“Why, there’s even our Jemmy,” Mother worried. “Already he’s saying he’ll have to start trying to find another Group. None of the girls here pleases him. Supposing this Outsider-how old is she?”
Father unfolded the application. “Twenty-three. Just three years out of college.”
“Jemmy’s twenty-four.” Mother pinched her mouth together. “Father, I’m afraid you’ll have to cancel the contract. If anything happened-well, you waited overlong to become an Old One to my way of thinking and it’d be a shame to have something go wrong your first year.”
“I can’t cancel the contract. She’s on her way here. School starts next Monday.” Father ruffled his hair forward as he does when he’s disturbed. “We’re probably making a something of a nothing,” he said hopefully.
“Well, I only hope we don’t have any trouble with this Outsider.”
“Or she with us,” Father grinned. “Where are my cigarettes?”
“On the bookcase,” Mother said, getting up and folding the tablecloth together to hold the crumbs.
Father snapped his fingers and the cigarettes drifted in from the front room.
Mother went on out to the kitchen. The tablecloth shook itself over the wastebasket and then followed her.
Father drove to Kerry Canyon Sunday night to pick up our new teacher. She was supposed to have arrived Saturday afternoon but she didn’t make bus connections at the county seat. The road ends at Kerry Canyon. I mean for Outsiders. There’s not much of the look of a well-traveled road very far out our way from Kerry Canyon, which is just as well. Tourists leave us alone. Of course we don’t have much trouble getting our cars to and fro, but that’s why everything dead-ends at Kerry Canyon and we have to do all our own fetching and carrying-I mean the road being in the condition it is.
All the kids at our house wanted to stay up to see the new teacher, so Mother let them, but by seven thirty the youngest ones began to drop off and by nine there was only Jethro and Kiah, Lizbeth and Jemmy and me. Father should have been home long before and Mother was restless and uneasy. But at nine fifteen we heard the car coughing and sneezing up the draw. Mother’s wide relieved smile was reflected on all our faces.
“Of course!” she cried. “I forgot. He has an Outsider in the car. He had to use the road and it’s terrible across Jackass Flat.”
I felt Miss Carmody before she came in the door. Already I was tingling all over from anticipation, but suddenly I felt her, so plainly that I knew with a feeling of fear and pride that I was of my grandmother, that soon I would be bearing the burden and blessing of her Gift-the Gift that develops into free access to any mind, one of the People or an Outsider, willing or not. And besides the access, the ability to counsel and help, to straighten tangled minds and snarled emotions.
And then Miss Carmody stood in the doorway, blinking a little against the light, muffled to the chin against the brisk fall air. A bright scarf hid her hair, but her skin was that luminous matte-cream it had looked. She was smiling a little but scared, too. I shut my eyes and-I went in, just like that. It was the first time I had ever sorted anybody She was all fluttery with tiredness and strangeness, and there was a question deep inside her that had the wornness of repetition, but I couldn’t catch what it was. And under the uncertainty there was a sweetness and dearness and such a bewildered sorrow that I felt my eyes dampen. Then I looked at her again (sorting takes such a little time) as Father introduced her. I heard a gasp beside me and suddenly I went into Jemmy’s mind with a stunning rush.
Jemmy and I have been close all our lives and we don’t always need words to talk with each other, but this was the first time I had ever gone in like this and I knew he didn’t know what had happened. I felt embarrassed and ashamed to know his emotion so starkly. I closed him out as quickly as possible, but not before I knew that now Jemmy would never hunt for another Group; Old Ones or no Old Ones, he had found his love.
All this took less time than it takes to say how-do-you-do and shake hands. Mother descended with cries and drew Miss Carmody and Father out to the kitchen for coffee, and Jemmy swatted Jethro and made him carry the luggage instead of snapping it to Miss Carmody’s room. After all we didn’t want to lose our teacher before she even saw the schoolhouse.
I waited until everyone was bedded down. Miss Carmody in her cold cold bed, the rest of us of course with our sheets set for warmth-how I pity Outsiders! Then I went to Mother.
She met me in the dark hall and we clung together as she comforted me.
“Oh, Mother,” I whispered, “I sorted Miss Carmody tonight. I’m afraid.”
Mother held me tight again. “I wondered. It’s a great responsibility. You have to be so wise and clear-thinking. Your grandmother carried the Gift with graciousness and honor. “You are of her. You can do it.”
“But, Mother! To be an Old One!”
Mother laughed. “You have years of training ahead of you before you’ll be an Old One. Councilor to the soul is a weighty job.”
“Do I have to tell?” I pleaded. “I don’t want anyone to know yet. I don’t want to be set apart.”
“I’ll tell the Oldest. No one else need know.” She hugged me again and I went back, comforted, to bed.
I lay in the darkness and let my mind clear, not even knowing how I knew how to. Like the gentle teachings of quiet fingers I felt the family about me. I felt warm and comfortable as though I were cupped in the hollow palm of a loving hand. Someday I would belong to the Group as I now belonged to the family. Belong to others? With an odd feeling of panic I shut the family out. I wanted to be alone-to belong just to me and no one else. I didn’t want the Gift.
I slept after a while.
Miss Carmody left for the schoolhouse an hour before we did. She wanted to get things started a little before school-time, her late arrival making it kind of rough on her. Kiah, Jethro, Lizbeth and I walked down the lane to the Armisters’ to pick up their three kids. The sky was so blue you could taste it, a winy fallish taste of harvest fields and falling leaves. We were all feeling full of bubbly enthusiasm for the beginning of school. We were lighthearted and light-footed, too, as we kicked along through the cottonwood leaves paving the lane with gold. In fact Jethro felt too light-footed, and the third time I hauled him down and made him walk on the ground I cuffed him good. He was still sniffling when we got to Armisters’.
“She’s pretty!” Lizbeth called before the kids got out to the gate, all agog and eager for news of the new teacher.
“She’s young,” Kiah added, elbowing himself ahead of Lizbeth.
