Mother Lode (25 page)

“You need exercise too.”

The baby was fussing in her kitchen
basket.

“Pick her up, Jorie. You can always calm her
down.”

Jorie took Eliza in his arms, watched her as
she reached inquisitively for his face. “I must draw her,” he
decided, “in all her innocence.”

Jorie and Miss O’Dell continued to converse
before and after school, as well as at lunchtime.

One day he forgot his lunch, and Miss O’Dell
said, “I’ll share mine with you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t Miss. I’ll be fine.”

“No, I won’t eat unless you do too,” she
replied with a twinkle in her eye.

“All right, if you put it that way.”

But he wouldn’t take more than the apple and
one of three small cookies.

At home, his mother pointed to the lunch
pail still on the table, and asked, “How did you manage without
your noon meal?”

“Miss O’Dell offered to share hers with
me.”

“And you accepted?”

“Well, she made me.”

“Made you?”

“She said she wouldn’t eat if I didn’t.”

“Well, I never!”

Although Miss O’Dell usually stayed after
school to check papers, as well as do her chores, one day she
suggested that if Jorie would wait a bit, she could leave early,
and they could walk together until their paths parted. Delighted,
Jorie helped her with the chores — drawing water from the well for
the drinking bucket, bringing in firewood for the stove and
sweeping the floor.

As they walked along the lake road she told
him a little about her life, how she had been brought up on a farm
near Lake Linden, and had then gone to school for two years in
Redridge to get her Life Certificate for teaching. She said she
didn’t know the Houghton-Hancock area very well yet, but had
recently been attending a church, and hoped to become more
acquainted with the people.

“Are you married?” he ventured.

“Goodness, no. If I marry, I’ll lose my
job.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Well, the school board has its reasons, I
suppose.”

“Did you ever have a beau?” Jorie wanted to
take the words back, but Miss O’Dell didn’t seem to mind the
question.

“Once. Back home.” She looked wistful. “He
was an engineer. But he took a job in South America, and I, well, I
studied to be a teacher.”

“You must be lonely, then.”

“You know all about that, don’t you?” She
surprised him.

He reddened. Well, of course, she must have
noticed that he didn’t mingle much with the others. Perhaps that’s
why she’d brought the book, to let him save face by giving him
something else to do at lunchtime.

“I’m sorry.” She touched his shoulder.

“Oh, no ma’am. It’s true, I don’t seem to be
able to mix with the other lads very well. I’m no good at sports
and no one seems to like the things I do. Except,” he swallowed,
“Frederick.”

“I seldom see you together.”

“My mother prefers I not associate with
him.”

He was sure Miss O’Dell saw the twitch in
his cheek. “You would have liked him for a friend?”

Jorie lowered his head and nodded. He told
her what his mother had asked of him.

“Does she often ask you to make
sacrifices?”

Jorie hesitated. Suddenly he was in deeper
than he’d realized. He’d already said too much, but he didn’t know
how to stop.

“Well, sometimes. She believes sacrifice
strengthens character, and is an act of love.” He hesitated. “Do
you believe that, Miss O’Dell?”

She answered slowly. “Sometimes, I suppose,
under certain circumstances. What sort of sacrifices does she ask
of you?”

“Oh, mostly little things — like going to
bed without supper, or sitting for awhile without doing anything —
just thinking.”

“Thinking? About anything in
particular?”

“Yes, she gives me assignments, you could
say.”

Jorie thought that perhaps Miss O’Dell could
see that he was uncomfortable. She said only, “Well, I’m sure she
has her reasons.”

“Like the school board,” he smiled.

They laughed at that, and spontaneously,
without knowing why, Jorie hugged Miss O’Dell. Then he was so
embarrassed he grabbed his lunch pail and ran off.

“What did you and Miss O’Dell talk about
today?” Catherine handed him a scone fresh from the oven.

He looked for an escape. “Where’s
Eliza?”

“I asked you a question.”

Jorie scanned his recent conversation
quickly. What part of it could he tell her without arousing her
ire?

“Not much. She told me she had a beau once,
but he went to South America, and she couldn’t get married anyway,
because the school board didn’t allow it.”

“I see.”

Catherine would bide her time. No point
letting Jorie know how upsetting these conversations were to her,
how inappropriate for a teacher to take a pupil into her
confidence. She would gather more information.

The next week, while Jorie was sweeping the
classroom floor, Miss O’Dell offered him a chocolate. He shook his
head. “I’m not having sweets this week, Miss O’Dell, but thank you
very much.”

She frowned. “Another sacrifice?”

He reddened. “Yes, ma’am. But it’s not
because I did anything wrong. It’s not punishment.”

“Whose idea was it?”

“My mother’s. But I didn’t have to. I never
have to—it’s up to me.”

“Do you always follow her wishes in this
regard?”

“No. But we get along better when I do.”

Miss O’Dell nodded.

“She says it helps to keep our bond
strong.”

Suddenly Miss O’Dell changed the subject.
“Are you planning to go on to college?”

“I’d like to.”

“I think it would be splendid if you could
go to the University of Michigan. Have you heard of it?”

“Yes.” He got excited. “That’s where
Frederick wants to go! It’s in the Lower Peninsula, near Detroit,
isn’t it?”

“Ann Arbor, yes. I wanted very much to go
there, as my beau did. They have several different colleges —
everything from Law School to the College of Literature, Science
and Arts.”

“They allow women?”

“They do now, since 1870. But I didn’t have
the money. I have dreamed of it often — the great variety of
studies, the grand buildings, standing as silent sentries to higher
education.”

Miss O’Dell seemed far away and Jorie waited
patiently for her to come back. When she did, she seemed
embarrassed, and Jorie felt sad to think she’d been denied
something she wanted so badly.

She pulled herself together. “Forgive me, I
do tend to romanticize it.”

“No, it’s all right. I want to know all
about it. Please.”

“There’s a very large square, with a
diagonal walk running from one corner to the other. Almost all the
buildings are built on the perimeter of this square. No runaway
horses to watch out for. Very pastoral, with a few sheep grazing,
I’m told. I can picture it all in my mind.”

Jorie wondered how she knew so much.

“My friend wrote letters for a time,
describing the campus to me. I think it must be beautiful. Oh,
Jorie, you should go!”

The subject of Women’s Suffrage was a hot
topic all across the nation, with raging debates and impassioned
speakers extolling the woes or blessings of women getting the vote.
Beginning in the eighties, it would fire up, then die down, and
every now and then burst into emotional flames again. Miss O’Dell
led a discussion in her classroom, and encouraged everyone to study
both sides of the issue, and speak their mind on the subject.

After school one day she
told Jorie that
The Copper Country Evening
News
had announced they would be accepting
essays addressing the question.

“I think you could write a compelling
essay.”

“For the newspaper?” He was astounded. “Is
this a student project?”

“No, mostly adults will be submitting, I
should imagine. But there’s nothing said to disqualify
students.

He thought about it that night, and looked
at the paper to see what he could find out. He read some old papers
to get filled in on the subject. He could see the issue met with
much resistance from a large portion of the male population. It
evoked such questions as, were women truly equal to men? Since it
was in their very nature to be soft, receptive, and skilled in the
domestic arts, was it fair to expect them to grasp the complexities
of politics? If women were expected to strain their minds regarding
politics, what implications did this have toward other areas of
their lives? What price would marital harmony pay for propagating
such ideas? Some said women would vote as their husbands directed
in any case, so didn’t that put married men at an advantage, giving
them, in effect, two votes?

He asked Miss O’Dell if she knew any more
about the matter.

“Women in Michigan have had the right to
vote in school elections for some time now. Some say that was a
mistake, as it only whets their appetite for more!”

He could see she was getting excited about
it. “Do you have a stand on the subject?”

She smiled, and he reddened.

“Well, of course you’d be for it. Probably
all women are.”

“Would you believe that some are not? They
feel the affairs of the world should be left to the men, and the
business of the home to them.”

“And how do
you
feel about women
getting to vote?”

“I’m definitely in favor of it.”

“It’s the men who vote now, so they’re the
ones who need convincing. If you could add your masculine voice to
others, it might make a real difference.”

Jorie blushed. “I’m only fourteen.”

“They needn’t know that.”

He spent two evenings writing and re-working
his piece. On the third day he presented it to Miss O’Dell after
school. She read it through silently, nodding gently as she did.
When she’d finished, she looked up.

“It’s very good.”

“Do you think it’s convincing enough to
print?”

“You must submit it. You will, won’t
you?”

She offered to mail it for him, and they
waited a week to see what would happen. Finally the essay appeared
in the paper, no mention made of Jorie’s age, stating simply that
it was written by Jordan Radcliff of Hancock, which made Jorie feel
very grown up.

He hadn’t said anything to his family, but they
discovered it on the night it appeared.

His mother was jostling little Eliza on her
lap. “It’s well written, but why didn’t you tell me about it
beforehand? I could have helped you with it.”

“Miss O’Dell didn’t think it needed
improvement.”

The baby was crying.

“Jorie, you are only fourteen. When you wish
to do things that are put before the public, your parents have a
right to know. You represent the entire family when you speak out
like that. You should have shown it to me first.”

“Are you angry with me? I thought you’d be
pleased.”

Catherine looked at Eliza. “Oh, you are the
fussy one.” She got up and put her in her basket. “I must get the
supper on.”

The baby bawled louder than ever. When Jorie
picked her up she stopped crying immediately. It pleased him that
he was able to stop her tears.

Later, after reading the evening paper, his
father slapped him on the back and said, “Good job, lad. A fine
piece of work.”

He was so dumbfounded by this hard-won
praise he stood speechless. But he was proud indeed to have won a
point with this hard taskmaster.

Jorie wondered if he were in love with his
teacher. Sometimes he wished he was as old as she was, and that he
could court her. She was too lovely to ‘die on the vine’, an
expression he’d read in a novel.

He was telling her about the hill behind his
house one day.

“It’s very dark and still, especially when
there’s no moon — a beautiful place to look at the stars and
meteors. And last year it was grand, watching the aurora borealis.
All those colors, bursting from the heavens. I tried to capture it
on paper. But you can’t draw light. Did you see it, Miss
O’Dell?”

“One night I did, yes.”

“Do you have a star line?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s an invisible path that goes from your
special star to you. Only sometimes it is visible, if you
concentrate very hard you can see it. And messages travel along
this line.”

“What kind of messages?”

Jorie caught himself. “I shouldn’t be
telling you all this. I’ll get in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“My mother thinks certain things shouldn’t
go outside the family — most things, actually.”

“Will you be asked to make another
sacrifice?”

“If she feels I disobeyed, she might punish
me.”

“How does she punish you, Jorie?”

Jorie squirmed. “It’s not always the same.
She likes me to think of new ways.” Now he knew he’d gone too
far.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I’d best be
going.”

When he reached home his mother was angry.
“Where were you all this time? With that teacher, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want you staying after school with
her.”

“I like to talk to her.”

“Why? Most lads are glad to get out of
school. It’s not natural, hanging on to the teacher like that,
after everyone’s gone home.”

“I don’t hang on to her. She likes me, and
it’s easy to talk to her.”

“Did you tell her things you shouldn’t? What
have you told her?”

“I mentioned my star line.”

“What must she think of you — spouting such
gibberish? What else?”

“I told her you were very intelligent and
taught me a lot of things.”

She was bearing down on him. “Go on.”

Jorie swallowed. He could hear the crickets
sound their evening song. And then he was riding Peggythis far from
home, straight up his star line.