Carol Ritten Smith (2 page)

Bill jumped to his feet, nearly knocking over his chair. “Shut up! I’m sick of you bossing me around. Just ’cause you’re three years older than me don’t mean you’re smarter, ’cause you’re not. You don’t know squat about nothing. I’m gonna get me a horse. You’ll see.” Bill slammed the door behind him.

She yanked it opened. “Where are you going?” He didn’t give a reply.

She ached for her bed, but, since she was too upset to sleep, she set to work cleaning up the mess. She filled a bucket from the copper boiler on the stove and began to mop up the mud.

“Beth?”

Taken by surprise, she jumped, nearly dropping her mop.

Davy stood in the bedroom doorway, holding the front of his nightshirt away from his skinny body. “I wet the bed. Please don’t be mad. I tried, but I couldn’t hold it any longer.”

“Oh, Davy.”

“When you went after Bill, you made me promise to stay in bed. Remember?”

“I didn’t mean you couldn’t use the pot under the bed.” If she hadn’t been so emotionally and physically spent, Beth might have seen some humor in the situation. Instead she wanted to sit there and have a long cry. Digging deep, she summoned one last bit of patience. “Change into another nightshirt, and crawl into my bed. I’ll wash your bedding in the morning.”

A few minutes later, dressed in dry bedclothes, Davy padded from his room to Beth’s. “You coming?” he asked.

How she wished she could. “I’m going to wait for Bill. Then I’ll come.” While she rinsed out her mop, she wondered if Mr. Carver believed her story. Probably not. Unbidden, the memory of their few minutes in the barn returned in vivid detail. Bad enough to be caught in his barn, but the rough treatment, his falling on top of her, and then … Her cheeks heated at the memory of his recent manhandling and she slapped her mop hard against the wooden floor and swished it around with vigor. She refused to give him any latitude because he thought she was a boy.
Slap. Swish. Swish.
And the audacity of him, making that lewd comment about her “britches” being too tight through the hips!
Slap. Swish. Swish.
Shame on him for looking. What sort of man was he? A scoundrel! She ceased mopping as she searched for a better word. A reprobate? No, worse than that. A defiler of women! Yes, that’s what Tom Carver was.

Slap. Slap. Swish. Swish.
She scrubbed the floor with a fervor, conjuring up reasons to dislike him, while at the same time desperately trying to ignore her conscience niggling at her. Fine! All right, she admitted grudgingly. He wasn’t
all
bad. When she had arrived at Whistle Creek’s train station with her two brothers, the school committee almost turned them away. But Tom Carver believed her sob story about their parents’ untimely deaths and how she couldn’t leave her siblings behind. Tom was the one who had convinced the other committee members to let the three of them stay.

Beth threw the muddy water outside and refilled her bucket. She bent to work, mopping up the remaining mud. She still couldn’t quite believe how lucky they had been. Though she had no formal training as a teacher, she relied on her years of attending a one-room school to get by. Soon she was taking attendance and assigning lessons as if she’d been doing it for years.

Then Bill got a job at the livery. Sadly, working with horses spurred his idea of owning his own horse, despite the fact they couldn’t afford one. They had several arguments, but there was no reasoning with him. At sixteen, he was increasingly difficult for her to handle. Oh, who was she kidding, she thought. She had no control over Bill whatsoever.

She shuddered to think of the consequences had he been caught stealing Carver’s horse. Details of their dreadful past would surely be exposed. Best case scenario, they’d be run out of town. Worst case, Beth would hang for what she had done.

• • •

Bill returned home late the next afternoon. He looked as though he’d been on the losing end of a fist fight. His cheek was abraded, his left eye was all but swollen shut, and his chin was caked with dried blood from a bloody nose.

“Where have you been?” Beth grilled. “And what happened to your face?”

Giving no explanation, Bill tramped into his room and slammed the door.

• • •

Monday, Beth ushered her students outside to eat their lunches. She wanted to utilize the quiet time to mark their spelling tests. Freddie North’s spelling was dreadful and it wasn’t only the big words that were giving him trouble; even words that the first graders could spell stumped him. Beth resolved to spend extra time with him. The thought annoyed her, not because she begrudged the time or work, but because Freddie didn’t care one bit about his studies. He would rather pester the other children. He was the biggest, the oldest, and by far her most challenging student in the classroom.

Something hit the roof and Beth knew a noisy game of ante-I-over had been initiated. It was difficult to concentrate on paperwork with the ball thumping on the school roof, and children screaming as they chased each other around. Ten minutes later the racket stopped, indicating that the children had moved on to some other entertainment.

Soon thereafter blonde-headed Inga burst into the classroom. “Miss Patterson, the boys were throwing Penelope’s hat and now it’s in the tree and they can’t get it down.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Beth often wished the large spreading maple in the corner of the schoolyard wasn’t there, and if it hadn’t been such a beautiful old tree, she might have chopped it down herself.

She followed the girl outside to the maple where everyone stood gazing upwards. High above their heads, lodged in the crook of a branch, sat Penelope’s bonnet decorated with feathers and bows, looking like a fancy bird’s nest.

Beth berated herself for not having the foresight to put that hat safely in her closet until classes were dismissed. Something that garish was bound to be too tempting for any boy to leave alone.

“Who started this?” she demanded.

No one confessed.

“I’m going to close my eyes. Whoever started this foolishness had better step forward by the time I count to three … or every single student will have to write lines. One … two … ” Before she got to three, there was a scuffle. “Three,” she said and opened her eyes. Standing before her was Freddie North, no doubt pushed front and center by his fellow classmates.

It didn’t surprise Beth in the least he was the culprit. But today of all days, why couldn’t it have been someone else? Freddie’s father was Raymond North, the owner of North’s Bank. Beth planned to go to the bank this afternoon for a loan so Bill could buy a horse. Punishing his son would not go in her favor.

Beth felt sick. “Did you take Penelope’s hat from her, Freddie?”
Please say no.

Freddie gave her a belligerent look. “What if I did?”

“You should not take someone else’s property without their permission. Did you ask Penelope if you could have it?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“He did not! I would never let him have my bonnet!”

Freddie turned on her. “We was just playing a little game o’ keep away. Ain’t no harm in that.”

Beth interceded. “The
harm
is that Penelope’s hat is now in that tree with no way to get it down.” She knew she was committed to follow through with some form of discipline. “Fred, I want you to go into the school, and write fifty times on the chalkboard, ‘I will show restraint when tempted to do wrong.’ And be sure to use a dictionary.”

Freddie groaned. “But — ”

“Make that seventy-five times.” She stared him down, knowing that if he openly disobeyed, she would have no way to enforce her discipline. He wasn’t much taller than her, but he was far stronger. Her heart thudded erratically. When Freddie stomped toward the schoolhouse, she slowly released her breath. “I will show restraint when tempted to do wrong,” she hollered after him.

The remaining boys stood, hands in pockets, looking guilty and likely thanking their lucky rabbit’s foot they hadn’t thought of grabbing Penelope’s hat first.

This was Beth’s first major disciplinary action. She hoped the other students took note that Miss Patterson was not a teacher to push about. She was in control of what happened on the school grounds and they had better remember it!

“Teacher, how are you going to get the hat down?”

Beth felt her control blow away like a leaf in a tornado. What
was
she going to do? It was obviously too high to reach with a broom.

“I can climb up there and get it,” an older boy volunteered.

“No, you most certainly can not. No children are to climb this tree. That’s the rule.”

Davy shot his hand straight into the air. “I know! You could climb it, Beth. You’re not a kid anymore. You’re all growed up. And you used to be real good at climbing tr … ” His voice petered out when Beth glared at him.

“Oh, please, Miss Patterson,” Penelope begged in a fresh rush of tears. “Mother will be so upset if she finds out I wore it to school. Auntie sent it all the way from Toronto.”

“Hush. Let me think.” Absurd as Davy’s suggestion may have been, Beth decided the only viable solution was to climb the tree herself. She looked over the maple’s structure. When she was younger, she’d shinnied up trees a lot trickier. “Very well, I’ll do the climbing. Everyone stand well back.”

Immediately, the class backed up several paces. Turning to the maple, Beth lifted one leg and settled her foot firmly in a waist high crook. For once, she was thankful for the many layers of concealing petticoats dictated by fashion. She looked up, reached for a branch above her head, grabbed it, and pulled herself up. She reached for the next limb. Despite the branches snagging her bulky skirt and petticoats, Beth climbed with confidence until she reached the branch cradling the hat. Its feathers fluttered in the gentle autumn breeze.

She looked down. The class had moved forward again. “Everyone back!” she commanded. “I don’t want you hurt if I fall.”

She inched out along the limb. It creaked under her weight. She carefully shifted herself further along and stretched forward with her arm. The bonnet was at least ten inches out of reach. If she just budged a little bit more … Suddenly the branch dropped six inches and Beth nearly fell.

The girls below screamed.

“It’s okay. I’m fine.” Beth wondered if she was reassuring herself or her students. She decided it was unsafe to continue and started back down. “The branch isn’t strong enough,” she explained. A short wispy stem caught a strand of her hair and pulled it from the tidy knot at the back of her head.

“Still looking for Cally, Miss Patterson?” a deep voice asked.

Lord love a duck!
Beth looked down through the branches. There stood Tom Carver, his head cocked back, gazing up at her. He sported an exceptionally wide smile. Beth could only imagine how she must look with her petticoats draped on either side of the branch, her hair a mess. She scrambled down from the tree.

“That was a pretty sight.”

Beth glanced to see if any of her students overheard his comment. She couldn’t tell. “Mr. Carver. A gentleman would have averted his eyes.”

“I tell you what, the next time you’re up a tree, I promise to look away.” He grinned.

She wondered how many times he had used his swarthy good looks to get out of trouble. Well, it wouldn’t wash with her! “The wind carried Penelope’s hat into the tree. I was merely trying to retrieve it for her.”

“Seems to me, you might do better if you were wearing those britches again,” he said in a low voice.

The nerve of him! “Mr. Carver,” she retorted, her whisper seething with outrage, “it is none of your business what clothes I do or do not wear.”

Tom shook his head. “Oh, trust me, Miss Patterson, if you chose to wear no clothes, I’d make it my business.”

Beth gasped and hot color poured into her cheeks. How dare he be so crass, once again warping her words into something crude! She presented her back to him and clapped her hands. “Children, lunch break is over.”

“But what about my hat?” Penelope cried.

“You will just have to wait for the wind to bring it down.”

Tom tipped his head back to peer through the leafy branches. “I haven’t climbed a tree in a long time … oh, what the heck! I’ll give it a go.” He whipped off his leather blacksmith apron and dropped it in the brittle grass. Stepping up to the maple’s trunk, he reached high above his head for a secure hold and started climbing. He rapidly ascended the maple and moved along the branch beyond the point where Beth had stopped. It groaned under his weight, but dropped no further.

Beth hoped the branch would break. Nothing would please her more than to see that scoundrel flat on his back. But the branch held and with the agility of a cougar Tom stretched out on the limb and retrieved the bonnet, then descended with it perched at a jaunty angle upon his head. He jumped the last few feet to the ground, removed the bonnet, and bowed low. The children applauded exuberantly.

“You just have to know how to distribute your weight properly.” Tom turned the hat over and inspected its plumage. “If you ask me, this thing looked more at home in the tree. Surely women don’t wear hats like this. Those feathers would make any person look bird-brained.”

Several boys snickered. Beth snatched the hat from Tom and handed it to Penelope. “Mr. Carver, this bonnet is of the latest fashion back East. All proper women wear them.”

“Yeah? Judging by your get-up the other night, I guess
you
would know.”

It took a great deal of restraint to resist kicking him in the shin. “If you will excuse me, I have classes to teach.” She marched to the school steps. “Come along, children. Line up, please. Tidy rows now.”

She stood tall and straight as each student filed past her into the school. Before she could follow them inside, Tom hollered, “One other thing, Miss Patterson.”

“What now?”

He ambled over to her. “Got so distracted with you in the tree and all, I almost forgot why I came over in the first place. Mr. Hoosman had a mare stolen late Friday night. You remember Friday night? We met in my barn.”