Tisha (17 page)

From now on I wouldn’t have to eat supper all alone and I’d have somebody to talk to at night. I was getting lonely. She hadn’t shown up the first time Mr. Strong came in and I was afraid that maybe she or her mother had changed her mind about her staying with me, but Mr. Strong had told me she’d be out with him on this trip.

“School’s out for the day!” I yelled, and a minute later the classroom was empty.

The pack train didn’t come in until late—almost three. By then it had started to snow again and it looked as though it might stick. Fred had come in to pick up his family’s mail and he was playing Softball with some of the kids, batting out easy flies to them. I was playing too, when all of a sudden the dogs all over the settlement began to bark and howl, raising a racket in their kennels. It meant that Mr. Strong was pretty near. We were having a good time, so we kept playing while everybody who’d come in from the creeks started emptying out of the roadhouse and others came straggling out of their cabins. I yelled for Fred to pop one over to me, and he hit one that went over my head. The ball hit the side of the Vaughn’s storm entry just as Mr. Vaughn came out. He picked it up and the kids started yelling and waving for him to throw it to them, but he didn’t. He walked over to me with it, his mackinaw collar turned up to hide his big goiter.

“What are all these kids doing out of school?” he asked me.

He knew as well as I did why they weren’t in school, but he couldn’t pass up the chance to let me have it.

“I gave them the afternoon off,” I said.

“Who says it’s up to you when they should have a holiday?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Vaughn, I didn’t think there was anything wrong in it.”

“I suppose you don’t see anything wrong in playing with them like a wild Indian either. I’ve seen you do it during recess.” He turned to Angela Barrett and a few others who’d come up. “You ever see a teacher carry on that way?”

“Not in any school I ever went to,” Angela said.

“Not in any I ever went to either,” Mr. Vaughn said. “You’d better start watching your step.”

I turned beet red, too embarrassed to say a word. He didn’t like me and he didn’t make any bones about it. Merton Atwood had come up, the black flap he’d made for his yachtsman’s cap pulled down around his ears.

“What’re you pickin’ on the girl for?” he asked Mr. Vaughn.

“I’m trying to get her to act like a teacher.”

Mert came to my defense. “What do you mean, act like? Girl’s the best schoolmarm this place ever saw.”

“The next time you want to take time off,” Mr. Vaughn said, “you get permission from the school board.”

Mert spoke right up again. “What’re you talkin’ about? Ever since I can remember, these kids been gettin’ the afternoon off when the pack train’s due in.”

“You mind your own business. No little snotnose is going to decide how to run things here. We were here long before you arrived,” he said, pointing a finger at me, “and we’ll be here after you’re gone. You’re too damn smart for your own good.”

“You don’t have any right to speak to me that way, Mr. Vaughn.”

“I’ll speak to you any way I damn please.” He pointed that finger at me again. “One more word out of you and I’ll smack all that smartness right out of you … Go on,” he challenged me, “let’s see how fresh you can be now.”

He was really working himself into a rage, and I began to feel weak in the legs. I was embarrassed too. Everybody was watching, and more and more people kept drifting over from the post office to see what was going on. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t dare try to reason with him because he’d have slapped me as soon as I opened my mouth. I was even too scared to move.

Fred’s hand touched my arm. “C’mon, Anne.”

He started to lead me away and I went along willingly.

“Good thing your boyfriend has more brains than
you have,” Mr. Vaughn sneered. “I was just getting ready to take you over my knee.”

He kind of sniggered, and Angela Barrett laughed too.

That did it. Fred whirled around. “You won’t lay a finger on her,” he said.

Mr. Vaughn looked as if he’d just heard something he couldn’t believe. “What did you say?”

He walked over to us with blood in his eye. Fred was still holding the baseball bat and he drew it back without saying a word. All of a sudden I knew he’d use it if he had to. I heard Mert say, “Good boy, Fred,” and I didn’t know whether I felt more proud of Fred or scared of Mr. Vaughn.

“Are you threatening me?” Mr. Vaughn said.

“You touch her or me and I’ll let you have it,” Fred said.

He looked Mr. Vaughn straight in the eye when he said it and Mr. Vaughn knew he meant it. It made him swell up so I thought he’d burst his goiter.

He had a cruel wide mouth and teeth like one of those fish that swim way down in the deeps. He was a full head taller than Fred and he’d have chewed Fred up right then and there if he could have. He was afraid of that bat, though.

“You black-assed half-breed sonofabitch,” Mr. Vaughn said. “It seems to me I’ve seen your face around here an awful lot lately.” He was still holding the ball, and suddenly he drew back and threw it. Fred ducked, but he didn’t have to. It went wild.

Fred looked him straight in the eye. “You go to hell,” he said.

My brain started working, and I found my tongue. “Mr. Vaughn, I didn’t think anyone would think it was wrong for me to give the kids the afternoon off,” I said. “I’ll be glad to talk about it with the school board if you want me to.”

That took the wind out of his sails. He gave Fred a contemptuous look just to show he was too puny to bother with, then he went on over to the post office. Fred and I drifted over along with everybody else and
I tried to act as if nothing had happened, but I was so upset that the whole time we waited for the pack train I could hardly say a word to anybody. Even if he didn’t like me he had no call to say what he did to me, especially in front of the class and everybody else, and he certainly didn’t have any call to say what he did to Fred.

I felt a little better as soon as I saw Nancy. She didn’t act too enthusiastic, though. All she gave me was a curt “How do.” She gave even less than that to the people who said hello to her. She just mumbled something and then looked away. I figured she felt strange. As soon as she was settled down, she’d probably be more friendly.

Inside my quarters, while Nancy put away her things I sat down and read a note from her mother that Mr. Strong had handed to me. Along with a few other things Mrs. Prentiss had to say, she wrote that Nancy was usually sensible, “but keep an eye on her. Don’t let her go off to any of those miners’ cabins by herself. She’s inclined to be lazy and stubborn. You make her toe the mark. I’ve warned her to be obedient and help out all she can. Otherwise you’ll send her home and I’ll whip the daylights out of her. Don’t be afraid to tell her that.” She’d also had second thoughts about her offer to pay me. “I heard you don’t have an outfit,” the note ended. “Since it won’t cost anything for Nancy’s room maybe we can work out something where I send you some grub for her keep.”

I put the note in the stove, not thinking one thing or the other about it. Once I had a little boy in my class whose father wrote me that the boy was a liar and a thief, and he turned out to be one of my smartest and best pupils. So I knew better than to judge somebody from what somebody else said.

She didn’t have much with her, just a few pairs of bib overalls and a couple of washed-out old dresses that looked as old-fashioned as the ones in Mr. Strong’s store. After we found a place for everything I told her how much I’d looked forward to having her with me. She didn’t say anything to that. Aside from being so lonely, I went on, the school was taking up so much
time that I couldn’t keep up with all the chores. “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad,” I said, “if there was running water. I never realized how much water a person used until I started packing it up from the creek—water for washing clothes, for washing yourself, for cooking, washing dishes. That’s all I seem to do all day is pack water and then dump it out.” I started to laugh when I told her about the first bath I took. It was a major undertaking. Besides a five-gallon pot I’d had to borrow from Maggie Carew, the top of the cookstove had been crammed with every pot I owned. But when I poured the water from them into the washtub, even with cramping myself down in it, it came up about five inches. After I was finished I felt as dirty as when I started. On top of that it was another major job to dump all the water out back. “Ever since then I’ve settled mostly for sponge baths.”

She didn’t find anything funny about that, so I asked her about her schooling. “What grade have you gone through?”

“Eighth.”

“Without being able to read?”

“I can read somewhat.”

I gave her the nearest book at hand, a fifth-grade reader. Opening it, she studied it for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to read. When she finally did she spat the words out like pits, but she did well enough.

“You read fine,” I said. “I don’t see why you need me.”

“I know most of the words,” she answered.

“That’s what I’m saying. You read pretty well.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I know how to read this book ’cause my ma tutored me with it.”

“How long ago was that?” “Two years ago.”

She saw that I still didn’t understand what she was getting at.

“I can only read,” she said, “if somebody reads it to me first and shows me the words. Don’t you see? My ma read this to me.”

“But that was two years ago. That’s a long time.”

“I studied with it for a whole year,” she said. “Try me with another book.”

I showed her a book of fairy tales. “Have you ever read this?”

She shook her head. I opened the book to the beginning of a story. She studied the page for almost a minute before she began to read. Later I realized that she had guessed at the first few words. “‘Once … upon a … time …’” She paused before she went on, and what came from her next was gibberish. “… Three … was … a … title … tar …” I looked over her shoulder. “There was a little tailor,” the words read.

She went on, the rest of it just as senseless, until finally she gave up. “I don’t know what I’m reading,” she said. I had her try again, but it was the same. She even mistook one letter for another—an l for a t, a
b
for a
d.
When I questioned her I found out she didn’t know what a consonant or a vowel was, nor had she ever memorized the alphabet. To her a word was just a bunch of letters written down in a certain order. She didn’t know that the letters made up syllables and that each syllable had a sound.

Now I understood what she meant when she said she could read something only after somebody read it to her first. She was able to memorize the key words, and guess at the rest. I’d never seen anything like it.

Her teachers had pushed her through to the eighth grade, I guessed, figuring it wouldn’t do any harm and would make her feel good. She couldn’t go any further, though, because in order to get out of the eighth grade she had to pass the territorial examination. And she wasn’t able to read it. After quizzing her for a while I found that she had learned her school work pretty well. She was smart, there wasn’t any doubt about it.

“We’ll enroll you tomorrow morning,” I said.

“I don’t want to be enrolled,” she said tightly.

I had to prod her before she told me the reason: she felt she should have been out of the grades already and couldn’t face the idea of failing again. She became so upset that I agreed not to enroll her even though she would attend classes like the other pupils. At night,
I promised her, I’d give her any extra help she might need.

For the first week I blessed Mr. Strong for advising me to take her. I’d fallen way behind in all my cleaning, washing and ironing, but Nancy pitched in with the chores so willingly that inside of a few days my quarters were spick-and-span. She did most of the cooking too, and even took the job of keeping the fire going. I didn’t know what I’d have done without her, especially when it came to water. The snow that had started on the day she came kept up until it was two feet deep and the creek was running thick with slush ice. Then all of a sudden the temperature dropped to thirty below and the creek froze up. She was one step ahead, though, because she’d already piled snow high alongside the door, and there was our water supply. I didn’t care much for the taste of it. It was flat, until Nancy dumped oatmeal in the barrel, and that improved it.

“We’ll have to go easy on the water now,” she told me.

“I thought I was going easy on it before,” I said.

She said no, I’d have to go even easier. The trick, she showed me, was not to throw any water away until it was thoroughly used—first for personal washing, then for clothes. If necessary it could be used a third time to scrub floors. It didn’t seem very sanitary to me at first, but after packing in snow and ice a few times I stopped worrying about hygiene. She also pointed out to me that Maggie Carew was not only shorting me on each cord of wood she had contracted to supply for the school, but that half of it was green instead of dry. “That’s why the stove smokes so much.”

After the first week or so problems began to come up between us. I’d told her that before she could learn to read she was going to have to learn how to recognize all her letters, printed and written, and learn the sounds they had. She buckled down at first, memorized the letters in no time, and even started to write simple three-letter words. But when a couple of the older kids saw what she was doing they made fun of her. That ended that. She told me she wasn’t going to work in the
classroom any more, at least not on her reading and writing. I let her work in my quarters on those two things, but I wanted her to join the class for discussions, arithmetic, field trips and everything else. She’d sit in class, but she wouldn’t say anything unless I called on her. She was bored. Pretty soon she wasn’t even completing her reading and writing assignments. Either they were done sloppily or not at all. When I asked her what the matter was she said that she didn’t understand why she needed all the drills I was giving her in syllables and sounding out words. She wanted to learn to read and write, and she couldn’t see that she was doing so. I told her that she’d have to start from the beginning. “I know you think you’re not getting anywhere right now, but once you catch on you’ll be reading in no time.”