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There were some places that had regretted with a brief but polite rejection, but there were those that had never replied. Either way, it had been demeaning.
Andrew wondered if Mrs. Keeper was going to oust him from the Keepers’ place. Would she?
He avoided confronting her.
He did not want to go home.
His father was simply ridiculous. He was such a burden on Andrew’s mother. His father needed his mother by him all the while. Such a leech.
Andrew did not think of himself as a leech. Not at all. Never. He was a jewel of a guest. He realized that. The fact that he was there heightened the caliber of any place.
He had been educated abroad in one of England’s exclusive, private schools. Those who’d been students were brain heads and rather strange. If one did not know of their particular interest, he had been rejected by the students.
Andrew had learned to speak as they did and discarded the TEXAS speech. They laughed at his accent and word choice. His speaking as they did, had made no impression at all.
It had been a long, hard time, but he had learned to be aloof. He knew his value.
So he had been the only student who was interested in the States, he had been terribly homesick, and one elderly, bumbling man taught Andrew in that pioneer field of TEXAS. Unfortunately, everything the old man knew had occurred long ago.
They didn’t know of anything current about the United States. They hadn’t even thought doing so could be important.
However, no one at the Keeper place paid Andrew much mind. Of course, everyone was civil. They greeted Andrew and nodded across a room, but no one ever sat down with him and asked him questions. Nor did they ask his opinion. No one ever asked his point of view on any subject.
Andrew had all this long-ago knowledge of the States stacked up inside himself, and no one was curious enough to ask him a question. How strange is such a careless, rejective world.
Of course, Andrew didn’t approach any other person. He didn’t offer anything at all to anyone. He waited to be approached. He was tolerant of the people who did not know of history or of the makings of the world. He had his own opinions, his own ideas. He could give people another view.
They didn’t ask.
He didn’t offer.
The reason he never started a subject was not that he wasn’t outgoing. He had been. But too often the listener got up, excused himself and...left.—or one just walked on off to start with. Escaped?
Andrew felt that people needed to know basics. They needed to know who and how and why things were as they’d been. Everybody seemed to think current knowledge was enough.
They put it on the internet.
How can people build on things unless they know basics? How did people live before there were ovens? How did they cope with weather before there were chimneys? How did they now handle cars when there’d been just horses?
It was basic knowledge.
Andrew didn’t know any better. It was probably his father’s fault. Mr. Andrew Parsons Sr. was such a fool. With Andrew knowing his father was how he was made, his eldest son would flinch at the very thought of being made by such a man.
It was only astonishing that Andrew’s grandfather allowed his son, Andrew’s father, a portion of his estate. Andrew would have nothing when his father had used that all up. His father was not stable.
Andrew’s father had seen a droll movie about plastics when he was vulnerable. He didn’t have the humor to understand the film. He believed in plastics. He owned stock in plastics. He was caught in something that could never last. And he would shrivel away along with his inherited money.
Andrew’s father needed to understand. He needed to listen to his son about the beginnings. Unfortunately, it appeared that every other person in this world was hell-bent on going on beyond plastics to breathing synthetics.
There are people who just never understand the world is moving along—without them. Oddly enough, Andrew was such a person.
He had all those past things stacked up in his mind, and no one gave a hoot in hell about any of it.
How strange that the busy, distracted and kind Mina Keeper knew all that about Andrew Parsons. And it was she who told JoAnn how to smooth Andrew into understanding this finishing twentieth century.
“He is a throwback to another time,” Mina Keeper mentioned needlessly. “We need to upgrade him somewhat. How about you working on that first, JoAnn. You do that while I’m trying to find someone else who can help him.”
JoAnn said, “Okay. I’ll try. Don’t expect anything. He’s in the clasp of his own regard and probably won’t listen.”
Very kindly, Mina Keeper mentioned, “You need to make him think he’s teaching you all that stuff.”
JoAnn licked her lips thoughtfully as she mentioned, “Stuff” in a manner that was an echo of Mrs. Keeper. It was an important communication about which she wasn’t entirely sure.
Rather drolly, Mina Keeper said, “He’s not in step with other people. We need to upgrade him enough so that he understands the current times.”
“Oh. Well. I think I can help with that. I shall try.” Then she asked, “Have you found someone to take my place as yet?”
“Not yet. I’m searching.”
“Well, get on it as soon as you can, or I might louse up this outdated person who is named a rather current Andrew.”
Mina mentioned, “We had a long-ago president named Andrew Jackson.”
“Compared to Andrew Parsons, Andrew Jackson is almost current.”
That made Mina Keeper laugh.
So Mina saved that to tell her husband that night as she was again winding up her hair in little swirls and trapping them just so.
Sprawled on the bed, John Keeper said, “Compared to Andrew Parsons, Andrew Jackson was modern.” And John added, “Has it ever occurred to you how fast this world has progressed in just the last one hundred years? My grandmother went from horse and buggy to watching the moon landing on TV, for crying out loud!”
Winding her hair, Mina replied, “I know.”
“Andrew has a long way to come up to normal. Let’s get rid of him.”
Mina turned and looked at her husband. He was watching her.
She told him, “Darling, we have to help this poor person advance until he can join in with other people of this time.”
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