Esther’s Pillow: The Tar and Feathering of Margaret Chambers. Marlin Fitzwater

and a Sunday school watercolor that Margaret had done twelve years ago. The watercolor was pretty, a daisy with bright colors. Margaret’s mother remarked on it every time she came in the room, so the girls kept it on the wall even after they became tired of it. A birdhouse with a red roof sat beside the china lamp. Margaret always said the painted blue jay on the lamp shade was the only admirer that birdhouse ever had, and probably so since Margaret took the house out of the tree just a week after her father had hung it on a low limb. She saw the neighbor’s cat creeping down the limb; the house had been in their room ever since. Margaret had once read a French saying that marriage was like a birdhouse, those without want in and those within want out. She wasn’t sure if she remembered the saying right, or exactly what it meant, but she thought about it a lot, especially when she became dissatisfied with her surroundings. It always seemed to her that she wanted an escape, but then she wanted a return to safety as well, like coming home to teach, even though she didn’t seem to have the patience for all the rituals of the job, like Literaries.

      “Ileen,” she said, “I’ve been going to Literaries all my life. I remember sitting on the front steps of Mt. Pleasant School when I was in about fourth grade, while all the adults were inside eating, and three boys about my age, maybe a little older, asked me if I wanted to go on a snipe hunt. I was so excited.”

      “You didn’t fall for the old snipe hunt, did you?” Ileen asked, laughing. “I thought you were too smart.”

      “I bought it for the same reason every kid buys it,” she said. “I wanted those boys to like me. Ed Garvey was one of them. I don’t remember the other two. But I remember sitting out in that grass, holding that stupid paper bag, and waiting for the boys to drive those snipes into my bag. And I remember waiting in the dark, just able to see the school past the mulberry bushes, and I remember being scared to death that some snake was going to get me before the snipes got there. And then I saw the door of the school open and a shaft of light came out that hit those boys full in the face, while they were laughing and sitting on the same steps where I had been, and I knew I had been tricked. I hated those boys. I ran inside to mother and they laughed at me all the way. I have never liked Literaries since.”

      “Oh, Margaret, you’re so dramatic,” Ileen said. “Those boys were harmless. And now Ed is one of our most important citizens. Practically runs the mill.”

      “It’s not that,” Margaret said. “It’s like the birdhouse. I feel trapped. Do you know that Jerry and Berry Quick are going to play their marimbas again? They’re grown men. They’ve been playing those twin marimbas for twenty years. We used to think they were going to be great musicians, giving concerts around the world. Now they’re just old bachelor farmers playing in barns.”

      “Oh, Margaret,” Ileen said with a kind of shushing sound, “you’re the only one who thought they would be traveling around the world. The rest of us knew they were just farm boys in overalls who liked playing the marimbas.”

      She let the moment slide, then added, “You probably thought that old man who played the harmonica and the accordion was going to the Kansas City symphony.”

      “Hush, Ileen,” Margaret said. “When did you get so sarcastic? And where did you get the Kansas City symphony?”

      “I don’t know,” Ileen said. “I’ve always liked the music, even the spoons player. You know I saw Dad trying that down in the barn once. I walked in and he had three spoons between the fingers of each hand and he was beating them against his knee, and I think he was even singing. Daddy can’t sing. But they had just been to a Literary, and he thought he could do it.”

      “At tonight’s Literary,” Margaret proclaimed, “I am the main attraction, and I don’t even want to go.”

      “You’re not my main attraction,” Ileen said, grinning. “I want to see those new Swedish boys you were telling me about, the blonde ones who just moved onto the Bonebreak place.”

      “Ileen, they’re still in school. Too young for you.”

      “I’m only seventeen, and I’m going to get married. One year doesn’t matter much.”

      “Just remember,” Margaret said, “there are four schools coming together tonight. I’m the only new teacher in years, and the only one who’s been to college. These people never change. Everybody sits around in the desks. Then we have Mrs. Darden introduce the teachers, then we have the Quick brothers, and the spoon players, and old Ab Grogger playing the bones, and then little Jenny Arnstead gives her reading. Then we set the date for the next Literary, adjourn, and then we have the covered dish dinner . . . a lot of baked beans and potato salad.”

      “Margaret, why are you teaching anyway?” Ileen said.

      “I love teaching. The kids are wonderful. It’s just these meetings with parents I can’t stand. Literaries are the only entertainment in this community. I understand that. They’re fun for the children and their families. They’re just not fun for the teachers.”

      “I can’t believe you don’t like the whistling Solomon family, with all those grandkids lined up, just a whistling and yodeling their hearts out,” Ileen said with a giggle.

      “We’ve been watching that family so long the oldest boy is seventy-three,” Margaret said, joining in the humor. “But that’s what makes it so hard to have fun around here. Everyone but the Solomon family is repressed. We don’t sing anything but hymns. Don’t dance. And the Reverend Aaron makes it sound like joy in any form except work is bad.”

      “Margaret,” Ileen countered, “you’ve got to work your way into heaven. That’s what the Bible says.”

      “Well, I want to dance . . . to have fun like we used to in college,” Margaret said. “I’m not just working to get into heaven. I want to meet a grown man as handsome as those Swenson boys and live in the city, and go to plays and dances and parties. Maybe I’ll just take that Swenson boy with me.”

      “Margaret, you don’t mean that. That Swenson boy is your pupil.”

      “I know that,” Margaret said, “but he does have an eye for me. You know what I mean, Ileen. I’m going to teach for five years and then move to Kansas City. You can come with me if you want.”

      There were 133 one-room schools in Nickerly County. Ostensibly, the reason for this was so that the children could walk to school, especially in winter when roads were difficult and hooking up the buggy for a short ride to school simply seemed extravagant. But a more compelling reason was parental control, over the teacher and over the curriculum.

      Mt. Pleasant was a larger school than Sunnyside, principally because it was closer to Nickerly and served a larger population. Mt. Pleasant was named for the picture of a mountain printed inside the textbooks selected for 1903. The mountain’s snow-crested peak was so pristine and sparkling that it reminded the school mothers of God’s beauty. Even though the closest mountain was in the Rockies, some 500 miles away, and no one in the Mt. Pleasant School had ever seen a real mountain, it seemed the perfect name for a new school. Several of the mothers looked at the Mt. Pleasant picture and proclaimed that they would one day visit that place.

      The school had twenty bench desks that ran the full width of the school, and twenty bench seats of the same length, meaning all the children sat in rows, side by side, an arrangement conducive to foolishness such as pencil poking and ankle kicking. Although hand holding had never been allowed, children would group together in the yard to laugh and tease about the latest school romance. Teachers watched this sort of thing carefully, and the admonitions against touching by the Reverend Aaron were a fearful reminder that such behavior was not allowed. For most children, of course, it was not desired anyway, and some of the boys placed their rulers on the bench as a reminder to any girl to keep her distance.

      On Literary night, the parents squeezed onto the benches, but the “ruler” division erected invisible barriers between families. It was crowded, and the farmers folded their arms over their stomachs