by Ivan Doig
"That much, huh?" Toby said with pride. He had lost the toenail off his big toe. He could hardly wait to show that toe off in the schoolyard.
***
"ROSE! COME SEE!"
I wouldn't have believed a person could shout in a whisper, yet I managed some such feat when I barged into the kitchen and madly beckoned her outside into the dark that had now changed forever.
We went out the door of the house in nearly one person, Rose so close her shawl smacked the back of my neck as she hurled it across her shoulders. I held the bull's-eye lantern up, ushering her across the yard and into the field, the pair of us tightroping between the seeded furrows, somehow watching our step while trying to read the sky in giddy glances. When I judged we were far enough from the lamplight reflected through the kitchen window, I drew us to a halt. "Here goes." I doused the lantern. Maybe as much as a minute passed while our eyes adjusted to the darkness. "There," I whispered, sheer habit. "Over the top of The Cut."
"Is that it, you're sure?" Rose cupped a hand to her brow.
"Has to be. There's the water bearer, and there's the centaur," I pointed out constellations for her, "and see, that one is just as bright but doesn't fit with any of theirs." No, it was beyond doubt, this was a traveling star. As soon as our eyes had night sight, we could pick out the faint trailing smudge of light, like the here-and-gone strike of a match, that marked the visitor amid the standing clusters in that corner of the sky. The tail of the comet would grow and grow as it neared, Morrie had told us in school. Each night would add to its paradoxical cloud of brightness. I already was dazzled, that the nature of things could be vast enough to cast a stray diamond of light across the spaces of night probably just once in our lifetimes, yet one so legible that the blink of an eye brought this single migratory glow home to us out of all the glimmers held by the sky.
"Oh, Paul, it's beautiful," Rose murmured, my heart dancing to her words. Then she said something odd, her tone wistful. "Morrie needs a comet now and then."
I had no time to puzzle that out. "I have to go in and get everybody up to see it. Father and I can carry Tobe out in a chair."
***
I HAVE THOUGHT BACK MOST OF A LIFETIME ON HOW HALLEY'S comet arrived to our world in 1910—and have come under its aura again time after time in dreams—and the course of it through the atmosphere here below makes me emotional even yet. By the earthly order of things, Marias Coulee and its scattered antecedents through history were granted the visiting star ahead of the populous parts of the world. Goatherds and keepers of sheep and camel drovers and stalkers of hoofed game at predawn water holes, the rural earth's earliest risers—theirs always would have been the first eyes to find the arriving comet. Those and the dream-tossed; others on this planet may have seen the coming of the fresh star earlier than I did that sleep-short morning, but they were not many. Then, having made itself known to the prairies and savannahs and deserts, the fiery traveler showered portent in past the walls of the greatest of cities. Soothsayers prospered. Beggars did better. Crowned heads grew uneasy; Halley's comet known to carry off kings. Harold II, King of England, perished to the Norman invaders following the comet's passage in 1066. Edward VII, King of England, was laid in his bulky casket our spring of 1910.
Those who looked to heaven for a wrathful king of everything could all too readily read the comet as a flaming writ of doom. Morrie brought to school sensational newspaper stories of panic among sects that were sure the world was coming to an end according to one feverish prophecy or another, and instructively paired those with similar accounts across the past few thousand years. "Mark Twain, our greatest living American writer, once told the press association its report of his death was an exaggeration, and down through the ages these lamentations fit that same category," he left it at. If that wasn't enough, the Delacroix print on the schoolroom wall was always there as a reminder that the Star Dragon had flown before and given alarm to inflamed consciences, and would again.
Passing over our own roof, Halley's comet could hardly have been more auspicious. To universal relief in the household, on his next call the doctor let Toby proceed to crutches. Damon and I made sure to kid him about being Peg Leg Pete the Pirate Man, and he gyrated through the house with a surprisingly sure swagger. Rose allowed him along on her housekeeping swoops through the downstairs rooms, which meant she could keep an eye on him. And Father looked less like a man chased day and night by a swarm of things; he made it downstairs in time to join Rose and me in our comet-watching every one of those mornings. Life somehow smoothed out, under that brightening cloud of comet tail. Morrie one morning wove it into Latin. "There is a line that is tailor-made for Halley's, and you know which one I mean. Lux desiderium universitatis, Paul. Kindly come up with an inspired translation before I become too old and deaf to hear it."
"I will. I mean, I am. Next time, maybe."
Yet one thing strangely troubled me as the great comet progressed across the sky of our lives. The particular fragment of thought never did ascend to dream level, but only because my mind could not quite catch hold of a way to dream it. What plagued me was the idea Eddie—One-Punch Milliron's old adversary—might never look upon Halley's comet. On their ride to school the day after Brose Turley had jerked him out of the classroom, the Pronovosts had sighted the pair of them on their way to the mountains, a pack string behind them, swags of traps clanking on the pack saddles. "Eddie looked like a whipped pup," Isidor reported. Plainly Brose Turley was squeezing in another high-country season of pelts and bounties now that he had Eddie to slave for him. Up there in the Rockies, spring and the end of trapping would not come for some time yet, and meanwhile the comet was low on the southeast horizon, blocked from sight in the mountain valleys by the shoulders of the foothills and the front range of peaks. I could not get rid of the thought that a kind of blindness had been put on Eddie Turley, and where did that fit in the beautiful workings of the universe?
***
HOURS AFTER ROSE AND I MADE OUR FIRST SIGHTING OF the traveling star, Morrie laid out comet night for his attentive eight grades of listeners in the schoolroom. Naturally he leapt ahead on the calendar—three weeks seemed to us all like a terribly long time-to the night when Halley's comet would achieve full magnitude, according to his calculations. That particular night, the tail of the comet would extend across the sky from Minneapolis to the Rockies. Marias Coulee School perhaps could not take full credit for that, but at least we could host the event.
"Your parents of course will need to be reminded," Morrie reminded us, "that we will not start until full dark." It shouldn't be too hard to get parents to be nocturnal one night out of seventy-five years, we figured.
"I shall make a talk on matters of the cosmos," Morrie said offhandedly. We had thoroughly expected that. "And all of you—" he paused as if this was almost too decious to tell us. Then he told us.
A hush fell on the schoolroom. Three weeks seemed like a terribly short time.
Carnelia wasn't saying anything, even between her teeth. I knew better than to speak up, because if I did it would come out something like: "Morrie, have you lost your mind?" Glancing around the room, I caught a gleam in Damon's eye, not exactly a recommendation for Morrie's scheme. Grover looked dubious. Marta put a hand up to her face to see if this was going to set off a nosebleed. Both sets of Drobny twins licked their lips, tasting conspiracy. Milo, oaf among eighth-grade oafs, inexplicably had a grin on him the size of a calf bucket. At last, next to Milo at the back of the room, Martin Myrdal stuck up a meaty hand. "All of us? The little kids too?"
The first grade en masse—Josef Kratka and Alice Stinson and Maggie Emrich and Marija Stoyanov—turned and glowered at Martin. The Robespierre of the second grade, Emil Kratka, stuck his tongue out at him.
"All," Morrie said firmly. "First grade to eighth grade."
The next question in the air was from Sally Emrich. Sally even had a fussy way of raising her hand. "Teacher, is this a secret? Even from our folks?"
If I have learned anything about what happens in a classroom, it is that inspiration does not always follow a straight path. Up in the second row, Inez Pronovost squirmed one way and then the other at her desk, next to Toby's empty one all these weeks, and suddenly piped up: "Spitbath handshake, Mr. Morgan?"
I saw Morrie covertly cock an ear for school-inspector footsteps in the cloakroom. Hearing none, he spat in his hand. "All right, everyone. The bargain will be sealed in the manner Inez suggests. I'll make the rounds, although each of you must provide the rest of the expectoration—I do not have three dozen decent spits in me. We shall discuss the salivary gland when we are finished."
And so we were launched toward comet night.
"Morrie thought up a doozy this time," I confided to Rose insofar as I could. "I wish I could tell you, but it's a—"
"Ah, but I know all about it," she whispered back, delicately fingering her cocoa cup. I kept forgetting how much time she and Morrie naturally spent together, sister and brother, out of our sight. "That man. You just never know what he will pull next, do you." Her little conspiratorial smile seemed to approve of that, this time.
***
ACROSS THE NEXT WEEKS, MORRIE FOUND SCRAPS OF THE day to rehearse us. Last period was always a catchall, and he used it to the fullest for our one purpose now. Several times we voted to stay in from recess to practice. It was an ensemble effort, whatever the results would be.
"So how is your singing voice by now?" Father asked me one morning after he and Rose and I had checked on the progress of the comet. There still were times when he looked like he was being put through fife's wringer—a dry springtime will do that to a farmer—but some matters were not pressing on him quite as hard now. Toby still was the pest of all time, but at least he could periodically be dispatched outside to work off energy by pegging around the yard. Even the specter of the inspector dimmed with each passing day; Father and Morrie had practically squinted holes in the calendar and the long list of one-room schools in Montana and come to the conclusion that with any luck now, the school year would wind down before the Department of Public Instruction managed to get past its backlog and reach us. And while Father would not have said so out loud, having Rose in the house all the time gave the place a feel of ticking along to a natural clock that it had not had for a good, long time. She could be heard rummaging around in the parlor that very moment, setting up for what she announced as spring cleaning.
Before I thought, I scoffed, "Oh, we're not bothering with singing. Anybody can sing."
Father stopped whatever he was doing and sent me a long look. Then crossed the room and closed the kitchen door, an exceedingly rare occurrence. He came over close to me and asked anxiously, "Paul. He doesn't have the whole caboodle of you whistling, does he?"
"Father, I can't tell you, can I. It's a surprise. That's the whole idea."
"HERE HE COMES!"
Toby's yelp when he spotted the doctor's Model T chugging along the section-line road toward us would have wakened the dead. Houdini chorused in with him.
"Settle down, you two," Father directed, coming out of the barn where he had been mending harness. This was something he was looking forward to as much as Toby was, if it meant the end of careening crutches.
Damon and I got up from where we were lying flat, trying to snare gophers at the edge of the field. If we caught any, Morrie would have the specimen he wanted to illustrate the history of incisors—from the saber-tooth tiger on down, no doubt—in class the next day It was a big if. Mostly, this was just such a fine, sunny Sunday afternoon we wanted to be out in it. Now we brushed the worst of the dirt off ourselves without Father even having to tell us and headed across the yard, each trying to look more mature and presentable than the other. How often did mighty events coincide like this? Toby was receiving the doctor visit he had been looking for every day all week, and comet night was a mere two days away.
The Model T pulled up to us, vibrated nervously for several moments, and shut down. The doctor from Westwater got out from behind the steering wheel and was instantly set upon by Toby, in one breath wanting to know if he could throw away his crutches yet and in the next wanting a guarantee that his big toenail would never grow back. Another man climbed out the other side of the automobile. This was no great surprise, as the Westwater doctor had said he wanted Toby's one-of-a-kind foot to be looked over by the orthopedic specialist from the Great Falls hospital whenever that worthy made his rounds in our general direction. Certainly Toby would be ecstatic to rate two doctors. Right now his jabbering away had the Westwater one thoroughly distracted, so Father approached the other. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure, Doctor—?"
"Call me Harry," the man said as they shook hands. "Harry Taggart. School inspector."
It was as if Zeus had appeared in our yard. Father froze. I heard Damon gasp, or maybe it was me.
Actually, Taggart did not look like much. He was a long stick of a man, his bowler hat sitting on him about as it would have on a hat stand. His frowsy mustache made it apparent what an achievement Morrie's had been. But he had slitted eyes, as though his vision was everlastingly pinched to a point by watching people try tricks. And the bag he carried, now that we had a second look, was a dark leather briefcase bulging with whatever a school inspector inspected with.
The intruder explained, "I asked around town and caught a ride out with the good doctor here, to find your place." Those eyes with their visors of lids flicked across the homestead and Father in his barn clothes as if reserving judgment.
"Yes, well," Father rallied, "we weren't expecting you on a Sunday and—"
"Excuse us," the doctor called over, "we are going in the house for me to examine the patient," and Toby vaulted along ahead of him on the crutches.
"And these are your other lads." Taggart belatedly dispensed handshakes to Damon and me. As if a switch had been nipped, now he sounded hearty. "Ready to tackle the Standards tomorrow, buckos?"
We hated it when that tone of voice was used on us. Not trusting what we might say, Damon and I stood there as soiled as badgers and dug our toes in the yard as though in search of more dirt.
The inspector breezed right back to Father. "First off, I should make sure our records in Helena are up to date." He instantly delved into his briefcase the way a gunfighter went to his holster. "Marias Coulee School District; he pulled out an official-looking piece of paper and read off, "established 1901, Township 28 North, so on and so on. Teacher, Adelaide Trent—
Damon couldn't help it. He snickered.
Father dropped a kindly hand on Damon's shoulder and gave a little squeeze meant to carry all the way to the vocal cords. "Miss Trent is no longer with us. That old epidemic, matrimony." Father forced a chuckle. "The school board fortunately found a sterling replacement."
The school inspector frowned.
"This individual's name?" He spread his piece of paperwork onto the skinny hood of the automobile, reached out a fountain pen and scratched Miss Trent into oblivion, and for better or worse, Morrie was entered onto the rolls of the Department of Public Instruction.
Pen still poised, Taggart was saying, "Next there is the matter of this person's—" and I was proud to have enough Latin instinct by then to know the next phrase was going to be bona fides.
Just then Rose quick-stepped out of the house, water bucket swinging in her hand, headed for the pump. Wearing satin for Sunday, she looked very nice indeed. Our visitor cast a glance at Father as if he thought better of him. Capping his pen and putting it away, Taggart drew himself up formally, tipped his hat, and called, "Good day, Mrs. Milliron."
"She's not—" Father started and stopped.
"Oh, how do you do," Rose said, swerving over. "Actually, I am more properly called Mrs. Llewellyn," she said in the melan-cholically musical fashion we had not heard from her for some time now. "I'm the�
��" She gestured inclusively around, water bucket and all, a sweep that took in our homestead and hers and the fields and evidently the perimeters of things all the way back to Minneapolis.
"Temporary nurse," Father hastily filled in.
"Neighbor next door," I prompted in the same instant.
"Housekeeper," Rose said, looking at both of us.
Damon saved our skins. In back of Taggart, he frantically pantomimed peering through a magnifying glass, Sherlock Holmes style.
"Ah!" Rose let out. "You must be the school inspector everyone has been so looking forward to." She and he shook hands—hers obviously startled him, being as strong from work as any man's—and she sped on with the conversation as if she had been waiting months to confide in him. "I five just across the way, so it's nothing for me to pitch in here on the household chores and see to Toby since his awful accident, and Mr. Milliron is so busy with farming and the school affairs and all, so it works out well for everyone concerned. You see—" Here she halted and bit her lip. Taggart leaned toward her from the waist as if to make sure he did see. "My husband is"—Rose gestured off to far horizons again—"gone for an extended period."
"What can exceed neighborliness as a virtue?" Taggart proclaimed to us all as if it might be on tomorrow's test. Rose beamed at him and went off to pump water.
Father had not fully recovered from Rose's transit through the situation before Taggart turned to him again. "Mr. Milliron—may I call you Oliver?"
"Be my guest."
"Oliver, how I would like to proceed," Taggart went on in a fashion that made it plain it was how they were going to proceed, "is to meet with you and the teacher before school tomorrow. To examine the classroom equipment and the physical state of the schoolhouse, that sort of thing. Say an hour ahead of start of class? That's usually ample."
My face fell. That would crowd out Latin.
Father said in not much voice, "I'll be there."
