Tisha (35 page)

We all went out to see her off. The sun had been up for more than a half hour, but the sky was so overcast it was almost like night. “You make sure you study
everything I gave you,” I said to her. I’d given her a couple of books to take along and marked the pages for her.

“I will,” she said.

We’d filled a pillowcase with all her stuff. She handed it to Mr. Strong and he shoved it under the tarpaulin covering the sled.

When she said good-bye to Chuck she told him to be a good boy. “With me gone,” she said, “you’re gonna have to help out more—do the dishes and things like that.”

He stuck out his lower lip. “I no do dishes,” he said proudly. “Womans do dishes.”

“Just the same, Anne’s gonna need all the help you can give her, you savvy?”

“I help plenty.”

She picked Ethel up. “‘Bye, sweetheart,” she said, giving her a hug before she put her down. It was time to go.

“You keep studying hard,” I said to her.

“I hate to go,” she said.

“You’ll be back to take the exam before you know it.”

She swallowed hard so she wouldn’t cry, then we hugged each other good-bye. “Thanks, Anne,” she whispered. “Thanks for everything.” She hugged me tighter. “You were right to take those two,” she said. “They’re good kids. I hope it works out.”

It was a big thing for her to say, a real big thing, and I appreciated it. We’d both have started to cry if we said anything more, so we didn’t.

Then she was clambering up on the sled and the children were all shouting good-bye to her. As soon as Ethel realized Nancy was going she started to cry.

The sled pulled out. Nancy turned around a couple of times to wave, and then she was gone. We all went back into the schoolhouse.

Right from the start the place seemed emptier without her, and came suppertime I really missed her.

Over the next couple of days, especially after school, I missed her more and more. Besides not having her company anymore, and her help with the chores, I
started having trouble with Chuck and Ethel. I didn’t know which one was worse. Ethel always seemed to be under my feet, clinging to me and putting her arms out to be picked up, and Chuck didn’t take to it at all. He was always pushing her away from me, wanting to be close to me himself. I tried to explain to him why Ethel was doing it, but it didn’t do too much good. With Nancy gone there was only me, and Chuck wanted to make sure Ethel wasn’t going to take first place. So they carried on their little war, he giving her a pinch or a sock when he thought I wasn’t looking, she holding on to me every chance she had.

Even with the jealousy and the rows, though, I loved having them. Ever since I could remember I’d always wanted children of my own to take care of. Once when I was a little girl there were two little kids that lived next door to me that my mother never let me play with. She said that they were dirty and had lice. One day while I was talking with them over the fence—the two of them scratching and whimpering—I felt so sorry for them that I brought them into our yard and filled an old washtub full of water. I figured that if I cleaned them up my mother wouldn’t mind if I played with them. They loved it and so did I—until my mother caught me. She was furious, and so was my father. He gave me a good whipping and sent me to bed without my supper, saying that would teach me not to play with trash. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, so I guessed there was just something wrong with me. If there was then the same thing was still wrong with me, because I could no more have parted with Chuck and Ethel than if they’d been my own little brother and sister. I even went to sleep when they did. It was easier than trying to get them to bed by themselves now that Nancy was gone, and it turned out to be fun. With Chuck on one side of me and Ethel on the other, I sat up in bed with a book of fairy tales and read until they dropped off. Ethel didn’t have the least idea of what the story was about, but she seemed to enjoy it as much as Chuck did. In the morning I’d just get up earlier to get my work done.

A few days after Nancy left, Jeannette and her husband
started for Eagle, with Jeannette and the baby tucked into the Carews’ sled. They stopped by the schoolhouse before they left so Jeannette could say good-bye to Jimmy and Willard and let them have one last look at their niece. The Carews had a fairly good string of dogs, but there was an awful lot on the sled for them to pull. Since Maggie would be closing the roadhouse, she was trying to move as many things to Eagle as she could. All told there must have been about seven or eight hundred pounds there.

Ben Norvall said they oughtn’t to go with so much packed on the sled. “There’s a storm comin’ down,” Ben said, “and you’re Hable to run right into it.”

Maggie came out of the roadhouse while they were still talking about it. She’d had second thoughts too. She came on over and looked the sled over pretty carefully. “Maybe you oughtta leave off some a them things,” she said to Jeannette’s husband. “You’re liable to take a spill and get hurt.” They argued about it for a while, then decided to take off a couple of picture frames, a whole bunch of iron pots and a small Yukon stove. Some more discussion followed, until finally they took off a couple of hundred pounds before they left.

A few hours later Ben was proved right. A really mean freeze came in so fast you could hear the nails in the walls snapping as they contracted. Even after we built up the fire till the sides of the stove were red hot the schoolroom was hardly bearable. It was the wind that did it, sweeping down from the north and bringing sleet that drove against the windows so hard I thought they’d break. It wasn’t any kind of weather you wanted to be out in and for a while I thought I’d have to keep Isabelle and Joan Simpson overnight. But Mr. Purdy showed up for Isabelle about seven and Joan’s father came about a half hour later.

When I was putting Chuck and Ethel to bed that night somebody knocked at the door. I yelled come in, but nobody did. After another knock I went to it. It was still sleeting out and I could hardly see beyond the edge of the porch. Right in front of the threshold was a fancy little box all done up with gleaming ribbon and cellophane. My heart gave a jump. I thought right away
that it was from Fred and I poked my head out around the jamb with a smile I hadn’t felt like showing in weeks. I should have known better, though, because there, hugging the wall so tight his Stetson was tipped down to his nose, was Cab Jackson. He tipped it back up and gave me that big dumb grin of his, then he picked up the fancy box and held it out to me. “Howdy, Teacher.”

It was too cold to do anything but invite him in and have him get the children all awake again. Chuck was right out of bed, of course, wanting to see the present. Ethel was up too and they wouldn’t go back to bed until I’d let Chuck open the box and take out the bottle of perfume that was in it. I gave them each a smell, then hustled them off to sleep, with Chuck getting the cellophane wrapping and Ethel the ribbon. Then I gave Cab a cup of coffee and made a cup of tea for myself. “I’m sorry ’bout what happened last time,” he said. “I don’t hardly remember any of it, but I sure wish you wouldn’t be mad at me.”

“I got over it.”

“You wouldn’t maybe want to splash a little of that perfume on and come over t’the roadhouse a spell, would ya?”

“I can’t leave the kids alone, Cab.”

He looked over at them and I could feel a sermon coming, so I changed the subject. “D’you come in from Eagle?”

“Nulato. Did a little business there. I’ll be mushing over to Eagle when I leave here—tomorrow mornin’ I reckon. Teacher,” he said, “you mind if I tell you somethin’?”

“I’ll have to hear it first.”

“There’s some mighty loose talk bein’ spread about you.”

“Nothing I can do about that.”

“You’re roonin’ your whole career, people are sayin’, an’ they’re right.”

“I’ll make you a deal, Cab. I won’t say anything to you about whiskey running if you won’t say anything to me about what I do.”

“I got to,” he said. “You are just too fine a person
to have people talkin’ the way they are. I got a good mind to let that Joe Temple have it for givin’ them kids to you.”

“I hope you won’t,” I said. “I asked him for them.”

“But don’t you see you’re throwin’ away your whole future? The only thing stoppin’ that school board in Eagle from givin’ you your walkin’ papers right now is old Strong. He’s a-tellin’ ’em to wait ’n see … And Teacher, I don’t want you to lose that job. Shucks, I was bankin’ on you bein’ there. I got some pretty deep feelings about ya, as you do know by now.”

“I appreciate it, Cab. I appreciate everything you’re trying to tell me, but I know what I’m doing and I want to do it.”

“No you don’t, Teacher. You got a heart big as all outdoors and you’re lettin’ it rule out your good sense. I’m askin’ you as one who is truly interested in your welfare and your good name—you just let me mush them two kids outta here and you’ll wind up the happiest female in the Forty Mile. You will.”

“It’s getting kinda late. I’ve still got some work to do.”

He got up and took his mackinaw down from the drying rack. He looked at me as if he was really worried. “You sure you feelin’ good, Teacher? You know—not sick or anything? Sometimes that can happen …”

“I’m not tetched, if that’s what you mean.”

He smiled. Then he said something I thought was really touching. “I guess you think I’m kinda wild and not smart. And maybe I’m
not
too smart either. But I got deep feelin’s, Teacher, deep and good feelin’s. About you ’specially. I wanta do somethin’ for you, in the worst way. I wanna be a help to you. You know what I mean?”

“I think so … I appreciate it.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

When I went to sleep the wind was raging, blowing so hard that if the windows hadn’t been frozen in place they’d have been rattling loud enough to keep us all awake. I woke in the middle of the night. It was warmer and it wasn’t sleeting. Getting up, I turned the stove
damper down, then I went into the schoolroom and did the same thing. It was so quiet outside that I went to the window. Snow was falling softly. I didn’t look at the clock, but I had a feeling it was about three. If it kept falling this thickly there’d be two feet on the ground before morning.

It must have stopped soon after because the next morning there were just a few more inches on the ground. It was gloomy and foggy out all that day, though, so we didn’t even go outside for recess.

A little after school was over Harry Dowles knocked at the door and said he needed a couple of things from the store. Joan’s mother hadn’t come to pick her up yet and I didn’t like the idea of leaving the children alone, so I offered to give him the key.

He said no thanks. “Wouldn’t want to be accused of shoplifting. Only take a minute,” he said.

I peeked into the schoolroom. The three of them were playing line cabin. Chuck had stretched a blanket over a few boxes and Joan and Ethel were inside the “cabin,” while Chuck was out “trapping.” They were playing so well that I didn’t see any harm in leaving them for a few minutes. I told Chuck to make sure the three of them stayed in the schoolroom, then I went out.

In Mr. Strong’s store, Harry said he needed some blue thread. The color he wanted wasn’t on the rack with all the other thread so I had to hunt through some boxes before I found it. Then he asked for a tin of tea and five pounds of sugar. After I weighed out the sugar, he looked around, scratching his head. “Somep’n else I wanted,” he said.

“Maybe you’ll think of it later,” I told him. I’d been gone over five minutes and wanted to get back.

“No,” he said. “It’s somep’n I need bad.” He kept looking around making a big show of trying to think, and I should have realized then and there something was wrong, but I didn’t. I reeled off a bunch of things and he kept saying no, none of them was it until I mentioned matches and he said he could use a few boxes, but that still wasn’t it. Finally I told him I had to get back and that made him all kinds of nervous.

Just then from outside I heard Cab yell out “Yah-h-h-h—mush!” I didn’t take particular note of it except to wonder why he was leaving so late. Last night he’d told me he’d be leaving early in the morning.

“Well,” Harry Dowles said then, “I guess I can’t think of it. You go ahead and tally up.” He put a hand on the counter and it was shaking. I looked at him and his eyes shifted away.

And then it came to me. My first instinct was to say I was wrong, that nobody would do a thing like that. But then I knew I was right. I knew it. It was written all over Harry’s face, and I felt sick.

I ran for the door, and then I was outside, running along the path to the schoolhouse and seeing Angela Barrett just ducking into the roadhouse storm entry. Cab’s sled was already well out of the settlement, speeding up the trail beside Chicken Creek, and he was cursing his dogs a blue streak, yelling for them to move faster. He was running in back of it, so I couldn’t really see the sled at first. But then the dogs swung to the left where the creek jogged and the sled was in full view for a few moments.

Chuck and Ethel were in it.

“Cab, come back!” I yelled. “Come back!”

I started to run after him, but it was useless. The dogs were fresh and the sled was moving too fast. I’d never be able to catch him.

I kept yelling and calling, but he didn’t so much as turn around. In a minute the sled veered to the left to avoid a big patch of scrub, then disappeared. I stood there dazed, hearing Cab urge the dogs on, and then I didn’t even hear that anymore. I turned back.

Except for little Joan, who was standing on the porch of the schoolhouse shivering, no one was out. The whole settlement could have been deserted. Inside my quarters I asked her what happened.

She was almost too bewildered to tell me. And frightened. “They just came in here, Teacher,” she stammered, “a whole bunch of ’em. They came in and took Ethel and Chuck away—just took ’em. I was scared they were gonna take me away too.”

She broke into tears. It took a few minutes before she could tell me who had done it

“Mr. Vaughn. And Mrs. Barrett. And that man whose sled it is … Why did they do that, Teacher?”