Staggerford (6 page)

“That’s quite true,” said Mrs. Stevenson. “You were hardly conscious of their existence. They came to town and went home again the same way farmers do. No fuss.”

“Exactly. So when the Staggerford School Board said, ‘Stevenson, we understand you get along with Indians,’ I said, ‘Who told you that?’

“ ‘We went to St. Paul,’ they said, ‘and we talked to the commissioner of education. The commissioner says so. The commissioner
says
North Siding has the best record of Indian attendance in the state of Minnesota.’

“Well, Miles, you can imagine how I felt when I heard that. I swelled with pride. I suddenly found myself with a reputation as an Indian expert. Blazes, I was proud. You see, I suddenly believed I was an Indian expert. It shows you the danger of jumping to conclusions. There’s a lesson in it, Imogene, Miles, and don’t you forget it. When someone tells you something about yourself that you like the sound of, it’s not necessarily true. You’re tempted to believe it, of course, but don’t let it color your honest opinion of yourself. After all, you know yourself better than other people know you. Hang on to your own opinion of yourself, in spite of what people say. They told me I was an Indian expert, and I knew better, but all six of them said it, and I swallowed it. And I came down here to Staggerford and fell flat on my face.”

“Now, Ansel.” Mrs. Stevenson gently laid her hand on his arm.

“No, it’s a fact, Viola. I came down here to Staggerford and fell flat on my face.”

Miles was sleepy. Stevenson’s talk was a soothing drone, unhurried and soft. Miles wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to take off his shoes and sink deeper into his chair and sleep while Stevenson went on all night with his life story. Stevenson’s life was a lullaby.

“Such gifts,” Mrs. Stevenson said, turning to Imogene. “You cannot imagine the generosity of the people of North Siding. The gifts we received when we moved away. Why, you cannot imagine.”

Stevenson said, “You see, what happened was that the Staggerford School Board had gone to St. Paul to consult the commissioner and the commissioner simply showed them where North Siding was maintaining student attendance at such-and-such a level, and the six men jumped to a false conclusion. They thought I was responsible for the high level of attendance. And when they showed up in
North Siding and told me about it, I jumped to the same conclusion. I thought of myself as an Indian expert. I remember following them out to their car after we had lunch and had talked about salary and everything. I remember what I thought as I watched them drive off in the mud. It was spring and the streets were muddy. To this day I don’t think the streets of North Siding are paved. Main Street, yes, but side streets, Viola? I don’t think so. Anyhow, as I watched them drive off I thought my name must be pretty prominent in education. I imagined my name on every tongue in the commissioner’s office. Perhaps at that very moment I was being praised in the legislature. I knew that the commissioner was an old man. Maybe the governor would appoint me the next commissioner. I had met the governor once at a conference in Minneapolis. We had lunch at the same table. He spilled a drop of coffee on my shoe.”

Stevenson uncrossed his legs and held out his foot, and he and his wife and Imogene and Miles looked at his shoe.

“Well, of course it was all nonsense. I came down here to Staggerford and fell flat on my face.”

“I never dreamed of owning sterling for sixteen,” said Mrs. Stevenson. “But the pieces kept pouring in. When the North Siding faculty wives heard we were leaving, they said, ‘Please tell us the name of your silver pattern, Mrs. Stevenson, we think it’s so lovely.’ I told them the name-Moonscape, it’s called—and wouldn’t you know, everybody’s going-away gift to us was a piece of Moonscape sterling.” She turned and cast a look into the dining room, where glass and china glinted in the shadows.

“You have such nice things,” said Imogene.

“Before we left North Siding, I could only serve twelve.”

A small flame in the cinders sputtered and turned green. The clock growled and struck. Miles couldn’t keep his eyes open.

“It’s no mystery why I failed,” said Stevenson. “It turned out that these Indians around Staggerford are a different breed from the Indians we had up there at North
Siding. An altogether different breed. Ask George Butler. He took my place up there. He’ll tell you that to this day those Pinelake Indians are going to school like whites. They’re a more ambitious breed than these Sandhill Indians. Less clannish. Maybe they’ve got more French blood in them. Or less French blood, who knows? All I know is that I came down here and fell flat on my face.”

There was a pause. Miles opened his eyes and told Stevenson that he was underrating himself. Mrs. Stevenson said so too. So did Imogene. But Miles knew (did Imogene know? did Mrs. Stevenson know?) that Stevenson couldn’t possibly underrate himself. As a superintendent he was a dud. When you considered what he had contributed to the Staggerford school system in twenty years—a mediocre teaching staff, a Faculty Handbook full of platitudes, an average of three Indian graduates per year, compared to perhaps two when he came to town—then you knew the man was a failure. But Miles loved to hear him talk. His voice was a low hum. His life was a lullaby.

Next, the rubber of bridge. Imogene and Stevenson enjoyed bridge and they enjoyed each other as partners. When Stevenson chuckled, Imogene chuckled. When Imogene chuckled, Stevenson chuckled. Nowhere else but at the card table, and then only as partners, was either of them known to chuckle. Tonight they won, which was no more than right; Mrs. Stevenson and Miles were stupid at cards, and Miles was bored besides.

After cards Mrs. Stevenson served raspberry sundaes and butter cookies (the ice cream brought a keen pain to the left side of Miles’s jaw) and after that she took Imogene into the next room for a tour of her china closet. Stevenson and Miles returned to the fire.

“My contract called for me to be in Staggerford on the first of August,” said Stevenson. “That’s twenty years ago last August. Viola and I were scheduled for coffee at Bartholomew Druppers’ house that afternoon. Bartholomew Druppers was chairman of the school board then. He’s still on the board, you know, and he’s mayor now besides. Quite a public servant, Bartholomew Druppers. The coffee
party was going to be an exclusive affair with the school board and their wives and some of the older faculty and
their
wives and a few selected old-time businessmen and
their
wives. It was set to start at three o’clock at the Drupperses’ house.

“So on the first of August Viola and I arrived in town at ten in the morning. The moving van was to follow the next day. I went straight to Bartholomew Droppers’ law office and I said, ‘Mr. Druppers, I don’t know how this is going to set with your wife, but my wife and I will have to take a raincheck on that coffee party this afternoon. This is a working day and I have to be about my business. School begins in one month and it’s none too soon for me to set off on my reservation visits, and my wife has elected to come along with me.’

“Blazes, what a hot-shot I must have been, Miles. I remember the look on Bartholomew’s face.

“ ‘Come with me,’ he said, and he led me across the street to Sy Larson’s grocery store. Sy Larson was also on the board in those days. Bartholomew told Sy that the coffee party was off because I wanted to get started with my work. I remember Sy was behind the meat counter tying a package with a string when he heard the news. He stared at me for a moment, then he went to the phone and got in touch with two more board members and they rushed right over to the store and stood with Bartholomew and Sy in front of the meat counter. I stood a little apart from them as they held a conference. Miles, do you know how I interpreted the serious expressions on their faces? It shows you how innocent I was at the age of forty. I thought their expressions were the expressions of four men who had found themselves a determined leader who would see them through whatever troubles lay ahead—four men who were at last coming to grips with their old, old attendance problem. I imagined the expressions I saw in Larson’s Grocery that day were the same ones you might have seen at the Continental Congress when Jefferson walked in and said, ‘All right, boys, I’ve got a little document here I’d like you to sign; we’ll call it the Declaration of Independence.’
But, Miles my friend, I have since figured out what those expressions really meant. They were not the expressions of courage and determination. Hell, those were the expressions of men who were afraid to tell their wives the coffee party was off. But what did I know? I spoke up and said once more that I had to be about my business, and I left the store and drove with Viola out to the Sandhill Reservation. It was our first look at Sandhill.”

Stevenson shook his head. Miles searched with his tongue for the source of pain on the left side of his jaw.

“Bleak. Blazes, Miles, it’s bleak out there. You know what I mean. You’ve been out there.”

Miles nodded.

“We drove to the village of Sandhill and stopped at the Sandhill General Store. Viola and I went inside and introduced ourselves to Bennie Bird, who’s been running the store since the year one. It was dark in there, and Bennie was sitting behind the bar at the back of the store where he serves beer. That was twenty years ago last August, and to this day, I’m told, he’s still sitting there. I told Bennie I was Staggerford’s new superintendent of schools and I was learning my way around the Sandhill Reservation because the school was there to serve all youngsters in the district, never mind race or creed. I told him I was eager to get acquainted with all the Indian families, and his store looked like the logical place to start. This seemed to puzzle Bennie. He looked over his shoulder, and I was surprised to see a woman sitting behind him in the shadows. She was sitting on a stool smoking a cigarette. I assumed it was Mrs. Bird. I leaned over the bar and introduced Viola to her, but she didn’t respond. She just smoked and stared at us. There was a long silence, which I found very awkward. I repeated to Bennie that I was exploring the reservation. He said nothing. He looked over his shoulder again at the woman. We decided to leave.

“Miles, on the inside of the door there was a sign saying, ‘Did you forget shoelaces?’ I can see it yet. As we were going out the door, we heard Bennie Bird and the woman making a noise. It sounded like they were laughing.
We got into the car and drove another mile or so deeper into the reservation. I could see that Viola’s eyes were wet. You know, Miles, how dismal the Sandhill Reservation looks to a white man. Nothing but brush and jackpines, and here and there a yard full of stumps and weeds. Narrow driveways winding between the trees. Never a straight driveway. All of them narrow and crooked. I don’t know of a more depressing landscape. Dusty roads. No-good land. Brush. Blazes, it’s bleak. I looked at Viola. She did her best to smile, but her eyes were wet. Her instincts were telling her that we had no business on the reservation, and we had no business missing the coffee party. And my instincts were telling me I was no Indian expert, and we had no business leaving North Siding in the first place.

“I turned the car around and we headed back to Staggerford. We drove several miles in silence. Finally I said, ‘Viola, did you forget shoelaces?’ I was trying to be funny. I thought it would cheer her up, you know. But when I said it, she burst into tears and cried like a baby all the way back to Staggerford.”

Imogene and Mrs. Stevenson returned from the dining room and sat down, and Miles tried to imagine Mrs. Stevenson crying like a baby.

The superintendent said, “We should have stayed in North Siding.”

A faint reverberation touched Miles’s ears. It coincided with another twinge of pain in his jaw, and he assumed that it was a rush of blood to his head; but when he heard it again he called it to the attention of the Stevensons.

“Someone at the door, do you suppose?” said Mrs. Stevenson, rising from her chair. “At this hour?”

“The wind,” said the superintendent.

“No, I think it was a knock at the door,” said Imogene.

Mrs. Stevenson went first to the front door, where she found no one, and then noiselessly through the carpeted rooms to the kitchen, where Miles heard her unlock doors, speak, and lock them again. She returned to the fire and sat down.

“The Bone woman,” she said.

“The Bonewoman!” said the superintendent with surprising emotion, picking his feet off the floor, then letting them down again. “The Bonewoman? At this hour? I tell you, something should be done about that woman. Coming around at night. It’s a scandal. Viola, don’t open the door to that woman again.”

Mrs. Stevenson patted his arm. “I gave her a bone, Ansel. The beef bone, from supper. What harm could there possibly be in that?”

“Never again, Viola! She comes like a scavenger. A thief in the night. She’s a crow, picking over carrion. Never again open the door to that woman, Viola.”

Miles saw fear in the superintendent’s eyes. He understood its cause. A few hours before, Miles himself had leaned out the back door of Miss McGee’s house and sensed that the Bonewoman had somehow brought to the neighborhood the shadows and frost of the end of October—that by walking through the garden she was somehow hastening its decay, its freezing, its cover of snow. And now for Superintendent Stevenson, whose passionate clinging to life had fixed his attention squarely on death, the Bonewoman called up the same emotions, but more strongly—a sense of the end of things. Shadows and frost and the end of things.

“What possible harm?” his wife was saying gently. “The roast we had for supper. A good roast.” She turned to Imogene. “It was a delicious roast—tender, and the bone was not large. A very small bone, actually, for so large a roast. What possible harm?”

Imogene stood up and said it was time to go home. Miles agreed, but he was reluctant to follow. For one thing, he was carrying on an experiment in his mouth, finding that if he ran his tongue a certain way along the inside of his lower left wisdom tooth, the pain subsided; and for another thing Stevenson showed signs of dropping back to his normal, relaxed state and appeared ready to begin another installment of his soothing, meaningless biography.