"I just know." Loo Ree put the book down gently, sliding her finger out reluctantly, it seemed to me. "It would be useless to try to thank you for the help you have given me. There's no way to repay you and you will never know how far your influence will be felt."

I smiled ruefully. "That's nothing new to a teacher. Especially a first grade teacher. We're used to it."

"Then it's goodbye." Loo Ree began to fade and pale away.

"Wait!" I stood up, holding tight to my desk. My weariness set tears in my eyes and thickened my voice. "All my life I'll think I was crazy these past few months. I'll wonder and wonder what you are and why you are, if you don't it seems to me the least you can do is tell me a little bit. Tell me something so I'll be able to justly to myself all this time I've spent on you and the shameful way I have neglected my children. You can't just say goodbye and let it go at that" I was sobbing, tears trailing down my face and smearing the bottoms of my gla.s.ses.

Loo Ree hesitated and then flooded back brighter.

"It's so hard to explain-"

"Oh, foof!" I cried defiantly, taking off my gla.s.ses and, smearing the tearsacross both lenses with a tattered Kleenex. "So I'm a dope, a moron! If I can explain protective coloration to my six-year-olds and the interdependence of man and animals, you can tell me something of what the score is!" I scrubbed the back of my hand across my blurry eyes. "If you have to, start out 'Once upon a time."' I sat down-hard.

Loo Ree smiled and sat down, too. "Don't cry, teacher. Teachers aren't supposed to have tears."

"I know it," I sniffed. "A little less than human-that's us.

"A little more than human, sometimes." Loo Ree corrected gently. "Well then, you must understand that I'll have to simplify. You will have to dress the bare bones of the explanation according to your capabilities.

"Once upon a time there was a cla.s.sroom. Oh, cosmic in size, but so like yours that you would smile in recognition if you could see it all. And somewhere in the cla.s.sroom something was wrong. Not the whispering and murmuring-that's usual. Not the pinching and poking and tattling that goes on until you get so you don't even hear it." I nodded. How well I knew.

"It wasn't even the sudden blow across the aisle or the unexpected wrestling match in the back of the room. That happens often, too. But something else was wrong. It was an undercurrent, a stealthy, sly sort of thing that has to be caught early or it disrupts the whole cla.s.sroom and tarnishes the children with a darkness that will never quite rub off.

"The teacher could feel it-as all good teachers can-and she spoke to the princ.i.p.al. He, being a good princ.i.p.al, immediately saw the urgency of the matter and also saw that it was beyond him, so he called in an Expert."

"You?" I asked, feeling quite bright because I had followed the a.n.a.logy so far.

Loo Ree smiled. "Well, I'm part of the Expert." She sobered. "When the Expert received the call, he was so alarmed by the very nature of the difficulty that he rushed in with a group of investigators to find where the trouble lay." Loo Ree paused. "Here I'll have to stretch my a.n.a.logy a little.

"It so happened that the investigators were from another country. They didn't know the language of the school or the social system that set up the school-only insofar as its resultant structure was concerned. And there was no time for briefing the investigators or teaching them the basics of the cla.s.sroom. Time was too short because if this influence could not be changed, the entire cla.s.sroom would have to be expelled-for the good of the whole school. So it had to be on-the-job training. So-" Loo Ree turned out her hands and shrugged.

"Gee!" I let out my breath with the word and surrept.i.tiously wiped my wet palms against my skirt. "Then you're one of them, finding out about our world."

"Yes," Loo Ree replied. "And we believe now that the trouble is that the balance between two opposing influences has been upset and, unless we can restore the balance-catastrophe."

"The Atom Bomb!" I breathed. "The princ.i.p.al must have found radioactivity in our atmosphere-" I gleaned wildly from my science fiction.

"Atom bomb?" Loo Ree looked puzzled. "No. Oh, no, not ,the atom bomb. It is much more important than that. Your world really ought to get over being soscared of loud noises and sudden death. If you would all set your minds to some of the more important things in your life, you wouldn't have such loud noises and so many sudden deaths to fear."

"But the hydrogen bomb-"

"At the risk of being trite," smiled Loo Ree, "there are fates worse than death. It's not so important how you die or how many die with you. Our group is much more concerned with how you live and how many live as you do. You should be more concerned with living. I think you are, individually, because I have seen you, in your cla.s.sroom, distressed by a symptom of this unbalance.

Or rather, symptoms of symptoms of the unbalance.

"Anyway, in the course of my a.s.signment, I followed Marsha to you. Of course the mere mechanical learning to read was no problem, but I needed to learn all the extra, unwritten things in the use of a language that give it its meat and motive power in society.

"Besides that, you know that school is usually the first experience of a child outside the home environment. His first school years are a large factor in determining his adjustment to society. So I have been observing, first hand, the cla.s.sroom procedure, the methods-"

"You've been observing!" I gasped. "Oh lordy, why didn't you warn me?"

"The results would have been invalid if I had," smiled Loo Ree.

"But the times I've hollered at them-that I've lost my temper-that I've spanked-that I've fallen so short-"

"Yes, and the times you've comforted and wiped noses and answered questions and tied hair ribbons and fed the hungry wonder in their eyes.

"However, I am ready to submit my data now. We might be able to start the turning of the balance because of what I have learned from you. You'd better pray, as I do, that we can get started before the unbalance becomes irreversible. If that happens-" Loo Ree shivered and stood up. "So there it is, teacher and I must go now."

"But wait. What shall I do about Marsha? You know what has been happening to her. What can I do to help her? I know that she's awfully small compared to a world or a cosmos, but she is lost and unhappy-"

"A child is a cosmos and a world," said Loo Ree. "But you have handled such problems before and you don't really need my help. The trouble would have arisen even if I hadn't come. She just happened to choose me to express her difficulty. You can handle it all right.

"Good-bye, teacher."

"I'm glad you came to me," I said humbly. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Loo Ree.

She was suddenly a tall pillar of light in the dusky room. As natural as breathing, I slid to my knees and bowed my head above my clasped hands. I felt Loo Ree's hand briefly and warmly on my head and when I looked up, there was nothing in the room but the long, long shadows and me.

The next morning, I sat at my desk, feeling so empty and finished inside that it seemed impossible to go on. Loo Ree had been more of my life than I hadknown. All this time she had been giving more to me than I to her. Now I felt as lost and weak as a convalescent trying to walk alone after months in bed.

The children felt my abstraction and, stimulated by the nearness of the holidays, got away with murder all morning. Just before recess the whole situation erupted. Marsha suddenly threw herself across the aisle at Stacy and Bob who had been teasing her. She hit Stacy over the head with a jigsaw puzzle, then she dumped her brand-new box of thirty-six Crayolas over Bob's astonished head and jumped up and down on the resultant mess, screaming at the top of her voice.

Awed by the size and scope of the demonstration, the rest of the cla.s.s sat rigid in their seats. A red Crayola projected from the back of the neck of Bob's T-shirt and Stacy, too astonished to cry, sat looking down at a lap full of jigsaw pieces.

I gathered up the shrieking, board-stiff Marsha and dismissed the cla.s.s, apprehensive row by apprehensive row, then I sat down on the little green bench and doubled Marsha forcibly to a sitting position on my lap. I rocked her rebellious head against my sweatered shoulder until her screams became sobs and her flailing feet drooped laxly against my skirt. I pressed her head closer and bent my cheek to her hair.

"'There, there, Marsha. There, there." I rocked back and forth. "What's the matter, honey-one, what's the matter?" Her sobs were hiccoughy gasps now.

"n.o.body likes me. Everybody's mean. I hate everybody." Her voice rose to a wail.

"No, you don't, Marsha. You don't hate anybody. Is it about Loo Ree?" Her sobs cut off abruptly. Then she was writhing in my arms again, her voice rising hysterically.

"Marsha!" I shook her, with no effect, so I turned her over briskly and spatted her good and hard a couple of times across her thighs just below her brief skirts, then turned her back into my arms.

She burrowed into my shoulder, her two arms hugging one of mine tight.

"Loo Ree's gone away," she sobbed.

"I know," I said, and one of my tears feel on her tumbled hair. "She was my friend, too. I feel bad, too." Marsha knuckled her eyes with one hand.

"She was my most special friend, and she went away:"

"She had to go," I soothed. "She was so special she couldn't stay."

"But I didn't want her to go," cried Marsha.

"Neither did I," I patted her back.

"She told me lotsa stories." Marsha struggled to a sitting position. "She showed me pretty things. She loved me."

"Yes, she loved us. And just think, we can remember her all our lives. When you grow up, you can tell your children all about her."

"I'll tell them all about her," sighed Marsha, leaning against me and shutting her eyes. "When I grow up." "When you grow up," I whispered, looking past her head and through the schoolroom wall out into the troubled world. "When you grow up."

I hugged her head to me tight and listened and listened for the creak of a changing balance wondering, with a catch in my heart for all the Marshas and Bobs and their growing up-Which way is it tipping?

THE CLOSEST SCHOOL.

WELL, WE were the closest school.

The rolling gra.s.slands stretched all dry and tawny from the front of the school up into the hills until the slopes got too steep for the gra.s.s to cling. Behind the school was my store and in front of it was the thin white-st.i.tched black tape of the main highway and beyond that the rolling gra.s.slands stretched all dry and tawny up into the hills until the slopes- At right angles to both the school and store and facing another way was the church and in front of the church the rolling gra.s.slands stretched all- The last direction was faced by the Community Center and the rolling gra.s.slands- Isolation, yeah, and plenty of it-it takes plenty of acres like ours to raise a few head of cattle-but Sat.u.r.days and Sundays we're pretty busy. Dusty rivers pour themselves out of canyons and arroyos and out of the folds of the hills and solidify into dustcovered pickups and station wagons and cars in front of the store or Community Center. And, during the week, the station wagon school buses rattle out and in and out again and the fourteen kids spread themselves pretty good and fill the whole place with their clatter.

But sometimes in the evening, when the sun is spinning every blade of gra.s.s to gold or-along the black slope kindling it to a fine spun-gla.s.s snowiness, I listen to the wind, thin and minor, keening through the gold and gla.s.s and wonder why anyone would want to live in such a dot under such wideness of sky with such a tawny tide of gra.s.s lapping up to such hills.

But things do happen out here-things to talk about, things to remember, things to wonder about. Like the time when we were the closest school-so naturally they came here to register their child. Mrs. Quinlan, the teacher, came fluttering over to the store early that morning before school. Mrs. Quinlan fluttering is a sight in itself. She's usually so self-contained and sort of unflutterable.

"Bent," she said, "you're on the school board. What shall I do about this new student?"

"New student?" I squinted out the window of the store. "I didn't hear anyone drive up."

"They didn't come by road," she said uncomfortably. "They cut across."

"From where?" I asked.

"From the Nuevas," she said.

"Cut across from the Nuevas!" The two of us silently reviewed the terrain between us and the Nuevas. "Maybe I'd better come see them." I flipped the card on the front door so it said, "Come In. Back Soon." and followed her across the hollow square that separates the four buildings.

Well! When I caught sight of them, I nearly fluttered, myself. Then I got tickled and started my subterranean laughter that plagues me at the worstpossible times and that is almost inextinguishable.

"Bent!" Mrs. Quinlan flashed at me out of the corner of her eyes.

"I'm not laughing at them," I choked in a whisper. "It's Stringler! Wait'll he sees them!" I ironed out my face-hers began to crinkle-as best I could and gravely acknowledged her introduction.

"Mr. and Mrs. Powdang and Vannie. This is Mr. Brentwood, one of our school board members." I wondered a little about how appropriate it was, but I held out my hand anyway and felt warmth and friendliness in their firm clasps though they did tickle my palm.

"Pleased to meet you," I said. "This is an unexpected pleasure."

"Thank you."

I don't know why I should have been so startled at the English. We get a fair number of transients through here and most of them are bilingual to the point of no accent. Why shouldn't the Powdangs be so also?

"What's the problem?" I asked. "Haven't you any registration blanks?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Quinlan. "It's a matter of what to put in the blanks.

Equivalents, sort of." But we both knew it wasn't that. She'd needed someone to be with her--someone-well, just someone.

"Well," I picked up the registration card. "Name, Vannie Powdang. Parent's name. Mr.-?" I lifted my eyebrows at Mr. Powdang-I think. "Your first name?"

Mr. and Mrs. Powdang exchanged glances and I almost dropped my pen. No valid reason why I should have been startled. Two eyes aren't necessarily standard equipment just because I count that many on myself. But coming that way, unexpectedly like that from the fluff- "First name?" asked a deep voice.

"Like Vannie," said Mrs. Quinlan, crinkling secretly at me, now.

"Oosh!" Mr. Powdang's eyes lit with a turquoise comprehension and he reeled off a string of syllables that stopped my pen in mid-air. "One or two will do," I said. "Spell them, please."

Mrs. Quinlan said quickly, "I think we had figured out Vanseler Oovenry. It shrinks somewhat in translation."

I was afraid to meet her eyes since my mirthbox had been upset already and so I just quaked quietly as she spelled it out to me. I had just tailed the y when we were all startled by the unG.o.dly screech of brakes that announced the fact that Stringler was trying to bring his pickup truck to a roaring stop from a blistering thirty-five miles an hour.

"Oh, oh!" I said, sliding away from the desk. "We might as well get it over with now. I'll go drop a few preparatory hints."

I ducked into the store through the back door. Stringler was tromping up and down the room, gouging his heels into the planks at every step, dust dancing out of the cracks of the floor and flouring off his faded Levis. For the skinny little old half-pint he is, he's the world's most unquiet man. Since he is the school board president, we have some pretty loud meetings from time to time.

I leaned into his first blast of speech. "If yer gonna keep a store, Bent,keep one! Don't go gallivanting off to see the school marm all the time!"

I think Stringler's mother was marked by reading a western before his birth.

He always sounds like it, anyway.

"What can I do you for today?" I asked.

"Outa color film," he said. "Frost's. .h.i.t our upper ranch. Color like crazy, up Sycamore Canyon. Missed it last year on account of that gol-dang rain we had.

Gonna get it this year or bust!"

"This is a fresh shipment," I said, fishing his account pad out of the drawer next to the cash register. "How many?"

"Half a dozen, I reckon." He pushed his battered hat back on his head. "Oughta last me a spell."

"We have a problem, this morning," I grunted as I made out the sales slip.

"School business. There's a new kid-"

"Why bother me?" Stringier stacked the film. "That's Mrs. Quinlan's business."

"Might be school board business 'fore it's through," I said. "Public opinion-"

I settled myself for his roar.

"Public opinion! We got rules and regulations to run our school by. That there public opinion put us in office to see that they're stuck to. Anything come inside them rules and regulations thur ain't no question about. Stick to the rules and regulations!"

"But this is different. These foreigners-"

"Since when are you a foreigner hater!" It's incredible the volume that could come from such a scrawny old frame. "I thought you had a little sense!" He roared twice as loud because he knew and I knew that he resented "foreigners"