The New Teacher Had Nowhere to Spend Christmas. A Widowed Cowboy Set One Extra Plate

By the second week of December, the Wyoming wind had scraped every soft thing from the land. It came down from the Big Horn Mountains with ice in its teeth. It flattened the dry grass, drove needles of snow beneath doors, and worried the cottonwoods along Bitter Creek until their bare limbs clicked through the night.

 Roads disappeared in an hour. fence posts became white humps. A man could stand 20 paces from his own barn and lose sight of the house behind him. Elias Mercer had lived through 12 winters on the barm, and he trusted none of them. Before dawn, he broke ice from the stock trough with the flat of an axe.

 He fed the mares first, then the milk cow, then the red steer that had learned to push open any gate not fastened with wire. He carried split pine to the house in arm loads and stacked it beside the stove. Every movement was measured. Every tool went back to the same nail. The ranch house had three rooms, though only one seemed lived in.

 Elias slept in the narrow room behind the kitchen. The parlor stayed closed. Its curtains held the gray smell of dust, and a small walnut clock rested silent on the mantle. He had not wound it in almost 4 years. At meals he sat at one end of the long table, one tin plate, one cup, one chair drawn near the stove.

 The other chairs remained pushed in. Folks in Pine Hollow knew better than to ask him to Christmas supper. The first year they had tried. The second year fewer had tried. By the fourth they settled for nodding when he came to town for flour, coffee, and lamp oil. He was not unkind. He shaw a neighbor’s horse without charging when the man’s boy took fever.

 He pulled stranded wagons from spring mud. He left venison at the church steps before sunrise and never signed his name. But he kept his words short and his gate closed. That December, the only reason he rode into Pine Hollow was a cracked hinge on the south barn door. The blacksmith had iron straps that would hold through winter. Snow began while Elias waited at the forge.

 Fine grains hissed against the hot metal. Across the road, children spilled from the one room schoolhouse, wrapping scarves over their mouths as they ran. Behind them came a woman in a dark green coat carrying a stack of copy books against her chest. She was the new teacher, Miss Clara Witcom. Elias had seen her once at church and once through the merkantile window.

 She had arrived in September after answering the territorial school board’s advertisement. She looked too slight for the country, people said, though she had already outlasted one dust storm, a flooded creek, and three boys who believed frogs belonged in her desk. The wind caught the top copy book, and tore it free. It struck the road, opened and skated beneath Elias’s horse.

 He leaned down, caught it by the binding, and held it out. Clara crossed the road carefully. Snow had gathered on her brown hair and on the shoulders of her coat. Thank you, Mr. Mercer. He glanced at the childish sums inside. Would have reached Nebraska by morning. The corner of her mouth moved.

 Then someone in Nebraska would know that Samuel Pike cannot divide by six. Elias handed her the book. At that moment, Mrs. Bell came from the boarding house next door and called across the road. Miss Whitam, I nearly forgot. My sister’s telegram came. We leave for Cheyenne on the 20th. Clara turned. The 20th.

 First stage that runs might be the last before Christmas. You’ll need to make other arrangements until January. I am sorry, dear. Family is family. Mrs. Bell hurried back inside before the snow deepened. Clara stood with the copy books pressed tightly against her coat. For a breath, her face lost the steady look she wore for the children.

 There was nowhere else in Pine Hollow that rented a proper room to a woman alone. Everyone knew it. Then she noticed Elias still watching. “It seems Nebraska may not be the only place in need of a teacher,” she said. Her voice was light, but her fingers had gone white around the books. Elias touched his hat and rode home through the gathering storm.

Clara Witcom had arrived in Pine Hollow on a stage coach under a hard September sun. She brought one brown trunk, a carpet bag, and a wooden box filled with books. The driver set them in the road outside the schoolhouse and left in a cloud of dust. No committee waited to meet her. The school trustee, Silas Rusk, had forgotten which day she was due.

Elias happened to be passing with a wagon load of oats. He saw her try to lift the trunk. She managed one end, lost her grip, and sat down sharply in the dust. He stopped the team. Boarding house. She brushed dirt from her sleeve. If you please. He loaded the trunk without asking what was inside. It was heavier than feed grain and made a faint metallic clink when he set it down.

 At Mrs. Belle’s porch. Clara thanked him and offered a nickel. Elias looked at the coin in her palm, then at her traveling boots, which were made for citywalks and already coated red with prairie dust. Keep it for new souls, he said. She closed her hand around the nickel. I can pay my way, Mr. Mercer. Didn’t say you couldn’t.

 That was their first exchange. By week’s end, Clara knew the names of all 21 children in Pine Hollow. Some rode five miles. Some walked. They came carrying biscuits and cloth, slate boards under their arms, and burrs in their socks. Elias’s daughter would have been among them. No one spoke of that to Clara. Not at first.

 She saw him each Tuesday when he passed the school on his way to town. He never stopped. Yet when the schoolhouse pump began shrieking and gave only brown water, she arrived one morning to find a new leather seal fitted inside it. When a shutter tore loose during an October gale, it was back on its hinges before the children arrived. Clara asked Silas Rusk who had done the work. Silas shrugged. Mercer likely.

 He fixes things when nobody is looking. The next Tuesday, Clara waited beside the road with a parcel wrapped in flowercloth. Elias slowed his horse. For the pump, she said, “Inside were two biscuits with blackberry preserves between them. Pump wasn’t hungry. Then you must make the sacrifice.” He took the parcel and put it in his coat.

 The following week, he left a bundle of kindling beside the schoolhouse stove. He cut every stick short enough for Clara to lay it crosswise without opening the iron door too far. She said nothing about it. The first frost silvered the sage in late October. Clara began arriving before daylight to warm the schoolhouse.

 Often she found the stove already breathing red behind its vents. Elias would be half a mile away by then, a dark rider moving toward the barm. She started leaving coffee in a litted cup on the wood pile. He returned the cup clean. The days shortened. Dust became mud, then hard earth. The children’s wet mittens hung on a cord above the stove.

 Their lessons mixed with the smell of wool, chalk, smoke, and potatoes warming in lunch tins. One Friday, Clara kept the older pupils late to practice a Christmas hymn. The sky darkened sooner than she expected. By the time the last child had gone, sleet covered the road. She had walked only a quarter mile when she heard hoof beatats behind her.

 Elias rode beside her, leading a saddled bay. Mare roads icing. I noticed Mar’s quiet. Clara looked at the empty saddle. And you? I know the road. She mounted. Elias walked ahead, one hand on the bridal while his own horse followed. They traveled that way to the boarding house. Ice shown on his hatbrim. He did not complain.

 At the porch, Clara dismounted and noticed a strip of faded blue ribbon tied around the saddle horn. It was sunbleleached, almost gray. “Was she your wife’s horse?” Clara asked. Elias’s hand stopped on the rain. My daughters. The answer lay between them, plain and cold. Clara did not ask another question.

 She touched the mayor’s neck. She has good manners. Anna taught her. It was the first time Elias had spoken his daughter’s name in front of anyone for more than a year. Clara went inside. Elias stood in the sleet until the lamp appeared in her upstairs window. Then he turned toward home. After that, their silence changed.

 It no longer felt like a door held shut. It became something they could stand inside together. When Clara found a split in the schoolroom globe, she carried it to the barm m on Saturday. The ranch house looked smaller than she expected, tucked beneath cottonwoods beside a frozen bend in the creek.

 Smoke leaned from the chimney. Elias opened the door, saw the globe in her hands, and frowned at it. I was told you men things, she said. Some things. This only needs glue. He took it. Then why didn’t you glue it? Because I was also told your coffee is terrible, and I wanted proof. He stared at her long enough that she wondered if she had gone too far.

Then he stepped aside. The kitchen was warm and spare. One coat hung by the door, one plate dried beside the basin. Clara noticed the long table and the chairs pressed tight beneath it. She did not look toward the closed parlor. Elias heated coffee. It was terrible. Clara drank half a cup without saying so.

 He glued the globe while she held the two halves together. His hands were scarred and broad, careful around the thin paper. “Where did you teach before here?” he asked. “Ill.” “A town called Marston.” “Family there?” she watched the glue darken beneath his thumb. “Not anymore.” He waited, but she offered nothing else.

 When the globe was bound with string and set to dry, Clara opened her carpet bag. She had brought a folded map of Wyoming territory. She laid it on the table, and Elias showed her where Bitter Creek rose, where it vanished in summer, and where the North Trail became dangerous after snow. Their shoulders nearly touched as he traced the land with one blunt finger.

Neither moved away quickly. In November, Clara’s city boots finally gave out. The left sole peeled back during recess and filled with mud. The children laughed until she laughed, too. The next morning, a pair of used riding boots stood outside the schoolhouse. The leather had been cleaned and rubbed with tallow.

 They were a little large, but someone had placed folded wool inside the toes. Clara wore them everyday. She repaid Elias by mending the torn lining of his winter coat. He had left it on a peg during a schoolboard meeting. When he collected it, the rip was closed with small, even stitches, and the loose brass button had been secured.

 He ran his thumb over the thread. The coat had been Ruth’s last gift to him. His wife had sewn the lining herself before the fever came through Pine Hollow. Ruth died in February. Anna, 8 years old and stubborn as springgrass, followed 6 days later. Afterward, Elias moved into the kitchen and closed the parlor.

 He ate because work required it. He slept because morning came whether a man welcomed it or not. For 4 years Christmas had been the worst day. Ruth used to hang juniper over the mantle. Anna placed three polished stones beside each plate because she said even ordinary rocks deserved a feast. Elias spent each Christmas repairing tac in the barn until darkness made his hands useless.

That year, small traces of Clara began following him home. Chalk dust on the sleeve she had mended. A book she lent him about a sailor crossing the Pacific. A paper star one of her pupils folded and tucked into his saddle bag. He set the star on the kitchen window sill. He told himself it was only there because throwing it away seemed wasteful.

 Clara carried traces of the barm m too. Wood smoke in her coat after Saturday coffee. A smooth piece of cedar Elias cut for her classroom ruler. The warmth of boots that had once belonged to someone he loved. They did not name what was growing between them. Pine Hollow noticed anyway. Mrs. Bell began smiling when Elias rode past.

 The older pupils found reasons to look out the window on Tuesdays. Silas Rusk commented that a school teacher’s reputation ought to be tended as carefully as a lampwick. Clara looked him in the eye. Then I suggest you stop breathing on it. Word reached Elias by sundown. The next morning, the schoolhouse had enough chopped wood stacked against it to last until February.

December came hard. Snow sealed the northern pass. The stage from Cheyenne arrived 2 days late with frozen canvas curtains and a driver whose beard was white with ice. He brought mail, lamp oil, and news that another storm was building beyond the mountains. Clara received a single letter. She read it alone at her desk after the children left.

 Then she folded it once, twice, and tucked it into her sleeve. That evening, she did not leave coffee on the wood pile. 2 days later, Silas Rusk called an emergency school meeting at the Merkantile. Elias attended because the notice said the school might close. The men stood between barrels of nails and sacks of meal. Clara sat near the stove with her hands folded over the letter.

 Silas cleared his throat. Territorial funds are short. Enrollment drops each winter. The school roof needs work, and Miss Witam’s contract allows dismissal if suitable lodging cannot be maintained. Mrs. Bell is leaving. Given all that, I propose we end the term on the 20th and reopen in spring with a local instructor.

 There is no local instructor. The blacksmith said there is Miss Dobs in Sheridan. She has an aunt here. Clara’s face remained still. Elias felt something old and sharp turn beneath his ribs. Roof doesn’t leak, he said. Silas glanced at him. Not yet. It will. Then fix it. With whose money? Elias looked around the room. Men lowered their eyes.

 Winter had been poor. Hay cost too much. Two ranches had already sold cattle below value. Silas tapped the paper in front of him. It is practical. Miss Witkim can take the 20th stage south. Clara finally spoke. There is no place waiting for me in the south. The room went quiet. She drew the letter from her sleeve.

 Her older brother had been her last family. After their parents died, he took work with a rail company and sent money when he could. Clara had planned to spend Christmas with him in Denver. The letter had been forwarded twice before reaching Pine Hollow. Her brother’s crew had left for California in October.

 No address had been given. The rented house in Denver was gone. Mrs. Bell would be away. The stage depot did not allow overnight lodging. Every spare room in town already held cousins, married children, or ranch hands brought close for winter. Clara had nowhere to spend Christmas. Silas shifted his weight.

 That doesn’t mean that ripples are not felt down to this day. But the board cannot act on sentiment. Elias stood so quickly his chair legs scraped the floor. Every face turned toward him. He wanted to say she could stay at the barm. The words rose, then stopped. He saw Ruth’s shawl still hanging in the closed parlor.

 He saw Anna’s cup on the top pantry shelf. He imagined Clara at the long table, and fear moved through him with greater force than any blizzard. Not fear of her, fear of hearing life in the house again, then losing it. He put on his hat. “Roof will be fixed,” he said. Then he walked out. Clara watched the door close behind him.

 The next morning, Elias climbed onto the schoolhouse roof before sunrise. The cold made the shingles brittle. He replaced the worst boards, sealed the ridge, and reset the stove pipe while snow gathered in the creases of his coat. The blacksmith arrived with nails. Mr. Pike brought a ladder. By noon, three mothers were inside stuffing cloth around the window frames. No one had called them.

 They simply came. Clara taught around the hammering. At the end of the day, she found Elias behind the schoolhouse warming his hands over a small fire. “You did not have to do this,” she said. “Roof needed it. Silas will still use the lodging clause. Elias stared into the coals likely, and the stage leaves in 4 days if the pass stays open.

 She waited for him to look at her. He did not. Thank you for the roof, Mr. Mercer. Her voice had become formal again. She walked away, her borrowed boots crunching across the snow. For the first time since September, the silence between them felt like a closed door. The storm arrived on the 19th. It came as a white wall at noon.

 School dismissed early. Children left in wagons tied with ropes so one driver could follow the next. Elias rode behind the last family until their lantern reached the pike ranch. By evening, every road vanished. The stage did not run on the 20th. Mrs. Bell had departed a day early with a freight wagon, leaving Clara a key, a cold stove, and permission to remain until Christmas morning.

 After that, the building would be locked because Silas owned it and feared burst pipes. Clara packed her trunk. She placed the repaired globe in its wooden box. She stacked the children’s copy books beside it. At the bottom went the Wyoming map, still bearing the faint mark of Elias’s finger along Bitter Creek.

 Outside, wind hammered the shutters. At the bar, M. Elias sat at the kitchen table with a harness buckle in his hands. He had been holding the same buckle for nearly an hour. The paper star trembled on the window sill whenever the wind found a crack. He rose and opened the pantry. Anna’s cup stood on the highest shelf. Blue flowers circled its rim.

 Beside it rested Ruth’s white serving dish, the one she used for Christmas potatoes. Elias shut the pantry. He crossed to the parlor door, but could not turn the knob. The house creaked around him. For 4 years he had mistaken its emptiness for safety. Nothing entered. Nothing could be taken. Yet the emptiness had taken something each day, quietly and without end.

 Near midnight he pulled on his coat and went to the barn. The storm had eased, but the temperature was falling. He harnessed the strongest team to the sleigh. Before leaving, he filled a lantern and hung it from the front rail. The trip to Pine Hollow took 3 hours. He found Clara awake in the dark boarding house, sitting beside her packed trunk with her coat on. The fire had died.

Frost feathered the inside of the windows. When she opened the door, the lantern light fell across her face. The road is closed, she said. I came by the creek. Why? Elias looked past her at the trunk. House has a spare room. Clara’s expression did not change until the stage runs.

 He heard the distance in her voice. He had put it there. If that is what you want, and if it is not, the wind moved snow across the porch in thin white ribbons. Elias took off his hat. I had a wife named Ruth, a daughter named Anna. Fever took them both. Since then, I have kept every chair where they left it. Clara said nothing.

 I thought an empty house could not hurt me, he continued. I was wrong. His fingers tightened around the hatbrim. You need a place for Christmas. I would like you at mine, not from duty. Not until the weather changes. I would like you there because the house is better when you are in it. Clara’s eyes shone, but her voice stayed steady.

 You could have said that at the meeting. I was afraid. Are you still? Yes. She looked at him for a long moment. So am I. That was all. Elias carried her trunk to the sleigh. They reached the barm late on Christmas Eve. The eastern sky was beginning to pale. Clara slept for 2 hours in the spare room while Elias fed the stock and brought in wood.

 When she woke, the house smelled of coffee and scorched biscuits. She entered the kitchen to find Elias standing at the long table. He had pulled two chairs out. At his usual place, sat a tin cup and plate. Across from it, near the stove, he had set one extra plate. It was white china with a blue rim. The silver fork beside it had been polished.

A folded cloth napkin rested beneath the knife. Clara stopped in the doorway. Elias kept his eyes on the table. Plate was Ruth’s. She saved the good ones for company. Clara laid her hand on the back of the chair. Am I company? He looked up then. I hope not for long. The clockless house held the quiet around them.

 Clara sat. Elias served eggs, biscuits, and potatoes from Ruth’s white dish. The biscuits were hard at the edges. Clara ate one anyway. When he poured the coffee, she reached into her pocket and took out three smooth stones. She had gathered them beside Bitter Creek while he loaded her trunk. She placed one by his plate, one by hers, and one in the center of the table.

 Elias stared at them. “Who told you?” “Mrs. Pike,” she said. Anna believed ordinary stones deserved a feast. His breath caught once. He covered the stone nearest him with his palm. “She did. They ate while mourning brightened the snow outside. Later, Elias opened the parlor door. Dust lifted in the strip of sunlight. Clara waited in the kitchen while he went inside alone.

 He wound the walnut clock and listened until its small ticking steadied. Then he carried out Ruth’s shawl, shook the dust from it, and laid it over the back of Clara’s chair. They spent Christmas afternoon making the house warm. Clara swept the parlor. Elias washed the windows. Together they hung Juniper over the mantle.

 She set the pupil’s paper star between two candles. He brought Anna’s blue flowered cup down from the pantry and placed it beside the three stones. No one spoke of replacing what had been lost. Nothing could. They made room beside it. Near dusk, sleigh bells sounded along the creek. The Pike family arrived carrying a ham.

 Behind them came the blacksmith with a jar of molasses. Then Mrs. Dobs with apple preserves. Children crowded through the doorway, stamping snow from their boots. Silus Rusk came last, holding a paper from the school board. The repairs had satisfied the county inspector. 12 families had signed a pledge to provide teacher lodging in rotation if necessary.

Clara’s contract would continue through spring. Silas handed her the paper. “Seems Pine Hollow has decided it needs its teacher.” Clara looked toward Elias. “I have lodging,” she said. Silas followed her gaze and gave one slow nod. “The long table filled. Elias brought out every chair. Children ate from mismatched bowls.

 Someone burned the gravy. The blacksmith sang half a carol before forgetting the words, and Clara’s pupils supplied the rest at twice the proper speed. Elias stood near the stove, uncertain amid the noise. Clara came beside him. Her hand found his, hidden by the folds of Ruth’s shawl. He held it. Winter remained beyond the walls.

 It pressed against the windows and filled the roads. There would be fences to mend when the thaw came, calves to pull in spring rain, and school mornings when the stove refused to draw. Clara’s brother might write from California. The future had not become safe merely because one day was kind, but the clock ticked above the mantle.

 The fire held, and when the guests finally left, Elias closed the door against the cold. He returned to the table where two plates remained side by side and three ordinary stones caught the last of the Christmas light.