The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  “She drapped it in the creek,” Mandy said. “But she’s my sister and she can eat some of mine.”

  Inside was the biggest room Latha had ever seen, bigger even than the inside of the general store, and it was all filled with desks. The desks at the back were bigger and they got smaller toward the front. Rindy was already sitting in one of the front desks. Although she didn’t know which way to turn, Latha was so happy to see her buddy Rindy that she gathered up enough nerve to walk down the aisle and say howdy to her. Rindy patted the seat beside her.

  “I reckon we git to sit together,” Rindy said.

  Two by two all the other desks began to fill up, girls to the left of the aisle, boys to the right, until the whole room was filled. She had never imagined that the world contained so many children, but the only one she recognized apart from Rindy and her sisters was Every, who was sitting right across the aisle from her, with a boy she guessed must be Lawlor Coe, his buddy.

  Mr. McWhorter mounted the platform at the head of the room, and clapped his hands once and said, “All righty, time o’ books is done hereby declared in session. Let’s stand and recite the Lord’s Prayer.” Latha didn’t know the words but she listened carefully and figured she could learn the words by and by. Mr. McWhorter motioned for them to sit. “Now, for any of you’uns who is here for the first time, and for them that has bad memories, I will refresh the rules. One, don’t never talk unless you are called upon. Two, don’t stare out the winders; the view is real purty but it gits stale. Three, this here table has two water buckets on it; this’un’s for boys and that’un’s for gals; be sure you know which is which and don’t never touch the dipper in the other’n. Four, if you just have to go out, although I hope most of y’uns have the sense to do yore business afore ye come in or wait till recess or dinner, hold up one finger iffen you just need to go out to see how high the moon is but hold up two fingers iffen you have to bowel off. Now, number five, the last of the rules, is don’t never fall asleep. That there high stool in the corner yonder is for dunces, and anybody that falls asleep has to sit on that stool and wear that pointy hat for the rest of the day. Billy Duckworth, stand up and recite for us what it’s like to sit on that stool all day.”

  A boy stood up and said, “It aint ary bit of fun, sir.” Then sat down.

  “Okay now,” Mr. McWhorter said, “we’ll commence with the First Reader. Second through Eighth Readers already know how to read, or ort to, so y’uns just read while I start off with these least’uns.” He handed a book to Latha. It was the first time she had ever held a book, because she had not been permitted to handle the family Bible, which supposedly was filled with the names of all the Bournes going back for generations. “That there is McGuffey,” Mr. McWhorter said. “Open it to the first page and tell me what you see.”

  Latha opened the book and beheld a whole bunch of characters. Except for the “A” which Every had taught her, she couldn’t identify any of them. “I caint read it,” she admitted in a small voice.

  “‘I caint read it, sir,’” he said. Latha wondered how it came to pass that her teacher didn’t know how to read either. She hoped maybe he would ask Every to read it for him. He repeated again, “Sir.” And when she failed to respond, he said “Sir. Sir. Sir!” It sounded almost like the way her father spoke to the cow when he was trying to calm the cow. When she still did not respond, he took his ruler and smacked it into his palm and said, “You’re supposed to say, ‘I caint read it, sir.’”

  She finally got it. “I caint read it, sir,” she said.

  “Correct!” he said. “You caint read it. Do you know why you caint read it? Because you haven’t been learnt how to. Next page.” She turned to the next page, which contained a picture of a dog running. “Can you read that there pitcher?”

  “It don’t say anything, sir,” she said. “It just shows a dog, sir.”

  “Correct! But on this page it has three words. This word says, ‘dog.’ This word says, ‘the.’ And this here word says ‘ran.’ How would you put them three words together?

  “‘The dog ran?’” she said. And added, “Sir?”

  “Good gal!” he said, and patted her on the top of the head. Then he took the book out of her hands and passed it to Rindy. “Now you try it,” he said to Rindy.

  “Try what?” Rindy said.

  “‘Try what, sir?’” he said.

  “That’s what I just ast ye,” she said.

  “That’s what I just ast ye, sir,” he said.

  Rindy couldn’t seem to get it. “What was it ye wanted me to try to do?” she asked.

  “See if you caint read them words.”

  She pointed at one. “Dog?”

  “No. That’un says ‘ran.’”

  She pointed at another one. “Does this’un say dog?”

  “‘Does this’un say dog, sir!’” he said.

  “That’s what I want to know,” she said.

  “‘That’s what I want to know, sir!” he said. “No, that’un says ‘the.’ Gal, I think you’d better go sit on yonder stool and put that hat on yore head.”

  Rindy seemed pleased at the privilege of wearing the hat and sitting on the stool, where she grinned real big but then stuck out her tongue at Latha. Latha stuck out her tongue back at her. Rindy crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue again. Latha had been told by her grandmother never to cross her eyes because they could get stuck that way, so she had to be content with poking her tongue out at Rindy again and again.

  Mr. McWhorter said to Latha, “Wal, that’s all of Lesson One for today. You just study them words while I work on the Second Reader.” He moved across the aisle and began talking to Every and Lawlor, and Latha picked up the McGuffey and leafed through it. There were pictures all over the place, of a cat, of a man writing at a desk, of a hen watching a rat. Latha was able because of the word’s similarity to “ran” to figure out which word meant “rat.” Both of them had Every’s “a” in the middle. She didn’t know what you call the “n” and the “t” but she was able to figure out that the “t” sort of looked like a rat with ears. In no time at all she would be reading. Meanwhile she just looked at all the pictures in the book, from time to time glancing up at Rindy, who was wearing a mischievous smirk. Mr. McWhorter interrupted his lesson to go to Rindy and make her turn around so that she was facing the corner of the room.

  After Mr. McWhorter moved on to the students in the Third Reader and the Fourth Reader, occasionally smacking someone on the hand with his ruler, Latha began to lose interest in McGuffey and could only study the room. She looked at all the strange faces behind her, girls that got bigger and bigger toward the rear of the room, and the same with the boys across the aisle. Some of the girls just smiled at her, but the boys made faces, and one of them raised his middle finger at her. She couldn’t figure out what that meant. Possibly it was like sticking out your tongue. She took her eyes away from him and studied instead the walls and the blackboard. Across the top of the blackboard were all the alphabet letters in script. Above that was an American flag on one side and on the other side a picture of some old guy with what looked like a white wig on his head, and a frilly white handkerchief for a necktie. She wasn’t sure whether he might be one of the first schoolmasters here many years ago, or possibly somebody important, maybe a person in charge. Those were the only decorations of the classroom, if you didn’t count Rindy sitting on her stool in the corner. She had gone to sleep, leaning her head against the wall. Latha knew that it was against the rules to go to sleep, the punishment for which was having to sit on that stool. She decided that Rindy was pretty smart after all, knowing she could go to sleep if she wanted to, and the teacher couldn’t make her go sit on the stool because she was already on the stool!

  By and by, Mr. McWhorter addressed the whole room, saying, “All right, boys ’n gals, it’s time for recess.” Everyone jumped up and jammed the doorways getting out. Mr. McWhorter saw that Rindy was asleep and went and whacked her with his hickory switc
h and said, “You’re free to go to recess, but when you get back you get on that stool again for falling asleep.”

  Latha took Rindy’s hand and led her out of the building. She wanted to ask Rindy, “What is re-cess?” but she wasn’t going to ask any questions of anybody. She considered saying, “I wonder me what re-cess is supposed to be,” and waiting to see what Rindy said. But she didn’t. She knew that “re-” oftentimes means “again,” as in remake and redo and rebuild and repeat. The only “cess” she’d ever heard of was when her father referred to the hole beneath the outhouse as a “cesspit.” So maybe “cess” means to go and do your business and recess meant to do it again. But Latha hadn’t even done it once, yet, today.

  Chapter six

  Soon enough she discovered that none of the girls was using the outhouse and none of the boys was using the woods, so that wasn’t what recess meant. All the girls were on the north side of the schoolhouse, where one of them was taking a stick and making long marks in the dirt while the others watched, except for a few who were jumping their ropes. All the boys were on the south side of the schoolhouse playing some kind of ball game.

  Latha and Rindy joined the girls who were marking up the dirt, making long lines that enclosed squares and rectangles. One girl said, “This here’s the parlor,” and another girl said, “This here’s the kitchen,” and a third girl said, “These here are the bedrooms.” Various girls stood inside one room or another. “This here’s the porch,” another declared, and a few girls stood on the porch.

  Latha took a stick and drew a large square away from the other rooms. “This is the outhouse,” she said. Most of them laughed, except for one girl who challenged Latha, “You think you’re smart, don’t ye?”

  Another girl said, “You made the outhouse, let’s see you use it!” Other girls joined in until all of them were trying to get Latha to actually use her play-like outhouse. “Do number two,” became their chant, and all of them starting singing in unison, “Do number two!” It got louder and louder, and even some of the boys stopped their ballgame to peer around the schoolhouse and see what it was all about, and Mr. McWhorter stuck his head out of one of the north windows to watch. So even if Latha had felt inclined to pretend to do a number two for the benefit of the girls, she sure wasn’t going to do it with all those boys watching.

  “I done went, in the fore part of the day,” she declared. She walked into the “room” that had been designated the kitchen and announced, “And now I’m going to make a vinegar pie.” Other girls joined her in the kitchen and pretended to make pies and cakes and even chick’n dumplins.

  But soon enough Mr. McWhorter stood in the schoolhouse doorway tinkling a little hand bell. “Recess is done done!” he announced, and all the girls went back in through the left doorway and all the boys through the right doorway. Two of the boys were fighting with each other, and Mr. McWhorter separated them, then gave both of them a licking with his hickory. Rindy sat down beside Latha and Mr. McWhorter didn’t even notice that she hadn’t returned to the dunce’s stool. “Now everbody,” Mr. McWhorter said, “you’uns can all just go back to the page you was on and we’ll try it again and see if nobody didn’t learn nothing.” He started off with Latha, pointing to the three words on her page and she correctly identified them as “dog,” “the” and “ran” and correctly put them in order to make a sentence, although it was boring to just do the same thing over again. Rindy once again could not distinguish one word from the other, and Mr. McWhorter sent her back to the dunce’s stool, saying, “You ort never to’ve left that stool. You mought as well just sit there at dinner and recess too and ever day until somebody else needs the stool worse than you.”

  By dinnertime Latha was hungry but her sisters had forgotten that they were going to give her part of their dinner buckets. Latha took Rindy’s dinner bucket to her in the corner and hoped maybe Rindy would share something with her, but Rindy pointed out, “I aint got nothing but a biscuit and some ’lasses. I’ll let ye have half the biscuit.” But Latha refused to take any of Rindy’s meager meal. She couldn’t bear to watch Rindy eat it, though, so she went on out to the schoolyard, where the girls were eating their dinner in the shade of the north trees and the boys were eating theirs in the shade of the south trees.

  Every caught her halfway. “Sorry ye lost yore dinner bucket in the creek,” he said.

  “I’m glad you stopped them boys from making the bridge act up,” she said. “Did they catch ye?”

  “Naw,” he said. “Caint nobody catch me.” He opened his dinner bucket and showed her the interior. “I got me a roast’n ear AND a sweet ’tater, and I caint eat ’em both. Which ’un would ye keer to have?” She tried to guess which of the two Every himself would have wanted most, and correctly guessed the sweet potato, so she asked for the roasting ear, and he gave it to her.

  “Too bad we caint just sit and eat together,” Every said. He took his bucket and went to sit with the other boys under the shade of a walnut tree, and Latha took her roasting ear and ate it with the girls under a maple tree. She caught sight of Mandy and Barb and glowered at them for forgetting to share their dinner buckets with her.

  Mr. McWhorter sat on the edge of the schoolhouse porch and ate by himself. After everyone had done finished eating, they all went off to play again, the boys to play ball games and the girls either to decorate their imaginary playhouse or to sing ballads, or both. Every bravely crossed over to the girls’ side and gave Latha a fried apple pie. “Look what I found in the bottom of my dinner bucket,” he said.

  “Wasn’t there but one of them?” she asked, and when he nodded, she carefully tore the fried pie in two and gave one half back to Every. The nearest girls made remarks about this, and set up a clamor, not because of envy of the pie but because Every was on the wrong side of the schoolyard. He blushed and departed.

  Although all the windows were open, the interior of the schoolhouse was hot and sweaty all afternoon. The two water buckets were soon empty and older boys were sent out to the well to draw more water. Mr. McWhorter said to Latha, “We caint do Lesson Two ’til tomorrow, so we mought’s well work some more on Lesson One. What’s this here word?”

  “Dog, sir,” she said. But her eyelids were drooping and she wondered, if she fell asleep, would the teacher make her try to sit on that one stool with Rindy? Or take turns? Or what?

  “Tell ye what,” the teacher suggested. “Let’s us see if we caint make a different sentence out of these three words.”

  “‘Ran the dog,’ sir?” she offered, struggling to keep her eyes open.

  “Yeah, I reckon that will do, even though the sentence don’t have a subject, like in ‘That feller run his dogs all night long.’” Mr. McWhorter just stood and scratched his head for a while, and then he said, “Now why don’t ye just practice trying to copy the words on yore slate?” He reached inside the desk and brought out a gray rectangle and a gray slate pencil, and demonstrated how to make the “D” of dog on it. Latha spent the rest of the afternoon until recess marking up her slate with her attempts at copying the letters in the words Dog, The, and Ran. Except for “a,” which she’d already learned from Every, none of those nine letters were alike. Only she didn’t know there were nine letters because she hadn’t been taught how to count yet, and she wondered when Mr. McWhorter would teach her the numbers of counting.

  Some boy three rows back (she could count that far) just put his head down on his desk and went sound asleep, even snoring. Since the dunce’s stool was already occupied by Rindy, Mr. McWhorter shook her awake and drew a little circle on the blackboard and said, “Now you just stick your nose in that circle and keep it there, and maybe you won’t fall asleep again.” And he replaced her on the stool with the boy who’d fallen asleep. Rindy stood with her nose in that circle as long as she could stand it, but then she began to swoon from sleepiness. Latha jumped up and caught her just before she fell. “Hey!” Mr. McWhorter yelled at Latha. “Who tole ye that ye could help her? Now you
’ve done went and got yourself a punishment too. And he drew another circle on the blackboard and made Latha stick her nose in it. Minutes and minutes passed and Latha understood how easy it was to fall asleep like that. Also, she realized that she needed to visit the outhouse, so she held up one of her hands with the forefinger raised to signify Number One. She waited and waited but the teacher didn’t come to her to give her permission to leave and use the outhouse. She wanted to look around to see where he was, but she had to keep her nose up against the blackboard in that circle. She kept that forefinger raised for a long time, and Mr. McWhorter never came, and she knew she’d wet her bloomers soon. So she raised the middle finger instead, which was taller than the forefinger. That caused a lot of gasping and giggling and guffawing.

  But it made Mr. McWhorter come to her, and he demanded, “Young lady, is that meant for me?” Without taking her nose from the circle, she said, “I need to use the outhouse for Number One real bad and that’s all my finger means.”

  “That aint all it means by a long shot,” he said. She shrugged her shoulders, the only sign language she knew to mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. He seemed to get it. “Don’t you understand what that means, child?” She shook her head but had to smudge the chalk circle to do so. “Wal, I reckon you’re too young to know. But it aint nice. It’s downright brash and blackguardy.”

  Some boy in the class yelled, “Up yours too!” and Mr. McWhorter wheeled around and tried to identify the culprit but everyone was either giggling or guffawing and he couldn’t tell who had yelled. Both Latha and Rindy had taken their noses out of their blackboard circles and were watching Mr. McWhorter get red as a beet and start lashing the air with his hickory stick, and then he started beating his desk with the stick until the stick broke. Latha almost felt sorry for him but she desperately needed to go to the outhouse and that was all she could think of.