The Boy, A
Bear and The School Master
“John Lee Ransom, approach
the desk this instant, barked school master Collins. John got out of his desk,
walked to the front of the room, and assumed the “bend over,” position at the
desk. The class laughed. They knew what was coming. The School Master held up
his hand. The laughter stopped.
Simply put, John was a common source of entertainment for his
classmates, and a constant distraction to the class of 15 students.
They were in grades first through sixth, or wherever they
walked away from their schooling. Mr. Collins was satisfied if a student passed
the 6th grade competence test.
“I am assuming you put the frog in the water bucket?” spoke
Mr. Collins.
“Yes Sir, “answered the boy.
“Please explain your action, IF there is such an explanation!”
demanded Mr. Collins.
“Well, the frog looked pretty thirsty,” John
replied, still in his bent over position, eyes on the floor. The class laughed
again.
Mr. Collins and John Lee Ransome had hooked horns from the
beginning of John’s school career. This was Master Collins’ tenth year and John
Lee Ransom’s fourth. The whole community knew their adversarial relationship.
“Young man,” began Master Collins, “you have pulled your last
bit of monkey business in this school term. You are suspended from school for
the rest of the term. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!” The Master barked.
“Yes, SIR”! answered John. He was out the door and gone.
John Lee Ransom felt relief. He took his usual creek trail
home. Most kids, including his siblings, took the dirt road.
In his young mind the three R’s Master Collins seemed so
intent on teaching were unnecessary to John Lee Ransom’s young life.
John studied nature. He had learned the ways of the animals in
the fields and woods. The knew from experimentation a hellgrammite would give
you a bite worse that a crawdad’s pinch. To his Ma’s dismay, John kept Praying
Mantis egg cases in his room, and thousands of small mantises hatched. It took
forever to rid the house of them. He knew bird calls, rabbit trails. He had
raised a young coon until his parents made him release it.
He arrived home. The house was a typical with two story
farmhouse on 60 acres in the Blue Ridge. Pa’s father had built it. He took a
long breath and walked inside.
“What are you doing home,” his Ma questioned.
So, “You put a frog in the drinking water bucket,” John
Ransom, WHAT in the devil possessed you to do such a thing?”
“Ma, the frog looked thirsty, and ole Mr. Fancy Pants Collins
said not to never come back to school again, and I ain’t never going back.”
“Don’t get smart with me, young man, and we’ll see what your
Pa has to say about that,” she answered, tight lipped.
Pa had plenty to say, and was about to give John Lee a good whipping,
when Ma intervened. “Let the boy be, we’ll figure this out. You need help this
fall, put him to work on the farm, and let’s give it some time.” That was fine with John Lee Ransom. Trading a
small room with four walls for a big world with four seasons was a win!
John took his work on the farm seriously. He pulled corn
fodder for the milk cow until his hands bled. He split stove wood for Ma’s
cookstove, and winter wood for the fireplaces after he and Pa cut the trees
with the crosscut saw.
His farm chores included
carrying water up from the spring to the house. He helped his Ma with the clothes
washing, filling the black wash pots with water and keeping the fire under the
wash and rinse pots going. There was hay to put up, stock to feed and a cow to
milk twice a day. John dug and stored potatoes and went to the neighborhood hog
butchering. Despite the hard persistent of work on the farm from “can see to
can’t see,” it was the better option than Mr. Collin’s education in John’s
mind. He was happy with Mr. Collin’s decision, and began to wonder how his Pa had
managed to do all this work by himself.
Going to the grist mill was a pleasant day off. John had
shelled corn with an ancient hand cranked corn sheller and filled sacks from
the bins of black buckwheat grain that Pa traded for. The grain was ground into
flour at the grist mill. Cornbread and buckwheat cakes were mountain folk staples.
His older brother and sister had their chores, but John Lee accepted
the brunt of the everyday tasks.
November came bringing the cold west wind and shorter days.
The Oak tree acorn mast drew all kinds of critter to gather
and store nuts for the cold mountain winter. John found time to sneak to the
woods and sit by the creek to watch the critters get ready for winter. Change
of seasonal habits in the animal world was fascinating. How did they know what
to do? John began to realize that all living things were bound to seasonal cycles.
It dawned on John Lee Ransome that he was no different than
the squirrels storing nuts for winter. All life was a journey through seasons,
even his own. Something in him changed that day. He was on a journey! He had
decisions to make. Ma and Pa couldn’t make them for him. He had learned much in
his 3 months of work on the farm.
Harvesting Chestnuts was an age-old mountain tradition. The
nuts of the American Chestnuts in a prickly mass of husks that the cool fall
weather would dry, and the prickly balls would fall from the branches releasing
the large brown sweet chestnuts.
The ground under the massive trees was littered with these
husks and their fruit. The sharp spines were impossible to escape and contained
something chemical which caused painful red festers on tender fingers, gloved
or not.
One evening, light fading fast and his hands aching from the
spiney husks, he hurried his haul of nuts down a mountain trail blurred with
leaves, picking his was around roots and rocks, eyes on the ground. He heard
something coming toward him. He looked up to see a black bear with two cubs
following! The bear slowed, rose up sniffing the air. She grunted, turned, and ambled
back the way she came, the cubs galloping behind. John was stunned. Never had
he seen a bear on the mountain. He waited until he could no longer hear the
bears as they shuffled away and made his way home. He said nothing about the
encounter, knowing his Ma might forbid his ramblings.
School Master Collins was a bachelor and lived in a small
house some three miles from the school halfway up a holler road. No one lived
above or below on the steep, rutted half-mile road. Master Collins liked it
that way.
A couple of days before the school break, Mr. Collins began to
sniffle. He thought nothing of it, but a sore throat the next day gave evidence
he was catching something, suspecting it was the illness half his students had
contracted.
It was well known that School Master Collins had family in
Roanoke and went home a few days after the Christmas break started. He stabled his
mare and buggy and the livery in town as there was no one to care for her up
the holler.
School out, Mr. Collins
went home, built a good fire in the coal stove, and began packing and putting
the house in order. He fed the coal stove and read in his chair awhile before
going to bed. Later that evening he awoke with chills and decided it best to
delay his trip to see how this played out.
The first big snow came blowing in the the next afternoon
late. John was up with the first light and made his rounds to feed the stock. Snow
was two rails high on the sheep lot fence.
His Ma gave John
permission to go sledding with the neighbor kids on the Big Hill on the Justice
farm just past Mr. Collin’s road. His siblings were still not well, and Ma said
they must stay inside. They complained bitterly.
John and the neighbor
kids had an exhausting day of fun. The sun’s red glow on the new snow said it
was time to head home. Sleigh and wagon tracks had packed the snow on the road,
making it a bit easier to walk. John Lee was last in line, tired and cold to
the bone.
As he came to Mr. Collin’s road, he saw bear tracks going up
the hollow. He stopped, examining them. Sure enough, big tracks and 2 sets of
smaller tracks heading right up the middle of the road. He smiled and continued
walking, stopped, he turned and walked back to the holler road. There, going up
the holler were bear tracks, but absent were buggy tracks coming out of the
mountain holler road.
“That’s odd,” John Lee thought “ole fancy pants usually take
his buggy to town to catch the train morning after school closes.”
John ate supper, and went to bed, exhausted. He kept waking up
with a premonition something was wrong up the holler. Bear tracks going up, no
buggy track coming out. Finally, he slipped out of bed, no longer able to sleep.
He quietly dressed, quietly slipped down the stairs, fetched a couple of
biscuits and a piece of ham from the warmer oven on the wood cook stove, and
quietly let himself out the back door.
The half-moon was low on the horizon when John made it to Mr.
Collin’s holler road. The cold on the new snow made the surface crisp. Luckily,
John was light enough not to fall through the crust, which would have made the uphill
trek much harder. The bears’ tracks were clearly visible, but no buggy tracks
at all.
The boy was breathing
heavily when he reached the small barn below the house. The horse was in the stall
with no hay and only half barrel of water. She nickered softly as John entered
the barn. He quickly threw hay at the manger and went to the house. No one had
been to the barn in a day!
The door to the house was bolted, and windows pinned shut. John
saw there was a small scuttle window above the porch. He found a ladder in the
shed behind the barn and got to the roof. It took some work to negotiate the snow-covered
roof. A bit of jiggling and the window fell on to the ceiling floor breaking a
pane. John heard no noise from below. The house was as cold as the outdoor
temperature; well below freezing. John removed the small access door in the ceiling,
calling Mr. Collins name a couple times before dropping heavily to the floor. He
walked to the bedroom and caught his breath.
Mr. Collins looked pale
as death. John called his name again, “Mr. Collins, can you hear me, it’s John
Lee Ransome.” There was a slight moan. He went to Mr. Collin’s bed and felt the
man’s hands. They were cold as ice.
John rushed to the coal stove and shook the grate. There were still
live clinkers enough to start a fire with the help of a couple pieces of pine
lighter wood. Next, John scooped up a large pot of snow from the porch and put
it on the stove.
Going back to Mr. Collins, John began rubbing his hands and arms
and talking to him. He had watched his Pa do this with newborn calves and lambs
born in the cold mid-winter. “Wake up Mr. Collins. wake up!” After a few
minutes, Mr. Collins coughed softly. John beathed a sigh of relief. At least he
was alive.
The small house warmed quickly, and John found towels, and
hung them near the stove to warm and placed them on Mr. Collin’s chest, neck,
and head and arms. Mr. Collins opened his eyes briefly and coughed. “It’s me,” he
stated, “John Ransom!”
The sun was just over the trees and John knew Ma and Pa would
be frantic when they found him missing. John’s mind raced. Mr. Collins was much
too weak to move under his own power and too heavy for John to carry. He
decided it was best he walk back home to get help. He knew it would take at
least an hour to make the trip.
First things first. Stabilize Mr. Collins. He wet a cloth in
warm water from the stove and swabbed his face. The warm moisture brought on a
coughing fit. Mr. Collins eyes opened briefly. The sick man was becoming more
responsive to John’s efforts to revive him.
John found coffee and made it on the small kerosene kitchen stove.
John stirred honey in the black coffee and carefully spooned the liquid into Mr.
Collins’ mouth. He coughed, opened his eyes, and smiled slightly. Half an hour
later Mr. Collins sat up weakly in bed with John’s help.
The house was warm, and John remembered the biscuits in his coat
pocket. He placed them and the piece of ham in a small pan on the coal stove to
warm. John drug Mr. Collins chair to the bed, and with effort got him in it,
pulling it closer to the stove. The effort produced a coughing fit and a nasty
yellow green sputum.
Mr. Collins was in a bad way.
John explained to Mr. Collins what he must do. Mr. Collins
nodded and, in a whisper, said, “Take the horse, she’s broke to ride.”
John went to the barn, bridled the horse, and led her out into
the brilliant sunlight. She was a tall horse, and it took several tries to get
on her back. He headed for his house, thought again, and headed to Dr. Bentley’s
house a mile further down the road
He reached the main road and tried to put the mare in a trot,
but the frozen solid road was slippery and rough. Ten minutes later he met Leonard
Smith and his wife in their buggy. He stopped them, explained Mr. Collins’
situation, and asked if they would see after Mr. Collins. They obliged, and
John went on to town to find Dr. Bentley.
John hitched up the Doctor’s buggy as the Doctor stocked his
bag saying to John, “sounds like pneumonia to me.” They arrived to find Mr.
Collins awake, coughing but not as spasmodically. Mrs. Smith doctored Mr.
Collins with what she could to make him comfortable, and Leonard had tended to
the gathering in coal and cleaning the stall and filling the water barrel from
the creek.
Doc Bentley examined Mr. Collins and announced he did, indeed,
have pneumonia and would not have survived the day were it not for John and the
Smith’s intervention.
Dr. Bentley asked how John came to be there, as everyone in
town knew he had been suspended for the semester. John told of his observation
and premonition. Dr. chuckled, “Well, I never heard a story quite like that,
and you just saved you School Master’s life, I think.”
The Doctor headed back to town saying he would stop by his Ma
and Pa’s and tell them he was safe and was staying with Mr. Collins. The Smith’s
went on their way.
John administered the medicine Doc left per instructions, and
fed Mr. Collins the soup Mrs. Smith had put together. Color was returning, but
his coughing was deep, but not persistent as it had been earlier.
John sat in a chair next to Mr. Collins and dozed off by the
stove. He woke with a start with the late afternoon sun coming in the window on
his face. He got up and quietly stepped out on the porch into the chilly air. It
felt good. The house was stuffy warm.
He leaned on the rail of the porch thinking about the day’s
events. Hearing something, John looked to see the big bear ambling slowly up
the holler road with two cubs cavorting in the snow behind her. John crouched
watching as she passed behind the horse barn. Neither she nor the mare paid any
attention to each other. The bear took her time, slowly waddling up the hill.
John knew there must be a den cave further up the mountain. Life was, indeed, an
adventure.
It was dark when he heard the wagon coming up the holler,
lantern swinging from the brake arm. Ma and Pa would be here moments later. Sun
sets fast up the hollers. He checked on Mr. Collins and stepped out on the
porch as the wagon pulled up.
Ma, in her usual manner, said “You little rascal, you scared
us to death.” Pa just shook his head, smiling, “glad your safe, son, we were
worried, but I knew you were up to something,” pausing, he continued, “Good job
son,” and went out to deal with the horses.
Dr. Bentley returned
and administered to Mr. Collins. The Dr. and Ma made the decision Mr. Collins should
come to recover at Ransoms’ house when School Master Collings was able to
travel.
Ma stayed the night with Mr. Collins, and Pa took John home
for some much-needed rest. Doc brought them home the next day, feeling Mr.
Collin’s was able to travel three miles to the Ransoms.’
Ma’s cooking would make a yard stick fat. Her nursing skills
were natural, and Dr. Bentley’s medicines were effective. Although weak, Mr. Collins
was up and moving a few days before Christmas. Mr. Ransom telegraphed Mr. Collins’
relatives of the situation and said that he was recovering from pneumonia thanks
to John.
On Christmas Eve the Ransom family went to the small
Presbyterian Church for the “singing.” John elected to stay with Mr. Collins.
It was the first time they had been together without interruption since the
late great unpleasantness.
Sitting by the fire, Mr. Collins went straight to the point.
“John, what really made you come to my house that night”? John
told him he just put two and two together. He knew Mr. Collins needed help, as
he always went to Roanoke on holidays. That evening, coming home from sledding,
John noticed bear tracks going up the holler but no buggy tracks coming out of
the holler. That told John Mr. Collins had not gone to Roanoke. He finished
with “I knew something wasn’t right and came looking.”
They sat quietly watching the fire as it crackled and sparked.
John, I know we have had disagreements. You were like no other
student I’ve experienced. You are a conundrum; intelligent, clever, curious,
observant, and exasperating disruptive. I found it impossible to challenge your
intellect as your head was somewhere else. Your antics were clever and
disruptive.
I was very frustrated to watch you waste your time, that of
your classmates and my efforts to teach. I did not know what to do with you. I
let you go, however; I knew something in you would click one day and you
wouldn’t be prepared for it. Native intelligence and education go hand in hand.
You have a God given sense of curiosity far superior to any pupil in my
teaching career of 20 years. Formal education is another tool, John, why not
embrace it, it’s not that painful. It can be an adventure!
“I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. I’m offering you the
gift of knowledge for Christmas. School starts back in a week or two, and I
hope to be there, and hope you will be there, also
Thanks to you and your family’s kindness, I’m alive. I
survived what could have been my final life’s adventure. Not all adventures are
pleasant, but that’s life.
John did not commit
that Christmas Eve, but he knew Mr. “fancy pants, School Master” was right. Life
is indeed an adventure. It’s not every day one sees a bear or saves someone’s
life. A big Mama bear and a School Master changed John Lee Ransom’s life
adventure.
Well, not really. John “done it to his self.”
He slept better that night than he had for months.
