The Whistling Season

  "You think" Turley made it sound like that was Morrie's trouble. His voice was sized to the rest of him, but there was an odd clack to it as if it had been out of use a long while. Something about his face was out of kilter, too. It was as if the upper part belonged to one countenance and the lower part to some other. I only figured it out when Turley, still glowering across the ranks of desks at Morrie, opened his mouth to say more. He had false teeth, but just the uppers. The bottom of his mouth was an ugly, sharp ridge of gum fine. From sentence to sentence, the choppers on top gnashed away and then the pink gums below leered out. "You go about this like an educated fool," the voice that came out of that maw was letting Morrie know. "He that spareth the rod hateth his son. I'll take a preacher over a teacher anytime."

  I was afraid Damon might spout out something about that being just like a Holy Willy but Morrie was quick with: "A wounded spirit who can bear? Proverbs 18:14, I believe. There is a lifetime of sermons in that."

  Turley looked affronted to have the Bible cited back to him. "I don't know what kind of a hoosier you are, but you and this school of yours don't show me anything. If the law wouldn't get on me about it, I'd pull my boy out of here so fast it'd make your head swim. His next birthday I can do it anyway."

  "Until that day, Eddie is a student here, the same as any other." Rather primly, Morrie smoothed the pockets of his suit coat as if to make sure he was as presentable as his argument. I hoped he was not going to bank entirely on manners, although I didn't see what else he could do. Was Father still on the face of the earth, and if so, why wasn't he here lending a hand?

  Turley answered Morrie with his back, turning away until the full brunt of him again faced his son.

  "You. Get on home."

  Awkwardly, Eddie unfolded out of his desk, but stayed standing beside it.

  "Daddy?"

  Could we have heard right? The word that in the Marias Coulee hard school of adolescence only girls and toddlers used, coming out of the usually sneering lips of Eddie Turley? If Toby happened to giggle—or worse, Damon—I didn't know what might be ignited. But in the pitiful silence Eddie mustered himself and blurted, "Daddy? I, I can't. He has to say. He's the teacher."

  Morrie stepped forward. "If you wish to, Eddie, you may go. You have done well in staying after, and from here on you can stay in at recess and noon hour instead."

  As Eddie edged past, his father gave him the same disgruntled look he had in Brother Jubal's tent. He made no move to follow his son. Gradually the hoofbeats of Eddie's horse faded away, and as hard as Damon and Toby and I were listening, we could not bring any sound of Father's team and dray in place of that. Turley seemed to have all the time in the world as he turned toward Morrie. "Now to deal with you, pettygog."

  "Eddie is safely on his way," Morrie said calmly, "and that should conclude your business here."

  "I'll show you business." Turley jerked his head toward us. "Get rid of these pipsqueaks. What're they doing here anyway?"

  That was too much for Damon. "Just working on our arrowheads. We can be here if we want."

  Brose Turley singled me out with the unnerving scowl that sucked in the toothless part of his face. "You there, bright boy. Take these other two and go."

  "Nothing doing." I am not sure my voice carried elder-brother authority as I wanted it to, but it did the best it could under the circumstances. "We're staying."

  Turley leered over at Morrie as if that was a joke to be shared. "If they want to see a fool get what's coming to him, let 'em." He looked as dangerously deliberate as he had been in goading the wolf into the box canyon. He indicated toward the hanging lamp right over his head. "Wouldn't take much to burn this place to the ground."

  "It would take a lunatic." Morrie circled out away from us, to the dear area of floor at the front of the schoolroom, as if he was merely taking a philosopher's stroll. "Four of us have just heard who one might be."

  Brose Turley grunted. "For now, a good pounding will do." He moved toward Morrie. I knew without even looking that Damon had the pliers ready to throw, and I would do what I could to jump on Turley's back, but the odds were that Turley could handle us like puffballs.

  Still looking philosophical, Morrie had been standing with his hands parked in his coat pockets. He pulled them out now, sets of brass knuckles gleaming right and left.

  Turley halted. "I'm barehanded."

  "Much more metal than this would be needed to bring me up to your weight," Morrie pointed out mildly. He had lifted his arms as high as his midsection and was clinking the knobbed bands of brass together, clenched hand lightly tapping against clenched hand, as if passing the time with a tune until the bout began.

  Turley was a man who knew how metal could bite flesh, and he edged back until he was sure he was out of range of Morrie's armored fists.

  "I know how to wait," he ground out, the pink gums gnashing into each threatening word. Without so much as a glance at the wide-eyed three of us, he abandoned the schoolhouse.

  "Morrie," Damon sounded dazed, "where—?"

  Abruptly Morrie had a hand up, signaling silence. From outside came the sound we had been waiting for, the harness jingle of a dray team. Mixed with it, though, were hot words exchanged out there in the growing dark. Then, thank heaven, that drumbeat of a saddle horse's hooves, Brose Turley riding hard into what was left of the dusk.

  Morrie had not relaxed one bit, but somehow the brass knuckles had vanished. Speaking low and rapidly, he enlisted us further in the chapter that had just happened. "Damon, Paul, and need I say, Toby. It would be best if the little tiff between Mr. Turley and myself, just now, were kept between us. Particularly my, ah, persuaders. Agreed?"

  Which of my brothers was more distressed at the thought of not being able to regale Father with the whole episode the minute he came in, Toby or Damon? From the stricken look on them, it was impossible to choose. But we had no time to think about any of it. That quick, here was Father in the schoolroom, Brose Turley's footprints barely cool beneath his. The agitation we'd heard outside was spelled out on his face. Plainly he was not expecting to find Morrie still in one piece.

  "I see you had a visitor." Father was breathing heavily. "I meant to be here long since, but a wheel rim popped. Did Turley cause you any trouble?"

  "Pff," Morrie made a dismissive noise. "The man is substantially shallow."

  Father sensed that more had gone on here than anyone was letting on. He looked from me to Damon to Toby, and when that was unproductive, he focused back onto Morrie. "You don't want Brose Turley gunning for you."

  "Oliver, you are entirely correct, I do not want that."

  Then Father said something odd. "Pray for snow." We all looked at him as if his mind had wandered severely. "Brose Turley traps in the timber in winter," he reasoned it out for us. "Eddie lodges with the Johannsons as soon as that happens—he may be tamer without his father around, who knows? Morrie, if you can just put up with Eddie through the winter, this might all go away."

  Unusually, Morrie said nothing one way or the other. Somehow Father's presence shouldered the tension out of the schoolroom. He was pressed into admiring the arrowhead display. Then he scooped up Toby. "Tobe, little man, you look like you've had a day." Father swung him up onto his shoulders. "Come on," he directed Damon and me, "it's getting late and Morrie has had a sufficiency of your company for one day. Tobe can ride home on the dray with me; you bring his horse with you."

  As Damon and I crossed the schoolyard to the grassy plot where our horses were picketed, it took an uncharacteristically long time for words to catch up with whatever my brother was thinking. At last he fished out, "Boy oh boy, I didn't ever think something like that would happen, did you?"

  "I'll say," and now I was the one doubtless sounding a bit dazed. "Imagine, Eddie calling him 'Daddy' right there in front of us."

  "No, no! Didn't you see? Brassies on both knucklesl Morrie knows how to hit with either hand!"

  11

  LITTLEST THINGS
. THE POCK IN THE KITCHEN WINDOW IN the shape of a star, halfway up; we used that as a mark in cold weather. If the window frosted over as high as that star, the temperature had gone way, way down overnight. A snowstorm generally followed. After Morrie's episode with Brose Turley, I would check as soon as I lit the kitchen lamp each morning, hoping to read winters shivery arrival there on the windowpane. But the weather stayed obstinately mild, with only a dry chill in the air that carried no promise of snow anytime soon.

  The last schoolday of that week, in physiology period, Morrie startled everyone by holding up the rattle off a rattlesnake and, as if it was the most natural teaching device to be found in the average schoolroom, illustrated the principle of stimulus and response.

  Eddie still was sitting out his sentence, so I could not press the question at recess or noon hour. But when school let out I lagged enough to pass by Morrie's desk and, with no one else around, make sure.

  "Wasn't that rattle fresh off the rattler?"

  "Top mark for observation, Paul. This morning, actually."

  Retrieving the item in question from a desk drawer, he cradled it in one hand in the manner of the gravedigger contemplating the last of poor Yorick. In class I had expected Damon to catch on to the unfaded quality of the segmented tail the same as I did, but he'd reflexively looked away as soon as he realized Morrie was holding up something where blood was involved. And I didn't want Toby fretting about a rattlesnake invading the teacherage. "The reptile greeted me just outside the front door," Morrie was saying as he tapped a fingernail against the horny object. "Remarkable jest of nature, isn't it, the creature carrying toxin at one end and a tocsin at the other."

  "For crying out loud, Mor—" I burst out before remembering I was still technically under the rules of the schoolday. "Mr. Morgan," this time it came out of me singsong, I was enunciating so carefully, "it's practically winter."

  "I don't see any snow," he pointed out maddeningly.

  "You know what I mean. Snakes shouldn't be around. What if Brose Turley put the thing there?"

  "What if it's mere coincidence?" Morrie weighed the rattle in his hand a moment more, then stuck it back in the desk drawer. "What if the unfortunate serpent simply was attracted by the heat of the house? We mustn't jump to conclusions," he chided, although it didn't seem to me to require much of a hop to reach a good one here. He stroked his mustache appreciatively as if a thought had just arrived to him by way of it. "Incidentally, Paul, don't tell him so just yet, but your father's method works like a charm. A barrel stave is first-rate for slaying a snake."

  A snake, I remained convinced, that ought to have been holed up in its den that time of year.

  That night, rattlesnakes drove wolves out of my dreams. I was my usual wreck by the time Rose showed up.

  "Another off night, Paul?" How could she tell even before she set foot into the kitchen? Quick as a wraith, she was over to the stove to warm her hands and whisper: "I know just the prescription to take your mind from it. Three tubs of water."

  I'd forgotten washday had devolved to Saturday now that she was in command of Morries housekeeping as well as ours. "Help me carry the wash water, pretty please," she set out the terms in her melodious low murmur, "then I'll leave you to your book," although for once I did not want to be left to that. I put my coat on, each of us grabbed a handle of washtub number one, and we crept from the house so as not to wake its Saturday sleepers.

  In the start of daybreak we could see just well enough on the path to the pump. Out around us, the barn and other outbuildings loomed as if they were growing with the eastern light. Down at the corral, the horses gazed toward us through little fogs of their breath. I was mad at the weather again, another snowless morning that did not know the meaning of winter. The wind had not even started up yet, practically unheard of for Marias Coulee. Rose breathed in as if taking the air in the Alps. "How my poor husband loved mornings like this," she exulted, somehow managing to do it in the same veiled voice she had used in the kitchen. "I can just see him. He would be up and out at the crack of dawn, getting his miles in. Then he would gather me to go out to breakfast and—"

  "His miles? On foot?" It was enough to make me gasp. If Damon and Toby and I couldn't saddle up Paint, Queenie, and Joker to go someplace farther than the neighbors within easy sight of us, we didn't go.

  "A goodly distance, let's just say," Rose hastened to correct herself. "But every single morning, if the weather wasn't throwing a fit." As she chatted on, we could have been mistaken for leisurely strollers on a boulevard except for the galvanized tub between us. Ever since that first predawn conference of ours in the kitchen, several days ago now, it seemed natural to be at this. It intrigued me that in these circumstances Rose's experiences seeped from her, episode by episode, as if they wanted out. Like my dreams.

  I listened assiduously as usual as she finished up the particular reminiscence brought on by the feel of this morning, about poor Mr. Llewellyn coming home from one of his constitutionals in the grip of a policeman unwilling to believe that a person would be out that early merely for exercise. "Imagine, that policeman would not even trust me to identify my own husband," she came to the end of the story as we reached the pump. "I had to ring up Morrie to come over and—"

  "Rose, you don't have to whisper out here."

  "Oh, right."

  I voluntarily did the pumping so she could save her energy for conversation. "Such times as the three of us had together," she mused. It was a rare moment of Rose at rest as she stood there, hands quietly pocketed. Slight against the great prairie around us, she nonetheless seemed where she ought to be, pegged into place in the forthright Marias Coulee dawn. I had to strain to pick out her words over the racket of the pump, "—and didn't we just think we had the world by the tail. High living. All the comforts. Money growing on bushes. But put such trifles up against real purpose in life and all you come out with is—" She halted.

  "Perdition?" I panted.

  "Paul, you are a mind reader. Blindsight. There is nothing like it."

  Perdition sounded pretty good to me, out there on the clammy pump handle. The matter at the moment, though, was salvation, namely Morrie's. Rose seemed not to have a care in the world, chatting away as we started back to the house with the heavy tub, but my mind was going back and forth furiously over the dangers represented by Brose Turley Twice now Morrie had made me promise not to say a word to Father in that regard. But he hadn't said anything about not telling Rose, had he? Halfway up the path we set the tub down to rest for a minute.

  "Rose, you better know." Time to go back to whispering. "Morrie is maybe in for it."

  "For what now?"

  As rapidly as I could spill the words out, I told her the full story. She seemed less surprised about the brass knuckles than I'd expected. In fact, the only thing that seemed to startle her was my conclusion:

  "Maybe Morrie ought to go. Leave, I mean," and I had trouble even saying the word. "On out to the Coast or back where you were, or—"

  "Oh, I think not," she said quickly. "Life here agrees with both of us."

  "It won't be so agreeable if Brose Turley gets hold of him when he's not looking."

  "I'll speak to Morrie about being careful, don't you worry." She did her best to settle me down. "But if this Turley person wants him out of his way, he is going about it exactly wrong." One of Rose's patented pauses ensued. Her eyes always widened when she thought deeply. I waited, leaning her direction as a sunflower will follow the sun, for whatever illumination was sure to follow. At last she whispered, as if it were a secret between us, "Morrie can be contrary at times."

  ***

  Aunt Eunice seconded that.

  "Give that man bread and roses and he'd eat the petals and go around with the loaf in his buttonhole. Oliver, you have taken leave of your senses in turning the school over to him."

  Her pronouncement caused Damon to kick the leg of the dinner table until Rae stopped him with a look. He knew it was against his best
interest to contradict Aunt Eunice out loud, but here it came: "Morrie is a hundred times better teacher than old Miss Trent."

  I leapt in just as recklessly. "Morrie knows something about almost everything."

  "Morrie taught me 'rhinoceros,' Aunt Eunice!" Even Toby felt the need to take issue. "R-h-i-n-o—"

  "There, you see? What manner of teacher lets the pupils call him by his first name, answer me that!" Her tiny mouth pursed full of triumph, she looked around at those trying to have a Sunday meal in peace. George was not uttering a peep behind his nest of beard. I was sure Rae felt some allegiance toward Rose, but did it extend to Morrie? That left Father, as usual, in Aunt Eunice's direct line of fire.

  "We don't call Morrie that when school is on," I protested.

  "And you had better not let me catch you at it if you ever do," Father said. "Exceptional lamb roast, Rae. You boys: less talk, more fork. You were saying, Eunice?"

  "The greenest graduate of The Spencerian Academy"—Aunt Eunice's alma mater, needless to say—"could do a better job of it in that school."

  Father kept his head down over his plate, but his voice was on the rise. "Eunice, The Spencerian Academy is twelve hundred miles from here. How was I supposed to pluck up a teacher from there overnight?"

  "This is the way of the world anymore." Aunt Eunice was addressing a higher invisible audience, maybe heaven. "Try to give someone the benefit of all one's years on this earth and will they listen? No."

  Sitting there hearing Aunt Eunice call down the thunder of her accumulated years, I tried to imagine Morrie and Rose right then. Rose was spending most of every Sunday at the teacherage, and chances were Morrie would be putting dinner on the table for the two of them about now. Probably sparrow hearts and three peas apiece, but brother and sister would gaily tuck in their napkins and converse in spirited tones as usual. I could see it as real as anything, the teacherage a Crusoe isle of calm amid the turbulence of fife—if it did not come under assault by snake, fire, fist, boot, and other weaponry my dreams provided. Was Rose having any luck in making Morrie be wary of Brose Turley? Was luck adequate to that?