The Lesson

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  And what could M.K. say to that? It was the truth. In fact, it was the essence of the problem. M.K. had been the worst offender of any pupil—by a long shot. Hadn’t she just been reprimanded in church for reading a book? How could she possibly try to act like she was in charge when she was known for being the ringleader of mischief? She knew these pupils, and they knew her. It was hopeless. And the thing was—she didn’t blame them one bit. She should not be standing here as their teacher.

  Eugene Miller was in the third grade when M.K. was in eighth. He was a little too smart-mouthed for his own good, even back then. And he was at that troublesome age now, a renowned prankster. He had dark, shaggy hair that hung in his eyes, and he wore a smirk of superiority on his wide mouth as if laughing at the whole world and everyone in it. Clearly, he was the leader of the big boys, and she knew he could easily influence them to make trouble for her.

  And then there was that overly petite new girl—Jenny. She looked at M.K. with unconcealed suspicion. As if she knew M.K. had no business teaching.

  It dawned on M.K. that she had probably stared at poor Alice Smucker in the same insolent way as Jenny was staring at her. It was the first time she could recall having a sympathetic feeling for Alice Smucker. Ever. The thought amazed her.

  Barbara Jean pulled on M.K.’s sleeve again. “Thee you thometime at church.”

  M.K. had to think fast. If she allowed Barbara Jean to leave, the entire classroom would think up excuses to leave. Had she been in their position, she would be inventing excuses for each of the students and selling them for a nickel during recess. “Barbara Jean, tell me why you want to go home.”

  Tears filled Barbara Jean’s eyes. “I love my mom tho much. You don’t know how hard it ith to be away from thomeone you love that much.”

  M.K. felt tears prick at her eyes. That she understood! She pulled Barbara Jean into a hug and whispered, “I miss my mom like that too.” She wiped away Barbara Jean’s tears with her handkerchief. Then she wiped away her own tears.

  Ridiculous. This was getting ridiculous. Somehow, she had to pick up the pieces of this class and carry on. “How would you like to be the teacher’s helper and sit at my desk?”

  Barbara Jean gave that some thought.

  “If you still want to go home at lunch, then I’ll let you go.”

  Barbara Jean whispered a yeth, so M.K. led her right up to her desk.

  M.K. felt rather proud of herself. She had actually solved a problem. The feeling quickly dissipated as she heard a high-pitched scream from the back of the classroom. Someone had lit a match and tossed it into the trash can at the back of the room. As M.K. rushed outside with the flaming trash can, she thought she caught a smirk on Eugene Miller’s smug face. Why, that boy was another Jimmy Fisher. Worse.

  Somehow, she stumbled ahead through the day, one eye on the clock, willing this hour to be over, and then the next and the next.

  Chris tried to hold back a smile when he heard Jenny’s complaints about the new teacher. He burst out laughing when she described the teacher’s looks: bony, wispy haired, wild-eyed, false teeth that wobbled when she talked. His sister had a vivid imagination. “What’s her name?” he asked.

  “Teacher M.K. That’s all I know about her. That and the fact that she has had no teaching experience whatsoever. I’m not even sure she can read. Probably not.”

  Chris rolled his eyes. “I highly doubt the school board would give the teaching job to a teacher who couldn’t read.”

  “Well, I heard that the real teacher was run over by a crazed lunatic. Just last week. And she’s dying as a result. That’s a fact. I heard that too.”

  Chris knew Jenny had impossibly high expectations for teachers and they always fell short. Jenny had yet to find a teacher who challenged her. She was always “bored.” But the more he heard about the school day—starting with the fire in the trash can and ending with the disappearance of a little first grade girl, the more he had to agree with Jenny’s assessment. This new teacher sounded like she had no ability to control a classroom filled with big boys. No backbone at all. If this was day one, it was going to be a long school year.

  He knew what it was like to have good teachers and not-so-good teachers. That was the thing about a one-room schoolhouse. You didn’t have much of a choice with your teacher. At least Jenny had a place to be each day, and this hapless teacher was too preoccupied with putting out fires to ask his sister too many questions about her background.

  But he did make Jenny promise not to stir up any trouble. The last thing she needed to do was to add to this poor pitiful teacher’s problems with the big boys.

  Chris had problems of his own on his mind tonight. He stared at the ceiling. The sight of water stains and peeling plaster did little to dispel the cloud of gloom hovering over him.

  He was working at Windmill Farm this morning and got caught in an untimely conversation with Hank Lapp, Amos’s uncle. Chris had been cutting hay in the north field and noticed the bit for the large Belgian wasn’t fitting properly. The big horse kept tossing her head. When Chris examined the bit, he saw that a piece of it had come undone and was causing discomfort for the horse. That wouldn’t do. He headed back to the barn to see if he could either fix the bit or find another one.

  As he passed by a buggy, a loud voice called out: “DADGUM!”

  Chris stopped to locate the source of the voice.

  “BLAST! WHERE DID THAT DADGUM THING GO?”

  All around the buggy were tools. Chris looked into the shop and thought he had never seen such a mess. Buggy parts and tools littered the floor. Every horizontal surface was filled. A headful of wild white hair popped out from under the buggy and peered up at Chris in surprise. If Chris wasn’t mistaken, one of the man’s eyes wandered.

  “Uh, hello,” Chris said to the head. “I’m helping Amos cut hay.”

  The wild-haired man pulled himself out from under the buggy. “So I heard!” He rose to his feet and thrust an oil-smudged hand at Chris. He pumped Chris’s hand up and down. “Hank Lapp. Known far and wide for my buggy repairs.”

  “Not hardly,” came another voice.

  Chris whirled around to face another older man with a long white beard.

  “When will this buggy be ready, Hank?” the man said. “It’s been months now.”

  “Now, Elmo, what we’ve got here is a tricky problem,” Hank said. “Very hard to fix. Needs just the right part and I can’t seem to . . . uh . . . locate the source.”

  As the two men discussed the buggy, the conversation became more animated, especially on the part of Hank Lapp. Chris decided it would be wise to slip quietly away. On the ground, he noticed a clevis—a little metal pin that held the singletree to the buggy shafts. He bent down and picked it up, then walked to the buggy. He looked up to see if he could interrupt the men, but Hank was waving his arms, talking fast, trying to explain why there was such a delay in fixing this particular buggy. Chris slipped the clevis into place and rose to his feet. Hank abruptly stopped talking. The two men stared at Chris.

  “I think I found that part you were looking for.” Chris knocked on the singletree that kept the traces from working their way off on their own. “See? It works.”

  Hank came over to check it out. “LOOK AT THAT! Well, wonders never cease.”

  Elmo sized up Chris as if he had just noticed he was there. The way he looked at Chris made him nervous. It was like the man was peering into his soul. “And who are you?”

  “That’s Amos’s hired help. New to town.” Hank looked over at Chris. “Son, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Chris Yoder.”

  “Chris Yoder, this is Bishop Elmo.” Hank pulled on the trace holders to make sure they were taut.

  The bishop. The bishop? Oh, this was not good. Not good at all.

  Bishop Elmo, cheerful and bespectacled, took a step closer to Chris. “New to Stoney Ridge?”

  “Really new. Just arrived.”

  “Any relation to Isaac Yo
der?”

  Chris shook his head.

  “Melvin Yoder?”

  Chris shook his head more vehemently. He did not want to start down that long road of dissecting family trees. Two thoughts ricocheted through his mind at that moment. One, that Bishop Elmo would ask why he hadn’t seen him in church more often once he discovered how long Chris had been here. That could be answered easily—they really just arrived a few weeks ago. A second and far more dangerous question was that the bishop might inquire—no, definitely would inquire, by the way he looked at that moment—as to where Chris had come from. Actually, it was surprising that he’d been able to evade the question so far with Amos Lapp and a few other people he had done odd jobs for, thanks to Bud at the hardware store. Chris quickly searched his brain for something to comment on, hoping it might redirect the conversation.

  He held up the bit in his hand. “I left the horses in the field while I fixed this bit. It sure is a hot day. I’d better get back to work.” He rushed off to the barn before Bishop Elmo could squeeze in another question.

  And still, Elmo managed to call out, “I’ll expect to see you in church in two Sundays, Chris Yoder.”

  Church. A feeling of dread washed over Chris. He would be found out.

  Stop it! he told himself fiercely. They’d come this far, hadn’t they?

  4

  M.K. didn’t think it was possible for Day Two as a teacher to be worse than Day One, but it was. The school had never been so noisy, including all of M.K.’s eight years as a student. All over the room there was a clatter of books and feet and a rustle of whispering. Whichever way she turned, unruliness and noise swelled up behind her. She didn’t think anything could have been more disruptive to a classroom than yesterday’s fire in the trash can, until Eugene Miller left during today’s noon recess—taking three other eighth grade boys with him. M.K had a horrible feeling that each day, fewer and fewer students would return after lunch. By Friday afternoon, the schoolhouse would be empty.

  Six-year-old Barbara Jean had started the exodus yesterday when she disappeared during lunch.

  M.K. gave permission for Barbara Jean to go outside to the girls’ room, but then she was gone for so long that M.K. panicked. She raced outside. Where was Barbara Jean? M.K. was hesitant to call out her name. It was unlikely that she’d left the school, wasn’t it? But she wasn’t in the girls’ bathroom, nor the boys’. In just a matter of minutes, she had lost a child. Barbara Jean had gone missing.

  Finally, M.K. found Barbara Jean behind the big oak tree, playing with her doll. “Oh, good!” M.K. said, flooded with relief. “I thought I’d lost you!” She was sure Barbara Jean had gone home.

  But why should it matter if a few pupils slipped off to go home?

  She didn’t know why, but it did matter.

  Fern had been right about one thing: M.K. was going to have to figure out how to get through this teaching job. For two weeks and three more days.

  But how? How?

  Amos put the ladder in the wagon. He untied Rosemary’s reins from the post and walked her over to Chris, waiting for the horse and wagon by the path that led to the orchards. He had thought Chris would want to head home early this afternoon after he finished cutting hay in that last field, but the boy asked if Amos had something else for him to do. That was easy to answer—work on a farm was never done. Amos had noticed that a variety of early ripening apples were starting to fall from the trees. Another sign of autumn’s arrival.

  Normally, Amos enjoyed every part and parcel of farming, but picking fruit from trees was one task he was happy to pass off to a younger soul. Up and down that ladder, empty the sack in the wagon, then back up the ladder. Over and over and over. Not easy work for the knees of a fifty-six-year-old man. Yes, he was happy to share that chore.

  Amos held the reins out to Chris, but he was preoccupied, staring up at the house. Amos shielded his eyes from the late afternoon sun to see what had caught Chris’s attention. M.K. was shelling peas on the porch, and Jimmy Fisher sat sprawled on the steps, his long legs crossed at the ankles, talking to her. Chris startled when he realized that Amos stood behind him and turned abruptly to lead Rosemary up the gentle rise toward the orchards.

  Amos walked down the hill and crossed the yard to where Fern was hanging laundry on the clothesline. “Fern, does it seem as if Jimmy Fisher is hanging around an awful lot? More than he used to?”

  Fern lifted one of Amos’s blue shirts up and hung it upside down so the arms dangled in the wind. “I’ll say. That boy is eating me out of house and home.”

  Amos watched Jimmy throw back his head in laughter at something M.K. said. “I always thought those two would either kill each other or fall in love.” He chuckled, pleased. “Guess it’s the latter.”

  Fern gave him a sideways glance. “You think those two would be a good match?”

  “Sure. Don’t you?” He thought it was a wonderful idea. Being in love with Jimmy might cure M.K. of that restlessness. She wouldn’t have time to think about anything else—trying to keep tabs on what Jimmy was up to would keep anybody busy. And M.K. would be good for Jimmy too. He never had a swooning effect on her like he did on all the other girls.

  Fern clipped a pair of black trousers to the line. “Was mer net hawwe soll, hett mer’s liebscht.” What we are not meant to have, we covet most. She picked up the empty basket and started toward the house.

  Amos puzzled on that for a while. What did that saying have to do with Jimmy and M.K.? Half the time, he had no idea what Fern meant. She spoke in riddles.

  Day Three. After M.K. dismissed the students for the afternoon, she put her head on her desk. She was a horrible teacher, just like she had known she would be. And she had an entire two weeks and two days looming ahead of her.

  Maybe, if she were thought to be a truly terrible teacher, the school board would fire her. Ah, relief! Followed swiftly by mortification. She would have to move away. Far, far away.

  Shanghai. Johannesburg. Reykjavik.

  Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Over the last year, she couldn’t stop thinking about what the world outside of Stoney Ridge would look like, what it would sound like. What filled her mind were thoughts of breaking free from this Amish life of careful routine. Every day looked like the day before it. Every day looked like the day in front of it.

  There were moments, mostly in church, when she had to sit on her hands to stop herself from jumping up and shouting at the preacher, “You already said that! Over and over again! Every two weeks, the same sermon! The same piece of Scripture! Same, same, same! Let’s try something new!” She would love to see the look of surprise and horror on everyone’s faces.

  Of course, she didn’t dare. She would never do such a disrespectful thing. She had been raised to respect her elders.

  But, oh, how she would love to do it. Just once!

  And then she started to think she might be going crazy. How awful it would be if she really did go berserk one day. She could hear the women clucking about it now . . . “Poor, poor Mary Kate. There was always something a little off-kilter about that girl. One moment, she seemed right as rain. The next moment, a raving madcap.”

  Deep down, she knew she could never do anything to intentionally hurt her father, or her sisters, or Uncle Hank. Or Fern.

  It was a good thing she loved Fern, because that woman was impossible. M.K. knew Fern was behind this teaching job. It had Fern written all over it. Fern had a way of knowing what a person was thinking, without that person ever having to say it aloud. She had no doubt that Fern knew she was toying with the idea of leaving the Amish. Fern always knew.

  But teaching a roomful of slow-witted, obstinate children? What a cruel, cruel mantle to place on M.K.

  She was pretty sure Fern was savvy to the fact that M.K. had turned Ruthie down about joining this year’s baptismal instruction class. She probably knew she had turned Ruthie’s pleading down for the third time in a row. Fern knew everything.

  Or mayb
e Ruthie told her. Ruthie just didn’t understand. Every year, she begged M.K. to go through baptismal instructions with her, but M.K. just couldn’t do it. Not yet.

  She knew she would have to decide, at some point. She couldn’t walk this line forever—one foot in the church, one foot out. If she left before she was baptized, then she could remain on good terms with her family.

  And do what? The practical side of her always took over this internal conversation, and that was saying something because M.K. didn’t have a practical bone in her body. She wasn’t much of a long-term thinker. It was one of Fern’s continual complaints about her. “Act first, think later,” Fern said. “That’s why you’re always in hot water.” She was constantly trying to tell M.K. to think “down the road.”

  So what would it look like, down the road, to leave Stoney Ridge? What would she do? She wasn’t prepared to do much of anything outside of the Amish life. Even if she had a car, she didn’t have a driver’s license. How could she get a job? She didn’t have a high school education. And she certainly didn’t want to clean houses for English people for the rest of her life. Cleaning houses and waitressing were the only jobs former Amish girls seemed to get. No thank you.

  She was a crackerjack beekeeper, though, thanks to her brother-in-law Rome. Maybe she could sell her bees’ delicious honey in Paris. That sounded like fun. She knew a Plain girl shouldn’t flame those desires to see such worldly places, but she did. She just couldn’t help herself.