Winter Wheat (26 page)

I set it up on my dresser and went across the room to look at it. It was clearer from a distance, but there were no firm outlines, mostly color. I think it must have been good, because it made me feel like summer. I knew how hot it would be if I went beyond that shaded place. Gil had remembered it just as it was, only he couldn’t get the clearness of the stream—maybe no one could. If he had remembered the place and the way the bank turned and that I’d worn a white dress, he must have remembered everything else, what we said and the way we felt. I turned the painting over. He had scribbled a sentence in pencil:

“The mud here is worse than in Montana. Gil.”

That was all, but he had sent it in spite of my horrid, smug little letter. I sat reading it over and over the way Robert Donaldson used to read over the sentences in the reader. If Gil could joke about the mud, he wasn’t angry about getting stuck in it, any longer.

It was like a Christmas present—maybe he had meant it for that. Last year he had given me a picture of himself for Christmas. This year it was a painting of a creek and trees and a girl in a white dress, hardly even me, and yet this seemed to give me more of him than his photograph. I pinned the painting to the wall where I could see it from my desk.

The Thorsons had come back with colds and Francis La Mere had cotton in his ear because of an earache. He kept saying he couldn’t hear and the others burst out laughing every time.

“Miss Webb,” Leslie called out to me at recess. “My dad’s going to be a lieutenant in the Army!”

“Yes, I know. That’s fine, Leslie,” I said thoughtlessly.

“How did you know, Miss Webb?” Leslie asked.

“Maybe Mr. Harper told her! They were sitting in the car by the road when we come by from town last night,” Mary Cassidy said archly.

But school hardly touched me that day. I wanted it to be over so I could be alone. All through the day I watched the way the sun struck the painting differently at different times.

After school Leslie came back in when he had his cap and scarf and jacket on. I noticed how much healthier he looked than in the fall.

“Miss Webb, Dad told me about your asking me to go home with you this week end when he goes. Gee, thanks!” He leaned back against the desk as though he were going to stay.

“We’ll have fun,” I said. “You better hurry so you can walk with Mary and Sigrid.”

“I don’t care. They can go on.”

“You better go today, Leslie. I have work to do.” I went with him to the door and waved. I had the feeling that he had wanted to stay and talk, but this afternoon I wanted them all to be gone. It seemed strange that I should ever have dreaded The Part after School when the children were gone. The late winter sun lighted up the yellow-green of Gil’s painting.

That evening I wrote to Gil. I kept thinking about what Warren had said: “You ought to tell him, Ellen. You ought to let him know.”

I held my pen still so long it wouldn’t write, and then it blotted when I shook it. I took a pencil instead and wrote him on a ruled school pad held against my knee. Afterward I could copy it.

I told him what I thought of the water color.
“You see you did do it the way you wanted,”
I wrote, because I knew that not being able to do something made Gil cross. He’d never make a rancher! I tried hard to find something about the figure in the painting that made it seem especially me. It might have been any girl under a tree in the sun, but it must have been more to Gil.
“It’s all just as it was except the water,”
I wrote.
“And I don’t believe anyone could get the way a mountain stream looks into paint.”
I closed my eyes and saw the gravel glistening at the shallow bottom and the satin-smooth look of the mud sloping down the low bank, and the clear shine of the water moving swiftly under the alders. It was so real in my mind it seemed strange to open my eyes in the teacherage. I tried to tell Gil how I had felt after he went away last June.

“I saw our ranch and the country as you saw it, Gil. It was bare and flat and the house was a little unpainted shack. I even saw Mom and Dad with your eyes. Mom is a big peasant woman. I may look like her some day. Dad is sick and tiresomely talkative. He doesn’t belong out here. You were right in a way. You said you would think they’d come to hate each other. Maybe it was that hate between them that you felt. Maybe that was what made you afraid to love me. I felt that it was in me, someway, like a blight in a sheaf of wheat. After you went away I hated you and Mom and Dad and our ranch and this country. I hated myself even more. Oh, Gil, you don’t know what the summer was like or this winter when I first came out to the teacherage!”
The words poured onto the paper. It was a relief to write all this to Gil.

“I was never lonely before this fall. That was true when I wrote you that, but when I said ‘Thank you for teaching me what loneliness was’ it was just boasting. It’s not a good feeling. When I wrote you that letter I felt proud of myself because I thought I had been strong enough to put you out of my life. But at Christmas time, Christmas Eve, I knew all over again that I still loved you. And I came back after vacation and found your water color, like an answer.”

I had no more to say. That was where I had come to. It had seemed like a miracle to me to know that. Understanding what you really feel and really want is more breath-taking than climbing to the top of the rimrock in the wind. Whether it was good or bad or foolish or wise didn’t matter—there it was. I felt light-hearted and sure.

What more was there to say? “How do you like officers’ training? What is it like to fly? Can the wind bother more than mud?” Not in this letter. This letter had all that mattered. I wouldn’t even copy it over.

I stood on the step a minute before I went in to bed and looked up at the sky. The chinook was over. It was settling down again for a pull of hard winter, dark hard winter, like the name of the winter wheat. I could see the shadow of the flagpole on the moonlit earth and way across the flats, the dark shoulder of Prairie Butte. “It’s cold enough to pick your bones,” Mom used to say. It was tonight. The cold had picked all that was soft or green or growing and left only the bony skeleton of the earth.

I listened to the radio a long time after I turned the light out. The cold air flowed in under the window that was only opened a few inches. It’s a good thing cold can’t freeze music! My radio ran on batteries and I should have been saving of it, but I fell asleep with the music still playing.

13

THE
cold winter days were good days for school. The children settled down to the new term. Leslie seemed more quiet than usual, but I thought he dreaded his father’s going on Saturday. He loved stories, and I read aloud longer than usual at the end of school.

On Tuesday the children stayed a half-hour longer while I finished a chapter of
Bambi
. I had a secret feeling of triumph that I wasn’t reading about the war to them.

“We’re going to move to town next week,” Leslie said excitedly as he was getting into his coat. “My grandfather’s going to close up the ranch.”

“I know that. My dad’s goin’ to take the hay off’n it,” Francis La Mere said.

I thought of the Harper place closed up, no wool caught on the barbed-wire fence from the sheep pushing through, no tracks coming out of the roadway. It must be the rancher in me; I hate to see a ranch house empty and the fields unused.

“We’ll only have six in school then,” Mary said. “If help don’t get easier to get, Pa says maybe we’ll move to a big town and he’ll go to work for a defense plant.” Mary’s face looked eager. “It’d be swell to live in a city.”

I thought how quickly the war could reach to a place as far away as this.

Nels and Francis stayed to wash the blackboards for me. I sat at my desk marking spelling papers. Raymond brought in wood.

“Look, Miss Webb, a mouse got frozen in the woodpile!” He held up a flat gray body by the tail for me to see.

“Throw it away, Raymond,” I said quickly.

“I betcha you can break its tail in two,” Nels called out.

Raymond threw it across the room and the other boys dodged with a loud yell.

“That’ll do, boys. Finish up now and go. Raymond, take that outside,” I said sharply.

“Do you want any mail took to town, Miss Webb? The folks is goin’ in tonight.” Raymond was trying to make up for the mouse.

I hesitated. I hadn’t put the letter in my mailbox. I had kept it on my dresser to think about it.

“Thank you, Raymond. I’ll see.” I went into my room and took the letter out of its envelope.

“Hey, Raymond, come on!” the boys shouted outside.

“Wait a sec. Teacher’s getting a letter.”

But I couldn’t hurry. I read it again:
“Christmas Eve I knew all over again that I still loved you. And I came back after vacation and found your water color, like an answer.”
I sealed it quickly and put two stamps on it and wrote “Air Mail” across the top.

“Here, Raymond. Thank you for waiting.”

I watched the three boys straggling down the road until they were out of sight, but I was thinking of Gil getting the letter. It was sent now, anyway, and it was true.

Thursday morning I was wakened suddenly by the sound of a car coming up the road to the teacherage. Then I saw the lights. They shone in the window of my room and laid a strange bright light on the oil stove and the linoleum. I looked at my watch. It was four o’clock in the morning. The car went past the corner of the schoolhouse and left my room in darkness for an instant, then I could see the lights shining up the road. It was snowing again. The flakes danced crazily on the beam of light. The lights went out and the sound of the motor was stilled. I pulled on my warm bathrobe and slippers. Perhaps it was a message from the folks. I lighted my lamp and went through the schoolroom. I opened the door before there was a knock. Warren Harper stood there. He wore his good clothes, but his overcoat hung open and he was bareheaded.

“Warren, why did you come here at this time of night? Is Leslie all right?”

“Sure, Leslie’s all right, but he won’t be if he sees me! Ed Anderson leaves for the Army tomorrow and I leave Saturday, so we were celebrating tonight. I couldn’t go home with liquor on my breath, could I?” His voice had an unpleasant sound.

I set the lamp down on Robert’s desk. “But you can’t stay here,” I said.

He didn’t seem to have heard. He sat down in Robert’s seat. Then he nodded his head as though agreeing with something I had said.

“Army’s a good place for me. Might make a man of me,” he said with a mirthless kind of laugh. “Unless it’s hopeless.” He shrugged his big, loose shoulders.

I stood watching him. I could see why he didn’t want to go home. If Leslie saw him like this, all the work of the last few weeks would be undone.

“Go to bed,” he said so suddenly that it startled me. “Don’t stand there staring at me with sorrowful eyes. Leslie can do that.” He clasped his hands in front of him on the desk like a boy in school, but the lamp made his face look older than I had seen it.

“Oh, Warren, why did you do this just before you went away? It meant so much to Leslie.” He looked back at me, then his eyes moved around the room.

“I used to sit there by the window, the last seat in the row.”

I didn’t stay to listen. I took the lamp and went back in my room and lighted the stove. I would heat up the coffee I had made for my dinner. I didn’t know much about people who were drunk, but I had an idea that it might help him. I glanced out into the dark schoolroom. He had dropped his head on his arms. I heard his breathing and wondered if he were asleep. When the coffee was hot, I poured a cup and took it out to him. I set the lamp on my desk and then I sat down in the seat in front of him.

“Warren, drink this coffee.”

He sat up and pushed his hair back. “Thanks, sister, you’re doing the Salvation Army act!” The steam from the coffee went up between us. I saw him jerk his head as he took the first sip and wondered if he had burned his mouth. Then he set the cup down on the desk.

“Came to say good-by,” he said. “Got my papers right here.” He patted the pocket of his coat. “Report to Texas. Swell! Commission and everything. If I don’t get shot it won’t be my fault. Maybe they’ll hang my picture on the wall here. The children’ll be told what a hero I was. If you’re here teaching, you remember that!” He shook his finger at me. “Why not? That’s the way heroes are made.”

“Warren, don’t talk like that!” I laid my hand on his arm and he put his hand over mine and held it when I tried to pull it away.

“You’re a hero, too, the way you went through that blizzard.”

I jerked my hand away and picked up his cup.

“Don’t go. Sit down. I want to talk. I drove all the way out from town just to talk to you.” I stood a minute, hesitating. “You won’t have to listen to me much longer. I’ll be gone Saturday.” I set the cup on the desk across the aisle and sat down again. It was so cold I was shivering.

“It’s a great thing to come back where you went to school. You can see yourself as a kid. I was a smart little kid; guess I was the smartest kid in the school. I thought I was going to be a great man. I learned my geography and history lessons well. I can tell you where the Philippine Islands are without looking!” Warren emphasized what he said with one finger that cast a longer finger in shadow on the wall.

“I can tell you the dates of all the wars America ever fought and why we fought ‘em and why we’re going to fight this one. Isn’t this school the cradle of America? Sure! And how the politician loves it!” He swung his arm in a wide gesture and his voice was loud.

“Citizens of the United States, look to the little red schoolhouse if you would safeguard the future of America. Teach ‘em the Gettysburg Address and Washington’s Farewell Address an’ you won’t lack for soldiers to fight your battles. If they don’t do so well as private citizens, that won’t matter now. They’ll win the war. America always wins its wars.

“But we’ve got to learn more than that in the little red schoolhouse; got to learn how to live decently afterward, too.” I shivered with the cold, or at some tone in Warren’s voice that sounded like Dad’s when he gets started on something. It was eerie having him go on and on in the half-dark room. I went over and opened the school stove and put in a fresh stick of wood.

“Warren, please leave now.”

“When you’re a kid in school here, you want to be great and famous,” he went on, but his voice lost its ranting note. “After a while you go away and you forget about that. You want someone to love you the way you love her and you want to make a good living, and live a decent life. When you don’t get that, then you’re ready to settle for some ideas, but they have to be good ones. That’s when a man goes in for religion, I guess, some kind of a faith. But you can’t pick up faith at a cut-rate drugstore. A man’s lucky if there’s a war on that he can go and fight in. If he gets killed in it, his life’ll do some good, maybe.” He went on and on. Finally I broke in again.

“Listen to me, Warren! You’re just talking to hear yourself. You have Leslie. He has to believe in you. He’s just beginning to trust you now. His whole life depends on you.”

“And then I go and get drunk!” His voice was quiet. He sounded suddenly sober.

“You can’t let Leslie know you were drinking.”

“I must hide my sins from my son, must I?” Warren said, and that unpleasant sound was in his voice again.

“Yes, if you have to have them. You’ve got to go away with Leslie proud of you. Can’t you see for yourself? I thought you cared about Leslie!” I was so angry I didn’t care if he knew it. “I thought you came back here to win his love. Nobody ruined your life for you when you were his age, but you’re going to ruin Leslie’s.”

“You’re magnificent when you’re angry, Ellen,” he said. I saw he was smiling. It made me more angry.

“Get out of here! Go on out to the sheep camp until you’re sober!” I think I would have struck him if he had gone on sitting there any longer. He stood up and buttoned his coat. He didn’t say anything until he got to the door.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Webb.” He looked around the schoolroom. “I always liked this place,” he said.

I heard him go down the steps. I went to the door. Outside it was just barely light. I had forgotten that it was snowing hard. And then I saw Mr. Thorson driving into the schoolyard with a truckload of stove wood. He must have seen us in the doorway of the schoolhouse. He got out of his truck and stood waiting for Warren.

“Good morning,” Warren called out.

“Well, you’re out early, aren’t you?” Mr. Thorson said. I stood there wrapped in my bathrobe watching them. They were only a few feet from the steps.

“I just got my orders to leave for the Army. I stopped by to talk to Miss Webb about Leslie,” Warren said. I was relieved that he sounded dead-sober.

“You chose a queer time to call,” Mr. Thorson said.

“Good morning, Mr. Thorson. Our woodpile was getting low,” I said.

Mr. Thorson looked at me, but he didn’t speak. Then he looked down at the ground.

“It must have took you some time,” he said to Warren. The snow had covered over any tracks going to the schoolhouse.

“Look here, Thorson,” Warren said, looking straight at him. He took him by the arm and they walked over to Warren’s car so I couldn’t hear what they said. I saw Mr. Thorson lay his hand on the hood of Warren’s car and I knew it would be cold to the touch. I went back in and dressed hurriedly. It was almost seven-thirty.

I kept going over to the window to watch the two of them by the car. I wondered if I shouldn’t call to them. I had a right to know what they were saying. I started out to the door once, but I came back. When I saw them coming back to the schoolhouse, I went into the schoolroom and sat at my desk. Mr. Thorson pushed open the door with a burst. Warren came after him; he looked angry.

“Miss Webb,” Mr. Thorson began, “this is a pretty serious proposition for a teacher we send our children to . . .”

“Nels, I just told you that Miss Webb didn’t have anything to do with my coming,” Warren interrupted. “I sat in that seat over there and talked like a drunken fool for two hours straight. She gave me some coffee and kept trying to send me home.”

“Maybe so, maybe so, Warren.” Mr. Thorson looked thoughtful. “But she coulda kep’ the door locked.”

“Mr. Thorson, there was nothing wrong. It is just as Mr. Harper told you,” I said.

Mr. Thorson didn’t meet my eyes. He studied the crack in the floor. “You see, Miss Webb, I’ve been defending you for some time back. There’s been a party that has seen Warren coming over here and seen you two in town on week ends, and now what I just seen with my own eyes this morning makes it look pretty bad.”

“We’ve told you the truth. You’ll have to take our word for it,” Warren said.

“Just the same, as head of the school board I’ll have to talk with the other members.” Mr. Thorson studied the inside of his hat as he talked. “We’ll have to hold a meeting and come over here this afternoon to talk to you, Miss Webb. I imagine you won’t have any pupils today.” He was standing now, but he lingered by the desk, playing with the top of the inkwell in the very same way his son did when he recited.

“Then there’s another thing I was going to take up with Mr. Henderson, because he knows your folks. I’ve heard you mother’s a foreigner, Miss Webb, I don’t know what. Nels says you have foreign books here that you read out of, German and French and all like that. And the children say you don’t seem very keen on the war. Sometimes you make ‘em stop talking about it. It don’t add up right, Miss Webb.

“Mary Cassidy told how once when the Russians was beaten back you said to think of all those soldiers on both sides that was wounded and crippled for life. That don’t sound like a patriotic way to talk to children.” He got out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. I saw the look of disgust on Warren’s face. I didn’t quite believe what I had heard.

“Mr. Thorson, my father fought in Russia in the last war. He was wounded and has never been really well since. Naturally, war means wrecked lives to me. That doesn’t keep soldiers from going to fight, or us from sending them.” Suddenly, I said boldly: “The man I love, Mr. Thorson, is in the service right now. He’s learning to be a pilot.” It did me good to say “The man I love.”

Mr. Thorson looked startled. “You oughtn’t to be going out with Warren, then.”

“I . . .” But Mr. Thorson tramped out of the room without another word. Warren was still standing there, but I didn’t look at him.

“I’ve made a pretty good mess of everything, haven’t I? I suppose they’re all as evil-minded as Nels, or worse. It makes me gag to think I talked about coming back here to live!”