The Lesson

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

Oh, but there must be something or someplace or maybe even someone out there with enough excitement to satisfy M.K.’s restive nature. She just knew it was out there. Something was calling to her.

  She let out a deep sigh. For now, she was stuck. Stuck for two weeks and two more days. She pulled her small Igloo lunch box out from under her desk (there was no way she was going to leave her lunch in the coatroom where Eugene Miller could slip a frog or snake into it—after all, hadn’t she endured Jimmy Fisher’s mischief for countless years?) and locked up the schoolhouse. She wanted to go investigate the murdered sheep farmer’s pasture and look for clues. Solving this crime was the only bright spot of her day.

  After school let out, Jenny rushed to the corner mailbox with the letter she had written during the school day. She had to get it in the mail before the day’s mail was taken out. She knew Chris was over at Windmill Farm, but she still looked over her shoulder as she read it one more time before putting it in the envelope.

  Hi Mom,

  Just wanted you to know that Chris and I might not be able to see you for a while. We’re together and doing fine. I’m going to school, too.

  She chewed on her lip, thinking. Should she have added this last part?

  Probably nobody told you, but Old Deborah passed. I thought you should know. Here is four dollars that I saved up. I’ll try to send more. Don’t worry about us.

  Love, Jenny

  She had wanted to write more. She had wanted to let her mother know that she and Chris were living in Stoney Ridge, that Chris was fixing up their grandfather’s old house and planned to start a horse breeding business. Chris had been adamant that their mother not be told where they were. He would be furious if he knew she was writing to her mom. But she felt like a traitor if she didn’t. Her mom may not be much of a mother, but she was the only mother Jenny had.

  She licked the envelope, put on a stamp, opened the mailbox, and let the letter slide down its big blue throat.

  Men! So frustrating.

  M.K. was chased away from the crime scene area by the sheriff before she had time to uncover a single clue. Sheriff Hoffman took his sense of duty to ridiculous limits, she thought. He had a gun in his holster on his belt that he liked to pat, to remind her it was there, at the ready. How was she supposed to know that no trespassing included the first witness on the scene?

  Sheriff Hoffman had glared at her. “You stay out of this pasture, Mary Kate Lapp. We got your statement. We’ll come to you if we have any more questions. And we won’t. You only heard a shot. That’s all. That’s nothing we don’t know. This yellow tape here is meant to keep out riffraff. All riffraff.”

  Riffraff?! She was not riffraff. How insulting. Clearly, the police had no new information. If only they would have let her search the pasture. She was sure she would find a clue to the poor sheep farmer’s untimely demise.

  M.K. walked over to her red scooter and picked it up. How could she solve this crime when she wasn’t even allowed near the crime scene? During school today, when she had the children reading quietly at their desks, she pulled out the most recent issue of her Crime Solving magazine. She read about how often a simple footprint could lead a clever sleuth to the perpetrator.

  The only footprints she could find, besides those of the dead farmer’s, were hoofprints that belonged to sheep. And it was then that Sheriff Hoffman happened to pass by in his patrol car and turned on his noisy siren.

  So frustrating!

  Maybe she would have to come back after dark, with her father’s big flashlight.

  She hopped on her scooter and started down the road, deep in thought. She built up speed to crest the hill. Just as she reached the rise, she crouched down on the scooter to improve aerodynamics. She had read about aerodynamics in a book from the library. It had suggested that a rider cut down on any draft by making oneself as sleek and small as possible. She liked to go down this hill with her eyes closed. There weren’t many opportunities in the Plain life to let go and go all out. This hill, though, offered a taste of it. Danger and risk.

  Suddenly, she heard someone yell “Watch out!” then a loud “ooouf” sound as her eyes flew open.

  Chris Yoder was heading home from a long day at Windmill Farm. He had ducked through a cornfield filled with drying, green-golden stalks and slipped out to cross the road, when suddenly a flash of a red scooter flew right into him. He yelled, but it was too late. Chris was thrown into the ditch on the side of the road. Headfirst. Into murky, stagnant ditch water.

  “I’m so sorry,” someone called to him. “Are you hurt? I had my eyes closed and didn’t see you.”

  Even though Chris had landed in water, his head had hit the bottom and he was sure he was seeing stars. He was drenched in smelly ditch water. A big yellow dog peered down at him in the ditch and let out a feeble “Woof.” Chris shook himself off and staggered onto solid ground. Life returned to him pretty quick as he sized up his attacker—a young Amish woman with concerned brown eyes. “Why would anybody, anywhere, in their right mind, EVER ride a scooter with their eyes closed?”

  The young woman pointed to the hill, flustered. “It’s just that it’s such a good . . . never mind.” She bit her lip. “I said I was sorry.”

  Chris squeezed murky water out of his sleeve. “You should be.”

  Now she started getting huffy. “Well, I’m not as sorry as I was a minute ago! Maybe you should look where you’re going.”

  “Maybe you should just LOOK. As in, keep your eyes open.”

  She started to sputter, as if she was gathering the words to give him a piece of her mind. But then she threw up her hands, muttered something about how this day was a complete disaster, hopped on her scooter, and zoomed away. The big yellow dog trotted placidly behind her.

  Chris wiped his face off with his sleeve. Amazing. That girl had the gall to be mad at him! The nerve!

  But she was cute. Very cute. That he happened to notice.

  Stoney Ridge was caught in the grip of an Indian summer. Long, hot days. Long, windless nights.

  Late Thursday night, Jimmy Fisher tossed pebbles up at M.K.’s window, but she didn’t come down like she usually did. This was their summertime system—he would drop by after being out late with his friends, and she would come down and meet him outside to hear all about it. She thought his friends were hopelessly immature, but she liked hearing about their shenanigans.

  Tonight, Jimmy and his friends had climbed the water tank in a neighboring town and dove into the reservoir, forty feet below. Such brave-hearted men. It made him proud to be in the company of these noble fellows. He wondered what M.K. would say about that. He tossed another pebble up at her window. Still nothing. As he looked around in the dark for something more substantial to toss at her window without breaking it and risking Fern’s wrath—something he had experienced on occasion and took pains to avoid—a police car pulled up the driveway. Jimmy hid behind the maple tree. His first thought was that Sheriff Hoffman had figured out what he had been doing tonight and had tracked him here. It might have happened once or twice before. But then the car pulled to a stop, the sheriff got out and opened the back door. M.K. bolted out, an angry look on her face.

  Wait. What?

  Oh, this was too good.

  If Jimmy were a more gallant man, he would quietly leave.

  But this was too good.

  The sheriff banged on the front door. In the quiet of the night, Jimmy could hear a pin drop. He heard M.K. try to convince the sheriff that she could handle things from here, but he didn’t pay her any mind. From where Jimmy stood, he could see the front door. He saw a beam of light through the windows as someone made his way to the door. Jimmy heard the click of the door latch opening, and there stood Amos in his pin-striped nightshirt, with Fern in her bathrobe, right behind him. Their eyes went wide as they took in the sheriff standing beside M.K., who looked very small.

  “I can explain everything!” M.K. started.

  The sheriff interrupted. “Sorry to bothe
r you in the middle of the night, Amos. But I believe this young lady belongs to you.”

  Amos looked bewildered. Fern looked like she always looked, as if she had expected a moment such as this. “What has she done now?” Fern asked in a weary voice.

  “I found her disturbing a crime scene,” Sheriff Hoffman said.

  “That is not true!” M.K. said.

  Fern shook her head. “Was she trying to get in that poor farmer’s sheep pasture again?”

  The sheriff handed Amos, who still seemed stunned, a large flashlight. “Sure was.”

  “I wasn’t disturbing anything,” M.K. said. “I was looking for clues.”

  “I keep telling you, we don’t need any help solving crimes,” the sheriff said. He sounded thoroughly exasperated. He turned and headed to his car, then spun around. “You stay out of that pasture, Mary Kate Lapp.”

  Jimmy slipped behind the tree again. The front door closed and the sheriff drove away. He waited awhile to make sure no one would see him and quietly strolled home.

  Oh, this was too good.

  5

  M.K. couldn’t stop yawning. She didn’t even mind that Eugene Miller and his cronies had left after lunch again. It was easier to get through the afternoon’s work without them. She hoped the boys were smart enough to stay out of sight until after half past three, though she doubted it. She almost fell asleep as second grader Timmy King puzzled over subtraction problems at the board. The warm air in the room, the gentle buzz of a bee on the windowsill. “Nicely done, Timmy,” she said. She glanced at the clock. Two and a half hours to go. She read out loud for a while, but no one seemed to hear. She thought about dismissing everyone early because it was so hot.

  Could she do that? Why not? She was the teacher.

  She put down the book. “Let’s try again on Monday.” Barbara Jean, the youngest of everyone, clapped her hands, making M.K. laugh. Just as M.K. stood and opened her mouth to say, “School’s out! Go on home!” the school door opened wide. In walked Eugene Miller, Josiah Zook, Davy Stoltzfus, and his brother Marvin.

  And Fern. In walked Fern.

  The boys took their seats. “These boys seemed to have gotten lost after lunch,” Fern announced, as if she was on a mission to find them. “So I helped them locate the schoolhouse. They won’t be getting lost anymore.”

  A few snickers circled the room. Fern went to a chair in the back and sat down. M.K. knew that look on Fern’s face. It was the look that said she was going to be staying for a while. For the next two and a half hours.

  M.K.’s heart sank. She turned to the third graders. “Rise, please, and bring your readers.”

  Tick. Tick. Tick. The clock inched forward, painfully slow. Finally, it was half past three and the class was dismissed. Fern waited.

  “Where did you find the boys?” M.K. asked.

  “Hank found them fishing at Blue Lake Pond. He’s been worried that all the rainbow trout will be gone by the end of September with those four spending their afternoons fishing, so he ran them off and I happened upon them.”

  M.K. closed up the cloakroom and locked up the front door. “Why do you have the buggy?”

  “We’re not going home.” Fern pointed to the buggy. “Hop in. We’ve got someplace we need to be.”

  “Fern, it’s Friday! My first free afternoon—”

  “Nothing is as important as this.”

  M.K. knew not to push it. The ride home from the sheriff must have been a shock to her dad and Fern. It was ridiculous, really. All a simple misunderstanding. She had gone out to see if there might be another clue, something the police missed. There was a problem and it needed solving. Hadn’t she learned in life to just solve the problem herself?

  And suddenly she was under threat of arrest. Again! How was she supposed to know that the police were patrolling the area? Why hadn’t they been patrolling when the murder occurred? She would have liked to ask Sheriff Hoffman such a bold question, but of course she didn’t dare.

  Fern slapped the reins on Cayenne’s rear end and the buggy lurched forward. “Is that the way you’ve been teaching?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was today a typical afternoon? Class by class comes up and reads out loud?”

  “That’s the way Alice Smucker ran the classroom.”

  Fern was silent, so silent that finally M.K. couldn’t hold back another minute. “I told you that I wouldn’t be a good teacher! Dad said I’ve never failed at anything I’ve tried to do, but this—”

  “Well, see, that’s the problem right there.”

  “What is?”

  “Tried. You’ve never failed at anything you’ve tried.”

  “I’m failing at this!”

  There was a silence, then Fern’s voice, sounding soft and hard at the same time. “You haven’t tried to teach. You’re just babysitting. Not even that. The trouble with you, Mary Kate, is you can’t see a day ahead.”

  That was not a new observation.

  “You’re spending most of your time thinking about solving that sheep farmer’s death. You think about it more than the police do.”

  That was somewhat of an exaggeration, but the sheep farmer murder was taking up a great deal of M.K.’s thoughts. Somebody had to solve the crime before Stoney Ridge was riddled with murders! “I’m teaching the same way Alice Smucker did. Everything’s the same. Every single thing.”

  Fern looked at her as if she might be addlebrained. “You spent eight long years complaining about the time in Twin Creeks School. Seems like a smart girl like you should be able to figure out what’s wrong with that logic.”

  It seemed that way to M.K. too, but she couldn’t quite figure out what Fern was getting at. She scrunched up her face as if she was thinking hard, and she was. “How do I know how to teach any different? Alice Smucker was the only teacher I’ve ever had.”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  Fern thought she knew everything, but she didn’t. “Oh yes she was!” Then M.K. clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh, no! She wasn’t.” M.K. had completely forgotten about Gideon Smucker’s brief tenure. He had filled in for his sister, Alice, after there was an unfortunate collision with a runaway sled (a sled that happened to be carrying M.K., but that was beside the point). “But it was easier for Gid. He was a man. The big boys obeyed him. It’s always easier for men.”

  “Why do you think the children obeyed Gid?”

  “Probably because Eugene Miller hadn’t moved to Stoney Ridge yet.”

  Fern rolled her eyes.

  “Eugene is a bandersnatch, Fern. The very worst of the bandersnatches! He makes Jimmy Fisher seem like any teacher’s dream. Eugene makes vulgar noises whenever I turn my back. Yesterday, he put a book up on the doorjamb so that when I walked in, the book fell on my head. And there he was at his desk, with a sweet-as-pie smile pasted on his face. He’s just a school yard bully—always making outlandish suggestions and daring his friends to join him. Eugene Miller pushes a person to the limit of politeness. The very limit.”

  This very morning, she had slipped outside to fill her thermos with water from the pump. When she returned to the classroom, she found that Eugene had drawn a caricature of her on the chalkboard. Never mind that it was actually a rather amusing likeness—he had made a fool of M.K.

  “Did the children obey Alice?”

  M.K. sighed. “I suppose. She made everything a mind-numbing routine, so the boys used school to catch up on their sleep.” Boring. School had been incredibly boring. But M.K. was starting to feel a mild twinge of guilt as she complained about Alice’s teaching. It was a new feeling for her. At least the boys didn’t disappear during lunch under Alice’s tutelage. “Teaching isn’t that easy, Fern.” She gave herself an A+ for trying.

  “No, I’m sure it isn’t, if someone were actually trying to teach.”

  M.K. was insulted. She was trying! Sort of. Now and then.

  “Wann epper mol nix meh drumgebt, is es schlimm.” When you don’t care, you are
in a sorry state.

  M.K. tried not to flinch. Fern’s sayings were worse than a beesting, and she knew all about beestings.

  “How long do you plan on wallowing in self-pity?”

  “Fine.” She let out a sigh. “I’m done wallowing. No more wallowing. Really.”

  “Good.”

  M.K. waited, sensing from Fern’s change in tone something was coming. “Where are we going?”

  “To visit Erma Yutzy.”

  M.K.’s heart sank a notch lower. Any more bad news today and it would be in her stomach. “I don’t like talking to old people. They make me uncomfortable.”

  Fern released a long-suffering sigh. “What a thing to say.”

  “I’m sorry, but the way they look at me with their watery eyes makes me uneasy. And their skin is like wrinkled crepe paper. Old people can be odd too. Some as odd as a cat with feathers. I never know what to say to them.” She could tell by the way Fern was clutching the reins that she was running out of patience. “You can’t deny that, Fern. Just last month, Mose Weaver came to church in his pajamas.”

  “Mose Weaver is having a few forgetfulness problems.”

  “Well, how old is Erma Yutzy, anyway?”

  “She’s turning one hundred next month.”

  One hundred years old?! M.K. was intrigued. What would it be like to have one hundred years of stored memories jammed in your head? It boggled her mind. “Why today? Maybe we should wait for her birthday.”

  “Can’t. Erma’s too busy planning her party.”

  Planning her party? Who would still be alive to attend? Fern stopped the horse in front of Erma’s house. M.K. hopped out and waited for Fern to join her.

  Fern didn’t budge. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

  An hour or two? Fern was leaving M.K. alone with this ancient lady for an hour or two? “Fern! What am I supposed to talk about with her?”

  Fern simply pursed her lips as if the why of it was too obvious to say.

  She slapped the horse’s reins and trotted out the driveway. Over her shoulder, she tossed, “Did I happen to mention that Erma was a teacher?”