The Longest Ride

eventually ended up graduating and going to college, of course. But every now and then, she had a student who made her realize again why she’d wanted to be a teacher in the first place. And that brings me to the painting above the fireplace.
     

     
    “You are thinking about Daniel McCallum,” she says to me.

“Yes,” I say. “Your favorite student.”

Her expression is animated, and I know her image of him is as vivid as the day she first met him. At the time, she’d been teaching for fifteen years. “He was very difficult.”

“That’s what you told me.”

“He was very wild when he first arrived. His overalls were dirty all the time and he could never sit still. I scolded him every day.”

“But you taught him to read.”

“I taught them all to read.”

“He was different, though.”

“Yes,” she says. “He was bigger than the other boys and he would punch the other students in the arm at recess, leaving bruises. It is because of Daniel McCallum that my hair began to turn gray.”

To this day, I can remember her complaints about him, but her words, as they are now, had always been tinged with affection.

“He’d never been to school before. He didn’t understand the rules.”

“He knew the rules. But at first, he did not care. He sat behind a pretty young girl named Abigail, and would constantly pull her hair. I would say to him, ‘You must not do this,’ but he would do it anyway. I finally had to seat him in the front row where I could keep my eye on him.”

“And it was then that you learned he couldn’t read or write.”

“Yes.” Even now, her voice is grim.

“And when you went to talk to his parents, you discovered they’d passed away. It turned out that Daniel was being raised by an older stepbrother and his wife, neither of whom wanted him to attend school at all. And you saw that the three of them were living in what was essentially a shack.”

“You know this because you went with me that day to the place he lived.”

I nod. “You were so quiet on the drive home.”

“It bothered me to think that in this rich country, there were people who still lived as they did. And it bothered me that he had no one in his life who seemed to care about him.”

“So you decided not only to teach him, but to tutor him as well. Both before and after school.”

“He sat in the front row,” she says. “I would not be a good teacher if he learned nothing at all.”

“But you also felt sorry for him.”

“How could I not? His life was not easy. And yet, I eventually learned that there were many children like Daniel.”

“No,” I say. “For both of us, there was only one.”
     

     
    It was early October when Daniel first entered our home, a gangly, towheaded boy with rough country mannerisms and a shyness I hadn’t anticipated. He did not shake my hand on that first visit, nor did he meet my eyes. Instead, he stood with his hands in his pockets, his gaze fixed on the floor. Though Ruth had tutored him after school, she worked with him again that evening at the kitchen table while I sat in the living room, listening to the radio. Afterward, she insisted he stay for dinner.

Daniel wasn’t the first student she’d invited to our home for dinner, but he was the only one who ever came regularly. It was due partly to the family’s situation, Ruth explained. Daniel’s stepbrother and his wife could barely keep the farm afloat and were resentful that the sheriff had ordered them to send Daniel to school at all. All the same, it didn’t seem as though they wanted him around the farm, either. On the day Ruth visited, they sat on the porch smoking cigarettes and responded to Ruth’s questions with indifferent, single-syllable answers. The next morning, Daniel came to school with bruises on his cheek and one eye as red as a ruby. The sight of his face nearly broke Ruth’s heart, making her all the more determined to help him.

But it wasn’t simply the obvious signs of abuse that upset her. When tutoring him after school, she often heard his stomach rumble, though when asked, he denied that he was hungry. When Daniel finally admitted that he sometimes went days without eating, her first instinct was to call the sheriff. Daniel begged her not to, if only because he had nowhere else to go. Instead, she ended up inviting him to dinner.

After that initial visit to our home, Daniel began to eat with us two or three times a week. As he grew more comfortable with us, the