Staggerford (26 page)

To a man with a dry socket, what is more dismaying than a raspberry sundae?

Wayne Workman was too hot under the collar to give Miles a warm welcome. Opening the door, he said, “Come in and explain what you think you’re doing with that Bingham girl.”

Miles was speechless. He sat down with his coat on.

Wayne stayed on his feet. “For a man to be carrying on
with a female student is dynamite. It’s no secret that you and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, Pruitt, but by God we’d better understand each other on this. If you don’t know, at the age of thirty-five, with twelve years of teaching experience, that carrying on with a female student is out-and-out dynamite, then I’d say you have a lot of growing up to do.” He swiveled about and walked the length of the living room, then walked back. “Dynamite!”

Miles got up to go.

“Sit down, Pruitt, and hear me out. I can tell you exactly how many times in the last two weeks I’ve seen you standing in the hall after fifth hour talking to Beverly Bingham. I’ve seen you talking to her eight times!”

Miles sat down. He was determined to stay cool, though he was getting very hot in his coat.

“And I wish that’s all the evidence I had. But I have more. Last Sunday afternoon, Pruitt, your car was seen in Pike Park next to the Bingham pickup truck. It rained hard Sunday afternoon, and what anybody might be doing with a good-looking girl in Pike Park on a rainy afternoon is not all that difficult to figure out. Nadine Oppegaard and her friends were driving out that way and they saw your car and the Bingham truck—Nadine Oppegaard, daughter of Doc Oppegaard, chairman of the school board, no less. And Coach’s son Peter was among those who were with her. And when they got back to town, Nadine Oppegaard told her father and Doc told Stella Gibbon and Stella told Coach and Coach asked Peter if it was true and Peter said, ‘Yes, it’s true,’ and so Coach told me.” Wayne stepped back and folded his arms, studying Miles. “Well, do you wish to say something, or shall I go on to the next piece of evidence?”

“Go on to the next piece of evidence.”

“Very well. That was Sunday. Now the very next day, which was Monday, Beverly Bingham, passed you a note in the hall after fifth hour. I saw it with my own eyes. You put it in your briefcase. And then on Tuesday she visited your house after school and stayed for at least thirty minutes, and that too I saw with my own eyes because her
truck was sitting in front of your place from three thirty, when I went home from school, until at least four, when I drove uptown for a pack of cigarettes. And now, today, Wednesday, it was the same thing, the track sitting in front of your house for a goodly length of time, and what I can’t figure out is how you think you can get away with anything so scandalous and how you can be so careless with your reputation, to say nothing of the reputation of the Staggerford faculty, and—most puzzling of all—how you can bring that kind of shame upon the house of Miss McGee, who is the most moral person on God’s green earth.” Wayne sat down, resting his case.

Miles said nothing.

“Now speak up.” Wayne clamped his lower teeth on his mustache. Sweat stood out on his brow.

Miles said, “Do you have a toothpick? I have a raspberry seed here between—”

Rage lifted Wayne out of his chair. “I do
not
have a toothpick!”

“That’s all right,” said Miles, going to the door. “I have some at home.”

Outside on the dark street, Miles was convulsed with the anger he had been holding in check. His knees trembled, his scalp burned. He walked home and saw through the front window that Miss McGee had company. He did not go in. He walked down Main Street to the Hub to soothe his emotions with a piece of chocolate cake, and that was where he first heard about the Indian invasion. Someone said that everybody living on the Sandhill Reservation was planning to come to Staggerford at first light in the morning and seek retribution for what had happened to little Hank Bird. Someone else said that the Indians were going to camp on the football field across the street from the school until Jeff Norquist was scalped.

THURSDAY
 
 
N
OVEMBER
5

T
HE SUN WAS SCARCELY
above the horizon when the first car arrived from Sandhill. It was an old white Buick carrying seven men, including Alexander Bigmeadow and Bennie Bird. It came to a stop near the flagpole across the street from Staggerford High School. The seven men got out, stretched, passed through the open gate by the ticket booth, and walked out onto the football field. They stood under the goalpost, silhouetted against the orange sun, and they watched the arrival of the students.

Next, a red pickup pulled in behind the Buick and three women emerged from the cab and three more climbed down from the box behind. Then two more cars and another pickup, then three more cars and a van.

Wayne Workman’s office faced the street. Between eight o’clock and nine, Wayne stood at his window and peeked through the blinds, watching the Indians arrive in a steady stream. At nine he called the governor and said his school was under siege by Indians.

The governor asked why.

“I don’t know,” said Wayne.

“Well, ask them.”

“Yes sir.”

“And have you called the county sheriff?”

“No.”

“Call the county sheriff.”

“Yes sir.”

“And when you find out what they want, call me back.”

“Yes sir.”

“In the meantime, I’ll send you a fleet of highway patrolmen.”

Wayne called the sheriff in Berrington, but he did not go across the street and ask the Indians what they wanted. He was paralyzed with fear. He continued to stand at his window, peeking through the blinds. He counted the Indians. With the arrival of the final carload at about ten o’clock he counted 507 men, women, and children of the Chippewa nation. The sun by this time had dried the dew, and most of the Indians were sitting on the grass like clusters of picnickers.

Classrooms were full of tension. Even first-hour English was wakeful—coughing and stretching between yawns. Lee Fremling, manifesting uncharacteristic imagination, said he wished the classroom faced the football field instead of the courtyard, so he could see what was going on.

Second-hour English, with Jeff Norquist conspicuously absent, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The only thing all hour that quieted the class was Roxie Booth’s story about a black soldier who had raped an Indian girl. The girl’s family and friends kidnapped the black soldier and castrated him with the edge of a torn tin can.

Next hour, Miles was summoned by Wayne Workman’s secretary. He put William Mulholland, the scientist, in charge of his class and he went to Wayne’s office, which he found empty. He stepped to the window and raised the blind. Wayne rushed out of the closet (blowing smoke out of his nose) and grabbed the rope from him and lowered the blind.

“Pruitt, are you crazy? That’s the enemy out there. And do you know how many of them there are?”

“How many?”

“Five hundred and seven. Go out and ask them what they want.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because it happened in your study hall. They’ve come to get even with Jeff Norquist.”

“If we know that, then we don’t need to ask them what they want, do we?”

“The governor says to ask them. I called the governor and he said to ask.”

Suddenly little Hank Bird was standing in the office doorway. Smiling shyly through his bruises, he said, “My dad says for the principal to come outside.” He left as quickly as he came.

Between bites of his mustache, Wayne said, “Pruitt, you’re coming with me.” He waited for Miles to lead the way.

As Miles and Wayne crossed the street, several men who had been sitting on the grass got up and came off the football field through the ticket gate and gathered at the curb under the flagpole. No flag flew this morning because Sorenson the janitor had been afraid to cross the street and raise it.

“Good morning, what do you want?” Wayne said, stepping up on the curb. His voice had a tremor in it.

A lean, dark man with a face full of deep wrinkles came forward and glared first at Wayne, then at Miles. “I’m Bennie Bird. I expect satisfaction for what happened to my boy Hank.” His voice was an ominous rumble, like distant thunder. He had the same kind of face as the wise old Indian Miles had seen in countless movies, the Indian who had weathered seventy years of sun and wind on the slopes of the Rockies and who told his great-grandchildren with a faraway look in his small eyes that the plains were once a sea of buffalo. But this wasn’t the movies, this was Staggerford, and this Indian was Bennie Bird, whose face was weathered not by sun and wind but by seventy years of smoke and shadow in the Sandhill General Store. These
small eyes were not gazing far off across the plains, they were gazing at Miles.

“Glad to know you,” Miles said, putting out his hand in case Bennie Bird wanted to shake it. He didn’t.

Another man stepped forward. “I’m Alexander Bigmeadow,” he said. Under his very large stomach he wore his belt like a sling. This was the chief of Sandhill, and both Wayne and Miles were glad to see him. They had spoken to him at meetings of the Staggerford PTA and they had known him, on occasion, to smile. But he wasn’t smiling this morning.

“Well, Mr. Bigmeadow,” said Wayne in a very high voice, “What brings all you folks to town this morning?”

“It’s not good, Mr. Workman. We have to have satisfaction for little Hank. When the noon-hour bell rings, we expect to see that Norquist boy step out the front door of the schoolhouse, and if he doesn’t, we’re going inside and search him out.”

“You goddamn right,” said Bennie Bird. “Satisfaction for what he did to Hank.”

Little Hank was edging away from the group of men, hoping his duties were over.

Wayne said, “Jeff Norquist isn’t in school today. I’ve suspended him. You see, he’s already being punished for what he did.” Wayne’s voice was deserting him. Its pitch kept rising.

“That’s for you to do if you want to,” said Bennie Bird, “But we ain’t yet done what’s for us to do. We want satisfaction.”

“What do you have in mind?” asked Miles.

Bennie Bird said, “Satisfaction for Hank. Eye for an eye.”

Bigmeadow said, “We’ll decide on the satisfaction when the time comes. When we meet with the Norquist boy we’ll decide.”

Wayne squeaked, “But he’s not in school today. He’s home.”

“Go get him.”

Wayne then said something unintelligible, and one of the
men standing behind Bigmeadow was amused by his high, tremulous squeak. This man, a middle-aged Indian wearing the kind of lime-green hat sold at carnivals, laughed out loud. One of his friends snickered. A third man smiled. Bigmeadow scowled at them. So did Wayne. When the carnival-hatted man quit laughing and the other two quit smiling, Wayne turned abruptly and marched across the street, Miles following him.

Wayne called the governor and told him what the Indians wanted. The governor said he was sending twelve highway patrolmen to Staggerford, and Wayne’s job was to keep the lid on until they arrived.

Wayne said, “The student they’re after is not in school today. Do you think he should be?”

The governor thought he should be.

Wayne put his hand over the phone and said, “Pruitt, get Norquist.”

Miles went across the hall to Delia Fritz’s desk to call the Norquist house, and picking up the phone he caught the end of Wayne’s conversation with the governor.

“By the way,” said the governor, “is Ansel Stevenson still your superintendent in Staggerford?”

“He is, but he’s not here this morning. He went home.”

“Well, as long as Ansel Stevenson is your superintendent I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Old Ansel is a great hand with Indians, you know.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Wayne hung up.

Mrs. Norquist answered Miles’s call. She said Jeff was in bed.

“Did he tell you why he is staying home today, Mrs. Norquist?”

“No, he never tells me anything.”

“He’s been suspended for fighting. But it’s imperative that he come back to school now because we want him to attend a meeting. He has made a lot of Indians mad.”

“He’s a thorn in my heart,” said Mrs. Norquist, and she hung up.

Miles called her again. “Am I to understand that you will send Jeff to school right away, Mrs. Norquist?”

“If you think he’ll get out of bed and go to school just on my say-so, you must be a fool, Mr. Pruitt.” She hung up.

Miles went back to Wayne’s outer office and scanned the morning attendance report. Nearly every Indian student was absent; but Annie Bird, as Miles expected, was in school—no doubt in defiance of her people.

He looked up Annie’s class schedule and went to the gym where four teams of girls in red shorts and white shirts were playing volleyball. He called Annie aside and said that he and she must somehow bring Jeff Norquist back to school before twelve o’clock.

Annie said it sounded like a dumb idea. She said the football field was full of Indians and Jeff was better off at home.

“It’s what the governor wants,” said Miles.