“She’s littler’n me,” Jethro sniffed, and we all laughed because he’s five six already even if he isn’t twelve yet.
Debrah and Rachel Armister linked arms with Lizbeth and scuffled down the lane, heads together, absorbing the details of teacher’s hair, dress, nail polish, luggage and night clothes, though goodness knows how Lizbeth found out about all that.
Jethro and Kiah annexed Jeddy and they climbed up on the rail fence that parallels the lane, and walked the top rail. Jethro took a tentative step or two above the rail, caught my eye and stepped back in a hurry. He knows as well as any child in the Canyon that a kid his age has no business lifting along a public road.
We detoured at the Mesa Road to pick up the Kroginold boys. More than once Father has sighed over the Kroginolds.
You see, when the Crossing was made the People got separated in that last wild moment when air was screaming past and the heat was building up so alarmingly. The members of our Group left their ship just seconds before it crashed so devastatingly into the box canyon behind Old Baldy and literally splashed and drove itself into the canyon walls, starting a fire that stripped the hills bare for miles. After the People gathered themselves together from the life slips, and founded Cougar Canyon they discovered that the alloy the ship was made of was a metal much wanted here. Our Group has lived on mining the box canyon ever since, though there’s something complicated about marketing the stuff. It has to be shipped out of the country and shipped in again because everyone knows that it isn’t found in this region.
Anyway our Group at Cougar Canyon is probably the largest of the People, but we are reasonably sure that at least one Group and maybe two survived along with us. Grandmother in her time sensed two Groups but could never locate them exactly, and, since our object is to go unnoticed in this new life, no real effort has ever been made to find them. Father can remember just a little of the Crossing, but some of the Old Ones are blind and crippled from the heat and the terrible effort they put forth to save the others from burning up like falling stars.
But getting back, Father often mourned that of all the People who could have made up our Group we had to get the Kroginolds. They’re rebels and were even before the Crossing. It’s their kids who have been so rough on our teachers. The rest of us usually behave fairly decently and remember that we have to be careful around Outsiders.
Derek and Jake Kroginold were wrestling in a pile of leaves by the front gate when we got there. They didn’t even hear us coming, so I leaned over and whacked the nearest rear end, and they turned in a flurry of leaves and grinned up at me for all the world like pictures of Pan in the mythology book at home.
“What kinda old bat we got this time?” Derek asked as he scrabbled in the leaves for his lunch box.
“She’s not an old bat,” I retorted, madder than need be because Derek annoys me so. “She’s young and beautiful.”
“Yeah, I’l1 bet!” Jake emptied the leaves from his cap onto the trio of squealing girls.
“She is so!” Kiah retorted. “The nicest teacher we ever had.”
“She won’t teach me nothing!” Derek yelled, lifting to the top of the cottonwood tree at the turnoff.
“Well, if she won’t I will,” I muttered, and reaching for a handful of sun I platted the twishers so quickly that Derek fell like a rock. He yelled like a catamount, thinking he’d get killed for sure, but I stopped him about a foot from the ground and then let go. Well, the stopping and the thump to the ground pretty well jarred the wind out of him, but he yelled:
“I’ll tell the Old Ones! You ain’t supposed to platt twishers!”
“Tell the Old Ones,” I snapped, kicking on down the leafy road. “I’ll be there and tell them why. And then, old smarty pants, what will be your excuse for lifting?”
And then I was ashamed. I was showing off as bad as a Kroginold, but they make me so mad!
Our last stop before school was at the Clarinades’. My heart always squeezed when I thought of the Clarinade twins. They just started school this year, two years behind the average Canyon kid. Mrs. Kroginold used to say that the two of them, Susie and Jerry, divided one brain between them before they were born. That’s unkind and untrue-thoroughly a Kroginold remark-but it is true that by Canyon standards the twins were retarded. They lacked so many of the attributes of the People. Father said it might be a delayed effect of the Crossing that they would grow out of, or it might be advance notice of what our children will be like here-what is ahead for the People. It makes me shiver, wondering.
Susie and Jerry were waiting, clinging to each other’s hands as they always were. They were shy and withdrawn, but both were radiant because of starting school. Jerry, who did almost all the talking for the two of them, answered our greetings with a shy hello.
Then Susie surprised us all by exclaiming, “We’re going to school!”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” I replied, gathering her cold little hand into mine. “And you’re going to have the prettiest teacher we ever had.”
But Susie had retired into blushing confusion and didn’t say another word all the way to school.
I was worried about Jake and Derek. They were walking apart from us, whispering, looking over at us and laughing. They were cooking up some kind of mischief for Miss Carmody. And more than anything I wanted her to stay. I found right then that there would be years ahead of me before I became an Old One. I tried to go into Derek and Jake to find out what was cooking, but try as I might I couldn’t get past the sibilance of their snickers and the hard flat brightness of their eyes.
We were turning off the road into the school yard when Jemmy, who should have been up at the mine long since, suddenly stepped out of the bushes in front of us, his hands behind him. He glared at Jake and Derek and then at the rest of the children.
“You kids mind your manners when you get to school,” he snapped, scowling. “And you Kroginolds-just try anything funny and I’ll lift you to Old Baldy and platt the twishers on you. This is one teacher we’re going to keep.”
Susie and Jerry clung together in speechless terror. The Kroginolds turned red and pushed out belligerent jaws. The rest of us just stared at a Jemmy, who never raised his voice and never pushed his weight around.
“l mean it, Jake and Derek. You try getting out of line and the Old Ones will find a few answers they’ve been looking for-especially about the bell in Kerry Canyon.”
