Under the Same Blue Sky (11 page)

In mid-November, Reverend Collins presented himself at the schoolhouse, waiting impatiently until the last child left to announce that I was driving people from the church. “They’re saying the schoolteacher will cure them if the Good Lord can’t. Edna Fuller abandoned her husband because of you. Is
that
holy work?” He crossed his arms as he often did during sermons, letting minutes crawl by as the congregation squirmed.

“Reverend, I never claimed divine powers.”

“Never? Didn’t you tell the Burnetts you could cast out devils?”

“No, I never said that. Alice has epilepsy. I noticed that Henry and Agnes felt better, and because I was so worried about Alice—”

“You told her parents you could cure her.”

Put thus, of course I seemed a charlatan with claims buoyed by hysterical faith or lucky coincidence. “Reverend, I don’t know what’s happening or why. Sometimes a sort of tremor runs through me and people are cured, or seem to be helped. Why? Because of me or John Foster or Ben or the house? Maybe the paint?
I don’t know.
I just try to—do some good.”

“This is a Christian town, Hazel. Or it was, until you came. Does your power come from Satan?”

“I don’t deserve that question.”

Still a pastor despite his anger, he softened. “I’ll walk you home, Hazel. The ways of the Lord are beyond our understanding. But consider, if these are unholy powers, you must pray for the Lord to remove them. And if they are
from
the Lord, you must pray for wisdom to use them wisely.”

“Yes, Reverend.” On the way home, we managed a little conversation about the Christmas program. He did acknowledge that school attendance had never been higher.

“I’m glad. I enjoy teaching.”

“Well then, that might be the work you’re called to do.”

“Yes, Reverend.”

I
N THREE WEEKS
, Alice had not had a fit, not even the smallest stiffening. Perhaps Edna and her children had found a better life. Ben, in the few times I saw him, neither twitched nor scratched. Henry, Agnes, and all those for whom I’d felt a tremor had not sought another touch. I assumed they still felt themselves cured. But everywhere, eyes scoured me: the grateful, the disappointed, the wary and suspicious. Henry came at nightfall to shoo crowds away, arguing that the schoolteacher needed time for the work she’d been hired to do. In this role, he was roundly disliked—for my sake.

Since the tremor came for only one in four, and then one in five, six, or more, the line of seekers took fervent interest in outcomes. “Successes” roused jealousy:
Why was she healed and not me?
Why that
trivial pain and not mine?
When I felt no tremor, a palpable shiver of pleasure ran through the line:
Good! Now there’s more of “it” for me, for my child.
Some, I suspected, claimed healing when there was none, becoming objects of wonder themselves: “How did it feel? Can you help me?”

Tired as I was, with no time for myself, my house no longer my own, still I ached for each pain: a pitifully sickly child, a sudden weakening of a limb or crippling seizure of the back, burning in the gut, bloody coughs and sores that would not heal, the anguished mother whose babe in the womb had ceased kicking, a blacksmith whose eye had been burned by a spark and could no longer see to work. School was no escape. At recess, little Maude tugged at my skirt. “Miss Renner, why didn’t you help my mama? You helped other people. Don’t you like me anymore?”

I’m sorry, Galway!
I wanted to bellow.
I can’t do more!
And if I couldn’t do more, where could
I
have peace? But there was no escape in a town consumed by wanting.

I’d never looked forward to Thanksgiving so eagerly. My mother celebrated with the earnest fidelity of immigrants; it was the one holiday for which my father happily ate “American.” But it wasn’t for food that I yearned to go home. I wanted to be unexceptional again, to have a respite from longing or disappointed eyes, even at the cost of noise, smoke, and smells, the press of war, and difficulty of navigating my parents’ questions. But leaving Galway was impossible, I discovered, even for a weekend.

“Folks are thinking
it
will come back on Thanksgiving,” Henry said. “Christmas is around the corner. Can’t you wait?”

“But—”

“The Burnetts would love to host you. And remember, there’s the pageant coming up.” Henry was so unmovable that I had to write home excusing myself, make a reasonable imitation of my mother’s apple pie, and walk to the Burnetts’ on Thanksgiving Day. Ellen had set out her best china, and the family received me warmly.

“We can’t leave the store,” Jim explained. “So you’re doing us a favor by coming.” They asked about my holidays at home and what “my people” thought about the war. After dinner they urged Alice to announce what she’d told them, that she wanted to be a schoolteacher “just like Miss Renner.” But when Alice slipped away from the table to read, they related painful gossip that they had “used up” too much magic from my house for her. Once they’d been friends with everyone in Galway. Now there were factions: the cured and the not cured. “It’s hard for us, but we’re worried about you, Hazel,” Ellen said. Alice had heard the word
witch
floating around the schoolyard.

“But if the cures are stopping,” Jim suggested, “maybe folks will forget. They
are
happy with your teaching.”

“I hope so.” I didn’t mention that the hours of tending to seekers meant less time to prepare the slower children for county tests. The
Christmas pageant would be less elaborate than I’d planned, and I was scrambling to finish the portraits I’d promised each child.

That Sunday in the churchyard I heard
witch
myself. The word floated in frosty air. It was impossible to identify the speaker in the tight groups of townspeople turned away from me. Buying groceries, I heard
Kraut
from a woman huddled with her neighbor. More food was disappearing from my kitchen.

“People take things,” Ben said. “And some get angry because I’m not scratching anymore. They say: ‘How come
you
got fixed?’”

“They shouldn’t say that, Ben.” Could I somehow press one hand on the blue paint and one on the town’s heart? I brought Ben a bowl of bean soup and we ate in troubled silence. Had Margit ever felt like this, that something in
her
had unleashed trouble on a town?

T
HE FIRST WEEK
in December brought cold, stinging rains. Chipped and nicked, my house looked dismal against the gray winter woods, speaking more of disappointments than of miraculous healings. I had no tremors after Thanksgiving. The lines dwindled away, and Ben came often. I was grateful for his quiet, undemanding company. His skin was healing; clearly he’d once been a handsome man. But in perverse compensation, the voices in his head became more constant, disturbing even on my porch. Who could help him? Dr. Bentley dealt only with visible or palpable pains; Rev. Collins would tell him to pray away his devils. But Ben said he wasn’t a Christian “after Cuba,” and in any case, “they don’t want me in church.” Unhappily, he was right.

On the evening of December 17, Judge Ashton and his wife brought Susanna to my house in their gleaming Keystone automobile. She hadn’t been in school for days. “Her fever won’t go down,” Mrs. Ashton said. “Dr. Bentley says he’s tried everything he knows.”

“It’s my wife that wanted to come,” the judge interrupted. “I don’t hold with this idiocy about your paint.
I’d
say you’re selling snake oil.”

“Miss Renner isn’t
selling
anything, Edgar,” his wife retorted. “Every penny she gets goes to the Galway Benevolent Society. I know because I’m the treasurer.”

He reddened, obviously annoyed. I’d never disliked him more. But how tenderly he held his daughter. He and I both wanted Susanna healthy. We shared this much. She brought a gentle, uplifting presence to the school. Jockeying for her favors, even the roughest boys were more polite. As Henry said, Susanna was easy to love. So for her sake, I tried to speak calmly. “Sir, I have no idea why some people are healed at my house and others not. Lately, nobody has been helped.”

“Could you try?” Mrs. Ashton asked. “Maybe there’s enough healing for one more?”

“You heard her,” the judge said. “Nobody’s been helped for—how long, Miss Renner?”

“Almost three weeks.”

“Please, Edgar. Let her try.”

“Yes, Father,” said a small voice from the blankets, “please let my teacher try.”

The judge was a man accustomed to command. To be helpless was clearly an agony. “Well, do what you can. But hurry. She shouldn’t be out in this cold.”

I led them to the side of my house, now patched with gray from the constant scraping and chipping. Reaching into the folds of Susanna’s blankets, I touched her hot and clammy hand, and then the largest patch of blue paint. I closed my eyes, pressed, and prayed. The tremor, if it came, always came quickly. Nothing. Still I waited. Stinging sleet rattled down on us.

The judge’s heavy breath filled the air. “Nothing?”

“No, sir, I’m sorry.”

“So why keep a sick child outside in this weather? That’s enough. Like I said, it’s snake oil. Or if it’s not, what’s wrong with you? You fixed Crazy Ben, that slut Edna, and not my little girl? Exactly what were your intentions in coming to Galway?”

“Don’t talk that way to my teacher,” came Susanna’s small, hoarse voice.

“She’s right, Edgar. It’s not for us to question the Lord.”

“The
Lord
cured Ben and made my daughter sick?”

“Edgar, that’s enough. Let’s take her home. Thank you for trying, Miss Renner. We appreciate it. There’s a specialist in Cleveland who can see her after Christmas. Maybe he can help.” Mrs. Ashton shepherded them both into the elegant car and the judge drove them away.

I sat on my porch, watching sleet rattle down on dry leaves.
Was
I a fake, a charlatan, a snake-oil seller? Certainly the healing touch was capricious. I raised hopes that couldn’t be met, and the good I did was tinged with trouble. I’d wanted to be an extraordinary teacher. Now I was only another Miss Clay whose children might do poorly on county tests. A faint flash of gray caught my eye. “Ben? Come out of the cold.”

He took shape and appeared, dripping, on my porch. “Your house didn’t help Susanna, did it?” So he’d been watching us.

“I’m afraid not. Maybe the specialist can do something.”

“
After
Christmas. Susanna needs help
now
. There was a sick girl in Havana. They brought her out in the evenings for the sea breeze. Sometimes they let me give her flowers. Then they kept her inside and she died. Now Susanna’s sick again and nobody’s helping.”

“Ben, please, don’t worry. Her parents are doing everything they can. And really, it’s only a fever.” I’m not sure he heard me. Perhaps he heard his voices instead.

He studied my clapboards. “I did a good job, right?” Poor man, the
whole town shied from him; children stepped aside when he passed; weeks might pass without a human touch.

“You did a fine job.”

“Up top was hard. I’m scared of heights, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I saw men hurt in Cuba. Some of them fell a long way into rocks. Other bad things. I couldn’t help them. It’s not good when you can’t help.”

“No, it’s not.”

“But people still try.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Can I stay awhile?”

“Of course. Let me get you something to eat.” I brought out a blanket and a plate of toasted cheese.

“Thank you. You can go in now, Miss Hazel.”

So his voices had come, and he needed to be alone with them. I went inside and drew Susanna walking in a meadow; Susanna winning a geography bee; Susanna and Alice jumping rope. And then, remembered images: grand rooms, a table set with silver, men in scarlet livery, a garden. Perhaps that world would tell me why, like Margit, I had found myself in a place that first seemed so good for me and now was so difficult and full of pain.

When I went to check on Ben, he was gone, my blanket neatly folded, and the empty plate beside it. I’d never see him again. If I’d listened more closely, I might have stopped the terrible engine set in motion when I demanded blue paint for my house.

CHAPTER 7

Crazy Ben

W
hy wouldn’t you help my Ernie?” Mrs. Ramsey demanded at the grocery store. A ring of women surrounded me.

Finally Charlie’s mother spoke: “Wilma, there’s
nothing
wrong with Ernie. He’s just one year old. Doc Bentley said he’ll walk when he’s ready. Lydia walked early, but every child is different. Ernie will be smart as a whip, just like his sister.”

“
She
fixed Edna,” Mrs. Ramsey countered.

“Well, so what if she did? Didn’t that poor woman deserve a normal face and something better than that drunk?”

“I suppose so.”

Pressing her advantage, Charlie’s mother turned to the assemblage, smiling broadly. “Hazel was hired to be a
schoolmarm,
and she’s doing that just fine. If she’s supposed to work miracles for everyone in Galway, we’d have to pay her more.” A few twitters loosened the air. Mrs. Ramsey’s neighbor engaged her in a conversation. I eased up to the counter where Jim put bread, onions, potatoes, and beans in my basket. “Let me talk to them,” he whispered. I slipped out, determined
to stretch these rations as if I lived behind the Allied blockade. Coming to town was a mistake. But there was no escaping the jealousy and resentment my house and I had brought to Galway.

The next day in school, as we were practicing the Christmas pageant, whispers and glances toward Lydia Ramsey built until I had to ask: “Lydia, do you have something to share?”

She stood up. “Yes.
Are
you a witch, Miss Renner?” Winter light frosted a sharp-edged face, the image of her mother’s. Yet just last month, Lydia had shyly confessed how much she loved drawing and unfolded a deft self-portrait in pencil. I’d held her hand in mine to demonstrate how shading could highlight her deep eyes and sleek hair. She’d held her breath in wonder. Now I wouldn’t dare touch her.