We haven’t done so badly the last few years, though. The Old Ones say we’re getting adjusted, though some of the nonconformists say that the Crossing thinned our blood. It might be either or both or the teachers are just getting tougher. The last two managed to last until just before the year ended. Father took them in as far as Kerry Canyon and ambulances took them on in. But they were all right after a while in the sanatorium and they’re doing okay now. Before them, though, we usually had four teachers a year.
Anyway Father wrote to a teachers’ agency on the coast, and after several letters each way he finally found a teacher.
He told us about it at the supper table.
“‘She’s rather young,” he said, reaching for a toothpick and tipping his chair back on its hind legs.
Mother gave Jethro another helping of pie and picked up her own fork again. “Youth is no crime,” she said, “and it’ll be a pleasant change for the children.”
“Yes, though it seems a shame.” Father prodded at a back tooth and Mother frowned at him. I wasn’t sure if it was for picking his teeth or for what he said. I knew he meant it seemed a shame to get a place like Cougar Canyon so early in a career. It isn’t that we’re mean or cruel, you understand. It’s only that they’re Outsiders and we sometimes forget-especially the kids.
“She doesn’t have to come,” Mother said. “She could say no.”
“Well, now-” Father tipped his chair forward. “Jethro, no more pie. You go on out and help Kiah bring in the wood. Karen, you and Lizbeth get started on the dishes. Hop to it, kids.”
And we hopped, too. Kids do to fathers in the Canyon, though I understand they don’t always Outside. It annoyed me because I knew Father wanted us out of the way so he could talk adult talk to Mother, so I told Lizbeth I’d clear the table and then worked as slowly as I could, and as quietly, listening hard.
“She couldn’t get any other job,” Father said. “The agency told me they had placed her twice in the last two years and she didn’t finish the year either place.”
“Well,” Mother said, pinching in her mouth and frowning.
“If she’s that bad why on earth did you hire her for the Canyon?”
“We have a choice?” Father laughed. Then he sobered. “No, it wasn’t for incompetency. She was a good teacher. The way she tells it they just fired her out of a clear sky. She asked for recommendations and one place wrote, ‘Miss Carmody is a very competent teacher but we dare not recommend her for a teaching position.’ “
” ‘Dare not’?” Mother asked.
” ‘Dare not,’ ” Father said; “The agency assured me that they had investigated thoroughly and couldn’t find any valid reasons for the dismissals, but she can’t seem to find another job anywhere on the coast. She wrote me that she wanted to try another state.”
“Do you suppose she’s disfigured or deformed?” Mother suggested.
“Not from the neck up!” Father laughed. He took an envelope from his pocket. “Here’s her application picture.”
By this time I’d got the table cleared and I leaned over Father’s shoulder.
“Gee!” I said. Father looked back at me, raising one eyebrow. I knew then that he had known all along that I was listening.
I flushed but stood my ground, knowing I was being granted admission to adult affairs, if only by the back door.
The girl in the picture was lovely. She couldn’t have been many years older than I and she was twice as pretty.
She had short dark hair curled all over her head and apparently that poreless creamy skin which seems to have an inner light of its own. She had a tentative look about her as though her dark eyebrows were horizontal question marks. There was a droop to the corners of her mouth-not much, just enough to make you wonder why, and want to comfort her.
“She’ll stir the Canyon for sure,” Father said.
“I don’t know” Mother frowned thoughtfully. “What will the Old Ones say to a marriageable Outsider in the Canyon?”
“Adonday Veeah!” Father muttered. “That never occurred to me. None of our other teachers was ever of an age to worry about.”
“‘What would happen?” I asked. “I mean if one of the Group married an Outsider?”
“Impossible,” Father said, so like the Old Ones that I could see why his name was approved in Meeting last spring.
“Why, there’s even our Jemmy,” Mother worried. “Already he’s saying he’ll have to start trying to find another Group. None of the girls here pleases him. Supposing this Outsider-how old is she?”
Father unfolded the application. “Twenty-three. Just three years out of college.”
“Jemmy’s twenty-four.” Mother pinched her mouth together. “Father, I’m afraid you’ll have to cancel the contract. If anything happened-well, you waited overlong to become an Old One to my way of thinking and it’d be a shame to have something go wrong your first year.”
“I can’t cancel the contract. She’s on her way here. School starts next Monday.” Father ruffled his hair forward as he does when he’s disturbed. “We’re probably making a something of a nothing,” he said hopefully.
“Well, I only hope we don’t have any trouble with this Outsider.”
“Or she with us,” Father grinned. “Where are my cigarettes?”
“On the bookcase,” Mother said, getting up and folding the tablecloth together to hold the crumbs.
Father snapped his fingers and the cigarettes drifted in from the front room.
Mother went on out to the kitchen. The tablecloth shook itself over the wastebasket and then followed her.
Father drove to Kerry Canyon Sunday night to pick up our new teacher. She was supposed to have arrived Saturday afternoon but she didn’t make bus connections at the county seat. The road ends at Kerry Canyon. I mean for Outsiders. There’s not much of the look of a well-traveled road very far out our way from Kerry Canyon, which is just as well. Tourists leave us alone. Of course we don’t have much trouble getting our cars to and fro, but that’s why everything dead-ends at Kerry Canyon and we have to do all our own fetching and carrying-I mean the road being in the condition it is.
All the kids at our house wanted to stay up to see the new teacher, so Mother let them, but by seven thirty the youngest ones began to drop off and by nine there was only Jethro and Kiah, Lizbeth and Jemmy and me. Father should have been home long before and Mother was restless and uneasy. But at nine fifteen we heard the car coughing and sneezing up the draw. Mother’s wide relieved smile was reflected on all our faces.
“Of course!” she cried. “I forgot. He has an Outsider in the car. He had to use the road and it’s terrible across Jackass Flat.”
I felt Miss Carmody before she came in the door. Already I was tingling all over from anticipation, but suddenly I felt her, so plainly that I knew with a feeling of fear and pride that I was of my grandmother, that soon I would be bearing the burden and blessing of her Gift-the Gift that develops into free access to any mind, one of the People or an Outsider, willing or not. And besides the access, the ability to counsel and help, to straighten tangled minds and snarled emotions.