Miss Dimple Disappears (2 page)

“I think you still haven’t answered my question,” Annie persisted. “What happened with Hugh last night?”

Charlie busied herself wiping chalk dust from her fingers and sneezed. “Are you sure you can handle the excitement?”

“Try me,” Annie said.

“We went to see that
Thin Man
movie at the picture show—the new one with Myrna Loy and William Powell—and then he brought me home and ate up what was left of the lemon meringue pie in the Frigidaire.”

“And that’s
it
?” Annie asked.

“ ’Fraid so. Anything else you want to know?”

Annie shook her head and paused, and Charlie knew she was thinking up an appropriate quote from the great bard. “ ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’ Surely he said
something
.”

Charlie frowned as if in serious thought. “Right. ‘You be sure and tell Miss Jo that’s the best pie I ever put in my mouth,’ ” she mimicked, stretching to her full height. She hadn’t told him that the pie had been made by Evie McDaniel, who cooked for them occasionally. Her mother, Josephine Carr, could do little more than scramble an egg, which was why Charlie took her noon meal with several of the other teachers at Phoebe Chadwick’s boardinghouse.

Charlie had been seeing Hugh Brumlow almost exclusively for over a year now and he would soon be called up for service, so naturally just about everyone—especially Annie—expected him to propose. But Charlie, caught up in the tide of war and romance, found herself in a tug-of-war with her emotions. His kisses stirred desires in her that terrified and thrilled her, and the thought of him soon going off to war was like an icicle piercing her heart, but she was distressed as well about her brother, Fain, and others who had left to fight.

Looking over her shoulder she saw that Annie was still there. “Don’t you have some place to go—like your own classroom maybe?”

Annie looked at her watch. “Guess I had better skedaddle. It’s almost time for the bell and they’ll be lining up outside … but, Charlie …” She hesitated in the doorway.

Charlie cocked an eyebrow and grinned. “Annie…?”

“Hugh cares about you. Really. I know he does. Just wait and see.”

Charlie shook her head as Annie rumbaed into her classroom next door, and hurriedly began writing the reading assignment on the board. She wasn’t going to think about Hugh Brumlow. She wasn’t going to think about his eyes so blue they could burn a hole in your heart, or the funny, stubborn tuft of hair no amount of brushing or hair tonic could conquer.

And she certainly wasn’t going to think about his mouth … mmm … oh, no—and how his lips felt against her own. Charlie Carr had enough on her mind without worrying about Hugh Brumlow.

Everyone knew Hugh would’ve already enlisted if his mother hadn’t had to have her appendix out, then suffered what she claimed were “setbacks,” taking what seemed forever to recuperate. Doc Morrison, who performed the surgery, had told his wife, who told Charlie’s mother, that when he made the incision her appendix looked perfectly healthy to him.

The early-morning sun hadn’t worked its way to their side of the building and the classroom seemed drab in the gray November chill in spite of the colorful drawings of Indians and Pilgrims marching along the walls, the American flag above the portrait of George Washington, and the purple felt banner the class had won for having the most mothers attend the last PTA meeting.

In an hour or so, when Christmas Malone finally got around to stoking the furnace, the room would become so close and warm Charlie would have to open windows to let in cooling air. Already the place smelled of dust, mildewed galoshes, and forgotten bananas, and she decided a room cleaning would have to be a priority since it was apparent the school’s janitor had skipped them once again.

Charlie glanced at the bulletin board to be reminded that Mary Ann Breedlove was scheduled to lead her classmates in a selection of patriotic songs that morning. Classes always began with a ten-minute period during which students recited the Pledge to the Flag, listened to a brief verse of scriptures from the Bible, and were led in a morning prayer. From time to time the ritual centered on a theme, and freedom, loyalty, and courage had been popular subjects since the war began the year before.

Throwing a jacket around her shoulders, Charlie stepped into the hallway and was on her way to greet her third-grade students at the back steps when the first bell rang.

For blocks around, school-age children in the small Georgia town kissed their mothers, grabbed their books, and started out on a run when they heard the lusty clanging. The bell hung in the belfry over the red brick building that housed grades one through four as it had when Charlie’s parents went to school there. If a child wasn’t present to line up when the principal rang the second bell five minutes later, he or she was marked tardy and required to “stay in” during recess—or worse, after school.

“Did you hear the bell ring earlier?” Geneva Odom, who taught second grade, stood in the hallway outside her classroom, brimming wastebasket in hand. “I could’ve sworn it rang while I was cooking breakfast this morning, but it was much too early, so I guess it was my imagination.”

“Or a bad dream,” Charlie answered, “except I thought I heard it, too.”

Annie gave a little shiver. “I must’ve been in the shower, but it was probably mice gnawing on the bell rope. I know they’re around. One chewed clear through a box of cough drops I left out on my desk, and Christmas doesn’t halfway clean around here. I know he has trouble with his back, but you’d think he could do better than this.”

“If it’s not his back, it’s his blood pressure,” Geneva said. “All our able-bodied men are in the service, and I guess the poor man does the best he can, but he’s late more often than not and it seems he’s always complaining about something.” She set the wastebasket in the hallway. “I hoped that little talk he had with Mr. Faulkenberry would give him some incentive, but apparently not. Since he missed my room again yesterday, I’m going to leave this right here in the hall as a reminder.”

“I found my door unlocked, so it seems he’s at least been in my room, but I can’t see that he’s done any cleaning.” Miss Dimple Kilpatrick appeared from the first-grade classroom next to Geneva’s wearing her customary purple. Today it was a long-sleeved cotton dress in a paisley print with a plain gold bar pin at her throat and a lace-trimmed hankie peeping from a pocket of the bodice. Her graying hair was swept up and held in place by tortoiseshell combs, and bifocals hung from her neck on a chain. Now she spoke softly as she shrugged into what once had been a lavender sweater. “The flu has been going around, you know, and Wilson complained of a sore throat yesterday. I do hope he hasn’t come down with something.” She never referred to the janitor as Christmas.

If he had caught the flu, Charlie wished he’d stoked the furnace first, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Miss Dimple might think she was being selfish.

Miss Dimple Kilpatrick had taught first grade in Elderberry Grammar School for almost forty years, and for most of those forty years she had made it a point to arrive at the school before anyone else, including the principal and the janitor. It gave her time to think and plan in peace and quiet, she said. Charlie herself had sat in one of the little green chairs in the first classroom on the right and read about the adventures of Tom and Nancy from a bright pink primer, and when she first began teaching there, she had been shocked to discover that Miss Dimple actually went to the bathroom like ordinary humans do.

“Did you hear the bell ring earlier this morning?” she asked the older woman as they parted at the second bell.

“Why, no, but then I doubt if I would’ve. Do you know I walked almost as far as the peach orchard this morning before I realized how far I’d gone.” And Miss Dimple hurried after Geneva to stand at the top of the front steps as “commander in chief” of the first grade class. She had deliberately taken a different route on her walk that morning after her peculiar experience the day before, although she was probably letting her imagination run away with her, she supposed. Miss Dimple knew she read entirely too many mysteries but had no intention of giving them up. Whenever a new Agatha Christie arrived at the local library, her friend Virginia always saw that she read it first.

A champion of healthy living, Dimple Kilpatrick seldom missed her brisk early morning walks and was the only person Charlie knew who didn’t seem to mind cutting back on sugar, even going so far as to decline desserts and Phoebe Chadwick’s occasional breakfasts of crisp hot waffles with syrup. There was a secret contest among the other faculty members to guess the ingredients of Miss Dimple’s Victory Muffins, which were supposed to make one healthy and patriotic as well as regular. Even Miss Phoebe, who gave her permission to use the boardinghouse kitchen, claimed she didn’t know what was in them.

When Christmas still hadn’t shown up by mid-morning, the school’s principal, Oscar Faulkenberry, also known as “Froggie” because of his likeness to that amphibian, had begrudgingly rolled up his sleeves and stoked the ancient furnace, and during recess Charlie tricked her third graders into believing it was a special treat to be allowed to sweep the classroom floor.

“You don’t suppose something’s really happened to Christmas, do you?” Annie asked as the two of them watched the usual game of tag during the noon lunch break. “He might actually be sick. It could be his heart or something.”

Charlie smiled as one of her students hid behind the oak tree to avoid being caught. “I hope not,” she said. “I heard Froggie say he tried to call his house but nobody answered. I think his wife works at the cotton mill.”

“As far as I know, he’s never done this before,” Geneva said, joining them. “It’s one thing to be late, but we should’ve heard something by now.”

“If he was that sick, he’s probably waiting to see a doctor,” Annie said. “There’s just the two of them now since Doctor Stewart left for the navy, and Phoebe said she had to wait over an hour the other day just to have her blood pressure taken.”

Charlie realized Miss Dimple was standing silently behind them and wondered what she was thinking. Unless a student was misbehaving, the older teacher usually kept her opinions to herself, but Charlie had known her long enough to realize there was more to Dimple Kilpatrick than any of them could ever guess.

It wasn’t until the children filed in for the afternoon session that one of Alice Brady’s expression students went to the upstairs storage closet for a box of Thanksgiving props for their upcoming theatrical production and discovered the janitor’s body.

The child’s scream was so loud and shrill that Ruthie Phillips, who happened to be giving a book report on
Nancy Drew and the Message in the Hollow Oak
for Charlie’s English class, dropped the book she was holding and ran to crouch under her desk. She thought they were having an air raid, she said afterward.

*   *   *

“A heart attack, I’ll bet,” Annie said. “You know how he was always complaining about being out of breath.”

“Well, I hope it isn’t anything contagious! I sent the Cooper girl home with a fever just the other day, and frankly, I haven’t been feeling so well myself.” Lily Moss, the pencil-thin sixth-grade teacher, spoke as if she had marbles stuck up her nose.

“I heard Doc Morrison say it looked like a stroke to him but he injured his head when he fell,” Geneva cut in, giving the woman a long-suffering look. “Of course he’ll have to do a more thorough examination before they know for sure. I expect there’ll be an—”

“Oh, don’t say that awful word!” Lily clasped a hand to her ironing-board chest. “I just can’t bear the thought of anyone cutting into the poor man, even though he
was
too lazy to hit a lick at a snake.”

“Why, Lily Moss!” Geneva gasped.

“Well, he was … bless his heart,” Lily mumbled, as if the expression would make everything all right.

Charlie stood at the window watching empty swings zigzagging in the wind. The children had been dismissed early for the day and she wished the faculty had been allowed to do the same. Instead, the teachers were instructed to gather in Lily’s classroom until the principal could address them.

The structure that housed the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades was smaller than the belfry building and sat on the other side of the school grounds with a play area in between. Built in more recent times, the upper-grade classrooms were spacious, but without the heat-sucking high ceilings of the older building, and the desks were large enough to accommodate most adults although Charlie found it difficult to fold her long legs underneath.

While some of the teachers chatted or roamed restlessly about the room, Miss Dimple Kilpatrick, Charlie noticed, sat primly in one of the front desks with an open book in front of her, although she didn’t appear to be reading. With fragile hands she clutched the worn leather handbag in her lap, and for a minute Charlie wondered if the woman might be praying.

Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we all did,
she thought. Charlie caught Annie’s eye and took a seat across from her. It made her think of their years together in college. The two had been roommates all four years at Brenau and after graduation it was only by chance they found teaching positions together. With the recommendation of a college professor, Charlie had been offered a teaching job in her instructor’s California hometown and was excited about the opportunity for travel and adventure, but then the war came along. With her brother enlisting in the army and her younger sister marrying and leaving home, Charlie’s widowed mother would be left alone, and although she knew Josephine Carr would never stand in the way of her leaving, Charlie just couldn’t bring herself to desert her. She was thankful that Annie had not yet signed a contract to teach and was willing to fill one of the openings in Charlie’s hometown of Elderberry.

It was now half after three and her mother would be rolling bandages for the Red Cross, after which she would probably stop for a visit with her sister Louise. The two worked three days a week at the ordnance plant in Milledgeville, and still spoke to one another most days. Charlie’s father, who had died a few years earlier, had claimed the two sisters could talk the ears off a mule.