The man called teacher, p.6
The Man Called Teacher, page 6
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I took Teacher up on his offer a couple of days later. Mr. Westover had given me an afternoon off for working some extra hours, which I did every year about that time when a lot of our fall supplies came in. I ate a sandwich, drank a glass of buttermilk, and headed for the Ramsay schoolhouse.
The day was warm, almost hot. It was the kind of fall day that made me hate having to go to school when I was a kid and I was curious to see how Teacher’s students would behave. When I got there, I was surprised to see that all of the students and Teacher himself were outside. The lunch break was long over, and it seemed strange they weren’t inside, hunched over their slates. But there they were in the schoolyard gathered up in a group. The only voice I could hear was Teacher’s. As I got closer, I could see that the students were actually gathered around a horse, a short stout grey. Teacher was bent over, holding up one of the horse’s feet and he was nailing a shoe on. He saw me and waved, then made a few more taps on the shoe and set the horse’s foot down.
“You can put him away, Jeremy, he’ll get you home just fine now,” he said.
A student I recognized as Jeremy Clark led the grey off toward a hitchin’ post that stood not far from the front door of the school. There were several horses tied up there.
“Afternoon. You picked a good day to come,” Teacher smiled at me as I got down out of the saddle. “Michael will tie up your horse for you.”
I handed the reins to a tall boy with bright red hair. Teacher introduced me to the students — I knew most of them from the store — then he answered the question I hadn’t had a chance to ask yet.
“It’s outdoors day,” he explained. “Once a week we spend the afternoon outside doing a few things that I figure might be every bit as useful as book learning. Jeremy’s mare threw a shoe this morning, so that was the first piece of business. Now we’re going down to the creek to learn a few tricks of survival if we’re ever lost. And later it’s a baseball game — you’ll play, won’t you?”
I’d never played baseball. In fact, I’d only seen it once when my pa played for the town team against a bunch of traveling players. I didn’t relish the idea of looking like a fool in front of all these kids.
“Well ... uh ...”
“Sure you will,” Teacher patted me on the shoulder. “Come on, you can help me show them how to build a shelter. Let’s go.”
We started off hiking at a very fast pace with Teacher talking to the students the whole time. He amazed me with his knowledge of nature. He pointed out trees, flowers and birds that I’d seen all my life but didn’t know the names of. Teacher not only knew their names but was aware of all kinds of interesting facts about most of them as well.
From time to time one of the kids would ask a question, like, “What’s best for poison ivy?” or “Where do the eagles go in the winter?” and Teacher would answer. Good answers, too, not stupid stuff like Cooper Raine gives for answers to questions even when he isn’t the one being asked.
We spent an hour down at the river, building a shelter out of deadfall and spruce branches and Teacher had all of us, even me, eat some roots he dug up. The roots weren’t all that tasty, but I guess if I was lost and out of food, it was a piece of knowledge that could come in handy. He even took his knife and cut himself on the arm and showed us how if you mixed mud and spit with the pulp of one of the roots we’d been eating, you could make the bleeding stop. On the way back to the school yard, Teacher and I were walking a little ways from the students.
“How do you think Mr. Warren would take to ‘outdoors day’ and building shelters and eating roots and what not?”
“He’d hate it.”
“Kind of what I was thinking,” I nodded. “Don’t you worry about him coming out here one day when you’re outside doing something and—?”
“Nope.”
“You don’t? Why not?”
“See that dark-haired girl over there?” Teacher pointed.
“Round-faced gal? Kind of pouty looking?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen her before, or if I have...
“Her name’s Betts. She’s Warren’s daughter.”
I whistled. “Then you really are taking a chance. She’s sure to tell her father sooner or later.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the first time we had one of these outdoors days, I did a little thing with a magnifying glass and spontaneous combustion. Started a little grass fire and we got some good practice putting it out. Turns out none of these kids had ever seen anything like that before. So, I just happened to let slip that at my last school, a student got way out of line in his behavior, and I got so mad I made him burst into flames.” Teacher grinned real big at me. “Haven’t had much in the way of discipline problems since. Everybody was quite impressed by my little demonstration, Betts Warren most of all.”
I thought about what he’d said for quite a while before I said anything.
“Did you really?”
“What?”
“Set a kid on fire ... at your last school?”
Teacher’s grin faded and he looked at me for a long time. Then he fished in his pocket and pulled out a piece of glass.
He held it out to me. “You ever see one of these before?”
“Well, I’ve seen glass before.”
“This is a magnifying glass” Teacher held it closer. “You know what that means?”
“Of course. It magnifies things,” I didn’t want him thinking I was some kind of dull witted country boy.
“That’s right,” Teacher smiled, “but have you ever seen what else it can do?”
“I ... guess not.”
“I thought as much,” Teacher put the glass back in his pocket, then didn’t say anything more for quite a while.
We were almost back to the school and I needed to know. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Your last school. That kid you set on fire. What happened to him?”
Teacher patted his pocket where the glass was. “Let’s just say it would be best if you didn’t ever make me real mad.”
I looked at him, but I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not. It wasn’t until we were in the middle of the baseball game that I remembered our conversation at the campfire when he’d hinted that maybe there hadn’t been any previous school, but all that did was to confuse me even more in my thinking about Teacher.
The baseball game wasn’t the best part of my day. I figured Teacher must have had those kids playing ball prior to that afternoon because every single one of them, including Betts Warren, was better at it than me.
We chose up sides and my team suffered for having me as a member. I dropped the ball every time it came my way; I never did figure out how to throw the thing and have it go where I was aiming. I wasn’t much better at batting. In fact, the only time I succeeded in getting the bat to strike the ball, it didn’t go far, and Betts Warren picked it up and tossed it to the tall redheaded kid so I was ‘out’. That’s the term they use in baseball to describe what happened to me every time I got up to bat.
It was fun, I suppose, even if I wasn’t much good at it. I took comfort from the fact that Cooper Raine hadn’t been there to see the game, so at least my lack of baseball playing skills wouldn’t be the subject of conversation in every building in town by that evening.
It was interesting to see the way Teacher got on with the students. He laughed with them, talked with them, listened to them and answered their questions. What stood out most of all was how much he seemed to like them. And they liked him back. Spontaneous combustion or not. I wondered if things went as well when he was teaching the more traditional subjects in the classroom. One other thing I wondered was what Mr. Warren thought about the fact that Teacher still had the .44 strapped on his hip. It had even been there during the baseball game.
“You’ll stay for supper,” he said once the students had all headed for home on foot or horseback.
“Thanks, but I better not.” I shook my head. “It’s getting dark earlier now and I think I should be getting along. I promised Mother I’d husk some corn for supper.” That gave me an idea. “Why don’t you come back to town with me and join us for supper. I know Mother won’t mind.”
Teacher shook his head. “I appreciate the offer but I kind of like to be around that new schoolhouse building at night in case anybody gets any ideas.”
“Sure, I understand.” We walked over to my horse. “Looks to me like you’re a born teacher,” I told him as I mounted up.
Teacher laughed real hard at that although I couldn’t see the humour in what I’d said.
“So long.” he slapped my horse lightly on the hip.
I waved and headed off toward town as the sun was dipping behind the hills to the west. I figure I was about halfway back to town when they ambushed me.
The light was pretty well gone which is why I never knew how many of them there were; I think maybe four, three for sure. They didn’t say anything, just rode up alongside and knocked me off my horse. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to do much or say much except “What do you think you’re doing?” Then they got off their horses and started beating and kicking me. I tried to fight back but I’m not much of a fighter and I don’t think any of the punches I threw hit anybody. When it was over, my hands were about the only part of me that didn’t hurt.
I figure what must’ve saved me was a couple of wild horses. That, and how I happened to be wearing boots that were a couple of sizes too big. Whoever jumped me, after they beat me up for a while, hung me up in my stirrup just like they had done with Watts. I know that because my boot was still in that stirrup when Teacher found me. And right next to my horse was a couple of wild mustangs that must have strayed off from the main herd that ranges mostly north of here. They were mares, curious mares at that; Teacher figured Powder probably stopped to visit. That’s when my foot slipped out of my boot and I landed on the ground next to a clump of sage.
Teacher never told me exactly why he happened along, said something about having second thoughts about the corn on the cob, but I was never sure whether he really meant that or if he’d actually been going someplace and just stumbled across me. I was nowhere near as bad off as Watts. Maybe they meant to kill him and just scare me or maybe my dragging getting cut short was what saved me. Anyway, I was mostly okay except for a lot of scrapes and bruises and the bad part, a broken nose. I say the bad part because ever since that night I’ve always felt I had the look of a pale, skinny pelican. And pelicans aren’t likely to be successful in attracting women the likes of Miss Lyla Case.
The other thing that came out of my being jumped was that Teacher got real mad, even madder than before and this time there was no talking him out of doing something about it. I guess I was partly responsible for that too. I happened to notice — it’s about the only thing I did recollect out of that night — silver cheek pieces on the bridle of the horse of one of my attackers.
I don’t know how it came about that a couple of round pieces of silver, probably not much bigger than a silver dollar, caught my attention in the dark and confusion, but I was absolutely positive about those cheek pieces. I mentioned them to Teacher after he got me back to town and after I got myself sorted out enough to talk. (My voice was different too with that broken nose and all the cotton swabs Doc Fenster stuffed up my nostrils — I sounded like I had a bad cold.) Anyway, after I told Teacher about that one detail that was fixed in my memory, it wasn’t long before he rode out.
He waited though until he was satisfied that I was all right. (He wouldn’t take my word for it — he had to hear it direct from Doc Fenster.) Then he was gone, and we didn’t hear from him for a couple of days. I guess it’s a good thing the next day was Saturday or he would have been missed at school. As it was, nobody saw him until Sunday night when he rode through town on his way back to the camp.
What I just wrote is not quite true. In fact, I found out later, from Teacher himself and others that quite a few people saw him. For example, J. Emerson Keymore saw Teacher. Waincastle saw him. Cook saw him, too. And one of Mr. Keymore’s new hands, a man named Link Mayes, saw a whole lot of Teacher. It turned out Link Mayes had a real nice set of silver cheek pieces on the bridle of his horse and matching silver jingle bobs on his spurs. Teacher didn’t appear to care much about the spurs, but he took a particular interest in the cheek pieces. When he asked Mayes about what he’d been doing and where he’d been about the time I got jumped, Link took it in his head to sass Teacher something awful and call him a couple of names that don’t generally come up in conversation around my mother’s dinner table. That wasn’t too smart on Mayes’ part, as it turned out.
It was about that time, I’m told, that Teacher took a fence post from a pile that was sittin’ there and drove the pointy end into Mayes’ stomach, which I’m inclined to think must have hurt pretty bad. But then Teacher turned the post and used it kind of like the baseball bat we had used in our game and hit Mayes three or four times around the head and the last hit he made sure broke Mayes’ nose. I saw Mayes sometime afterward and he didn’t resemble a pelican anywhere near as much as me, but it was easy enough to tell his nose had been broken. Now the story is that there were at least five or six men, all friends of Mayes or men he worked with, watching this take place (only two or three when Teacher told it) but not one of them cared to interfere at all or even go for his gun.
After that, the kind of stuff that had happened to Watts and me didn’t take place for a good while. I don’t know if everybody feared Teacher or what, but I never saw him challenged, not by men in groups of two or three and not even by Mr. J. Emerson Keymore himself, who was pretty much fearless even though he was probably well into his sixties at the time.
And so, things were kind of peaceful for a time.
Chapter Six
There was some good and some bad that came out of what happened to me. Miss Lyla Case took it upon herself to become my personal nurse whenever she wasn’t at school. This I found to be very good and it more than made up for the pain (truth is, there wasn’t much) of my injuries. What was a whole lot worse was the regular afternoon visit of Cooper Raine who made it his business to drop by daily to bring the news.
Most of the time there wasn’t any of that either, but that didn’t stop Cooper from coming around about three o’clock every single afternoon. He always led off the conversation with “Where’s Miss Lyla today?” I’d noticed that Miss Lyla Case, after a few visits from Cooper, managed to be busy in some remote part of the house whenever he came by.
The fact that my injuries looked a lot worse than they hurt allowed me to remain bedridden for longer than I needed to be — I admit it now and I suppose I’m a little ashamed — and to receive the benefit of Miss Lyla Case’s gentle care. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I pretended to be hurt when I wasn’t, just to keep Miss Lyla close by longer than necessary, but I suppose it’s true that I didn’t exactly rush my recovery.
Teacher dropped by a couple of times a week as well. We talked about a lot of different things and it was during that time — then and later when we were holed up in the schoolhouse, that I came to know him a lot better. Though I’ll admit right now that there was always a lot more about Teacher that I didn’t know than what I did.
He seemed to enjoy teasing me. For example, he figured out real quick that I wasn’t hurt half as bad as Watts had been, but I was laid up twice as long. I explained that I was concerned about reinjuring myself if I went back to work too soon.
Teacher laughed for quite a while about that. “How much danger is a person’s nose in when he’s wrapping linens?” he asked me.
One night we talked for a very long time about women.
“You ever been in love?” I asked.
“Have you?” he said.
“Well ... yeah, I think so ... once,” I said.
“It happens,” he said.
I think he had some idea I was talking about Miss Lyla Case, which of course, was a reasonable assumption. But the fact is it wasn’t her. I’m a bit nervous putting this down for folks to read especially since those folks could include Mother or even Miss Lyla Case herself. But I told it to Teacher, so I suppose I best put it down here.
“I’ve been with a woman,” I said. “You know what I mean by ‘been with’?” He nodded. “She was ... a ... sporting woman.” I always hated the word whore. “Her name was Julie and she was beautiful and ... soft, not at all like I thought one of those ladies would be.”
Teacher nodded but he didn’t say anything.
“It happened two times,” I said. “The first time Cooper Raine and some other fellas got together and paid Julie some money. Of course, I didn’t know anything about it or even that she was a ...
“She came by the store and asked me if I’d stroll with her a while. Problem is there aren’t a whole bunch of places you can stroll to in a place the size of Kecking Horse so after an hour or so of walking and talking our way up and down Main Street, we found ourselves at Julie’s door and she asked me if I’d care to drink a cup of coffee with her. Well, I cared to quite a lot but, of course, those fellas hadn’t paid Julie four dollars just to stroll and drink coffee.”
Teacher smiled then but it wasn’t a smile that was poking fun at me, so I felt I could go on telling him.
“I’m not sure I can recall exactly how it all happened. But one thing led to another and the next thing I do remember for sure is standing in front of Julie in my long underwear — it was February at the time — and I was awful embarrassed partly because, even in my underwear, I was considerably overdressed compared to what Julie was wearing as we stood there facing each other.” I stopped talking and wiped the back of my neck which had become uncomfortably warm all of a sudden.
