Excerpt
“Let me think about it,” she said finally, “and I’ll give you my
answer in a day or two. I really should discuss it with Ben before I
make a decision.”
She saw them out with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
She dearly wanted to accept the school board’s offer but she
had no idea what Ben would say. She had a feeling he wouldn’t be
pleased so she was unprepared for his response when she told him
about Dave’s and Arnold’s visit.
“Yeah, why don’t you do it then? It’d give you something to do
instead of spending so much time at McNeill’s.”
Sarah bristled. “Do you feel I’ve been neglecting the house, Ben?
Or you?”
“’Course not.”
“Then you don’t mind your wife going out to work?”
“Can’t see any harm in it. I ain’t saying you should go out cleaning
houses or anythin’. But school teaching … well, that’s different.”
His eyes were bright and she suddenly remembered his reaction
when she had been elected secretary of the Agricultural Association.
Because it was Ben Fielding’s wife who would have the prestigious
position of schoolteacher, he was all for it. But there was no
point in making an issue of it so she let it pass.
After a short silence she said, “Arnold said the school won’t start
until the end of January. That seems awfully late to me.”
“Not for these parts it ain’t. I remember some winters when I was going
to school, we didn’t go back ’til pretty near the end of February.”
“You must have missed out on a lot of school time.”
“Naw, we made up for it in summer because the holidays were
cut short by several weeks. That was the hard part for the boys. In
winter we sat around with nothin’ to do then in summer, when
we could’ve been helping on the farm, we were supposed to be in
school. But most of us weren’t in school, anyway, ’til the threshing
was over.”
“That must have been hard on the boys,” she said.
When he shrugged but didn’t answer, she asked gently, “Did you
like school, Ben?”
“Naw, I hated it. I only got started when I was nine years old ’cause
Colson school wasn’t built ’til then. The closest school was three miles
away and my grandpa wouldn’t let me go that far by myself.”
