Samuel Peterson's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Samuel woke before dawn with the county woman's question still sitting on his chest. He had a board on the wall and desks being built. He had no lessons. He had until Monday, and the county could shut the school before the first child sat down. He pulled on his boots and drove into town. The public library opened at eight. Samuel waited on the bench outside for twenty minutes. When the librarian unlocked the door, he asked for anything on teaching. She pointed him to a shelf in the back. He pulled down state teacher guides, a stack of old readers, a math primer, and a thin book on lesson planning. He sat at a table and copied section headings into a notebook. Reading. Arithmetic. History. Handwriting. He copied the order and the hours. He copied the words the state used. By ten his hand ached. By noon he had six pages. It wasn't enough. State guides told him what topics to cover. They did not tell him how to stand in front of eleven kids on Monday and teach them. He drove to the McAdams ranch. Casey was in the yard filling a water trough. Her two girls watched from the porch with a book between them. She shut off the hose when Samuel pulled in. "County wants a curriculum," he said. "By Monday." She wiped her hands on her jeans. "Come inside." He followed her through the kitchen. She stopped at a hallway shelf and pulled down a leather binder with tabs sticking out the side. She set it on the table. "Three years of lessons," she said. "Reading. Math. Bible. Handwriting. I use it with my girls." Samuel opened it. Each week had a page. Each page had a verse, a math sheet, a reading passage, a short writing task. Casey's handwriting filled the margins. Dates. Notes on what worked. What she'd cut. "You'd let me copy this." "You can have it. I know it by heart." He looked at her. "The county will read every page." "Then they'll read scripture and arithmetic." She tapped the binder. "That's what it is." Samuel closed the cover. He thought of the family Bible on his own shelf, the one his grandfather had carried. He would set it beside the binder on Monday. That was the spine. Everything else could hang from it. "What do I owe you," he said. "Nothing." She looked toward the porch where her girls sat. "Teach them right." He drove home with the binder on the passenger seat. Katherine met him in the driveway. He held it up. "Curriculum," he said. "I'll call the county this afternoon." She took the binder from him and ran a hand across the leather. "This is Casey's." "She gave it to me." Katherine nodded once. Samuel walked inside to make the call.