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Clyde Logan had never seen so dainty a woman put away so many hot wings in one sitting.
He’d told Ophelia Dane, his young niece’s teacher, about the dinner special at Duck Tape. Didn’t expect her to come, but was pleased when she passed through the screen door. He directed her to a prime seat at the bar. Made sure the kitchen picked out six of the meatier wings for the woman’s first plate. Phee, as she asked him to call her, got her money’s worth with the all-you-can-eat special after her third helping.
He smiled, watching Phee lick the flame orange sauce from her lips. “Get you another beer, Phee?”
“I’ll switch to sweet tea, if you have it. School night,” she said, and slid a bowl of picked-clean bones toward him. “Thank you for letting me know about the special. Always on the lookout for deals on my salary.”
Clyde used his mechanical prosthesis to clutch the bowl and dump the bones. “Thank you for giving Sadie her extra credit.” Sadie and her parents–Clyde’s former sister-in-law and her current husband–had left an hour ago to get the kids to bed. It tickled the young girl to see her favorite teacher outside of school.
“Clyde, that was all you and Sadie.” Phee smiled as she shook her head. “You held those kids in the palm of your hand with your story…” Her expression fell and her gaze landed on his false hand. She hissed in a breath, sounding contrite. “Not the best turn of phrase, huh?”
He smiled and assured Phee he’d heard much worse with regards to his disability. “Let me get you that tea.” Clyde was happy to serve her, but an influx of customers kept him busy for a while. When he was able to see to her needs again, he found Phee engrossed in the paperback she’d brought along with her.
Phee caught him looking and inserted a bookmark. “Have you read it?” she asked, showing him the cover of The Wind in the Willows .
“Been a while, but I have.” A few years, in fact. Clyde recalled reading it to Sadie on a night he and his sister Mellie babysat. “Of all the books out there where a toad is the main character, I’d put it in the top three.”
“The other two being…?”
Clyde figured Phee was fishing; she had to know what he meant. “The first two Frog and Toad books, of course.”
“You respect the classics. I like that.” Phee handed Clyde her card to charge. “This is my homework, believe it or not,” she said. “We are almost finished with Charlotte’s Web and the kids seem to like stories where animals are the main characters. I have to familiarize myself with each book before I read it to class.”
Made sense. Clyde spent much of his spare time reading, and at one point burned through a number of banned books on the various lists. The denizens of Toad Hall seemed harmless to him.
He set Phee’s ticket and card by her tea with a pen. “So long as you get the voices right you’ll be fine.” He could listen to her read a phone book, if they were still being published.
Phee scratched off her signature and pinned Clyde with a serious stare, biting her lower lip. “Clyde, maybe you’d like to come back to school as a guest reader?” she asked. “We have days where parents come in and help. I’m sure we can bend the rules for uncles, too?”
“Me?”
She nodded. “You have a good voice for it, and you don’t talk fast. The kids will follow you fine, and students whose parents help out for a day get extra credit. In this case, it would be Sadie.”
Twice in the same month. Sadie would flip for that, Clyde thought. Not only that, it gave him the opportunity to sit in the same room with Phee again. He only worried about losing himself in Phee to the point of distraction, diverting his attention from a child in need.
“I’d like that,” he said anyway. It was the truth.
Phee gathered her things and said goodnight. “I’ll send Sadie home with the schedule. Thanks so much, Clyde.”
As Clyde wiped down the section of bar she vacated, he took note of her check. If Phee had noticed Clyde gave her the employee discount on tonight’s dinner and “forgot” to charge her for the beer, she said nothing about it.
~*~
Leaving the main stream, they now passed into what seemed at first sight like a little landlocked lake. Green turf sloped down to either edge, brown snaky tree-roots gleamed below the surface of the quiet water, while ahead of them the silvery shoulder and foamy tumble of a weir, arm-in-arm with a restless dripping millwheel, that held up in its turn a grey-gabled mill-house, filled the air with a soothing murmur of sound, dull and smothery, yet with little clear voices speaking up cheerfully out of it at intervals. It was so very beautiful that the Mole could only hold up both forepaws and gasp: “O my! O my! O my!”
Phee watched from her desk as Clyde, perched on a small stool and surrounded by Sadie and her classmates, finished the section from the book’s first chapter. From the very first words, Clyde held each student rapt. He changed the pitch and accent of his voice for every character’s dialogue, inspiring waves of giggles at the proper intervals. Overall, today’s storytime succeeded beyond expectations. Phee was sorry to see it end.
Tomorrow, another student’s parent took over. Good luck to them. Clyde set a high standard for storytime narration.
“Thank you, Mr. Logan, for joining us today,” she said at the end of the period, the last of the school day. She then addressed the class, reminding them of the night’s homework and to leave school safely. “See you all tomorrow.”
Sadie came up and hugged her uncle. “Are you reading again tomorrow?”
“No, baby girl.” Clyde placated Sadie with a large hand brushing back her hair. “The grown-ups gotta take turns.”
“Maybe after a few weeks, Sadie,” Phee said, and the girl acted okay with that semi-promise. When the classroom emptied of students, Phee caught Clyde’s attention. “Of course you’re welcome to read again at the next available spot. It won’t be for a while, though.”
“I’d like that. You think you’ll still be reading Wind in the Willows by then?”
“Hard to say. Some parents read faster than others.” Phee walked back to her desk. “By the time you come back we might be on to a different book.”
Clyde followed but kept a respectable distance. Dang it. He hovered close to Phee’s desk, gazing down at a stack of books.
“Any ideas?” he asked. “I read quite a lot, if you want a recommendation.”
A sense of embarrassment washed over Phee as Clyde picked up the top book from the pile with his good hand. She’d mixed some of her personal reads in there, and her taste in literature ran a touch racier than the Boone County School Board permitted.
“It should be age appropriate,” Phee said. “Nothing with violence or explicit language. I prefer books with an upbeat ending, even though we can debate Charlotte’s Web .”
“I was about to say…” Clyde grinned at her, and set aside the first book. He turned serious then. Up next, a collection of poems by John Donne.
“Don’t think you ought to be readin’ this to grade schoolers,” he said.
“That,” Phee reached for the book but Clyde playfully held it away, “is for a literature class I’m taking. I still have to go to school to keep up my certificate.”
“I see.” Clyde skimmed the pages. His brows rose higher with every turn, indicating to Phee he’d reached the more sensual offerings. She figured Clyde might make another teasing face and move on, but her heart jump started when he began to read:
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man.
Silence reigned for about a minute. Phee counted the ticks of the second hand on the wall clock as they stared at each other. Dang it, but Clyde had a gift for reading aloud.
He softly shut the book and handed it back. “Yeah, I reckon you ought to read that aloud in private,” he said.
“I think so.” Her laugh came out all nervous and giggly. “If I bring this to Duck Tape for wing night I’ll be sure to read it to myself.”
Clyde nodded. “Of course, if you want to read it aloud after dinner I wouldn’t mind listening,” he said. “Either that, or my next night off.”
“When is that?” Phee asked, holding the book to her chest.
“Tonight.” Clyde winked.