Rock Island Line. David Rhodes
began teaching school jointly with old Mrs. Fitch, the two of them making a comic pair standing side by side in the schoolyard supervising games; small Della, pretty, and quick as a yellow warbler, looked as though she were about ready to run off and get in the circle, her hair and clothes buffeted around her by the wind, while old Mrs. Fitch, dressed in heavy gray cotton, her hair coarse, bound into tight curls, did not seem as if she could ever move.
All the children were taught in the same room, through the eighth grade. The only difference between the younger and the older ones was that they carried different books. So while talking out loud with the fifth-graders about history, it was necessary to have the others busy with something that did not demand the teacher’s attention. It couldn’t always be done, and Della, as a way of learning the profession, quietly (and sometimes, under Eleanor Fitch’s disapproving frown, not so quietly) watched over those grades of students and answered their individual questions.
Some things could be communicated to all, like reading stories of pirates and buried treasure, animals that could talk and dark forests. These times they traded off, though mostly they belonged to Eleanor, who seemed to Della to be possessive of them and only let her read the books of little emotional consequence.
While Eleanor read, Della sat in the back of the room next to the doors, and once, as the old practiced voice told of the death of Brighty of the Grand Canyon, she began to cry, and hid her face in her hands. Eleanor looked up and saw her, then quickly looked down again to the book, thinking privately between the next sentences that there was nothing wrong with it in itself, but it was something to be kept from the children, who could not understand that some people never completely grow up but that that didn’t make them less than grownups. Except Eleanor suspected that in some way it did—in some way there should be a drawn line between feeling like crying when the burro dies and outwardly doing it. Later, in her house, she pondered this question, and decided that feelings had a reality of their own and that actions had little to do with them. Remember, she was very old, and soon retired from teaching, leaving Della there by herself.
But Eleanor came back for visits, and would arrive at the schoolroom unannounced, usually in the morning, bursting in through the door as though she owned it, and begin talking right away. Sometimes she brought her two canaries, Ebeneezer and Melissa, and talked about their habits. These visits saddened Della, because she knew Mrs. Fitch was lonely and that she needed a place where there was life—where she could talk of dress, and manners, and the great scholars, nature, numbers and the romantic imagination—a place where things mattered and were of consequence—a place full of meaning.
Eleanor had tenacity, and her brittle old bones hung on to life and refused to give up; and her mind refused to be dissolved into spirit and fastened like a many-tentacled bloodsucker onto reason. Her thinking remained clear, her memories intact. She continued her visits to the school, even when all of the students who could remember her as a teacher were gone into high school and, bashing in through the front door with her canaries, they would look up and think, Here she is again, the old weird woman. And Della was saddened, and many evenings took Wilson with her over to Eleanor’s house to visit. But Eleanor didn’t care about that. She loved children.
One morning she arrived in her buggy while Della and her students were sitting in a corner of the schoolyard, picking along the ground as though searching for a lost ring. Eleanor tied her horse (named Perseus, and left her by her husband, who had bought him because he was afraid of him, and there was no faster or more high-strung horse in Sharon Township) and hurried over to take control, in case they were not aware of the proper way to hunt for lost things in the grass—everyone not to move, and to look carefully around him. Moving around causes the grass to be trampled and it is possible for the object to become pushed down into the dirt, where it will be impossible to find. What she found was that they were engaged in searching for four-leaf clovers, all of them down on their hands and knees, pushing their fingers through the green clover heads. They said hello to her, and Della began to get up, but Eleanor motioned for her not to bother—that she would simply watch for a while. It was a lovely day, and the warm, fall air felt good on her face, and she thought privately, Ah, only we old ones know what it is like to breathe this and feel fully alive. Then she was taken up with watching the hunt. One of the youngest girls had the classroom dictionary, and it was her job to press the lucky clovers in between the pages. The hunters fanned out and began covering more ground, finding very few, though searching with a solemn devotion. “We’ll never find enough for all of us,” moaned one child. “Here’s one!” screamed another. “Look! There’s a snake!” “A snake!” “Leave him alone and he won’t hurt you.” “He won’t hurt anyway. I catch ’em all the time. Where is he?” “He’s gone.” “Here’s one!” “Let’s see.” “That’s not a real one. It’s just busted.” “It is too.” “I can’t find any.” “Here’s one! Oh, never mind.” “Go look in your own place.” “Don’t step there.”
But as she watched, Eleanor became increasingly amazed at what was happening within the excited hunt, and could not move her eyes away. Della was carefully, quietly taking up four-and five-leaf clovers and passing them unnoticed over to be stuck in the dictionary. Everywhere she turned would be another, as though she did not have to look, but merely reach her hand down and one would crop up to be tugged out of the ground. Even in places where the children had already searched. But they were not noticing. Della was finding them and pushing down the clovers around them so that they stood out; then she would walk away, and later the children would find them and begin screaming, “I got one! I got one!”
Eleanor, inside her heavy dress beneath her old face, thought, I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s uncommon. What can it mean? Does it mean anything? No one can be that lucky. She merely knows how to hunt for them and is practical—No! It’s uncommon.
Della was finally forced to take hold of one first-grade child (the only student left who had not found a clover himself and was on the verge of tears) and lead him over to a place where she had several located and waiting; and even then he stepped on one and only found the other by Della suggesting he not stoop over, but get down on all fours—helping him in such a way that both hands were on either side of a five-leafed one as big around as a golf ball. He picked it and took it over to the dictionary. “Here’s another one,” he said in an unconcerned way, but watched the older girl press it into place and gave a little jump when she slammed the book shut.
Della said it was time to go in, and then hollered that it was time, because sounds travel poorly through children. It was only then that she noticed Eleanor’s eyes bent upon her. She told the older ones to monitor a study time, and together she and Eleanor watched them clear the yard and disappear into the building. Della turned to her, smiled and began to speak, but was interrupted.
“Magic,” said Eleanor. Then she paused, took off her hat, patted her hair and put it back on. Della looked away and wondered if she were going to finish, or begin, or if the word was at the tail end of a private thought and had escaped by mistake. Some old people she had known had been like that.
“Sometimes I’ve wondered if there’s anything reasonable about magic,” Eleanor continued. “I mean, if it’s real.” Then she bent her eyes down on Della again.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s real or not. . . . Maybe. . . . What do you mean by magic?”
“You know, magic. Not black magic or superstition. White magic. Is there such a thing as white magic?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anyway, I’m sure there is. Its study is not for evil purposes. It reveals luck. It’s a kind of preparation that makes you lucky. Do you know anything about it?”
“What kind of study?”
“I don’t know for sure. Yes, incantations and such.”
“I guess I don’t know anything about it.”
“Forgive me,” Eleanor said, and stepped several feet closer toward the schoolhouse, her shoes hidden in the clover. “I’m not being precise enough.” Then she began again. “When I was young—much younger than you . . . How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”