by Ruth Glover
The day was useless as far as studying was concerned; the children were wild to be released. Birdie devoted much of it to reading and reporting, favorites with all of them.
Finally, glancing at the Drop Octagonal and finding that this day, as all days, had slipped away (but with what satisfaction!), Birdie announced, “Time to fold up for the year, children. Take all your papers with you, your scribblers, your pencils. Leave the books and texts; I’ll lock them in the cupboard until school opens in the fall.”
“Miss Wharton,” it was Victoria Dinwoody, her face innocent but her eyes sly, “will you be coming back?”
“Why do you ask, Victoria?”
“Because my mama says...” Even Victoria, bold as she was, hesitated, wriggled, stuttered.
“Yes, Victoria? What does your mama say?”
“My mama says you’ll be getting married.”
Every activity stopped; every head lifted and poised. Every eye fixed on the teacher.
“It happens to most everybody sooner or later, doesn’t it, Victoria?”
“Yes, but...”
“But what, Victoria?”
“Nothing; I just wondered, that’s all,” Victoria murmured, flustered, and disappointed that she had nothing to go home and report.
“Whether I will be teaching or someone else, the school board will see to it. The announcement will be made in due time.
“Now, children, that will be all for the year, except—”
All heads lifted in the teacher’s direction; about to embark on their summer, they paused.
“Just one more thing,” Birdie said. “We have one honor, one special honor, to award. Before the year is over, I want to recognize the child who has made the most progress. You have all done well in many ways, and I’m proud of each of you. However, there is one who has come along well not only in his studies but in his deportment. So well, in fact, that we’ll bestow special recognition on him—Ernie Battlesea.”
Ernie, caught totally by surprise, gasped, turned red, sank back into his seat in a rare moment of shyness. Near pandemonium broke out—whistling, the stamping of feet, clapping.
“And to recognize and reward his diligence, we’re going to give Ernie the honor of winding the clock.”
The noise faded; small bodies sat up straighter; childish breaths were indrawn; childish faces were filled with awe.
Miss Wharton took the key from the drawer and, amid the silence and the attention, encouraged Ernie to clamber up onto a chair, guided his small hand to the proper place, and then—all by himself—he inserted the key and commenced winding. “One, two, three, four”—twelve times the children chanted the number, the proper number of turns. Then, with a flourish, face shining with his matchless accomplishment, Ernie turned. Turned and, being Ernie, couldn’t resist playing to the gallery (never had he had such an audience). Sweeping his hand in a wide arc, Ernie pressed it against his middle and bowed. Bowed gallantly and bowed deeply. So deeply, in fact, he lost his balance.
Ernie’s great accomplishment and the favor of the winding of the Drop Octagonal was concluded to the screams of certain girls, the jeers of most boys, and the gasp of the teacher.
Setting Ernie on his feet, Miss Wharton used the opportunity to give the rascally boy a small hug. Flushed and proud, Ernie hugged her back.
The eager children were dismissed with the reminder that report cards would be forthcoming at the annual picnic.
If the Drop Octagonal was moved by the unusual experience, it gave no sign but ticked on as steady, as faithful, as reliable as ever.
One by one the children picked up their lunch pails for the last time, trooped through the door, casting smiles back and calling, “Good-bye, Miss Wharton. See you at the picnic.”
Wandering around the empty room, picking up crumpled paper, straightening a desk kicked crooked by some child’s impatient departure, moving to the window ledge to remove the pencil sharpener and empty it of shavings... Birdie stood transfixed for a moment, staring out at the birch ring and remembering.
What a distance she had come, and all due to the marvelous grace of God—
There was a sound at the door, and Birdie turned.
Silent, kindly, anticipating—Big Tiny. Slowly his arms opened, spread wide, waited.
Without a moment’s hesitation, leaving the sharpener, dropping the crumpled paper, Birdie Wharton walked, straight and true, into the waiting arms. Arms that, she felt quite sure now, had been waiting all the winter long, perhaps all the year long. As they closed around her, she laid her cheek on the broad chest with a sigh that seemed to speak of rest, of complete contentment, of total fulfillment. Birdie—her flutterings past, her aimless flight abandoned—had found her nest.
The bliss of the moment only increased when Big Tiny, not as patient a lover as might have been supposed, tipped her head with his rough finger, bent his own, and kissed her. Kissed her tenderly... kissed her urgently... kissed her with enough passion to satisfy the tide of desire that surged warmly and generously through her starving heart and yearning body.
“Tell Victoria,” he murmured, when speech was possible, revealing that he had been waiting outside, “that you’ll be Mrs. Wilhelm Kruger before another school year rolls around.”
“Oh, Wil...” Birdie offered no argument, thought of none.
Later, much later, in his buggy, her hand in his big paw, she made her one confession. A hesitant confession.
“Wil, there’s been someone... someone I don’t know, who’s been sending me things in the mail. Rather intimate things.”
“Oh, ya?” Big Tiny’s head swiveled, and he cocked an eye at her. An eye in which curiosity gleamed, and speculation.
“But, Wil, it was all one-sided. I never once wrote to him—”
“No? And why not?”
“Why not? Well, I... I didn’t know his name, you see. In all honesty, I might have responded, might have thanked him, at the last, for bringing me to Christ. But I didn’t know his name—”
“Didn’t know his name?” Big Tiny asked, his eyes going wide, his voice filled with astonishment.
“Why, no. They, the letters, were anonymous... unsigned.”
Silence. Silence as though Big Tiny might be sorting through unusual areas of thought and finding it slow going.
The wheels creaked; the horse plodded.
A bluebird flashed past.
“‘The bluebird carries the sky on his back,’” Big Tiny said thoughtfully, following the swift flight of the bird with his eyes.
The silence became deafening. Slowly Birdie turned her eyes on Big Tiny’s face.
“Thoreau. Henry David Thoreau,” Big Tiny added as an afterthought.
“Are you telling me... are you saying... what are you saying, Wil!”
“Are you telling me,” Big Tiny said unbelievingly, “that you haven’t known, haven’t known all along, that I was the one sending those quotations?”
Birdie looked dazed.
“Wil, oh, Wil! Why didn’t you tell me—”
“But I did.” Now it was Big Tiny’s turn to look puzzled. “First thing. I wrote you right after...”
“Right after?”
“Right after I put the fear of my good right arm into that... that Buckley kid.”
Limply Birdie sank back. But her mind was working swiftly. Why should it surprise her that Big Tiny, with the sensitivity he had displayed, should discern what was going on with Buck? She recalled now that she had realized very quickly after she failed to meet him in the birch ring that the writer had changed. The messages had changed—
“My letter, Birdie. My first letter. Didn’t you get it? In it I explained that certain callow youths wouldn’t be bothering you anymore and that—if you didn’t tell me not to—I’d like to share with you the things I was reading. From that time on I just kept leaving them here and there, at the post office, in your desk...”
Birdie had a clear picture of the small chiffonier drawer at home and the letter
she had locked in it—unopened, unread.
And to think that here, at her side, holding her hand, offering love enough for a lifetime, sat not only kind, generous, sweet-natured Big Tiny Kruger, her friend, but her soul mate. One and the same.
It seemed fitting, riding along in the curve of Big Tiny’s arm into the gentle spring evening, to find a quotation rising in her heart.
Softly she spoke it: “‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!’” (Rom. 11:33).
The “amen!” lifted from bush and tree, bird and beast, earth and sky and water, until Bliss echoed with praise.
With school out, Hans and Gretchen accompanied Sam each time he came to the Bonney place to work. Soon they felt quite at home, rousting out the toys of former years, becoming thoroughly acquainted with all the buildings, digging into the cookies when hungry or settling for a slice of bread and jam, haunting the bush for early berries, hunting crows’ nests, trapping gophers.
Gopher tails, after all, brought a bounty of a copper a tail. And the array of candy choices at one cent apiece was exciting, even exhilarating, to a child of the bush: gumdrops, jawbreakers, hoar-hound squares or twists, mints, lemon drops, strawberry drops, cream balls, lady kisses; the choices were endless. Why, a child could linger, enthralled, over the candy counter half a day, given a chance. Hans and Gretchen, clutching grisly gopher tails, accompanied Ellie to Bliss and to the store at times, to return sucking a favorite candy, and totally blissful.
After a winter of potatoes, beans, porridge, bread, and a few shriveled vegetables, young appetites craved something sweet, something store-bought, something extravagant. Older appetites were no different, and the first berries—wild strawberries, tiny, jeweled, luscious; or saskatoons, milder than blueberries, smaller than blueberries but blue in color—were gathered and relished with cream and sugar in a sauce dish or baked in a pie. As the sweetness exploded on the tongue, eyes closed in near ecstasy, and something long starved was satisfied.
Today, Ellie glanced with satisfaction at the bowl of ruby-red strawberries, freshly gathered as soon as Sam and the children had arrived, the children happily accompanying her to the meadow where the matchless berries spread like a carpet over the ground. On the table beside the strawberries sat a sponge cake, a delight in itself because the hens were laying once more and the twelve eggs necessary were available again. The kettle was boiling, and the best teapot was warming; Mum’s good dishes were laid out on the table along with serviettes snowy and white enough to satisfy the severest critic.
The “girls” were coming for tea; the old gang would be together for the first time in years. Flossy had broken the ring of friendship and fun when she had married and moved away. Now, due to the illness of the grandmother who had raised her, she was back briefly. Marfa and Vonnie would take time off from their busy round of summer duties, escaping for this memorable occasion, this reunion. The four of them would, first, fall into each other’s arms; then conversation would flow, as never-ending as it ever had been when they got together in years past.
They were no longer rambunctious children, however, but women having acquired the manners of the day and accustomed to certain amenities. And so Ellie would serve tea and refreshments. They could only enhance the occasion.
“You’re welcome to come in and meet the girls,” Ellie said to Sam before he left for the fields. “And you, too,” she added, indicating the children.
“We’ll see,” Sam said, hedging. He would be in his dusty work clothes, and this was, after all, a ladies’ tea. As for Hans and Gretchen, they were in their most faded, worn, shrunken clothes, and barefoot, ready for a day of exploring the meadows, the sloughs, the bush. Their last foray had yielded an elusive tiger lily, which they had borne proudly to Ellie, and which still graced the center of the round oak table.
Hans cast longing eyes toward the sponge cake, and Ellie had an idea he might not lead his sister too far astray today. How proudly she would introduce them, worn garments and all—and no doubt grimy—when they returned from climbing trees or any of the numerous activities that would fill their summer with memories never to be forgotten.
“I’ll save cake for you,” she promised, and she was rewarded by the boy’s grin. A grin so like his father’s that it twisted the heart of Ellie Bonney, and she flashed them all such a smile that Sam went to work with a song in his heart, and the children sped off to their particular pursuits with never a care in the world.
The arrival of Flossy, Vonnie, and Marfa was announced by chatter before ever the screen door slammed behind them. Bonds such as theirs would never be forgotten, never broken. The conversation was punctuated almost immediately by laughter and preceded almost entirely by “Remember when...”
There they sat, in a ring, just as they had so many times over the years. Now, however, they reclined gracefully in chairs, daintily handling china and refreshments, where before they had sat cross-legged on the leaf mold in some shady nook, nibbling wild gooseberries or hazel nuts or whatever the bush was yielding at the time.
Marfa, still chubby, still round of face, still cheerful, still pleasant. Flossy, more worn, slightly shabby, as quiet as ever, as gentle. Vonnie, best dressed, as vivacious as ever, more sophisticated, just as brittle. Ellie, less exuberant perhaps, less inclined to take charge, thoughtful, quick to speak but ready to listen, a woman of charm and grace.
When the “remembers” were exhausted and the reminiscences thoroughly discussed, the talk grew more personal.
How was Vonnie enjoying marriage? How was she adjusting to life in Bliss once again? “Fine,” and “Fine, thank you.”
How was small Bonney developing? Was there a brother or sister in the offing? “Growing like a weed,” and a dimpling “Perhaps.”
How was Flossy’s grandmother doing? How many children were there now, and where were they? “Fairly well, thank you”; “five at last count,” and “with their paternal grandparents.”
And then all eyes turned with interest and curiosity on Ellie, long considered the “old maid” of the group.
“Is there somebody special?” Flossy, the absentee and largely ignorant of the happenings in Bliss, asked, while Vonnie seemed to listen tensely and Marfa, who knew all, sipped her tea complacently.
“I guess you could say so,” Ellie admitted, having tried to prepare herself for the questions she knew would be forthcoming today.
“Sam Dickson, isn’t it? Hasn’t been a widower for long, has he?” Vonnie, widow of a few months when she married again, asked, and managed to sound as if the relationship might be a questionable one.
“Over a year,” Ellie said patiently.
“How do you think you’ll enjoy being an instant mother?” Again it was Vonnie; again there was a needling, very slight, carefully cloaked but there.
Why should Vonnie, married and presumably happy, need to insert unsettling remarks into the one brief visit the old gang would have together? Ellie, knowing Vonnie thoroughly, had expected no less; she took it in good grace.
“When you meet him,” she said, speaking lightly but with a steady assurance to her voice, “you’ll understand. And when you meet the children—”
The words were no sooner spoken than the door was thrust open and two bedraggled, sun-browned, bleach-haired, bright-eyed children stormed in. Stormed in, to immediately subside, abashed before the prestigious assemblage studying them over cups of tea.
Turning toward them, Ellie saw nothing any different than she had seen all across her growing years when she and her friends had played together—health, satisfaction, weariness. Happiness. All the things life in the bush did for a child.
“Come, Hans; come, Gretchen. I want you to meet my friends,” she said.
The two, silent but curious, stepped forward. The introductions were made; the children squirmed, looked bashful, fiddled with whatever treasures they had accumulated and held in their hands.
“Yes, I remember,” Vonnie affirmed. “But I don’t remember getting quite so dirty.” And she looked critically at the small ragamuffins standing self-consciously before her.
“We were every bit as dirty! And happily so,” Marfa supplied. “Oh,” she squealed, and the others jumped. “What is that you have there, Hans? What is it? Could it be—?”
Startled, Hans looked down at the object in his hands, turned it over, rubbed it on his shirt. Held it out.
Marfa took it, blackened though it was. Marfa took it, turned it over in her hands, her mouth falling open in pure astonishment.
“Girls! Do you know what this is? You’ll never guess!”
Round it was, with crimped edges. Once it had been shiny.
“Look,” she said, squealing again. “Look!” And she took her handkerchief, spit on a corner of it, and rubbed the dark object. Some of the grime came off; some of it never would—it was permanently blackened. Blackened as though by fire.
“I think this belongs to you, Grand Panjandrum,” Marfa twinkled. And she held out the insignia of the Busy Bees—the badge made from the end of a tin can.
A tin can lid that had been pounded and twisted into shape by Ellie herself, a tin can lid worn by each of them in turn.
Ellie took the object in her hand and stared at it blankly. Then, turning to Hans and Gretchen, she asked, her voice echoing oddly in her own head: “Where did you find this?”
“In that old burned-out cabin across the fields,” Hans said proudly. “Me and Gretchen dug around in there all afternoon. We found some ol’ bottles...”
“It has a hole so’s we can wear it,” Gretchen spoke up for the first time. “Hans is going to put some string through it so’s I can wear it around my neck. What do you suppose it means—BB?”