Chapter Seven

Homer Emerson, superintendent of schools and principal of Franklin Hill R-I Elementary, met with Grace one early morning in the small office she would soon occupy. Homer spent some time reviewing the five or six small mountains of paperwork before him and then gave a weary sigh. Studying Grace, Homer suggested she take some files home to review before her regular work days began. The superintendent was gracious and welcoming, but his eyes were fatigued and his complexion pasty, which Grace found disturbing. Clearly, the man was overworked. In his own tired way, he seemed relieved and excited that Grace was there to shoulder some of his burden. With a good computer and some patience, Grace knew she could bring Homer back up to speed. Her official titles would be Assistant Administrator and School Counselor, but in fact, her role was to bring order to chaos. Homer Emerson had bigger fish to fry.

Grace read the disciplinary reports at home in the growing chill of dusk, curled in front of a fire built by Norm. He had materialized at her back door, laden with wood and to “have a quick look up the chimbly” as he called it, “just in case of a bird or two nestin’ in there.” Once he had given the all-clear on the flue, he cleaned the hearth was while Grace re-heated Ellie’s beef stew. A mouthwatering concoction with chunks of rib eye, potatoes, broad-sliced mushrooms, carrots, Chinese pea pods and a touch of cayenne pepper, it was perfect for a fall evening. Ellie could take basic cooking and create a gourmet meal, good enough to put the Cooking Channel to shame.

When Grace returned to the living room to offer Norm a casserole to take home to Ed and the wives, her neighbor had already disappeared. There was wood stacked in the brick niche alongside a roaring fire, the nip of frost now gone from the small living room. These neighbors were a gift, of that Grace was certain.

Dinner over, Grace curled up in front of the fire and reached for a stack of folders. She reviewed Nadine’s files speculatively, unsurprised by the standard schoolyard pranks. Vandalism at the school ran the gamut from parking a privy “borrowed” from the local hunt club on the opposing team’s end zone (a time-honored Franklin Hill High School senior class homecoming tradition) to removing the pins from the door hinges in the boys’ bathroom. The culprits had been caught in both cases and brief in-school suspensions followed. Marijuana had been found in lockers, but so far the popular drugs methamphetamine and ecstasy had yet to be reported at the middle or high school level. Grace was sure they were there, in the outlying area around Franklin Hill. Missouri claimed the number three spot in the U.S. for meth labs and Grave’s Knot, a local community that had not even warranted a post office, was the most likely source.

The Knot was a community where poverty ran heavy, prosperity unable to reach down the narrow, winding, two lane roads riddled with blind curves and dark hollows. It was said if you went in the Knot during deep fog, you didn’t come out. The road became invisible and the drive treacherous. Most of the children from the Knot would attend school in neighboring Diggsville, but a few fell under the protection of the Franklin Hill school district. Those few children climbed aboard a school bus at 6:20 in the morning, half asleep and rarely appearing to be well fed, much less well-prepared for class.

Grace’s first priority was to appropriate an office cabinet or closet to fill with a stockpile of donated items for those who lacked pencils, notebooks and other school supplies. One of her nieces had already shared with her the story of an art teacher who had harangued a ten-year-old girl in front of the class, threatening that the girl would not be allowed to attend the class if she wasn’t capable of bringing the appropriate and required supplies. The telling factor was that the child was not only from Grave’s Knot, she was a child of color. Her father, a disabled black GI, had returned from his tour of Iraq via Germany, acquiring a pretty blonde German wife along the way. Army disability pay was a slim living with two children and a wife with only minimal English. And work was hard to come by for a man with not one but two missing limbs.

That young girl had stared at the wall, stony faced, while the teacher expressed her disdain for an unprepared pupil and poured her venom into the air, no doubt oblivious to the girl’s need for decent shoes while viciously lamenting the lack of colored pencils.

The fifth grade art class took its own measure of justice for the harshness of their instructor. The next day, as that same ten-year-old walked into class, she bumped into a large boy who then offered to pick up her fallen books. When he returned the stack to her, it included an art supply box full to the brim. Color suffused the face of the girl, but her benefactor insisted, shaking his head when she tried to return the box. “This ain’t charity,” he whispered hoarsely, “It’s ‘cause we don’t like that old witch and we don’t like how she talked to you. So we all just put in some extra stuff that we had laying around.” Then he grinned at her, a wide unassuming smile of camaraderie, and the light had come into her eyes. A friendship was formed.

Grace designed a mental picture of herself with stocks of fresh pencils and crayons, notebooks in bright colors, boxes of Kleenex at the ready, standing in the small office and handing them to the dark-haired shoplifter. Then seeing a smile on the face of that child. Of course, in her fantasy the child was dressed in a crisp orange sweatshirt with freshly washed hair and pink cheeks.

She could see herself hugging the small girl and sending her off to class, mentally adding a new backpack to the pleasant picture.

Her shoulders sagged slightly as the fantasy faded. There would be twenty or thirty or fifty little girls and boys without supplies, teenagers without gym clothes and children every day without lunch money. There would be shivering kids without coats, gloves or hats. And how many would there be needing shoes? It was not one child, it was over a hundred children, some with parents, some without. Children needing supplies, clothing, love, attention, a warm meal and the morale boost of teachers who wanted them in class and were god-willing, able, and ready to teach. Grace sighed.

The file fell from her lap, scattering its contents across the rug. She shook her head, back to reality, and reached to pick up the papers. A Post-it note fell to the floor. “Mrs. Gilmer in K-1 called again to report Gina P ‘unwashed’ in class. No report filed with Children’s Services. Noted in record.” Grace read the crumpled note, written the previous March, thinking the looping scrawl must be Homer Emerson’s. She could fairly feel the dismay in Homer’s note. The child was coming to school without a bath. Homer recorded it dutifully and moved on. He did not address the issue because he felt incapable of correcting the problem. Grace decided to assume the best of Homer. She fingered the note again and then thoughtfully placed it back in the folder, pressing out the creases. She would keep an eye out for Gina P.

In the meantime, she took the growing list she was making and added an item. “See if local churches will provide extra bag lunches.” Peanut butter and jelly here, a bologna sandwich there and a couple of kids would be fed for another day. Franklin Hill prided itself on being a church-going community. It was time to call for some good works from those that preached so loud and long. Make them put their money where their mouths were.

Grace knew that the federal lunch assistance program didn’t always reach the families that needed it. Then there was the embarrassment of carrying a bright yellow lunch card that labeled you a “free lunch” child. Grace made a note to look into how the Franklin Hill system worked and see if it could be changed to avoid embarrassment for those students. She herself had worked in the school cafeteria to pay for her own lunch when she turned twelve. The cooks in the cafeteria had saved butter and bread for her, taking her under their wing and seeing that she left the kitchen with extra snacks. These days, the school district wouldn’t allow a child to run a garbage disposal or commercial dishwasher as she had done. Those jobs were now filled by men and women who could find no other work in Franklin Hill.