by Natalie Dean
It was a difficult letter to write. Her heart had been much stricken by the teacher. Despite his stilted words, she saw in his face a man who had endured much for his faith and who had suffered the bitterness of defeat. He was lonely. His loneliness crept yearningly from his eyes and wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak. She wanted so much to brush that cloak off, to let him feel how mistaken he was in his fears and doubts. He thought she was too young to love him, but he was wrong. She loved his tortured nobility and his gentlemanly manners. She loved the stubborn corners of his mouth that refused to acknowledge mistakes. She loved all that comprised the nature of Joseph Marston, and could have remained as an assistant she supposed, but it wouldn’t be enough. If he couldn’t love her, she must leave so she could find somebody else to love.
Several days afterward, he asked if she was willing to assist at the school. As it would probably take several weeks for her letter to arrive and several more before she received an answer, she felt the best way to occupy her time was to do something valuable with it, and agreed.
“You will be working with Mrs. Haldeman,” he explained. “She covers levels one through four; basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. You can do your multiplication tables?”
“And division,” she assured him.
“You will not have to teach anything complicated. Mr. Haldeman and I work at the higher levels.”
The schoolhouse still smelled of freshly cut pine, as well as chalk, ink wells and a mixture of school lunches. Mrs. Haldeman was a large woman with a very large bosom that settled just above her tightly belted waist. Her hair was pulled back into double braids that wrapped around her head then tucked into her bonnet. She looked neither happy nor unhappy and gripped Greta’s hand like a man when she shook it.
“These are our pupils,” she said, including all of them in a single gesture. “You will find they are generally well-behaved with a few inconsistencies. We keep the worst trouble-makers in the back.”
Greta glanced around the room. The children ranged from five to twelve years old, although the two twelve-year-olds were at the back of the room. “They are retarded or something,” Mrs. Haldeman said privately to Greta. “The other kids their age left this classroom two years ago. They are retarded or they just don’t want to learn anything.”
Neither boy was paying particular attention to the study guide they had been given, nor had they picked up their books. Instead, they were involved with the techniques of knotting a hook to a fishing line. “I suspect they just aren’t interested,” Greta whispered back. “At least they are thinking of something to catch for dinner.”
“Most likely so. That one’s daddy is a trapper and the other doesn’t have a daddy. He ran off before the boy was born. He has a decent mama, however. She washes clothes, scrubs floors. Does what she can to make an honest living, so we just leave the two boys alone. Coming here keeps them out of trouble.”
Mrs. Haldeman strolled up the center aisle between the desks and indicated another small group. “These are our youngest children, but these are the ones who will need your guidance most diligently. Petey is only six, yet he already knows the way of the con at the gambling table. Noel is eight and has been caught thieving so many times, the deacon said he must attend school or he will be turned over to Denver law authorities. Anna’s mother is a woman of the night and without proper guidance, she will be one, too. It is our hope and prayer that by intervening with their waywardness at an early age, we can deliver them from the den of vice and corruption.”
Greta nodded. “They all seem well-mannered and obedient.”
“Not everyone who comes here is sinful and lusting for wealth. We have many peaceful, law-abiding citizens, Miss Samuelson. We have shopkeepers, traders, farmers, and honest workers. Their orderly children have been an influence on the others, but sometimes their obedience masks devious behavior. You must always be on your toes and aware. They play their deception quite well.”
Mrs. Haldeman had a long, wooden pointer that she used for lectures, but also for retaining her pupils’ rapt attention. She snapped the stick down now on one desk, causing the young boy of perhaps seven or eight, to jump backward in his seat, startled. “Jonah, I told you to begin lesson fifteen, not draw idle pictures.” The boy scrambled to bring out his primer but behaved as though he was confused as to where to begin. Mrs. Haldeman flipped through the pages and pointed to the lesson in exasperation.
“This is what I mean,” said Mrs. Haldeman. “Jonah never does anything he is told. He’s not a mean child, mind you, and does not pursue mischief. But neither does he pursue instructions. He is slow-witted if you ask me, but Mr. Marston insists he can learn. Seven years old and he barely talks. How shall he learn anything?”
“Such children often have special gifts,” said Greta. “It is our duty to uncover them.”
“Then you and Mr. Marston are much of the same accord. I will leave the boy in your willing hands, but I confess that I believe it’s a waste of time.”
Greta spent most of her first week at the school observing the performance of her new students and familiarizing herself with the school policies and routines. Mr. Haldeman was the Headmaster, but also taught advanced mathematics. Once a week he held meetings with the staff to discuss the progress of the children. As the school was small, with no more than forty pupils aged five to seventeen, they had a great deal of knowledge into the background of each child.
This knowledge generally served them well. They knew the trading post owner’s five children had a Ute mother and were very shy about attending school, slipping in and out of classes like ghosts, sometimes going weeks at a time without making an appearance. They were never graded on attendance, only on a completed assignment.
Lizbeth Montgomery was the oldest of seven girls whose father was a miner and a gambler. When she was fifteen, her father had tried to sell her to settle a debt. For the past year, she had been living at the Haldeman home, fearful that her father would once again try to give her away.
Her main focus was Jonah, however. She noticed that the closer she drew to him, the more responsive he became. When there were general instructions at the front of the room, he did not respond. “What type of family has Jonah?” she asked Joseph while they shared dinner together.
“A respectable one. They have a homestead about three miles from here. The Pratt family has eleven children and they all attend school except the oldest who is eighteen and works on the farm, and the two youngest, who are still babies. Every one of them show up on time and do their lessons conscientiously except Jonah.”
“Yet you don’t believe he is slow?”
“I believe his disobedience is deliberate.”
“You are very willing to believe in miscreant children. Were you such a ruffian in your own childhood?”
“Certainly not!” he answered, clearly ruffled. “I’ve simply seen how easily defiance perpetrates the cities and how this defiance paves the way for the more vile of human corruption. Do you see now, Miss Samuelson, how you are not suitable for administering to these tiny souls grasping for light in the middle of darkness?”
“Mr. Marston, you’ve spoken to me at length about hopelessness, but it’s not this hopelessness we desire to teach. You believe I have not seen it? With the first bloodshed and the first fallen comrades, we shed tears and held great funerals. We dressed in solemn garb and made our appearances with each death of a relative or a friend. As the war progressed, the funerals grew shorter. The mourners were fewer until the graveyards were as lonely as the empty battlefields. We mourned until we had no tears left for mourning. We were emptied out. I was a child and I saw hopelessness.
Hopelessness is a luxury that comes at an exorbitant price; the surrendering of your dreams and of your love for the divine. Hope is a laborious journey, but when I understood the importance of the task, I was no longer a child. We may acknowledge hopelessness, Mr. Marston. We must never surrender to it.”
He didn’t answer her
at first. Instead, he appeared quite busy with his dinner plate, so she changed the subject. “Is the roast beef too stringy?” asked Greta. “I’m afraid I’m much better at preparing a stew. Beef was so rare during the war, we would boil it down next to nothing, so we could stretch the flavor.”
He smiled then, a somewhat sardonic, yet genuine smile. “It’s naught to worry about. I’ve chewed far more gristle in my life than I have fat. I believe it’s the difference between your plains cattle and our mountain climbing cattle. The plains cattle are lazy, while ours are as nimble as goats. Mrs. Haldeman can give you a few tips on how to tenderize the meat.”
Joseph Marston had proper table manners. He held his knife with his right hand and his fork with the left to cut and dice the food, using only the fork, with the tines tilted up, to carry it to his mouth. They were the table manners of her own German and Swedish heritage, and they attracted her as much as did his careful evaluation of quality and practicality, the gentleness under that straight-stretched mouth and upright posture and his strong moral fiber. Greta matched her rhythm with Joseph’s so that they finished almost simultaneously, at which time she carried the dishes out to the kitchen.
He helped, covering the left-over roast and placing it in the pantry to stay cool until it was made into stew for the next day’s meal, and adding a few scraps to the plate scrapings to feed the pigs the next morning. He watched her add the last tidying touches, then asked broodingly, “Do you think I have given way to hopelessness?”
“I believe that is something you must answer on your own, Mr. Marston.”
She brushed by him, her scent mingling with his own manly aroma for a moment, and felt that warm flush that rose to the surface each time they came in close contact. She was not one to judge, but if she was, she thought to herself, she would believe that Mr. Marston had lost hope in love.
At the foot of the stairs, she turned. “Good night, Mr. Marston.”
He had followed rather closely behind her, closer than either of them realized until she turned and their eyes met. He looked startled, as though she had caught him in an unguarded moment, then gave her a short bow with his head. “Good night, Miss Samuelson. May you sleep well.”
“And you also.” She held out her hand. After a hesitation, he shook it. His grip was one of controlled strength and inspired energy. Perhaps this was the heat she felt. The burning energy of a man consumed with his vision. And too blinded by it to see what was in front of him. She went up the stairs aware that he was still watching her, and shut the door to her loft. The moonlight made a soft, yellow puddle on her bed. She sank into it, wondering how she could ever shake her feelings for Mr. Marston and simply move on with her life.
Chapter 4
Women had never been entirely explainable to Joseph Marston. They were mysterious creatures who often defied the boundaries of logic and reason, yet always seemed to come out the better for it. He learned early in life that you never asked a woman why she needed a new dress when her wardrobe was perfectly acceptable. He learned to never contradict her opinions of music and art, even if they were abominable. He also learned that an educated woman in the city might be quite passionate about spreading education west, but felt somebody else should do it.
It was the Woman’s Society for Child Welfare who introduced the Wyoming speaker at a Teacher’s Symposium. The somewhat small, but sturdily built man with a healthy, sprouting mustache and beard, radiated an intense energy as he spoke at length on the need to safeguard the future of the children by expanding their ministries west. “We have missionaries settling all the way into California, but their missions are often for the Indian populations, bringing them education and a religion that will help them become a part of this great union. What has been left behind are the pioneer settlers. These children have no missions they can go to. They have no schools. They have nobody to prepare them for civilization. We cannot, in all consciousness, leave them behind. If we do, we’ll be weak instead of strong. We will fall by the wayside as barbarians. Here is a list of locations petitioning teachers and assistants. The pay is low, but land is cheap and you will find that your neighbors are always willing to assist you.”
He had never regretted his decision to move west and he had discovered a new type of woman. This woman worked shoulder to shoulder with her partner, carving out a living, facing down predators, both beast, and man. She was strong. She was practical. She was treated as an equal because she deserved it.
He had been pleased that a plains woman had answered his query. He had visualized her much as she was, studious, devout and adept at farming skills. He hadn’t visualized her age. He hadn’t visualized how unscathed she would look after witnessing the worst that humanity had to offer. That’s when it occurred to him, she was unscathed because she hadn’t seen it. Her home had been a refuge, her community, a sanctuary. All she saw were the after-effects of horror.
He wanted to protect her, but he was discovering she had her own independent thoughts. He had tried to forbid her going into the mining camp, warning her that some of what she would be exposed to was not fit for a lady, but she had looked at him with those calm, gray eyes and said, “Yet it’s suitable for raising children?”
“Of course it’s not suitable! Not at all. That’s why we are trying to raise them above it.”
“And how can we if we turn a blind eye to their homes? The Haldeman’s have a girl they are sheltering. But what of her six sisters? Do we wait for them to come to us one by one or do we appeal to their mother’s good senses now?”
“We’ve made our appeal. Some women are very obedient to their husbands.”
She had furrowed her brows together and that’s when he knew she could not imagine the terrible depths a man would go to in pursuit of his vices. “Do not go into the mining camp alone,” he had urged her again. “If you must go, at least bring along a companion. Mrs. Haldeman or Lizbeth. They know where you can safely go and where you cannot.”
She had agreed, and in fact, had struck up quite a friendship with Lizbeth. It was another of the things he had noticed about Greta. She liked being around children and young girls. She liked playing. Often, he would see her playing games with the children before the school bell rang or joining them for a little after-school fun.
He had finally taken his concerns to the Haldeman’s. Instead of sympathy, they seemed to be amused. “I think you are placing far too much emphasis on your age difference,” chided Mrs. Haldeman. “Greta is young, but she’s capable, and it’s better to have a young wife who looks to you for guidance than one that is fully mature but set in her ways.”
“I don’t wish to raise a child bride.”
“Oh, she is fully raised, my dear. Instead of worrying about how the neighborhood could contaminate her, you should be conscious of what she can add to the community. She was right about the boy, Jonah.”
“What about Jonah?”
“He’s deaf. Not completely deaf, but he can only hear things up close. When we moved him to the front of the classroom, his lessons improved. Now she’s helping him with his speech.”
Joseph stood in the shade of his back porch, watching Greta as she pulled weeds from the vegetable garden. No matter what she was doing, she seemed to be content, whether it was pulling weeds, feeding the chickens, or grooming Snake Bite, always giving him a treat when she was finished and backing away from him slowly.
She spoiled the farm animals. They snuffled and snorted, fluffed themselves up and strode around importantly as soon as they spotted her. Even now, a chicken scratched wherever she tossed her weeds, and the pigs pushed their quivering noses under the pen, hoping for a handout. They flocked around her the way the children did, and he wondered now if perhaps he had been too hasty in his words. She brought sunshine with her, but was her light strong enough to survive the wilderness?
Her weeding had also included thinning the carrots for their autumn crop. A number of spindly, twisted, partially grown carrots gathered in a small pile
that she scooped up when she was finished and tossed to the grateful pigs. She started to work on another row of vegetables when he called to her and beckoned her over. She came, wiping her hands on her apron, a half smile on her face. It was a wonderfully pleasant face; round, rosy cheeks, a tilted nose with a light feathering of freckles and a Cupid’s bow mouth. It was the kind of face men wrote home about, the kind that inspired loyalty, the kind you wanted to defend.
“The stagecoach is arriving in Boulder this afternoon with some school books, and especially for you, Miss Samuelson, some drawing paper for the children. Our new curriculum includes nature studies for lower level children to help prepare them for the sciences. The headmaster was very enthusiastic with your demonstration on mixing different colored earth and berries to make paints and feels the drawing paper will stimulate them into greater creativity.”
“I see, Mr. Marston. What you are saying is the drawing paper will give them a reason to make paints and study nature.”
“Put in its simplest form. You have a very unorthodox but effective way of teaching, Miss Samuelson.”
“My uncle and my mother are largely responsible for my education. The plains required a few unorthodox methods. I imagined from the start, the wilderness would too.”
“You imagined yourself teaching?”
“Formally? I suppose not. There are many teaching methods, Mr. Marston.”
“I’ll be drawing up the buggy in half an hour. I was wondering if you’d like to go into Boulder for the afternoon.”
“I’ll be delighted,” she answered, a broad smile spreading across her face.
A half hour was all she needed to spruce herself up and put on a clean dress. When he pulled the buggy to the front of the house, she was already bounding down the steps, tucking her runaway curls back into her bonnet. “You should get yourself a couple of real horses and a proper wagon,” she laughed, as he jumped down to assist her into her seat.
