CHAPTER FIVE

"He wasn't here," the voice said.
     It penetrated Set's mind which had not settled sufficiently into logical perceptions since she walked, almost timidly, into the small white room. Now she stood, helpless, among frames. "No, David, he wasn't here last night but he came over this morning to see about that pane of glass. It's been giving me fits since August. Why, it just popped right out with a gust last night." Ivy Gilchrist creased delicate lines on her upper lip when she smiled. "September, would you like a glass of my specialty - cinnamon tea?" Set was still adjusting herself to the idea that here was another habitat in East Worthy which housed the unusual. But this "unusual" was strangely familiar, something that reminded her of Aunt Margory. This, however, was not Margory Dunlap's illuminated symphony of ragged rooms, painted and padded with fabrics and words. This was a cacophony of wooden and plaster frames, leaning three and four deep against walls, books piled in tottering towers where the briefest swing of a skirt might topple them into frames.
      Ivy leaned against a window where the afternoon sun glinted off the white casement. The dried wine leaves of Virginia Creeper framed the trees beyond. Her skin sculpted her bones in transparent white; her dress pleated in neat white starch on the bodice; and the white light in the window made Set look away. It was too bright.
      "David, you should have told me you had such a pretty friend," Ivy said. Set, embarrassed, adjusted her stance, knocking against a gold-leafed rectangle, collapsing the nearest tower.
      "O, no. I'm so sorry," Set said, bending to catch the cascading pile.
      Ivy laughed easily. "David, tell her how much of this clutter you've loosed from its moorings when you were little. I never was a housekeeper, September, and so you'll have to keep a firm footing and vigilant watch when we visit."
      Set stooped to reassemble the frames, but David touched her shoulder and shook his head. He smiled and Set could not turn away from his eyes which crinkled at the corners. His eyes held her and, in turning from the scattered paintings and frames, she backed into another loosely propped assembly of three prints. When they clattered to the floor Set's cheeks changed to pink. Her ears reddened; she could feel them burning but David Owen's cool hand took hers and her palm burned warmer than her ears. Beyond this heat, she heard dimly the soft combined laughter of the other two in the room.
      "Now out of this hall of horrors into Ivy's domestic domain," David said as he pulled Set out of the clutter, into another room of the cottage. There Set had room to turn. She looked around. About her the space was a mosaic of frames, high up the wall, down to a wide-planked floor--rectangles and squares, ovals and triptychs, circles, burled wood, gold flecked and raised broken borders, black shiny frame-shop metal, all hanging together, overlapping, thrusting forward on dubious wires, some askew, slopping un-symmetrically right or left. Set's mother would have been mad with straightening and tilting the frames back to order.
      "You see, Ivy is a scholar, a lady and a scholar," he offered lightly, dropping Set's hand and reaching Ivy's back where he caressed the shoulder blades protruding through her tiny form. "What you see here is a life-time of focus. Look, Set, here is an autograph from T. S. Eliot, and there's one from Yeats. Ivy got in on some good deals in the early days when she began collecting, didn't you, Dear?" His angular face turned toward the little woman who was shifting cups from an oak cupboard to the table.
      "Oh, I see David hasn't told you of my passion," Ivy said when Set offered no sign of recognition for the subject. "I love them all, their words, their names, their very scratchings of ink on these faded pages." She unhooked from the wall near the cupboard a small frame. "I know it's just a name, a scrawl of a mere mortal, but this scrawl came from the same mind, the same hand that wrote "Once out of nature I will never take my form from any natural thing." Her liver-spotted hand touched the glass that covered a framed envelope.
      "Ivy, you have a Yeats signature? How did you . . .?"
      "Ivy has her ways," David offered quickly, assuming a casual air. "What you see before you is a woman of the gown, Professor Ivy Gilchrist, class of forty-eight, East Worthy High, now Professor Emeritus, Highgate College."
      "Don't let him impress you with accolades that have no meaning, Set," Ivy said as she offered the sugar bowl to the young woman. "I have not taught in twenty-nine years and I never intend to again."
      "Ha, you've never stopped teaching, you little love, and I'm the product of that career, secret though it may have been."
      When Ivy turned her face to David, Set thought she had never seen a more fondly-given response. The older woman sat slowly, gently in a chair and covered David's hand with both of hers. Set cleared her throat and took a sip of tea. She had an odd feeling that if she spoke, her words would intrude. But then a splinter of glass, somewhere beyond the window, shattered the quiet.
      "Oh, I almost forget, Ora's still out back trying to come up with some spare glass for that broken pane. Sounds as if he's found some," she laughed, breaking the table scene, "and I know he'll just want to see you before you scoot off East again." She stood and glided, Set thought, to the leaved window. "David, perhaps you could give a hand out there. Ora's knees have been bothering him, something terrible. He's been kneeling in the shed, I know he has, even though I told him there'd be nothing but a mess. I just could never keep my treasures from piling up. and he's suffering for it."
      David rinsed his cup under the faucet. "September, just make yourself at home amid these walls. Really, a person, particularly with your literary knowledge, could spend days here, among the autographs. Ivy, I did want to ask you about another matter. Walk on out with me, will you?"
     He had pulled his glasses out of an inside pocket in his tweed jacket and Set felt herself staring again. Those horn-rimmed glasses on that elegant head made her feel agitated, soft, too warm. She knew she had to countermand these warm patches, these sensations which seemed out of line for a thirty-nine year old teacher who has met a stranger, a stranger who was a mystery, maybe even a dangerous mystery. She looked up, twisted her ashen hair in its French roll to proper tension, and smiled. "I'll be fine." She heard her own voice, really heard it and it rang false, not like her own.
     "More tea in the pot," Ivy called back as David ducked his head to avoid the low door and they disappeared out back.
      Left to her own explorations, her uneasy feeling about this stranger who had placed a warm patch on her palm, and who carried on an impenetrable relationship with the strange little Ivy Gilchrist, Set now turned full circle in the diminutive chair and scanned the interior landscape. Yes, "landscape" was always the word that suited her best, for any world--inside or out.
     She stood and edged herself about the walls, stooping to check a collection about two feet from the floor. She tried to adjust her eyes to each rumpled fragment or faded page and made out what she thought to be "Gertrude Stein," "Leigh Hunt," and what she eventually rendered as "W Faulkner." Her eyes drifted upward to photographs, vaguely 1950's vintage, lined five in a row above a bookcase, and she stretched herself on tiptoes to read an inscription below one of them. Feeling momentarily bold, she reached for the inscribed frame and unhooked it from a crooked position, telling herself she had done so in the act of straightening the angle. "Senior Class, Nineteen-Forty-Eight," was written below. Several water stains beneath the glass marred a group of fifteen or sixteen young persons with smiles, pearl necklaces and funny-collared shirts, who stood before a car; Set had the sensation of sweaters and bobby socks, even though this was pre-fifties. There was no mistake--in the center of the group, wearing a pixie smile, a tall fellow with his arm about her neck, stood Ivy Gilchrist. Set stared at the photo wondering about the history of this spright, this eccentric whom David Owen obviously cared for like a mother.
      Set re-hooked the photograph and stretched again to see its companion pictures. As she reached to detach another frame, her sweater caught on the rough edge of the bookcase. "Damn," she whispered as she pulled away, unraveling a thread in her new find. And it had been a perfectly intact piece in lamb's wool she had found at "Carrie's Closet,"
     She bought most of her clothes at Carrie's these days. And she had chosen this bronze-colored, almost amber, sweater with particular care for the meeting with David Owen. Hoping to cover up the snag, she twisted the yarn carefully on her finger. When she heard the tapping at the window, she patted the soft circle against her side. David and Ivy were returning, and above all, she wanted to be presentable for him. She looked up but neither Ivy nor David appeared. She stood at the window.
      The creeper framed a small wooded lot which opened onto the back entrance to Shequonur. Darby was washing down the walls in one of the tower rooms this morning, she remembered. And then the sound was as quick as a bird's chirp. A laugh, a high-pitched staccato, perched momentarily in the air and, before Set had time to think about its source, a blank, flat mound of flesh with eyebrows rose up before her face, just outside the window. A patch of dark hair, a switch of eyebrows, and a flash of round eyes slid upward taller and taller until it stood face to face with Set, separated from her only by glass. It was as if some grotesque photograph had come to life. The gray eyes did not blink, the black tufts of hair stood straight up, and the mound face stared boldly into Set's.
      A scream Set felt was muffled by her own hand at her mouth, and only a squeal emerged. And as suddenly as it appeared, the flat face disappeared, sunk while Set stared.
      "I know you, yes, in-deedy, I do know you.” At the back door stood the face with a body attached. Before she could walk a step, a small man was standing before her, his face so close that she could see nothing but dull gray eyes pulsing with flecks of red, a round, dirty nose with deep, black pores, and the heaviest eyebrows Set had ever seen. These monstrous features were spun from graying brown fibers that merged over the bulbous nose. "You are the teacher, you are the teacher," the man sang, skipping behind Set. He emerged on her other side where his tufted head came dangerously close to her ear. For Set was ready to swat, swat him like a gnat that had buzzed about her head too long. But Set as quickly snuffed that reaction. She didn't know what she was dealing with. "Kathy told me you were here and she ought to know, yes, she should," the little man piped.
      "I'm sorry. A . . . a . . . I don't think we've met."
      "No, I haven't met the teacher, I haven't met the teacher, but David and Kathy have." He was behind her again, from where he took three hops and pulled a chair up to the sink. Onto the chair he jumped and opened the two cupboard doors simultaneously, his head punching deep into the contents on the shelf. "Now where could that old screwdriver be. Ivy said, she said, 'Just look up there, Aaron, just look above the sink, and there it'll be,' she said. But nope, not there."
      Set moved into a corner of the small room for she saw the man was going to light again. Tossing the chair back under the table, he skipped to the bookcase, where Set had snagged her sweater. Darting and dancing along the shelves, he turned again suddenly on Set. "I saw you looking, looking here, looking there, looking at Ivy, looking at Eli. Looking, looking, looking." Set's face reddened, realizing that this strange creature had been watching her.
      "Well, yes, I've never been in Ivy's house and I thought . . ."
      "Makes no never mind what you see. I see you and you see them but you don't see it all. I see it, but I don't know it. Cause I'm the Bug Man." Here the little man bent his head into his folded arms on the book case and his shoulders heaved. A queer noise rocked under his face. Set was alarmed. She reached out her arm toward the figure and took a step.
      "Ha! Got ya there, didn't I? But you see," he spoke gently now, "they never said I was the Bug Man. Kathy told David and then they never called me that and they never let the rest." He catapulted to the table where he sat with two gnarled, bumpy hands propping his stubbled chin. With bib overalls and blue plaid shirt, he impressed Set as a rustic Rumplestiltskin. When he ground one yellow fingernail under his pocked nose and snorted, nausea rose in the quivering fear that lined her stomach. He giggled. "But ya see, I don't really care if you call me Butterfly Man. Now that's better. That's the ticket. Butterfly Man, but just not . . ." He paused and pronouced each word with ferocity. "Just . . . not . . . Bug . . . Man."
      He sat quiet then and with this silence in the room, Set felt compelled to respond. "I will call you whatever you like. Do you want me to call you by your real name? I certainly would . . ."
      "O, you know, Ora will be needin' that driver for the pane. He said, 'Hurry, Aaron,' but then I saw you peekin' at the pictures." He was up again, close to Set's face. "But after that night, after that night when David pounded him, pounded him hard, they only said the stuff soft."
      "Now, Aaron, we've been waiting for you and you in here bothering the teacher. I'm real sorry, Miss, Miss . . ."
      "Hunt, Mr. King." Ora King stood at the back door.
      Aaron giggled several staccato notes and sprung up to Ora's side, weaving like a small animal on either side of the farmer's short frame. "Don't let Aaron scare you none, Miss Hunt. He doesn't mean any harm, do you, Aaron? Now go on out to Ivy with the screwdriver, son."
      "Didn't find none, but I found her," and he pointed a parchment yellowed nail at Set.
      The old farmer placed a knobby hand on Aaron's shoulder and turned him gently toward the back door. "Well, now, we'll look out in the small shed by the woods. You go tell Ivy and David I'll be there right away." With slumped head, the little Rumplestiltskin shuffled through the door.
      Left alone with Set, Ora King offered only a few words. Set knew it would be brief in any case with Ora. She had heard him at Yoder's Feed. "He's not quite right. That's not to say, he's not smart. Why, you ask him anything about bugs, insects, and no one can beat him. And if you can keep him on track he's a real good help around. He always likes to be here when Dave come home." Ora braced himself with one knobby hand on the door frame. "Ivy'll be here in a few minutes." Set watched his work shoes and pictured underneath a hundred knobs on toes carefully and painfully guiding the arthritic tight little frame above. "Oh, by the way, he's Aaron Leib."
      It was a singularly peculiar experience was all Set could think. But before she could delineate its parts, she heard a soft padding. The twitching eyebrows twitched framed by the door. "Ya see, when they found it that night, then it was a big night and David said that he wasn't gonna let them say it any more because it was the beginning. Kathy said it was the beginning too."
      "Beginning of what, Aaron?" Set questioned cautiously.
      "The beginning of our time," he said with an irritation tacking each word to Set's ears. "And the end, too," he added. "The beginning and the end, that's what he said, and so they never said it any more." The gray-flecked eyebrows, mounted over a pair of pained animal eyes, screwed together. And then he was gone.
      Set sat stunned, a titillating conglomerate of images playing at her mind. Aaron Leib really took the cake, as her mother would say. And yet while Set enjoyed this new caricature, this additional personage for the stage of her East Worthy life, she also felt an uneasiness, a queasy thin line of discomfort deep in a lower level of her mind; almost in her physical self rather than her intellectual self. She couldn't tell if her undefined emotion was a memory of Aaron's Leib's words, "Kathy and David," or the guilt she felt for feeling pleasure at another's pain, an harrassment that had twisted a human being into this one-faceted grotesque. "So David and Kathy are so involved. Or were so involved," she corrected her thoughts, "that even the strangled, limited mind of Aaron Leib could perceive their--their what?" And what about the beginning and end? What kind of apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo is that? She knew the whole gist of Aaron's thought rested on David's protection. Probably against cruel name-calling. The Bug Man. But the Butterfly Man is okay. Aaron Leib must be at least forty, maybe even closer to fifty. When was he the Bug Man? And what night looms so large in his mind?
      "So you met our friend?" David Owen said as he ducked to reenter the cottage. "That must have given you a stir."
      "I must say, you do have a colorful cast of characters in this town," Set turned to watch Owen's elegance fill the room. "And does he revere you. He must be a long-time acquaintance? And you've helped him, or protected him on some momentous occasion?" Set was squeezing into this casual exchange as much question as possible.
      "Poor Aaron. Yes, old Butterfly Man. We graduated together and kids can be cruel. You must know that every day at school. But, Dear, I can speak more to that subject on the road. Ivy wanted me to thank you for coming and please come back again. With or without me," he added. "She needs to direct Ora and his sidekick with the chores. I've got to return you for a good night's sleep. And I have a few things to go over before I face that rambunctious crowd of yours in the morning."
      Set's stomach fluttered at the word "Dear." She turned her face away as she pulled on a scarf, trying to twist it flambouyantly at the back of her neck. "O, yes, I shouldn't have kept you so long."
      Owen laughed. "September, my dear, I am the one who kept you. You have sat in a room left to your own devices for twenty minutes while I attended to other things." Set realized, embarrassed, that she had made this turn-a-round statement out of her own--obviously unmasked--tension to be with David. She had perceived herself as keeping him, because that was her intent with every move, every calculated, soft sway of hand. And now, through her bungled words, she saw that he knew why.
      "He knew, he must know what I'm feeling," she thought, "and he's not going to know it any more. I'm stone, a brick. I don't care how good he is. I can be a mystery, too." Set's face was a smiling mask when she lifted it to him. "Of course. What a silly statement." She heard her own voice in the hollows of her head. She didn't usually listen to it. Now it sounded foreign and unattached. It sounded smooth.
      November's dark afternoon sky drifted with smoky clouds, and a drizzle dampened their heads before Set could slide across the leather seat. Before four o'clock that afternoon, she had never as much as looked through the window of a Porsche. Now, for a second time, she sank into the lush interior of wealth. The smell, the very smell, upset her because it was so easy, only an odor, but so removed from her life. It was the aroma of leather and gleaming metal knobs and wood paneling. It was the gourmet recipe of the unattainable.
      "I thought perhaps we could go another way back. I make a point of traveling my favorite road at least once when I come home. Can you afford ten extra minutes?" He had pulled on a pair of driving gloves and the windshield wipers thudded rhythmically against glass. He didn't even turn to see Set's response and backed the car away from the cabin with a lunge of power. As they pulled away Set could see the north tower of Shequonur rising beyond the woods, which separated the main building from the tiny structure where Ivy lived . A steam coated over the window as their breath condensed. Owen flipped on the defrost and turned the wheel with a jerk at the stop sign. As the fog cleared from the window, Set looked out over the stubbly fields and then turned a calculated strength toward the driver. His damp hair curled over his coat. Set swallowed.
      "Now, you do want me to give a short specific definition in my introduction tomorrow, or not?" She knew the answer for they had discussed this point on the way to Ivy's. But something had to fill the breathing silence, the cloudy landscape, the ragged corn-stubbled fields. He did not answer. Instead he punched a silver button on the mahogany panel and an unearthly variegated sound filled the car. The fields were strands of muted brown, blurred below the dark stands of trees. Late afternoon gray had turned to inanimate darkness and now the woods were a chiaroscura film, connected with a lighter sky. Tattered clouds shredded into wild mist above the skeleton trees and the moon slid up like a wafer of light.
      "It's Verdi," he said.
      "What?" Set asked. Her voice seemed too harsh in the space.
      "It's Verdi's Requiem." His voice was just above a whisper. Set understood now that he meant the music which played at every opening in the car as if it needed to escape out onto the colorless fields and into the racking wind which pummeled metal and glass. A dry corn leaf caught in the wipers. Its frayed ends beat lightly against the pane and then it was gone.
      "I'm sorry," she said. "Your music is beautiful. I'm not familiar with Verdi's works. I mean, I know his name but I couldn't . . ."
      "Be quiet." His metallic whisper punctured her words. "Look," and his gloved hand directed her eyes over the fields outside her window. He braked and directed the car's nose into the grass. Set lay weighted against the door, for the Porsche tilted into a country ditch. She turned in the direction of his hand but only the scattered layers of field, trees, and sky appeared.
     The parchment moon shifted from behind a cloud and then she saw it. At first, only motion, and then a sea of points and perches, a plain of brown heads, an acre of deer pawed their spindle hooves under the delicate light. Their antlers shifted slowly and their round eyes rose together from feeding These distant gray eyes held the car's lights for only an instant, and then a boney spectacle of leg and horn clattered silently into the trees.
      "So many, so many of them out . . ."
      "For God's sake, don't speak," Owen said. But then he turned a wooden head toward Set and took her hand and pulled her up from the door. He looked, not at her, but to the fields and then he touched her face. A soprano ranged high over an aria and David's eyes drifted to Set's face. He kissed her simply; there was a kindness in his motion, a gentle sadness in his hand which propped her back. But there was a fire in Set.
      Set could remember little detail about the way home. It all ran together. Some inane conversation about his arrival at the school, the number of people, including parents, he could expect in the classroom in case he had some handout material he wanted to distribute, the increased population of deer that made their weedy home in the woods of the county, the potholes that pitted the gravel road on which his car bumped. Even something about Aaron Leib. And Ivy, of course. He slowed only once more-- at a sharp corner where some dead branches had fallen from old trees. The car moved at a crawl. Through black branches rose a white obelisk, a church steeple, its shape illuminated by spot lights mounted at the base. "You know, they like me there," he said. "I've made quite a hit, wouldn't you say, September?"
      "You've been magnificent," she said.
      "My dad built that." He gestured at the steeple, now perfectly silhouetted between the trees.
      "He did?" Set responded, shocked, knowing the history Don Morrison and Agnes Bolton had suggested.
      "Yes, Calvary Chapel was his project. It grew up from under his hammer, you might say." He laughed a short laugh.
      "But I thought, I mean I heard that your parents had . . . ."
      "Oh, that my parents were removed from the church. Yes, an unfortunate set of circumstances." His tone was dry; his manner clipped. "But that's all behind us now. Mom's in Florida and it really doesn't affect her much any more. Dad," here he paused for several seconds, "Dad's gone but really they found their own lives. I guess one just rolls with the punches in life."
      Set thought this last statement incongruent. "You mean your Dad's, your Dad died?"
      "Yes, it's been about five years now," he said without inflection. "But I'm glad to be back. Dad would have enjoyed my lectures at the church."
      Set hesitated. "Hasn't Reverend Sowder's death more or less brought your conference to a close?" She looked sideways to see the fine features react.
      "Nathan's death won't change the conference. He'd want me to continue. I've been officially invited to continue my comments into next week. I think the deacons suggested three days. Will you come, Set?"
      "David, why do you hate Sowders?" The kiss had made her bold. "You said you hated him the first night I met you. You know, with Darby."
      "I did say that, didn't I," he said. "Well, September Hunt, I have known Nathan Sowders a long time and I guess I had a chance to know him well. Maybe in a lifetime one has time to love and hate, to know all of someone, at least as much as that person will allow." He looked at Set now as they pulled into the gravel patch beside the caboose. "But I did have some good reasons to, did I say hate, Nate Sowders. But it's all behind us, isn't it?"
      "What reasons, David?"
      "He officiated at the ceremony which removed my parents from the church." Set was astounded when he laughed shortly and she waited for him to continue. But he sat silent.
      "I can't believe you're here, I mean, there at the church lecturing. Sowders did that to your parents. I don't understand; how does that sort of thing happen in a little village church, such a small community?"
      He smiled and turned the car key off. "It's the way of the world, wouldn't you say, Set? Besides, I’ve put it far behind me. And now Nate's gone. I can't say I'm saddened by the event. I'm shocked, but not sad. I had really appreciated his offer to speak for this Bible Conference. We had essentially forgiven one another." He opened his door and walked behind the sleek gray machine. Opening Set's door, he took her hand, helped her from the low seat.
      At the step of the caboose entrance, Set heard Will and Chaucer squawking inside the door. "Won't you come in, David? I'd love to show you what my Aunt Margory created. You'd appreciate it."
      "Another time perhaps. I'm glad you met Ivy. She saved my mind here in East Worthy. I really did enjoy our time, September; you're a good companion." He turned away, but looked back. "I'll see you early in the morning. Room three, probably with Miss Kellogg's shade lurking somewhere about, watching and haranguing, 'Now, David Owen, articulate properly when you read Wordsworth'." He laughed, lifted a hand, and ducked into his car. Set watched through a crack in her blinds as the glass eyes beamed over the caboose and then into the night.

"Miss Hunt, Louden wants to . . ."
     "Mister Louden. Please, Kirt, please try to present yourself with some dignity. Look at the parents we've got here. What will they think?"
      "Sorry, Miss Hunt. Anyways, Mr. Louden wants to know if he can let the study hall out to hear the presentation. I gotta tell him right away, because Mrs. Short has got some extra gym people in there and the place is pretty messed up. She wants to gestapo them real big if you don't let the study hall come down."
      Set's stomach was rolling. Every single desk was filled and several adults sat on the window ledges. Fifteen chairs had been pulled in from the library and a few animated parents sat on these, conversing as if nothing unusual was occurring. Two women with scarved heads, giving the appearance of babushked peasants, nodded and pointed at the bulletin board with its fresh lettering "EPIPHANY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE." Set had directed Susie Baxter to make a yellow background behind the word "Epiphany" so that it would give the effect of a flash of light. The yellow construction paper was hanging loose above the "Y" and Seth Lapp was twisting in his seat, penciling something onto the paper. Some obscenity, Set was sure.
     "Just a minute, Kirt." She grimaced at the bobbing youth by her side. "Aaa, Seth Lapp, will you run an errand for me?" she called over the increasing volume. For several seconds the volume lessened. A pimple-faced boy jerked around and gave a winking nod to a smiling round face and enormous coiffured bangs in the next desk. Then he strutted up the aisle to meet his teacher. This cocky amble was somewhat impeded by close quarters, the desks having been realigned to fit the crowd. But this gave Set a rescued moment to respond to Kirt. "Tell him that we can't take any more--and I mean not a single body--than ten." She scanned the room nervously. "And I don't know how we'll do that." But Kirt had already snaked his slender body by several parents in the door and was gone
      "Seth, what in the world are you doing back there?" Set's tone was angry. How did they always do it? She had assumed for years that when they were on stage, so to speak, that the students would act out the part assigned to them. Inevitably she had been appalled at some abhorrent behavior. On an off-day, with no one around, her students could give brilliant answers, sit quietly in their old desks, and generally be Victorian portraits. Now she had Seth Lapp grinning at her like a hyena as she ground her teeth into a reprimand, and F U C K written on a yellow fringed paper straggling from a board at the back of the room.
      "Would you please go out and get a drink and when you come back, sit in the third row at the front. Right in front of my desk. And if I see you with a writing utensil of any kind in your hand, I will give you a year of detentions and ask your parents in to explain why their son exhibits antisocial and deviant behaviors." Seth looked crestfallen for several seconds but as he loped toward the door, he gave a triumphant sneer toward the back of the room where the enormous bangs were being preened with a plastic pick.
      Set moved toward an innocent-faced, homely girl in a front desk. "Ann, I'm sorry to ask, but would you please move back by Melanie? I have to separate Seth from her. I know you understand. You always do."
      Ann gave an ancient look of acceptance to her three wise companions and then to her teacher. Always a small coterie of obedient, traditional, homework-completing students gathered around her. "Maybe they'll not be brilliant creators and fireballs in the future, but, thank the gods, they always come through," she thought.
      "Miss Hunt, I wondered if we'll be able to squeeze in?" Set turned. Kathy Schmidt's face beamed. She was beautiful. Set had lain awake during the night, rehearsing this moment, telling herself that this small-town housewife was dowdy, faded with middle age, ignorant, a trite, religious prom queen carrying out her duties as wife and mother with a dull strength. She probably had her fantasies on the side; fantasies which kept her fed and accommodated to her silly life. Set had been through the gamut of emotions, finally fading to sleep with guilt and anger on the edge of her mind; guilt because of the jealousy she felt now for this married and good-natured woman, anger because she felt any thing at all for the unreachable David Owen. Now the dowdy housewife radiated a light, her eyes green and sweet, reflecting no malice, no pettiness, nothing but acceptance of Set, this pounding room, the day, her entire bland existence. She was beautiful.
     Set took her hand, although it was not necessary. "I'm so glad you could come. It's a little cramped as you can see," Set said, sweeping her arm over the bobbing heads. "And I assume you're Mr. Schmidt." She directed this toward a man with wavy hair who stood straight and tall next to Kathy.
      "Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Hunt; I thought you had met my husband."
      "Please, call me Set." Set could not at this moment bear the epithet of "Miss Hunt." Teacher, tight, severe teacher with smiling face and happy career. Beige.
      "Well, Reuben, this is Set, or September Hunt. The children have spoken of you so often." Set offered her hand to the man. He did not flinch. "Set, this is my husband Reuben."
      "We're glad to have a fine teacher in this community. I hope you don't mind if we sit in on your education process today. Kathy wanted to hear Dr. Owen this morning and I felt that I should keep in contact with the school. I imagine you could use the support of all the parents in this day and age."
     Behind his glasses Reuben Schmidt was a handsome man, or had been strikingly handsome in a former time. Now a group of women would not give him a second glance. His appearance had not been attended to through the years; he had no concern for maintenance of the body. Probably only the spirit, Set thought. She admitted instantly in some deep level of trailing thought that this was admirable, but her upper mind pushed it away.
     "Of course I can use your support and encouragement. Particularly on a day like this," Set offered with a little laugh, repeating her gesture over the crowd.
     Reuben Schmidt did not laugh, but gave a blank look. "Where shall we sit, Miss Hunt?" He directed his wife's elbow forward.
      "Maybe we should pull up some chairs in the hall?" Kathy said, turning her eyes upward toward Reuben's and then to Set's.
      "No, no, please, we can squeeze a few more here up near the desk," She immediately realized what she had done. Kathy and David, but with Reuben. Perhaps it would be alright and she called for two more chairs. She watched Kathy Schmidt lean lovingly into a group of three women who sat near the black board to the right and then wave over the room to a woman sitting at the back near the window. It was Enid Fout surveying the expanse of parents and students. Set smiled a weak smile, trying to appear in charge.
      "September, are you ready to be relieved?" David Owen stood beside her. The low roaring quieted and Set turned to see Louden smiling administratively beside the Oxford scholar. The principal's chunk of hand made a habitual gesture, somewhere between sycophancy and autocracy, as he prepared to speak. But Owen did not give him time. "Thank you for your direction, Ed. I can take it from here. Set, I'm ready whenever you are." Ed Louden turned, appearing miffed, and leaned against the frame of the door.
      "Yes, David. Well, almost ready. I'll have to find some more chairs. You're a popular man."
     Set's hand was trembling as she opened her desk drawer to jam in the litter of pencils and memos which topped its surface. Everything flared simultaneously in heat. Ivy and Ora appeared at the door with Aaron Lieb grinning behind them; the bell rang and the unrelenting clang of locker doors joined the noise of her room; Darby sauntered in and commented some scathing words about the crowd; several teachers wandered in from their planning periods and hovered near Louden; and David Owen leaned down to take the hand of Reuben Schmidt and then Kathy's.
     Set saw it all in pantomime. She could see David's mouth form their names, but behind the thunder of noise she could not hear his inflection. She feared she would see the word "Kathy" form over and over on David's lips during the lecture, although she knew he was lecturing on epiphany.
      When extra chairs had been located and the hall noise died away, Set stood before her desk. The old room was panting with life. "Thank you all for coming this morning," she began. "Our speaker this morning has had a varied career. As most of you know he has been speaking at one of our local churches, Calvary Chapel, this past week." The crowd murmured in response to the thought of Nathan Sowders. "Before that, our speaker lectured at Manchester College, Oxford University, in England for three years. He is currently teaching at Brent University in Readmore, Pennsylvania." Set saw Jon Phillips signaling from the second row. He jabbed at the air with his finger. Set turned to see the auburn head of Faith McDowell peek into the room. "Please do come in. Jon, could you give her your seat?"
      After this transaction was made, Set continued. "I want to say just a few words about where our Advanced Seniors are, particularly for you parents, who probably wonder what your children actually do here each day." Set smiled, a meager turn of levity, and a few parents nodded pleasantly to one another. "Generally, we approach our British Literature chronologically. Usually I move from the Anglo-Saxons to early Twentieth-Century literature. " When Set saw several faces blanken at this information, she hurried into the next phase. "But when something as important as the concept of epiphany can be explained by an expert, we drop out of this order. And so, today, in the very room where he studied English, he tells me, Dr. David Owen will speak to my Seniors and all of our guests about the literary moment called epiphany."
     She began the light applause and David Owen stepped forward from where he had leaned against the black board.
      "Last night I saw brown deer standing under the moon on a dark field. They moved their heads, up, slowly. I felt an emotion, a deep longing in my chest. Then suddenly they were gone, into the woods. I cannot say what that emotion was. I can only say it gave me a flare of inner light. This to me was epiphany." He paused and looked at the back row, Set thought. "Have any of you ever felt anything like that?"
     The room was entirely still. Then Susie Baxter raised her hand slowly. Several girls at the back among the big earrings and heavy makeup raised their hands. They peeked cautiously at each other around their elbows. Finally, a plump, scarved woman, probably fifty years of age, lifted a fat hand, its knuckles raised and red. "Good, then, you individuals know what I am speaking of. But probably the rest of you have had these moments of elation and didn't know what to call them."
      Several boys tittered near the door. Set's directed look was almost physically palpable in the air between them. They quieted immediately. "But, you see, that moment, that single quick moment of light is something that is paradoxical." Set was afraid now that Owen might lose them and she scanned the room. Every face was alert. "That is, it seems to have two opposing sides--two ideas that cannot be combined and yet are. That moment, that epiphany, seems to go beyond words. You who raised your hands, isn't that the way it is, or was? Do you think you could repeat what the moment was?" The red-knuckled woman shook her smiling face. "Exactly, Mrs. . . . ?"
      "Mrs. Troyer. Mildred," she said.
      "Mildred, that's it. You've hit upon the meaning of the epiphany in literature. Writers who have experienced these moments want to put them in words, but since the experience goes beyond words, the painting of the moment has to be extraordinary. The words of an epiphany have to do more work than words usually do to make the literary moment real for those who will find the moment on the page."
      "But what is its meaning within the Christian framework, Dr. Owen?" Enid Fout's words hung in the air. Heads turned toward the window where she sat, and then again to David Owen.
      "Thank you for that question, Enid." Owen's tone was even, his words smooth. "The literary epiphany, as I define it, is an element of the page and can be found in religious or essentially secular works, even though the nature of the epiphany will always be spiritual."
      "But I thought you came to tell us of the Christian epiphany," Enid Fout said leaning into each word.
      "For this classroom I have come to teach. And what I teach is the epiphany in all of its settings." Brian Saddler yawned and heads began to rock. "But, Mrs. Fout, I certainly can spare some time after class to explain its significance in the Christian world." Owen did not wait for a response although he offered a metal smile generally in Enid's direction. Enid Fout opened her purse and pulled out a small tablet on which she to penciled something.
      David Owen turned toward the board and wrote "Illumination," "Conversion," "Epiphany."
     As he presented the distinctions between these ideas, which were never so clear to Set as they were now, her admiration grew . She knew that he owned a world of mysterious knowledge gleaned in high towers and Oxford days. For that she felt a hungry envy. But what made this knowledge even more enviable and precious was the deep empathy with which he offered his exquisite definitions to these acne-faced teenagers and red-knuckled farm wives . Had he kept his learning secreted or even unapproachable by dressing it in intellectual jargon, Set would not have felt such torment. He would have been flawed. He would have been wonderfully human, his ego making him less of a person. But he leaned into the wooden desks, into the eyes and minds of anxious faces, parents nodding to one another with pleasure as they realized that they too owned the knowledge, that the Oxford towers were theirs or could have been theirs, that knowledge did not lie behind a veil. He leaned into the fresh darting eyes of sixteen-year old boys and girls who captured for an instant the meanings which would never again be obscure because, just as they knew they could, they had learned it here, this day in a wooden room in Ohio.
      "So when you turn a corner on the road and your eye is riveted, held by a bird or a cloud in light, when you feel that you are somehow released from time and that nothing matters but that moment, then, I believe, you are experiencing epiphany," David said. "Yes, Mrs. Schmidt, do you have a question?" Kathy had raised her hand, her face gleaming.
      "Yes, Dr. Owen, are you saying that people other than Christians have epiphany?" She articulated the last word shyly. Reuben Schmidt shifted in his desk.
      "Yes, Mrs. Schmidt, other cultures have evidenced these moments." He adjusted his diction here. "Yes, many writers have written of these moments, and have, in fact, reproduced the moment in their literature. For instance, the poet Wordsworth has talked about what he calls his spots of time. Small events, little memories engraved on his mind that gave him strength throughout his life. These are epiphanic moments and they are not essentially related to doctrine or religious structure in any way."
      "Thank you, Dr. Owen," Kathy said never blinking or turning her head. Her smile softened and even when Faith McDowell spoke, Kathy did not turn her eyes away from Owen.
      "Ms. McDowell?" Owen said.
      "Dr. Owen, I thought perhaps you would like to update the students on your new schedule for lecturing." The spell was broken. Set was jarred out of an analytical maze. She had lost the thread of thought that strung like glass beads in her mind. The light falling on Kathy Schmidt's dark hair spun with birds and clouds, the vocal texture of David and Enid's exchange, deer in a field, a hand on her back, a kiss, the chalk-dust hanging like a film over polyester jackets, big knuckles, a photograph of Lincoln, the multiple faces of surprise as each student, young and old, took inventory of his own new knowledge--the string broken, the beads rolling over oiled boards, into dusty corners of Room Three.
      "Yes, thank you for reminding me. I've been asked to continue the series I prepared for the conference at Calvary Chapel. Since the unfortunate events of this past week, I have reconsidered when it would be appropriate to continue. I, along with a committee from the church, have decided that I will resume my lectures a week from this Monday. I hope that . . ." A harsh bell jangled over his sentence. Set stood quickly to direct the chaos of the next few moments. She raised her hand and her voice.
      "Please wait just a few minutes. Brian, please have a seat. Thank you, Dr. Owen, and would you like to finish.?"
      "Thank you all for your kind attention," David called over the room as the students began to rise with books at their chests.
      "Now, will the study hall people go on out first and then my regular class. Please all go directly to your second period class. If you need a note because you're late, tell your teacher I'll bring a list around. And, Seniors, don't forget the intro on the Victorian Period for Monday."
     But most of the students did not wait for her full decree and were in the hall, a defiant babble covering the transition of bodies and atmosphere. Ivy and Aaron stood together and Faith was saying something to Mildred Troyer. The Schmidts were speaking to a girl at the back who, Set realized, was their daughter. She had been a part of the study hall group. While David gathered his papers, Set juggled a series of student inquiries on page numbers, final essay dates, and the make of Owen's car.
      "Hey, man, that your Porshe in the lot?" Brian Saddler pumped at Dr. Owen.
      "Yeah, dude, that's mine. Do you like it
      "I'd like to take a look inside that machine."
      "Sure . . . a a a . . .?" Owen questioned.
      "Brian. This is Brian Saddler, Dr. Owen," Set intervened.
      "Well, Brian Saddler. If you've got a few minutes on, say, Saturday afternoon, I'll show you the machine." Brian almost smiled, but then turned toward the door where Lori Sowders stood with a citrus face gnawing at chewing gum. Her wet eyes looked tired and old, her fists were jammed into tight jean pockets. "Well, maybe I can make it. You gonna be out there where, where you been staying?"
      "Yes, I'll be at Shequonur. Probably between two and four would be best. Maybe I'll see you then," David said. Brian made a farewell tap at his eye, a teenage salute, and joined Lori at the door.
      "You handled that so well, David. You cannot know how much those few words can mean to a kid like Brian," Set offered enthusiastically, but eased her smile down into lesser rapture. Kathy and Reuben Schmidt were approaching. Owen turned away and placed his hand on Set's shoulder.
      "You know, September, I really enjoyed being here in my old room and speaking about this topic."
      "And we enjoyed having . . ." Set began, but he broke in.
      "And last night, the beauty of that moment. It was a harbinger of today's success, wouldn't you say?" His voice was strong, his manner open. Set felt mildly pleased but confused when she saw Kathy obviously listening and waiting for an opportunity to speak. Owen's hand massaged Set's shoulder. He did not turn to Kathy. Kathy's tweed coat hung now worn and messy, her sweet smile dimmed, and Reuben loomed heavily near her.
      "David?" she said softly.
      "What, you two still here? I assumed you'd be over at the chapel. Isn't there some kind of steering committee being set up for the new pastoral position?" He dropped his hand from Set and slid a few papers into his leather attache. "I know the flock is going to need a shepherd with the absence of Nathan." His words seemed blank, but an emptiness trimmed with acid. "And you, Kathy, you certainly have to make up lists for potlucks or prayer meetings or something."
      Kathy faltered for a moment, pain circulating about the green iris of her eyes, which she lowered. But when she looked up, she smiled, and the pain was gone. "I just wanted to tell you how wonderful this morning was. How much I loved the idea of - of," and she articulated the word shyly as if she did not have the right to use it. "Of epiphany." Her pronunciation was faltering, awkward.
      "Yes, I suppose you did love it - the bright moment, the absense of thought, the connection with God. It probably suited you very well. And how about you, Reuben, did you like it too? Or do you let the little woman handle the bright moment department?" Although the words could have been vaguely friendly in another setting, in this circumstance they were vicious and insulting. But the Schmidts did not react to Owen's tone.
      "Yes, Dr. Owen, Kathy has many bright moments," Reuben said, either mistaking Owen's meaning or not admitting it. "Thank you for your presentation for the school. We'll be anxious for you to continue your lectures at the church next week."
      "Mom, will you be able to pick me up after practice tonight?" A porcelain-faced girl, a lighter version of Kathy, stood between the Schmidts. Her hair was ash brown, not the crow-color of mother's, and her features were finer, more delicate. But they were not more catching, more hypnotizing than her mother's. They don't have something, what is it, Set questioned trying to find the microscopic partical that Kathy Schmidt contained, the abstract microcosm that generated the mysterious center of her beauty. Some distance in the green irises and sweetness. Set looked at the mother again. .
      "David, thank you." Kathy’s tone was almost imploratory.
     David smiled at Kirsten and clipped shut his case. Turning toward Set, he spoke as if no one else was in the room.
      "Would you, September Hunt, enjoy an outing at Dalows, our local che gourmet? What about tomorrow night for supper?"
      Set didn't answer because she was watching the slouched shoulders in the tweed coat. Kathy turned toward the door. Reuben had already gone out, and Kirsten followed, talking simultaneously to two friends and her mother, who did not respond. When the door was clear, Set spoke softly to David. "David, I thought you and Kathy were friends. You seemed so," and here she hesitated. What right did she have to make evaluations of old friendships or relationships? But she said it anyway. ""You seemed so angry, David. I thought you and Kathy had been . . . had been sweethearts." The word sounded archaic and ridiculous.
      "So we were." he said. "What time tomorrow would be convenient for you?" He was less passionate now. In fact, he seemed cold.
      "I guess five-thirty would be good. Alright for you?"
      "Certainly. I'll be there," he said, and pulling on leather gloves, he strode out of Room 3, out of his past, and out of Set's vision.
      She dropped into her chair and held her head between her hands. Her temples thumped the blood through her mind. She did not know how one planning period would be enough time to readjust for teaching Sophomore Regular English. Forty minutes were not sufficient for this.
      "Pssst. Teacher. Did you see them, did you see Kathy and David?" Set jerked her head up. Aaron Lieb's eyebrows twitched at the door. The little man's tie was tucked in between two buttons on his plaid shirt. He wore clean bib overalls. "Nathan's not here any more and so he can't have the letter. David said so. But, shhhhh, don't tell." His head made a bird-like spasm back toward the door.
      "Aaron, please come here." Set stood at her desk but still the man seemed to sense her coming. He backed up. "Please, do you have a few minutes? " She coached him like a child, but he eased backwards a few steps as Set took a cautious step toward him.
      "Nooooo. David said I shouldn't talk about the letter. But Kathy knows and Nathan can't know any more," he giggled. He stepped backward again without looking behind him. "Nate sat over there," he said, pointing toward the interior of the room. "But Ivy said I have to finish up that wood job out at her place. So, thanks, Teach, thanks for . . . Just thanks," he said. He raised his eyebrows and appeared to spring around the corner.
      Set spoke right out-loud. Into the emptied room, into the scattered desks and into the smudged blackboards. "What are these people?"