Work Song - Ivan Doig [48]
“They’re practicing on mine, I can tell you that much,” he disposed of my discourse. “Are we running a library or a union hall?” Scowling at his own question, he heaved himself around for another look at the packed street. I barely caught the words in his gust of exhalation: “Oh, hell, let them in, Morgan.”
FULL AS A CHURCH on Christmas, the library brimmed with activity, much of it mine as I sped from task to task. Sandison commanded from the mezzanine, on the lookout for anyone forgetful enough to spit on the sacred floor, and things seemed to be going well until midway through the morning, when he flagged me down with the news:
“Miss Runyon has gone home in a nervous fit, the excitement has been too much for her. You’ll have to take over the story hour.”
“Now? How? Whatever short notice is, this is less.”
“The tykes are on their way,” he overrode my protest. “You wouldn’t want to break their young hearts, would you?” Did the man actually have a sense of humor? I would have had to part that beard of his like a curtain to be sure. “Get yourself down there,” he ordered.
I raced to the basement, hoping against hope that the auditorium’s supply cabinet held some storybook that Miss Runyon had in reserve for emergencies such as this. Rummaging frantically, I came up with a dog-eared Mother Goose Tales. Well, it wasn’t Aesop, but it would have to do. I breathed easier; from my experience in the one-room school, even jaded fifth-graders eavesdropped keenly enough when those old nursery tales were read to the younger children.
Then I heard the thumps and scuffles on the stairs.
By the time the freckled heathens of the sixth grade spilled into the room, with Rab riding herd behind them in a harried way, I had given up on Mother Goose. More like a rough-dressed horde than a class, boys and girls alike threw themselves into chairs and looked me over. Who’s this gink? I heard the loud whispers. How come so much of him is mustache? Where’s Old Lady Bunion?
“Everyone, shush, or else,” Rab recited as if by rote, meanwhile shooing the final straggler in from the hallway. Pale as a chalk figure, Russian Famine slouched past her, sending me a prisoner’s gaze as he took the farthest seat of the last row.
His classmates ignored him but not one another, pinching, poking, prodding, and generally provoking disorder. How well I remembered it all. Grade six somehow transforms obedient schoolchildren into creatures with the bravado of bandits and the restlessness of overage Sunday schoolers. Rabrab herself had turned into a schoolyard Cleopatra at that time of life; the Marias Coulee sixth-grade boys went dizzy in her presence. Now I watched her brightly approaching me, while behind her a pugnosed boy and a redheaded girl swatted each other over the issue of elbow room. If Rab, with her battlefield experience, couldn’t command best behavior from this bunch, what chance did I have? The dismaying thought occurred to me that, in Butte, perhaps this was best behavior.
“Mr. Morgan, what a treat,” her velvet murmur greeted me as we stepped aside to confer. “My pupils don’t know how lucky they are.”
“I can see that. I was hoping for a second-grade choir of angels.”
Rab wrinkled her nose at her squirming tribe. “They’re somewhat worked up today.”
“I wonder why.”
“The Hill is a little excitable this morning,” she hedged, “but Jared is only doing what he thinks is necessary.”
“Maybe so. The question is, what am I to do with this mob of yours, Rab?”
“Anything you like, as long as it teaches first aid,” she said contradictorily. “That’s a must—we don’t want the school board on our necks.” She thought to add: “Nor, I imagine, Sam Sandison.”
I had forgotten the medical aspect. Seeing my blank look, Rab prompted: “Your Miss Runyon starts off with Florence Nightingale as a nurse in, oh, say the Crimean War, with shot and and shell whizzing everywhere, and somehow