The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook Read Free Book Online

applause, then Miss Channing stepped back into the cluster of teachers and listened quietly while my father continued his introductory remarks, going over the necessary administrative details, reminding the boys of various school rules, that therewas to be no cheating, no plagiarism, no profanity, no smoking, nor any drinking of alcoholic beverages, as he put it, “anywhere, anytime, for any reason, ever.”
    I have often wondered what came into Miss Channing’s mind as she listened to my father recite the rules by which we were all to conduct ourselves at Chatham School, rules that stressed humility, simple honesty, and mutual faith, and which stood four-square against every form of recklessness and betrayal and self-indulgence. How different they must have seemed to the visionary teachings her father had laid down, how deeply rooted in the very kind of humble, uninspired, and profoundly predictable village life he had taught her to revile.
    Once my father had finished, the boys already shifting restlessly and muttering impatiently to each other, he clapped his hands together once, then uttered a final remark whose tragic irony he could not have guessed. “Welcome to another splendid year in the history of Chatham School,” he said.
    I entered Miss Channing’s class about an hour later.
    It was a small room, formerly used to store school furniture and various supplies, but now converted to other purposes. It was not physically connected to the school, but stood apart from it in a little courtyard to the rear. Still, it seemed adequate enough, with three long tables lined up one behind the other in front of the much smaller one that served as Miss Channing’s desk. On the far wall, half a dozen gray aprons hung from wooden pegs beside a metal cabinet upon which someone had painted the words art supplies in large white letters. In the far corner a few wooden sculpting pedestals had been stacked base to base, the legs of the upper pedestals stretching almost to the room’s tin ceiling.
    As for art, there were portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, along with a framed photograph of the current president, Calvin Coolidge.
    There were only five of us in the class, but we scattered ourselves widely throughout the room. Ralph Sherman and Miles Clayton took possession of the rear table, Biff Conners and Jack Slaughter the middle one, leaving the front table to me.
    Miss Channing didn’t smile at us or say a word of welcome as we entered the room. She’d already placed one of the sculpting pedestals in front of her, and as we filed in, she began to knead the clay gently, hardly glancing up from it as we took our seats. Then, once we’d taken our places, she drew her hands from the clay and looked at us, her eyes moving from one boy to another. She did not acknowledge me in any way.
    “I’ve never taught art,” she said. “Or been taught it by anyone else.”
    Her fingers moved over the clay’s wet surface, shaping it with slow, graceful strokes as she searched for her next remark.
    “When my father died, I went to live with my uncle and his family in Africa,” she said finally. “He had a mission near a village where the natives lived in wooden huts. It was just a clearing in the plain. The people who lived in the village did all their cooking in their huts, and there was no way for the smoke to get out except through a small hole in the roof. When they came out of their huts in the morning, a sheet of smoke trailed behind them.” Her eyes lifted toward us, and I saw them take on a certain wonder and delight. It was as if in telling stories, she could find a voice to teach in, a way of reaching us. “Like wings that dissolved in the light,” she said.
    “That’s where I learned to paint.” She was kneading the clay more quickly now, in short, quick thrusts. “In Africa.” She stopped suddenly and settled her eyes upon us. I could tell that a thought had just occurred to her, that in the very