"Zenna Henderson - Pottage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

POTTAGE
by
Zenna Henderson
What was the secret that held the children of Bendo in quietness and
fear? One of many stories about The People.


You get tired of teaching after a while. Well, maybe not of teaching
itself, because it's insidious and remains a tug in the blood for all of your
life, but there comes a day when you look down at the paper you're
grading or listen to an answer you're giving a child and you get a boinnng!
feeling. And each reverberation of the boing is a year in your life, another
set of children through your hands, another beat in monotony, and it's
frightening. The value of the work you're doing doesn't enter into it at that
moment and the monotony is bitter on your tongue.
Sometimes you can assuage that feeling by consciously savoring those
precious days of pseudo freedom between the time you receive your
contract for the next year and the moment you sign it. Because you can
escape at that moment, but somehow—you don't.
But I did one spring. I quit teaching. I didn't sign up again. I went
chasing after—after what? Maybe excitement—maybe a dream of
wonder—maybe a new bright wonderful world that just must be
somewhere else because it isn't here-and-now. Maybe a place to begin
again so I'd never end up at the same frightening emotional dead end. So I
quit.
But by late August the emptiness inside me was bigger than boredom,
bigger than monotony, bigger than lusting after freedom. It was almost
terror to be next door to September and not care that in a few weeks
school starts— tomorrow school starts—first day of school. So, almost at
the last minute, I went to the placement bureau. Of course it was too late
to try to return to my other school, and besides, the mold of the years
there still chafed in too many places.
"Well," the placement director said as he shuffled his end-of-the-season
cards, past Algebra and Home EC and PE and High-School English,
"there's always Bendo." He thumbed out a battered-looking three-by-five.
"There's always Bendo."
And I took his emphasis and look for what they were intended and
sighed.
"Bendo?"
"Small school. One room. Mining town, or used to be. Ghost town now."
He sighed wearily and let down his professional hair. "Ghost people, too.
Can't keep a teacher there more than a year. Low pay—fair housing—at
someone's home. No community activities—no social life. No city within
fifty or so miles. No movies. No nothing but children to be taught. Ten of
them this year. All grades."
"Sounds like the town I grew up in," I said. "Except we had two rooms
and lots of community activities."
"I've been to Bendo." The director leaned back in his chair, hands
behind his head. "Sick community. Unhappy people. No interest in
anything. Only reason they have a school is because it's the law.