WISE COUNSEL
FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK
I didn’t see Edwin or his siblings again that day, though I did have to dodge Ike a few times. I wanted to stalk Edwin out to the parking lot, see what kind of car he drove, all that sort of thing, but I had to turn in the papers my teachers had signed. I walked to the office, where the orange-haired secretary was deep in conversation with one of the oldest men I’d ever seen. He was scrawny, with dirty whitish hair, and I could see the shape of his skull under his face, and the veins and muscles in his neck sticking out, like all his infrastructure was showing. He had on a nice gray suit, though, made only slightly silly-looking by a little red bow tie. The man gave me a smile that was all teeth and no eyes. “Ah, the chief’s daughter. Hello, dear. I’m Superintendent Levitt—well, I was, before I retired. I allowed the county to woo me back, and now I’m acting principal.”
He was obviously some kind of ancient pillar of the community, but there was something funny about him, but also something kind of familiar. Those eyes… they were the eyes of someone who knew a joke nobody else did, and the joke was on you. “Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Enjoying our school so far?”
“Everyone has been very nice,” I said carefully.
“Mmm, well, why wouldn’t they be?” He patted the secretary on the shoulder—was I imagining things, or did she flinch away from his hand a little? Interesting. “Just step on through there—” He pointed down a short hallway “—and chat with our guidance counselor, Mr. Inkfist, for a moment before you leave.”
“Oh, I’d love to, but I should get home, my dad will be—”
“I imagine Harry’s at the three-car pile-up that just happened over on the state road,” Mr. Levitt said blandly. “Or so my police scanner would suggest. You have a few minutes to get some guidance.” Another cold smile, and then he just stared at me, and I knew he’d keep right on staring until I went where he said… or didn’t, but if I didn’t, there would be consequences, and what those consequences might be, I couldn’t entirely predict. Also interesting. Two interesting things in one day… though Edwin was a rather more pleasant sort of interesting than this cold-eyed old man.
More to get away from him than anything else, I went down the hall to the office he’d indicated, a tiny closet of a thing. A middle-aged man with gray hair at his temples was sorting through a pile of folders in a distracted way, so I knocked on the door. He looked up. “Yes? Ah, yes, Miss, ah, Harry’s daughter, um—”
“Bonnie Grayduck.”
He nodded, a pained look on his face. “Grayduck. Not Cusack, that’s right. Your mother’s maiden name.”
I seesawed my hand. “Well. I think it’s only a ‘maiden’ name if she ever gets married, which she hasn’t, yet. And she never wanted Harry—Dad—to adopt me, so Grayduck it is.” His discomfort was delicious. “It’s okay, Mr. Inkfist. Being a bastard isn’t so bad.”
“Ah, well, youthful indiscretions, and, ah… We’ve gotten off. I mean. On the wrong, er, footing. Foot. Feet.”
I slung my bag onto the floor and dropped into the chair across the desk from him. “Does it bother you, me being born out of wedlock? It’s only… that happened a pretty long time ago. And I didn’t have much to do with it.”
“Of course not!” He held up his hands. “No blame accrues to you, that is, not that there’s any blame of any sort, officially speaking of course I don’t have an opinion about it one way or another, which doesn’t mean you should have a child out of wedlock, not that I’m suggesting you’re the sort of girl, that is young woman, who—who—” He sighed and put his head in his hands.
Light dawned. “You’re… Pastor Inkfist. I remember, Harry took me to your church when I used to visit when I was a little girl.”
He looked up and smiled weakly. “Not a man of God anymore, though I hope still a godly man, I try to be, but, oh, well, of course I’m strictly secular, technically speaking, here on school grounds, and ah—”
“How’s the wife?” I said. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but I could still see the pale patch of skin where it had been for who knows how many years.
He chuckled and shook his head. “Did Harry tell you? That’s… Well. Hard for me to counsel my flock about their own marriages and other travails when my own wife… when I wasn’t able to keep my own marital house in order. My wife is fine. Last I heard. Though we don’t speak often. So, things being as they were, or as they are, I put aside my calling, and chose to serve in another way, here, as a guidance counselor, instead of standing in the pulpit.”
Standing in the pulpit with everyone staring at you, I thought, thinking how your hussy of a wife did… whatever it is she did. Or how you did whatever it was you did, though to look at you, I bet it’s all on her.
“So.” He laced his fingers together and rested his hands on top of the desk. “I just wanted to see how you were settling in, on your first day.” His smile was a tiny bit strained, but far more genuine than that old lizard Principal Levitt’s.
“Not bad,” I said nonchalantly. “I’ve met some nice people. Especially the Scullens and the Scales.” I watched him carefully, and was rewarded with a tiny frown.
“I don’t know them well,” he admitted. “They’ve only been in town a few years, but they seem like a good family, or families, or… no, family.”
“They don’t go to your church—your old church—then? I was hoping to see them there.”
He shook his head. “No, they, ah, no.”
“So they’re Catholics.” In Lake Woebegotten, you were Lutheran, or you were Catholic, unless you were that crazy guy Gothic Jim who lived in the woods and worshipped the moon or Satan or whatever. Harry was Lutheran, and so, by extension, was I.
“No, they don’t attend Father Edsel’s church either,” Mr. Inkfist said. “They… I suppose they’re not terribly spiritual. Good people though, very good, especially Dr. Scullen, he does a lot of wonderful things for the community. Still, it’s good you’re making friends already, I’m delighted, I know it must be hard moving to a new town, a new school, leaving everything you knew behind.”
“I look at it as a fresh start,” I said. “The beginning of the rest of my life. A good, sharp separation from the life you used to know can be good for you—shake you out of your old habits, force you to think about the decisions you’ve made and how you got where you are in life, and where you want to go.”
“That’s a very healthy attitude,” he said doubtfully. “Well, ah, did you get your teachers to sign… Oh, good. Everything looks to be in order. If you have any problems, or need any help, about school or anything else, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Sure thing, Reverend,” I said, and rose, walking out of the office, and putting in a little extra sashay as I went. Might as well give the ex-pastor something nice to sin about later in his lonely bedroom.