My Dear Miss Wanamaker,

I pray you receive this letter before your first day in class. There are a few titbits of information you will benefit from knowing when you take over the teaching this upcoming year (1937 already!) at our little one-room schoolhouse. Even though we met only briefly, I could tell that you are a fine young woman, well-versed in modern education methods, and I feel certain you’ll fare quite well—you seem far better prepared for the task than I was when the job fell to me all those years ago.

One practical fact you’ll want to be aware of is that the stove in the centre of the room is a bit balky, and doesn’t draw well, but will keep everyone warm enough if you make sure to feed it continuously with the smallest pieces of firewood, and encourage its continued cooperation with a good swift kick now and again. (Mr. Chen will clean the flue if you ask him.) In a similar vein, you should be aware that the window sashes tend to be stubbornly recalcitrant and stick when the spring rains come and the dampened wood swells, but once again, a few sharp emphatic raps are often all that’s needed to show who’s boss.

Anyway, no doubt there are many other items of interest I could relate, private experiences and bits of wisdom I’ve accrued whilst attempting to teach these needful children out here at the ends of the earth, but I realise as I write this that my observations are perhaps trivial in the grand scheme of things, so I’ll allow them to remain unsaid—the last thing I want to do is waste your time. The real purpose of this letter is to share an important secret, one you should be let in on before you enter the classroom.

First, a little history: when the tiny farming community of Argos, being well removed from any other good-sized village, decided they would set up an informal school for their younger children, the first problem they faced was who might be trusted to do the teaching. Back in those days, just after the war in Europe, everything here on the island was quite laissez-faire and unregulated, with a self-reliant, make-do attitude prevailing. Though having no formal training, I was approached to take on the teaching duties (as an unpaid volunteer). It was assumed that, as a mature, educated woman living nearby on a war widow’s pension, I had little else of import to occupy me. Well, the truth is, they were quite right. In any case, I’ve always loved the children of Argos—I hadn’t any children of my own—so I said yes.

The second problem concerned a proper location for the schoolroom, which had to be able to accommodate eighteen students (ages six to twelve) in all of the wildly assorted weathers to which our island is subject. Argos is far too small (even now) to boast any public buildings, so a private individual was going to have to offer up a place. After much discussion and rigmarole, a quiet farmer named Danzetti stepped forward and proposed we use one of his derelict outbuildings, which was a sort of small barn. The property would need a great deal of work to make it habitable for children on a daily basis—digging outhouses, lowering the ceiling, plastering the walls, adding windows, and of course installing that balky stove—but it would do. It was well-known that Danzetti had a child who had died not long before in the building, falling against the sharp end of some rusty stored equipment whilst playing, and the farmer could no longer bring himself to utilise—or in fact even enter—the premises. The boy, it was said, had been looking forward to attending school when he was old enough, so if the building where he died were made into a classroom, it might be considered a fitting way to honour the poor little lad. Danzetti was happy to have his property turned to this good purpose.

It would be some time before the volunteers were able to shape up our new schoolhouse, and in the meanwhile the children and I got to know each other in various temporary settings, including a redolent old grain silo, a vacated greenhouse with an entire wall absent, and even a steep cool hillside in the shifting shade of a large barn. These changes of venue seemed to matter little to the children of Argos, however—they made my task easy and pleasurable by demonstrating every day how eager they were to learn. There were never any serious behaviour problems in that initial class for me to deal with.

I realised early on that the main skills our students needed to acquire were just basic reading and writing (along with concomitant grammar, spelling, and vocabulary). Some had been schooled haphazardly at home, and knew their numbers and letters, but it would be fair to say only a few of them were being reared in houses containing more than one book. And I’ve always been a firm believer of the truth inherent in the observation that once a young person has learned to read, the entire world is open to them. Of course, I also did my best with maths, history, science, and geography. (I scoured our homeland looking to purchase a globe that showed our little Mid-Atlantic island on it, but never could locate one—it was as if rest of the world thought we didn’t exist.)

It was then related to me that the new schoolroom would finally be ready for use by the last week of October. The farmers had banded together and managed somehow to acquire ten child-sized inkwell worktables (each meant to hold two students on a bench seat), a rather nice oak desk for me, and a massive old wood-framed slateboard which they screwed into the wall. I purchased many of the other incidental supplies myself—chalk, ink, paper, etc.—but I didn’t mind a bit. Books were another matter. A donated box of retired elementary-level texts from other schools on our side of the island helped a bit, and the library in Old Town turned over a few copies of well-thumbed volumes from their children’s fiction section they had been planning to dispose of. We would end up reading the stories rendered on those yellowed pages over and over until we knew each line by heart.

At last, the day came for everyone in Argos to get together and inspect the just-completed schoolhouse. There was a little outdoor dedication ceremony—the emulsion paint they’d slathered on the interior had not quite dried yet—so the next morning would be the first class session to actually take place inside our new home. Since it was the end of October, I thought—inspired by the American version of Hallowe’en—it might be fun to play a game to commemorate the occasion. I instructed the students to come to school in the morning disguised in fancy dress, leaving it to me to guess who each one actually was, before assigning them a permanent classroom seat. The last one I was able to identify would win a bag of sweets.

In the morning, I was faced with a gathering at the back of the classroom containing twelve ghosts of varying sizes. I should have anticipated that—throwing an old sheet over one’s head was the easiest costume for a poor child to make. But there was also a little pirate, a princess, a clown, a Raggedy Ann, a pair of constables, and a wee figure probably meant to be a soldier (brandishing a carved wooden rifle). The chatter that normally passed between the children was completely absent; they did not want to take the chance I’d recognise their voices.

I made a rather hammy, over-dramatised showing of pretending to be completely flummoxed by the prospect of guessing the students’ identities, but eventually I began naming them one by one, starting with the eldest, who was significantly taller than the rest. I actually was flummoxed by the fraid of ghosts for a bit—all I really had to go by was the students’ height—but eventually, after several wrong guesses, I deduced who they were and directed each little wraith to their newly assigned seat. In the end, I was left only with the boy dressed as a pirate. His outfit—unlike all the others—appeared well-made, possibly store-bought, consisting of a tight-fitting rubbery mask covering his entire head, a swashbuckler’s tunic and trousers, black gloves, a soft tricorn hat emblazoned with skull and crossbones, an eyepatch, and even a short, blunted wooden cutlass tucked into his silver-buckled belt.

I was genuinely puzzled; I thought I’d named all the boys—and yet I was certain I was being faced with a little male pirate, not a girl. Turning, I assessed the children already in their seats. Yes, Ramon, Derek, young Jamie…they, and the other boys were already identified. I shook my head a little, somewhat disappointed in myself—it seemed I was experiencing a middle-aged memory lapse or mental block of some kind. Well, whoever the youngster might be, he’d won the sweets.

‘Alright,’ I said to him, ‘you are the winner! Take off your mask and show us who you are!’

The child did not move.

A sort of hush fell over the schoolroom. After a few awkward moments, I turned again and asked the children, ‘Does anyone have a guess?’ They all appeared confused by the question and looked about them, counting up their friends, I suppose. I too, enumerated those already seated in their desks, and came up with just my regular eighteen students. The Little Pirate was an unexpected nineteenth.

An outsider who had sneaked in? A new student no one had informed me about? But why wouldn’t he speak or remove his mask?

Well, my joints were creakily rheumatic, even back then, but I managed to drop to my knees on the rough-hewn floor and attempt to get near enough to examine the Little Pirate close-up, face-to-face. One of the mask’s eyes was obscured by the patch, of course, so I leant in, adjusting my spectacles, to focus all my attention on the other. As I brought my face near to the Little Pirate’s, the tip of my nose almost touching the rubbery false-flesh nose of the mask, I saw that there was, in fact, no child’s eye to be seen looking back at me through the hole—inside the mask there was only dark vacant space; the costume was, apparently, uninhabited.

I reared back a bit in fright then, and nearly lost my balance. Then I watched, astonished, as the Little Pirate strode calmly over and took his place at an unused, excess desk (the one with a wobbly leg), which had been stored in a corner at the back of the room.

I got to my feet—rather clumsily, I’m afraid—and faced the remaining students. They were absolutely silent, peering at me searchingly. A couple showed faces with uncertain smiles; no one took even a peep in the direction of the Little Pirate. With quaking legs, I retreated to my chair at the desk. After a few moments, I said, ‘I’ve decided your costumes are all so wonderful that you may share the sweets. Elodie, please portion this out, and make sure everyone gets some.’

Sweet Elodie—Raggedy Ann—stood from her desk in the front row. She hesitated, but then stepped forward to receive the paper sack of sweets from me. I watched as she moved past the Little Pirate at the back of the room without acknowledging his existence.

Well, Miss Wanamaker, the fact is that the Little Pirate is our classroom’s perpetual student, a permanent presence who never speaks, nor ages. Everything about him resists explanation—the preposterousness of his costume, the forthright manner in which he marches across the classroom to his seat in the mornings, and the unwaveringly heedful way he leans his body forward to regard me carefully, taking in all I say. I have become quite inured to his quiet, calm, steadfast presence over the last twenty-one years, and would certainly miss him if for some reason he weren’t there. In fact, on those days when I notice that my energy for the profession of teaching is flagging a bit—as is natural, it happens to everyone—I usually pause the lesson, look hopefully the way of the Little Pirate, and after regarding the rapt eagerness of his attention, invariably find my enthusiasm renewed.

So—that’s it, my dear. That’s my secret.

Good luck.

Marguerite Shimmer