Of course I’m past school age, Canyon school age, and have been for years, but if the tally came up one short in the fall I’d go back for a postgraduate course again. But now I’m working on a college level because Father finished me off for my high-school diploma two summers ago. He’s promised me that if I do well this year I’ll get to go Outside next year and get my training and degree so I can be the teacher and we won’t have to go Outside for one any more. Most of the kids would just as soon skip school as not, but the Old Ones don’t hold with ignorance and the Old Ones have the last say around here.
Father is the head of the school board. That’s how I get in on lots of school things the other kids don’t. This summer when he wrote to the county seat that we’d have more than our nine again this fall and would they find a teacher for us, he got back a letter saying they had exhausted their supply of teachers who hadn’t heard of Cougar Canyon and we’d have to dig up our own teacher this year. That “‘dig up” sounded like a dirty crack to me since we have the graves of four past teachers in the far corner of our cemetery. They sent us such old teachers, the homeless, the tottering, who were trying to piece out the end of their lives with a year here and a year there in jobs no one else wanted because there’s no adequate pension system in the state and most teachers seem to die in harness. And their oldness and their tottering were not sufficient in the Canyon where there are apt to be shocks for Outsiders-unintentional as most of them are.
We haven’t done so badly the last few years, though. The Old Ones say we’re getting adjusted, though some of the nonconformists say that the Crossing thinned our blood. It might be either or both or the teachers are just getting tougher. The last two managed to last until just before the year ended. Father took them in as far as Kerry Canyon and ambulances took them on in. But they were all right after a while in the sanatorium and they’re doing okay now. Before them, though, we usually had four teachers a year.
Anyway Father wrote to a teachers’ agency on the coast, and after several letters each way he finally found a teacher.
He told us about it at the supper table.
“‘She’s rather young,” he said, reaching for a toothpick and tipping his chair back on its hind legs.
Mother gave Jethro another helping of pie and picked up her own fork again. “Youth is no crime,” she said, “and it’ll be a pleasant change for the children.”
“Yes, though it seems a shame.” Father prodded at a back tooth and Mother frowned at him. I wasn’t sure if it was for picking his teeth or for what he said. I knew he meant it seemed a shame to get a place like Cougar Canyon so early in a career. It isn’t that we’re mean or cruel, you understand. It’s only that they’re Outsiders and we sometimes forget-especially the kids.
“She doesn’t have to come,” Mother said. “She could say no.”
“Well, now-” Father tipped his chair forward. “Jethro, no more pie. You go on out and help Kiah bring in the wood. Karen, you and Lizbeth get started on the dishes. Hop to it, kids.”
And we hopped, too. Kids do to fathers in the Canyon, though I understand they don’t always Outside. It annoyed me because I knew Father wanted us out of the way so he could talk adult talk to Mother, so I told Lizbeth I’d clear the table and then worked as slowly as I could, and as quietly, listening hard.
“She couldn’t get any other job,” Father said. “The agency told me they had placed her twice in the last two years and she didn’t finish the year either place.”
“Well,” Mother said, pinching in her mouth and frowning.
“If she’s that bad why on earth did you hire her for the Canyon?”
“We have a choice?” Father laughed. Then he sobered. “No, it wasn’t for incompetency. She was a good teacher. The way she tells it they just fired her out of a clear sky. She asked for recommendations and one place wrote, ‘Miss Carmody is a very competent teacher but we dare not recommend her for a teaching position.’ “
” ‘Dare not’?” Mother asked.
” ‘Dare not,’ ” Father said; “The agency assured me that they had investigated thoroughly and couldn’t find any valid reasons for the dismissals, but she can’t seem to find another job anywhere on the coast. She wrote me that she wanted to try another state.”
“Do you suppose she’s disfigured or deformed?” Mother suggested.
“Not from the neck up!” Father laughed. He took an envelope from his pocket. “Here’s her application picture.”
By this time I’d got the table cleared and I leaned over Father’s shoulder.
“Gee!” I said. Father looked back at me, raising one eyebrow. I knew then that he had known all along that I was listening.
I flushed but stood my ground, knowing I was being granted admission to adult affairs, if only by the back door.
The girl in the picture was lovely. She couldn’t have been many years older than I and she was twice as pretty.
She had short dark hair curled all over her head and apparently that poreless creamy skin which seems to have an inner light of its own. She had a tentative look about her as though her dark eyebrows were horizontal question marks. There was a droop to the corners of her mouth-not much, just enough to make you wonder why, and want to comfort her.
“She’ll stir the Canyon for sure,” Father said.
“I don’t know” Mother frowned thoughtfully. “What will the Old Ones say to a marriageable Outsider in the Canyon?”
“Adonday Veeah!” Father muttered. “That never occurred to me. None of our other teachers was ever of an age to worry about.”
“‘What would happen?” I asked. “I mean if one of the Group married an Outsider?”
“Impossible,” Father said, so like the Old Ones that I could see why his name was approved in Meeting last spring.
