sign thrust up from among them, its message scrawled in huge black letters:
It is a phrase that has returned to me often over the years, and which can still prompt my deepest speculations. Especially given the fact that on her arrival at Chatham School, no one would have been able to suggest that Miss Channing might ever stir up such violent emotions, or even that her time among us would be any different from that of the many other teachers who’d come and gone over the years.
On that first day, as I stood with the other boys, all of us gathered in front of the school to hear my father’s customary opening remarks, I saw her turn onto Myrtle Street, her arms at her sides, no books or papers in them, no overstuffed briefcase dangling from her bare hand.
In all other ways, however, she’d done her best to blend in, wearing a plain white dress with a pleated skirt, and a pair of square-heeled black shoes with large silver buttons. She’d changed her hair as well, so that it was now wound in a tight bun at the back of her neck and secured with an ornate silver clasp. I could almost imagine her standing before the mirror in her bedroom a moment before leaving the cottage, looking herself over, her mind pronouncing an identity that—given the exalted vision of life her father had presented to her—she may well have found rather uninspired:
“Good morning, Miss Channing,” I said as she passed by.
She glanced toward me, smiled, then continued on across the lawn, over to where the other teachers were assembled. I saw a few of them turn and greet her, Mr. Corbett, the math teacher, even going so far as to remove his old felt hat. Later, some of them would tell their fellow villagers that she’d never really fit in, that from the very beginning she’d set herself apart, telling the boys grim and savage tales from her travels with her father, creating dark and bloody landscapes in their young minds. Some went even further, claiming powers of clairvoyance, as if they’d known all along that Miss Channing was destined to be the prime mover in what Professor Peyton would later call with typical hyperbole “a grim Shakespearean orgy of violence and death.” “I saw trouble the minute I laid eyes on her,” I heard my history teacher Mrs. Cooper say one afternoon in Warren’s Sundries, though I’m sure she’d seen nothing of the kind.
Of course, the one thing that did unquestionably separate Miss Channing from me other teachers at Chatham School was her youth and beauty, and from the way my fellow students watched her as she approached that morning, it was clear that their interest in her went far deeper than the usual curiosity inspired by a new teacher.
“Who’s that?” I heard Jamie Phelps ask Winston Bates, poking him with his elbow.
I took the opportunity to demonstrate the insider’s knowledge I possessed as the headmaster’s son. “That’s the new teacher,” I told them authoritatively. “She came all the way from Africa.”
“That’s where she got that bracelet, I guess,” Jamie said, pointing to the string of brightly colored wooden beads that circled Miss Channing’s wrist, the very one Mr. Parsons would later find at the edge of Black Pond, broken by then, the beads scattered across the muddy ground.
As usual on the first day of classes, my father stood at the entrance of the school, the teachers and administrative staff to his left, the boys to his right, all of them dressed in what amounted to the uniform of Chatham School, white shirts, black trousers, gray ties, and black suspenders. Dark gray jackets would be added later in the fall.
“All right, let me have your attention, please,” my father began. “I want to welcome all of you back to Chatham School. Most of us are very familiar with the routine, as well as each other, but we have a new teacher this year, and I want to introduce her to you.”
He motioned for Miss Channing to join him on the stairs, which she did, moving gracefully beside him, glancing first at her fellow teachers, then at the boys.
“This is Miss Channing,” my father said. “She has come all the way from Africa to join us here at Chatham School, and she’ll be teaching art.”
There was polite applause, then Miss Channing stepped back into the cluster of teachers and listened quietly while my father continued his introductory remarks, going over the necessary administrative details, reminding the boys of various school rules, that there was to be no cheating, no plagiarism, no profanity, no smoking, nor any drinking of alcoholic beverages, as he put it, “anywhere, anytime, for any reason, ever.”
I have often wondered what came into Miss Channing’s mind as she listened to my father recite the rules by which we were all to conduct ourselves at Chatham School, rules that stressed humility, simple honesty, and mutual faith, and which stood four-square against every form of recklessness and betrayal and self-indulgence. How different they must have seemed to the visionary teachings her father had laid down, how deeply rooted in the very kind of humble, uninspired, and profoundly predictable village life he had taught her to revile.
Once my father had finished, the boys already shifting restlessly and muttering impatiently to each other, he clapped his hands together once, then uttered a final remark whose tragic irony he could not have guessed. “Welcome to another splendid year in the history of Chatham School,” he said.
I entered Miss Channing’s class about an hour later.
It was a small room, formerly used to store school furniture and various supplies, but now converted to other purposes. It was not physically connected to the school, but stood apart from it in a little courtyard to the rear. Still, it seemed adequate enough, with three long tables lined up one behind the other in front of the much smaller one that served as Miss Channing’s desk. On the far wall, half a dozen gray aprons hung from wooden pegs beside a metal cabinet upon which someone had painted the words art supplies in large white letters. In the far corner a few wooden sculpting pedestals had been stacked base to base, the legs of the upper pedestals stretching almost to the room’s tin ceiling.
As for art, there were portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, along with a framed photograph of the current president, Calvin Coolidge.
There were only five of us in the class, but we scattered ourselves widely throughout the room. Ralph Sherman and Miles Clayton took possession of the rear table, Biff Conners and Jack Slaughter the middle one, leaving the front table to me.
Miss Channing didn’t smile at us or say a word of welcome as we entered the room. She’d already placed one of the sculpting pedestals in front of her, and as we filed in, she began to knead the clay gently, hardly glancing up from it as we took our seats. Then, once we’d taken our places, she drew her hands from the clay and looked at us, her eyes moving from one boy to another. She did not acknowledge me in any way.
“I’ve never taught art,” she said. “Or been taught it by anyone else.”
Her fingers moved over the clay’s wet surface, shaping it with slow, graceful strokes as she searched for her
