Pilgrimage

"Where?" Nothing I could see spoke school to me.
"Around the bend." This time I followed his indication and suddenly, out of the featurelessness of the place, I saw a bell tower barely topping the hill beyond the town, with the fine pencil stroke of a flagpole to one side. Mr. Diemus pulled himself together to make the effort.
"The school's in the prettiest place around here. There's a spring and trees, and-" He ran out of words and looked at me as though trying to conjure up something else I'd like to hear.
"I'm board president," he said abruptly. "You'll have ten children from first grade to second-year high school. You're the boss in your school. Whatever you do is your business. Any discipline you find desirable-use. We don't pamper our children. Teach them what you have to. Don't bother the parents with reasons and explanations. The school is yours."
"And you'd just as soon do away with it and me, too," I smiled at him.
He looked startled. "The law says school them." He started across the bridge. "So school them."
I followed meekly, wondering wryly what would happen if I asked Mr. Diemus why he hated himself and the world he was in and even-oh, breathe it softly-the children I was to "school."
"You'll stay at my place," he said. "We have an extra room."
I was uneasily conscious of the wide gap of silence that followed his pronouncement, but couldn't think of a thing to fill. it. I shifted my small case from one hand to the other and kept my eyes on the rocky path that protested with shifting stones and vocal gravel every step we took. It seemed to me that Mr. Diemus was trying to make all the noise he could with his shuffling feet. But, in spite of the amplified echo from the hills around us, no door opened, no face pressed to a window. It was a distinct relief to hear suddenly the happy unthinking rusty singing of hens as they scratched in the coarse dust.
I hunched up in the darkness of my narrow bed trying to comfort my uneasy stomach. It wasn't that the food had been bad-it had been quite adequate-but such a dingy meal! Gloom seemed to festoon itself from the ceiling and unhappiness sat almost visibly at the table.
I tried to tell myself that it was my own travel weariness that slanted my thoughts, but I looked around the table and saw the hopeless endurance furrowed into the adult faces and beginning faintly but unmistakably on those of the children. There were two children there. A girl, Sarah (fourth grade, at a guess), and an adolescent boy, Matt (seventh?)-too silent, too well mannered, too controlled, avoiding much too pointedly looking at the empty chair between them.
My food went down in lumps and quarreled fiercely with the coffee that arrived in square-feeling gulps. Even yet-long difficult hours after the meal-the food still wouldn't lie down to be digested. Tomorrow I could slip into the pattern of school, familiar no matter where school was, since teaching kids is teaching kids no matter where. Maybe then I could convince my stomach that all was well, and then maybe even start to thaw those frozen unnatural children. Of course they well might be little demons away from home-which is very often the case. Anyway I felt, thankfully, the familiar September thrill of new beginnings.
I shifted in bed again, then stiffening my neck, lifted my ears clear of my pillow.
It was a whisper, the intermittent hissing I had been hearing. Someone was whispering in the next room to mine. I sat up and listened unashamedly. I knew Sarah's room was next to mine, but who was talking with her? At first I could get only half words and then either my ears sharpened or the voices became louder.
"… and did you hear her laugh? Right out loud at the table!" The quick whisper became a low voice. "Her eyes crinkled in the corners and she laughed."
"Our other teachers laughed, too." The uncertainly deep voice must be Matt.
"Yes," Sarah whispered. "But not for long. Oh, Matt! What's wrong with us? People in our books have fun. They laugh and run and jump and do all kinds of fun stuff and nobody-" Sarah faltered, "no one calls it evil."
"Those are only stories," Matt said. "Not real life."
"I don't believe it!" Sarah cried. "When I get big I'm going away from Bendo. I'm going to see-"
"Away from Bendo!" Matt's voice broke in roughly. "Away from the Group?"
I lost Sarah's reply. I felt as though I had missed an expected step. As I wrestled with my breath the sights and sounds and smells of my old dorm room crowded back upon me. Then I caught myself. It was probably only a turn of phrase. This futile desolate unhappiness couldn't possibly be related in any way to that magic ….
"Where is Dorcas?" Sarah asked, as though she knew the answer already.
"Punished." Matt's voice was hard and unchildlike. "She jumped." "Jumped!" Sarah was shocked.
"Over the edge of the porch. Clear down to the path. Father saw her. I think she let him see her on purpose." His voice was defiant. "Someday when I get older I'm going to jump, too-all I want to-even over the house. Right in front of Father."
"Oh, Matt!" The cry was horrified and admiring. "You wouldn't! You couldn't. Not so far, not right in front of Father!"
"I would so," Matt retorted. "I could so, because I-" His words cut off sharply. "Sarah," he went on, "can you figure any way, any way, that jumping could be evil? It doesn't hurt anyone. It isn't ugly. There isn't any law-"
"Where is Dorcas?" Sarah's voice was almost inaudible. "In the hidey hole again?" She was almost answering Matt's question instead of asking one of her own.
"Yes," Matt said. "In the dark with only bread to eat. So she can learn what a hunted animal feels like.
An animal that is different, that other animals hate and hunt." His bitter voice put quotes around the
words.
"You see," Sarah whispered. "You see?"
In the silence following I heard the quiet closing of a door and the slight vibration of the floor as Matt passed my room. I eased back onto my pillow. I lay back, staring toward the ceiling. What dark thing was here in this house? In this community? Frightened children whispering in the dark. Rebellious children in hidey holes learing how hunted animals feel. And a Group… ? No it couldn't be. It was just the recent reminder of being on campus again that made me even consider that this darkness might in some way be the reverse of the golden coin Karen had shown me.
My heart almost failed me when I saw the school. It was one of those monstrosities that went up around the turn of the century. This one had been built for a boom town, but now all the upper windows were boarded up and obviously long out of use. The lower floor was blank, too, except for two rooms-though with the handful of children quietly standing around the door it was apparent that only one room was needed. And not only was the building deserted, the yard was swept clean from side to side, innocent of grass or trees-or playground equipment. There was a deep grove just beyond the school, though, and the glint of water down canyon.
"No swings?" I asked the three children who were escorting me. "No slides? No seesaws?"
"No!" Sarah's voice was unhappily surprised. Matt scowled at her warningly.
"No," he said, "we don't swing or slide-nor see a saw!" He grinned up at me faintly.
"What a shame!" I said. "Did they all wear out? Can't the school afford new ones?"
"We don't swing or slide or seesaw." The grin was dead.
"We don't believe in it."
There's nothing quite so flat and incontestable as that last statement. I've heard it as an excuse for practically every type of omission, but, so help me, never applied to playground equipment. I couldn't think of a reply any more intelligent than "Oh," so I didn't say anything.
All week long I felt as if I were wading through knee-deep Jello or trying to lift a king-sized feather bed up over my head. I used up every device I ever thought of to rouse the class to enthusiasm-about anything, anything! They were polite and submissive and did what was asked of them, but joylessly, apathetically, enduringly.