Softly Falling

by Carla Kelly

  “We are, indeed,” she said.

  He sent Luella skipping ahead. “Maybe you would like a butler in San Francisco. Mrs. Buxton is ever more certain daily that she is going to die. She’s even starting to cling to Luella, which is unnerving in the extreme. Poor child doesn’t know what to do.” He turned to face her, hanging tight to his hat. “You have no idea what a refuge school is for Luella.”

  Suddenly, Lily knew that even if she was never paid a penny for her efforts at the Bar Dot Temple of Education, her cup of purpose already flowed over the rim. “I think it is a refuge for most of us,” she assured him. “As for needing a butler: would you like to live somewhere and not have to resort to an English accent? Papa and I won’t require it.”

  He leaned closer and spoke in his Ohio accent. “Lily, you’re a spiffy gal.”

  Nick had already started a fire in the stove. Usually there was a cheery warmth by now, but the wind had a bite to it so strong this morning that even the winter count robe fluttered from the darts of cold air that forced themselves through the gaps in the log walls.

  “Better get more wood from outside,” she said, taking off her coat, then thinking she might just want to leave it on. No, that would hardly be professional, even in a tiny little classroom in the middle of nowhere. Still, she might keep it close on the back of her chair today.

  Nick put two fingers to his forehead in salute and went outside. He carried in two armfuls, and then it was time to call the class to order and contemplate True Greatness, once they decided on a name for the Little Man of the Prairie.

  Chantal raised her hand. “Miss Carteret, I think I saw the Little Man peeking out of the hole yesterday.”

  “Do you know, I think I did too,” Lily said. “All the more reason to name a fellow class member.”

  Trust Luella to be literal. “Miss Carteret, what can he possibly learn from us?”

  “Maybe the bigger issue is what are we learning from him?” she asked in turn, even as she wondered if real teachers found more of their lessons outside of the arithmetic and reading.

  A thoughtful silence followed, then Amelie slowly raised her hand. “That maybe we should be kind to those smaller than we are?”

  The children nodded.

  “Let’s put these on the blackboard,” Lily said as she stood up and turned to the board. “I like that one. What else?”

  “That if you steal something, you’d better leave a pebble behind?” Luella offered, then covered her mouth and laughed.

  They all laughed. “Let’s turn this to our advantage,” Lily said. “How about, ‘If you want to borrow something, please ask.’ ”

  It was Nick’s turn. “Maybe sometimes you don’t know who your friends really are. He was afraid, and he didn’t need to be.”

  Up it went on the board. “This is good. Now we need to name our Little Man of the Prairie.”

  More thought. “We don’t know if he is a boy or a girl,” Chantal said and blushed.

  “We don’t,” Lily agreed. “For the sake of argument, let’s say he is a boy.”

  “Edward?” Luella asked. “I like the name.”

  “St. Dismas,” Nick said. “He is the patron saint of thieves.”

  More giggles. Lily wrote the name on the board, wondering what educationists would think of her class naming a pack rat. She turned to face her students. “We’ll think about this. Now it is time for your arithmetic.” She nodded to Nick. “I have asked Professor Sansever here to show us how to add and carry numbers.” She held out the chalk to him, and he took it, his face full of purpose.

  Lily walked to the back of the room as he went to the board, cleared his throat, and began his simple discussion. If my father could see you, she thought with pride.

  She glanced out the window to see Mr. Parker and her father in the buckboard nearing the top of the incline, and remembered the letter for Mr. Li. “Pardon me, Nick, but I need to take our letter to Mr. Li to my father. He can take it by the Great Wall Café.”

  Nick waited while she fished the letter from her desk, the one signed by all her students inviting him to visit their class and tell them all about China. She nodded to Nick to continue, and she hurried outside in time to flag down Mr. Parker.

  She handed the letter to her father, who promised to deliver it in person to the Chinaman in the Great Wall. “Don’t let him talk you into chop suey, Papa,” she said and blew him a kiss. “It isn’t that fortifying.”

  Smiling to herself, she returned to the classroom, after reminding herself to bring her wool shawl tomorrow. That would look more professional than a coat worn indoors.

  The morning passed with surprising speed, as all mornings seemed to in the Temple of Education. Chantal added the name Carol to the blackboard, reasoning that it could be a man or a woman’s name. Luella changed Edward to Ned because she liked nicknames, and Nick stood firm with St. Dismas.

  She had her children clear their slates and turned to the blackboard again. “Spelling words,” she said as she printed. “Copy each word three times and . . .”

  That was odd. Sudden movement caught her eye as the winter count buffalo robe began to flap. The morning had been growing steadily colder, and she had gotten used to the slight motion of the winter count robe. She glanced at the robe and watched it move faster, standing out from the poorly chinked wall. Wind, wind, go away, she thought, come again another day. But now the wind was moaning almost like a living thing. She felt the airs on her arms rise.

  The students were copying her words, unmindful of the wind, until the room began to darken. Chantal looked up, startled, then Amelie and Luella. Nick was on his feet, uneasiness written all over his face. Only great force of will kept Lily from crying out when the building began to shake with the fury of a storm, and not just any storm.

  She hurried to the only window, a south-facing one, and watched in wide-eyed horror as their little world vanished behind a curtain of snow. They could have been in the middle of Mongolia, colored pink on their world map, which was fluttering too.

  Lily thought of her father, grateful he was probably in Wisner by now. She thought of Jack Sinclair and the other men and hoped they had taken shelter. Her thoughts returned to Jack. “You were right,” she whispered, knowing she would never be heard above the wind.

  CHAPTER 29

  Lily glanced at the half-empty woodbox and then looked away, so the children wouldn’t see the worry written on her face. She wished with all her heart that Nick had managed to bring in more wood before school started. She stared out the window as the children clustered around her.

  “I can’t see my house,” Luella said. Her lips started to tremble.

  “We can’t see anything,” Nick added. He glanced at Luella. “Don’t cry. It’s just snow, and you’ve seen snow.” He hesitated, put his arm around her, gave her a quick pat, and let her go.

  They all looked at her, and Lily felt the fear leave her body because she was the grown-up and they needed her as much as they had ever needed anyone in their lives. They knew it; she knew it. Every slight and hurt vanished as she turned into a woman grown. No matter where life led after this, she would never be the same again.

  Lily took several deep breaths as the wind roared and shook the schoolhouse like a cat with a mouse in its jaws. Luella jumped in fright, and Chantal and Amelie drew closer together until their arms circled each other’s waist. Then Amelie did a wondrous thing and held out her free arm for Luella, who quickly turned them into a trio.

  “Girls, I want you to put on your coats and pull your chairs close to the stove. Nick, will you add more wood?”

  He did as she asked, and his worried glance at the wood box was a mirror image of her own, only minutes ago. “That’s probably enough for now,” he told her, leaving several good-sized pieces in the box.

  The room had turned into a weird twilight, which would have frightened her even more, had she not just experienced the epiphany of her life. She managed a chuckle. “Imagine this, my dears
: we have enough light for me to read to you!”

  “Miss Carteret, we are going to starve to death!” Luella burst out, with all the melodrama that Lily remembered from her interviews with Mrs. Buxton.

  Lily rested her hands on Luella’s shoulders, dismayed to feel her tremble. “It won’t come to that,” she said. “I have some bread and cheese. All we really need is water, and it will be a simple matter to heat snow on the stove.”

  “In what?” Chantal asked, sounding more curious than doubtful.

  Lily pointed to the enamel pitcher and basin on the table by the door, and the flour sack towel that Madeleine had contributed when school began. “Nick or I can fill them both just by standing in the open door, and we will have all the water we need.” She patted her slim belly. “As for me, I can always stand to take off a pound or two. No one is going to starve, Luella.”

  The building shook again, and this time snow pounded against the north and west sides. It swung to the east, as if testing every corner to find a way inside. The one south-facing window had already rimed over with ice as the temperature steadily dropped.

  Nick gestured to her and she joined him by the door. His was an old man’s face in a young boy’s body. “This blizzard could last three days,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen one like it so early.” He cleared his throat, as if he had arrived at a decision. “We should hold hands and leave this place right now. We can get as far as the Buxton place, and they might not mind if we all stayed there.” He gave a Gallic shrug. “If they do, well, maybe Fothering can help us.”

  She heard the doubt in his voice, as though the ranch’s manager would have no qualms about sending her and the Sansevers on to their own quarters. Time to stop this right now.

  “Nick, we’ll never know, because no one is leaving the school until the storm is over.”

  “We can’t stay here,” he contradicted.

  “We will stay here,” she assured him.

  He scowled at her, the sullen Nick she remembered from the first few days of school. He took several resolute steps toward his sisters, the issue decided in his mind. “Chantal and Amelie, come with me now.”

  The sisters looked at Lily and then at Nick. Chantal started to rise slowly, and Lily felt her heart sink. She knew she could stop the girls, but Nick was wiry and quick, and already pulling on his coat, his mind made up. If he went by himself, something told her that he would never survive.

  “No. You are all staying here.”

  He shook his head and held out his hand for Chantal, who still stood there in a half crouch. “We’ll just walk a straight line and we’ll make it. How many times have we walked this way?”

  Before Lily could stop him, he wrenched the door open. Although the door opened inward, the combined force of the wind and snow nearly separated the door from its hinges. Lily sprang to the door, slamming it shut with all the strength in her arms. In less than a few seconds, snow covered her body. She leaned against the closed door.

  “No! You can’t walk a straight line in this wind! No one can.”

  Nick eyed her, equally stubborn. His voice took on a wheedling quality. “Mama will worry about us, and you don’t want her to worry, Miss Carteret. It’s a quarter mile down the slope and we’ve walked it for three weeks now. Then it’s just another quarter mile to the cookshack. Come on, Chantal.” He gestured again.

  Chantal stood up, and so did Amelie, but only to force her sister into the chair and storm toward her brother, her usually gentle demeanor at odds with the sudden fire in her eyes. She pushed him off his feet and he stared up at her, looking as astonished as Lily felt. This was a different Amelie.

  “Nicholas Sansever, we’re not budging and neither are you!” Amelie had to speak up to be heard about the storm, but there was nothing but determination on her pale face. “Miss Carteret knows what she is doing, and you are just a child!”

  It seemed as though even the snow held its breath for a moment, the silence weird and other-worldly. Lily shivered, and not from the cold.

  “I . . . I’m older than you,” Nick finally muttered, but the fight had gone out of him. Lily tried to touch his shoulder to reassure him, but he shook her off and stalked to the corner.

  “Let him alone for a few minutes, Miss Carteret,” Amelie said. “He’ll come around.” She ducked her head, shy again, now that the crisis had passed. She whispered, “Maybe you can give him something useful and heroic to do.” He voice softened further. “Boys are like that.”

  “I think men are too,” Lily said, forgetting the storm for a moment, a co-conspirator with a child. “I’ll think of something, but right now, let’s sit close together and read. Let’s see—we’re on chapter ten of Ragged Dick, aren’t we?”

  Lily pulled her chair close to the stove. The metal monster that had seemed so large on the first day of school seemed tiny now, a stove for a doll’s house, as it struggled to heat the room. She opened the well-worn paperback, wishing she had thought to bring mittens this morning. She glanced around. Only Luella had mittens. Chantal and Amelie had shoved their hands deep into their coat pockets. “Here we are. “ ‘Dick’s ready identification of the rogue who had cheated the countryman, surprised Frank . . .’ ”

  She had read only a few pages, speaking up to be heard above the wind, when Nick joined them, pulling his chair close to Amelie. His sister smiled at him, all turmoil forgotten in the generosity of her nature. She held his hand and pulled it into her more commodious coat pocket. He smiled back, and a look of affection passed between the brother and sister.

  We are in this together, Lily thought, gratitude outweighing her fears.

  She read four chapters, leaving Dick to confront Mickey Maguire, another street bully, when Luella raised her hand. “Yes, my dear?”

  “Where do you think everyone is?” Luella asked.

  “My father is likely on his way to Cheyenne on the train, your parents are probably hunkered down in your house with Fothering, and Madeleine is probably scolding the cowhands for tracking snow into her dining room,” Lily said.

  The children chuckled as she hoped they would. And we are here alone, Lily thought, as alone as if we were in the middle of the Arctic.

  “You . . . you don’t think anyone is out of doors in this, do you?” Chantal asked.

  “Heavens, no! When the snow and the wind stop, I feel confident that Jack and Pierre will come and get us.” Lily nearly said “rescue,” but changed her mind. No need to alarm them further. “Nick, could you put another log in the stove?”

  He looked at the now-empty woodbox and shook his head. “None left.”

  Chantal puckered up and started to cry, which meant Luella joined her. Amelie’s face was solemn, her eyes apprehensive.

  Lily wished her brain wasn’t starting to feel so sluggish. She stood up and motioned the girls to sit closer together as she walked with Nick to the window, where nothing could be seen. “We have to get more wood from outside,” she said.

  He nodded. “Pierre moved the box closer, but it’s still at the end of this side of the school.”

  “I know.”

  She stared at Pierre’s buffalo robe winter count and slapped her forehead. “I’m a dunce. Nick, help me lift this off the wall.”

  Amelie brought her chair and Lily stood on it as all the children held the heavy robe from below, bearing the weight so she could lift the short rope he had used to hang the robe from the nails. She nearly fell from the chair as the robe came loose, but the children were there to catch it. Little Chantal ended up on the floor.

  Lily detached the rope, wishing it were longer, and set it aside. “All right! Girls, I want you to wrap this robe around you, hair side in. Just sit close together. Ah, yes. I do believe there will be room for Nick and me too, but we have something else to do.”

  The girls did as she said. They dragged the winter count close to the stove that was barely warm. Amelie was the tallest, so she took charge, positioning the robe so everyone had cover.

&n
bsp; “Excellent. Now, Amelie, I want you and Chantal to teach Luella all those verses of ‘Sur le Pont.’ She knows some of them already.” She took a deep breath. “Nick is going to be our hero and go for wood.”

  She must have said it with confidence she barely felt, because Amelie nodded. In a minute they were singing. She turned to Nick. “Will you get wood for us? It’s dangerous, but I’m going to tie a rope around you, and tie you to me.”

  He nodded, no words necessary. Maybe that was how heroes behaved. Lily didn’t know.

  “I’m going to tie the rope around your waist.”

  She tied it over his coat, dismayed to see that only two feet of rope extended. They looked at each other for a long moment as the wind howled and snarled. She looked back at the wall where the winter count had hung, promising herself that if they got out of this fix alive, she would keep coiled rope and a woodpile inside the classroom.

  Her gaze fell on the canvas winter counts that her lovely children had created only a week ago, with Pierre’s help. She walked closer, admiring the months her students had already filled in, chronicling their courageous lives in a wonderful way. She turned around, decisive now because she saw a way through this current dilemma. Likely there would be others before the storm ended, so she would take them one at a time and not borrow trouble.

  “My dears, we are going to have to cut your winter counts into strips to make a longer rope for Nick. I’m going to tie the other end around my waist and stay inside. If something happens, we can all pull him back inside.”

  If she had thought there would be objection, she saw none, beyond the initial disappointment to see their work made into a rope. “I am almost certain we can prevail upon Mr. Sinclair to find us more canvas, so we can reproduce our winter counts.”

  Lily removed the canvas winter counts from the wall, made snips with her scissors, and ripped the winter counts into strips. “I’m not good with knots,” she said when there was a pile of canvas on her desk.