Spruce Bay

Chapter 3

Over the next weeks Leigh fell in love with her class. They were such an interesting mix of children.

Tom and Steve were both old enough to be in Grade Six. It wasn't inability that held them back. Mrs. Hall, who taught the Grade Two class said they were out of the class as much as they were in it. They spoke Cree fluently and knew amazing things about the forest surrounding Spruce Bay. Their fathers were among the shrinking number of Cree who were comfortable in the wilderness.

"Dad gets along fine, Mrs. Dalrymple," Tom said, "and he doesn't read as well as I do. But it you want to know anything about the bush. He can tell you. We spend most of the summer living off the land. He's taught me what to eat and how to stay alive out there." Steve nodded along with everything that Tom said.

"Well." Leigh waved the reader at the boys. "If you can learn all that stuff, then reading should be easy for you."

"Words are a lot harder," Steve said. "Food in the bush is always food, words keep changing around and I don't know what they mean."

"Things change in the bush too," Anna turned to look at Steve. "Some plants are medicine only at certain times. If you eat them at the wrong time or the wrong way, you die. At least with words you can try again as many times as you want."

Tom rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything. Instead he picked up the book and started working one word at a time.

"I'm going to be rich someday." He looked up from his book. "Dad knows where all the stuff the miners are looking for is. I'll own the mine and pay people to read to me." He went back to his book, so Leigh didn't continue the discussion.

Jamie watched the two boys with wide eyes and hung on every word they spoke.

"Mines are chancy," he said, "I'd like to know how to hunt and stuff. Dad came here to work in the mine and it closed. Now he works at the gas station. It isn't as good money as the mine, or as fun as hunting. That's what he says anyway."

"Hunting can be chancy too," Steve said, "There've been days that we eat a lot of green or roots. But when the hunting is good..." He rubbed his stomach and the other kids laughed.

"I like fishing," Macky said, "but I never catch anything but jacks. I'd like to go hunting."

"You'd have to stop talking," Tom said, "and put on a hat. That hair would scare deer from miles away."

Macky just grinned and went back to his math.

Leigh watched Anna do her work. She didn't have the struggles or the reluctance of Tom or Steve, but she hated to speak up in class discussion. Her comment to Steve was the most that Leigh had heard her talk since they started. Ms. Hall had told Leigh that Anna had a very good attendance record, once she started living with her grandmother. But she hadn't started school until she was almost eight, being so much older than the rest of the group seemed to have made her very shy.

William wandered away from his desk to look at what Tom was doing. Tom glared at him.

"William," Leigh said, "you need to stay in your seat."

"Ok," William said, but he stayed watching Tom.

"Now, William," Leigh said. The boy sighed and went back to sit down. He was one of half a dozen youngsters who had the telltale signs of fetal alcohol syndrome. They too were a mix of white, Cree and others. No group had a monopoly on tragedy. Sally came up behind her to wrap her in a bear hug with no warning. Leigh gently untangled her and sent her back to her seat too. Like William, she wanted to belong to the group, but she wasn't sure how to go about it. The class tolerated her, William and the others

"Mrs. Dalrymple," Enji raised his hand. "can we play soccer at gym?"

"We'll see, Enji," Leigh said.

Even when he was sitting still Enji had the appearance of a wound spring, but was unfailing polite and helpful. Oddly, his ebony skin wasn't the subject of any teasing.

"Excuse me," Georgia said. The girl was the smallest of the Grade Fours, "I've finished the reader. Do we have anything else to read?" She was reading through every book in the room at an astonishing pace. It didn't matter how deep her nose was in a book, she always had her hand up first for every question. She was usually right too.

"There are some books on the shelves under the windows, Georgia." Leigh pointed toward them.

"I read all those last year," Georgia heaved a dramatic sigh. Leigh had a book sitting in her bag for her lunchtime reading. She didn't think there was anything inappropriate in it. She pulled the book out and handed it to Georgia.

"I'll bring some more books from home, Georgia. Make a list of the kinds of books you like to read."

"The kind with words," Georgia opened the book and started reading.

"How many pages are in that book?" Tom asked.

"There are two hundred and fifty-six." After flipping quickly to the back of the book.

"So if there are two pages on each paper page, how many paper pages are there?" Leigh asked. Tom sighed and pulled out a pencil and paper.

Leigh let her plans flex and change as she got to know the children. Math work would shift to a discussion of the number of fish it took to buy enough gas to drive to the nearest city to go shopping. From there it would become social studies as they tracked the route on the maps on the wall and wondered why the roads weren't straight. Gym was mostly an excuse to get the children tired out so they would sit reasonably quietly through Miss Dupuis' French class.

The weekly staff meetings were a chance to get to know the other teachers who taught on the elementary side of the school. Mr. Ryckle always opened the meeting.

"We have a parent/teacher day coming up early in the school year," he said, "It is important to build whatever relationship that is possible with the parents. Find ways to encourage them to be involved in their child's education."

"That's difficult when so few of them come to parent/teacher night," Miss Dupuis said. "We have this discussion every year. Maybe it's time we tried something new."

"What would you suggest, Fran?" Mr. Ryckle said, "We can't just not have parent/teacher night. I know it is hard, but we need to do what we can."

"I have a couple of parents who are volunteering to help in the Grade One," Mr. Jackson said. "They seem very interested, maybe it will continue this year."

Leigh looked at the tall teacher. He didn't look like a Grade One teacher, but his students adored him and when she looked in on his class they appeared to be having a great deal of fun.

"Hmmph," Mrs. Hall said, "We can only hope."

Fran winked at Leigh and the meeting rolled on. They weren't much different than the ones at her old school.

Fran took Leigh on a tour of the town. She drove around through the streets and pointed out the landmarks. The early northern fall was upon them and the tamaracks were yellow against the dark green spruce. Cold winds blew off the lake and made the air damp and chill. Leigh explored every road of Spruce Bay. There were two parts of town. The people with jobs lived in the well-planned part of town surrounding the mall with careful circles and curves. The houses there were mostly well kept with lawns and flower gardens. The other part of town was built on a regimented grid. Many of these houses were abandoned and in poor shape. They tended to be surrounded by weeds and junk. It shocked Leigh to learn from Jim that more families lived in the Grid than the Plan. Their trailer started looking much better. It was parked in a tiny trailer court straddling the boundary between the two parts of the town.

Most of the teachers lived in the Plan. Fran pointed out Mr. McRoy's home. It was the one with the ramp and a pontoon boat in the drive. Mr. Jackson lived in a house with a half-court basketball setup instead of a driveway. His daughters were out playing one-on-one. They looked to be as tall as their father.

"I won't show you Mr. Ryckle's home," Fran said. "He's very private and doesn't like the teachers, or the students to know where he lives. I don't know how he expects to keep it in a secret in a town this size, but I won't be the one to spoil the surprise."

Fran lived in an apartment building on the outside edge of the Plan. The first Friday of the school year she had invited Leigh back to her apartment after their tour of the town. Leigh had gone in expecting to drink tea in chairs covered with doilies. Fran's home was filled with hunting trophies, paintings and books. She tossed a beer over to Leigh who almost dropped it.

"I love this," Fran said, "But we don't get enough new people I can trust in my home so I don't get to show off." She dropped into a well-worn chair with a deep sigh. "I can make you tea if you prefer." Leigh laughed, popped the tab on her beer and sat across from Fran.

"This is amazing," she said, "I would never have guessed."

"I grew up going hunting and trapping with my father. Did a little prospecting too. He convinced me to stay in school and become a teacher. Even then he could see that the day when you could live in the woods was ending. We still went on a canoe trip every summer until the year before he died." Fran sighed. "I haven't been out in years now. I don't think I could manage with my arthritis, but I can still get a little way into the woods in just a few minutes. The folks here know me, but you'd be at risk on some of these trails. Not everyone is friendly here."

"I've guessed that," Leigh said, "You don't live with a cop for as many years as I have without learning that some people are just dangerous."

"It isn't just the adults either, some of the teens and even younger kids are downright mean." Fran took a long pull of her beer. "Do you wonder why I live on the third floor even with my arthritis acting up? The kids can't throw bricks this high, at least not hard enough to break my windows. The entire first floor is lexan instead of glass because the owner decided it was cheaper than replacing the glass every month."

Leigh walked home nervously after that visit, but none of the kids on the street paid her any attention.

The place where the two parts of the community met was at the mall. Rough looking men sat on the benches and drank coffee while Leigh's neighbours walked around them laden with bags of groceries. Children ran up and down the mall and played on the stairs. As far a Leigh could tell they didn't care whether a kid was from the Grid or the Plan, just how many stairs they could jump. The hockey rink was up and running so youngsters with skates and equipment bags paraded up and down the ramp to the ice level.

Leigh discovered the coffee shop with its wall of paintings and uncomfortable plastic chairs. Many days she sat there with Fran after school and watched the people go by. It was a testament to the size of Spruce Bay that the only name the coffee shop needed was Coffee Shop. It provided a regular meeting place for the people of the town. Two booths at the back looked more comfortable, but they were always occupied, at least whenever Leigh was around.

"That guy in the suit is Mr. Henry. He's the Child and Family services worker in town." Fran pointed with her chin as spoke softly. "He's not a popular guy in town, but he's been here for years. I expect things would be worse without him." A steady stream of people came and sat with Mr. Henry in the back booth to talk, often in Cree.

"I don't know the name of the woman in the other booth," Fran said, "But she's here all the time. She sits and nurses a tea bag through an entire afternoon." She was the oldest Cree woman Leigh had yet seen. All kinds of people came to see her. All their conversation was in Cree, but it sounded like they were coming for advice. The woman didn't say much, but her listeners treasured every word, by the intentness of their respect.

When she wasn't drinking tea with Fran, Leigh came to drink coffee with Dr. Kwali, Enji's mother who had a rich laugh and a vast store of stories about the places she'd lived over the years. Her husband worked as custodian at the school.

"It isn't that he couldn't do whatever he wanted," Dr. Kwali said, "but he likes the work and no one else would take the job. He is proud of how well the school is kept."

"I've never seen it anything but spotless," Leigh said, "He must work very hard."

The only shadow in Leigh's life was Mr. Ryckle. He didn't like the name signs and complained about them every chance he got. When it wasn't the signs it was something else.

He walked into her gym class one morning.

"You must teach them discipline," he said, "form them into teams; make them follow the rules."

Leigh looked at the mob of screaming children playing what Tom and Steve insisted was an ancient Cree game. She wondered if they made it up as they went, but the class enjoyed it. Mr. Ryckle snorted and left before she could think of a suitable reply.

"Your art classes aren't teaching them enough technique," Mr Ryckle said the afternoon he dropped in while she was teaching art, "Rein them in, make them focus."

She didn't say anything, and he left as soon as he had made his complaint. The children were creating wildly colourful abstracts as they experimented with what colours went together and which ones didn't.

"Your class is behind on their reading," Mr. Ryckle stood in the door as Anna read quietly from her reader. "Push them harder." Anna turned red and sat down before he left. Leigh ground her teeth and kept on with the class.

"Don't let your students talk so much. They won't learn anything from their own chatter."

At least this time Mr. Ryckle was talking to her in the staff room, so the students weren't put off by his comments. Leigh took a breath to talk to him about his constant complaints, but he vanished again as quickly as he arrived.

The list of complaints was endless, but they all had to do with control. Leigh didn't like to manage her classes too closely - it didn't give any space for surprises. She wouldn't learn enough about her students if all she did was talk at them.

When she got home that evening she called Mr. Damowski.

"Normally, I would just talk to Mr. Ryckle myself," Leigh said to him, "But he never stays anywhere long enough for me to start a conversation."

"Ignore everything that isn't directly related to his duties as principal." Mr. Damowski said, "There is a reason we hired you, Leigh. Just do your job and leave Mr. Ryckle to me."

"But he is hurting the children." Leigh told him, "It's bad enough that he is complaining constantly, but complaining about the children in front of them is horrible."

"Let me talk to him," Mr. Damowski said.

"Are you sure?" Though Leigh's stomach relaxed at the thought of not having to deal with the man. "I really should talk to him myself."

"That wouldn't be a good idea." Mr. Damowski spoke firmly. "Leave it to me."

Leigh set her mind to do just that, but the constant complaints kept her up at night.