Sam gives the schoolhouse a much needed renovation.

[ikissdhimbck]

Mary had a little lamb;
Its fleece was white as snow!
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go!

Children are good for things like quiet days, mundane activities, bad moods… broken hearts. They have a lightness about them that seems to lift the burdens of adult life right off your shoulders, until you forget—however briefly—that the burdens are there.

It followed her to school one day;
Which was against the rule,

There’s something to be said for dancing in a circle with about nine little ones, singing nursery rhymes loudly and giggling like the little girl you haven’t been since your mother died of pneumonia when you were eight years old.

It made the children laugh and play,
To see a lamb at school!

Katherine reenters the schoolhouse after sending the rest of the children on home, brushing grass off her skirts and picking up discarded hats and lost rubber bands, jacks, and marbles.

It is late in the afternoon and the sun is bright and hot, beaming through the polished and freshly painted windows. The thick glass sparkles with light.

Katherine smiles, and admires the new windows for a moment, before she moves on to her desk. Right in the center, next to a book of poetry, lays a brown leather journal with a Polaroid picture tucked into its back pages.

The smile gradually slips from her face.

It's been nearly a week since she left Milliways. She hasn't found a door back since. But then, she hasn't been looking for one, either.

“Afternoon, Miss Katherine.”

She turns to see Sam standing in the doorway, toolbox in hand.

“Good afternoon, Sam,” she replies, the smile coming back to her face.

“There something wrong with the windows?”

“Oh, no,” she quickly assures him. “They’re lovely! The room is so much brighter now; the children and I greatly appreciate the improvement. It’s just that… it’s just… that my desk. It wobbles.”

And it’s the truth. Her desk does wobble. However, it is only a very minor annoyance that she could easily overlook. It’s for the relief of having Sam’s company, especially now, when she feels so achingly alone, that the wobbly desk has become an unbearable burden.

“There’s another jar of peaches in it for you, if you’re interested.”

He smiles that trademark patient grin of his, setting his toolbox down on a desk and removing his hat.

“I can fix that.”

***

And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near,

“There must be something you remember about your momma,” Sam prods good-naturedly, sanding down the legs of Katherine’s desk as she cleans the cluttered room.

“Of course, there are snatches of memories; bits and pieces of things. I remember her smile. I remember her hair—it was strawberry blonde and thick, and it came down her shoulders in these big, blossoming curls. I remember trying to help her churn butter. I remember… I remember her smell.”

She smiles, a faraway look in her eye as she tries to recall the scent. “Like honey and milk, and fresh springtime roses. She loved working a garden.

“’Course, it’s my daddy’s smell I remember best. Like leather and hay, fresh tilled dirt and—”

Lime shaving soap.

She can’t quite get out that last bit before her throat goes tight, and her eyes skim once again to the desk. There in the middle, the soft leather journal, glossy Polaroid picture hidden within.

“…Miss Katherine?”

She wonders if he’s all right. She wonders if he’s out of the infirmary yet.

She wonders if Bar kept her word and held onto those guns.

“Miss… Kate?”

She blinks a few times, refocusing on Sam and the deep concern on his tender face.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice too-soft when she replies. Swallow the lump in your throat. Blink the gleam out of your eyes. Breathe, Katherine. Deep breaths.

She smiles timidly and gestures to the front door, rubbing her hands together for lack of anything else to do with them.

“You know, I was thinking. That door doesn’t hang straight.”

Sam looks past her, over her shoulder, and nods, features warm and understanding.

“I can fix that,” he affirms, and there’s something in his voice that makes Katherine sigh with relief.

***
And waited patiently about,
Till Mary did appear!

“My daddy tried to do me right, learning me how to ride side-saddle, like a proper lady,” Katherine chuckles, painting blue trim around the doors of the schoolhouse. “I was used to jumping fences and beating it out to desert plains. He was always terrified I was going to get bit by one of them yellow-spotted lizards.”

She shakes her head with a fond smile, as Sam watches, crouched to paint the lower half of the door. His eyes stay on her the whole time.

“’Bout the first time I tried going over that fence in that pretty little riding dress, my skirts got caught up in the barbing, and I cut myself from knee to mid-thigh, tearin’ the fine fabric and bleeding all over the place. I was crying my eyes out, but not because I was hurt; I was just afraid daddy would give me a whopping when he saw what I did to that dress.” A short burst of laughter. “Absolutely ruined it!”

Sam chuckles, shaking his head. “How old were you?”

“I was…”

Slow, steady strokes of the paintbrush.

“Twelve, I believe.”

“You still have any of ‘em horses from your pa’s farm?”

Katherine shakes her head, a bit sadly. “Beaut was the only beast didn’t get auctioned off with the rest of the estate. Dr. Hawthorn and his wife stable her down at their place, as a kindness to me. She’s this gorgeous chestnut mare my daddy brought home for me back when she was just a filly and I was a girl. We grew up together.

“I just… couldn’t bear to part with her.”

‘All right, Katie, open your eyes.’

‘Oh! Oh, daddy! She’s beautiful!’

‘She’s yours. And she’ll be your responsibility, so from here on out Joe’ll be showin’ you about the barn so’s you can learn to take care of her.’

‘I will, daddy, I promise! Thank you! Thank you!’

‘You take good care of her, now. She’s gonna be your best friend, here on out. I know you ain’t got a momma ‘round to spoil you and make you fine clothes. I do what I can, Katie. I hope it’s enough love for two parents.’

More than enough, daddy.

‘What you gonna name her?’

Beaut. ‘Cause she’s so very pretty. That okay, daddy? That okay?

‘That’s perfect, Katie. Fits her right smart.’


“Perhaps she an’ Mary Lou will have to go on a picnic sometime,” Sam smiles.

Katherine laughs brightly. God, does it feel good to laugh. She can’t remember the last time she…

Her thoughts stray back to that leather journal again, but she doesn’t turn to look at it this time.

“Perhaps the four of us will have to go on a picnic sometime,” Katherine corrects.

She isn’t even embarrassed for being so forward as to even suggest it, when Sam grins up at her, eyes sparkling with excitement.

***

“Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
The eager children cry;

By the end of the first semester, “Onion Sam” had turned the old, run-down schoolhouse into a well-crafted, freshly painted jewel of a building that the whole town was proud of. Even passersby would stop and admire it.

“That’s our schoolhouse. It shows how much we value education here in Green Lake,” they would say.

The only person who wasn’t happy with it was Miss Katherine. She’d run out of things needing to be fixed.

“Sam, this is the finest schoolhouse in all of Texas!” she exclaims with bittersweet delight, late one afternoon. And indeed, it was. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Miss Katherine,” Sam replies genially, his brown eyes glimmering with warm enthusiasm.

The two stand for a moment, smiling at each other in the late December afternoon. Sam reaches up to the wide-brimmed hat he wears, and plucks a long, brown eagle feather from the leather band, handing it to her.

She’s not sure why, but her fingers tremble a little as she accepts the gift, her cheeks pinking.

She’d grown accustomed to their conversations, every afternoon after classes with the children ended, and night courses with the adults began. She could quote anything—Byron, Poe, Tennyson, Longfellow—and he knew them all, and would recite the verse right along with her. Each time he did her stomach would flip with barely restrained excitement.

As she stepped back into her schoolhouse—dry, warm, sound, bright, and clean—it suddenly felt very, very hollow and empty.

The feather twirls lightly between her fingers, and she smiles.

The leather journal is waiting for her when she settles herself at her desk, the quiet of the room gnawing at her fingertips. She opens it up, first to that back page where the Polaroid bookmark is, and reads the tender scrawl.

‘Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.’

The words make her sad, but not near as sad as the page at the front of the book makes her when she turns there next.

Doc,

Please don’t hate me for leaving.
I need some time to think. I will
come back, I promise. Just try to
be patient with me. Concentrate on
healing yourself. And don’t you
dare go anywhere near those guns.
I will come back.

-Katherine

She’s a coward and she knows it.

She shuts the journal and presses her face into her hands.

She didn’t even leave him a note.



“Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
The eager children cry;
“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,”
the teacher did reply.



.