The boys stabbing each other in the treetops hung their heads and reluctantly dropped the dead branches they were using on each other.
Mahrree nodded, smiled forgivingly, then pointed at the sun—they were still being timed. They hurried back to picking apples.
“I’m impressed,” Hegek said quietly. “You only held up a finger, and they stopped fighting?”
“The finger was a warning,” she told him. “First warning. If I get to a third warning, joy is lost.”
Hegek frowned. “Joy is lost?”
“That’s how to discipline boys,” Mahrree explained. “No sense in keeping them after school, or making them write lines—what does that accomplish? But temporarily take away something they love, and they remember. They discover that their behavior doesn’t earn them punishments, but decreases their joy.”
Hegek slowly shook his head. “You should be teaching this at the directors’ training conference. So I have to know—what’s the ‘joy’ they lose if they misbehave?”
“They lose their Zenos day. Corporal Zenos won’t come do an activity with them that week if they reach the third finger of warning.”
“That’s the soldier who barely lost to your husband in that race, right?” Hegek smiled. “And that threat works?”
“Loss of joy,” Mahrree reminded him. “And yes. I’ve only had to implement it once for the boys to realize I was serious, and for them to realize how long and dull a week is without Zenos day. It was as painful for me as it was for them, to be honest. If I had them write lines as a punishment, I have a feeling we’d be doing that every day.”
Hegek looked at her with sudden and intense fervor. “Mrs. Shin, I need you!”
Mahrree, stunned, blinked before she said the only thing she could think of. “Uh, but I’m already married, Mr. Hegek.”
Hegek went red and shook his head vigorously. “I mean, as a teacher.”
“Oh, of course—”
“Mrs. Shin, you could accomplish so much if you returned to teaching.”
“I think I accomplish a great deal already,” she said, a bit taken aback, and turned her attention to her toddlers sitting next to each other in the dying grasses. They nibbled on their apples, then Jaytsy dropped hers, eyed Peto’s, and pulled it out of his hands. Peto didn’t wail, because he was already lunging for the apple his sister dropped. They took tiny bites from their new apples, then the process started again. Jaytsy thought Peto’s looked better, and Peto wanted the apple she dropped again.
She watched them to avoid saying the words that the idea of going back to school was one she never entertained. And the thought of sending those darling children—who traded apples yet again but were now eyeing each other suspiciously as if realizing their sibling was really a thief—well, the thought of sending them to Full School made her gut twist.
She couldn’t say the words because the small figure standing next to her with an air of hopefulness was really, at his core, quite a very nice man. That was the trouble. It was easy to be angry and rant against the Administrators and Mal because there were beasts that lived far away. Distance makes it easier to demonize.
But poor Mr. Hegek, with loneliness in his eyes that watched the children with what Mahrree suspected was actually longing, was simply trying to do his job, to do what he thought was the best thing for the world. He used to be a teacher himself, she found out, down in Orchards. Then he answered a call for teachers wanting to ‘improve the world’ and found himself at director training in Idumea. He wasn’t a malicious, conniving or callous man; he was just a good man doing a stupid and unnecessary job.
How could she say that to him?
She heard him chuckle softly, breaking the uncomfortable silence between them.
“I think they figured it out,” he gestured to her toddlers. “They’ve finally discovered they’re eating the same two apples!”
Jaytsy and Peto were now glaring at each other, with the sweet fury only toddlers possessed, and clutched their nibbled fruit in defiance of the other. At any moment now Jaytsy would declare, “Mine!” and Peto would yell, “No!”
Mr. Hegek said, as cheerfully as he could, “How old’s your youngest—the boy?”
“A year and a half.”
He sighed. “So . . . another four to five years, right? Until I can hope you’ll consider my offer and come back to teach? Once they’re both in school themselves?”
Mahrree could only groan softly before looking into Mr. Hegek’s eyes. She was reminded of a sad, damp mouse begging her to take the last of his grain.