Annie Pike Greenwood

by We Sagebrush Folks

  Charley was continuing to speak across the chasm of my bleak despair, for I could see that I was going to have to do what he wanted. Those wealthy girls who had wanted him would have done it, and so I...

  “I can help you with the arithmetic, and you know you can do the rest. I’ll hitch up Old Buttons, and you can go over to Charley Willey’s and sign the contract before it gets away from us; and you can bring back the school-books you will be using...Charley has the school supplies at his house...and when you look over the books, it will not seem so bad.”

  It took courage. I said no more; changed my dress, dressed my two little fellows to go with me; and there I was with the reins in my hands, driving Old Buttons out through the sagebrush, baby Charles sitting between me and the five-year-old Walter. I had never driven a horse before, but I knew I could. My father’s horses were famous throughout Utah. He had the best money could buy, several buggy horses—for his practice, I think I am safe in saying, was the largest in number of cases, and the widest in point of territory to be covered, of any doctor the West ever knew. He had also his saddle horse and a saddle horse for my sister Florence, who looked so pretty on her side-saddle in her long-skirted riding-habit. For me there was a gentle, beautiful little Indian pony. My father was unofficial physician to the Ute Indians, who used to travel, by ponies, all the way from the reservation to get his services, just as later they traveled all the way from the Navajo reservation for the same purpose.

  My father never charged the Indians for treating them. Indians, almost without exception—I never knew an exception—are grateful. Such cannot be said of white men, who are, almost without exception, ungrateful. My father had healed a squaw, and one day her man came leading gentle little Lady, named because she was a lady in actions, though I cannot today understand why some one did not give her an Indian name. I used to ride the streets of Provo on my Indian pony like a wild thing, my long light hair streaming out behind. I rode without saddle or blanket, and because of Victorian taboo I stuck on sideways, slipping off only rarely, never fearing and never being injured.

  I have always loved horses, and what we love we do not fear. Old Buttons took us safely through the sagebrush to Charley Willey’s home beside the spillway where the Jerome Canal begins to voice the protest of its father, the Snake River, at being forced by man into the degradation of common labor. There were lovely big trees around the Willey farm-house, so I knew the place must be that of a first settler. I signed the contract, feeling as though I were sentencing myself to the tortures of death after a bad life, and then, with a stack of books and my babies, back Old Buttons took me through the gray brush, which, not so many years later, I was to see change into green alfalfa-fields.

  I sat up nights poring over those books, so terrified I could scarcely see the print. In imagination I saw school-benches filled with children over whom I had no control because they had discovered how little I knew. I could not sleep for thinking of the disgrace I was about to experience. No one will ever know what I suffered at the thought of that school. I could not be a typical teacher. I knew I would have to smile and laugh, and I could not punish children as I knew children were punished in school. I have always felt about the four walls of a school-room, and the hideous formality and repression of it, as Longfellow felt when he wrote in his diary, “Air! Air! Give me air! Give me freedom!”

  MY HEART BLED that whole long year because of my separation from my baby, for I knew he missed me. All through the day, at intervals, the little fellow would go to the front door and, turning appealingly to his father, speak almost the only word he could yet say, “Mama!...Mama!” Charley would reply, “Not yet, son. Not time yet to go for Mama.” The baby would then content himself as best he could—there was never any crying of my children for what they could not have. That separation from Charles has made me abnormally sensitive to anything that may happen adversely to him, a feeling which was to be deepened by another separation from him, to take place years later.

  The horses could not be spared the first day of school. I dressed in my prettiest frock, to fortify myself, and walked the distance with Walter, for he was to go to school, at the age of five, to his mother. He was large for his age, much more advanced mentally than the average five-year-old, yet none of us suspected that deep within him was such a fund of humor and tragic understanding. How dare we deal inconsiderately with little children, when within them lies such character as we are not wise enough to penetrate?

  I stopped at the home of one of the trustees on my way. I thought he would walk with me to the school-house, if he had not already gone before, to open it. This trustee had been a Methodist or a Baptist preacher—I have forgotten which, and he was generally spoken of by the farmers as “Revener Klyte.” My knock was answered by his wife, gray-haired, a fine woman. I knew so many splendid women in that sagebrush country. The men took the women there, but it was really the women who bore the burden of the change.

  Revener Klyte and I had never seen each other before. He was not dressed in overalls, but wore a suit such as any man might wear. On him it declared, “I am sanctified!” I do not know why a preacher’s clothes should hang in those holy, straight lines, somehow like a Gothic cathedral. Especially is it strange that this should be so in Dissenters. Revener Klyte is not the only preacher I have seen whose clothes hung in those churchly lines on his prayerful figure.

  He handed me the key but made no move to go with me. I was to open the school-house and take possession all by myself, a perfectly normal proceeding, but horrifying to me. I was about to be gobbled up by a school-house when I wanted only to have my baby in my arms.

  It was normal to expect me to go alone, but what I found in that school-house would be considered normal only in a district perfectly indifferent to its school-children and without respect for its teachers. I learned later that until the year before, the teacher had held school in Charley Willey’s home, there being then only three or four pupils.

  Now there were about eighteen, clustered about the unpainted wooden steps, which were just pushed before the door. I was amazed to see tall, robust young men, up to nineteen years old, and little children, not more than four. I was mystified about the young men, supposing instantly that they had brought the children. One look at the little ones convinced me that I was supposed to care for the babies, or what was I being paid for?

  Before I forget, I should say right here that I tried teaching eight grades and first-year high school just one month. I love children and young people. But I also believed I was being paid to teach the grades efficiently; it seemed to me a crime to waste the time of those farm children, who so much needed education, by taking care of the babies. It meant that I had to prepare enormous amounts of busy work for those little folks, a proceeding which would have delighted me had I not also been conscientious about preparing myself to teach the other children.

  Teaching first-year high school along with the other grades, with fifteen minutes for each class, could be only a farce. I went to the parents and told them so. They were reasonable. When the question came up in the big district school meeting, with everybody present, a year later, these parents remembered what I had told them and made brief speeches against saddling the teachers with this absurdity. Farmers and their wives can see things like that. It was not practical, nor was it practicable. There was a high school at Hazelton, six miles away. What is six miles to a youth if he really wants to learn something?

  I hesitated over that last sentence, almost concluding it with the word education, but today

  Education’s so full of a number of things,

  It doesn’t mean much but a dangling of strings.

  If you think that opinion harsh, just remember that I am nobody, and be comforted. But I want to add—and please do not disturb your family with a backward flip-flop if you happen to be a professor—colleges are places where young people waste their lives trying to learn how to live. I say this who studied in three colleges. But, of course, they
were the exceptions that prove the rule. Doubt: Are young people going to college to learn how to live, or just to pick up a smattering of stuff that will make them feel at ease? I give it up. Silly women like me are prone to dive beyond their depth, and they never can swim.

  Here I have been keeping you wondering what atrocity awaited the opening of that unpainted, undovetailed, weathered school-house. Allowing the usual number of sense-organs to each person, about thirty-six eyes gimleted me as I turned the key. It felt that way to me. I can be as brave as a lion because, like the lion, I never realize my danger until it is over. A great many people get praise for that kind of unconscious courage when it is just plain dumbness. I was not brave as I turned that key. I wanted to kneel down before those staring human beings and say, “Have mercy on me! I never could do arithmetic. I would not be perpetrating this deceit of my own free will.”

  The key was turned, the sullen, unpainted plank door swung open, and there met my eyes the most terrifically disorderly dump—that’s what the sagebrush farmers call any house with which they are disgusted. It was a dump if there ever was one. I do not know the origin of that expressive word, but I suspect some farmer adopted it to describe a house so disorderly that it looks as though everybody in it had just dumped things anywhere, including everything from clothing to garbage.

  There was no clothing in that dump, but everything else possible in a school-room had been dumped there. I could not help feeling a little indignant that the trustees had dared to send me to such a place. All along the way of my years in the sagebrush country I was always being astounded that certain people should dare to do certain things to me. I...I...I! How it takes the I out of you to be sat upon by the folks all around you. But they did not sit upon me any more than I deserved. I was a bumptious human being who for years retained that Divine-Right-of-Kings opinion that I was God’s little pet lamb.

  The children all trooped in with me, the babies toddling ahead like little chicks, the young men lingering at the door like self-conscious young roosters. All of them were staring at that big room because I was staring. Perhaps they were wondering why I looked so horrified. You would have thought they had never set eyes on that room before.

  Light glimmered dimly through windows which must never have been washed since they were placed in their frames. These windows ran along one side of the building only. The floor was covered with litter: books, prone, with widespread backs, pages flat on the dirty floor; old overshoes, ragged and covered with dried mud; little and big wads of paper; blackboard erasers. In the front of the room was a tiny, rickety table, evidently Teacher’s desk. And back of Teacher’s desk, on the wall, was tacked a black-painted rag, which here and there hung in strips. This black rag was spattered with white and yellow and a sticky-looking red substance.

  I forgot I was Teacher. I said, “Who threw a fit here?”

  At this unexpected question from Teacher, who should, I am sure, have at least worded her inquiry in a more educated way, a good many of my future pupils began to snicker. The babies just toddled about, one of them picking up a dried-muddied overshoe to bring me like a faithful little dog. The young roosters at the door pushed each other off the steps in an agonized appreciation of my vernacular. Of course, at this day I would never say such a thing as I said before those young, learning ears. What I would say now is, “What the hell...?” I think everyone understands what that means.

  Seeing my puzzled look, as my eyes again rested on the besmeared black rag, a red-headed girl with nervous eyes began to volunteer, “Them things on the blackboard is what us childern throwed at Old Shavvy last year...”

  But this was the young roosters’ story. They came into the room by one impulse, and somehow, with their sudden entrance, I felt in them that they did not think the new Teacher was so bad. All young folks are willing to give us grown folks the benefit of a doubt. We usually ball things up by some word or act that makes us fall so far in their estimation that they can no longer respect or like us. Then we say we never saw such badly behaved young folks.

  Just as Elida, for that proved to be her name, had reached the word year, the story was continued by Homer, her brother, with the same beautiful hue of hair. “Them spots was made when we throwed our lunches at Old Shavvy and told ‘im t’ git!” All the young fellows were grinning, and watching me with intent, serious eyes, to see whether I could stand the test. “The white and yeller is hard-boiled eggs. The colored, sticky stuff is jam. If yuh go up closeter, yuh’ll see the bread on the floor.”

  I could see it from where I stood, after my attention had been directed. I wanted to laugh, and I didn’t know why. My imagination was springing ahead of my information. I felt the boys relax a little. They could sense that unteacherly levity in me. “Who is Shavvy, and why were you so cruel to him?” I asked. I had not even smiled, but the boys knew.

  “He was our teacher last year,” said Bernard, a big, husky, handsome, curly-haired fellow. “Name’s Shavock...we call ‘im Old Shavvy.”

  “Was he old?”

  “Yes. He musta been all of forty.”

  “Did he fight back?” I couldn’t see myself refusing to answer with a few refreshments.

  “Him?” Bernard’s voice was scornful. “Naw! He didn’t do nothin’ but stand up a-front o’ the blackboard ‘ith his hands a-front of his face.”

  “You’re pretty big...what’s your name?...”

  “Bernard.”

  “Bernard. Maybe he knew he couldn’t fight you.”

  All voices broke in at once, and from the medley I gleaned that Shavvy weighed over a hundred and eighty pounds and that he was just a-skeered of the big boys.

  “We told him t’ git,” declared Homer, with some delight, “and you shoulda seen ‘im git! He went down the road to where he was boardin’, and he never come back.”

  I smiled at them. “You’re a pretty tough lot, aren’t you?”

  They squirmed uneasily at that. They were not sure of me now. Maybe I was just Teacher, after all.

  “Come on,” I said. “Everybody help me. You pick up, and I’ll sweep. And can’t somebody get on a horse and go for something to clean those windows with?”

  William, tow-headed and faithfully dumb, swelled with importance as he hurried to say, “I’ll go, Teacher. I on’y live about two miles away. I gotta horse in the shed.”

  “All right.” I had seen the stub of a broom leaning in a corner by the ragged black-cloth blackboard. I was about to move toward it when I noticed all but one or two of the big boys moving toward the door. “Aren’t you boys going to help us?”

  “Can’t,” said one of the big fellows. “Have to work. We can’t start t’ school till November. We can’t go none after February. Time fer spring plowin’.”

  “So that’s why you’re still in school!”

  “Not me,” said an attractive-looking lad of about nineteen. “I come to high school.”

  “Here?” I was surprised.

  “Yes. You kin teach me, can’t you?”

  “I might be able to teach you some things.” In my usual manner I was ready to bite off more than I could chew, as our tobacco-chewing ancestors have given us the expression. I did not want to teach, but I was beginning to see the possibilities of working with these young people. Of my own free will I would have taken babies and all, even as God does; but before I was through, I found I could not do it, being, much to my surprise, only mortal.

  The other young fellows looked a little crestfallen at what they had just heard. And one of them hastened to say, “We taken the eighth grade over three years now. Dad says it couldn’t do us no harm, and we might learn somethin’.”

  That struck me as tragic. Marking time—being young, filled with fire and life, and compelled to mark time in a school-room. I had lived in a little town, and I knew what that feeling of being young and alive and yet compelled to mark time meant. I thought the thing out later, and when the boys did start to school in November, I had arranged with their parent
s that they might remain until the end of April, when the first county examinations took place. “You’ve just got to graduate from the eighth grade,” I told them. “Then maybe some of you can go to high school at Hazelton.”

  I had never cleaned anything in my life as dirty as that filthy school-room. After I had swept, we took the bucket William had brought, and Homer went on horseback for some water. With this, using my broom, I scrubbed the floor. A few days later I had little white sash curtains at the clean windows. The sills were too shallow, and it would be too cold in that school-house, to have flowers. As yet I had no flowers in my own windows.

  I STUDIED HARD every day to fit myself for teaching those children. I have never been a typically good student, although I have never stopped studying, and it is today my great joy to be learning something new all the time. I was a student who registered for too many courses and got what I could in class recitation, though oftener than not I was bored almost to death by the slowness which is a necessary concomitant of this drudgery-learning which palsies the whole educational system. Sometime there will be a laboratory method in all classes, so that the student completing the experiment, be it with words or with geological formations, may go on as fast as his brain will let him. The horrible waste of young life in class-rooms has always appalled me.

  Besides registering for too much and then getting what I could in classes, I spent the rest of my time studying all the other subjects for which I had not registered. My curiosity with regard to this world, human laws and natural laws, is insatiable. I shall never stop studying until I stop existence.

  That does not mean I am the child prodigy of learning. I know so little! Oh, I know so little! But thank God I do not know everything, for think of the wonderful good time I have ahead of me, just finding out, and learning!