“Death-” Lea choked; feeling the dusty bitterness of the word she had thought so often and seldom said. “Death is at least private-no one nosing around-“
“Can you be so sure?” It was Karen’s quiet voice. “Anyway, believe me, Lea, I haven’t gone in to you even once. Of course I could if I wanted to and I will if I have to, but I never would without your knowledge-if not your consent. All I’ve learned of you has been from the most open outer part of your mind. Your inner mind is sacredly your own. The People are taught reverence for individual privacy. Whatever powers we have are for healing, not for hurting. We have health and life for you if you’ll accept it. You see, there is balm in Gilead! Don’t refuse it, Lea.”
Lea’s hands drooped heavily. The tension went out of her body slowly.
“I heard you last night,” she said, puzzled. “I heard your story and it didn’t even occur to me that you could-I mean, it just wasn’t real and I had no idea-” She let Karen turn her back down the road. “But then when I heard Peter-I don’t know-he seemed more true. You don’t expect men to go in for fairy tales-” She clutched suddenly at Karen. “Oh, Karen, what shall I do? I’m so mixed up that I can’t-“
“Well, the simplest and most immediate thing is to come on back. We have time to hear another report and they’re waiting for us. Melodye is next. She saw the People from quite another angle.”
Back in the schoolroom Lea fitted herself self-consciously into her corner again, though no one seemed to notice her. Everyone was busy reliving or commenting on the days of Peter and Bethie. The talking died as Melodye Amerson took her place at the desk.
“Valancy’s helping me,” she smiled. “We chose the theme together, too. Remember-?
” ‘Behold, I am at a point to die and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And he sold his birthright for bread and pottage.’ “I couldn’t do the recalling alone, either. So now, if you don’t mind, there’ll be a slight pause while we construct our network.”
She relaxed visibly and Lea could fed the receptive quietness spread as though the whole room were becoming mirror-placid like the pool in the creek, and then Melodye began to speak ….
POTTAGE
YOU GET tired of teaching after a while. Well, maybe not of teaching itself, because it’s insidious and remains a tug in the blood for all of your life, but there comes a day when you look down at the paper you’re grading or listen to an answer you’re giving a child and you get a boinnng! feeling. And each reverberation of the boing is a year in your life, another set of children through your hands, another beat in monotony, and it’s frightening. The value of the work you’re doing doesn’t enter into it at that moment and the monotony is bitter on your tongue.
Sometimes you can assuage that feeling by consciously savoring those precious days of pseudofreedom between the time you receive your contract for the next year and the moment you sign it. Because you can escape at that moment, but somehow-you don’t.
But I did, one spring. I quit teaching. I didn’t sign up again. I went chasing after-after what? Maybe excitement-maybe a dream of wonder-maybe a new bright wonderful world that just must be somewhere else because it isn’t here-and-now. Maybe a place to begin again so I’d never end up at the same frightening emotional dead end. So I quit.
But by late August the emptiness inside me was bigger than boredom, bigger than monotony, bigger than lusting after freedom. It was almost terror to be next door to September and not care that in a few weeks school starts-tomorrow school starts-first day of school. So, almost at the last minute, I went to the placement bureau. Of course it was too late to try to return to my other school, and besides, the mold of the years there still chafed in too many places.
“Well,” the placement director said as he shuffled his end-of-the-season cards, past Algebra and Home Ec and PE and High-School English, “there’s always Bendo.” He thumbed out a battered-looking three-by-five. “There’s always Bendo.”
And I took his emphasis and look for what they were intended and sighed.
“‘Bendo?”
“Small school. One room. Mining town, or used to be. Ghost town now.” He sighed wearily and let down his professional hair. “Ghost people, too. Can’t keep a teacher there more than a year. Low pay-fair housing-at someone’s home. No community activities-no social life. No city within fifty or so miles. No movies. No nothing but children to be taught. Ten of them this year. All grades.”
“Sounds like the town I grew up in,” I said. “Except we had two rooms and lots of community activities.”
“I’ve been to Bendo.” The director leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “Sick community. Unhappy people. No interest in anything. Only reason they have a school is because it’s the law. Law-abiding anyway. Not enough interest in anything to break a law, I guess.”
“I’ll take it,” I said quickly before I could think beyond the feeling that this sounded about as far back as I could go to get a good running start at things again.
He glanced at me quizzically. “If you’re thinking of lighting a torch of high reform to set Bendo afire with enthusiasm, forget it. I’ve seen plenty of king-sized torches fizzle out there.”
“I have no torch,” I said. “Frankly I’m fed to the teeth with bouncing bright enthusiasm and huge PTA’s and activities until they come out your ears. They usually turn out to be the most monotonous kind of monotony. Bendo will be a rest.”
“It will that,” the director said, leaning over his cards again.
“Saul Diemus is the president of the board. If you don’t have a car the only way to get to Bendo is by bus-it runs once a week.”
I stepped out into the August sunshine after the interview and sagged a little under its savage pressure, almost hearing hiss as the refrigerated coolness of the placement bureau evaporated from my skin.
I walked over to the quad and sat down on one of the stone benches I’d never had time to use, those years ago when I had been a student here. I looked up at my old dorm window and, for a moment, felt a wild homesickness- not only for years that were gone and hopes that had died and dreams that had had grim awakenings, but for a special magic I had found in that room. It was a magic-a true magic-that opened such vistas to me that for a while anything seemed possible, anything feasible-if not for me right now, then for others, someday. Even now, after the dilution of time, I couldn’t quite believe that magic, and even now, as then, I wanted fiercely to believe it. If only it
