Life Sentence by Kim Paffenroth Page B

you
did.”
    Chuckles followed. I had always wondered how they
decided on the script, because when my dad walked by Mr. Enders, it
was always, “Hey—working hard? Oh, no, hardly working!” Even back
then, I marveled at Mr. Caine’s ability to segue seamlessly from
the highest speculation and analysis down into meaningless banter.
It was another of his charming ways of putting people at ease,
because he did enjoy his quips with Mr. Enders, for what they were.
There was never any condescension or fakery in it.
    We went outside and sat on the ground in the shade
of the school building. Mr. Caine talked to Vera first, asked how
her day had been, what she’d done in her other classes. She was
kind of at an awkward age at that point, because she both did and
didn’t want to be treated as a child, but Mr. Caine was always
flexible with her moods and listened to her carefully. Of course, I
was no less awkward, as I only wanted to be treated as an adult,
but lacked the experience, strength, or discipline always to act
and respond as one. But again, I never felt nervous or anxious
around him.
    All our lunches were meager at this point in the
year, before new food was harvested in the summer. I was chewing on
some jerky that required extensive application of saliva before my
teeth could have any hope of defeating it, even if the odds were
28-to-1. I also had more of Mom’s crumbly bread and some dried
nuts. Mr. Caine had a bunch of apples from last fall that required
extensive surgery with his pocket knife to get out all the bad
spots. He shared the good pieces with me and Vera as he cut them
out. They were mealy and slightly tangy from having fermented some
in the skins, but eating is mostly about the company, I knew even
then, and for that I was grateful.
    When Vera had said enough about her day, Mr. Caine
turned the conversation more towards me. “Ready for your vows,
Zoey?”
    I shrugged. How was anyone ready? It was built up as
this big deal, but I still didn’t know everything expected of me.
“I guess. Dad says I’m really good at all my fighting skills.”
    He kept cutting around in his apple. “I’m sure you
are. Your dad is great at that. He used to teach me all the time,
back before you were even with us. I doubt I would’ve survived
without his help.”
    It was the same as in the classroom. I didn’t feel
like what we were talking about was relevant, and I wanted him to
know. “How am I supposed to feel? I just feel like I’ve been
training, and now there’s this ceremony—I went to someone’s last
year, but I don’t see what it’s supposed to mark or make different
about me.”
    He kept at the apple, nodding as he worked the
knife. A smile curled up his lips as he thought, and I knew I was
in for something. “Funniest thought just occurred to me, Zoey. I
remembered as clear as crystal why I wanted to become a professor
all those years ago when I was working for it and studying all the
time—what it would offer me, teaching older students, so that some
of them could become teachers, too. For almost a decade, I prepared
to answer questions like you just asked. I got all the right words
and categories for it, for dealing with how complex it would be. I
learned several other languages, so I could study what other people
had written on a difficult topic. And now it’s so funny, because I
can’t explain it to someone for whom the answer really
matters.”
    He chuckled—not like with Mr. Enders, though he had
been sincere then, too—but deeper, quieter, up from the place where
we laugh at ourselves and still feel good about it. “So I’ll try my
best, Zoey, but the words are all big and wrong, so bear with me. I
remember at some point, I realized that all real knowledge is
relational.” He looked at me for the first time since he turned
serious over lunch. “It just means that real knowledge—not mere
facts, like ‘Zoey is a girl,’ but deeper, more fundamental
knowledge, like ‘Zoey is now an