Sam's Yarn (Could Be Short Story #1)

The Hope

Sam didn't know where to go. He didn't know what to think. He couldn't go back into the schoolhouse after saying such unwittingly cruel things to Miss Langley, but this wasn't the triumph he'd hoped for. He wasn't even sure it was a triumph. She might just be further determined not to change the color of the chalk after his behavior.

So he headed to the woods for the second time that week and took out his frustrations on the hills he'd called home ever since he could remember. He toiled up slopes and down draws, listening to the chatter of the little creeks and throwing stones into them just to see the splash. He might've just ruined every chance he ever had of getting Miss Langley to listen to him. He wouldn't beg his father's help or Doctor Blecham's, or even his brothers'. He was old enough to sort out his own problems.

When it was time, Sam went back to Plainborough to study with Doctor Blecham as if nothing was wrong (though the doctor seemed suspicious of Sam's sudden enthusiasm), and then went through the motions of keeping the store with clockwork efficiency. By the time he made it home he could barely keep his eyes open, but he was paralyzed upon opening the door to see Miss Langley at the kitchen table talking with his father while his brothers fried venison. There was no mistaking that smell. His stomach growled.

"Sam, come here," his father commanded, not unkindly. But Sam's feet hardly seemed to work anymore. The fight had come home, and he didn't want the people he loved most to see it. He swallowed hard.

Miss Langley had been crying. Even from this distance he could tell that her eyes were bright and eyelids puffy. "I would like to speak with you, Mr. Paine," she said, in a softer tone than he'd ever heard her use before. "May we go outside?"

Sam nodded, scarcely aware of what he was doing as he stumbled out the door ahead of her. Twilight had fallen. The last rays of a dying sun cut across the distant mountains, but the valley was cool. Sam shivered, waiting for the storm to burst.

"Samuel Paine, I have come to ask your pardon," Miss Langley said, and he looked up, staring at her. She wasn't wearing spectacles. "I have not been fair to you."

Sam continued to stare, and she went on, wrapping her arms tightly about herself in a gesture of unusual vulnerability. "You were right—I am near-sighted—and I have been that way since I was a girl. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be put at such a disadvantage at school, but I spoke with both Dr. Blecham and your father today and it seems that I have not been giving you the credit that is due to you."

Sam stepped back a pace. Things had to add up, make sense—and this didn't. "I shouldn't have said what I did today—"

Miss Langley shook her head. "You reminded me of the day I misspelled every vocabulary word Mr. Bates wrote on the board simply because I couldn't tell the difference between an O and a U, and then had to write each twenty-five times after school as punishment."

Then why had she been so unfair to Sam? Something wanted to harden inside at the injustice of it, but he pushed the feeling away. This might be his chance. He hadn't come this far to give up because of hurt feelings. "Then you believe me?" he asked instead.

"Every word," Miss Langley said, steeling herself curiously like a soldier. "Starting tomorrow, white chalk will be the order of the day."

Sam scrutinized her face, wondering where the snare lay. She'd been a sore spot ever since she'd come to live in Plainborough, so why she should want to be friends now was beyond him. But he was desperate—he couldn't enter medical school without a high school diploma. "All right," he said, extending his hand. If it was a trap, he'd fall in it. "It's a deal."

*******

Two years later Sam stood alone by a fresh grave, twisting a piece of yarn around his fingers to dull the pain. He and Miss Langley had continued to have their spats, but he'd graduated with honors under a robin's egg blue sky and given such a speech as would prove every last naysayer in Plainborough wrong. Mrs. Oliver had even stopped to congratulate him over lemonade afterwards, crying about what a beautiful speech he'd made because she was pregnant with her second child and emotionally compromised.

Mrs. Paine must be very proud, she said. Who would've thought it? Samuel has grown up to be something. He wanted to be a doctor. There was a world of promise ahead. It was just such a pity—such a shame—he'd done it three days too late for his father to see.

Promise. What an awful word full of hollow hope.

Sam knotted the yarn around his fingers, waiting until they went white and blissfully numb. He wanted to tourniquet his heart. He wanted to stop it from feeling. Maybe then he'd reach his fullest potential, unhindered by the weakness at his core. But no—heart was what Dr. Blecham had. Heart was what his father had had. Heart was what his brothers had. And heart would keep on hoping.

He knelt down by the rough wooden cross at the head of the grave and loosed the yarn from his fingers, then draped it around the top and tied it there. The ends fluttered in the breeze rustling through the branches of the trees watching over the wild old graveyard.

"I don't guess you or I will ever have much use for yarn after this," Sam said, throat tightening. "But I suppose I'll just have to keep living—like you did, after the war."

The tears came then, for the first time since the day he'd died. "Mother talks of going 'home'—I thought Elesol was home. But you know, with Jep managing the store for you, and Albert minding the farm, and Thomas off to gold country—I suppose I ought to go with her." He sniffed. "She shouldn't be alone. No one should."

Sam scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. "And maybe there—in the Old Country—I'll find what should be done with me." He licked his lips and tasted salt, and wondered why the sky was so blue.