In Praise of Violets

by Hunter James

Edna shoved the violets in his hand and told him to hurry up and get on down to the corner or he'd miss his bus. He stood at the corner holding the flowers out in front of him. He rode all the way to school like that, sitting on one of the inside seats staring straight ahead and waiting for someone to say: "OK, buddyrow, where ya think you're goin' with them thar flowers?" By the time he got to school the bouquet had begun to wilt. He went up through the schoolyard holding it out in front of him, the petals drooping on his hand. He went down the hall to the classroom and, as usual, P. C. was waiting for him.

"Ain't I done gone and told you better’n that? Don’t you know no better’n to bring no more flowers up here?"

"Shut up."

He knew P. C. was right, as much as he hated him. The girls were supposed to bring the flowers. That's what he had told the maid. "I'm not gonna take those flowers. I'm just not gonna do it."

"You do lak yo mama said and take these here flowers," Edna said. "She tell you to take them flowers ‘en give 'em to Mrs. Flynt, so you just better go on 'en do it."

He set them on Mrs. Flynt’s desk. Amid the tall vases of tulips, forsythia and yellow jonquils, they looked like a sickly bouquet of old hounds' ears, flopping down idiotically around the rim of the jar. Other days P.C. and his pals had mocked him for his clean starched shirts, his shiny shoes, the way he parted his hair. Now they could ridicule him for the flowers as well.

Class had begun.

"I'll sho git you at recess," P. C. said from across the aisle. "You wait."

Ryerson stared directly ahead at Mrs. Flynt. She seemed immensely tall and pale, a thin washed-out blonde, not old, with her hair done up in a bun on the back of her head. His mother wore her hair like that sometimes.

"You just wait," P. C. said. "We'll git you this time."

Ryerson kept looking at the front of the class. He saw his puny violets almost lost amid the forest of tulips and jonquils. He wondered if Mrs. Flynt knew who’d brought them. He had torn off the name tag as soon as he left home. Would it matter if she knew? Would she take his side this time?

"We'll git you. Don't you worry, dummy. We'll take real good care of you at recess."

Mrs. Flynt hadn't called on him for reading. Now it was time for the writing lesson. He had just written The day is sunny I am seven when P. C. started taunting him again. "Redheaded peckerwood. Redheaded niggerhead."

He felt the eyes on him, not just P. C.'s eyes but all the others as well, his classmates all snickering and laughing at his hair, at his funny starched shirt.

He looked at Mrs. Flynt. She had just started to take up the papers when the bell rang for recess."

"We'll git you now, dummy!"

Ryerson waited for P. C. under a giant white oak not from the schoolhouse door. Except that it wasn't just P. C. now: there were three of them facing him at first and then three more, all barefooted.

Ryerson looked at their bare feet and then at his own feet—the shiny Buster Browns his mother had bought at a special sale just before school began. "How they feel, son?" the shoe salesman said. "Looks like you gotta real nice fit."

Even though they were still brand new his mother had cleaned and polished them before leaving for work that morning. "Yessir," the salesman kept saying. "A real nice pair of shoes, son." Now they felt tight, hot.

"Redheaded niggerhead," the boys chanted. "We'll git you now!"

P. C. was a shade darker than most of the boys in the second grade. Long hard days in the tobacco field. But Ryerson had done plenty of hard work in the tobacco fields himself. So that didn't have anything to do with the way he felt about P. C. It was those bare feet and overalls and a genuinely unpleasant smell that followed him everywhere he went. That's what the difference was. All Ryerson knew was that he had disliked him from the start. Or maybe it was more of a feeling of discomfort than anything else. How had P. C. known of his feelings? Ryerson wasn't sure, but somehow the ratty little guy had sensed the dislike.

"Git him, P. C.!"

Ryerson watched him, his eyes, his thin face, his hard dirty fists. There were more of them now, eight or nine second graders crowding in behind P. C., all with the same threatening look. One wore shoes, a pair of brogans encrusted with field dirt—the others, all barefooted.

"Go on, P. C! Git him!"

P. C. moved in, circling him, glowering, dancing around. One of the others gave him a shove that sent him crashing into Ryerson, who fell against the tree and, recovering, pushed P. C. away. Then more circling, more glowering. P. C. making a fist and thumbing his nose. The others hooted and shouted, staring at him, their bare feet shining.

"Git him, P. C.!"

Then another clang of the bell. And Mrs. Flynt yelling at them from the steps.

"Come, children. Hurry now. Let's get inside. Come, quickly now."

"Come on, P. C. Ain't you gonna git him!"

"Ain't time now. We'll git him at lunchtime, though."

Inside, P. C. was still taunting him under his breath. "Redheaded peckerwood. You jes wait’ll lunchtime. We'll git you then. You jes wait."

Ryerson could not—must not—say anything. Earlier that week when P. C. was taunting him he had turned suddenly and said: "Shut up! I haven't done anything to you. Just shut up!" Then Mrs. Flynt:

"Come to the front, Ryerson."

"Wasn’t me saying anything. It was P. C."

"Come here!"

"But it really wasn't . . . "

"Don't be impudent with me, young man!"

She had hurriedly scribbled something on a scrap of paper and pinned it to his shirt front. "Now, young man. Now."

The sign said: "I TALK IN CLASS! I LIE! I WILL NOT MIND!" All in capital letters and harsh red ink. And the other children all laughing and saying, "Look, Ryerson Goode has to wear signs in school. Look at him. Look." And P. C. laughing loudest of all and telling him, "Take that sign off, boy. You better listen to me now? You take hit off or we'll sho take care of you."

He had worn it all day, everywhere he went, through the lunch-line, at recess, everywhere, and at the end of the day Mrs. Flynt told him: "Now, young man. You take that home and bring it back with your mother's signature on it. Do you hear me? And don't you dare take it off on the school-bus. You wear it just like that until you get home and give it to your mother. Don't worry. I'll know it if you try to pull a stunt like that."

His mother had cried all through supper, saying, "What has happened to my child? Where have I gone wrong?"

The next morning was the first time she had told him to take along a bouquet of flowers.

When he got to school it started all over again. One of the first graders had shouted at him, "Ryerson has to wear signs in school. Where's your sign, Ryerson?" Ryerson had chased him across the playground and got him down on the grass. Then somebody was pulling him off.

It was Mrs. Flynt. "You, young man! Follow me!"

In the principal's office, One-Eye Becker said:

"Turn around."

As he turned Ryerson saw Mrs. Flynt standing in the door, her lips tight. He felt the keen fast blows of the rubber strap. The teacher kept standing there, looking, maybe to keep him from escaping. Becker had only one arm, as well as only one eye, and would be without recourse should his victim decide to make a run for it. "Help! Ho! Help! Stop that man! . . ."

When the blows stopped falling Mrs. Flynt said that he should feel much better now and that in any case it was all up to him whether he wished to continue this unseemly behavior or whether he would learn to conduct himself in a manner befitting a young man brought up in the way she was sure he had been brought up.

"I only pray that we don't have a repetition of what we have all been through this morning."

-*-

Lunchtime. Ryerson moved through the line, P. C. right behind him, and ate alone at a table near the cafeteria exit. He ate fast, a bowl of soup, some crackers. That was all. Then out into the bright sunlight. Still alone. No one had come up and said: "Don't worry. We'll see to it that he doesn't bother you."

He walked past the swings and on out toward the baseball diamond, where some of the fourth graders were playing roller-bat. He knew it was only a matter of time before P. C. would be standing behind him saying, "Redheaded niggerhead. You ready to fight? I done told you we'd git you. You jes c'mon now."

He knew there would be trouble soon enough, but he really wasn't thinking about P. C. now. He was thinking again about the sign, the other children laughing at him, and his mother crying, and the big principal standing there with the white rubber hose. "I TALK IN CLASS! I LIE! I WILL NOT MIND!" And Mrs. Flynt saying, "Now, young man. You come here to me. Do you hear me! 'Now!' I said."

"There he is, P. C.! Git him!"

The shout came from a clump of hedge near the road. He walked slowly, not trying to get away, no use of that now, but not looking back or waiting for them either, just walking along acting as though he hadn't even hear the shout, the warning.

"C'mon, P. C.! Take him!"

Again he faced them, the same group that had ganged up on him at morning recess. Two or three others came up to join them. None came around to his side.

"Git him, P. C.!"

He was thinking about the time he had come home from school with a swollen eye and how his father had put a punching bag in the backyard and started teaching him how to box. "Just remember, son. First thing you do you go for their eyes. That'll keep 'em off balance. Start 'em to thinking some too. Just keep moving and going for their eyes and keep that left out." That's what his father had told him. Go for the face; eyes.

He watched intently as the small knotty P. C. crowded in on him, dancing around, the dirty fists raised high in front of his face.

Ryerson looked at the clumps of bare feet; then again looked down at his own— the shiny shoes, garish, unseemly. He felt the blood draining out of him, a surge in his bowels. P. C. wasn't saying anything now. Just looking. He wore no shirt beneath his overall straps. Ryerson saw the dark skin, the tight hard muscles.

"Remember," his father had said. "Don't start anything, but it they start it . . . "

One of the barefoots had knelt behind him as P. C. closed in, but Ryerson got out of the way in time to avoid the sure backward flip into the dirt. Now there were others, three or four of them, all shoving him viciously toward the center of an imaginary ring. Twice, three times, he caught himself before plunging into P. C. Then someone was shoving P. C., then both of them at once.

Then it was P. C. shoving him. He stood there feeling bloodless and helpless in his starched shirt, his neatly pressed pants, not wanting to look down at his shoes again. He could see P. C.'s hot eyes and feel his own growing blurred, the bright April sun bearing down on him like an interested spectator. Then more shoving and grappling. Then P. C.'s fist smacking into his face. The hot mean eyes again. Then he was hitting too, mostly just swinging wildly, trying to remember everything at once. The face, the eyes. He landed a blow, two blows. And then another — but he was being hit too. Clean and hard. His jaw already beginning to swell. Again he saw the eyes, the bare feet, heard the voices.

"C'mon, P. C.! Git him, P. C.!"

Then someone else yelling, "Stop it! You boys cut out that fighting this minute!"

It wasn't Mrs. Flynt this time, not at first anyway. It was Miss Small. She held them apart, saying, "Who started this? What's it all about?" Then he again looked up and saw Mrs. Flynt coming toward him, her face pale, vicious.

"So it's you again, Ryerson. And you, P. C. Who's responsible for this?"

"He started it," said one of the barefoots, pointing at Ryerson. Then all the others chimed in. "Yeah. He's the one. The redhead started it."

"Is that true, Ryerson?"

"No'm."

"Come with me, young man. You too, P. C."

They followed her into the empty schoolhouse, down the dark oiled hall, into the classroom.

"Get out your paper. Both of you. Write, 'I must not fight on the school-ground.' Three hundred times apiece. You hear me?"

They began to write while Mrs. Flynt stood guard at the door. "I'm really gonna git you fer this," P. C. was saying beneath his breath. "Yeah. We're really gonna git you this time. There's still afternoon recess."

Ryerson wrote steadily until the other started coming in for class. He still wasn't more than half through. His classmates were all sitting talking quietly or reading stories. Every time he looked up Mrs. Flynt would say, "Back to what you were doing, Ryerson."

"Don't worry," P. C. said. "We'll git you at afternoon recess."

-*-

They were waiting for him just outside the schoolhouse door, on the stone steps. "Git him, P. C.!"

P. C. waited on the top step, his hand, like Ryerson's, cramped from writing, the others doing all the talking: "We've got you now, redhead! We're gonna git you now!"

What were they talking about anyway? Actually his hair wasn't all that red. "Strawberry blond," his mother called it. Why had they insisted on mistaking him for just another freckle-faced redhead without any real class about him?

He suddenly felt a hot anger he had not felt before. Maybe that was why he didn't even wait for P. C. to move in on him, or for one of the other barefoots to give him a shove. He moved in on P. C. instead, swinging wildly, clawing at him, and then he saw it: the terror in P. C.'s eyes, the blood running down his clawed face. Then some of the older children were pulling them apart, Ryerson still swinging at him and him holding his face and beginning to cry.

"You, young man!"

Mrs. Flynt came striding rapidly through the crowd, her thin face pale with new menace, his hair knotted tightly at the back of her head. She seized his arm and led him once more into the big empty schoolhouse, the oiled boards squeaking underfoot. He could still hear the shouts from the playground, but what he saw was Mrs. FLynt sitting at her desk writing out another sign:

BEWARE!

I FIGHT!

I SCRATCH!

I BITE!

I CLAW!

"Now, young man. Pin this on. Don't you dare let me see you close your jacket over it either." It hung down his shirt front like a monstrous neon sign. I Fight! I Scratch! IClaw! "Now come with me, young man."

Recess was still in progress when they reached the principal's office. One-Eye Becker said nothing. He saw the sign, rose and came toward him with the rubber hose.

"Stand quite still," One-Eye said. "This will only take a moment."

Ryerson felt the hose come down. Whap! Six more strikes, well laid on, and him just standing there wearing the sign while Mrs. Flynt barred the way, glaring at him from the door. He could hear the whoosh of the hose as it went up and came down.

"Again, young man. Once more if you please."

Once more, then, and it was over. This time the principal was breathing heavily. "There, now, I think that will about do it."

Ryerson waited a moment longer while One-Eye talked about truth and justice and the meaning of life and right conduct and respect for human kind. Mrs. Flynt, tall, lean, vicious, stood glaring at him, arms folded. It was a powerful lecture. For once, she could think of nothing to add as she led him back down the oiled creaky hall.

The last bell of the day clanged as they neared the room; already the children were lining up at the door, some of them saying, "There's Ryerson. Did you get a beating, Ryerson? Why're you wearing that sign?"

They were the ones who rode the early buses. "Now,” said Mrs. Flynt. "All of you children who're waiting for the second load—back to your seats, please. You too, Ryerson."

He was still sitting there wearing the sign when the janitor came in with his big brooms and trash cans. Ryerson watched him clear the wilted flowers off Mrs. Flynt’s desk, the violets with all the others. They hung down floppy and almost in shreds. The janitor held them by their broken necks, talking about how he never see a teacher get so many purty flowers . . .

Ryerson was still wearing the sign when he got on the school-bus. That morning he had sat there holding the droopy violets. Now he was riding home with the stupid sign on his chest, his back still hurting where One-Eye Becker had lashed him with the hose. Where had he gone wrong? He still wasn't quite sure.

As he boarded the bus the others had fallen back in a mania of laughing. "Ryerson has to wear signs at school! Ryerson Goode has to wear signs!" Then, in mocking refrain: "Ryerson Goode ain't no good. Ryerson Goode ain't no count." Then more mockery and laughter as the bus rumbled out of the schoolyard onto the high road. "Don't you bite me, Ryerson Goode! Don't you scratch me now!"

Janice Long, an older girl sitting just opposite him, said: "Ryerson, why don't you take off that ridiculous sign? What can she do to you now? She should never have been allowed to put it on you in the first place."

He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about any of it anymore. Mrs. Flynt had pinned it on him with the warning: "Don't you dare let me hear of you removing that sign, young man!"

So he was afraid she would get onto it somehow, afraid that there would be another trip to the principal's office, with old One-Eye Becker who also had only one arm standing there swinging the hose and Mrs. Flynt guarding the door and Ryerson yelling, "Stop! Please, stop!" And the people all looking in from the hall and Mrs. Flynt saying, "It's nothing. Don't worry. It's merely one of those phonograph records we're using for sound effects in the operetta this year . . . "

"The nerve of that woman," Janice Long said. "I've half a mind to . . . Who started it anyway. "

"I never started anything."

"You bite anybody."

“No, I didn’t. Not one bite. Didn’t even think of no bite.”

He sat there stiffly and awkwardly on the slow-moving school-bus, trying to remember if he actually had bitten anybody. The day came back to him in such waves of confusion he couldn't be sure of anything. The bus rumbled over broken concrete, up hills and across bumpy country roads, and him sitting there all that time with the sign pasted to him,

I SCRATCH!

I BITE!

I . . .

"Take it off," Janice said. "That woman ought to be ashamed of herself."

He couldn't take it off. He knew he couldn't take it off. He was even afraid lest someone else jerk it off him before he had a chance to get home with it. He just sat there with it hanging down his shirt front, feeling the bus droning on across the April landscape, the bright afternoon sun all mixed up with the memory of the fresh morning violets with their droopy necks.

"That P. C. Dunn," Janice said. "He deserved a great deal worse than he got. Go on and take it off, Ryerson, and you go home and tell your mother every detail of what happened to you at school today. That woman has no right to treat you that way."

He thought again of how his mother had left the house early that morning, walking across the damp grass and feeling her way carefully into the rock garden, not wanting to get the dew on her going-to-work clothes, reaching down and plucking the violets and gathering them ever so carefully into a bouquet. Then she had brought them in and stuck them in a jar and admired them for a moment and told Edna, "Don't you dare let that child forget to take those flowers today." And Edna:

"Yes'um." And his mother again:

"Don't you dare forget it now." And him taking the violets aboard the bus and holding them in front of his face and the other children laughing at him and him watching them wilt and hoping that somehow he could get them into the classroom without P. C. finding out. "Oh, don't you dare now," his mother had said. "I don't want to hear of his coming home today having failed to take those violets."

The sign was still hanging on him, shining like a frenzied glare of neon, as he got off at his corner. Behind him, the loud voices still full of mockery: "Ryerson Goode ain't no good. Ryerson Goode ain't no count . . . "

In the last block before he reached the house he quickly and with great furtiveness removed the sign, folded it twice and placed it inside his Blue Back Speller, still shuddering as he thought again of what Mrs. Flynt had told him as he was leaving school: "Now you bring it back tomorrow, young man, and I want to see your mother's signature on it. Do you understand me now!"

It would be another two hours before his mother arrived home from work. Edna had finished the cleaning and put the supper on.

"Did you give that teacher them flowers, boy?"

"Yeah, I reckon I did."

"You go on ‘en git on yo homework now. Yo mama done said fo' you to be sho and git on it."

It was growing dark when his parents got home. Supper was on the table, but he would not go into supper just yet. He sat waiting for his mother to come to his door. She had called twice, but he had only waited. Then, a moment later, she was beside him:

"Supper, Ryerson. Are you coming?"

He explained that he'd been busy with his spelling lesson and would be there in a moment.

She leaned over and gave him a rare hug. "I'm happy for you, Ryerson—to see that you're finally beginning to apply yourself."

Then he showed her his work. Among the words he had spelled was her first name: Eleanor. "Did I get it right?"

She peered closer. "E-L-E-A-N-O-R. Why, yes, Ryerson, and a very nice handwriting too. I'll have to speak with Mrs. Flynt about how much you've improved." Another hug, and then:

"What's the matter with your jaw?"

"It's nothing."

"Come to supper."

Before leaving his worktable he removed the sign from his speller and carefully wrote his mother's name at the bottom in his second-grade handwriting. E-L-E-A-N-O-R. But a very much improved handwriting. Mrs. Flynt would never guess that it wasn't his mother's own signature.

The next day he left with the sign still hidden inside his speller, being very happy that Edna hadn't given him any more flowers to take to school.

Once more the long ride over peaceful country roads, once more the feeling of terror inside him as the bus rumbled onto the graveled drive in front of the school. Once more the tall menacing blonde looking down at him as he entered the room. This time he had seen nothing of P. C.

He placed the sign on Mrs. Flynt’s desk.

"Very well. Take your seat, Ryerson."

He sat looking at what he had written the day before. The day is sunny. I amseven years old. I . . .

He clutched the top of the desk without looking up, wondering where P. C. was, what the other children were thinking, feeling inside him the magic of the spring sun, the memory of the violets. Yesterday morning all seemed to long ago now.

Then, loudly:

"Ryerson Goode!"

"Yes'um?"

"Come to the front, please. Be quick about it, will you?"

He looked at her.

"Just who exactly do you think you are, young man?” she asked him as he came forward. "Haven't you given me another trouble for one week?"

Somehow she had detected the forgery. How was it possible? He was certain he had spelled the name right. E-L-E-A-N-O-R. His very best imitation of grown-up handwriting.

"Young man, you are in for it now. What do you take me for?"

He watched her as she scribbled something on a scrap of paper. I AM A LIAR! A CHEAT! "Lean over here."

She pinned it on his shirt front. Where could he have gone wrong? Eleanor. She handed the first sign back to him. "Now, listen to me, young man. I want you to take both these pieces of paper home and bring them back with your mother's signature on him. Your mother's signature. Do you understand?"

He was thinking of the long walk up the oiled hall and One-Eye Becker standing there with the hose and Ryerson holding the sign carefully in place so the hose wouldn't cut it in two and Mrs. Flynt telling all the passers-by: "Pay no attention to the screams. We're just holding rehearsals for the operetta."

He sat at his desk, one sign in the speller and the other hanging down the front of his stiffly starched shirt, Mrs. Flynt glaring at him from the front of the room and saying,

"No more foolishness, young man. Do you hear me? Don't you dare come back in this class tomorrow unless both those pieces of paper have your mother's signature on them. Do you understand that?"

"Yes'um."

"Do you hear me? I'm not playing with you now."

"Yes'um."

Ryerson Goode ain't no good,

Ryerson Goode ain't no count . . .