Edenville Owls

Chapter 38

It was snowing again. We stayed after class until everyone else had gone, and then I said, “Miss Delaney, can we see you?”

“Of course,” she said. “Come down front.”

I got up and went and closed the classroom door. Miss Delaney smiled.

“Are we going to have a confession?” she said.

Joanie and I sat at the two desks in front of Miss Delaney. Outside the windows, the snow was different than the last snow. The flakes were small, and the wind was blowing the snow around. I looked at Joanie. Then at Miss Delaney. I took in a big breath.

“We know about Mr. Tupper,” I said.

Miss Delaney didn’t move. Her expression didn’t seem to change, but somehow her face got sort of sharp and hard, and she looked kind of pale.

“What do you know about Mr. Tupper?” she said.

I felt very small and stiff. I felt like if I moved quick, I might break.

“We know he was married to you. We know about your son.”

Miss Delaney’s voice was as flat as the top of her desk.

“We is you and Joanie?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Anyone else?”

I shrugged.

“Mr. Tupper,” I said.

“Besides him.”

“No.”

Joanie was completely still at the next desk. I wanted to reach out and touch her. But I didn’t.

“I thought we had a promise,” Miss Delaney said.

“We had to break the promise,” I said. “So we could help you.”

“You and Joanie?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Delaney leaned back in her chair and the sharpness kind of went away. She put her hands over her face for a minute. And rubbed her eyes. Then she took her hands away and rested them on her desk.

“What have you done to help me?” she said finally.

“I... we... we know Mr. Tupper is really Mr. Krauss.”

She nodded silently. She seemed tired, like too tired to fight about it, like she had given up.

“We know Mr. Krauss is a deserter,” I said.

Miss Delaney stopped nodding.

“What?”

“The army wants him as a deserter,” I said. “Did you know that?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t. I never knew why he took another name.”

“Oswald Tupper really did win a Medal of Honor,” I said. “But he got killed in the war. He and Mr. Strauss were in the same place in the army.”

“And Richard took his name,” Miss Delaney said.

The snow outside was getting blown all around, so that sometimes it was going sideways, and sometimes it even looked like it was going up.

“Have you talked to anyone else about this?” Miss Delaney said. “Anyone?”

I wanted to lie.

“I told the Owls a little about it,” I said. “They’re ready to help.”

Miss Delaney stared out at the snow blowing around outside the second-floor window. Then she looked up at the ceiling.

“My gang,” she said.

“They won’t tell,” I said.

Miss Delaney nodded. She seemed very sad.

“What do you think of all this, Joanie?” she asked.

“I think Bobby was right to try to help.”

Miss Delaney nodded again.

“If he weren’t a fourteen-year-old boy,” she said.

“He’s very smart,” Joanie said.

Miss Delaney put her elbows on the desk and her fingertips together and rested her fingertips on her chin. She tapped her chin gently and didn’t say anything. Then she took a big breath and blew it out.

“I met Richard in college,” Miss Delaney said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Colby College.”

She looked at Joanie.

“That’s why you wanted my yearbook.”

Joanie nodded.

“He was a hero in college,” Miss Delaney said. “Football star, very handsome, good student. The other boys looked up to him. Girls all wanted to date him.”

Joanie and I were very quiet.

“We began dating in our junior year, and we got married the day after graduation. Three months later I was pregnant and he was in the army, overseas. My son was born June 5, 1943. His name is John Strauss. I lived with my parents during that time. Richard was in Italy then, and we wrote each other often, and I sent pictures of Johnny. After Italy he went to England, and in 1944, he was in the Normandy invasion. And then one day he wrote me a letter saying good-bye. No explanation. Just good-bye for a while. He hoped he’d see me again. I wrote back. But I never got an answer. I wrote the War Department and never got an answer. My parents didn’t have much money. My father couldn’t support us forever. I had a baby. I didn’t know what had happened to my husband. I started looking for a teaching job. I didn’t want to tell them about the baby, for fear they wouldn’t hire me. I didn’t know what to tell them about my husband. So I pretended to be single, and I used my maiden name.”

It had started to get dark outside, the way it does in the winter before the afternoon is even over. It was as if we were closed up in this little lighted classroom, and the only people in the world were Miss Delaney and Joanie and me, surrounded by snow and darkness forever.

“In January 1945,” Miss Delaney said, “I got the job here, starting in September. And a month later my husband showed up. It was as if I didn’t know him. He had a new name. He was angry. He wanted a divorce. And he wanted custody of the child.”

Miss Delaney shook her head.

“He didn’t even know Johnny. He’d never seen him before. I asked him what had happened. He said I wouldn’t understand. It was the war, he said. If you hadn’t been in the war, you couldn’t understand. He barely looked at Johnny when he met him. He just wanted custody. Like of an object. Like I want that lamp.”

She sat thinking about it.

“So you got divorced?” Joanie said.

“Yes. But no custody. He said it didn’t matter. He would take the child anyway. I couldn’t take this job and take care of Johnny too. My father took a job in another city. Not much of a job. My father is a laborer and spent everything he had to get me through college. They moved there and took Johnny, so Richard couldn’t find him. I send them money every month. It’s why I need this job.”

Miss Delaney smiled kind of sad.

“Johnny has been with them since he was born,” she said. “He’s comfortable with them. I probably miss him more than he misses me.”

“And you took this job,” I said.

“Yes, as soon as my parents left with Johnny. A month later Richard moved to the next town and started his church of whatever. And began badgering me about Johnny.”

“He hit you,” I said.

“Yes,” Miss Delaney said. “He has threatened to kill me. But he doesn’t know where the child is, and I don’t think he would kill me unless he did.”

“Then he would?” Joanie said.

Miss Delaney shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know him. Whatever happened in the war, he’s no one I ever knew. He seems crazy.”

“And you couldn’t tell the police,” Joanie said.

“Tell them what?” Miss Delaney said. “That he hit me or threatened me? I can’t prove it. Just my word against his.”

“How about how he changed his name?” I said.

“Oh, I suppose,” Miss Delaney said. “But everyone would find out about me in the process. A divorced woman with a child, who lied to get this job?”

We all sat quietly for a time. It was like Miss Delaney had said everything.

Finally, I said, “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Miss Delaney said. “Do you?”

“I think so,” I said.