Re: Quicklog: Marvel, Clem & Jake
[There wasn't all that much thinking about college done at the small high school, out there back home. Not any college that didn't pay, for football. There was work, and then there were the real bright folks who dreamed big of places where they could read books as long as the day, but there wasn't a whole lot of reading around art to be done in the little college prep room off the library. Not a whole lot to be going reading about in there, if you didn't want a lot of questioning. Which didn't mean Jake hadn't looked, but same way he'd gone looking for things you didn't buy in stores unless you wanted your grandaddy knocking on your door come dinner time, looking real sober about it. He hadn't figured out there was school for art until real late, when his grandaddy had already talked real careful about the value of real hard work, and about the scribbling in corners that needed to stop.
Money, Jake didn't much think of about, with art. It wasn't pride, so much as it was that art was for other folks, folks who lived places that didn't bleed tradition like it ran red in veins. And he didn't think of money as his so much as Aunt Clem's, and that wasn't pride neither, it was just sense. He, Jake, he hadn't made a lot in the world just yet. Maybe someday, but someday was a long way off.
He smiled at Aunt Clem, because the chapter and verse on his grandmomma weren't the Bible, and there was maybe something in being bad as you ever were but believing you were something more. But his eyebrows narrowed some, and there was a tussle between believing his momma could have hung the moon and wanted some in the man she picked out, and innate stubbornness in defending something that had been precious, when he was small enough to go remembering.]
Gossip ain't the same as folks on the inside.
[Sure, he'd heard plenty around school. Felt real bad about the boy got named, the one who looked slant-ways at him in art class, smiled too often to be coincidence. The one who he'd talked to, between the bookcases way back at the back of the library. Ducked his head, walked on by, joked loud as everyone else when the names started to be tossed all around. But he held out his arm to Clem, in a way he'd seen his daddy do when Graham had been a father instead of disappointment.]
How French is it on the inside? [Jake doubted high school stood up to much.]