Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker

Author:Mildred Walker [Walker, Mildred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000 FICTION / General
ISBN: 9780803298767
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books
Published: 2013-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

3

I WORKED hard at teaching fractions and interest and reading and spelling and yet all the time, underneath, my life seemed to be reaching out like the roots of a cottonwood tree after water. The days fell into a pattern: The Part before School, then School and The Part after School and The Long Evening. I was glad to hear the children arriving in the morning, and every afternoon I had a little dread of the sudden stillness that settled down on the teacherage when they left.

At three-thirty we marched out into the yard and sang “America” while two of the boys lowered the flag. Leslie Harper was chosen first, because he was a new boy. Leslie would hold the folded flag carefully across his flat little chest and march in to put it away.

“The pole looks kind of lonesome when the flag gets down, don’t it, Miss Webb?” Leslie said once.

The children were seldom in a hurry to get off. Raymond would bring in wood for me. Francis, not to be outdone by his brother, would bring a fresh pail of water. Some of the children had a swing before they left. I lingered outside with them as long as they stayed. But all of a sudden they were gone. The Part after School had begun.

With a little sinking feeling I realized that today was Friday and I was alone again. I went back into the schoolroom. Somebody always forgot something: a lunch box or a hair ribbon or a cap. Today there was Nels’s slingshot over on the window sill and I could see a half-eaten apple in Mike’s desk. There was the faint smell of hot dirty hands in the room, and I recognized the scent of the musterole Sigrid’s mother had put on her chest. I opened the windows and let it air out. Soon it would be too cold to do that.

Nels Thorson’s father had brought a truckload of wood this morning, big chunks of fir and poplar, and dumped it at the corner of the schoolhouse.

“There, Miss Webb, that oughta see you to Christmas. It’s January and February that’s the worst months,” he told me cheerily.

Today I wished it would rain or snow, or the wind would blow hard. Then I would be glad of the snugness of the teacherage and open my books and get to work, but this placid, pitilessly clear fall weather made me feel like a fly held in a drop of honey.

“I must wash my hair,” I said aloud, trying to pretend to a great busyness. “I must hurry so I can dry it before the sun goes down. This schoolroom needs a good cleaning,” I told myself as I went down the aisle. “I have all those arithmetic and spelling papers to mark. But what are eight papers?” my mind sneered. “The blackboards need washing. I must make a pattern for those paper turkeys. The children can cut them out and paste them on the windows.” But I went into my room and sat down on the bed.

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