The Chatham School Affair (5 page)

Then the door of the cottage opened, and Miss Channing walked out onto the cool grass of the front lawn. She was barefoot, and as she came toward us, I noticed that my father’s eyes dropped toward her feet, his lips parting. Then, just as suddenly, he returned to himself, opened the door of the car, and stepped out.

“I have only a moment,” he said a little stiffly and hurriedly, like a man who had more important things to do.

Miss Channing continued to move toward him, her feet padding softly across the grass.

“But I wanted to make sure that everything was in order,” my father added in the same vaguely harried tone. I remained inside the car, but despite its dusty windshield, I could see that she had washed her hair so that it now hung wet and glistening in the darkening air, giving her that appearance of female dishabille that has forever after seemed so beautiful to me.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” my father continued.

She came to a halt perhaps no more than three feet from where he stood. “Thank you for sending Henry to me this morning,” she said. “There was really nothing more for him to do.”

“Yes, he told me that.” My father paused for a moment, lifting his eyes upward slightly as he reached into the pocket of his jacket. “I wanted to bring you this,” he said, drawing out a large envelope. “It’s the schedule for the school. It tells you when your classes are held, when you take lunch, that sort of thing. You should bring it with you Monday morning. I would have mailed it to you, of course,” my father added quickly as she took the envelope from him, “as I generally do with the other teachers. But then, you were in Africa, and so … well …”

A silence fell over him and I expected him to break it with a quick good-bye, then get back into the car. Instead, he uttered a question that seemed very odd to me. “Do you ever plan to have a family of your own, Miss Channing?”

I could tell that she’d never been asked such a question, so ordinary and domestic, nor once considered the way of life it suggested. “I don’t know,” she answered quietly.

“It has its compensations,” my father said, though more to himself, it seemed, than to her. “Family life.”

She stared at him, puzzled, as I was, by his remark.

He looked suddenly embarrassed by what he’d said, like a man who’d inadvertently revealed some small, sad aspect of himself. Then he spoke hurriedly again, resuming his schoolmaster pose. “Well, Henry and I had best be getting home. Good night, Miss Channing.”

“Good night,” she answered, the same quizzical look in her eyes as she watched my father stride back to his car, get in, and pull away.

We arrived back home a few minutes later. My mother had prepared one of her pot roasts and throughout the meal my father appeared no different than usual, eating with the same careful attention to manners, dabbing the white cloth napkin at the corners of his mouth after almost every bite.

But when it was over, rather than retiring to the parlor as was his custom, he walked down Myrtle Street to the school, saying only that he had “a few last minute details” he wanted to look over before classes started the following Monday morning.

My mother didn’t question him. Nor did I. But toward sunset, while I was sitting on the front steps of our house, I glanced up and saw my father standing in the school’s bell tower, alone, facing out over the village. It was only minutes before nightfall, and a great stillness had settled over everything. I knew that from his place in the bell tower my father could stare out over all the roofs
of Chatham and watch the low, unhurried beam of the lighthouse as it swept smoothly across the darkening sea, then over the village and finally beyond it, to the ebony waters of Black Pond.

I have always believed that at that moment he was thinking of Miss Channing, of her oval eyes and wet, glistening hair, seeing her again as he had earlier that afternoon, her bare feet nestled in a cool bed of dark green grass, his eyes closing for a moment as he reveled in that vision, then opening again, focused now upon the village, the school he’d labored all his life to build, the house on Myrtle Street, its small lights, his mind accepting without bitterness or rancor the path that he had taken, along with all the obligations it required, yet recognizing, too, as I believe he must have, that there was a certain shuddering ecstasy he would never know.

I
’ve kept only a single photograph to remind me of what I was, what I aid, all that followed after that. It is a grainy photograph, artlessly taken from the roof of one of the buildings across from the courthouse, its vista crosshatched with wooden poles and power lines, but clear enough to show the swarm of men and women who’d gathered around the building that day, their numbers pouring down its wide cement steps. And yet, it wasn’t the crowd of people that had caught my attention when I’d first seen it, but a single, crudely written sign thrust up from among them, its message scrawled in huge black letters:
Hang her
.

It is a phrase that has returned to me often over the years, and which can still prompt my deepest speculations. Especially given the fact that on her arrival at Chatham School, no one would have been able to suggest that Miss Channing might ever stir up such violent emotions, or even that her time among us would be any different from that of the many other teachers who’d come and gone over the years.

On that first day, as I stood with the other boys, all of us gathered in front of the school to hear my father’s customary opening remarks, I saw her turn onto Myrtle
Street, her arms at her sides, no books or papers in them, no overstuffed briefcase dangling from her bare hand.

In all other ways, however, she’d done her best to blend in, wearing a plain white dress with a pleated skirt, and a pair of square-heeled black shoes with large silver buttons. She’d changed her hair as well, so that it was now wound in a tight bun at the back of her neck and secured with an ornate silver clasp. I could almost imagine her standing before the mirror in her bedroom a moment before leaving the cottage, looking herself over, her mind pronouncing an identity that—given the exalted vision of life her father had presented to her—she may well have found rather uninspired:
School marm—

“Good morning, Miss Channing,” I said as she passed by.

She glanced toward me, smiled, then continued on across the lawn, over to where the other teachers were assembled. I saw a few of them turn and greet her, Mr. Corbett, the math teacher, even going so far as to remove his old felt hat. Later, some of them would tell their fellow villagers that she’d never really fit in, that from the very beginning she’d set herself apart, telling the boys grim and savage tales from her travels with her father, creating dark and bloody landscapes in their young minds. Some went even further, claiming powers of clairvoyance, as if they’d known all along that Miss Channing was destined to be the prime mover in what Professor Peyton would later call with typical hyperbole “a grim Shakespearean orgy of violence and death.” “I saw trouble the minute I laid eyes on her,” I heard my history teacher Mrs. Cooper say one afternoon in Warren’s Sundries, though I’m sure she’d seen nothing of the kind.

Of course, the one thing that did unquestionably separate Miss Channing from me other teachers at Chatham School was her youth and beauty, and from the way my fellow students watched her as she approached that
morning, it was clear that their interest in her went far deeper than the usual curiosity inspired by a new teacher.

“Who’s that?” I heard Jamie Phelps ask Winston Bates, poking him with his elbow.

I took the opportunity to demonstrate the insider’s knowledge I possessed as the headmaster’s son. “That’s the new teacher,” I told them authoritatively. “She came all the way from Africa.”

“That’s where she got that bracelet, I guess,” Jamie said, pointing to the string of brightly colored wooden beads that circled Miss Channing’s wrist, the very one Mr. Parsons would later find at the edge of Black Pond, broken by then, the beads scattered across the muddy ground.

As usual on the first day of classes, my father stood at the entrance of the school, the teachers and administrative staff to his left, the boys to his right, all of them dressed in what amounted to the uniform of Chatham School, white shirts, black trousers, gray ties, and black suspenders. Dark gray jackets would be added later in the fall.

“All right, let me have your attention, please,” my father began. “I want to welcome all of you back to Chatham School. Most of us are very familiar with the routine, as well as each other, but we have a new teacher this year, and I want to introduce her to you.”

He motioned for Miss Channing to join him on the stairs, which she did, moving gracefully beside him, glancing first at her fellow teachers, then at the boys.

“This is Miss Channing,” my father said. “She has come all the way from Africa to join us here at Chatham School, and she’ll be teaching art.”

There was polite applause, then Miss Channing stepped back into the cluster of teachers and listened quietly while my father continued his introductory remarks, going over the necessary administrative details, reminding the boys of various school rules, that there
was to be no cheating, no plagiarism, no profanity, no smoking, nor any drinking of alcoholic beverages, as he put it, “anywhere, anytime, for any reason, ever.”

I have often wondered what came into Miss Channing’s mind as she listened to my father recite the rules by which we were all to conduct ourselves at Chatham School, rules that stressed humility, simple honesty, and mutual faith, and which stood four-square against every form of recklessness and betrayal and self-indulgence. How different they must have seemed to the visionary teachings her father had laid down, how deeply rooted in the very kind of humble, uninspired, and profoundly predictable village life he had taught her to revile.

Once my father had finished, the boys already shifting restlessly and muttering impatiently to each other, he clapped his hands together once, then uttered a final remark whose tragic irony he could not have guessed. “Welcome to another splendid year in the history of Chatham School,” he said.

I entered Miss Channing’s class about an hour later.

It was a small room, formerly used to store school furniture and various supplies, but now converted to other purposes. It was not physically connected to the school, but stood apart from it in a little courtyard to the rear. Still, it seemed adequate enough, with three long tables lined up one behind the other in front of the much smaller one that served as Miss Channing’s desk. On the far wall, half a dozen gray aprons hung from wooden pegs beside a metal cabinet upon which someone had painted the words art supplies in large white letters. In the far corner a few wooden sculpting pedestals had been stacked base to base, the legs of the upper pedestals stretching almost to the room’s tin ceiling.

As for art, there were portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, along with a framed photograph of the current president, Calvin Coolidge.

There were only five of us in the class, but we scattered ourselves widely throughout the room. Ralph Sherman and Miles Clayton took possession of the rear table, Biff Conners and Jack Slaughter the middle one, leaving the front table to me.

Miss Channing didn’t smile at us or say a word of welcome as we entered the room. She’d already placed one of the sculpting pedestals in front of her, and as we filed in, she began to knead the clay gently, hardly glancing up from it as we took our seats. Then, once we’d taken our places, she drew her hands from the clay and looked at us, her eyes moving from one boy to another. She did not acknowledge me in any way.

“I’ve never taught art,” she said. “Or been taught it by anyone else.”

Her fingers moved over the clay’s wet surface, shaping it with slow, graceful strokes as she searched for her next remark.

“When my father died, I went to live with my uncle and his family in Africa,” she said finally. “He had a mission near a village where the natives lived in wooden huts. It was just a clearing in the plain. The people who lived in the village did all their cooking in their huts, and there was no way for the smoke to get out except through a small hole in the roof. When they came out of their huts in the morning, a sheet of smoke trailed behind them.” Her eyes lifted toward us, and I saw them take on a certain wonder and delight. It was as if in telling stories, she could find a voice to teach in, a way of reaching us. “Like wings that dissolved in the light,” she said.

“That’s where I learned to paint.” She was kneading the clay more quickly now, in short, quick thrusts. “In Africa.” She stopped suddenly and settled her eyes upon us. I could tell that a thought had just occurred to her, that in the very course of talking to us she’d discovered something. “That’s where I learned that to be a painter or a sculptor, you have to change your senses,” she said.
“Switch them around, so that you
see
with your fingertips and
feel
with your eyes.”

I didn’t see Miss Channing again until much later that same day. The last class had been dismissed for nearly an hour, and I was busily doing my assigned tasks around the school.

Under my father’s leadership, it was the policy of Chatham School to combine academics with physical labor, and so from the time of his arrival, each boy was assigned various chores. Some of the boys swept the classrooms and the dormitory, some washed the sheets and blankets, some worked on the grounds, pruning shrubbery or mowing grass or maintaining the playing fields. In the winter everyone shoveled snow or took turns unloading coal.

On that particular afternoon it was my job to return any books that lay on the library tables to their proper shelves, carefully keeping them in order according to the Dewey decimal system Mrs. Cartwright, the school librarian, had established. After that I was to dust the bookshelves with the old feather duster my mother had donated to the school after buying a new one at Mayflower’s a month before.

It was nearly four by the time I’d finished. Mrs. Cartwright surveyed the now-empty tables and ran a finger over the top of one of the bookshelves. “Very good, Henry,” she said when she found it clear of dust. With that statement of satisfaction I was released for the remainder of the afternoon.