Testing His Patience

by Lyn Cote

  “That’s it, then?” The foreman’s rough voice sounded as though he were dragging it up from a dark cave. “You won’t change your mind?”

  Every eye was upon her. She took a deep breath. “When the D.A. gives me one shred of real evidence—” Patience glared at the man, at them all “—and not small-town prejudice, I’ll change my vote. Until then, never.”

  At her words, the rigid silence became charged with palpable antagonism. She’d just called them small-town and prejudiced. I don’t care, Lord. It’s the truth.

  On Saturday afternoon, three days after the Putnam trial had ended in a mistrial, Gil stood in his backyard on another warm October day. He pitched a softball to Darby. The fastball whipped past Darby and the boy ran to pick it up.

  “Sorry,” Gil apologized.

  “That’s okay.” Darby threw the ball back.

  Gil caught it as it smacked his catcher’s mitt. He flexed his shoulder muscles, trying to loosen the tension that refused to leave him. He’d hoped a day off with Darby would give him release from the stress of the past week. But neither Darby’s eager face nor the beauty of the perfect fall day pushed away the feeling he had. His defeat pained him like a bruise he kept bumping.

  What was the use? He’d been too busy for weeks preparing the Putnam case to spend time like this with Darby. Now I’ll have to do it all over again.

  Still smoldering, Gil took aim and pitched again, but this time a low easy ball.

  Darby ran forward and grabbed the ball just before it hit the ground.

  “Good save,” Gil called out automatically and caught the ball from Darby. Again, he tried to lose himself in the brilliant sunshine, the golden leaves falling around them, the feel of the mitt closing over the ball. In vain.

  How am I going to get past the trial? I’ve got to face it and go on. I can’t let it derail me. I’ve got to make the charges stick this time.

  Gil saw himself in the courtroom that day rising as the jury had filed back in. The grim expressions on everyone’s faces had signaled him that something had gone terribly wrong with his open-and-shut case.

  “That’s not very good,” Gil’s dad, whom Gil still called the Captain, yelled as he bounded down the steps of the deck to join them. “You can do better than that.” Burly and nearly bald, the Captain took Gil’s place, squatting behind Darby as catcher.

  Gil shed the catcher’s mitt and Darby picked up a plastic bat.

  “Play ball!” the Captain ordered them.

  Irritated by his father’s tone, Gil lobbed the ball again.

  Darby swung his bat and missed. He groaned.

  “Darby, you’re not trying,” the Captain barked. “Keep your eye on the ball.”

  Darby scowled.

  Gil knew how his son felt. A hung jury. A mistrial. “What a waste,” he muttered, catching the ball again….

  On Saturday afternoon, three days after the Putnam trial had ended in a mistrial, Patience stood in the backyard at Mrs. Honeycutt’s and reached for another wooden peg in the cloth bag suspended from the clothesline. Indian summer was holding firm.

  Bunny’s friends, Dottie and Greta, had joined Bunny for iced tea on the front porch. Patience could hear their voices carried by the wind.

  Buffeted by a warm, eager breeze, Patience was hanging her freshly laundered underclothing between lines hung with her linens. White rose-sprigged sheets fluttered around her, cooling her and bringing a fragrant clean scent of soap.

  Patience liked the sense of concealment she found in the midst of flapping damp sheets, pillowcases and towels. Ever since the moment she spoke the truth in the jury room, she’d felt exposed, worn raw by hostile glances. Why did I give in to pique and tell them off? I could have been diplomatic. But she’d given in to anger.

  Now, daily as she walked home from school, people on the street that she didn’t even know glared at her or wouldn’t meet her eyes. More than once this week, she’d stepped into the teachers’ lounge and been confronted by an instant silence, as though someone had flipped a switch. Do they think I’m stupid? That I don’t know they were all talking about me behind my back?

  Patience shoved a clothespin hard onto the line. What can I do? How do I turn my situation around? I’ll never be able to take a year of trouble.

  “Well, I’ll be glad when this all blows over.” Another snippet of the porch conversation wafted on the breeze reached her. Patience froze with her hand aiming another clothespin at the line.

  “She shouldn’t have let them know she was the holdout.” Greta’s gritty voice came on the next billow of wind. “If she hadn’t owned up to it, none of them could have pointed a finger at her.”

  “She’s an honest woman,” Bunny replied.

  Patience lowered her arms. Thank you, Bunny.

  “I heard that she told them all off, called them small-town hicks.” Dottie’s breathy voice sounded eager with this information. “That’s why that awful woman let it get out.”

  “You mean that Harrington woman?” Greta snapped.

  “Yes, she was on the jury, too, you know.” Dottie’s tone oozed excitement. “And she’s told everyone she ever knew—”

  “That’s no surprise. She’s been a harpy since she was in fifth grade,” Greta grumbled. “We have to think of some way to help Patience. She’s a good girl, a good teacher, and she doesn’t deserve the things that are being tossed around about her at the café and the Dairy Queen.”

  Patience hummed with sudden warmth at Greta’s approval.

  “Yes, I know.” Bunny paused. “She’s in a vulnerable position as a teacher. Parents can make trouble for her.”

  Bowled over by hearing this worry put into words, Patience sagged, letting her arms drop to her sides.

  “The school board could refuse to offer her a second contract. She’s not tenured,” Greta pointed out.

  “Oh, no.” Dottie sounded chastened. “All this will blow over, won’t it?”

  I hope. Patience bent her face into the wet clothing flaring with the wind. Lord, help me. I don’t know how to turn this around…

  Halting the batting practice to give Darby some instruction, Gil positioned the small bat properly in his son’s hands. “Okay, now you don’t have to hit it hard, just hit it any way you can.”

  Facing Darby again, Gil pitched the ball low and easy.

  Darby swung and missed. “Oh, man!”

  “You can do better, kid,” Gil’s dad said in his gravelly voice. “This just takes practice.” The Captain picked up the ball and lobbed it back at Gil.

  “Don’t expect too much of yourself at first. You’ll learn. Just remember, keep your eye on the ball.” Gil tossed it again.

  Don’t expect too much of yourself. That’s what his mother had always said. Gil gave his father a narrow look. They’d lost Mom just over a year ago. His father’s favorite admonition had always been the exact opposite of Gil’s mother’s advice. According to the Captain: Expect more of yourself or you might as well not try at all.

  Gil snapped off a ball that flew past Darby and landed hard into his dad’s glove.

  “Hey, not so fast.” The Captain gave Gil a hard look as he sent the ball back. “Give the kid a chance.”

  Gil tried not to frown. After retiring from the navy and then losing his wife within a year, Gil’s dad had moved back to town, bought a modest home and offered to help Gil with after-school child care. All things Gil had never imagined his dad doing in a million years.

  Gil tossed an easy pitch to Darby and his son managed a pop-up.

  Over and over, Gil pitched, Darby swung, and the Captain caught and returned the ball. When Darby consistently failed to connect with the ball, Gil’s dad grumbled loudly enough to be heard.

  Gil tried to remember any time in his childhood when his dad had tried to teach him a sport. He couldn’t. “Hey, you two, time for a lemonade break,” Gil said, needing a break from the Captain’s constant criticism of Darby.

  Hot and tired of pitching, Gil
headed toward the deck and kitchen.

  Darby raced behind him. Soon, he grabbed a kid-size red plastic glass from his dad. “Wow, I’m thirsty.”

  With his thick rough fingers, Gil’s dad ruffled Darby’s hair. “Boys are always hungry or thirsty.”

  Darby gulped his lemonade and then jumped from the deck and charged the T-shaped backyard swing set. He leaped up. And with both hands, he caught the horizontal row of bars like a suspended ladder over his head and began to swing down the row, hand by hand.

  “He’s a regular monkey,” the Captain pointed out. “I’d like to see him on an obstacle course someday.”

  Not dignifying this with a comment, Gil nodded and let himself down into a lawn chair. He wiped his sweaty forehead with the hem of his T-shirt. It felt good to be out of a suit on a warm Saturday.

  “Have you heard that gossip about Darby’s teacher?” The Captain took a swallow from a tall, blue tumbler of lemonade.

  “Where did that come from?” Gil eyed him.

  “Bunny’s friend, I forget her name. Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” the Captain challenged him, “that Miss Andrews was the lone holdout on that jury?”

  Of course I know. Everyone in town knows. “It doesn’t matter to me who was responsible. It just means that I now have to prepare for another trial. It’s a needless expense and a waste of the court’s time.”

  “But you didn’t know that Miss Andrews voted not guilty seven times?”

  “Yes,” he muttered, “I’d heard that.”

  “I thought jury deliberations were supposed to be kept confidential.” The Captain let himself down onto the bench across from Gil.

  “They are, but people talk. There’s nothing I can do about that.” But guilt snaked through him. He wasn’t happy about the mistrial. He wasn’t happy that Darby’s teacher was being gossiped about, either. “What can I do about gossip?”

  “Bunny likes her.” The Captain watched intently as Darby braced his feet overhead on one bar.

  “Bunny Honeycutt?” Gil asked, putting two and two together. So that’s why his dad was asking about Patience Andrews. Gil wished he had the kind of relationship where he could ask his dad if he was getting serious about Mrs. Honeycutt. But they hadn’t had time to get serious, had they?

  The phone rang. Empty laundry basket in her hand, Patience ran in the back door and grabbed the phone. “Hello.”

  “Is this Miss Andrews?” a gruff man’s voice barked.

  Patience hesitated and then said, “Yes, speaking.”

  “You think you know so much more than we do. We know all about Dan Putnam and have for years. What makes you so smart?” A string of epithets and slurs followed. And then the receiver was slammed in her ear.

  Patience stood petrified with the receiver in her hand.

  Bunny came up behind her and took the receiver and hung it up. “Another nasty phone call?”

  Dry-mouthed, Patience nodded, trying to swallow.

  “Stop answering the phone,” Bunny said. “Let me get it or let it go to the answering machine.”

  “Why do they care so much?” Patience managed to say at last.

  “People talk…unfortunately. And thin skin is a common defect that makes people nasty.” Bunny squeezed her shoulder. “Now, go upstairs and try to get your mind off it. This will all blow over.”

  It hadn’t blown over. It had only gotten worse. Now it was the week after Halloween on parents’ night at Oakdale School. Patience looked out over her audience, the parents of her students. Not one smiled back at her. Do they all hate me? Distrust me? How do I handle this, Lord?

  “The first grade is a pivotal year for your children.” Patience stood tall and faced them, head-on. She tried to keep her eyes from shifting to Gil Montgomery, who lurked in the back. He sat there looking like an ad from GQ in contrast to the other parents, who hadn’t dressed up for the evening. But his attractive outer shell wasn’t what intrigued her most tonight. What was going on in his mind? Had he heard the gossip? Did he hold her responsible for his failure to convict Dan Putnam?

  Her eyes strayed to him again. More importantly, had he realized what had happened to his son while she was in court? Or was he oblivious to the damage that had been done? Lord, let me help Darby. I don’t want him falling through the cracks.

  “Studies have proven that what a child experiences in the first grade can shape his whole academic future.”

  Gil sat on a first-grader-size chair. He pushed his feet forward and folded his arms over his chest. That’s what I’m afraid of.

  “Keeping this in mind, I am committed to helping each of your children have a positive experience this year in my class. I don’t want to do anything that will send a child down a negative path.”

  Her low rich voice tantalized him like a tangible force. He felt it lowering his resistance to her. He wanted to keep his defenses up, but that voice possessed persuasive power.

  “I ask that you help me in this,” Miss Andrews continued. “If you notice any alteration in your child’s behavior at home or his or her attitude toward my class, I hope you will communicate with me as soon as possible so we can address whatever issue has developed.”

  Gil shifted in his seat. As far as I’m concerned an issue has developed over the trial and now with Darby. Darby’s teacher wore a royal-blue dress in some shiny fabric. The cloth picked up all the light in the room, making it hard not to stare at her. Why did women wear stuff like that?

  “Now, some of our goals this year,” Miss Andrews continued, “are concrete and some are less quantifiable—”

  “What does that mean?” a man wearing a feed cap and standing behind Gil asked. The question came out as a brusque confrontation, not a polite request for information.

  Miss Andrews stood her ground. “It means that some results I can show you on paper and some will show themselves only in your children and many years in the future.”

  “We know you’re from Chicago,” the man continued in a defiant tone. “We don’t want any big-city touchy-feely garbage in our school.”

  Murmurs of antagonistic approval swelled around Gil.

  “I really don’t know what you are talking about…” Darby’s teacher dangled a piece of paper by one corner in front of her, a flimsy protective barrier.

  “We don’t want you experimenting with new stuff like ‘new math’ and ‘spelling words any way you want, right or wrong’ on our kids.” A woman to Gil’s right rose. “Just teach them to read and write and do their arithmetic. That’s what we’re payin’ you to do.”

  Gil stood up. The atmosphere in the room had turned toward ugly and he couldn’t permit that.

  Then from the doorway behind the parents, Mrs. Canney’s daunting voice issued forth. “Miss Andrews is quite capable of teaching your children in the best possible way.”

  A troubled quiet fell over the room.

  “I didn’t hire an unqualified teacher.” Mrs. Canney cut them all down to size with her incisive tone. “Miss Andrews was in the top of her class in grades and in performance in her student teaching which she did downstate, in Quincy, Illinois, not Chicago.”

  Gil knew just how the rest of the parents felt upon hearing the censure in Mrs. Canney’s voice. He and most of them had attended Oakdale under this re-doubtable principal. Mrs. Canney had just done what they had all feared as children but which had never really taken place—till now. Tonight, the principal had verbally rapped them all across the knuckles with a ruler.

  “I’ll leave you then, Miss Andrews,” Mrs. Canney said. “Another few minutes and then I’ll expect to see everyone in the cafeteria for cake and coffee.”

  No one responded to this, but many exchanged disgruntled glances.

  Miss Andrews gazed at them, showing no weakness or concern.

  Cool, calm and collected. It must be nice to have all the answers. Gil scowled at himself, at his own dissatisfaction.

  “Why don’t you spend the rest of the time in the room looking at
the work your children have done.” The teacher crumpled the paper suspended in her hands. “Some is on their desks and some is posted. I’ll be at the door if you wish to speak to me further.”

  Gil watched the way Miss Andrews carried herself at the back of the room as she walked through the group of unsympathetic parents. She glanced neither right nor left. She showed no anxiety. She looked invincible.

  Doesn’t she have any weak spot, any doubt about her decisions? That must be a nice way to live.

  Gil walked toward his son’s desk. It dawned on him suddenly that he’d learned one thing about Miss Andrews. She possessed not only the kind of backbone that would make it possible for her to stand up to eleven other jurors and not give in, but also a roomful of hostile parents. He had to hand it to her. Like it or not, she was one gutsy lady.

  Later, in the cafeteria that felt so much smaller than it had when he was a student at Oakdale, Gil watched Miss Andrews stand all alone in the crowded room, humming with conversation. No one approached her. No one glanced her way.

  A shunning was taking place. Not too many miles north was an Amish settlement and Gil had heard of shunnings but he’d never witnessed one. And we’re not even Amish.

  This is Darby’s teacher who spoke kindly to him after he set a squirrel rampaging through her class. Most of all, she’s my son’s teacher and he needs…I need her help.

  Gil walked over to Miss Andrews and halted in front of her. “Good evening.” He forced the words out, hoping they didn’t sound as stiff as he felt.

  She opened her mouth, closed it and then replied, “Good evening.”

  Her rich voice was even more compelling up close. “I wanted to talk to you about Darby.” Gil held to his purpose.

  “Yes?” Her expression gave nothing away.

  “He is, I guess you could call it ‘acting out’ at home.” Gil groped for words. “He just bounces from one showdown to another with me. He can be good and then turn right around and defy me. What’s his behavior like at school?”

  “The same.” She examined him as though he were an exotic display in a museum.