Chapter 9: School on the Ridge

"They'll go back to a house," I said. "I'll find them one."

"With what?" Roxanne laughed. "Cinnamon rolls?"

"If I have to."

I walked out.

Glory didn't let go of my sleeve until we were in the truck.

Gunnar drove us home without saying a word.

At the bottom of the ridge road he reached over and turned the heater up on my side.

That night I sat at his kitchen table with a pencil and the back of a feed receipt.

The Pup House wasn't just the house where orphans lived.

Every morning, eight to noon, it was pup school.

The town school teaches reading and fractions.

It doesn't teach a pack kid what to do the first time their bones start to itch.

It doesn't teach which plants on the mountain kill wolves, or why you never shift in front of a school bus.

For six years I'd taught all of it, to my five and to half the pack's little ones.

Now there was a padlock on the door.

"I need a room," I said.

Gunnar looked up from the sink.

"I need a room with a stove and twelve chairs, eight to noon, five days a week."

He looked around his own front room.

Couch, rug, woodstove, the twins' bed shoved against the wall.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"It's a room."

On Monday morning I taught my five on the front room rug with a stack of library books.

On Tuesday a pack mother drove up the ridge with her two boys in the back seat, and stood on the porch looking embarrassed.

"Is it true you're still doing lessons?"

"Eight to noon."

She pushed her boys through the door and drove away fast, before anybody down the valley saw her truck.

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