Harley walked up to the board and began counting the lines. “Yep. I count one hundred. Now I got to get back to the Arnett place.”
“Danki, brudder.”
The boys grabbed their hats from the pegs on the wall and walked past her. “I’m glad you finished, Otto.” She wanted to ask him why he had been so upset earlier but decided it could wait.
She walked to the blackboard, picked up an eraser and was about to rub out Otto’s work when she noticed something was wrong. She looked at the first sentence on the board. It was clearly a different hand than the rest of the work. First sentence was neat with the words well spaced. The next sentence, while correct, wasn’t neat. Some of the words were smooshed together while there were extra spaces between some of the letters. The more she looked the more she saw errors. Some of the letters were actually backward. A few words had missing letters. She put the eraser down. Otto’s writing skills were far below his grade level. She decided to get Dinah’s opinion and ask her what she thought.
She left the school and was walking toward her house when she heard Willis call her name. She stopped and saw him jogging toward her. He came to a halt a few feet away and rubbed the palms of his hands on his pant legs. “I wanted to apologize for being abrupt with you earlier. Please forgive me. I have so much work to catch up on. Otto is at home if you are still looking for him.”
“He returned a short time ago and finished his work. I’m sorry I bothered you earlier. I’m new at teaching and I feel the need to panic at least once a day.”
He gave a halfhearted smile. “I’m new at parenting, and I feel the need to panic all day, every day. I’m sorry Otto was rude to you.”
“Come with me. There’s something you should see.” She led the way back inside the school and walked up to the blackboard. “This is Otto’s work.”
He looked at the board. “Okay?”
“Look at his writing.”
“I am. He finished the assignment, right? If that’s all I should get back to work.”
“He finished by copying the sentences his brother wrote out for him. I don’t think Otto could do it by himself.”
“So he had a little help. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“He has turned some of the letters around. He has copied all the letters but he hasn’t divided them into the proper words. Right here he wrote, I will respect school property.”
“Okay, so his writing needs work. You will have the next nine months to help him improve. That’s what a good teacher does, right?”
“Among other things. I don’t think you are taking this seriously.”
“Maybe I’m not. A few scrawls on the blackboard don’t put food in the mouths of hungry kids. That takes hard work. Not busywork.”
Willis needed to get out of the building. It felt like the walls were closing in on him. He didn’t see what was wrong with Otto’s work and he didn’t want Eva to know he possessed fewer writing skills than his little brother.
Her gaze was piercing, and he flinched from it. “Reading and writing are not simply busywork, Willis. They are the foundation by which we learn everything from God’s Word to the latest baseball scores.”
“You’re right. You’re the teacher and the teacher is always right. Even I learned that in school.”
“This isn’t about who is right and who is wrong.”
“I don’t know why you are getting angry,” he finished lamely.
“Because I get the feeling that you don’t care about Otto’s education or his future.”
“I care that the boys will be able to put food on the table for their families. That will take farmland, which I don’t have much of yet, or it will take a skilled trade. That is something I have and can teach them.” He turned and headed out the door, wondering if he had revealed his own shortcomings. Eva wasn’t a woman who could be easily fooled.
“Willis, wait.”
He stopped at the bottom of the school steps. She was a tenacious woman, too. “I thought we were finished.”
She stopped, framed in the doorway. Her green eyes brimmed with some deep emotion. “I don’t mean to criticize how you are raising your brothers and sister. I know it can’t be easy for you. I’m sorry for saying that you don’t care about their education. It’s no excuse but I find myself in uncharted territory. I may have crossed the line just now but I have no idea where the line should be drawn or how to change it. And that rambling explanation is my way of saying I’m sorry. I will limit my lectures to my scholars and try not to offend their parents or guardians.”
“You’re forgiven. If the boy has trouble in school let me know and I will speak to him about it.”
“Fair enough.” She arched one eyebrow. “I don’t have many friends in this new place. I’d hate to lose the first one I made here.”
“You haven’t lost me. I live just across the road.” He nodded in that direction.
A sliver of a smile curved her lips. “I should be able to find my way over if I try hard enough.”
“I suspect you can be a very determined woman when you put your mind to something.”
“I have occasionally heard my name associated with that adjective.”
“Occasionally?”
“Perhaps frequently might be closer to the truth.” Her grin widened.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone like you,” he said in amazement.
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down. “A bossy old maid who speaks her mind isn’t that rare of a creature.”
“Perhaps not but I think you are one of a kind, Eva Coblentz.”
Chapter Six
Eva watched from the doorway as Willis returned to his workshop. He might consider her unique, but she placed him squarely in the same
