The Lesson (21 page)

Fern squinted her eyes at him as if he had completely lost his mind.

“NOW THAT,” Uncle Hank interrupted, “reminds me of my great, great aunt Mathilda, who rowed over from the Old Country in a canoe.” He helped himself to another serving of potatoes.

“A canoe, you say?” Amos said, calm as a cucumber. He reached out for the butter to spread on his bread roll, but Fern intercepted and moved the butter tray away from him. The man’s dark eyebrows sprang up as he gave his wife a look of obvious merriment.

“A canoe and a pet parrot named Oscar,” Uncle Hank said, winking at Jenny. “So she had someone to talk to. She liked to talk, that Aunt Mathilda. The problem came when the parrot started talking back to her.” He jumped to his feet and shaded his eyes with his hand, as if looking for land. “Paddle faster, Mathilda! Faster!
Sqwuak! Sqwuak!
”

A laugh burst out of Jenny. She laughed in absolute glee, and to her surprise the others joined in, creating a tangible joy that fell upon the room like soft goose feathers. Something bloomed inside of Jenny at that moment, a leaf unfurling in the spring. It felt so good to be a part of a family.

Fern rolled her eyes. “Hank has found a fresh audience for his old tales.”

“Uncle Hank’s tales are always worth hearing again,” Teacher M.K. said. She leaned over to whisper to Jenny, “Unless you happen to be Fern, who says once is all she needs.”

“I HEARD THAT,” Uncle Hank bellowed. “You, Jenny Yoder, are welcome back every night!” Uncle Hank pinned M.K. with his good eye. “Now that M.K. has gone the ways of crotchety schoolmarms, I’ve been missing having someone appreciate my fine stories!”

Jenny looked at Teacher M.K. to see if she might be offended, but she was laughing. A warm feeling spread through Jenny. Amos and Fern told her to come back soon, to stop by anytime at all, and the way they said it, she knew they meant it. Fern had even told her to come over for a bread roll making lesson tomorrow afternoon after school, and Jenny thought she just might. She did love those sourdough bread rolls.

Then Jenny turned to Chris. She saw the way Chris was gazing at Teacher M.K. and she thought,
Oh, boy
.

11

W
hen Fern Lapp told Jenny to join her after school and help her make bread rolls, Chris had a hunch that it would end up being more than a onetime occurrence. Jenny had been kind of lost and alone in Stoney Ridge, and he saw the look of longing on her face as they sat down to that pot roast and potato dinner. It wasn’t about food—it was about having a place at someone’s table. About belonging.

His instincts were right. Two weeks later, it was getting harder to keep Jenny home from Windmill Farm. Chris nearly gave up trying.

Now that Fern had an apprentice, she decided to try selling baked goods at her roadside stand that stood at the bottom of the driveway for Windmill Farm. She was even paying Jenny to work the stand after school let out. Townsfolk were starting to drive out to Windmill Farm to pick up a loaf of bread or cinnamon rolls, because it was cheaper than Sweet Tooth Bakery, fresher and tastier. The bakery owner, Nora Stroot, was livid.

Chris didn’t think Nora Stroot should be too worried about it. When winter came, Chris was pretty sure that Fern would close up the stand and think of something else to keep Jenny
busy. Because
that
, he knew, was the true motive behind Fern’s bread making tutorials. For all her bluster, Fern Lapp was a marshmallow.

It did concern him, though, to see Jenny start looking and acting like Fern. Everything she talked about now was “Fern said this,” or “Fern said that.” Chris tried to have talks with her, about not getting too attached, and to not become a pest over there at Windmill Farm. In two weeks, she seemed far more attached to Fern than she had ever been to Old Deborah. But then, Old Deborah was . . . really, really . . . old.

“Pshaw,” Jenny shot back. “Fern said it’s not good to worry too much about what tomorrow holds.” Then she would start scrubbing the kitchen sink as if it were a hotbed of germs. And Chris would sigh.

But he knew that every child deserved such moments—times of knowing that someone was looking out for you. He had his own: his grandfather lifting him up out of the backseat of the car after a long drive, carrying him into the house and up the stairs and putting him to bed. The scratchiness of his chin, the smell of his aftershave. Jenny deserved this time with Fern, time to make her own memories.

Jenny was wearing the heart-shaped Lancaster prayer cap now, and Fern showed her how to get her hair to stay pinned in a bun. Jenny was even starting to turn up out of thin air, the same way Fern had of doing. If you asked Chris, Jenny was turning into a cut-down version of Fern Lapp.

Jenny felt a little sorry for Eugene Miller. Today, he showed up at school with a big black eye. She had asked him about his black eye and he told her he was breaking wild colts for the rodeo in his spare time. She didn’t think that was true.
Maybe, but probably not. Anna Mae raised her hand, probably eager to tell the teacher that she was sure Eugene was lying about the rodeo, but Teacher M.K. never did call on her. She had just acted like it was nothing unusual for Anne Mae to keep her hand aimed for the sky. And in a way, it wasn’t.

Jenny had expected Teacher M.K.’s new-and-improved teaching style would mean she would holler at them and hit her desk with the ruler, but now she would just look at the big boys, with her eyebrow up and her mouth a little pushed to one side. It wasn’t a mean look—it was a smart look. So the big boys stopped and sat down. It wasn’t any fun trying to get the teacher upset because it didn’t look like she could be upset.

Teacher M.K. was different somehow. It started on that day when she put Eugene Miller in his place. Then she did something pretty smart, which was good for a teacher who had seemed pretty dumb.

She flip-flopped the day’s work, so reading and arithmetic came in the morning. In the afternoon, she introduced a new period: art. Even Eugene didn’t slip away for the afternoon when he saw what Teacher M.K. had planned. She brought out paper for everybody, and a wooden box with little metal tubes of paint. She showed everyone how to rule a margin for the picture so there would be a white space all around for a frame. She showed them how to wipe brushes carefully while they were painting. Pretty soon everyone just got quiet, they were so happy making pictures.

Barbara Jean Shrock painted a picture of her baby sister, but she forgot to add eyes and a nose and a mouth. Danny Riehl drew a picture of an airplane. He knew all the different names of airplanes and all about their engines and stuff like
that. Anna Mae drew a picture of her and Danny on their wedding day. That made Danny’s face go cherry red.

Jenny painted a picture of a rainbow with a pot of gold at the bottom of it. She had always thought it might be nice to find a pot of gold someday. Life would be much easier. Maybe then her mother would be happy.

But it was Eugene Miller’s picture that was the best. He painted a falcon that looked so real it wouldn’t have surprised Jenny if it had taken flight. He said it was a peregrine falcon and that there was a nesting pair at Windmill Farm that returned year after year. He said he had watched them across the street with his binoculars. Teacher M.K. nodded, and she looked really pleased. Eugene didn’t seem nearly as annoying when he was talking about the falcons. Maybe there was hope for him.

Teacher M.K. had hung all the pictures on the wall. The room seemed much more cheerful after that. Everyone couldn’t stop looking at them.

That was the day Teacher M.K. put Eugene Miller in his place. That was the day something happened. Something that gave Jenny more to think about than worries about her mom. By the end of that afternoon, the children looked different too. Like something good was going to happen.

On a gray afternoon in October, M.K. went into the Stoney Ridge public library. She sought out the head librarian and asked, “Do you have any books on reading problems?”

The librarian’s face turned sad and pitiful. “Are you having a problem with reading, dearie?”

How insulting! “Not me,” M.K. huffed. “A student of mine.”

The librarian led her to a section of books at the far end of the library. The sunlight from the window was filled with dust particles. It looked like this section of books hadn’t been visited very often. She pointed to the bottom row. “Those are the only books we have about reading difficulties.”

M.K. pulled out a few books and went over to a table to sift through them. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for, but she knew Eugene Miller was a bright boy, imaginative and creative and artistic, but he couldn’t read or write at his age level. Not even close. In fact, some of his papers looked like a second grader’s. Untidy, mixed-up letters and numbers. He was easily frustrated, became bored, and that’s when he would start some mischief in the classroom.

The more she read, the more she thought she was finding what was behind Eugene’s reading struggle: something called
dyslexia
. She came across one paragraph that leapt out at her:

“Compared to the average person, a dyslexic generally has very strong visual skills, a vivid imagination, strong practical/manipulative skills—”

Oh . . . that definitely sounded like Eugene Miller.

“—innovation, and an above-average intelligence. Basically the right side of the brain is stronger than the left—and that’s what a good artist needs. As a dyslexic you are likely to have a greater appreciation for color, tone, and texture. Your grasp of two-dimensional and three-dimensional form is more acute. You can visualize your art before reaching for the paint brush, and your imagination will allow you to go beyond the norm and create new and innovative expression.”

M.K. thought about Eugene’s peregrine falcon drawing. It was shockingly beautiful—the minute detail, the haughty gaze in the tercil’s eyes, the vicious-looking talons. It was as vivid and realistic as a photograph. That was it! It seemed
as if Eugene had a photograph of it in his mind and was somehow able to transfer that image onto paper.

Eugene was always drawing something. A stick in the dirt, pencil sketches around the edges of his math assignment, caricatures on the chalkboard.

She closed the book with a sigh. If it might be true that Eugene had dyslexia, what could she really do for him? She was no expert. She had an eighth-grade education. Most of these words were entirely new to her, and she considered herself a first-rate philologist. Still, she checked a few books out and left the library.

As she walked down the front path of the library, she noticed Chris Yoder coming down the street in his horse and buggy. He saw her and lifted a hand to wave to her. She reached down to pick up her scooter, hoping Chris might offer her a ride home, but when she looked up, he had passed by.

She didn’t mind too much about Chris. He was friendly enough, but either he was keeping his distance, or she was keeping hers. She didn’t mind too much. Really, not at all, hardly.

Of all people!
The very moment Chris was heading to the sheriff’s office to have a talk with him, Mary Kate Lapp came strolling out of the library—directly across the street from the office. There was no way he was going to pull into the sheriff’s office at that moment. No way at all. He hurried Samson down the street and pulled over at the Sweet Tooth Bakery Shop and waited until he saw Mary Kate zip away, heading in the direction of Windmill Farm. He couldn’t hold back a grin from spreading over his face as he saw her zoom away. She was always darting around Stoney Ridge on that little red push-scooter.