The Whistling Season Read online

  At that moment, Toby spun out of the house. Crutchless.

  "I CAN GO TO SCHOOL! TOMORROW!"

  "Hey, wow, Tobe!" Damon congratulated him.

  "The more the merrier," Father said, sounding even more peaked. "We'll all see you tomorrow, Harry."

  As soon as the Model T was out of sight, the first necessity had to be performed. I was itching to be the one. But on some scale in his own mind Father kept track of these things, and this was not my turn. "Damon," he said wearily. "Saddle up and go tell Morrie, Judgment Day arrives tomorrow."

  Rose waited until the last one of us—Toby, bard of the longest-running foot epic since that of Achilles—had the last bite of supper in him before she said it. "And so. I'll need to move back to my place tonight."

  Damon and Toby and I looked at each other. This hadn't occurred to us.

  Father was a different story. He was behind the fortification of his coffee cup, taking a long, slow drink, before the last of Rose's words were out. When he finally put the cup down, he addressed Toby. "You can climb stairs, tiger, can you?"

  "You bet." Too late, Toby realized what he had condemned himself to.

  Father looked down the table to Rose now. His expression was harried, not surprising for a day bookended by the arrival of the school inspector and the departure of the presence that had given the household such a lift. He had a little trouble with his voice when he told Rose, "We don't want to seem to be throwing you out. If it's too much of a rush for you to go yet tonight—"

  "I'd better." She made sure to share her commiserating smile around to all of us.

  An unforgettable twinge went through me. A sense that something major was ending. I knew I was entitled to feel relief at coming home to sleep, out from under the hovering thunderhead of Aunt Eunice, but that was not what I felt. Anticipation of Rose alighting into the kitchen full of whispered cheer again each morning instead of me stumbling in from the field, dream-driven, should have filled me; but that was not it either.

  A chair clattered. Father was onto his feet, tugging at Damon's collar and giving me a look with plenty of pull in it. "We have to wrestle Tobe's bed back upstairs for him."

  "I'll get my things together while you're at that," Rose said, just as awkwardly, "and then I'll scoot."

  Father paused. "You don't need to run off."

  "I'd better," she said once more, and again her smile was carefully equal for each of us but ended with Father. "I thought I'd ride over and see Morrie yet tonight. He may need some bucking up."

  ***

  WE WERE A MOTLEY CREW ON HORSEBACK THAT NEXT MORNing. Toby rode double behind me; his foot still was tender enough that he was not supposed to swing up into a stirrup with it, so Father lifted him up behind my saddle and threatened him extensively against falling off or jumping down. By that hour I was bright-eyed as could be, accustomed to riding to school that early for Latin bouts with Morrie, but Damon drooped sleepily on the back of his horse. Father, in his best clothes, looked like an out-of-place pallbearer on top of the pint-size mare Queenie.

  Rose had not appeared at the house by the time we left, and that worried me. I'd had the comet to myself that morning, a lonely enough sighting. I could only hope our kitchen sessions would get back to what they were before.

  Plainly Father had enough on his mind without us, so on that ride to school we all stayed as close to mute as boys could humanly be. Toby contented himself with snuggling dreamily into my back as he held on to me, as though I were a horseback version of Houdini. The day broke out in pale spring sunshine. I can still see the schoolhouse as it appeared when we rode up out of The Cut, its paint a bit worn from the affections of the wind, its schoolyard trampled bare, its dawn-caught bank of windows a narrow aperture to sky and prairie. Any inspector from the Department of Public Instruction would have seen a thousand such places. We were about to find out if he had ever seen anything like Morrie.

  By the time we were dismounting at the school, the dreaded automobile was tottering over the horizon from the direction of Westwater. That longest day was under way, whether we were ready or not. The schoolhouse did not appear to be. Its windows were not showing any lampshine, which meant Morrie wasn't on hand yet. "Damon, get in there and make sure the chill is off the place," Father directed hurriedly as he hoisted Toby down from behind me. "Stoke the stove up good if you have to. Tobe, now listen. Take it easy on that foot. No running, no rough-housing, got that?" Toby promised, cross his heart, and all but tiptoed across the schoolyard to join Damon inside. In my usual role, elder statesman of the boys, I waited beside Father for the inspector's Model T to pull up next to the flagpole.

  "Where's Morrie?" Father asked me through gritted teeth.

  "Brushing up on pedagogical principles," I said as if I knew.

  "He'd better be."

  Harry Taggart unfolded out of the car, spoke of the weather, shook hands with Father perfunctorily, and headed into the schoolhouse like a man on a mission. Father and I hastened after him, trying not to be obvious about looking around for Morrie.

  Inside, the schoolhouse was not exactly dark, but it was a long way from illuminated. Toby was somewhat ghostly as he wriggled this way and that in his desk to see if it still fit him. Damon was over by the stove, but not feeding it; the schoolroom already was toasty as could be. As Taggart squinted around in the gloom, Father struck a match and pulled down the nearest hanging lamp. "Notice we do not go in for careless expenditure of kerosene," he said piously and lit the wick.

  Even with that first lamp, the schoolroom gleamed. By the time Father had them all lit, the place was practically blinding. Clean windows glistened, the scrubbed pine floor was spotless, the blackboard was the pure dark of obsidian—from its shining rows of desks to its perfectly aligned arrowheads in the display case, Marias Coulee School showed the handiwork I recognized with a jolt. The only thing lacking was the lingering echo of Rose's whistling.

  "Tidy," Taggart conceded, plopping open his briefcase and snatching out a sheet of paper to make a check mark.

  "We do our utmost to keep the vessel of knowledge shipshape," Morrie said from the doorway, causing Father's head to jerk around.

  Hand casually out, Morrie advanced toward Taggart, looking as tailor-stitched as when he first stepped off the train. "Kindly pardon my tardiness. I presumed you might like a peek around the premises without the instructional incumbent in the way. Good morning, Oliver, you're looking meditative."

  Introductions made, Taggart turned back to Father briefly to ascertain the budgeting for such a level of schoolhouse upkeep, and Morrie took up his station at his desk. I edged over to him and whispered, "We were getting worried. Where were you?"

  "Throwing up," he murmured.

  Taggart arrived to the desk and got down to business. "Mr. Morgan, I understand you are a replacement teacher. Oliver and his board must have been fortunate indeed to find someone sufficientiy credentialed, on such short notice." By now the inspector had his fountain pen poised, over another drastic-looking piece of paper. "Where did you take your degree?"

  "Yale," Morrie answered with towering dignity.

  Father's eyes bugged out.

  "No!" Taggart nearly dropped his pen and paper. "Why, that's first rate! What, may I ask, was your field of study?"

  "Yurisprudence."

  I was afraid the school inspector was going to choke. His lips crimped in while his Adam's apple bobbed.

  Then came the burst, a guffaw that would have put any of Milo's to shame. "Yurisprudence at Yale, by yingo, eh?" he cackled out. "I never—" Finally his fit of laughter broke off into a helpless snort.

  Father seized the opportunity. "We'll, ah, all step outside and leave you to your work in peace, Harry."

  Taggart gaily waved us out, shaking his head and moving off in the direction of the orrery.

  The instant we were safely in the schoolyard, Father pounced. "Morrie, damn it, this isn't vaudeville."

  "He laughed, did he not?" Morrie said w
ith the air of someone who had just broken the bank at a casino. "I would say life approximates a stage quite often, and a bit of low humor may not be amiss. How many times, Oliver, do you suppose an inspector for the Department of Public Instruction gets a chance to laugh?"

  "And I say play it straight. If anything goes wrong today, he'll have us fried in butter."

  "Never fear," Morrie responded. "Come on over to the teacherage; I have coffee lying in wait. I'll tell our inquisitor."

  We killed time in the teacherage—Damon kept Toby occupied in a game of acey-deucey the pair of them off in one corner furiously slapping down cards; I sat with Father and Morrie and pined for Latin—until Taggart showed up. He was back to looking official, plunking his bulging briefcase down in front of him as if not letting it out of his sight. Even then I had professional curiosity about what was in the thing. As serious now as if he had never had a laughing jag in his life, the school inspector stuck to formalities. Pen in hand, he elicited from Morrie the University of Chicago and the leather trade and vague smatterings of his existence before teacherhood. At last satisfied, more or less, with Morrie's qualifications, Taggart turned to Father. "I find that the school is exceptionally equipped, and yet the budget is in good trim. Nicely managed by your school board, Oliver."

  "We're careful with a dollar," Father said, avoiding Morrie's eye.

  "GOTCHA!" Toby let out, evidently springing a wild deuce on his opponent. "I win again, Damon."

  Taggart contemplated the cutthroat card game over in the corner. "Your littlest lad appears to be well on the way to recovery, Oliver."

  An alarm bell went off in Morrie and Father and me all at the same time. "Tobias had a perfect record before his accident," Morrie thrust in, true enough as far as it went, "but he has been out for six weeks. Has not the Department of Public Instruction some method of taking a stroke of fate of that sort into account?"

  Taggart had to mull that. Finally he allowed, "In an extreme case, and I can see that his may have been one, I am permitted to excuse a student from the grade-wide tests. Perhaps in this one instance—"

  By now, Toby's face registered full dismay at the prospect of being left out of anything on his debut back in school. "I can spell and everything," he protested shrilly. "R-h-i-n-o-"

  "That will do, Tobe," Father put a fid on that.

  "No, no," Taggart persisted. "A go-getting attitude should be rewarded. I'll test him just on the spelling standard, orally. Otherwise, he can have the run of the schoolyard this afternoon. Thank goodness you are on hand to supervise him, eh, Oliver?"

  "Thank goodness."

  "As to the rest of the school day, all morning is yours to do with, Mr. Morgan." Morrie smiled wanly in response. Taggart busied himself with something in his briefcase, then nicked a deadly look that took us all in. "I simply observe."

  Marias Coulee School was never quieter than at the start of that day. Nor more decorous. A fresh haircut shined on every boy, the strips of white on the backs of necks practically blinding from the seventh-grade perspective. The girls were tightly braided or ribboned. Clothes that were being saved for an occasion made a surprise appearance: the Kratka brothers echoed one another in plaid shirts obviously fresh from the catalog box, the homemade dresses of the Drobny sisters were a particularly witchy gray. Grover and Adele and Louisa and Alice and Verl and Lily Lee, of the other school board families, bore the same signs of recent ruthless hygiene that my brothers and I did, as scrubbed as new potatoes. Anywhere a person looked in the schoolroom, Damon's canny stops at every homestead along the way to Morrie's yesterday had paid off in style.

  In his by-the-book manner, the school inspector was informing us we were not to let his presence distract us in any way whatsoever. "This morning I am merely a fly on the wall." Mine was not the only set of eyes that moved to the swatter hanging on the wall behind Morrie's desk.

  "Likewise Mr. Milliron," Taggart officiously swept onward. "He is here to lend a hand as needed." From the row behind me came an involuntary creak of acknowledgment. Father was haphazardly seated in the desk left empty by Eddie Turley.

  Now Taggart took the spare chair that usually stood in the cloakroom, squared his briefcase on his lap to write on, uncapped his pen, and called out, "Ready to commence when you are, Mr. Morgan."

  Morrie outdid himself that morning. He drilled us through arithmetic like numerary cadets, one grade after another popping to the blackboard to smartly do its sums. Reading period was little short of Shakespearean. Morrie called on Toby as one of those to read aloud, letting off some dangerous steam there. And to stand and recite "Ozymandias," he passed right over me and picked Carnelia. That raised my hackles, until I figured out what he was up to: since she was the oldest girl in school and our desk was near enough to the back of the room, Taggart might be fooled into counting her as an eighth-grader instead of our actual woeful ones. Everything proceeded nicely to geography, which was a constant forest of hands raised to answer. Never had so many known what the capital of Paraguay is. Science of course was our trump card, and Morrie played it with full flourish. Every time I peeked over at Taggart, he was making check marks, hardly frowning at all. I believe all would have ended well if, at the end of that last period of the morning, Milo's hand wasn't still hanging high in the air at the very back of the room.

  Morrie hesitated. He'd managed beautifully to camouflage the eighth grade so far, taking answers only from Verl or Martin in the mob of big bodies back there that now included Father, and artfully trying to blend Carnelia in with them. In the best of circumstances, calling on Milo was not a promising proposition. Don't, don't, don't, I prayed to Morrie.

  Too late. Taggart had noticed the sky-high hand, and Morrie was forced to deal with it. "Milo, something quick, then it's noon hour."

  "Yeah, I was just wondering. All this going on, when we gonna get to practice for comet night?"

  "Comet night?" Taggart spoke for the first time all morning. "Did I hear right? The comet is there every night. Surely these students know Halley's comet has arrived?"

  "Absolutely they do," Morrie said in a hurry. "We have been working on a school function to commemorate the event, tomorrow evening. Inspired by the science of the matter, naturally." I darted a glance over my shoulder toward Father. He looked pained, and not just from hard sitting in a schoolboy desk.

  Taggart did not take the bait on the word science. His narrow eyes narrowed further. "You have been able to spare time during school hours to work on hoopla for the comet? We shall see." The school inspector rose out of his chair and advanced to the front of the room, unbuckling the flaps of his briefcase as he came. He reached in and began pulling out sheafs of printed paper. These he dropped on Morrie's desk, one, two, three, until there were eight stacks.

  Every one of us in every grade knew what those were.

  The Standards.

  The men spent the noon hour in the schoolhouse readying things for the afternoon-long tests, while we ate lunch in the schoolyard. Over by the teetertotter, a crowd was clustered around the spectacle of Toby's big toe. Letting Tobe have his moment, I parked myself on the front steps of the schoolhouse along with Damon and a majority of the sixth grade.

  On every mind was the boggling fact that the school could be shut down if it did not come up to standards, whatever those were.

  "They sure are out to get us," Isidor observed.

  "By a mile," Miles affirmed.

  Grover took a bite of a sandwich that looked twice as thick as and three times more tasty than mine or Damons. He asked me between chews, "What's dormitory from?"

  "Umm, give me a minute." On either side of me, the Drobny brothers supported me with silent attention. I thought back to my translation of Noli excitare canes dormientes, quite plainly "Do not disturb the canines that are asleep" to me, although Morrie truncated it to "Let sleeping dogs lie." "'Sleep.' A place of sleeping."

  Nick Drobny sounded baffled. "They want to send us all the way to town to sleep?"

>   "No, the dormitory is where we'd live while we go to school, dunce," said Rabrab.

  Damon wasn't saying anything. That meant he was really worried.

  Lily Lee reported in a quavering voice, "We'd get to come home weekends, my father says."

  "Weekends aren't much, in that kind of setup," Sam Drobny summed it up for us all.

  We filed to our seats for the afternoon with rare lack of conversation. Standard tests were relatively new in the educational scheme of things then, and those of us on the receiving end were not sure what we were in for. All too soon Morrie and Father were passing out test papers and giving low-voiced instructions to the grades at the front of the room while the school inspector himself did the same at the back. I watched Carl and Milo and Martin and to a lesser extent Verl confront the long sheets of questions Taggart was inflicting on them. Blood rushed to heads. Hearts very nearly stopped. Urgent inquiries were put to Taggart as to how much time they had for their answers. Days apparently would not have been too much.

  When he had untangled from the eighth grade and it became apparent to him that Carnelia and I, quiet as kittens, were a principality unto ourselves, Taggart bent over the pair of us and said in a low tone, "This is highly unusual, one class so small in a school this size. Are there others of you, out sick?"

  "We're it," Carnelia mourned, and I nodded abjectly.

  Taggart frowned. "I see. Something like this can skew the standards. I will need to count you as anomalous, and parcel the testing of the two of you for a truer picture of your standing. We'll begin with you, young lady. You are to write a three-hundred-word essay to demonstrate meaning and knowledge of a scientific topic, by luck of the draw." Taggart randomly yanked out a test paper. "Astronomy." He started to hand her the sheet, then pulled it back to peer at the heading. "No, wait, my error. I apologize, young miss." He looked at Carnelia with a bit of pity. "Your topic is agronomy." Carnelia did her injured princess imitation, just as if she didn't know more about the gospel of deep plowing than any other schoolgirl in America, and began writing.