23
Fire at the Schoolhouse!

It was a bitterly cold morning in late January. Wind howled around the corners of the house and whistled through the windows. Snow piled up in deep drifts in front of the door. “The wind has a mean bite to it,” Papa said as he scraped the last bit of porridge out of baby Paul’s little bowl and fed it to him. “I think it’s too cold for Lily and Joseph to walk to school. What do you think, Rachel?”

Mama peered at the thermometer that hung outside the kitchen window. “It’s only eight degrees,” she said. “The wind will make it feel much colder. I’ll get their lunches packed while you get Jim hitched up.”

“Can I ride along?” Dannie said.

Lily sighed when she heard him ask that question. Dannie was getting to be such a tag-along. If he came, there wouldn’t be enough room for everyone on the front seat with Papa. She would be the one to sit alone in the back because she was the oldest. She would be alone and cold. She hoped Papa would say that it was too chilly for Dannie to come, but he didn’t. “If you bundle up warmly you can ride along,” Papa told Dannie. He helped Dannie with his jacket and crouched down to close the hooks and eyes on his coat. “You’ll be able to keep me company on the ride back home.” Papa plucked his hat off the wall peg and headed out to the barn.

Lily hadn’t considered that it might be a lonely drive home for Papa after dropping them at school. She felt a tiny pinch of guilt for not wanting Dannie to tag along.

Lily hopped into the back of the buggy and was pleased that Joseph climbed in beside her. They covered their laps with the thick, fuzzy buggy robes, but it wasn’t long before Lily’s toes were cold. Her breath made big puffy white clouds. She and Joseph tried to see who could make the biggest breath cloud.

In the front seat, Dannie chattered away to Papa. Lily didn’t even try to listen to what he was saying. Dannie had a lot to say but most of it wasn’t very interesting to Lily. Fortunately, Papa was one of the best listeners in the world. He always seemed to enjoy listening to whatever anyone had to say. Even Dannie.

Jim trotted slowly through the wind and the snow. The buggy wheels squealed as they cut through the snow. It was a sound unique to a winter day, and even though Lily liked the snow on the ground, she knew that it took more work for Jim to pull the buggy.

As they crested the last hill before the schoolhouse, Dannie eyes went wide. “Look at all the fire trucks!” he said. “Look! The schoolhouse is burning!”

Lily threw the buggy robe off her lap and stood to look out the storm front. Dannie was right! The schoolhouse was burning. Flames licked at the roof around the chimney. More fire trucks than she had ever seen were parked in the school yard and beside the road. Red lights flashed everywhere. A few firefighters held a big hose and sprayed water on the fire. Lily couldn’t look at it any longer and squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, how terrible! The schoolhouse was burning. They couldn’t have school without a schoolhouse.

Then came a horrible, terrible realization. Her box of beautiful crayons was in that schoolhouse! They would be destroyed. Melted into wax.

Lily would never forget the day when Mama gave the crayons to her. She had just come back from town after buying Lily and Joseph’s school supplies. Mama reached into her shopping bag and gave Joseph a brand-new pack of twenty-four crayons. Lily loved new crayons. She waited for Mama to give her a new pack, just like Joseph’s. Instead, Mama pulled out a pack of sixty-four crayons and handed them to Lily. Sixty-four! She was stunned, speechless. Too happy for words.

Lily spent hours looking through her box of brand-new crayons, memorizing each name: aquamarine, topaz, sunset orange. Even the names were beautiful.

“You’re growing up, Lily,” Mama said. “You’re old enough to have a box of sixty-four crayons. Since fourth graders don’t color very often, I expect you to keep these crayons nice. They should last for the rest of your school years.”

Lily had tried to keep these sixty-four crayons from breaking or smudging against each other. She kept the points nice and sharp. She would miss getting a brand-new box of crayons every year but having one box of sixty-four was better than a new box of twenty-four.

Joseph and Dannie looked at Lily’s box of crayons with longing in their eyes. And they didn’t even like to color! For the first time in Lily’s life, she had something she was not expected to share. When Joseph and Dannie reached fourth grade, Mama said they would get their very own box of sixty-four crayons as well.

Lily had felt important on the first Friday afternoon art period when she took her box of beautiful crayons out of her desk and used them. None of her friends had a big box of crayons. Beth, Malinda, and Hannah admired them, and Effie said that they were too worldly, but Lily was sure that Effie wished she had such a box of crayons.

It always took Lily a long time to color pictures. There were so many different colors to choose from and she wanted to take better care of these crayons than she ever had with her other crayons. They needed to last five years, until she would be finished with school and all grown-up.

But now, as she thought about her beautiful crayons melting in the schoolhouse fire, she wished she had colored with them every day.

Papa pulled Jim to the side of the road. A policeman came up to the buggy. “There won’t be any school today,” he told Papa. The two men talked a little more and then Papa turned Jim and the buggy around to head for home.

“Couldn’t we get my box of crayons out of the schoolhouse?” Lily asked.

Papa turned to look at her. “Your what?”

“My box of sixty-four crayons,” Lily said. “I don’t want them to be burned.”

Papa gave her a sharp glance. “I would never ask anyone to go inside a burning building just to get a box of crayons.”

Of course. Of course he wouldn’t do that. Lily felt embarrassed that she had even asked such a thing. What was she thinking?

As soon as they reached home, Dannie ran inside to tell Mama the exciting news about the fire trucks and the burning schoolhouse. He always had to be first, Dannie did.

Mama looked concerned. “I’m grateful the fire didn’t start when the children were in school.”

Lily hadn’t even stopped to think about something like that. How terrible it would be to be trapped inside a schoolhouse with a fire on the roof. She felt another pinch of guilt. She had been getting all kinds of pinches of guilt today, and it was only morning.

Later that day, Papa hitched Jim to the buggy and went to pick up Grandpa Miller and Uncle Jacob. They wanted to see if there was anything they could do at the schoolhouse. They were gone a long time. Lily kept running to the window to see if Papa was coming home. She wanted to hear if the firemen had been able to stop the fire.

Mama was sewing at her sewing machine. She gave Lily a headscarf to hem by hand. As Lily sewed, she felt very sorry for herself. This had been a terrible day. First, the fire at the schoolhouse. Second, she didn’t know if her box of crayons had survived. Third, she had to sit home and hem a headscarf by hand. She hated to sew. This day was almost too much to bear.

When Lily heard the squeak of buggy wheels in the snow, she dropped the headscarf she had been working on and ran to the window. Papa was pulling up to the barn. “I’m going to help Papa unhitch,” she said, and darted down to the basement to get her coat and boots before Mama could tell her to stay inside and finish the headscarf.

By the time Lily reached him, Papa had already unhitched Jim and was pushing the buggy into the barn. Lily followed Papa into the barn as he led Jim into a stall. She blinked her eyes to try to adjust to the barn’s dim light. Papa curried and brushed Jim, a way to thank him for being such a good buggy horse. Lily stayed quiet as long as she could—at least a full minute. But she had to know! “Did the firemen save the schoolhouse?”

“It didn’t burn to the ground, but the damage is bad. We need to tear down the entire building and build a new one. Everyone is planning to lay all their other work aside so by Monday, Lord willing, there will be a new schoolhouse for all of you children.”

So it was true. Lily’s box of sixty-four beautiful crayons had been ruined. She knew it wasn’t right to care more about the crayons than she did for the schoolhouse. The thing was—the crayons had been her very own, and the schoolhouse had been shared with everyone.

She walked slowly back to the house, kicking and scuffing the fluffy snow. It was only Tuesday. Monday was a long way off. She hoped that Mama wouldn’t ask her to do more hand sewing. There was nothing that she hated as much as hand sewing. Even putting up with Aaron Yoder and Effie Kauffman at school was better than hand sewing.