by M Dressler
I am in a town lately renamed White Bar. The ground on which our schoolhouse is planted had been ordered cleared by the Messrs. Huellet, doctors and informal leaders and benefactors of this community, after four men set dynamite to the riverbank nearby and died collapsing a cavern beneath the surface. The miners’ camp has now been moved well upriver, and after a sufficient interval the doctors declared the bad luck and “pestilence” of the former camp cleansed. The funds that built this school are generated by the sale of the brothers’ Huellet’s Healing Tonic, which is very popular here and also in the surrounding camps.
Thus, I find myself, each day, in this room in a fresh, muddy clearing, with the sound of a waterfall created by man’s folly rushing not far from my ears.
I told my pupils that like them I am a newcomer, and hail from Connecticut.
“Where’s that?” little William called.
“Where is that please, sir,” I corrected him, for I will not have these children being ruffians, by God. They must learn.
Though we have neither map nor globe, only rough desks, some slates, and chalk.
“In the East,” I said. “By the Atlantic Ocean. Have any of you ever seen an ocean?”
I wish I could describe for you how sadly the younger ones shook their heads. Ola and the older boys sat shamefaced, as though I had tested them and they’d missed the mark.
So I went on quickly, “We are at present many miles from the nearest ocean, the Pacific. But what is near to hand are all the puzzles and wonders and mysteries locked inside what is already known to us, or may easily become known.”
I told them to take up their slates. I set them to copy an acrostic, the one we used to do when we were young, do you remember?
The bell tolls slowly
Over the empty pews
Lost are all the lonely
Lacking Heaven’s news.
The children all bent uncertain to their tasks. I was anxious for them as I walked up and down the room, studying their work, but saw, with relief, that while some of them might be unmannered, they at least do have their letters. The youngest, along with Jack, copy poorly, but Adelaide writes in a smooth hand, and Ola in a sturdy one.
I remember Anton asked looking at his slate, “Mr. Longhurst, sir, does this word, toll, have more than one meaning?”
I told him it could mean a charge or fare, as well as the ringing of a bell.
The children had looked to the chinked wall beside the door, where the bell rope—our school bell being a heavy iron kettle adapted to this purpose—is hooked. Ola tends to raise her hand into the air, slowly, as though she’s hefting a weight that troubles her.
“There’s another meaning to toll, I think, sir,” she said.
I asked her what.
“A burden. A claim takes its toll on you, my father says.”
I believe she’s quicker than her motions might suggest.
We make slow progress on numbers—addition, subtraction. I smile as best I can, even through general confusion. Because I am trying not to be like Father, a teacher who strikes students for their errors, so that they cringe and gape at the door hoping the bell might toll and release them from hell.
I remember well that feeling. You?
The students are fidgeting, fish trying to lose the hook. I will write more as I can.
October 26
Today Will and Addy are sitting side by side, their childish frowns knotted over unfamiliar spellings. Anton and Ola bend over their desks, shoulders forward, pushing against ignorance’s wheel. Jack makes a pretense of reading, his eyes sliding toward our glass-jarred window as though measuring its height for his escape.
They are coming, at least, each day. A different kind of escape. This school, I believe, is their only flight from the harshness of camp life. Anton and Addy are somewhat fortunate; their families make a living selling picks and shovels to wide-eyed miners who still believe there is gold to be found in this valley. Young Will walks a hard road. Willie’s father was a Spaniard who fell drunk and drowned last year in the Eno. His mother was a whore, who now however is a baker of French pies.
Ola’s family has come to near ruin on a bad claim. She works every day before and after school, picking through silt. Jack is a boy at the mercy of his whiskey-loving father, and tries to conceal the bruises on his arm by pulling at the sleeves of his shirt.
Yet I insist they all do well at school. We all must rise above our miseries.
I am, apart from my regular misgivings that I’ve fallen into the very sort of life I came West to avoid, accepting of my fate. If there have been difficulties, thus far, they haven’t come from inside this crude schoolhouse but rather from the town itself. There is suspicion in the camp that the White Bar schoolmistress is instead a schoolmaster. It’s been made clear to me, by looks and signs and jokes, that I’m engaged in a womanly profession. Perhaps this was to be expected. There are many in this remote valley who come from rude places, and have no sense of the traditions of schoolteaching in the East. I hope, in time, to show them that a knowledge of books and numbers and letters should be welcomed with gratitude, not suspicion. And I must hope that, like ballast to a ship, I can be a counterweight to the stupid and small and dim and unimaginative people that can be found in every corner on earth.
In any case, I am pleased to write that we all go on very well here in Schoolhouse Meadow. I might even say we have made a little camp, a little country for ourselves. Each day we begin by saluting the flag and each other, then set ourselves to our tasks. I grow each day more interested in their work; I find it shows a seriousness I had not thought possible. Of course, I won’t stay in this position beyond a season or two. It’s merely a stopgap. I’d rather shoot myself than become Father.
November 3
Progress: Will has made some headway on his letters and spelling. Addy is a child of natural gifts, with a sweet, clear voice, a joy to hear singing now that the weather has turned to rain and it is too cold for us to exercise outdoors. Jack continues stubborn. Knowledge seems to come to him and then seep away again, as if through the holes in his sleeves. Anton and Ola are catching up to their counterparts in the East, and I begin to hope will be acceptable graduates. It is Ola among all of them, however, who makes the most rapid advance. She is a surprise to me. Her manner appears slow, even laborious, and her dark brow often comes down in a frown that is as much resistance as it is concentration. Yet she’s the one who strides through each lesson with purpose. She’ll need more books, soon.
At the moment, we make do with what we’ve been able to glean from the townspeople—some soggy Dickens and The Arabian Nights. I’ve approached the Doctors Huellet, who I was sure would have something in their medical libraries that could entertain the minds of my older pupils. The doctors have been building a fine house on the square, in the place their medicinal stand first occupied. They’re sending, I’ve heard, for their wives from the East. Yet when I asked if the school might have the loan of some of their medical volumes, Caleb Huellet, our new mayor, looked askance at me and said he had nothing suitable for my needs. I ventured to mention this to Mrs. Berringer, the sheriff’s wife, since my lodging is near to her own home. I simply said it was disappointing the doctors had not brought more of their own library with them. Her response startled me. She huffed and stated that “traveling doctors couldn’t be expected to carry more than any other prospector on their backs, and it was unfair to judge men who had done so much good in such a short time, for any lack of paper.” Her speech struck me as strange, because indeed I hadn’t asked for any form of medical credential or diploma; only for the sharing of any books they might, as others in the camp, and now the town, have brought with them.
November 4
I haven’t been able to stop my mind from speculating on what I wrote above. The truth is I am beginning to wonder about the medical educations of the Brothers Huellet. I’ve been remembering their arrival in camp. It was in a covered wagon, filled with nothing but canvas
-covered crates of elixirs bearing their name. It was late spring of this past year, and a torpor, a sickness had hung over the Basin. I’d worked my claim to exhaustion and little more. I was considering abandoning the Eno River and moving on, like others who felt the camp had become unlucky. I happened to be in town on a Saturday playing billiards, when the explosion tore the throat of the river open and shook the saloon windows. As the smoke cleared, the Huellet brothers were everywhere—caring for the four dying men—shouting for an emergency meeting—sharing it as their medical opinion that the illness that had been plaguing the camp was clouding men’s judgment—and that Huellet’s Tonic was in plentiful supply to cure the trouble.
Their elixir sold briskly. The complexion of the town at first improved, it’s true. The river camp was razed and the meadow cleared. The Hardware and Tack doubled in size, and the jail was built. The speed at which all of this was accomplished was celebrated as a miracle, put down to the doctors’ industry on all fronts.
But here in the privacy of my papers I will record I’ve become suspicious as the doctors’ mansion rises on the square. I ask myself if this is mere jealousy on my part—since I have accomplished in two years along this river nearly nothing, while these men in their beaver hats succeeded in a matter of weeks. I ask myself why I don’t feel more grateful for the position I now hold, which allows me more comfort than I’ve known since I said goodbye to you, sister, at the rail station. Hadn’t I started my journey, just as the Huellet brothers had, with great ambition in my pocket? Is it that these men are simply better than I am? Or are some men better at finding a slim vein, and gouging it?
I have wondered, too, about the curious timing of the arrival of the Huellet brothers along the river, right before the explosion that took the lives of four miners who were no more or less clouded in judgment than any of us.
But then I wonder if it is some deficit in my own character that makes me so quick to mistrust. Is this envy raising its ugly flag? I ask myself. Am I envious of the fine house the brothers are building on the square, and of the no doubt fine wives they’ll be bedding inside it? Am I envious of their success not only in business but in love? But I can’t think too closely on my solitary state. If I dwell for too long on the truth that I’ve been alone and unsuccessful amid fields of gold where others have found luck . . . I become despondent, angry, almost ready to lash out at anyone. Such passion I feel . . . remembering the passion that drove me here. Yet somehow I have squandered that passion, spending it on a tiny pile of yellow dust. Such rage I might feel, if ever I allowed myself to. And here, now, I’ve written another letter that will never be sent, because it speaks too much, goes too far. Hope fails me. I want only hope. And perhaps to love and be loved. And failing hope and love . . . what?
I set the wrinkled sheets down on this cold lap.
Failing hope and love . . . what?
What’s left, the dead man means, when the world moves on and finds its companions, and you are left alone, at the end of words, holding hunger and longing dry in your lap, and nowhere to put their kindling?
The Prospector’s hulking shadow above me makes no answer.
But I can’t think too closely on my solitary state.
There’s nothing more to read or be said, so I fold the faded sheets, quickly, with their envelope into the mayor’s coat.
And stand and look back to face the empty windows of the inn.
If the Berringers had wanted not only to share with me White Bar’s hidden past but to show me what feeling alone and unlucky in the world might drive a soul to, they needn’t have gone to the trouble, I remind myself. I’ve lived all my life and afterlife knowing what hurt, rage, and the lack of love can do to the heart. I see the Prospector’s bronze ax, strapped to his pack, and need no more letters from Longhurst to know the rest of the tale.
The schoolmaster broke.
Sometimes, a kind of pain runs so fiercely through this body I wish I had, too, some sharp weapon in my hands to cut it with, sharper than whatever power it is that slices these torn bits of lace falling from the sky.
Look, it’s snowing again, I think. But you can’t let yourself feel lost in the cold, Emma Rose. You mustn’t.
A tinkling sound comes from across the square. It’s Su Kwon, stepping out of her art gallery, hanging a fresh, gleaming wind chime from her porch roof. I straighten so she can see me and raise my hand in a salute. She waves back and beckons.
On the porch, she tucks my arm into hers, friendly, the soft shock of her beating life pressed close to my shoulder. The trouble with having a body that can be touched is that it makes you want to touch all the more.
She’s wearing a thick sweater and fur-topped boots, and a necklace of stones in glinting colors.
“Rose, glad I’ve got you! Come on through the gallery. I need to show you something.”
She leads me in. I have only a moment to glance at splintered wooden walls covered with rusted pieces of metal that fling and reach out in strange, twisting tongues. Farther into the room, wild, fantastic waves of iron balance on squares of stone. A woodstove glows in the corner. I see a desk scattered with paper drawings, a tiny, messy kitchen, and stairs running to a loft and bed above.
“It’s this way to my studio. So have you just been over”—she pulls open an unlatched door at the back of the gallery—“at Mary and John’s? They’re the movers and shakers around here, you know. Could you tell? Did they like you?” She breezes outdoors again, the snowfall clinging to her hair, and pulls open a barn door on the other side of the alley. “Because if they didn’t, they’re insane. Okay, get ready, I want to show you what I just finished.”
I’m standing inside an old stable heated with glowing burners and filled with stacks and sheets of metal and piles of stone. We pass deep racks that hold pieces of iron pipe; hanging tools and strange, glinting machines; braces I have no name for. Her truck stands in front of a closed carriage door, and beside it something covered with a blue cloth.
“That’s my snowmobile,” she says as I stare at it. “Over that side is where I fire, and here’s where I weld.” She picks up a metal mask and jauntily hides her face behind it, showing me nothing but her eyes. She sets it down. “In this corner is what I want to show you. Do you recognize it, Rose?”
Rising from an open space littered with shavings of metal is a great shining piece of arched steel. It curves in a horseshoe—the shape of luck. Yet it’s big enough to throw a shadow over my head.
The base is a slab of flecked gray stone, where the metal is footed.
She reaches up and touches the arch, excitedly. “Remember? The scrap you helped me haul? Bent steel, anchored in granite. It’s all from the meadow. The rock, too. This is what I’ve been obsessing over. It’s been quite a job, the calibration, the weight, getting it to balance just right, so it looks like this, like a floating door. I have you to thank for the idea.” Her eyes dance, glowing. “It’s because of our conversation yesterday. I’d been brooding over what you said in my truck—that some souls might want peace, and others not. I think you might be right, Rose. How can we assume we know what anyone else wants or needs, in the end? For me, this whole piece is that big question mark. Notice the arch. Like a question that turns on and touches itself. Like a door. Because a question, it came to me, is always a door, and a door is always a question. And the question isn’t just, What’s on the other side of this? or even, Should I go through this door? It is”—she strokes the keen edge of it—“what makes this a door? Isn’t this just a hunk of scrap pulled from an unlucky place and soldered to rock? What makes it a doorway? Is it because I say so? Is saying something is a certain thing enough to make it so? Maybe. Maybe there’s always a door, room to move, an option, another way. Always the ghost of a door—that’s what I’m thinking of calling it, the Ghost Door—waiting somewhere, even if you don’t know it.” She lets go of it. “I think it’s my best piece. There’s even a little natural vibration to it. If you listen, you can hear it. A hum.
Or anyway, I can hear it when I’m not talking.” She laughs. “Me and my motormouth. Talking to myself—all the time! Do you like it, though? I hope you do. I won’t go fishing for compliments . . . but you really, really like it, right?”
I do. I don’t know why. I stare at it, wonderingly, and listen, and hear the stillness of the meadow where we gathered it, and the throb of the nearby waterfall, and the soft crunch of snow under our footprints. It’s what I said to the young couple at the hotel: even in places where the ground looks fresh, it’s lined with passing.
“A door”— I nod—“with what you can’t see behind it.”
“Yes!” She balls her hands into fists and raises them. “I knew you’d get it! That’s why I couldn’t wait to show it to you. I’m so jazzed. It’ll get a good price, too. If I can even bear to let go of it. But okay, all right, enough about me, my thing, how are you, what have you been up to, did you have a good visit with the Berringers, is everything moving along? I saw you go over there. What did they say? Any word on poor Ruth? I know Martha’s on her way to the hospital again. Wait, you don’t have to keep on standing.” She pulls two wooden stools out from a work bench, and we sit. “What else did Mary and John say? Did they tell you anything about the Bar?”
They told me too much and too little, I don’t say. “They said they told me things they wouldn’t tell the tourists.”
“Fantastic!” She draws her breath in. “You’re really in around here once the Berringers let you in. What did they tell you, exactly?”
“About a teacher who killed his pupils.”
“Good. Good. Well, no.” She shakes her head. “I mean, of course it’s not good, it’s terrible. This guy named Longhurst, he went crazy and burned them down in a fire one winter in the meadow and got sentenced to hang . . . I mean it’s good in the sense that I’m glad they told you. It’s not something the town shares with visitors. But me, I want you to really know this place. Warts and all. I would’ve told you myself, but it’s not my place to . . . and it’s better if it comes from the community’s leaders.”
