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

The Wilsons probably had more money than the Garveys, but it hardly showed, mostly because the Wilsons kept to themselves. Club broke his leg in high school, playing football in a pick-up game one evening after class, and hobbled around in a leg cast for nearly six weeks. After the cast was removed, his friends started calling him Club because he tended to drag one foot. The name stuck long after all evidence of the broken leg had disappeared. In fact, most folks no longer remembered how Club got his name in the first place.

      “I don’t think she’s so much,” Club said rather sheepishly. “Too tall for me.”

      “Not too tall for Talmage Grimes,” Jay broke in. “I hear she slips over to Mt. Pleasant ever so often for a little lesson sharing.”

      Joe Tanner hadn’t said anything because the conversation seemed so meaningless. But he could feel the group stirring with uneasiness as the subject turned to women. He had been involved with a girl once, nearly ten years ago when he was nineteen, and she had told him she loved him, just before she ran off with one of the boys from the quarry.

      “I’m leaving,” Joe said, standing up. “I got no use for women of any kind. Trust in the Lord, I say, ’cause He’s the only one that won’t leave you when you need Him.” Joe walked through the group and out the door. His departure quieted them for only a moment.

      “This is a serious matter,” Easy said. “It’s our kids going to that school. No telling what that Chambers girl is teaching them. She don’t go to church. Her folks don’t go to church. And you can ask Johnny Hargrove what her mother is like.”

      A general silence fell over the room as the men considered this new accusation. If this was a call to action, it was slow to be recognized. But Easy had put a question before the group that required a response, and Club was the first to offer a rational solution: “If you boys want to get rid of her, why not just have the school board fire her?” he said. “You guys run the school.”

      “No, we don’t,” Ed Garvey interrupted. “My mother does and she loves that Chambers girl. I’m not sure she’s so bad anyway. I don’t believe half that stuff they say about her.”

      “Maybe you don’t believe it ’cause you don’t want to,” Joe said.

      “That’s crazy,” Ed said. “I don’t like it any better than you if she’s corrupting the morals of our kids.”

      “Hell,” Club added, “she’s been to college. You know she’s trying to talk those kids into leaving Nickerly County. First thing you know, we won’t have anybody to work the fields or the quarry. We won’t be good enough for our own kids.”

      “Boys, I’ve known her family all my life,” Piney Woods offered. “The Chambers live just up the road. They may not be God-fearing people, but they aren’t evil. We can’t get her fired.”

      “Piney,” Club said, “I heard your wife just the other day tell you to stay away from that Chambers girl. Just as you went into the hardware store.”

      Piney was embarrassed. He was as tall as a pine tree, with a long face and coal-black hair that lay across his head like wet seaweed. Because he didn’t seem to have any hips, his pants were hitched high, and cinched tight. He wore wire-rim glasses that his grandfather had left him. The glasses had helped Piney, his father, and his father before him through at least three grades of school. They should have been replaced long ago, but since the diagnosis was the same for all three generations of men—they couldn’t see the windmill in the cow pasture—they were passed down from one generation of Woods to the next. The remarkable thing was that the glasses survived three generations, unbroken and with only a few deep scratches, even though Piney’s face was so narrow and his ears so small that the glasses kept slipping off his nose.

      Despite his homely appearance, Mrs. Woods loved Piney with a passion, and she suspected most other women of secretly sharing her sentiment. Ever since the first Literary, when she caught Piney staring at Margaret Chambers during the introductions, she had imagined a spark of interest between them. Of course, there was no such illicit romance between her husband and the schoolteacher. But jealousy is a passion of its own making. The more Mrs. Woods thought about the possibility of someone else sharing her Piney, the more certain she became that something had to be done to stop Margaret Chambers.

      Piney dismissed his wife’s concerns as so much women’s talk, but he did notice a new attentiveness in Mrs. Woods, and when she had touched his leg three nights in a row, it occurred to him that her preoccupation with Margaret Chambers might not be such a bad thing.

      “Oh, Mrs. Woods is always saying that,” Piney said. “She says there’s something going on with that Swenson boy. Now that ain’t right. God’s hand will fall hard on any teacher that takes a boy. I find it hard to believe.”

      John Buckhorn sat quietly through the discussion, mainly because he had never heard any of these accusations before. He was single, lived alone in his family’s home on the edge of Nickerly, and had known Margaret Chambers all his life. Indeed, he probably knew Margaret better than anyone at the mill, and he did not recognize the picture they were painting.

      “John,” Ed said, “do you think we could run her out of town, get her to leave on her own?”

      “What?” John asked. “What are you talking about? Why would she leave?”

      “What if we told her to leave?” Ed said. “Just told her we don’t approve of her carrying on, told her to get out.”