In the surgeon's wagon

[Continued from Day of the Flogging]

Maggie wiped off the slate that was covered with notations of prices and figures. She usually used it for calculating costs when selling things, but today it would have another purpose.

"Now listen to these words, Gabe, and tell me what they have in common, with the sounds. Apple, hat, cap, flag, rat..."

Cotton repeated the word, frowning a little. "Apple, hat, cap, flag , rat... Hat and rat sound the same at the end..." He mouthed them to himself again. "They've all got the same sound in them... sort of a flat sound." He wasn't quite sure how else to describe it, not being used to thinking about words.

He shifted uncomfortably. "'m sorry, Maggie, d'you mind if I lay down again? On'y me back's starting to hurt a bit, sittin' like this."

She grinned. "You may," she said in a prim voice. "A flat sound, that's right. What sound is it? Hat, fan, bag..."

He eased himself down again, folding his arms and resting his chin on them. He frowned, repeating the list and the new words she'd added to it. "Sort of a... a..." He brightened. "A. That's what."

He turned his head to look at her, puzzled. "What's that got to do with readin', then? It's only a sound."

"Yes, an A sound. That's an A, the letter A. See, you got to know the sound each letter makes, and then you can read anything. Here, maybe I should write all the letters on a piece of paper for you to look at." She did so, and then duplicated the letter A on her slate.

He looked at the piece of paper with the black lines and squiggles on it. "So, all of them's got a sound, and that's readin'? It can't be that easy. There's loads of different words, after all."

She smiled. "It is that easy. See? Else how could children learn it? But you're right, there's loads of different words. But wait, we're still not finished with A. Now A can make that aaaa sound like apple, and cap. See it even looks like a cap here, a pointed cap or a hat. Or an apple. There's a big A and a little a..."

Cotton looked at the slate. "Oh. But why are they different shapes, if it's the same sound? Does that mean every sound has two shapes to learn?"

He looked a little cast down. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to make it harder for you. Only, I never done this sort of thing before."

She laughed a little. "Don't worry! It's all right. When your back is better, you can teach me to fire a rifle and then you can laugh and laugh at the mistakes I'll make. As long as I don't shoot one of the officers. For now we'll stick to this less dangerous lesson. Yes, there's two different kinds of each letter. Well, actually, some are the same, just bigger and smaller... But it's like, um, a mother and child. Or no, like officers and men. One is just a bigger and slightly more important version of the other, but they're really about the same. Just dressed differently." She grinned at him. "Make sense?"

He thought about that, and nodded. An officer might wear a nicer uniform, with gold or silver lace on it, but it was still the uniform of the same regiment as the men.

"So they look different, but sound the same?" he said, fixing the idea in his head. "And those are both A. A for... for apple?"

"That's it!" she cried, beaming at him. "And look at your paper. A is the first letter there." She felt so mirthful that she spontaneously kissed his cheek. "You're the best student I ever had, Gabe Cotton."

He blushed, pleased. "Not sure I'll 'member all that lot," he said, looking at the paper. "There's such a lot of them."

"Of course you will. But were STILL not finished with A. A can make an aaaa sound, but it can also make an aayy sound, like - hay, paste, Gabe, taylor, saint, page, paper. In fact, we both have A's in our name. Mine is aaaa for Maaaggie, and yours is aayy for Gabriel."

He frowned. "Like... like officers riding and us walking? No, because you drew the officer one with the same sound as the soldier one: a. The flat sound. Like apple."

He thought for a moment. "So it's a like apple, and ay like... like... acorn? Those other words you said had different sounds at the start. I think." He looked up at her. "Could you show me? I mean, write it?"

"Hmm, maybe like... doing different duties. Sometimes scouting, sometimes marching, sometimes being a batman. Batman has A's too - baaaatmaaaan. And yes, acorn, that's an A! Now here's our names. Gabriel with an AY sound, and Maggie with an AAAA sound. But same A's, see 'em? And acorn, that's right." She drew an a with an acorn cap on its top. "Well, that's supposed to be an acorn too," she laughed.

"Oh. I see." He looked at the A she had written. "Round like that, with a line down the side is a. Or ay." He looked at their names, as she had written them. "Lots of different shapes in my name. And you've got two the same. Like a, but with a tail."

"Oh. Yes, it does look like an a, doesn't it? That's a G. G makes a 'guh' sound, and it's the first letter of Gabriel too, only you've got the big one. You've got Officer G and I've got two Rifleman G's. And do you see the Gs on your paper there? I think you know A, so I might as well jump to G and show you all the letters in your name." She erased the acorn and wrote a pair of Gs, leaving their names for him to examine.



"See, Officer G, the big one, comes first. If you're writing a sentence, or it's an important word like someone's name or the name of a city, say, then it starts with a big letter, like an officer leading the men. So your name has a big G. My name has a big M. Like the M on the back of my locket, too."

Well, that made sense. The officers always went in front of the men, after all. He tried to think of some words that started with a 'g' sound.

"G for... goat?" he said. "An' me, of course. G for Gabriel." He looked pleased at that, and looked at the piece of paper again.

"Only, they ain't in the same order in my name as they are on the paper," he said slowly. "Is that how it works? You put them in a different order to say different things?"

She couldn't stop smiling. "Yes, that's it exactly. You'll learn this all in no time, Gabe! The way they are on the paper, that's just the order that people put them in, like a list. But they all make different sounds, and you can put them in different orders to make words with the sounds. Like the way numbers work - a three and a two are two numbers, but thirty-two is a different number. Though... maybe that doesn't make sense. But yes, G for goat, and goose, and Maggie, and bag... Bag, that's a good word! Hold on a minute," she said excitedly, erasing the slate again.

"Jee for goat?" It was a lot to take in all at once, but if some of them were officers, and some were men, then maybe... "Is 'jee' the name of it? Like the name of a regiment?"

She paused a moment to think. "Jee is the name of it. Not like a regiment though... Maybe more like a company? Or just two partners? Or maybe it's more like there are two brothers, and one's an officer and the other's a rifleman or a private. Or one's the older brother. And your captain says 'Send G to me!' and you can ask, 'Lieutenant G or Rifleman g?'"

Cotton smiled at that. "Looks to me like one officer and one soldier from lots of regiments. Or... one officer and one soldier from all the different companies of one regiment." He counted the different pairs of letters on the paper.

"I don't know any regiment that's got twenty-six companies, though. So mebbe it's one officer and one soldier from lots of regiments."

"Maybe so. And you'll find that some of them combine very well, and others don't. And some are similar, like regiments of rifles, and others are like redcoats," she said, smiling mischievously. "Oh! I know! It's an officer and a batman. How's that?"

He grinned. "So the little ones do all the work and the big ones just pretend they do? Only, don't tell the Captain I said that."

He shifted a little. "An' you said you was goin' to write some more words. Only, I know the name of the goat-one - 'jee', but what's the name of the apple-one? The 'a' sound. Or 'ay' sound, in my name."

"That's A. A lot of 'em have the same name as what their sound does. So A says ay (or aaa.) But Jee says guh, except on its other duties it says juh. And that's like George." She wrote it on the slate. "Down here I've written bag - it ends in a Jee saying guh. And it has the aaa sound of A, see in the middle, the A there? But in George, it says juh. And that's confusing sometimes because it's a lot like a Jay." She pointed to the J on his paper. "Jee and Jay are alike sometimes. Kind of like... Jee is the 60th and Jay is the 95th, and sometimes folks get them confused."