There is a schoolhouse half-sunk into the hillside behind the Whitlock orchard. You can see the cupola from the road if you know where to look, which is to say, you cannot see it from the road at all unless someone has told you to look for it first. This is not an accident.
The story of how the schoolhouse came to be where it is, and what was taught there, and what is taught there still, is one that takes the better part of an afternoon. It cannot be rushed. It does not survive the rushing. Bitter Root has learned, over a hundred and some-odd years, that a story told too fast is a story that arrives somewhere it did not mean to go.
A story told too fast is a story that arrives somewhere it did not mean to go.
So when a stranger asks, and a stranger almost always does, the answer is a small smile and a question back. Are you in any kind of hurry. Most strangers are. They are pointed toward the diner and told that the pie is good, which it is. The few who say no, and mean it, are offered a folding chair on a porch, a cup of coffee, and the rest of the day.
What you hear, if you sit down, is not exactly a ghost story, though it has the shape of one in places. It is not a history lesson either, though the dates are real and the names are checked. It is closer to a recipe. There are ingredients that have to be added in order, and a couple of steps that look unnecessary until you skip them and find out otherwise.
The novel I am writing, The School Under the Ground, is my own attempt to set the story down. It is not the version you will hear on the porch. The porch version is better. The porch version is the one that was there first. But the book is what I can give to people who do not live close enough to come sit on the porch.
If you ever do come, bring a folding chair. The good ones go fast.
