Everglades Lessons
Ma set down the shirt in her lap with a wistful smile. “I wonder what Atlanta’s like. I hear they’ve got buildings fifteen stories tall."
“Fifteen stories?” I scoffed. “Do not.”
“Do so.”
“That sounds like a tall tale to me. It’s not that big a city.”
“That’s just what I heard. Ask your teacher when she comes. She’ll tell you.” Ma looked out across the humming water, as if lost in a daydream. “I heard tale Atlanta’s full of motorcars and movie theaters and dance halls…”
“But fifteen-story buildings?” I repeated skeptically. Sometimes people made up stories about the city that I knew weren’t true.
Ma turned toward Pa with a playful look. “You ever wish we lived in the city?”
Pa shook his head. “Too many people too close together. I like Everglade where it’s just us and the land. We got everything we need right here. City folk don’t.”
Reflections of palm trees rippled in the water. The sun was just reaching the angle where it cast a gold haze over the treetops. Suddenly, I saw a boat. Right on the horizon, coming round the corner. I shut the McGuffey reader and jumped to my feet. “Is that her?”
Ma and Pa came right to the edge of the dock and stood on their tiptoes. Sure enough, a wooden skiff came poling down the river, gliding slowly toward us.
Pa nudged my shoulder. “Told you she’d be here.” But that giant grin on his face gave away that he was plumb startled as I was.
As the boat approached, I got my first glimpse of the new teacher. A young woman with wide eyes sat up straight in the front of a skiff. A lock of dark wavy hair peeked out from under her bell-shaped hat, and she looked around curiously, seeming to take in her surroundings. When her eyes landed on us, she must have known who we were. With a look of relief, she gave an energetic wave.
“Good evening!” she called from the middle of the river.
“You must be the Crockers, I presume!”
“And you must be Laura Kellerman!” Pa called back. “Welcome to Everglade!”
“I’ve arrived!” she laughed. “And not in a coffin!”
I bit my lip and tried not to laugh. I’d never had a teacher who was funny.
She set her hands on her hips and breathed in, surveying the scene around her, then scratched her arms, covered in mosquito bites. Her outfit must have been from a department store: a straight-cut dress that stopped right below her knees and white stockings that continued the rest of the way to her shiny buckled slippers.
I’m not sure why, but somehow as that boat moved towards me, I felt a change coming with it. Things in these parts were going to be different, whether I was ready or not.
When the Everglade Schoolhouse shuts down, Zeb Crocker smuggles a textbook home with plans to teach himself. It’s 1921, and his remote town in the sizzling mangrove swamps of Florida is (yet again) without a teacher. If he’s ever going to finish his education and make anything of his storytelling ambitions, then the grown-ups had better hurry up and find a teacher hardy enough to survive the molasses-thick humidity and ferocious mosquitos.
Miss Laura might just be the one. This savvy progressive educator shows up unexpectedly from Atlanta with a trunk full of books, a warm smile, and a knack for finding adventure in ordinary, everyday things. Zeb’s never had a teacher before who takes his aspirations seriously. With her guidance, he finally puts his gift for storytelling to good use.
But if Zeb wants to keep Miss Laura, he’s going to have to give her some lessons too. After all, most proper Atlanta women have never poled a skiff through salt marshes, confronted hostile moonshiners, or outrun crocodiles at recess. Then, trouble happens back in Atlanta, and no one’s sure just how long the new teacher will stay. With Zeb’s rural community quickly being bought up by land developers and his way of life rapidly changing, will he be able to keep Miss Laura from disappearing too?
Complete at 56,000 words
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