Under the Same Blue Sky (8 page)

“I’m sure they are. But five country children weren’t there, and
Emma said they won’t come back. The parents promised they’d attend. They didn’t tell me it was just for one day.”

“Hazel, you’re from the city. You asked a question in public. Of course they agreed. They’d be shamed not to. Besides, the older children have chores at home or on the farm. Sending them to school is a sacrifice.”

“So I need to convince the parents—”

“No, you don’t ‘convince’ these folks of anything, or tell them how to raise their children, or what’s important and what’s not. Do you want some advice?”

“Yes.”

“Go call on them in the evening or Sunday afternoon, so you don’t take up work time or market time. And don’t talk about school. Just listen.”

I did as Jim suggested, making hot, dusty treks on foot to cabins where I sat on porches or front stoops, hearing about bad harvests, bad knees, sprained backs, barn fires, and early deaths. I also heard the deep longing that sons and daughters would have a better life. I didn’t need to tell anyone the value of school. They already knew. The question, I learned, was whether my school was worth their sacrifice. The next week, two of the five began attending regularly. A third said she’d come “unless there’s sickness at home.”

“Amazing,” said Jim.

The next week, Mrs. Ashton walked Susanna to school. “I guess we did well to get a city teacher,” Henry said.

M
Y PARENTS VISITED
in late September. They marveled at the quiet and calm of Galway, the blue sky “like in Heidelberg,” and friendly greetings as we walked through town. Over coffee and my mother’s cookies on the porch, I related my new life: collecting wild foods with Ben,
visiting families, preparing lessons, grading, and keeping house. Male teachers had the right to two free evenings a week for courting. How did they have time? The only drawings I did now were portraits of my students. Studying their faces, I could better judge what might frustrate or excite them. I described pacing off the dimensions of Egyptian pyramids, finding miniature geological structures in the stream that ran behind the school, and gathering objects for nature drawing.

“All the McGuffey Readers want is memorization,” I complained. So much time was spent in drills: names and dates of presidents; lists of states, capitals, and principal products; books of the Bible; spelling rules; rhetorical figures; kings of England; wars and battles.

“Have them sing the lists,” my father suggested. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “It would be a long song, all the battles in Europe now.”

“Isn’t Hazel’s house nice and clean, dear?” my mother prompted. “Nicer on the inside than the outside, though.”

“It will be painted. Father, look how your tins catch the light.”

“Did you know that Germany surrendered in South-West Africa? You hear young men talking about when America joins the war,” my father noted grimly. “They think it’s a party, or they want to be heroes. They don’t think they’ll be the ones with their legs blown off.”

“Shh,” my mother said. “See, Hazel made a lovely meal.” I had worked hard. We had rolls, green beans and meat loaf with Ben’s mushrooms, sweet and sour cabbage, beer brewed in Galway, and peach pie for dessert.

“How did you learn to cook?” my father asked.

“Watching Mother. And Ben shows me where to find wild things and how to cook them.”

“They’re eating roots at home, thanks to the British blockade.”
Swerving the conversation, my mother asked if people here minded that I was German.

“They think I’m strange because I’m from the city, but nobody talks about Germany.”

“They gave you a cursed house. You told us the story.”

“It’s
not
cursed. Something bad happened to the owners. That’s all.”

“If they respect you, they should paint your house. And blue draws good spirits.”

“Get it done before all the painters go to war,” my father added.

“Stop! Just stop!” my mother ordered. “I want to see the waterfall Hazel wrote us about, and we’re
not
talking about the war.”

We went to see the waterfall and said nothing else about “over there.”

Three days of rain followed their visit. My house was a gray square in driving gray. The roof was tight, as I’d been promised, but in the ceaseless drumming overhead I heard my mother’s voice: “If they respect you, they should paint your house.”
Did
Galway respect me? If they wanted the house to last, why not paint it? Working up to indignation, I slogged through mud to see Henry. What other schoolteacher had walked miles to visit country families? Didn’t I deserve a little indulgence? “I haven’t forgotten,” he said impatiently. “You can’t paint in the rain, and my shoulder’s acting up.” His wife called for hot milk. “Just a minute, Agnes. Hazel’s here about the paint.”

“It’s a small house,” I reminded him.

“Is everyone in Pittsburgh so persistent?”

“If we don’t want to be bamboozled.”

“Fine, you win. I’ll speak to the school board.”

“Please.” I walked home, drenched and discouraged.

CHAPTER 5

Just a Fluke

R
ain followed for a week. Ben hadn’t been to his shack behind the grocery or to my house. Was he hurt and alone? Were his voices worse in the rain? Nobody knew where his camp was or cared to look, so all I could do was worry. Slogging into town, I found idle farmers sitting morosely around a Franklin stove in Jim’s store, smoking and talking of rain, its costs to the chickens and crops, the rising creek, and trees falling in soggy earth. They spoke of rheumatism and arthritis, broken bones, fingers lost but phantom pain remaining, and all the aches of pushing, pulling, and dragging heavy weights. “Would any of you fellas take a town job?” Jim asked.

“Now why in blazes would we do that?”

The eighth day brought a gauzy drizzle. After dinner, I was laying out the week’s lessons when a soft step sounded on my porch, followed by a gentle knock. Henry? Ben? A parent or child? I opened the door. A slightly built man jerked back as if fearing attack. His clothes, hair, eyes and slouch felt hat were gray. His face was pale, like one who lived in shadows. He seemed barely thirty, and yet had an air of constant travel, of a man unused to life in houses. “Weren’t you afraid at night?” people
asked later. I wasn’t. He seemed as harmless as Ben, with an eerie wash of sadness and regret.

“I brought your blue paint, miss,” he said, pointing to a line of covered buckets set on the porch. He shifted slightly to peer around me into the house. “Could I have some water?”

I brought him a glass. He drained it and gave it back. Our fingers never touched. “Henry McFee sent you, or Jim Burnett?” He shook his head. I took a wild chance. “Ben Robinson?”

“Nobody sent me. I just wanted to help out. It’s good paint.”

“I’m sure it is, but you don’t know me. How did you know I wanted blue?”

“I just heard. Good evening, miss.” He touched his hat rim, still looking past me into the house. The idea shot across my mind that he might melt like a ghost into the gray.

“Wait! Tell me your name at least.”

“John,” he said, so softly it might have been the wind that spoke. “I have to be going now.” He stepped backward off the porch and hurried away, dodging puddles. He must have left his car around the bend. I heard it rattle, catch, and drive away, leaving only the sound of rain. Had I imagined the whole encounter, made dreamy by the weather? But I held the glass he’d drained, and on the porch sat five buckets with “Blue” neatly written on top and two good brushes. They were real enough, heavy and sloshing.

When had he even brought them? I’d only heard his step once on the porch. Could he have carried all five? I shivered. I’d met most of Galway and would have remembered his grayness. Why would a stranger bring paint? How did he know I wanted blue? He hadn’t spoken to Henry. And even if he had, what were my wants to this man? Inside the house, his melting form seemed to hover in every corner and outside each window.
Don’t be scary.
When I splashed cold water on my
face, a name roared back at me:
John Foster
. I splashed more, wetting the floor. The killer of newlyweds, the preacher’s kid gone wrong. His age seemed right, and there was that insistent peering into my house. Did he think to see Ethel Harding here alive? Was he crazy, far more than Ben? Surely he had no debt to me. Why serve Ethel’s house if she’d never see it? And how could paint repay two lives? Of course, “John” was a common enough name, but what other John could be so sad, alone, and fixed on my house? I couldn’t sleep. Gray men swirled over my bed, bathed in blue light.

Hot sun blazed the next day. I hurried outside. The buckets were still there, still marked “Blue.” I opened one and saw the blue of my father’s eyes. I searched the mud around my house. There was no trace of my visitor, no footprints or tire tracks, but of course rain would have washed them away.

What about the paint? Should I use it? Why not? It was a gift, however mysterious. If my visitor was John Foster, and if, for his own reasons, he felt a debt to the house or its tenant now, why not let him pay it? Besides, the paint was a beautiful blue. My mother always claimed that blue brought good spirits. I’d tell Henry what happened, and he might believe me. If he asked why I’d accepted a killer’s paint, I’d say I would have accepted the school board’s paint if it had been offered.

Ben came by at dusk, his clothes filthy and torn, blotched with crusted blood from scratching. “My voices go bad in the rain,” he said. He gulped down a bowl of potato soup, eyeing the buckets. “I could paint your house, you know, Miss Hazel. Except—up there.” Anxious eyes climbed to the eaves before dropping back to the comfort of earth.

“Suppose I borrow a ladder?”

“And hold it?”

“Of course.” We settled that for painting my house, he’d have hot
meals on the days he worked and I’d make him two drawings of Old Havana from his descriptions: one for his shack behind the grocery and one for his camp. We let some days pass to dry out the wood. I borrowed a ladder from my neighbors, the Allens, and he started work on a bright day in early October.

“See how the brush is gliding,” Ben announced with the first strokes, “like the house
wants
to be painted.”

“Hum,” I said, puzzling over a drawing. When I looked up, blue was rising swiftly, leaving the unpainted boards like a little ark floating on water. For the highest swatch under the eaves, I held the ladder as Ben climbed, twitching wildly and muttering: “Stroke, stroke, stroke.” Before sunset, the house was finished, all in one coat. We stood back to admire the glowing sapphire, as perfect as I’d imagined. Who could
not
want a blue house?

I set a picnic on the porch: bean and potato soup, beer, bread, and chunks of cheese. Despite his customary scratching, Ben had never seemed so much at ease. I talked about Pittsburgh, my family and friends, the factories, the boys’ war games, and choking smoke. “You were right to come to Galway, Miss Hazel,” he said. What was wrong with this town that they scorned Ben Robinson? When he wasn’t plagued by voices, he was as comforting as a cat.

“Where did you live before Havana?” Perhaps this time he’d tell me.

“Different places. My family traveled.”

“Doing what?”

“Just—traveling.” He still traveled, from porches to back doors, to the woods and his camp, a man without a home and, I still believe, a man without harm. As the first owls hooted, he stood. “I’m not supposed to bother you at nighttime.”

“You don’t have to go. Here, let me get you more soup.” I took his bowl, but when I returned, he was gone.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, Henry knocked hard on my door. “It’s blue. What happened?”

“The paint was a gift and Ben did the work.” I described my night visitor.

“Was he my height, about thirty?”

“Yes. He said his name was John.”

Henry’s eyes widened. “John Foster. Where did he go?”

“He drove away.”

“Well, that makes sense, at least. There’s a warrant out for his arrest. He didn’t do anything, threaten you?”

“He asked for water and left the paint. He never came inside. He was very polite.”

“That’s John,” Henry agreed. “Timid as a rabbit. Until that night.” He looked me up and down and demanded: “How did he know you wanted blue paint?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

“That’s crazy. Why would a killer bring
paint
?”

Was
I
was on trial? I stepped back, annoyed. “Henry, I don’t know. The point is, my house is painted now.”

“A boy kills two people, he’s gone for years and comes back with
paint
? Why?”

“I don’t understand it myself. Do you want to see Ben’s work?” Henry hung back. “Come around the side.” He followed grudgingly. The paint shone like glass in the bright sun. “It’s a good job, isn’t it?” I prompted.

“Good enough.”

Was it so difficult to credit Ben? Made bolder by annoyance, I made Henry touch the warm wood. “Here, feel how smooth it is. One coat. Isn’t that amazing?” Was it the angle at which I held him, or that he
resisted me? A tremor shot through my arm, then an ache, as when I’d been drawing for too long.

“I guess it was good paint.”

“And here,” I persisted, “there were knots. See how smooth they are.” Again, I made him touch the siding. Henry gave up his hand freely now, staring at me. What was I doing, holding a man’s hand against paint? I dropped it. He rubbed his shoulder. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”

“No—no, you didn’t hurt me.” Henry reached for the siding again, hand flat on the blue, slowly raising it higher. “Hazel,” he said more softly, “show me where the other knots were.”

“I don’t remember.” His eyes glittered. My arm ached, and his strange persistence troubled me. He could leave now.

“Show me where the knots were.” I pretended to know, pointing. “No,
show me
.” I should take his hand again? No, this was too much. I stepped away. “Blast it, Hazel, show me where the knots were!” Moving slowly, I held his flattened hand to a random piece of siding. Again the tremor up my arm. I tried to pull it free, but he gripped my hand.