Bittersweet Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #5): A Novel (7 page)

Though it wasn’t always evident to others, Birdie Wharton had a love for her pupils. Not just a concern, a love. At least for some of them, she thought honestly, and she strove to find something about the most unlovely to appreciate. All of them, she insisted on believing, had some worthiness, like buried treasure, and she worked to unearth it, feeling gratified when a rare flash of beauty or originality shone from some child’s heretofore barren personality. Their minds, she was aware constantly, were like blank slates waiting for what she, their teacher, would write upon them.

Birdie understood that the preceding teacher had walked the room, from the opening of the school day until dismissal, with a strap in her hand, quite successfully keeping order. But along
with an orderly room, she had all but withered any spontaneity. Her sternness had also engendered a fear, a distrust, that made the children wary, suspicious, hesitant of opening up or speaking up, even when a new teacher had come along.

Slowly yet surely under Birdie Wharton’s quiet and firm but approachable demeanor, the atmosphere was changing: Vigor and creativity were springing to life again in the Bliss school. She would rather deal with the rambunctious actions, the daring opinions that surfaced from time to time, than to prod sheeplike little human beings to dare to open their mouths.

Little Tiny, perhaps first of all, showed signs of being liberated when he lifted his hand and made his request to wind the clock. She should have recognized that moment for what it was; she should have found some way to encourage his venture into liberation. But fearing a wave of such requests, she had, without consideration, refused him. Little Tiny, rather than being daunted, had then urged the winding of the clock on first-grader Ernie Battlesea. Recognizing another bid for self-expression, Birdie should have... the truth was, she hadn’t known what to do. And under the speculative eyes of the other pupils, she had punished—halfheartedly, it’s true—the offender.

Little Tiny’s sin, if he had committed one, had been, in Miss Wharton’s eyes, to urge the daring act on a smaller child; she might have applauded, inwardly, if Little Tiny had shown a spark of gumption and had himself attempted to wind the Drop Octagonal. Still, she regretted her punishment of the miscreant, wondering if it would forever crush any spark of individuality in the boy. But she hadn’t reckoned on Little Tiny’s ebullient spirit. Thankfully, he seemed none the worse for the correction, stern though it had been.

And Ernie’s tendency to allow others do his thinking for him was challenged; Ernie would think twice before he was so easily led into trouble again. Miss Wharton meant for each child to be a thinker, not a mindless follower.

She had come to know them all so well during the year: the Nikolai children from the Old Country, Hungary in this instance—the twins Helma and Velma, Karl, close pal of Little Tiny, Frankie,
the smallest; several Nikolais had finished school and were gone, but there were two or three more at home, and Miss Wharton could envision a continuing parade of Nikolais attending school in the years ahead. Then there was Ernie, with the big, innocent eyes and the endearing grin, and Harold Buckley, “Buck,” the oldest in the classroom and soon to be gone, given to tormenting and teasing, full of smirks and silliness. If there was one pupil Birdie found hard to love, it was Buck. As large as he was, he was difficult, very difficult indeed, to control. More than once she had faced him down, unrelenting, until he had given in, either obeying or backing down, though always reluctantly.

But then there was Little Tiny. Little Tiny had wiggled his way into Miss Wharton’s heart in a way that no child had since—

There were some things that didn’t bear thinking about if one were to keep one’s equilibrium, one’s peace of mind, one’s sanity.

Abruptly, Miss Wharton checked her thoughts of the group that claimed her attention all week, Little Tiny in particular, and turned to the letter lying before her on the desk.

Like the one before it, received a week ago, it was simply addressed to Miss Bernadine Wharton, Bliss, Saskachewan (without the
t
) Territory. Like the one before it, it had no return address. Would it, like the one before it, be an astonishing revelation of some stranger’s interest in her—not as a teacher but as a woman?

S
ilence at last, inside and out. There was only the everlasting ticking of the Drop Octagonal. After the events of the last hour or so, Birdie was inclined to view the clock balefully: It certainly hadn’t proved to brighten her day; rather, it had pointed out as never before, tick by dogged tick, the relentless passing of time.

Every child, every horse, every rig, was gone. Now was the time to read the letter. Hand outstretched, Birdie hesitated.

Should she wait until she got home? She studied the idea for a moment, then reproached herself for her foolishness. Why was she hesitant? Why couldn’t she open the envelope, remove the letter, and read its contents? Was her life so empty, so void, as to find some small sense of anticipation and excitement in the waiting missive? In light of the Drop Octagonal’s revelation, possibly.

Considering, full of an unaccustomed self-evaluation, she wavered, drumming her fingers on the desk, studying the envelope. Being a teacher and accustomed to looking for errors, she noticed, on this envelope as on the last one, the word
Saskatchewan
had been misspelled—the
t
had been omitted, making it
Saskachewan
. Not
an unusual mistake; many folks had trouble not only in writing the word but in saying it without getting their tongue tangled until practice made the word flow more readily, even as the river itself—from which the province took its name—flowed from its sources along the Rocky Mountains, on and on, its deep channel splicing through the land, a sprawling, giant Y.

Birdie, caught up momentarily in musing on the river and its glorious history, rose and turned to the wall and the map case, a new addition to the schoolroom this year, due primarily to her appeal to the school board. Second to the Drop Octagonal in importance in the minds of the children but first in importance in the mind of the teacher, the maps—six of them: Canada, the United States and Mexico, Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe, each “oil colored and backed with heavy cloth”—opened the world to those who were settled, probably forever, in one small, obscure corner of it. Impulsively she pulled down the map of Canada.

“Here, right here.” Her finger followed the North Saskatchewan’s beginning at the foot of the Saskatchewan Glacier and along its thousand-mile downhill plunge to Lake Winnipeg. She traced the South Saskatchewan as it branched toward the prairies and located Prince Albert and Bliss in the center of the Y where the North and South branches met.

“Kisiskatchewan,” the Indians called it—the river that flows rapidly. Up its waters had come the French in their canoes; in her imagination Birdie could hear the cadence of their songs as with a strong, digging rhythm they pulled against the stream. Laden with furs they floated back down, their canoes settled deep in the tawny water. Then and later, always, the river was a highway, slowly taking men and their supplies up, quickly and easily bringing them downstream, headed east. Pelt by luxurious pelt the wilderness riches were transported to civilization.

Here in this green and flourishing garden, hemmed in by the river, fate had seen fit to transport her, Bernadine Wharton. The parkland, or bush, it was called; and it was beautiful and it was fragrant, in its wild way. But it was deceiving, so deceiving. The
Saskatchewan way was not an easy way, not a soft way, turning out men and women of endurance and strength or breaking them. Axe stroke by axe stroke they literally carved out their kingdoms—sixty acres of land for a filing fee of ten dollars. By the thousands they came, eventually tens of thousands, for some of the best free land remaining in the world, many of them investing their very lives before they were done.

And she, Birdie Wharton, could file for none of it. Penniless, she could buy none of it. Still, she felt it to be her own; she counted herself a pioneer.

As Miss Wharton the teacher, she strove to instill in her pupils an understanding of the size and scope of their new homeland as it stretched from the wilderness of the Island of Vancouver on the west to Newfoundland—called Cradle of the Wave by the Indians—on the east. She reminded them of the freedom it offered all comers; she challenged them to make it the finest place on Earth.

Flushed with her thoughts and the sight of the matchless country stretched out before her, so much of it still unexplored, most of it still unsettled, Birdie snapped the map back into place and turned, cheeks pink, eyes bright, face alive with her enthusiasm. Turned, to find a man of massive proportions standing, hat in hand, on the other side of her desk.

Big Tiny.

Big Tiny—Wilhelm Kruger—was not unknown to Birdie. Church, Sunday dinners, and school functions such as the Christmas “concert” and Field Day had been times of getting acquainted with the parents of her pupils. Big and Little Tiny lived on his homestead alone, wife and mother having met the fate of so many women of the day and place—death in childbirth.

Perhaps it was his size, perhaps it was the twinkle in his eyes, but Big Tiny Kruger tended, for some foolish reason, to intimidate Birdie Wharton. And so when she spoke now, it was sharply.

“Heavens! Don’t creep up on a person that way!”

“Creep?” Big Tiny repeated, his cheeks crinkling as laughter touched his eyes. “Me, creep?”

It
was
ludicrous, having been wrung from Birdie in reaction to being found defenseless, relaxed, guard down.

The pacs on the big man’s feet—a leftover reminder of colder days—had quite successfully silenced his advance from door to desk.

“You surprised me, that’s all,” Birdie defended, making an attempt to settle her ruffled feathers.

“I should have knocked,” Big Tiny was quick to offer. “I’m sorry.”

Knocked, on an open door? And apologizing for not doing so?

Birdie found herself flushing, a most unacceptable reaction. Would a flush—caused by aggravation—look like a blush? Birdie Wharton despised, above all things, blushing, simpering women.

“I was studying the map,” she felt impelled to explain. “That’s what had my attention.”

“Ya, I saw.” Big Tiny, a dozen years or so from the Old Country and speaking and reading English very well, still showed strong traces of his roots in his accent and speech. “It has Bliss on it?” he asked, his gaze going over her head to the maps, once again neatly rolled.

“No, Bliss is far too small. But it does have Prince Albert—”

“Ya?” Interest lit the broad face, shone in the blue eyes, eyes that showed an intelligence often overlooked because of the slow speech, the patience, the stolidity of the man. “Would you mind pointing it out to me?”

“Of course not.” Actually, it was the delight of her life, and Birdie turned again to the wall, pulled down the map of Canada, and fondly pointed out the meandering line that was the river Saskatchewan, locating Prince Albert and the Y and Bliss’s approximate location.

“There are no red men along the Saskatchewan, I’ve heard it said,” the big man said.

“You are right,” Birdie said, surprised. “Swarthy, brown, or dusky is what they are. The explorers and fur traders recognized that and stated as much in their journals. That’s probably where you learned it. Are you a reader, Mr. Kruger?”

“Only a little, I’m afraid,” Big Tiny said quickly. “Books—they are hard to come by. And when I was in school, in the East, we never studied about the Cree in the territories.”

Quick to notice an opportunity, Birdie said, “I could see that certain books come your way, if you’re interested. Are you, Mr. Kruger?”

“Very much. I’d like that!” Big Tiny said from his great height. “You could send them with Little Tiny—that is, Nelman. I’d take good care of them and see they get back to you safely.”

Birdie looked up speculatively at the big man, face shining with good humor and expectation. “Did you know,” she said on impulse, “that among the chiefs—Sweet Grass, Poundmaker, Red Pheasant, and the others—Big Child was actually a small man for an Indian?”

Big Tiny, so called because he was large, threw back his head and guffawed delightedly. Apparently there was drollery in Indian camps, as in white.

“Right here,” Birdie said, pointing to the map and in spite of herself taking pleasure in the sharing of knowledge, “in 1876—not long ago—on a grassy knoll on the Carlton side of the North Saskatchewan, white man and Indian eventually met; the Indians had finally recognized the need to treat. The Lieutenant Governor stood regally on the required piece of red carpet, red-coated Mounties stood by stiffly, and the Indians, in full regalia, advanced majestically—they love this sort of thing, you know, pomp and display. Soon the pipe stem—”

“The symbol upon which no woman must ever look,” Big Tiny interjected. Surprised again, Birdie lost her thought momentarily.

“Why, yes,” she admitted. “Though heaven knows why. Did you also know,” and Birdie’s eyes snapped, “what happened to women when the missionaries began baptizing the Indians?”