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Jeremy squatted down to tie his shoe. The laces
were frayed on the end because they were too long for his shoes and were
continually coming untied. While he worked at swinging them around this way
and that so he could get a knot that wouldn't come untied his eye was caught
by a nut on the ground beside him. As soon as he was satisfied the shoe
laces would hold, the boy reached over to pick up the pecan. It was large.
In fact, the whole inside of his hand was almost covered from the size of
it. Of course, Jeremy wasn't very big so that was understandable. This was
often a problem for him, too. It seemed he was continually having to find
ways to divert some bully with his use of mind games to distract their
thinking away from any violence toward him. Size gave him a disadvantage in
these circumstances.
Jeremy walked up the long heavy step toward the
double wide doors. The classroom was already filling up with kids. His coat
he hung on the hooks to the right side of the large entry way hall. Still,
he kept the large nut in his fist. While he slid across the seat of the
rather large, old desk, he was busily putting his books away in the cubby
hole space under the top of it. Once there had been inkwells to the right
and at the top of the desk, but now no one ever used pen and ink. All work
was done with pencils. Even penmanship allowed the use of a sharp lead
pencil. His desk still had the metal holder where the ink bottle should have
been so that it wouldn't fall through to the inside of the desk. Jeremy took
the large pecan and placed it in the small round metal part that was the
bottom of the ink stand. During the morning one after another would walk by
his desk and turn to look down at the pecan made obvious by its position in
the ink well. It was a strange thing to see. That little nut was decidedly
out of its place. Somehow and ink well shouldn't be holding a pecan.
Nevertheless, this was quaintly interesting.
Sometime before lunch he took the pecan up to
his teacher's desk and quietly handed it to her. She knew Jeremy came from a
poor family and probably couldn't even afford to give her something as
unattainable as an extra apple from their own pantry. The attractive, young
woman smiled sweetly to the boy and mouthed a quiet “thank you.”
Every day after that Jeremy gifted his teacher
with the same pecan from the tall tree standing not too, far from the front
door of the building. Finally, the season for pecans was over and the huge,
luscious nuts were becoming more difficult to find. Jeremy searched the
ground after school until he found the biggest nut possible and took it home
with him. As he worked on his homework a piece of sandpaper from his
father's tool shed was on the desk beside his school papers. When he tired
of doing math or English or science, he would turn his attention to the nut
and his sandpaper. Gradually the pecan began to take on a different
appearance. The sanding of it made the wood become delicately as smooth as
any fine piece of furniture. The boy then began to rub the pecan with his
bare fingers. Slowly but surely the wood took on even a greater glow. An old
wooden, toy block, with the initial J was to become the pedestal for the now
elegant and refined little nut. He glued it on with school glue so that it
was permanently attached. For the evening he placed it beside one like it
which was an identical finished token his own grandfather had made for him
before he died.
“There are no more nuts on the tree but I saved
this last one for you,”
Jeremy told his teacher. Again the teacher
smiled to the boy. She placed the tiny piece of artwork directly at the top
of her desk towards the middle so that any, who came before her, would see
it. Hardly any words had been exchanged about the boy's pecans while he was
working to a goal though some did turn their head to one side and wonder
what all was involved. They knew there was a significance to this. No one
but the gentle, young instructor seemed to understand and appreciate. |
