Winter Wheat (27 page)

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it, and I wouldn’t want to stay on if they won’t believe us,” I said. “But, Warren, what about Leslie? He mustn’t hear any of this. It would spoil everything.”

Warren’s anger had disappeared, but his face looked so hopeless it hurt me to see him.

“I guess he just has the wrong father and the sooner he gives him up for a bad job, the better for him.”

“Don’t talk like that!” I said.

“I’m going to see Cassidy first. He’s pretty human,” he said. I followed him out to the porch and watched him going through the snow that had plenty of tracks now.

14

I MADE
my bed and straightened my room and still it was only seven-thirty. Mr. Thorson had said I wouldn’t have any pupils today, but perhaps some would come after all. This morning seemed like the morning after Robert’s death when I waited for the children. Only then I had felt guilty; today I didn’t.

I went out to the schoolroom and arranged my books in order for the day’s lessons. I went through the back spelling words and made a list for a test. The parents must know every single thing that happened in school. I was glad that I hadn’t known it before. It gave me a spied-on feeling. I thought of Mr. Thorson saying “I’ve heard your mother’s a foreigner.”

I heard the sound of the doorknob that was loose and always rattled a little.

“Good morning, Miss Webb.” I knew before I looked up that it was Leslie. He slid into his seat and bent his head to look inside his desk. It was eight o’clock. None of the other children were coming. There was no sign of anyone else on the road. I wondered what I should tell him.

Leslie sat up straight and clasped his hands, as the children were asked to do as soon as they came into the schoolroom. I couldn’t help thinking how his father had sat there earlier this morning, talking in such a tormented way.

“Well, it looks as though you were going to be the only pupil this morning,” I said, smiling at him.

“Miss Webb, want to see what I found on the way over?” He came up to the desk, smiling mysteriously. When he stood beside me, he reached under his sweater and brought out a long gray and white feather. He had been so excited about his find he hadn’t heard me.

“Oh, Leslie, what a big one! What kind of a bird do you think it belonged to?”

Leslie looked at me with shining eyes. “I think it belonged to a eagle, Miss Webb, ‘cause it’s such a strong feather—the eagle that lives on top of Prairie Butte!”

“Maybe you’re right,” I agreed.

“I know I am, Miss Webb. D’you want to feel it?”

I riffled the feather against my finger. “You don’t think it could come from a chicken hawk?” I suggested.

“No.” Leslie scowled and shook his head. “Why, Miss Webb, it’d be darker. This one’s almost white, and it’s so long and strong.”

“That’s right,” I said. I was wondering what I should do with him. Mr. Thorson and the school board might come any time.

“Where’re the other kids?” he asked. He hadn’t thought about them before.

“I guess they’re not coming. Most of the parents are coming for a meeting, so the children are lucky and have a vacation today. Maybe your father forgot to tell you.”

“I didn’t see Dad this morning. He’s getting ready to go away.”

“Well, you had a walk for nothing, but you won’t mind that since you found the eagle’s feather.”

Leslie looked out the window at the snow. “I brought my lunch. I’d just as soon stay awhile. Can’t I wash the blackboards?”

“Yes,” I said impatiently. After all, it was only eight-thirty.

Leslie had to stand on a bench to reach the top of the blackboards. The wet slate had a sour, claylike smell that set my teeth on edge.

“Besides, you want the school board to think you keep the blackboards clean,” Leslie said. He went outside and I heard him clapping the erasers together. While he was out there, Nels Thorson and Francis La Mere went by. Francis had his rifle. They called out and Leslie called back. They walked backward a way to see him, but they didn’t stop. They would go home and tell their families that Leslie was here.

“Leslie, how would you like to take a book home with you to read?”

“Okay, Miss Webb.” He went over to the bookshelf and took a book. “You want me to go now, don’t you?”

“Well, I hate to have you waste the day here when the other children are out shooting and playing.”

“I’m going now,” he said. When he had his galoshes and cap and jacket on he came back to the desk. “Would you like my feather to keep, Miss Webb?”

“Oh, thank you, Leslie.” And then I had a better idea. “Why don’t you give it to your father to take with him to the Army?”

“That’s a swell idea, Miss Webb.”

I watched him go. He stuck his feather in his cap and before he was past the fence post he was eating a sandwich from his lunch.

I waited so hard the back of my neck ached. I was tight all over, the way I’ve been after a whole day on the combine when something goes wrong with the machinery. I couldn’t keep my mind on anything to read. I couldn’t go for a walk, because they might come and think I had been afraid of them. I tried to think what I would say to them, but I couldn’t. I would just have to wait till they came. I thought of Gil, but that didn’t help. Gil would hate anything like this; this had mud in it, and hate.

I watched them getting out of Mr. Thorson’s car; he had brought Mr. La Mere and Mrs. Cassidy and Mrs. Donaldson. Mrs. Donaldson kept nodding her head and talking fast. Mr. La Mere looked down at the snow while Mrs. Donaldson was talking. I went to the door and said how do you do, as though they were coming to the Christmas exercises.

They had to sit on a bench and the front seats around my desk. Mrs. Donaldson wouldn’t look at me. Mrs. Cassidy smiled and then covered it by blowing her nose. Mr. Thorson rose to talk. He put his hands in his pockets and looked out the window. There was a long minute of embarrassed silence.

“Miss Webb,” Mr. Thorson began, “we’re sorry we have to come here on such an errand. We’ve seldom had a teacher as promising, I might say, in the Prairie Butte school . . .”

“Nels Thorson, quit beatin’ around the bush. She’s not fit to teach young ones and she oughta go tomorrow,” Mrs. Donaldson interrupted.

“Now, Minnie . . .” Mrs. Cassidy said, but I didn’t wait.

“I’ll be glad to go, Mr. Thorson. If you don’t care to take my word and accept the explanation I gave you, I wouldn’t care to stay.”

Mrs. Donaldson sniffed. Suddenly, what I wanted to say was clear to me.

“There’s just one thing I want to insist on, Mr. Thorson. I want to be sure that none of the children get any idea of the bad things you are thinking about me and Leslie Harper’s father.”

“Some of them have seen things for themselves,” Mrs. Donaldson put in.

I could feel my face getting hot and my pulse throbbing in my neck.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me or to Mr. Harper what you think,” I said, “but I don’t want to see a little boy’s faith in his father destroyed by lies. Mr. Harper goes to the Army Saturday. He may not come back!”

“It’d be a shame to turn the boy against his father,” Mr. La Mere said. “We kin say it was sickness that took you home, Miss Webb. We kin put a piece in the paper that reads that way.”

“Teachers are hard to get in the middle of the term, Nels. My Mary’s very fond of Miss Webb,” Mrs. Cassidy said almost guiltily.

But Mr. Thorson shook his head. “Warren Harper threatened to sue me if Miss Webb lost her job . . .”

“I’d like to see him try! You saw him sneaking out of the teacherage this morning with your own eyes!” Mrs. Donaldson bristled. “His boy ought to know the truth.”

I lost control then and I’m not sure of all I said. I remember that I looked at Mrs. Donaldson and Mr. Thorson when I said:

“This war we’re fighting now is against people who have forced others, especially little children, to live in a world without hope or faith. Most of you feel there is no truth in what you are saying about me, but you want to believe there is, just for the excitement. You don’t care if a little boy’s faith in his father is destroyed by your gossip. I’m leaving! I wouldn’t stay now if you begged me to, but I want a promise from each of you that the children won’t hear a story that will break Leslie’s heart.”

Mr. Thorson was studying his hat. Mrs. Donaldson was red in the face. Mr. La Mere looked at me, but his face concealed whatever he thought.

I was trembling so that I gripped the edge of the desk while I waited for them to say something.

Slowly Mr. Thorson got to his feet. “Well, I don’t see as any harm’ll be done if we agree to that.”

“Suits me fine,” Mr. La Mere said, almost with relief, I thought.

“For the Lord’s sake, yes!” Mrs. Cassidy sounded as though she might cry.

“I don’t like it this way, but as long as she can’t hurt my Robert no more, why, I suppose she can let on she’s going home ‘count of sickness. But I won’t have her here!” Mrs. Donaldson declared.

I hardly listened to Mr. Thorson’s remarks. He said there was no hurry. I could wait till the county supervisor notified me. I heard myself repeating that I wouldn’t think of staying any longer than I had to.

But after they had gone I came back in and sat down at my desk. I put my head down on my arm like one of the children. I guess I was tired out. I didn’t want to leave. This place was mine, as the rimrock back of the house is mine. Mom and Dad would believe me, but it would hurt them to have anyone saying these things.

It seemed as though everything I touched turned out wrong. I couldn’t hold Gil’s love, not at first, anyway, and now I couldn’t hold my job. I remembered how Dad had said that other time: “If that boy’s made Ellen unhappy, we’ve got paid back for our sins.” He might even wonder if maybe I had been . . . like Mom.

I hated the way their lives and mine seemed so mixed up together. I almost wished I didn’t have to go home, that I could be free of Mom and Dad and their hate and even their love for me. But I knew I couldn’t. If I went away and got a job somewhere, in the city, I would feel I had run away.

Warren came back in the early evening.

“I couldn’t do a damn thing to help you out of this mess,” he said. He sat there, staring down at his hands. I felt sorry for him, more sorry than I had for myself when Gil went away.

“Don’t worry any more about it. I don’t care,” I told him.

“I’ll drive you home and tell your mother and father how it was,” he said.

“No, you don’t need to do that. I can tell them. They’ll believe me. You only have two more days with Leslie.”

“Please let me. I only have that long to see you, Ellen.” He looked up at me so quickly I couldn’t look away. I had never seen a man’s face so plain before. Nothing was covered up in it. I didn’t doubt that he loved me, it was there so clearly, but it didn’t seem to touch me.

“I won’t ask you again to marry me. Even if you didn’t love your Gil you’d be a fool to take a chance with me, but a thing like last night won’t ever happen again.” When he smiled that way he looked like Leslie. “I don’t know why you should believe me.”

“But I do, Warren,” I said. The funny thing about it was that I did.

“I wish I could have found you, Ellen, before you met Gil. He must be blind.”

“No,” I said. “He’s just the way he has to be. I suppose we all are.”

“Well, when I come back, I’m coming to see you.”

“Of course! I’ll be glad to see you.” I laughed a little to make things easier between us.

“If there was just something I could do to make it up to you.”

“You don’t need to make anything up.” Then I thought of Leslie. “Except I’d like to see you make it up to Leslie.”

His face changed and seemed to brighten under the weariness. “Do you know when I got in the car to go to see Henderson, Leslie came running out and wanted to go along. He’s never done that before without my asking him. It was a poor business to take a child on, but he sat out in the car. He gave me this to take with me to the Army.” Warren took the feather out of his pocket. “He says he’s sure it’s a feather from the eagle that lives on Prairie Butte.” Warren smiled as he told me about it. “Leslie slept all the way home. I carried him into the house and put him on his bed before I came over here.”

“It didn’t really take long to win him over, Warren, did it?”

“Now he’ll hear about last night!”

“No, he won’t. Saturday when you leave you’re going to bring him out to our place as we planned. Then the next week your mother and father will be in town, anyway.”

“How about your mother and father? Do you think they’ll want him after all this?”

“Of course, Warren, they’re not like that.” He looked so relieved I saw he had been worrying about them. “Go on home now and get some sleep. I’ll be ready to go in the morning when you come for me. You’ll have to bring the Pony Express, I’ve got so much stuff.”

He was so tired he didn’t say any more. He just went.

I worked until late that night putting the teacherage in order. I washed the floor again, but I couldn’t see to wash the windows. It was hard to remember how I had felt those first days here, but that was way back in the fall. Now I felt at home. I had come back here from the ranch last time with relief. I didn’t want to go away so soon. The reason for going didn’t seem to touch me—it was just the going.

I had grown used to living alone by myself. Now I didn’t want to go back to our house, where my room was so close to the folks. I had come to like the stillness that had seemed so empty and ghostly at first. Gil would say our ranch house was far enough away to suit anybody, but it was full of Mom’s and Dad’s living. The fields pushed up so close to the house with their crops and the need to worry about them. Here there was nothing. Even the sheepherder drove his herd across this bare place to better grazing ground. But it didn’t seem like nothing to me. It seemed wide and sunny and wind-swept, and I loved it, most of all, perhaps, because I had come out here feeling I had lost Gil and I had found him again while I was here.

I would never be able to make Gil understand how I felt about this place. I would know better than to bring him to see it. It would look only crude and desolate to him. His not understanding seemed for a minute like one of those sharp cuts that the spring rains make in the gumbo. The cut goes deep sometimes.

I remembered how Warren had stood against the door the other night, just last night, really. He had looked around the room and said:

“I always liked this place.”

I went into my room and started to pack my things. I took down the icon and Gil’s water color first.