"I never thought you'd stolen the dress, Esme. I know that you do not steal." His eyes upon her gave her more will than she had thought available.
"No," she stated without boast. "I do not steal."
She raised her chin as if to gaze across the horizon. Cleav found himself admiring her profile, not for its beauty or femininity, but for its strength. He had wounded her, but she would not show him her pain.
"I know how you feel, Esme."
The words brought her focus back to his face. There were unspoken words of derisive disbelief evident in her expression.
"It's true," he insisted calmly. "I've been there myself." He reached for one of the phlox. The stem was not as easy to slit as the clover, but he managed to do it and added the colorful blossom to the strand, where it stood out among the more ordinary clovers.
"You know that I went off to Knoxville to school?" he asked, looking off in the distance.
"Yes."
"I was so excited about that," he recalled, his voice calm and matter of fact. "I had been wanting schooling, oh, it seems like all my life. I'd wished for it, but I never dared to hope." He wove a second phlox into the clover chain, making a companion for the first outsider.
"My father drove me to the train station in Russellville. I could hardly sit still the whole way, talking and squirming like I was six instead of almost fourteen."
Esme smiled, trying to imagine the calm, confident man before her as a fourteen-year-old with jitters in his legs.
"Mama had made me a new suit from the finest brown wool we had in the store," he told her. "It fit me perfectly the day I left and had lots of extra fabric at the seams and in the hem to accommodate a young man with a good deal of growing yet to do."
Cleav wove a plain white clover into the chain with no hesitation in his story. "The train ride was pure pleasure," he said. "I told everyone in the coach about my new suit and my new school." His grin was wry as he continued. "The porter must have thought me the greenest boy ever to come down from the mountain. But he, and everyone else, listened to my wild enthusiasm, offered words of advice on city life, and wished me well."
Esme tried to imagine herself on a noisy train heading for the city and talking to strangers. It seemed a wonderful adventure.
"Knoxville was bigger, busier, noisier, more exciting than all my wildest fantasies. I was probably close to death a half dozen times as I made my way across town to the school."
Carefully weaving another clover into the pattern, he shook his head derisively.
"I was bug-eyed at the scenes around me. I had not one thought to caution in the busy streets. That hectic flurry of rigs and wagons was intent on running me down. More than one angry driver cursed my ancestry."
Esme giggled, earning her a playful rise of his eyebrows.
"The school was just as I imagined it," he said. "I remember stopping in front to read the name carved into the stone: Halperth Academy for Gentlemen of Good Family. I knew that I was going to learn so much there."
Cleav's smile brightened with remembrance but just as quickly faded to a sober line.
"And I did, but not at all what I expected."
Cleav sat up. Cross-legged, he faced Esme. Her eyes were wide with wonder and curiosity. Never had he confessed his secrets to a soul. Instinctively he knew that Esme could be trusted with the most mortifying of truths. "What I learned at the Halperth Academy," he began, his voice now slightly roughened with anger, "is that a storekeeper's son from the hills is not considered a gentleman of good family."
Cleav swallowed heavily, tasting again the bitter gall of disgrace. Unwilling to allow himself the privilege of privacy, he raised his eyes to Esme. He had made her feel shame, so he showed her his own.
"They laughed at me," he told her quietly. "The other boys in the school, the people in the town, even the professors laughed at the way I talked, the way I ate, the things I said."
He didn't stint on the truth.
"They even laughed at the new brown suit my mama made me. Their suits were fitted at the tailor's. They called mine homemade cracker clothes. Just perfect, one of the upperclassmen declared, for Cleavis Clodhopper the hillbilly boy." Even after long years of success and achievement, the hated nickname conjured up rancor.
"At first I thought I could prove myself," he told her. "I studied harder than anyone. I perfected my manners. I was determined that I could make them see me as an equal." He sighed and shook his head. "Of course, they never did."
As Esme watched him, there was no pity in her eyes, but there was understanding.
He shrugged nonchalantly. "It wasn't all for the bad, though," he said honestly. "With no friends and resolved to succeed, I spent untold hours in the library. I would lose my unhappiness in the excitement of science."
Smiling wryly, he added, "My biology text was so well-thumbed it looked like a risqué novel."
