Wheat for the Wise

By Margery S. Stewart

(Previous chapter)

Chapter 5

Synopsis: Jennie Starr, whose husband Rex is not a member of the Church, has received his permission for the family to participate in Church activities for a trial period of one year. Jennie feels that through her work in teaching a Trekker class in Primary, and the children’s active interest in their assignments, their home is gaining a spirit of love, co-operation, and a willingness to become part of a larger purpose.

Jennie tried to make her voice very bright, “Guess what?”

“What?” asked the Trekkers suspiciously.

“We’ve been asked to be on the program for the Christmas party.”

The Trekkers, as one man, fell off their chairs and lay about the room groaning.

“Enough,” Jennie said sternly, “quite, quite enough. Every man in place.”

Still groaning, they climbed back. They looked at her gloomily, “What do they want us to do?”

“We can choose,” said Jennie, still striving for enthusiasm. “Isn’t that wonderful! We can do a play or sing or make a pageant. . . . We can be amusing or inspiring. It’s up to us. What do you want to do?”

“Nothing!” they cried in shrill accord. Then they settled down to the business of deciding which would be the most startling innovation ever to grace the stage.

Jennie listened with a very real interest. It never failed to fascinate her, the barbarism of the ten-year-old mind.

“But we want to make the people happy,” she said. “We want to give them something beautiful to remember.”

“We can’t ever please them,” Billy said, “nobody can’t please anybody that’s over twelve years old.”

The others nodded in solemn unison. Jennie secretly agreed with them, in part. It was pretty difficult to be male and ten. Little girls had it better, they were born with an instinctive grace and knowledge of the way to the grown-up heart, but ten-year-old males might as well be equipped with cactus needles.

She looked at their doleful faces. She had herself unexpectedly and irrevocably fallen in love with the lot of them. She no longer smelled peanut butter or sneakers, she no more noticed the tumbling and never-ending battle for supremacy. To her, they had become founts of unexpected profundity, isles of laughter, pools of innocence. They fought to sit by “our teacher,’” she would have been broken-hearted if they were taken away.

“We have to do it,” she said to them now, “they expect it of us, and they don’t expect us to be too good, that’s where we’ll have to surprise them.”

“Let’s do the play,” Billy suggested. “I know a real dinger . . . it seems this cowboy. . . . ”

“No,” said Jennie firmly. She studied them. “Let’s try a carol,” she said. “How about ‘Silent Night’?”

She gave them the key and they sang. Jennie stopped singing and listened. They were quite good, really. Their voices, especially Billy’s, were high and true, clear and appealing. In class, away from the wrath of injured neighbors, they were not afraid to sing out.

“Very good.” She passed around songbooks and told them the page. “Now . . . let’s try it again . . . second verse this time.”

But the second verse was conspicuous by the absence of Billy’s voice.

“Come on, Billy.”

He tossed the book down. “Don’t want to.”

“But we need your voice.”

“It makes my throat ache.”

“Nonsense . . . you didn’t ache on the first verse.”

“Well, I’m aching on the second one . . . real hard.”

She turned to the class. “All right . . . we’ll try it again without Billy.” The class pealed forth and, to her bewilderment, Billy joined in again after the first few words. He sang happily, his eyes open and inward turned, all of him listening to the new-found splendor of his own voice.

“Third verse.”

“I’m tired,” Billy said.

Finally, she put the book down. “Enough for today, we’ll go on to our lesson. But I would like all of you to come to my house for practice, every Friday afternoon, until the party. We’ll have something delicious to eat, waiting for you.”

“I can’t come,” Billy said.

“But we especially need you.” Jennie meant it. His voice was exceptionally sweet.

Billy tucked his chin in his tattered shirt and was silent and mutinous.

On the way out of class he reverted to the behavior he had shown when she first came, gagging the other Trekkers, running through the halls. He sat beside her, however, at the closing exercises.

Suspicion of the truth had begun to gnaw at Jennie. She held fast to his elbow. “I want to talk to you, Billy.”

“I gotta run. Mom will be expecting me.”

“Just one minute . . . or wait . . . I’ll drive you home.”

She scrambled him into the car with her own children. But when they reached Billy’s house she commanded them to wait in the car. She waited for Billy to get out of the car and walked along the sidewalk with him. “Billy? What grade are you in?”

“Fifth.”

“How is it that you can’t read, and you’re in the fifth grade?”

He grinned impishly, “I memorize fast.”

She thought of the speed with which he had committed the second verse to memory. “But Billy! You’re brilliant!”

He shook his head. “I’ve got a block in my head. The doctor told my mother. I can’t never read.”

When Jennie reached home. Rex was already there. He was eating a slice of leftover pumpkin pie and drinking some of the children’s chocolate milk. “Don’t quote calories!” he warned.

She told him about Billy. He shrugged. “It happens.” He took another drink of the milk. “The headlines awhile back were rich with the tidings that Johnny could not read. I thought they’d gone underground.”

Jennie went to the telephone. Rex looked up, alarmed. “Are you going to call his teacher?”

“No, his mother.”

She dialed the number, wondering how to broach so delicate a subject. Rex listened openly and with unfeigned interest.

“Mrs. Wentworth, this is Jennie Starr . . . yes, Billy’s Primary teacher. Why, thank you! Did he really say that?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Rex teased.

She turned away. “I think Billy is one of the finest boys in our ward. Yes, I do.”

Mrs. Wentworth went at once to the heart of the trouble. “You have discovered Billy can’t read.” Her voice was low and weary.

Jennie, taken aback, swallowed, unable to think of anything to say except the obvious.

Mrs. Wentworth sighed. “I have four other children and a job. . . . We’ve had a lot of family trouble. But I did take Billy to the school psychologist . . . on recommendation from the principal.”

“What did he say?”

“He said Billy had a block . . . about reading. . . .”

Jennie looked about her beautiful, shining kitchen. She remembered the run-down little house that was Billy’s. She had a swift picture of a determined, overworked mother, who simply had no time. Just that, no time.

“Would you let me try, Mrs. Wentworth . . .?”

Rex shook his head and looked at her in wonder and compassion as the telephone conversation lengthened.

“She’ll let me,” Jennie said in triumph, when she hung up the telephone.

Rex watched her as she slid wearily into the chair across from him. “Don’t you feel crowded inside?”

“No. Should I?”

“I wonder sometimes, all the people you take to your bosom. Billy Budd isn’t yours.”

“He’s my Trekker.” She tilted her chin.

“What kind of relationship is that?”

She rested her chin on her palm. “It’s a teacher-student relationship. That’s one of the best kinds.” She leaned across the table. “Did you ever stop to think of all the relationships there are in the world?”

“Yes,” said Rex quickly. “You told me before.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “You’re really putting a lot of yourself into this class.”

Was she, then, trying too hard? Doing too much? Was he disappointed . . . was she neglecting some other facet of their lives? “Please tell me,” she said, “if you would rather I didn’t. Remember, you are the important one to me.

Rex stood up. “What kind of a heel would I be to stand in the way of Billy Budd, or the others . . . and besides, have you any idea how beautiful you have grown lately?”

In true feminine fashion, Jennie ran to a mirror to evaluate herself. She came back dejectedly, “I can’t see any difference. I think I’m getting fat.”

“I can see the difference,” Rex said, “and you are not getting fat . . . just different.”

Billy came twice a week to sit in Jennie’s kitchen and study words. He came on Saturday afternoons and Monday after school. Jennie had armed herself with word cards and books and a larger blackboard.

Billy sat gingerly at the kitchen table. He munched the apple she had offered him and was immovable. “A is for apple. . . .” he snorted, “kid stuff!” He was scornful, but he could not read “apple” on the card she held up.

“B is for ball.”

Billy looked longingly out the window where Lance was rolling snow. “I can’t read,” he said, “everybody’s tried to make me. I can’t. I have a block in my head.”

The baby woke up from his nap and shrieked for attention. Jennie left the book for Billy to study and ran upstairs to attend to Johnny’s wants. The baby provided for, she knelt and prayed briefly and with fervor. “Let me not be one more failure in Billy’s life . . . one more hope disintegrating under his fingers.”

She picked Johnny up and went downstairs and put him in his play pen in the family room. She stopped and listened to the sound of voices, Sabra’s and Billy’s. On tiptoe she went down the hall to the kitchen.

Sabra, chin in hand, was admiring Billy from the vantage point of the high stool. “. . . but when you really won the game for us, was when you pitched against Joe Stevens . . . he could not hit a single ball.” She continued with childish candor, “Are you always that wonderful?”

“Yeah,” said Billy confidently, “sometimes I’m better than that time. I’ll be on the Yanks when I grow up.”

“You sure will,” said Sabra, adoring the thought with him. “You’ll probably be on all the football teams and the baseball teams of the United States of America.”

“Yeah,” said Billy. “I’ll probably be real rich, but I won’t change. I’ll still be real good to people like you and your mother.”

Jennie watched as Sabra got down and went over to peer at the cards. “What are these for?”

Billy squirmed. “Your mother wants me to do it . . . I’m doing it for her.”

“Oh.” Sabra picked up a card. “I’ll hold them up for you. The way I learned to read was over and over and over on the same word until it stuck. Some words stick easy and some words stick hard.” She held up a card, “A-p-p-l-e.”

Billy leaned his face on his hands and began to perspire, “A is for apple.”

Sabra held up another.

“B is for ball,” Billy said scornfully.

Sabra nodded sagely, “What did I tell you! Ball is an easy sticker.”

Jennie went quietly into the living room and sat down with a magazine. After some twenty minutes she went back to the kitchen. Billy was on “M is for Mother.”

She took over the cards and reviewed him. He could read. She told him that. “You really know how. . . . It’s just getting the words through. . . .”

Billy said, “Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes I forget.”

No, she told him silently to herself, I believe that sometimes you are with an adult, who is a reminder of the terrifying world , . . and sometimes you are with someone like Sabra, who instinctively knows how to put you in the climate of receptivity. “Enough for one day,” she told him.

“Come on out,” Billy offered largely to Sabra. “I’ll show you how fast I can build a snowman.”

Jennie watched them from the kitchen window. Sabra, the remote, Sabra, the withdrawn, being chased by a boy, having her face washed, screaming with fury and delight.

Jennie turned to the task of peeling onions. She pushed back the hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. “People! Youngsters! Who could ever figure them out!”

Christmas crowded closer. Jennie had never been so busy . . . all the usual holiday parties, Billy’s lessons, the Trekkers’ rehearsals ate up the hours.

She bought presents in crowded moments. She rehearsed the boys with last-minute knitting cupped under her arm. She taught Billy while she sewed.

Sabra’s teacher. Miss Myers, came to call. Jennie fed her lemonade and fresh cookies.

Miss Myers was a tall woman with a thin, sensitive face and long, bony fingers tipped with unpolished nails. “Sabra is an unusual child, Mrs. Starr.”

“We’ve wondered about her ourselves.” Jennie smoothed her skirt. “We don’t always understand her.”

“Her poetry is remarkable.”

“Poetry?” asked Jennie.

“Oh, my, yes.” Miss Myers nodded vigorously. “I’ve never read anything like it.”

Jennie bent her head. She could not say, I have not seen Sabra’s poetry. She was silent.

“I came to ask,” said Miss Myers, after a pause, “if I might submit it.”

“Submit it?” asked Jennie, puzzled.

“Yes. . . . I would like to very much . . . there is a place . . . that I thought might find room for it.”

“If you like,” said Jennie stiffly. She sat very straight against the back of the chair. Why had not Sabra ever shown her the poems? Why did the child lead so solitary and quiet a life, shunning the parties and finding an apparent delight in solitude. Except for the inexplicable, to Jennie, friendship with Billy Wentworth, Sabra walked alone.

Miss Myers rose; relief and aticipation made her face glisten. “It’s been lovely. You know . . . I feel as though Sabra were my own child. I don’t suppose you know that feeling . . . not being a teacher.”

“I know the feeling,” said Jennie definitely, but without enthusiasm. She closed the door on Miss Myers and went back to her knitting. It was all very well for her to feel that the Trekkers were her own, still, the thought of Miss Myers claiming Sabra, made the green envy rise like a tide. Not only that, but tears were splashing on the red yarn in her lap. She wiped them away with her fingertips and regarded the moisture curiously. Now why? It was the poetry . . . the secret of her child that belonged to another woman. Jennie jabbed the needles through the yarn and tossed the ball into the basket. She would have stew tonight. That would serve them right! Children!

She hadn’t intended to tell Rex, but then, when could she ever keep anything from him?

Anyway he guessed.

“Stew!” He put the lid down unhappily. “Who is in the doghouse?”

“Nobody. We have to economize sometimes.”

He came to her and lifted her chin. “Give!” he demanded.

She told him about Miss Myers and the visit. He released Jennie and went to the windows. He stood with his back to her, but Jennie knew he was as upset as she. “Read the poems . . . just get them and read them.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

When she groped around in her mind for a good reason why not, she could find only one reason, “Brigham Young said a child had as much right to his privacy as a grownup . . . that they should have a chest to keep their treasures in . . . and a key besides. I guess he meant they had to have a corner of themselves for themselves.”

Rex turned angrily. “This is my house,” he said, “bring me the poems.”

Jennie shook her head. “I can’t. You’ll have to get them.”

“I’ll order Sabra to bring them to me,” he said firmly. “Parents have a right to know what their children are thinking and doing.”

But that’s the letter of the law, not the spirit, Jennie thought, it’s like going into a secret garden and tearing up the ground to see what your child has planted. Jennie went to Rex and took his arm. It was her fault. Her manner of telling it had made Rex angry and confused. “Let’s wait . . . just a little longer.”

He did not want to wait. “I’ll think about it,” he said. He went out to help Lora put her sled in the garage, his parting shot, “But no more Brigham Young, if you don’t mind.”

Jennie shivered. The year was going by so swiftly, and she was pushing all the wrong buttons.

Christmas, for Jennie, that year, was to be forever remembered by two events. One was the surprising success of the Trekker chorus. Not only were they the hit of the Christmas party, but they were asked to repeat their performance for Sunday night sacrament service and for three other wards during the holidays.

Jennie and Rex, hurrying the boys here and there in the two cars, found themselves again and again the center of congratulatory groups.

“They make me feel such a heel,” said Rex. “And in the first place I had nothing to do with it.”

Jennie hugged him briefly. “But we couldn’t even get to these places without you to drive us, and I couldn’t handle them, without you to help me.”

Rex put his arm around her and drove home more slowly. “I still don’t see how you did it . . . the voices, I mean.”

Jennie yawned sleepily. “The voices were theirs . . . the discipline was only acres of chocolate cake.”

“Wasn’t that bribery?”

She snuggled against him. “Is not heaven bribery?” she said quickly, “I really didn’t mean that the way it sounded . . . only people think that if you give children something to sweeten the task at hand . . . it’s wrong . . . but it’s these glimpses I’ve had of heaven, that make me put my shoulder more firmly to the wheel when lots of times I’d rather not.”

Rex kissed her. “What’s your heaven, my dear?”

She looked at him soberly. “You are my heaven . . . laugh if you like . . . but without you . . . I can’t get where I want to go . . . nor take my children with me.

But Rex was mutinous, though he understood.

The second thing that happened was Christmas morning. She had gone down early, she and Rex, to be sure, they told each other, that nothing had happened to the gifts overnight. But, in reality, to be there when the first eager footstep was heard.

The living room gleamed with tinsel and holly and glittering baubles. The tree towered green and silver and pink. Underneath the laden branches were the overflowing piles of gifts.

“Nobody in the world has as many uncles and aunts as we have,” Rex said ruefully.

“Uncles and aunts are thoroughly legal. At least we can say that we didn’t spoil the children by ourselves.”

Rex leaned down to examine the gifts the children had left. He picked up one package and peered at it. It was flat and very smooth. “A game?” He rattled it under his ear.

Jennie came close to look. “It’s from Sabra to us. It must be a game, but such a flat game.” She took it away from him and then smoothed the paper wrapping. “I think I’ll open it.”

He looked at her reprovingly. “Before any of the rest of them get here?”

“Yes.” She was shaking with a sudden knowledge. She tore it open. It was a handmade book, cardboard covers holding securely the neatly typed contents. The title of the book was, “Poems for My Father and Mother,” by Sabra Starr.

Jennie and Rex looked long at each other until the mist of their tears obscured their sight.

“It was for us . . . the secret . . . ” said Rex, “that was why she didn’t tell us . . . or show us.”

Jennie said, “I feel sick . . . suppose we had insisted she show us. . . .”

He took the book from her and opened the cover.

My father comes in from the evening
With love in his arms like a basket .. .
In it we are gathered like apples,
I and my brothers.
My father has stars on his forehead,
But he does not know this. . . .
He has singing inside him,
But he does not know the words.

Jennie wept, great bouncing tears. Rex stood grimly in silence for a long time. Then he said gruffly, “You can ask Brigham Young to dinner any time.” They were still laughing when the children began their Christmas descent.

(To be continued)