Carol Ritten Smith (6 page)

Tom glanced at Davy who stood staring at the floor, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Tom nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m sorry.”

“You should be. And that’s not all! You … ” She stopped midsentence.
He was agreeing with her? How dare he give in so easily!
Beth felt cheated. For once her wrath was completely justified and he backed down before she could really light into him. She felt like a pot of boiling water pulled from the hot stove. All the steam she had built up diminished.

“You were going to say?” Tom urged.

“I … I was going to say … ” What
was
she going to say? He had her so flummoxed she couldn’t remember. “It … it’s time for Davy to get home.”

“Ah, Beth,” Davy whined.

“Now!” She stomped her foot.

Tom patted the boy’s shoulder. “Do what your sister says.” To Beth, he gave a nod. “Good afternoon, Miss Patterson.” Then he began putting away his tools.

• • •

“What’s the matter with you?” Bill demanded when Davy scratched his head for the third time during breakfast a few days later. “You get fleas from Carver’s stupid dog?”

“Jack’s not stupid. He’s smart!”

“Smart as a two-headed nail.”

In a rare show of defiance, Davy jumped from his chair, and began punching and kicking Bill with all the fury his scrawny body could muster.

Bill laughed, easily warding off Davy’s feeble blows. “Get away from me, fleabag! I don’t want your pets.”

“Don’t call me a fleabag!”

“Stop it,” Beth shouted, but not before Davy gave one last mighty kick at Bill and connected with the sturdy table leg instead. Immediately, he dropped to the floor and wailed pitifully.

“Serves you right, crybaby,” Bill taunted. “It’s probably broke and Doc will have to cut it off.”

“Bill!” Beth had had enough. “Leave him alone! If you’re finished with breakfast, go to work.”

Bill belched rudely, then pushed back from the table.

“And by the way,” Beth said, “plan on being home tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s Friday, and you seem to have a habit of finding trouble Friday nights.” She felt a small amount of triumph when Bill slammed the door on his way out.

Beth turned her attention to Davy. “Let’s see your toe.”

Davy pulled his foot in closer to his body. “No. I don’t want it cut off.”

“You know Bill was teasing. Besides, how will you be able to count to ten if you’re missing a toe? Come on. Let’s see.”

Sniffling, Davy presented his foot for inspection, and scratched his head again.

“Nothing serious. You just chipped your nail.” Beth went for the nail scissors, and when she returned, Davy was working at a persistent itch behind his left ear. She pulled a chair close to the window where the lighting was best. “Sit here. Give me your foot.”

When she was finished tending his toe, she set the scissors down and carefully parted his thatchy hair with her fingertips. Sadly, she immediately found the cause of his itchiness.

“Well, Davy, you don’t have fleas. You have head lice.”

His face twisted in horror. “Is a licebag worse than a fleabag?” he asked.

Beth laughed, even though head lice was no laughing matter. “There are no such things as licebags or fleabags. Those are just hurtful words. You probably got head lice from another infected student at school.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” Davy asked woebegone, apparently forgetting completely about his sore toe, now that he was faced with a matter far more serious.

“Nothing. Tonight, we’ll wash your hair and treat your scalp with coal-oil.” She knew she’d also have to boil all the bedding and disinfect the house and school. She’d been thinking about starting the fall cleaning soon. Now she was forced to do it earlier and far more thoroughly.

“Will the coal-oil hurt?”

“Not one bit. But first thing this morning at school, I’ll need to do a careful head check to see who else has lice. They’ll need to be treated too.” Without proper and quick treatment, the entire class, including herself, could be scratching in no time. Just the thought made her scalp tingle.

• • •

In the smithy, Tom also scratched his head, not because of head lice, but because he was downright perplexed. Where did he leave his ball peen hammer? He had it just a minute ago.

He was down on his hands and knees, having a gander underneath the workbench when he heard a man say, “What’s a person to do to get some service around here?”

Startled, Tom lifted up suddenly and cracked his head on the underside of the bench. He cussed silently. “Be right there,” he said, rubbing the back of his head, certain he’d dented his skull. “What can I do for you?”

“I need you to fix the rim on one of my wheels,” a man said, pulling out his watch.

Tom carefully surveyed the damaged rim on the buggy.

“Can you fix it or not? I’m already running late.”

“I think so. Might take a while though.”

“Then get on with it. I’ve two more schools to inspect before nightfall.”

Tom didn’t put much stock in a fellow who dressed like a dandy and thought himself superior. This guy wore a double-vested gray suit and derby hat, and looked more like a groom than a school inspector. And those patent leather shoes! Tom hoped he’d step into a fresh horse pucky. The image brought a smile to his face. He extended his hand. “So you’re the new school inspector. I’m Tom Carver.”

“Martin Glower,” the man replied, shaking Tom’s hand.

Glower’s pudgy fingers reminded Tom of soft cow teats.
He probably hasn’t done a lick of hard work in his life.

While Glower paced back and forth impatiently, Tom began to unharness the horse from the buggy. “Been to see Miss Patterson yet?”

“Is that the new teacher’s name? She isn’t listed in my ledger.”

“No?” Tom ducked under the horse’s neck and loosened the other harness strap. “Probably because she didn’t start until midway through September. She came with high recommendations.”

“Really. Well, I’ll be the judge of that.” He adjusted his hat with an air of importance. “Which way is the school from here?”

Tom pointed. “You’ll see it when you get to the bank corner. But it’s almost noon hour. Won’t be much to judge when the teacher isn’t teaching. Why not eat lunch at Yen’s across the street first.”

Glower checked his watch again. “How long you say this is going to take to fix?”

“Don’t know for sure until I get it off. But I could come over to the school when I’m finished.”

“Fine. Do that!”

Tom waited until the inspector entered the Chinaman’s cafe, then ducked through the smithy, out the back door and jogged to the school. He only had a minute to warn Beth before Glower would wonder why he hadn’t started work on the rim.

He took the steps to the schoolhouse in one leap, barged straight through the cloakroom into the classroom.

Beth nearly used one of Bill’s swear words. Regaining her composure, she discretely slipped the fine-toothed comb she’d been using into her pocket. No way on God’s green earth would she let him know about the school’s outbreak of lice.

“Mr. Carver,” she said rather huskily, “it is customary for one to knock before entering.”

“I need to speak with you in private.” He nodded his head toward the cloakroom.

The words “in private” flagged her attention.
What was Bill up to this time?
Inside the cloakroom with the door closed, she took a defensive stance. “Unless the school is on fire, I can’t imagine what would warrant such a rude interruption! Just because you’re on the school board doesn’t mean you can waltz in anytime you please. It would be far better if you came after school hours.”

“But — ”

She held up her hand. “I’m certain whatever it is, it can wait until after school. I don’t get paid to visit you know.”

Tom considered her for a moment. “You’re right, this really isn’t as important as I thought it might be. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

Finally the victor, Beth nodded smugly.

• • •

It always took a good five minutes to settle the children after dinner, but eventually the youngsters in Grades One and Two were coloring. Grades Three, Four, and Five worked on their penmanship, while the oldest grades diligently attacked their arithmetic. The lice check was finished and so far it wasn’t too serious. She would send home notes with those requiring treatment.

Beth helped Jonah Pickard at the blackboard with a long division problem, and just as he began to grasp the concept, there was a knock at the door.

If it’s that blacksmith …
She never finished her silent threat for when she opened the door, there stood a formidable looking stranger. His hat sat perfectly straight on his head as if God had placed it there Himself.

“Good afternoon, Miss Patterson. I’m Inspector Glower. May I come in?”

No!
her mind screamed while her lips said, “Of course, welcome.” She turned to her class and wondered if they could read the look of panic on her face. She hadn’t even thought to prepare her students for a surprise visit by the inspector. She could only pray the previous teacher had coached them how to behave. “Children, this is Mr. Glower. How do we welcome our guest?” She had hoped for a chorus of “Good afternoons,” but instead got an informal jumble of shy “hi’s” and bold “howdy’s.”

Glower sat at the back of the room in the large desk Freddie North had once occupied. “I’m just here to observe. Carry on with your work.”

Beth felt the school walls close in around her like bars of a jail cell. How long would it take for him to realize she was a fake? On legs that felt wooden, she returned to the blackboard, printing up several more division problems for Jonah to do before she moved on to help another student.

Bless their souls!
Her students bent to work with earnest. She could see they were desperately trying not to scratch their heads. But the more they resisted, the more they fidgeted in their seats.

A sharp cracking sound spun Beth around. Somehow without her noticing, Glower had moved from his desk to the blackboard, rapping it smartly with the pointer stick. “Come on boy, think! How many times does seven go into fifty-nine?” With each crack, poor Jonah cringed.

“Use your times table,” Glower commanded.

By then the entire class had abandoned their own studies and were staring at Jonah, who was so rattled he could barely speak.

Eight,
Beth’s mind urged.
Eight. You know that one.

“Nine?” the boy answered doubtfully.

The pointer cracked against the board. “Wrong! Eight!” Glower grabbed the chalk from Jonah’s hand and scribbled the numbers on the board. Then he slashed a line underneath and subtracted fifty-six from fifty-nine. “The answer is eight with a remainder of three. This is elementary arithmetic. You should know this.”

He does,
Beth steamed,
but not when someone is standing over him with a stick!

Glower moved down the aisle toward Davy. “Have you nothing to do but scratch and squirm?”

“No, sir,” Davy replied timidly.

“Then get back to work!”

“Yes, sir.” He picked up his reader, and even from a distance Beth could see his little hands shake.

Glower marched up and down the aisles like a dictator, slapping the pointer stick against his palm. When he stopped at Penelope Pickard’s desk and leaned over her shoulder to inspect her work, Beth knew immediately what would happen. And there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it.

Glower raised his head and listened, then suddenly looked down at his feet. “What on earth!” he uttered, aghast. He was standing in a growing puddle of urine. Penelope, embarrassed and frightened, began to cry.

The boys guffawed. The girls giggled. The inspector growled, “Miss Patterson, have you no control over your class?” He slapped the stick so sharply against Penelope’s desktop, the tip broke off, shot across the room like a bullet, and imbedded itself into the wall. The girl ran out the door.

“You,” he said, pointing at Norman with the broken stick, “mop up this mess immediately and don’t ever laugh at me again or you will face expulsion!”

Beth wanted to take that damnable stick and crack it over the man’s head. Who did he think he was? This was her classroom and within five minutes, he had terrified her students. None dared to scratch their heads, but sat on their hands in fear the stick might be used on their knuckles next. She wanted to demand that the inspector leave, but such insubordination would mean her immediate dismissal, so instead she said nothing and allowed the intolerable man to bully his way around her classroom.

“You, how do you spell chrysanthemum?” he demanded. “ … Wrong. You, how do you find the area of a cone? Wrong.”

Beth went to her desk and began flipping through her manual. Why, that old cur was asking questions that weren’t even in the curriculum! Enough was enough!

“Mr. Glower!” she started in, but a knock interrupted her rebuttal.

“Who is it?” she yelled, not bothering to even to open the door, which would have been the proper thing to do. But at that moment, she didn’t care.

And she quite honestly didn’t know what to feel when Tom poked his head into the classroom.

Before she had a chance to utter one word, Tom said, “Sorry to interrupt, Miss Patterson, but I told Mr. Glower when his buggy was fixed, I’d come and let him know.”

“It’s repaired already?” Glower asked in amazement.

“I put a rush on it, seeing you said you were in a hurry.”

Glower nodded. “Yes. And there’s certainly no reason for me to remain here. I’ve seen more than enough to make my report.”

Beth’s shoulders slumped.

Tom led the inspector outside, explaining all he had done to make the buggy serviceable.

Beth followed them, but on her way through the cloakroom, she saw the inspector’s derby hat. She grabbed it, wishing she could stomp it flat as a cow pie. Then she thought of something even better. She took perverse pleasure in swiping the hat’s inside rim with the collar of every lice-infested coat.