I'll Never Forget You

They were an ordinary pair caught in an ordinary world where convention means more than a meeting of souls

I'LL NEVER FORGET YOU
by Ray Bradbury
From Mar 1983 Reader's Digest (Pages 92-96)


When Ann Taylor came to teach at Green Town Central, it was the summer of her 24th birthday and it was the summer when Bob Spaulding would turn 14. She was that teacher for whom all the children wanted to bring huge oranges or pink flowers. She always seemed to be passing by on days when the shade was green under then tunnels of oaks and elms. She was the fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a hot early-June morning. And those rare few days in the year when the climate was balanced as fine as a leaf between winds that blew just right, those were the days like Ann Taylor, and should have been so named on the calendar.

As for Bob Spaulding he was the cousin who walked alone through town on any October evening with a pack of leaves after him like a horde of Halloween mice. Or you would see him, like a slow white fish in the tart waters of the Fox Hill Creek, baking brown - or hear his voice in those treetops where the wind entertained, dropping down hand by hand, and there would come Bob Spaulding to sit alone and look at the world.

That first morning when Miss Ann Taylor entered and wrote her name on the board, the schoolroom seemed suddenly flooded with illumination, as if the roof had moved back. Bob Spaulding sat with a spitball hidden in his hand, but let it drop. After class, he brought in a bucket of water and began to wash the boards. "What's this?" She turned to him from her desk, where she had been correcting spelling papers.
"The boards are kind of dirty. I suppose I should have asked permission," he said, halting uneasily.
"I think we can pretend you did," she replied, smiling, and at this smile he finished the boards in a burst of speed and pounded the erasers so furiously that the air was full of snow, it seemed.

The next morning he happened by the place where she took board and room just as she was coming out to walk to school.
"Well, here I am," he said.
"And do you know," she said, "I'm not surprised."
"May I carry your books?" he asked.
"Why, thank you, Bob."

They walked for a few minutes and he said nothing. She glanced over and slightly down at him and saw how at ease he was, how happy he seemed. When they reached the edge of the school ground, he said, "I better leave you here. The other kids wouldn't understand."
"I'm not sure I do, either," said Miss Taylor.
"Why, we're friends," said Bob with a natural honesty.
'Bob--" she started to say. "Never mind." She walked away.

And there he was in class and there he was after school for the next two weeks, never speaking, quietly washing the boards while she worked, and there was the silence of the sun going down in the slow sky, and the rustle of papers and the scratch of a pen. Sometimes the silence would go on until almost five, when Miss Taylor would find Bob in the last seat, waiting.
"Well, it's time to go home," Miss Taylor would say. And he would run and fetch her hat and coat. Then they would walk across the empty yard and talk all sorts of things.
"What are you going to be, Bob, when you grow up?"
"A writer," he said.
"Oh, that's big ambition."
"I know, but I'm going to try," he told her. "I've read a lot."
He thought for a while and said, "Do me a favor, Miss Taylor?"
"It all depends."
"I walk every Saturday along the creek to Lake Michigan. There're a lof of butterflies and crayfish. Maybe you'd like to walk too."
"I'm afraid not. I'm going to be busy."
He started to ask doing what, but stopped. "I take along sandwiches and pop. I wish you'd come."
"Thanks, Bob, perhaps some other time."
"I shouldn't have asked you, should I?" he said.
"You have every right to ask anything you want to," she said.

A few days later she gave him a copy of Great Expectations. He stayed up all night reading it, and they talked about it.

Each day Bob met Miss Taylor and many days she would start to tell him not to come anymore, but she never could.

He talked with her about Dickens and Kipling and Poe, coming and going to school. But she found it impossible to call on him to recite in class. She would hesitate, then call someone else. Nor would she look at him while they were walking. But on several late afternoons as he moved his arm high on the blackboard, sponging away the arithmetic symbols, she found herself glancing over at him for seconds at a time.

Then one Saturday morning he was standing in the creek with his overalls rolled up to his knees, bending to catch crayfish, when he looked up and saw her.
"Well, here I am," she said, laughing.
"And do you know," he said, "I'm not surprised."
"Show me the crayfish and the butterflies," she said.

They walked down to the lake and sat on the sand with a warm wind blowing softly about them, fluttering her hair and the ruffle on her blouse, and he sat a few yards back from her and they ate the ham-and-pickle sandwiches and drank the orange pop solemnly.
"I didn't think I would ever come on a picnic like this," she said.
"With some kid," he said.
They said little else during the afternoon.

"This is all wrong," Bob said later. "And I can't figure why. Just walking along and catching butterflies and crayfish and eating sandwiches. But Mom and Dad'd rib me if they knew, and the kids would too. And the other teachers would laugh at you, wouldn't they?"
"I'm afraid so. I don't exactly understand how I came here at all," she said.

That was about all there was to the meeting of Miss Ann Taylor and Bob Spaulding: two or three monarch butterflies, a copy of Dickens, a dozen crayfish, four sandwiches and two afternoon, she left early with a headache.

But on Tuesday after school they were both in the silent room again - he sponging the board contentedly, and she working on her papers in peace, when suddenly the courthouse clock struck five. Its great bronze boom shuddered one's body, making you seem older by the minute. Miss Taylor put down her pen.
"Bob," she said, "come here."
"Yes'm." He put down the sponge.
She looked at him intently for a moment until he looked away. "Bob," I wonder if you know what I'm going to talk to you about."
"Yes," he said at last. "About us."
"How old are you, Bob?"
"Going on fourteen."
"Do you know how old I am?"
"Yes'm, I heard. Twenty-four. I'll be twenty four in ten years, almost," he said. "And sometimes I feel twenty-four."
"Yes, and sometimes you almost act it."
"Do I, really?!!"
"Now sit still. It's very important that we understand what is happening. First, let's admit we are the greatest friends in the world. I have never had a student like you, nor have I had as much affection for any boy I've ever known." He flushed at this. She went on. "And let me speak for you - you've found me to be the nicest teacher of any you've ever known."
"Oh, more than that," he said.
"Perhaps more than that, but there are facts to be faced - a town and its people, and you and me. I've thought this over, Bob. Don't think I've been unaware of my feelings. Under some circumstances our friendship would be odd. But you are no ordinary boy. And I know I'm not sick, mentally or physically, and that whatever has evolved here has been a true regard for your character and goodness. But those are not the things we consider in this world, unless they occur in a man of a certain age. I don't know if I'm
saying this right."
"If I was ten years older and about fifteen inches taller it'd make all the difference," he said.
"I know it seems foolish," she said. "When you feel very grown-up and right and have nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe someday they will judge a person's mind so accurately that they can say, 'This is a man, though his body is only thirteen, with a man's responsibility.' But until then, we have to go by ages and heights in an ordinary world."
"I don't like that," he said.
"Perhaps I don't either, but there really is no way to do anything about us."
"Yes, I know."
"We must decide what to do," she said. "I can secure a transfer from this school ..."
"You don't have to do that," he said. "We're moving. My folks and I, we're going to live in Madison."
"It has nothing to do with all this, has it?"
"No, no, my father has a new job there. It's only fifty miles away. I can see you, can't I?"
"Would that be a good idea?"
"No, I guess not," he said.
They sat awhile in the silent schoolroom.
"When did all this happen?" he said, helplessly.
"I don't know," she said. "Nobody ever knows. They haven't known for thousand of years. Sometimes two people like each other who shouldn't. I can't explain it."
"There's one thing I want you to remember," she said finally. "There are compensations in life. You don't feel well now; neither do I. But something will happen to fix that. Do you believe that?"
"I'd like to. If only you'd wait for me," he blurted.
"Ten years?"
"I'd be twenty-four then."
"But I'd be thirty-four and another person entirely, perhaps. No, I don't think it can be done."

He sat there for a long time. "I'll never forget you," he said.
"You'll forget."
"I'll find a way of never forgetting you," he said.
She went to erase the boards.
"I'll help you," he said.
"No, no," she said hastily. "You go home."

He left the school. Looking back, he saw Miss Taylor through the window, at the board, slowly washing out the chalked words.


HE moved away the next week and was gone for 16 years. Though he was only 50 miles away, he never got to Green Town again until he was almost 30 and married. Then one spring they were driving through on their way to Chicago and stopped off for a day.

Bob left his wife at the hotel and walked around town and finally asked about Miss Ann Taylor.
"Oh, yes, the pretty teacher. She died in 1936, not long after you left."
Had she ever married?
"No, come to think of it, she never had."

He walked out to the cemetery and found her stone, which said, "Ann Taylor, born 1910, died 1936." And he thought, Twenty-six years old. Why, I'm almost four years older than you are now, Miss Taylor."

Later in the day the people in the town saw Bob Spaulding's wife strolling to meet him under the elms and the oak trees. She was the fine peaches of summer in the snow winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a hot early-summer morning. And this was one of those rare few days in time when the climate was balanced like a leaf between winds that blow just right, one of those days that should have been named, everyone agreed, after Robert Spaulding's wife."

- Condensed from "A Story of Love", a short story by Ray Bradbury.