Chapter 7

At the end of that first winter, with spring rapidly approaching, we started looking at what needed to be done around the homestead. We looked at the winter damages and what was needed to repair them. Suzy went through the house, noting all the spring cleaning she thought was needed. We also went through our pantry and the other stores, deciding what was needed and what could wait. That naturally led to planning our first resupply trip off the mountain. After two weeks, we felt we had a pretty good handle on the project. All that was needed now was for the weather to cooperate.

I was right at that warm and comfortable point of falling asleep when Suzy said that phrase that all men dread to hear. “Honey, we need to talk.”

This jolted me awake, and I looked over at her. “About what, honey?”

She raised up on one elbow and looked at me. “It’s Kathy. We need to do something about school for her.”

I silently groaned. This was something that I had yet to think about. I had initially hoped that the Feds would come up with a foster plan for Kathy. But after a year, I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to happen. I also knew any plan that took Kathy away from Suzy would not work. Not that I wanted Kathy to leave either, but I knew that our circumstances weren’t the best for raising a child.

I sat up and asked Suzy, “That might be a problem. I don’t think we are on the bus route up here.”

“Matt, I’m serious. We could be hurting her future.”

“I know, but what do we do? We can’t take her into Elk City and leave her there. And there’s no way we can take her to school every day. We’d be spending all our time running back and forth. And we can’t live out of the camper.

“I was thinking that we could get around a lot of this. Maybe we could homeschool her.”

I don’t know if Suzy intended to cause a sleepless night, but that was the result.

How are we going to do this? We would probably have to go to the homeschool route. But I had no idea what the requirements of the state would be.

I also thought about what level Kathy was already at. She was already further than I was in kindergarten regarding reading, writing, and arithmetic. Soon after she came to live with us, I bought the McGuffey’s books and some other kids’ stuff.

The McGuffey’s books lasted about a month. It didn’t take too long for her to graduate to more adult material. Shakespeare, Frank Baum, and Tolkien soon became favorites. She didn’t know or care that they were too advanced for her. The other things I bought were a blackboard and a box of chalk.

In the beginning, Kathy had problems with arithmetic. She just couldn’t get the concept of addition or subtraction. She couldn’t grasp the symbols called numbers. But then I had an idea. I found a dozen small stones, and we broke through the symbol problem. Instead of symbols, she now had objects that the symbols represented. That gave me another inspiration, and I made her an Abacus. From there, Kathy was off to the races.

I figured that Kathy had the basics. But what else did she know or need to learn?

History is also important. We had several excellent books about America and the Founding Fathers. I particularly liked the books by Steven Ambrose. Suzy was a fan of the Civil War, Daniel Boone, and Frontier Life books. Suzy had all nine of Laura Wilder’s books. I know Kathy enjoyed reading those books.

Then I got to thinking about the sciences. I did believe that Kathy was far ahead of the curve there. Biology and anatomy were old hat for Kathy. Any kid who lives on a farm knows all about biology. She knew quite a bit about anatomy because she had been with me when I dressed out and butchered the game I had harvested. Blood, guts, and gore didn’t seem to bother her. She had even had experience with fish, rabbits, and chickens.

She even knew more about botany than the average high schooler just from what we had taught her about wild herbs and spices. We couldn’t let her collect mushrooms on her own just yet, but she had a good idea of what was poisonous and what wasn’t. Between Suzy and I, she had a healthy knowledge of the medicinal properties of the plants that grew on the mountain. Suzy had also begun teaching her cooking and baking.

We didn’t solve the school problem that night, the next day, or the following week. I finally decided that we needed to take a trip to Elk City. We both concluded that we would need the experts’ help for any decision we made. If anybody could tell us what our options were, it would be somebody at the school.

Suzy also decided that this would be a good time to do some shopping. She could get a head start on getting some of the supplies that we needed. Two days later, we saddled up and rode into town.

When we arrived in Elk City, we split up. Suzy and Kathy headed to McNamara’s dry goods store. We would meet later at Mable’s for lunch and ice cream. My mission took me to the Elk City elementary school.