18
September 21, 1932
Dear old Leenie,
Don’t worry, I’m fine! I don’t have nosebleeds now I’m used to the air. I have seven students at Stony Bank, four girls and three lads. There were more lads last year but Clare says they hopped trains and went off to find work. One of the girls at school reminds me of Kathleen Hagy except prettier. But it’s all the same in the way of spite and meanness. This one is called Emmeline and perhaps you and Will might say a prayer for some sickness to beset her, nothing mortal please, but plenty to keep her home in bed. She and another were supposed to leave the lesson book on my desk for my first day but instead kept it themselves then put it in my desk next day and said it was there all along if I had only looked and when I called her down on it her father steps in and says his daughter is honest and honorable and oh, I could have screamed.
There. I have just taken a few full breaths.
The Price family is still nice as ever to me. They aren’t Mormon anymore but nice all the same. Clare is 16 and ought to go to high school in a big town, like Charlotte did, but there’s no money to pay his board. He helps his father on the farm and shoots wee creatures. You won’t believe what we ate last night: squirrel. Clare shoots them and his mother cooks them for absolute ages. Made me want to boak at first but it’s no worse than Sedgie’s Bawd Bree which is what I taught them to make from one of Clare’s rabbits. Bang bang bang. Then the skinning. What I wouldn’t give for haddock.
You know how we used to wish it would quit raining raining raining? Listen to this song I have been teaching the wee ones in my class:
"Rain, rain, do not go
Rain, rain, we love you so
Make us music on the pane
Drum to wild wind’s fiddle strain."
That’d be a laugh on Bellevue Cres. but not here. The Prices have planted wheat like most of the whole county and if rain doesn’t come soon, the wheat will die like the corn did in the summer and the wheat did last fall. Every day, Mr. Price gapes up at the sky and listens to the farm report on the radio like he’s getting his fortune told. Yesterday, a storm was predicted and it blew up big and black, so bruisy dark we all ran to the windows at school and then when it started chucking I said, “recess!” and we all went out in it, even me. We were drenched but when Neva and I walked home after school, dead certain the fields would be sopping and Mr. Price would be dancing with his wife, we saw it hadn’t rained on his fields a drop. Charlotte said it’s the hogback’s fault. The hogback is a ridge on their property that she says splits every storm and sends all the rain down on other people’s fields. Felt wretched for Mr. Price. He looked like Father when Mum died.
Write and tell me about all the barrie jumpers you’ve knitted for Wee William (or Wilhemina!) to wear the moment he (or she!) is born. I hope you’re not feeling as boaky now.
Your own,
Deen
19
On the Tuesday morning of her second week of teaching, while the younger students were reciting multiplication tables in unison, Aldine looked out the window to see dust rising from the graded road to the south. A truck was coming, and as it approached, she saw that it was a truck very much like Mr. Price’s and that, trailing behind it, was a flatbed trailer that carried something covered with blankets and strapped down with ropes.
“That’s your father,” one of the older boys said to Neva, and at once the multiplication tables fell aside. Everyone peered out as the truck and trailer pulled into the schoolyard.
Neva was the first one out the door, calling, “Daddy! Daddy! Clare! Clare!”
While the girls watched and the boys edged close, Clare stepped out of the truck and stretched his arms very casually as a boy will when self-consciously assuming a manly role, then joined Mr. Price in loosening the ropes that held the mysterious shipment in place.
“What is it?” someone asked, but neither Clarence nor Mr. Price spoke. They just kept working the knots.
“It’s probably a new outhouse on its side,” Emmeline Josephson said, and Mr. Price, smiling, said, “Not that you don’t deserve one, Emmeline.” Which Aldine wanted to characterize as a backhanded insult, even while knowing it probably wasn’t.
When the ropes were loose, he nodded to Clarence, who gave the blankets a flourish, and there it was—a black upright piano.
Aldine was stunned with pleasure. “It’s gorgeous,” she said, “dead gorgeous. Where in the world did you find it?”
“Mrs. Odekirk,” Mr. Price said, and it was clear that both he and Clare were brimming with pride. To Aldine, in this moment, they both seemed boys. “Mrs. Odekirk’s arthritis was keeping her from playing,” Mr. Price said, “and after hearing you, she thought you would put it to better use here.”
He and the boys tipped it carefully on its side and, with Mr. Price at one end and Clare and the Wright boys at the other, they soon had it inside and situated at a pleasing angle to the corners. Clare handed her several books of music, and Phay Wright set the black stool to the keys.
“So who is it would like the first song?” she asked, and then when met with blank faces: “Does nobody play it?”
The children all looked from one to another.
“Then I’ll do one,” Aldine said, and started on the Gymnopédies, which she knew by heart. Her playing wasn’t perfect, and the piano was in need of tuning, but, still, it had a rich sound all in all, and the students fell quiet. She felt their eyes on her but she felt all the more Clarence’s and Mr. Price’s, and when she glanced at them, they each had a particular look, beatific almost, like angels. When she’d finished playing and they made to leave, she wanted to give them each a hug, and she would’ve, if this were Ayr, but it was not, and hugs and pecks on the cheek were not the way of it here, so she thanked them and thanked them again, and when they laid their eyes on her, she met their gaze one after the other.
“Culture,” Mr. Price said. “That’s what’s needed here, and you’ve brought it.” His tone was earnest, but now a smile creased his face and he said, “Now if you could just bring us a little rain out past the hogback.”
20
Ansel and Clare had been clearing roots from one of the new fields when Ansel saw the mules and the wagon. It was Tanner, no question, but his behavior was mysterious. He pulled the mules up short and just sat in the wagon. He didn’t wave to Ansel or even look his way.
“Give me a minute,” Ansel said to Clare, and planted his mattock.