Work Song - Ivan Doig [38]
“I could not have put it better myself.”
Rab leaned closer, back to whispering. “Now I’ll let you in on a secret. It just happened, the other night. I’m betrothed. E-n-g-a-g-e-d,” she rattled off as if in one of Marias Coulee’s spelling bees. She wrinkled her nose, turning in an instant into the perfect facsimile of a pretty and mischievous bride.
There was no hiding my smile this time. “The lucky man is getting more than he bargained for.”
“But keep the news to yourself for now,” she added anxiously. “My pupils can be such awful teases, and I want to wait until the school year is over to—”
As if the word pupil had triggered open a gate at the head of the hall, here toward us came one of the schoolgirls, mostly knees and pigtails. Undoubtedly she had put up her hand in that urgent way that allowed her to go to the lavatory, but she marched right past it until she was practically at the hem of Rab’s smock.
“Just so you know, Miss Rellis, Russian Famine snuck off.”
“Not with you around, Peggy, I’m sure. Now do your business and scoot back downstairs.” The class tattler flounced happily into the lavatory, and Rab spun to me. “Is there another staircase?”
I took her down the hallway toward the set of stairs at the back of the stacks. “Rab,” I questioned as we quickstepped along, “isn’t your class somewhat advanced for story hour? They look very much like—”
“Sixth-graders,” she sighed. “Don’t you dare laugh, Mr. Morgan.” She herself had been a ringleader—it was the kind of class that had many—in the populous sixth grade that had been my biggest handful in the Marias Coulee schoolroom.
“I won’t bother to say justice is served,” I told her archly. “But story hour at that level—what sort of story?”
“First aid.”
It was always hard to tell with Rabrab whether she was pulling your leg. She shook her head as I scrutinized her. “It’s the school board’s big idea.” Her expression sharpened. “Most of the boys will be in the mines in just a few years, and most of the girls will be hatching other children, up on the Hill. The thinking is, it might spare the public treasury in the future if they learn some first aid before what is going to happen to some of them happens. In theory, I suppose I can’t argue with that.” Another sigh. “In any case, your Miss Runyon here is looked upon as the apostle of first aid. I’m told she was greatly disappointed that she was too far up in years to boss the nurses in France during the war.”
“I can imagine. Here we are.” I unlocked the delivery door to the stacks, and we stepped in.
To be met with sounds such as I had never heard put together before: a shoeleather chuff-chuff-chuff spaced what seemed a dance step apart, followed by a drawn-out soft whizzing like a very long zipper being drawn down.
“That’ll be him,” Rab said under her breath. “See?”
Beyond the bookshelves sheltering us, a boy as spindly as any I had ever seen was racing up the long staircase to the floors above. As if built on springs he bounded up the stairsteps three at a time, on the brink of trying for four, and when his leaps carried him to the top, the race against gravity, against himself, momentarily over, he in one swift mounting move jockeyed his legs over the banister and slid back down. There was a heart-stopping pneumatic grace, a fireman’s fearless ride down a twisting pole, in the way he shot to the bottom. The instant he touched the floor again, he was back into motion, chuff-chuff-chuff, trio after trio of stairs flown over by the broomstick legs.
“He does it at school whenever he can,” Rab’s murmur was close to my ear. “You should see him on the fire escape.” Just watching him here was mesmerizing enough; I felt as the audience must have when Nijinsky first flew out of the wings onto a ballet