by Avi
"Ida, I wish it could be otherwise."
There was a noise. Ida glanced up. Tom was standing by the door. She wondered how much he had heard.
Miss Fletcher turned. "Tom," she said, "please call an end to recess."
"Yes, ma'am" He walked out.
Ida started to go back to her regular seat. She was halfway there when she paused. "Miss Fletcher, do you think girls don't need a high school education?"
"Oh no, of course I don't believe that. Mr. Jordan was not ... thinking."
"It's what he said."
Miss Fletcher sighed. "Ida, do try to be patient."
"It's hard being patient," Ida replied, "if there's nothing to be patient for."
At day's end Ida opened the Ford's door and flung in the empty syrup can. She was about to call Felix to get him to take his place by the pedals when Tom came over.
"Tom Kohl," Ida said, "I'm still peeved at you."
"Why?"
"Suggesting I should just have fun instead of being serious about my studies. You sounded like old toady Jordan."
"I was only trying to cheer you up," Tom said.
"You didn't."
"Hey," he said, pushing his hair out of his eyes, "I know I wasn't supposed to be listening, but I heard what Miss Fletcher said."
"And you called me a sneak-peek!"
"Said you'd be a good teacher."
"Never going to get the chance," Ida said.
"I thought of a way you could."
"How?"
"You could become our teacher."
Ida stared at him. "Just what is that supposed to mean?"
"You're such a gravy know-it-all," Tom said. "You could take over the school when Miss Fletcher leaves. Look, your legs weren't long enough to reach your car pedals, right? So you figured how to get Felix to work them."
"So what?"
"You might drive like a half-inch inchworm, but you're getting to school a lot faster than you used to, aren't you? Same thing here. Just have to find a way. And the way is, you be our teacher."
Ida glared at him. "Are you telling me what to do?" Annoyed, she turned away from him. "Felix," she yelled, "come on!"
While she held the car door open, her brother squirmed into the cab and onto the floor. Then Ida got in and tied the door shut.
Not saying a word, Tom went to the front of the car, ready to crank up the motor as he usually did at the end of school when Ida and Felix went home.
A frowning Ida sat behind the steering wheel and set the spark lever—on the left side of the steering wheel—to the third notch, then fixed the throttle lever—on the right side of the wheel—on the fifth notch.
"Neutral," she said to Felix.
Below, Felix pushed the clutch pedal down.
"Ready," he said.
"Ready!" she called out to Tom, who turned the starter crank and gave the motor a couple of turns.
As the motor sputtered into motion, Ida adjusted the spark lever until the engine ran smoothly.
"Reverse!" she called to Felix, who pushed in the reverse pedal while she released the hand brake.
The car backed up and swung around, stopping when Ida pulled back the brake lever. "Forward clutch!" she called.
Felix released the reverse clutch pedal, then pushed in the forward one.
"Let's go!" Ida shouted while shifting the throttle lever.
In moments the old Ford was bumping down the dirt road toward home.
"Ida!" Felix called up from beneath the dashboard after they had gone on awhile.
"What?"
"Is something wrong? Did Tom say something mean? What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing," Ida snapped. But in fact Tom's idea kept churning in her head.
Could I really become the teacher? she thought.
Three
AS IDA PARKED THE backfiring car in their farmyard driveway, bleating lambs, tails up, ran in fright, while Snooker, the old mare, looked over the corral fence.
"Felix," Ida whispered after they got out, "don't tell Ma or Pa what happened in school."
Felix's look turned quizzical. "How come?"
"I need to tell them my way. Understand?"
"No, but okay," he said, accepting, as always, his older sister's ways.
Ida opened the front door of their log cabin. It had been built by her father when he came from eastern Colorado years ago. At the time people thought there was gold in the surrounding mountains.
A red-faced Mrs. Bidson was in the steamy kitchen, stirring laundry atop the wood-burning stove. Baby Shelby was on her lap.
"Hi there!" she called. "How was school?"
"Fine," Ida said glumly.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
Felix darted a look at Ida. She put a finger to her lips. "Want some help with Shelby?" she offered.
"Just been waiting for you to come home," Mrs. Bidson said with a smile as she handed the baby over. "Felix, your pa's in the barn. Said to say you were needed soon as you got in."
Felix gulped down a glass of milk, then stuffed a hunk of bread into his mouth. Before racing away, he beckoned Ida over and whispered, "Why didn't you tell Ma that Miss Fletcher is leaving?"
"I'm not sure what I'm going to do."
He screwed up his face. "Do? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Tell you when I make up my mind."
Ida stayed with the baby for an hour, then got on with her regular chores. She mucked out the horse's stall and milked the cow. Working along with her father, she checked the early lambs, and finally, after she'd helped her mother with supper preparations, Ida set out the soaking barrels for the next day's laundry.
At supper Ida didn't say a word about school. Most of the talk was about a new hay field Mr. Bidson was thinking about fencing in.
That evening, up in the loft bedroom Ida and Felix shared, Ida put aside the year-old Saturday Evening Post she'd been reading, lay back, and stared up at the wooden plank roof. She liked to imagine different pictures for the grain patterns. It always soothed her. One night it was a map. Another time it was secret writing. Sometimes it was even music. Tonight it was the road to school.
But as soon as Felix was asleep, Ida slipped out of her bed and crept down the steps to the kitchen. Her mother was still awake, boiling baby bottles in a big pot.
"Hello, love," her mother said with a quick if tired smile. "Thought you'd gone to sleep a long time ago."
"Felix has. I couldn't."
"Something on your mind?"
Ida perched upon a chair and pulled her flannel nightgown over her toes. "Can we talk?" she asked gravely.
Her mother continued working. "I'm listening."
"Where's Pa?"
"Out in the barn. The tractor motor is leaking. This girl talk?"
"It's school." Ida hesitated, then said, "Ma, Miss Fletcher's mother is very sick. On Wednesday she's leaving to go to Iowa to be with her."
"Oh dear!"
"And Mr. Jordan—he's head of the school board—"
"I know."
"—said they wouldn't replace her."
"For heaven's sake. Why not?"
"Said it was too late in the term." Ida paused. "I think he just wants to save money."
"Times are getting tight, honey. The valley doesn't have much money. I'm sorry about Miss Fletcher."
"I am, too, but they're closing the school for the year."
"Closing?"
"And Ma, the thing is, if school closes, it means Tom and I can't take the final exam."
"Oh, honey! And you've been working so hard."
"Ma, it's a lot more. No exam—no high school."
Mrs. Bidson thought for a moment. Then she said, "Ida, love, high school was only a possibility. Like we told you, your going depends on how we do on the farm, anyway. Year by year."
"I know."
Ida watched her mother pluck the baby bottles from the hot water and set them to dry. "Ma," she said after a moment, "you know what Tom said?"
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"Guess I don't."
"He had an idea how we could keep the school going."
"How?"
"Said ... I should be the teacher."
Mrs. Bidson looked around. "You mean, you ... teaching?"
"Ma, I've been going to school almost forever. I guess I should know how to do it. And you know I've always wanted to be a teacher."
"Think they'd hire you?"
Ida shook her head. "Not for money."
"I don't understand."
"Just ... doing it."
Mrs. Bidson sat down, all attention now. "Honey, you're only fourteen. No one needs to tell me how smart you are. But think, if you were teacher, you'd have all that figuring out of the students' lessons, checking all their work, plus being in charge of the schoolhouse. It'd be hard making everyone mind, too. And you'd still have your own schoolwork to do on top of all that. What do the other children have to say?"
"Don't know. It was Tom's idea. I'd never even thought about it before he mentioned it."
"Well, Tom's sweet on you."
"Ma!"
"Course he is."
"Anyway, that doesn't have anything to do with it."
"Maybe," her mother said with a quick smile. "As for you teaching, I suppose it might work. But only if the other children went along. And I guess you'd need to speak to Mr. Jordan."
Ida winced. "Why him?"
"Like you said, Mr. Jordan's head of the school board. You'd need his permission, wouldn't you?"
Ida remained still for a moment. Then she said, "I guess. But do you think I should even try being teacher?"
"You're set on trying to get to high school, aren't you?"
Ida nodded.
"And you need your exam to do it, right?"
Ida nodded again.
"Ida, your getting to high school would be a family first. But you got to keep in mind what your pa told you: If you go, we'd still need to pay for your room and board in town. And even though Felix is getting older, he's only seven. Keeping things running around here is going to be harder without you."
"I'd be home weekends."
"When the snow let you."
"Ma, it's just now I'm talking about. Maybe I won't tell Pa what I'm doing."
Mrs. Bidson frowned. "Not sure I like that. The point is, your chores won't ease up none even if you are the teacher. We need you pitching in here, too."
"But ... do you think I could do it?"
"Being teacher, now, well, it would be unusual, I guess. But most things seem so when they're new. I can't see how it would hurt you any."
"Think I'd be ... good?"
"Ida, love, though your father's keen on reading, neither of us got much schooling. Bit of writing, sums. I think you'd be good. But ... honey, it's not my world."
"I know," Ida said. Suddenly recalling that at five-thirty in the morning it would be milking time again, she said, "I better go to bed," and headed back to the loft.
"Ida!" Mrs. Bidson called after her.
Ida looked back.
"If you decide to do it, I'll give you something."
"What's that?"
"Hairpins," Mrs. Bidson said with a smile. "If you put up your hair, you'll look older."
Four
THE NEXT DAY DURING midmorning recess, Ida approached Tom. "I want to talk to you," she announced quietly. "Without another word, she headed for the pond.
"Still angry at me?" Tom asked her when he caught up.
"I wasn't, really," she said. "Just upset about school, that's all."
"Me, too. When I told my folks they were hopping mad about it. Back in Germany, before they came here, they didn't get much learning. So they really hoped I'd go on to high school. Want me to be something different than they are."
At first Ida remained quiet. Then, shyly, she said, "I was thinking over what you said, about my being the teacher."
"You could do it."
"My ma said I'd have to ask Mr. Jordan."
Tom shook his head. "Old geezer would never agree."
"I know."
Ida looked up at Tom's long face, with its almost-but-not-quite turned-up nose. He seemed serious, too, but when he pushed his hair away from his forehead—a habit of his—Ida saw a gleam in his brown eyes.
"So if we did it," he said, smiling, "it'd have to be done in ... secret. That what you're thinking?"
Ida nodded. "And that means all the rest would have to agree."
"You game to ask 'em?" Tom said.
Ida took a moment. "Yes," she whispered.
Tom grinned.
"We've got to plan for when Miss Fletcher goes," Ida said to the other kids as they ate their lunches of bread with jam or lard, meat slices, and apples.
"Already got my plan." Herbert laughed. "One long vacation and it starts day after tomorrow."
"You're always taking a vacation," Susie said.
Herbert flushed. "Am not! Working, that's what. My dad says there ain't no laws can force me to go to school. Unconstitutional."
"Look here," Tom cut in impatiently. "With Miss Fletcher gone and school closed, next year it'll be the same as if we all got held back a whole year."
"You mean repeat everything?" Natasha asked, aghast.
"You heard Mr. Jordan," Tom said. "School board won't bring in another teacher. Which means you get no credit for the year. And Ida and I won't get our exit tests."
"I don't like tests," Susie said.
Ida said, "It's just Tom and me who need them. But I bet you'd hate it a lot if you didn't get credit for your whole fourth grade."
"Yeah," Herbert said, "then you'd grow up to be a dumb old maid like Ida!"
Ida gave him a dirty look.
Charley said, "Then what are you fixing to do about it?"
Ida felt her heart beat faster. "Tom," she said, "had a notion."
Everyone looked at Tom.
"Who's the smartest of everybody here?" he asked.
For a moment no one said anything. Then Natasha said, "I'm the best speller. And you're best at math. But all in all, for high marks, I guess it's Ida."
"So I say," Tom said, "Ida should become our teacher."
"My own sister, the teacher?" Felix cried with such dismay everyone burst out laughing.
"I'm serious," Tom went on. "We have to have a teacher, right? Except Mr. Jordan said the school board won't get one till next year. But if we got one now and did our own schooling, everyone could move on to the next grade, and Ida and I could take our exams. She knows what to do. Let her be teacher."
"How you going to make sure we behave?" Herbert said with a grin. "Get out the switch?"
"Switch whipping is mean," Mary Kohl said.
"And I don't believe in it," Ida said.
"Then how?" Herbert challenged her.
Ida shrugged. "Find some way."
"Hey," Herbert said, "it'll be worth coming to school just to see you try."
Everyone laughed again.
"But," Natasha said earnestly, "what about the school board? Think they'd let you? You know, pay and everything?"
"Wouldn't ask for pay," Ida said. "Do it for nothing."
"Mr. Skin-a-flint Jordan would love that," Herbert said.
"But the main thing is," Tom said, "because I bet the school board wouldn't let us do it, we won't ask. We'll just do it on our own."
"A secret teacher?" Felix asked.
"A secret school?" asked Mary.
"But," Natasha said with dismay, "I already told my parents school was going to close."
The other children nodded. They had, too.
Tom said, "Well, just tell them things got changed a little, that school is going on. Which it would be ... mostly. No fibbing there."
"But what if they ask who's teaching?" Natasha asked.
"Say you don't know yet."
"People are going to find out at Last Day Exercises," Charley pointed out.
"Be too late by then," Tom said.
"Well, I do love secrets,"
Herbert said.
"All in favor, raise your hands," Tom said after a moment.
All eight hands shot up.
"Then I guess," Ida said, "I'm your teacher."
The decision made, the children sat there, waiting for Ida to say something.
"Just remember," she said softly, "this really does need to be a secret. Now go play."
When the other children ran off, Ida and Tom stayed behind.
Ida sighed. "I can't believe we're doing this."
"You nervous?"
"I think so."
"Know what my uncle once told me?"
Ida shook her head.
"Said, 'If you want to try something new, and you're not scared, means you're not really trying something new.'"
"Maybe I'm too scared," Ida said with a wan smile.
"Which scares you the most," Tom pressed, "teaching, or not going to high school?"
"I think I'd hate myself if I didn't try everything to get there," Ida said after a moment.
"Well," said Tom, "if I had to pick between hating myself and scaring myself, guess I know what I'd do."
"What?"
"Oh no!" Tom said, getting up. "Last time I suggested what you could do, you got mad at me. You're gonna have to decide for yourself." He grew thoughtful. "But if you do it, we still going to be friends?"
Ida blushed. "Tom Kohl!"
Tom grinned. "Just asking." He walked away, untied Ruckus, and led him to a shady spot to graze.
Ida watched Tom go and then strolled down to the little pond back behind the schoolhouse. On hands and knees, she studied her reflection in the still water. She was sure she didn't look like a schoolteacher.
After making sure no one was watching, Ida undid her braids, then pulled back her hair and looked at herself again. The Ida who gazed back at her now appeared a little older—a little more like a teacher.
The bell rang. Quickly, Ida rebraided her hair and ran back to school.
"Well?" Tom whispered to her when she slipped onto the bench, next to him.
"I'm going to be scared," Ida answered softly. "Very scared."
Five
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, shortly before three o'clock, Miss Fletcher said, "Children, please put away your work."
There was a quick rustling of papers and closing of books. Expectant, the children sat back on their benches.