent of his teacher’s breath.
“That’s good, very good, Hobby.” She was encouraging, though Hobby knew he’d butchered the alphabet. “You’ve got an excellent grasp of your letters for someone who never went to school. Let’s try sounding out some words, shall we?”
This task proved difficult for Hobby but his teacher was gentle and kind. By the end of the reading lesson he could feel blood pumping in his temples and his eyes began to hurt. He rubbed them with the back of his hands. Seeing this, Miss Tartt suggested he take a break and have a snack.
“Why don’t we take a little break? You may not know this, but your brain, like all of the muscles in your body, burns calories when exercised. I can see you’ve been sapped of energy. Go refuel and use the restroom, then meet me back here in half an hour. In the meantime, I’m going to check on Haddie. Okay?”
Hobby crept from the study to the kitchen, still afflicted with the nagging sensation of being a stranger in his home, a sensation he would never truly overcome. Years later, living alone in an apartment of his own, he still found himself tiptoeing past closed doors leading to empty rooms.
Just outside the parlor, a floorboard groaned beneath his toes, even tipped as they were, and he winced. He could hear the Madame cackling beyond the cracked door, a news broadcast blaring about faraway tensions between forces unknown to Hobby. He paused a moment to listen to the radio announcer.
“You really ought to hear these loonies,” the announcer said. “It’s like they need a nuclear war to start before they’ll believe us, before they’ll take the nuclear threat seriously. How many towers need to fall? You bet those, I’m gonna say it, those ‘sand monkeys’ got weapons of mass destruction. You betcha! And don’t let none of those loonies tell you otherwise! Our security depends on it. Ask yourself: would Jesus let a buncha savages carry on making weapons? Weapons with the power to end our Christian way of life?”
The combination of words didn’t make much sense to the boy, but still he felt a mysterious sense of existential dread. Maybe he would be unaffected, he thought, the Christian way of life having so far eluded him.
He crept on down the hall and slunk into the kitchen where Stephan was busy preparing a plate of veggies and hummus. Hearing Hobby’s entrance Stephan whipped around and sneered at him.
“Get out of my kitchen. Yes, right now.”
The boy didn’t waste any time turning around and scurrying away, his fear of confrontation far exceeding his present hunger. He rushed down the hall, abandoning his previous delicate steps, pulled open the bathroom door and locked himself inside. Gazing down at the bathmat, he had to resist an urge to curl up and retreat to the safety of his eyelids. He sat a while on the toilet, but, nothing of note taking place, so he stood and washed his hands absentmindedly. The sound of the faucet had a hypnotic effect and the boy found himself somewhere remote once again, lost in abstract thought. Something like an alarm penetrated the depths of his subconscious and Hobby woke to scalding hands, bright red and raw from a vigorous lather. He turned the faucet off and dried them carefully, the skin feeling like it might rub free.
When Hobby returned to the study he found it empty and took his seat, waiting patiently for Miss Tartt’s return. Eventually he heard the soft click of her heels, louder and louder still, and she entered carrying Stephan’s tray of veggies and hummus.
“Stephan can be difficult to read sometimes,” she spoke softly, setting the tray down in front of the boy, “but he really does mean well, believe it or not. One day you’ll learn that some of us are clouds and others the sky, and what a pretty picture the two combine to create.”
“Okay,” Hobby said, considering her meaning over a bite of carrot, afraid to try the mystery dip he didn’t yet recognize. As he chewed his mind wandered to other things he couldn’t understand and, seeing an opportunity to change the subject, he asked about what he had heard on the radio. “What’s a weapon of mast reduction?”
Miss Tartt politely swallowed her giggle and, without missing a beat, corrected the boy.
“A weapon of mass destruction is one which, if used, could destroy a mass-ive amount of life.” Seeing the boy’s alarm, she quickly changed tactics. “It’s a difficult subject, I know. You’d be wise not to worry about things you can’t control. The other option leads nowhere but tragedy, but this is one thing you shouldn’t have any trouble understanding after these first ten years of your life. Most boys your age believe themselves princes of their own manors, based solely upon their previous contentment. Enough philosophy, though. Let’s start small. We’re going to write down and learn twenty relevant two letter words. Can you think of any?”
Morning bled into afternoon and afternoon passed in much the same way, Miss Tartt setting one child on a task, then attending to the other down the hall. Learning concluded at four pm and by then Hobby was exhausted, but he knew he could neither miss the rest of Oscar’s story nor hope to dissuade Haddie from returning to the treehouse again that night, so he dug deep and somewhere down there found a smile.
Miss Tartt led Hobby down the hall to the quiet alcove where Haddie sat in an armchair. She said goodbye to the two children, leaving each with a detailed lesson plan to be completed independently the next day.
“I’ll see you two on Wednesday, okay? Be good, but don’t be too good.” She winked and squeezed Hobby’s shoulder, disappearing down the hall and out into the waning light.
Haddie gave Hobby an expectant look and, without a word, both children dashed down the hall, their footsteps creating a thunderous ruckus. They raced to the treehouse and, by the time they made it there, Hobby had forgotten about his previous drowsiness. He hurried up the ladder, right on Haddie’s tail. When they pulled themselves in they were both out of breath and giggling uncontrollably.
“Ugh, what’s that smell?” Haddie asked once she caught her breath.
“Gross. It’s even worse than last night,” Hobby replied, pulling his shirt up over his nose.
“You smelled it last night? Hey, what’s that smell?” She turned and asked the empty room. “Oscar?”
Oscar pushed the door open and stepped in from the porch, his eyes red and swollen. He looked like he had been crying.
“This is the only good thing to come out of that awful place,” he said, lifting a smoldering roach between thumb and index. He took one last, long drag before tossing it carelessly out into the twilight at his back. He was laughing harder than he should have. “Sit down and try some, if you want. I’ve got plenty more. Might make y’all understand. Then again, maybe none of it’ll make any sense. Yea, actually, let’s hold off. If you want, maybe y’all can try some tomorrow. It’s better during the day anyway. The anxiety’s always easier when the sun’s out.”