Blue Shadows Farm: A Novel

37. School Days—October 1886

219 October 1886 Ma, Teacher wants to talk with you,” ten-year-old Abe said as he burst through the cabin door upon arriving home from school. He was in fifth grade. “Got anything to eat?” Sophia was busy preparing supper, working over her stove where she was boiling a pot of freshly dug potatoes and rutabagas from the garden. “Help yourself to a cookie, but just one. Don’t spoil your supper. What does Teacher want?” Abe lifted the cover of the cookie jar and took out two sugar cookies. He had his back to his mother. “I don’t know what Old Lady Emerson wants to talk about,” Abe said, curtly. “Abe, Miss Emerson is not an old lady.” “She acts like an old lady. Nobody can do anything right when she’s around. Can’t get away with nothin’.” “‘Anything,’ Abe. It is ‘anything.’” “That’s what I said; we can’t get away with nothin’.” “Oh, Abe,” Sophia said, tousling his hair. “Go do your chores; supper ready in a little while.” 37 School Days “I hate chores,” Abe said as he started munching on his second sugar cookie. Flecks of sugar appeared on each side of his mouth. “You know what your pa will say if you haven’t fed the chickens and carried in wood.” “Other kids don’t have chores to do,” Abe grumbled. “Bet they do,” Sophia said as she pulled three loaves of fresh bread from the oven and placed them on the table to cool. Abe slammed the door as he retreated to the granary, where he got a pail of oats, which he took to the chicken house and scattered on the floor for the layers to eat. Then he walked to the woodpile of freshly split logs, loaded his arms with them, and carried them into the house, dumping them in the woodbox as noisily as possible. The next day Sophia walked the mile to the Link Lake one-room schoolhouse to meet with Miss Emerson. The school was a rather shabby building, once painted a bright red but now faded to a light shade of pink. A bell tower was perched on the roof—Sophia could often hear the eight-thirty warning and nine o’clock starting bells’ “dong, dong” that echoed through the community on a still morning . All eight grades met in one room, with Miss Emerson in charge of all the classes. Sophia arrived at the school just after classes were dismissed for the day. She met Abe trotting down the road, swinging his lard-pail lunch bucket. “See you at home, Ma,” he said to his mother by way of greeting. “Come in, come in,” Miss Emerson said when she spotted Sophia in the doorway. The teacher, tall, thin, and with a rather pointed chin, wore her black hair in a bun. Her long skirt brushed the school seats as she walked to the back of the schoolroom to greet Sophia. This was Miss Emerson’s first year teaching at Link Lake School; the previous teacher had left the community at the end of the last school year without a word as to why she was leaving and where she was going. 220 School Days—October 1886 221 School Days—October 1886 “I think she got herself knocked up,” one of the school board members said, but that piece of gossip had never been confirmed. “So nice of you to come so promptly,” Miss Emerson said. Sophia guessed the young woman was still in her twenties. “Let’s sit here in the back of the room, where the seats are a little larger.” The seats in the school, lined up in three rows with a narrow aisle between them, were smallest at the front—for the first and second graders—and got progressively larger as they moved toward the back. The largest seats of all were in the far back, for those students, some of them well into their teens, who were trying to finish eighth grade. “I want to talk about Abe,” Miss Emerson said. She had a grayish book in front of her, her grade book. “Ja,” Sophia said, leaning forward. “Your Abe is a very smart young man.” Miss Emerson glanced down at her grade book. “He is the best reader in his grade; in fact he reads better than some of my eighth graders.” “That’s...