The Family Overhead
by
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It was two in the afternoon and Larry, in the back
of the classroom, was trying to make himself sick by shoving two fingers down
his throat. Miss Slurry at the moment
was reading aloud. For years she'd been
teaching the fifth grade and in time her viewpoint had become darker and more
crabbed as wave after wave of the young washed over her each term. Their quickness made her slow, their
flexibility stiffened her and their gift of joyousness had evoked in her a
yellowleaf of soul. Youth in quantities
can be corroding and Miss Slurry by now was triple-rusted.
All Larry could achieve was a couple of dry retches.
Brendan, meanwhile, was probably waiting for him outside because he could make
himself sick any time he wanted. This was the day they were going to try and
find a job. Larry had to get out of
school before classes ended at 3:00 P.M.
There wasn't any point in looking for work if every other kid was on the
street doing the same thing.
Again Larry regretted his big mouth. Why had he even mentioned the idea in the
first place? Ever since he had, Brendan
had been asking about it. Larry was
finding it difficult to back out of the project. If Brendan believed he was iron and steel then iron and steel he
would have to be, even though Larry knew he was nothing but paper and straw.
Giving up his efforts to turn his insides out, Larry
rose and went slinking down the aisle to stand beside the teacher's desk. He tried to catch her attention by clearing
his throat.
Miss Slurry was reading The Song of Hiawatha aloud
- something she couldn't always keep herself from doing. Whenever the fit took her she began exuding
Longfellow in an elocutionary dew. Once a week, usually towards Thursday, an
inner twitching would seize her.
Instead of reaching for an aspirin, she took out her Longfellow with its
double columns of cramped type. The
sight of the blue volume would sink the class into despair. There could be no escape now from Nokomis
and Pau-Puk-Keewis and all those poetry Indians.
What?
What?" said Miss Slurry, becoming aware of Larry's silent
presence. It was
considered risky to cut into one of her Longfellow
spasms. He tried to reply but could
manage only a nervous swallow.
"Speak up!
Speak up!" The teacher's
scissorblade nose snipped the air as she turned to him. Her mouth was already shaping itself into a
demerit.
"Please, Miss Slurry, can I go home? I think I'm sick to my stomach - "
"Sick?
Sick? You don't look sick. You
don't act sick."
All Larry could do was stare at her in stricken
silence and lower his eyes. This turned
out to be a good move. Miss Slurry was
divided between questioning him on his ailment - for she believed all boys lied
- or continuing to chant out trochaic tetrameters. But she fever was on her and the only cure was the sound of her
own voice. Very soon she'd be
transformed from teacher into teakettle as she simmered and sang out the easy
lines, coming to a poetic boil while the listening kids squirmed with the
embarrassment one feels when watching others make asses of themselves in
public.
Sated finally, the Hiawatha frenzy would die in her
and Miss Slurry would close the book, holding it a moment to her spare
bosom. She would stare unseeingly at the
class until, bit by bit, she came out of her daze.
"If you're sick, go home," she snapped at
Larry. "Don't stand there
rubbering. Go home."
Trying not to look too pleased, Larry kept his face
averted for there were several
snitchers in the class who might report to Miss Slurry any undue delight
on his part. He tiptoed out of the room followed by these
rolling sentences:
What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies?
Who
will care for the Puk-Wudjies?
He
will tread us down like mushrooms,
Drive
us all into the water,
Give
our bodies to be eaten
By the
wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs.
Brendan was waiting outside. "I threw up on my desk a little bit and
they told me to go home. How come
you're so late?"
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
When Con and Margaret Mary Skilly, an elderly couple
who have always longed for children, begin finding abandoned children left and
right, they never question their good luck but simply raise the three
foundlings with love and devotion.
Too soon the three kids are left on their own
again. It's the Depression, with more
feet than shoes, more appetites than dinners, when rumrunners wear diamonds big
as knuckles, even the cops have favorite speakeasies, and the thrills of radio
and the talkies hold the nation spellbound.
Only Birdy's Regina wants the kids. A diffident, self-effacing young woman, she
has always been cowed by her mother, bullied by her absurd husband, and
intimidated by her own infant. But she
turns out to have the heart of a lioness, and is determined to keep the
foundlings free of the State's clutches.
Along the way she finds a strong and completely unexpected ally.
Joseph William Meagher brings to teeming life this
Brooklyn neighborhood and the people in it who struggle for food and rent, love
and fun, and everything that keeps life going.
If characters caring deeply for one another are unfashionable, then this
is an unfashionable novel.
But such an enjoyable one!
About the Author
Joseph William Meagher was born in Brooklyn in
1917. Stricken with polio at the age of
four, he spent much of his childhood in hospitals. There he began an intensive reading of history and ultimately the
great literature which were the seeds of his fascination with the past and his acknowledged
fine craftsmanship as a writer.
"An author," Joseph Meagher has said, "must enchant to
win, never forgetting that dullness is a fifth cousin of death." Critics have praised him as a genuine
storyteller and compared him to a kind of modern Dickens. His previous novels, published here and abroad,
include THROUGH MIDNIGHT STREETS, TIPPY LOCKLIN and THE TENEMENT OF
DREAMS, followed by his recently published memoir, BROKEN YESTERDAYS.