Brightest and Best (18 page)

“But you teach them our ways at home,” Ella said. “They will always know truth.” She banished the image of David’s rebellion rising in her mind.

They walked a few yards in silence.

“Do you have hesitations about teaching them?” Gideon asked.

“I don’t know very much about teaching.” The intrigue of teaching collided with the reasons Gideon asked it of her.

“But you understand a great deal about learning,” he countered. “You are more than capable of teaching them to read and do basic math and enough history to know where they come from.”

“I suppose so.”

“If you are going to be their mother—and I hope they will see you that way—then it is fitting that they learn from you.”

“But what about the laws?” Ella said. “You’ve already been warned to put Tobias in school.”

Gideon shrugged. “I didn’t do it, and nothing happened.”

“You may be asking for trouble by taking the girls out.”

“I made our case with the school board that the Amish can teach our own children. We need to show this is true. If they are watching me, that’s all the more reason I need your help.”

Ella moistened her lips. “Can I think about it?”

As much as she loved learning, Ella had never seriously considered teaching. Why should she? The one-room school always had an
English
teacher—and not one who had been out of school for twelve years.

“Prayerfully consider it,” Gideon said. “I won’t say anything to the girls until we’re sure.”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Mmm?” Margaret lifted her eyes to Gray’s face across the table at the modest restaurant on Main Street.

“I was saying what a fine September we’ve had,” Gray said. “I suppose October will bring a change in the weather.”

“Yes.” Margaret turned up the corners of her mouth. “I believe October is my favorite month of the year.”

“I’ll take note.”

They were seated at a table near the window for an early supper, before darkness fell. Margaret could not quite see well enough from this distance to discern the two figures across the street.

“Margaret.”

Gray’s voice recaptured her gaze.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”

“You’ve barely looked at the menu. Shall I order for you?”

Margaret dropped her eyes to the printed sheet in front of her. “Yes, please. I’m sure it’s all delicious.”

“You seem quite distracted,” Gray said. “If you’re not feeling well, I’ll take you home.”

“I feel fine,” she said, resolving to pay better attention. “Quite hungry, actually.”

“Would you like to tell me what’s on your mind? It might help to talk about it.”

She looked out the window again. “One of the pupils in Miss Hunter’s class has missed more than a week of school due to illness. In fact, she’s missed more school than she’s attended this year so far. We’re all starting to be concerned.”

“I would think so. That’s a long time for a child to be ill.”

“The odd thing is, I’m fairly certain that’s her across the street with her father.”

Gray turned his head. “Where? I don’t see anybody but that Amish man and his buggy.”

“Yes, that’s him.”

“How can you be sure? They all look alike.”

Objection rang in Margaret’s ears, but she said nothing. A girl in a dark gray dress began to skip, only to be reprimanded with one gesture from her father.

“She doesn’t look sick to me,” Gray said.

Nor to me.

Gray laughed with abandon.

“What’s so funny?” Margaret said.

“That Amish man is
lying
to the school authorities.”

“Let’s not jump to judgments,” Margaret said. Perhaps the girl had been sick and was now recovering. Her parents might be keeping her home as a precautionary measure. Across the street, the girl climbed into the buggy—without assistance—and disappeared into its dark interior.

“You can see with your own eyes,” Gray said. “That child is fine. There’s no reason she shouldn’t be in school tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Friday. They may decide to let her finish out the week resting at home and start fresh on Monday.”

“Or it may be a ruse.”

The horse began to pull the buggy away from the curb.

“Let’s not let the Amish problem come between us,” Gray said. “Let’s enjoy our baked fish and roasted red potatoes.”

Amish problem.
Margaret bristled at the phrase, although Gray was not the first person in town to use it. Still, it soured her stomach to think that he would adopt it. These were children. They were not a problem.

“Of course,” she said. “That sounds delicious.”

His features crinkled with his smile, his eyes dancing as he looked at her. Margaret wasn’t sure any man’s gaze had ever warmed her at the core the way Gray Truesdale’s did. The disadvantage of not asking him to take her home right then was the interminable wait for his lips to find hers before the night was over.

Monday was art day. As the fourth week of school opened, Margaret selected art supplies from the cupboard in the downstairs corridor, arranged them in a basket, and carried them up to her classroom. This would be the first real art project of the year, other than some simple coloring with Crayolas. Up until now, Margaret focused on introducing a solid curriculum of reading and arithmetic as she assessed each pupil’s ability. The children had been working hard for three weeks. They deserved to spend the last hour of the day exploring what they could do with charcoal pencils on thick paper. Art was required in the consolidated curriculum, and Margaret was determined to demonstrate its value to dubious parents.

When the primers were stowed and the oil cloths draped over desktops, Margaret held up one of the hand mirrors she had brought from home.

“Take turns with the mirrors,” she said. “You can hold them for one another. Draw what you see in the mirror. It’s called a ‘self-portrait of the artist.’”

Margaret’s expectations were appropriately low for what the completed projects would look like. She was more interested in observing the process of the children’s efforts. They were only first graders, after all, and it was only the beginning of the school year. Most of them still struggled to control their thick pencils even to form the letters of their names.

Around the classroom, giggles and groans, jubilation and frustration greeted Margaret. She walked up and down the aisles, complimenting the effort her pupils made and touching their shoulders in encouragement. Lopsided eyes, uneven ears, disproportionate noses, oddly shaped faces—whatever the result, Margaret buoyed her students in the process of looking carefully and moving the charcoal with control.

She reached Gertie Wittmer’s desk beside Hans Byler. Hans’s project looked like most of the others around the room.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“All I ask is that you try,” Margaret said.

“But mine doesn’t look like Gertie’s.”

“Why should it?
You
don’t look like Gertie.”

Hans laid the charcoal down. “Gertie, show Miss Simpson your picture.”

Gertie had turned her drawing upside down. “I’d like to see it,” Margaret said.

Slowly, Gertie flipped the paper.

Margaret’s eyes widened. Gertie’s features stared up from the desk. Margaret lifted the paper at the edges.

“Gertie, this is wonderful!” Margaret had never seen a six-year-old produce such a recognizable self-portrait, even the reflection of light in her eyes as it bounced off the mirror. “I can’t wait for your father to see this.”

Gertie reached up and tugged on a corner of the drawing. Margaret released it, lest the paper tear.

“Don’t you want your father to see this?” Margaret asked.

Gertie shook her head.

“Why not?”

Gertie shoved the paper into her desk but did not answer Margaret’s question.

“All right,” Margaret said. “But please be careful with it. I’ll collect them when everyone has finished.”

Jed’s voice carried up the stairwell.

“It gets dark earlier every day,” he said. “David is not carrying his load. Before school started, he never once complained about working alongside me.”

“He still doesn’t,” Rachel said. “I haven’t heard him say one word of criticism or complaint about helping you.”

“Then why is he never around to do it?”

Upstairs, Ella tucked folded towels into a narrow cupboard. The conversation was becoming tiresome. Her father had always been one to mutter. It was his way of getting something off his chest. In the old days, though, Ella never would have discerned his downstairs grumblings if she were on the second floor of the Hilty home. Lately Jed’s voice rose. It was hard not to hear Jed and Rachel having a slightly different version of the same conversation every few days.

Ella padded to her room and softly closed the door to block the voices. In a moment, Rachel’s would break in disappointment, and Jed would either promise to be more patient with David or pull the front door closed behind him with more force than necessary.

David got up early and stayed up late to keep up with barn chores. He never missed a family meal. Some days he turned up on the farm shortly after lunch. What could her father do? Tether David to a post to physically prevent him from leaving? Ella supposed his comings and goings depended on what was happening at school—when he had an exam or an assignment due. Vaguely she wondered what high school must be like. Perhaps if she had attended high school, she would feel more prepared for what Gideon asked of her now.

She shook off the thought. Savilla and Gertie were nine and six. How difficult could it be? The half-collapsed schoolhouse still contained shelves of textbooks. Gideon would find a way to get what she needed—if she agreed to his request.

T
he children concentrated on copying short sentences Margaret had written on the chalkboard. On the desk in front of her lay her attendance book, her grade book, and a stack of lesson plans. Soon she would divide the first graders into two groups, a smaller group who seemed on the path to independent reading and might even be ready for second-grade primers by February, and a larger group who were mastering reading at a more predictable rate for six-year-olds. Margaret made notes on a pad as she considered each child’s progress, gazing out the windows along one side of her classroom from time to time. Outside, russet and bronze had displaced variegated green on most of the trees, and the sky, while still dazzling, was less glistening than in the summer months. October had arrived, and seemed to rush into full flame by its second day. Margaret had not been making conversation when she told Gray it was her favorite month. She looked forward to the season’s change every year.

She scanned the classroom to make sure no child faltered in the task, knowing that some would produce more legible papers than others. Little tongues stuck out the corners of several mouths, and other children scrunched their faces in concentration, but everyone’s pencils were making regular contact with paper. Her eyes turned to the view outside, soaking in the autumn colors that framed the high school next door. A flash of black caught her eye and she looked more closely, finding a dark-clad Amish boy hustling up the sidewalk, approaching the front door of the school. Out of reflex, Margaret looked at the clock in her own classroom. The boy was considerably late for the start of the school day. He seemed in a hurry, though. Perhaps he had a good reason for his tardiness. He slipped through the door.