Ms. Miller and the Midas Man (7 page)

“Tell me,” he whispered, his eyes black and bottomless in the porch light.

If he hadn’t sounded so caring, been so gentle, she wouldn’t have laughed, wouldn’t have pushed his hands away so forcefully.

“Look, I appreciate the help with the table, but it doesn’t entitle you to butt into my life. Why don’t you go turn something to gold and leave me alone?”

She took steps to walk away from him, but he snagged her left wrist and held tight.

“I can’t,” he said. “God knows I should. You’re mean and you’re nasty and...I can’t. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

Had she thought him strange? He was just plain nuts. Couldn’t he see she was trying to save him from the curse of her life? Didn’t he know he was better off if her life didn’t touch his?

“I’ll hurt you,” she said, explaining as best she could.

“Go ahead. Take your best shot. I’m not leaving.”

She shook her head. He didn’t understand.

“No. I mean I’ll
really
hurt you.” He frowned in confusion at her seriousness and slackened his hold on her wrist. She stepped away from him. “Stay if you want to, Scotty. I’m going inside. I’m doing you a favor, believe me.”

Okay. The best he could do was give her a high score for originality and watch as she walked into the house and closed the door.

She
was doing him a favor by not opening up to him?
She
was afraid of hurting him, not the other way around? Well, that was one for the books. Reverse rejection?

The porch light didn’t go out until he was through the gate, which meant she was still watching him. But when he turned, the house was dark and he couldn’t tell from where.

“I’m not afraid of you. You hear me, Ms. Miller?” he bellowed into the darkness, his voice echoing through the quiet neighborhood. “You don’t scare me. I’ll be coming back.”

H
E GAVE HER MONDAY
to reflect on and reconsider her hasty decision to ignore him, to think about him and anxiously anticipate his next move. He gave her Monday to miss him—and because he wasn’t sure what he’d do next until Monday evening.

Growing up, it had been a joke at his house when his father would reject the title of Principal Hammond in favor of Mr. Jack-of-All-Trades. “It’s not a part-time job,” he used to say. “People call me Principal Hammond whether I’m at the school or not.”

Of course, that hadn’t meant much to Scotty until he was older, until he was old enough and wise enough to see that being principal was his father’s vocation, not just his occupation. It didn’t start and stop at the doors of the institution he was associated with. It was who he was, whether he was passing out diplomas at graduation or filling in nights for a sick janitor.

Scotty liked the idea of being
someone
and belonging to
something.
Being a son, a brother, a husband, a father, and belonging to a family. Being a teacher or a principal and belonging to a school. Being a good citizen and belonging to a community. It was fundamental and solid, safe and simple. There was no confusion in being who you were.

And so, when he’d accepted the position of principal at Tylerville High School he knew exactly what he was getting into. He knew how important high school was to a child’s intellectual, physical, and emotional development. He knew small-town schools had small budgets, staff shortages, and limited outside resources. He knew it was up to him to maintain academic excellence, to promote community interest and involvement, and to provide the best possible experience for the students.

“I discovered almost immediately the loss of several intramural sports teams, the incorporation of the school newspaper into the English department curriculum, and that the drama club, debate team, chorus, and—for all intents and purposes—the entire art department had been cut away entirely by Mr. Kingsley to meet his budget. In essence, a lot of the fun stuff is gone,” he told an eager, if a bit wary, group of his peers during their first preseason team meeting on Tuesday morning. Faculty meetings were a necessary evil they endured, to present and maintain a united front to the opposing team, their students.

The wariness that morning stemmed, no doubt, from the fact that he had been a lively player on the opposing team less than twenty years earlier and had scored more than once on many of his present teammates.

“Believe me,” he said, sounding very grown-up in his own disbelieving ears. “I understand budgets. And cuts like these are necessary to maintain the core of the curriculum. However, we all know that not every student’s talents will lay within the realm of the three R’s. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Fiske?”

Mrs. Fiske, the English teacher at Tylerville High since the dawn of time, arched a brow and said, “Once upon a time, I had not the slightest hope for you in that direction, Mr. Scotty Hammond.” She paused. “Obviously, appearances can be deceiving.”

He laughed and she smiled at him fondly.

“Time will tell on that one, I suppose, but being a late bloomer myself, I have a special fondness for kids who have to check out all their options before they settle on a career. And I believe it’s our duty to expose
all
our students to as many adventures as they can handle. To give them every opportunity we can muster to try new things. To provide a safe testing ground for their youthful whims and dreams.”

He gave that a few seconds to sink in, and when he saw heads begin to nod in tentative agreement, he continued.

“I’ve been mulling over an idea that I’d like your opinions on,” he said humbly, knowing full well he could institute his idea without their opinions. “I haven’t quite figured out what to do about the sports we’ve cut, but I’ve been thinking of starting a new tradition here at Tylerville High School.” A pregnant pause. “A senior class play.”

The silence that followed his announcement was ominous. Small towns were notoriously reluctant to change, and this included teachers in small-town schools.

“I know that in the past, the drama club put on a yearly presentation. This would be basically the same thing, except it would be extracurricular and the seniors would be responsible for it. And any profits they made would go to a senior class campout in the spring.”

“A senior class campout? In the woods? All night? Together? With boys and girls together?” they asked, in a garble of exclamations.

He laughed quietly and went on. “The whole school could help with the play, for maximum exposure. This would give them a chance to experience acting, to sing if we do a musical. Art work on props, stage work, costuming, promotion, public speaking...a little bit of everything that was cut from the curriculum.”

“But together? All night?”

“Just the seniors, with chaperons. And with their parents’ permission. All of them months short of going to college and being off on their own anyway.”

As he’d suspected, there was more resistance to the students’ sleeping together than to putting on a play. When he made it clear that he’d be coordinating the project and that the campout could just as easily be a day at an amusement park, the friction shriveled to a feeble rub. Deciding to do the play and leaving the other matter up in the air—for further discussion at a later time—brought their meeting to a rapid close and left him with plenty of time to set step two into motion.

The teachers’ conference room at Tylerville Elementary School was as warm and stuffy two weeks before the new school year as it had been two weeks before the end of the last—a short eleven weeks earlier.

It had been a short summer for Gus. Finally being able to afford some changes in her little house had been so exciting in June. By the end of July, her energy was lagging but things were shaping up. The house was beginning to take on a personality of its own—warm, cheerful, comforting—and it was rubbing off on her.

She’d wake to sunshine soaking into and shining off the muted yellow of her bedroom walls; she’d stretch lazily, secure in her sense of belonging, and reflect on the fact that she was truly happy.

Had she ever actually
known
she was happy before? She must have, because she hadn’t always been completely miserable, but...well, maybe she’d just been too busy to notice it before.

Taking the time to notice your happiness sounded ridiculous, but—

“Why, Scotty! Mr. Hammond,” stammered the principal, her dry droning of the school board’s objections to the present health insurance policy ending abruptly when he sneaked, bold and noisy, into the room.

Gus’s heart rate slipped automatically into panic overdrive. A vacuum sucked the air from the room and the temperature soared.

Like everyone else she turned her head to look at the interruption. A cool breeze in tan slacks, his white cotton shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up to his elbows—he tickled goose bumps across her warm flesh. His smile was as refreshing and exhilarating as a dip in a mountain lake. God, he was annoying.

“Mrs. Pennyfeather. Please, don’t let me interrupt,” he said, trying his best to appear repentant. Ha! Gus almost laughed. “We...we’ve had a bit of a brainstorm over at the high school this morning and I wanted to come over and get your input—since it would involve some of your students as well. But I guess it can wait till you’re done here.”

“Oh,” she said, startled, confused, and curious. “Well, we were just finishing up. I must say, I can’t imagine what all this is about. Did you want to speak in private?”

It was then that he looked about at the gathering, as if he’d just suddenly realized what he’d walked in on. His open, friendly gaze barely grazed Gus, still she felt targeted and pierced through and through. The fool winked at her.

“No no. No need for privacy. We were so excited about it at our meeting that it’ll be all over town before lunchtime,” he said, walking to the front of the room. He beamed that smile of his like a beacon in a dense fog, from one side of the room to the other, pulling every eye in his direction. “I confess, I was completely blown over by my staff’s enthusiasm. A spark of an idea, and it caught on like wildfire.”

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Beverly Johns, the perky first-grade teacher, said. She giggled like a six-year-old and stared up at him adoringly. “Scotty, you’re terrible to tease us like this.”

Gus rolled her eyes toward heaven and prayed for strength. Well, she wasn’t going to get sucked into whatever he was up to. No way. She wouldn’t even look at him, she decided, tracing a heat circle in the veneer of the big wooden table with her right index finger, her left hand under the table rotating round and round and round—then back in the opposite direction.

“You always were fun to tease, Bev,” he said.

She glanced up, caught off guard by the affectionate tone in his voice. He was grinning at Beverly as he slipped his hands halfway into his pockets. He looked very much at ease—as he did everywhere—and Gus wanted to loathe him for it. He quickly explained the situation at the high school and the plan devised to temporarily fill the need. Gus tried not to hear him, but he had a nice voice. Deep and low, infectious and entrancing, it had a tendency to vibrate with whatever emotion he happened to be feeling. It was a voice that was hard to ignore. Harder to forget.

Her thoughts strayed to that night, dark and intimate, mysterious and magical. Him, standing close and concerned, his hands on her shoulders, warm and gentle. His scent in her nostrils. Her heart racing. His words, “What happened to you? Who hurt you?” rang in her ears.

How would you tell someone like Scott Hammond—Mr. Damn Midas Man—that not everyone had the gift of turning everything they touched to gold? That the touch of some people turned things to dust? That it didn’t matter if, in the wee hours of the night, his warmth and concern might have been a comfort to her soul, the risk of reaching out to him was too great?

How would you tell someone like Scott Hammond that some people were simply meant to be alone? That they hadn’t the vaguest idea how to keep a man content and satisfied? That the future wasn’t something they looked forward to? That it frightened them? That they couldn’t be trusted with someone else’s hopes and dreams?

Draw him a picture? Pencil a failure graph along her life line? Tell him the truth?

“...working closely with your music director.”

Gus looked up to find him staring down at her, his dark eyes twinkling happily. She frowned in confusion. “What?”

“Well, we did consider
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
but when
The Wizard of Oz
came up, it just seemed like the best vehicle for our purpose. Singing, dancing, acting, plenty of scenery and costumes...and with the addition of Munchkins, a bigger mandatory audience.”

He chuckled with everyone else who knew that no mother, father, grandparent, uncle, aunt, cousin, or neighbor would miss the chance to see their favorite first- or second-grader dressed up as a Munchkin. At the same time, he studied her.

“Of course, if you think this is too big a project for you to handle along with your other responsibilities here at the school,” he said, a calculating light coming to his eyes. “Well, I’m sure we could come up with a less challenging project for our first attempt at a senior class play. We’d probably also lose a lot of the enthusiasm and the momentum required to get something like this firmly rooted in the community, but...” He shrugged helplessly.

Slowly, she turned her head and then her eyes to the left to find everyone watching her expectantly. As this was only her second school year among them, she was still something of a newcomer, and an oddity, considering her background. She could see the uncertainty and hope in their expressions.

“I think I can manage to teach the children the songs,” she said finally, refusing to look his way again.

Well, she intended to refuse, but was unable to help herself when he spoke again.

“Thank you, Ms. Miller,” he said. “I was hoping I could count on you.”

He wasn’t teasing her. Their eyes met, exchanged suspicion and appreciation, then finally settled somewhere near the understanding that ultimately they were benefiting the children of Tylerville.