Free Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman Page B

salt-and-pepper hair, a tall, straight back, and the elegant, slender arms of a trained dancer. Mrs. Schermerhorn often tells how in her youth she studied modern dance at Bennington College. Now she lives with her husband on Mohican Road. Not in the Mohican Road estates, but in the gatehouse. Her husband serves as guard for that exclusive community, and Mrs. Schermerhorn is proud of that. Her own family is old, pre-Revolutionary, she has told Elizabeth, descended from the earliest Dutch settlers on the mountain.
    Mrs. Schermerhorn’s assistant, Janet Knowlton, is young and fair and likes to read stories to the little girls, but Mrs. Schermerhorn just watches them from her desk. When the children come up to her to take out their books, Mrs. Schermerhorn examines each selection, and looks each girl in the eye as if to judge whether she is worthy.
    The walls of the library are decorated with posters depicting “Common Birds of the Northeast,” “Leaves of the Forest,” and “Woodland Flowers.” All the posters have a cameo picture of Smokey the Bear and his famous saying: “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” The children’s books are on short bookcases. Also for children, there is a corner with a burnt-orange rug, pillows, small chairs, and a long coffee table covered with glass. Under the glass lies a map of Fairyland in ink and watercolor, an intricate, glowing map the color of sunsets, with fairies and sea monsters, Sleeping Beauty’s castle, Sinbad’s ship, the wicked witch’s gingerbread house sharing the dark forest withRobin Hood’s men. There is Cinderella’s coach on the way to the ball, the cottage of Snow White and Rose Red, the four winds blowing with squinting eyes and billowy, puffed cheeks.
    Chani wanders around while her mother helps Sorah and Ruchel find their books, large ones with their clear plastic library covers.
B Is for Betsy
—all the Betsy books;
Ramona the Pest, Bread and Jam for Frances.
There are tall boxes of records on one of the tables. Chani remembers once her mother took out some records of poetry, and they all went over to Cecil Birnbaum’s house to hear them, because Cecil had a record player. There were records of Robert Frost, and Dylan Thomas, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Old voices that creaked and swung in rhythm, their long phrases like the screen door on the bungalow, closing slowly, partway, a little more, and then, with a long sigh, thumping shut.
    Elizabeth marshals the girls at Ernestine Schermerhorn’s desk, and deliberately, formally, but with a kind of humor the girls miss, the librarian calls each one before her.
    “Hannah.” Mrs. Schermerhorn hands Chani
Nabby Adams’s Diary.
“You have two weeks. Sarah”—she summons Sorah up to the desk. Mrs. Schermerhorn glances at the windows streaming with rain. “I’m surprised you came in this downpour,” she says.
    “I thought it would let up,” says Elizabeth.
    “It shows no sign of letting up,” Mrs. Schermerhorn says. “Sarah, you have two weeks. Rachel,” she calls to Ruchel. Mrs. Schermerhorn says to Elizabeth, “You must be extremely careful driving home in this. We’ve had some accidents on these roads, cars swerving, trucks losing control. As you know, it’s a straight drop down to Devil’s Kitchen.”
    “We’ve been hiking there,” Elizabeth says. She has always thought Devil’s Kitchen a lovely place, dark and green, its great boulders strewn in the cleft of the gorge.
    “You may have seen the wreck,” Mrs. Schermerhorn says.
    “No,” says Elizabeth.
    “Well, I suppose it’s grown over now. It’s been ten years. Has it been ten years, Janet?” she asks the assistant librarian. “Young people driving home in the rain. Flew right over the guardrail and down in the gorge. That was how we lost Billy Walker. He used to stand herejust where you’re standing now. He would come in at all hours. His sweetheart worked here. Candy Kendall. And they were just married when he died.