by James Still
One evening in middle August Father sat on the battling block after supper, whittling a spool-pretty for the baby.
“I saw Jonce Weathers, the Flat Creek schoolteacher today,” he said. “He was going along, single stepping, like his bones was about to break at the joints. I caught up with him and he let off a spiel about being tired square to death. He did look a sight tender, and I reckon if he’d been laying flatback picking slate out of a vein like I had all day, he’d been to bury. I asked him how many scholars he had and he says eighty-six, he thinks, but they wiggle so he couldn’t count ’em for sure. I said I had two chaps ought to be in school. He says send them along, now he did.”
Mother sat on a tub bottom holding the baby, watching Father notch the spool. “It’s a long walking piece,” Mother said. “Four miles one way. But I always wanted my young ’uns to learn to figure and read writing. I went two winters to school, and I been, ever since, a good hand to learn by heart. I never put my schooling to practice though, and I’ve nigh forgot how.”
“I learned as far as ‘baker’ in the blue-back speller,” Father said. He threaded a wax cord through the spool hole, twisting match stems in the end loops until they pulled tight against his hand. The baby’s eyes widened. When the spool was put on the ground it rolled along like a tumblebug.
The baby laughed, holding his hands out for it, and stuck it into his mouth. He bit the spool with milk teeth newly edged on his gums.
“No use putting off another day,” Father said. “I told Jonce Weathers to nail up another seat for you chaps.”
Fern picked up the baby and ran around the battling block with him, running with joy. Lark squatted down on a broad chip, knowing he was only six, and too young to go. He cried a little, making no more sound than a click bug in tall weeds.
At seven o’clock next morning Fern and I sat on the puncheon steps of Old Hargett church-house. We had gone early, meeting only miners on the creek road with their mud-stiff britches rattling, their cap lamps burning in broad daylight. “Them’s the brightest scholars ever was,” one of the men said, “a-going to books ere crack of day.”
Fern spoke her scorn, though not loud enough to be heard. “Dirt dobbers,” she said.
The church-house door was chained and padlocked. We waited, looking across the foot-packed ground to the graveyard hidden behind a stickweed patch. A bushtail squirrel crept down a scalybark to wonder at us with bright eyes. “I bet he’s tame as a house cat,” I said. “I bet he is.” Two bats flew around the eaves, disappearing with dull squeaks, and then we heard the dinner buckets of the scholars cracking together upcreek and down.
The children came into the yard and set their buckets by the steps. The boys crouched on their knees to play fatty hole, the bright marbles spinning from rusty fists into the dirt pockets. Fern went into the graveyard with the girls. I watched the boys, standing a little way apart. The losers held their knuckles to be thumped, clenching them against the pain.
A boy named Leth came up to me and said, “Let’s me and you play big ring,” and he loaned me two marbles. One to put in the ring, and the other to shoot with. I held them in the cup of my hand, and they were fine to look at—green as a moss pool, with specks like water fleas in the glass. He drew a great circle with the toe of his brogan. We squatted on our heels. I clenched a marble between thumb and forefinger, feeling its perfect roundness, smoother than any acorn.
“Yonder comes the teacher,” Leth said, “but there’s a spell yet before books. Jonce Weathers has got to clean after the bats. The floor gets ruint every night.”
“Where, now, do them bat-birds stay of a day?” I asked.
“Yonside the ceiling, hanging amongst the rafters,” Leth said.
We played two games of big ring. Then we stood at the church-house door watching Jonce sweep with a brushy broom.
“Ain’t Jonce the littlest teacher you ever saw?” Leth asked. “He’s got scholars nigh big as he is. Be a wonder if he don’t get run off. Two teachers they got rid of last year, and they’d a-made two of Jonce.”
“I bet he’s sharp as a shoe sprig,” I said. “Size don’t count for sense.”
“I saw his arm muscle once,” Leth said. “It wasn’t much larger than a goose bump.”
When the bell rang we went inside. I kept close to Leth, finding a place beside him on the bench where the primer children sat. Leth’s feet touched the floor, but I could only reach it with my toes. The older boys came in late, the warped floor creaking under their steps. Jonce glared angrily at them. Books were opened, thumbs licked to turn the pages, and bright pictures spun under their hands.
“I’ve got no book,” I said to Leth.
He held his so both of us could see. “We’re reading Henny-Penny,” he said. “Look at that old dommer hen planting three grains of wheat. Ain’t that a peck of foolishness? Fellow who writ this book is a witty.”
“I can’t read writing,” I said, “but I know my letters.”
“What’s the biggest river ever was?” Jonce stood before the older boys, holding a book square as a dough-board.
“Biggest river I ever saw was the Kentucky, running off to the bluegrass, and somewhere beyond.”
“It’s a river in South America, far off south, many thousands of miles.”
“There’s a place called South Americee, over in Lott County. Now it’s the truth.”
“This river is the Amazon. It’s one hundred and sixty-seven miles wide at the mouth.”
“I looked that word up in the dictionary and it said Amazon was a fighting woman. River or woman, I don’t know which.”
Cricket throb, dry and ripe, came through the window, dull against Jonce’s words leaping over the room. He leaned from the pulpit, swinging his arms. Scholars stretched to draw numbers on the blackboard. Three classes in arithmetic were going at one time, three threads of voices intent as crickets. My feet hung from the bench, heavy as lead plumbs. “My tongue is dried to a string,” I told Leth.
“Hold up one finger and crack the others,” he said. Jonce saw me at last and nodded, and I went out into the yard, being no longer thirsty where the air was free of bat smell and wood rot. I sat down on a mossed rock under the scalybark, and the bushtail squirrel came halfway down, head foremost, unafraid. A titmouse whistled overhead, lonesome and questioning.
As I sat on the rock a boy ran out of the church-house, jumping the five doorsteps. His books were caught under his arm as he hurried down the creek road, leaving hat and dinner bucket behind. The squirrel fled up the scalybark; the titmouse hushed. Jonce came out into the yard to look down the road after the boy. I slipped back into the schoolroom before he returned, wondering at the quietness there.
“Jonce put Toll Mauldraugh back in the fifth reader,” Leth said, his voice husky with anger. “Toll reared up and Jonce cracked him with a figger book. Reckon Toll ought to be put back a grade, but I don’t like to see nobody strike my kin. Uncle Hodge’ll give Jonce trouble sure. He thinks the sun riz in that Toll.”
Fern and I ate out of a shoebox at noon. We laughed when it was opened, amazed at what was there. Fried guinea thighs and wings, covered with a brown-meal crust. Two yellow tomatoes. A corn pone, and a thumb-sized lump of salt.
“Mommy must of killed the guinea before daylight,” I said. “I never heard a peep.”
“I hope it wasn’t my little ring-tailed one,” Fern said. We had turned our backs on the others before looking into the box, but now we were not ashamed of what we had to eat.
“I couldn’t stand to know I’ve eaten my little ring-tail,” Fern complained, and gave one of her pieces away.
The children spread their food on the grass. They ate biscuits fist-big, with lean-streaked meat. Leth had milk in his dinner bucket. He crumbled corn bread into it, eating from the bucket with a wooden spoon.
Before the bell rang the girls went into the graveyard. The boys huddled together under the creek-bank willows, burying their feet in damp sand, talking.
> “I reckon we don’t need to run Jonce off,” John Winns said. “Hodge Mauldraugh will be doing that right soon.” He sniggered at his own words.
“That Jonce has the quarest walk I ever saw,” Eli Phipps said. “I’d give a pretty to see what kind o’ run he’s got.”
The clapper shook in the bell. Leth got up, his marbles rattling in the deep of his pockets. “I like Jonce for a teacher,” he said, “but I don’t want to see nobody whipping my folks.”
I walked across the yard with Leth. The older boys waited until the others were in the house before stalking in, clumping brogans on the floor. Jonce sat quietly in the pulpit, looking into a book that was a full hand thick. Pages flicked from his thumb. I looked up at him and saw his eyes run back and forth like an ant on a leaf. He stood up at last, grinning down at us.
“I’ve been learning about bats,” he said. “They’re unhealthy critters, festered with chinch bugs and lice, scattering plagues of diseases. And I learnt a bat’s not a bird. It’s a mammal, kin to man.”
Whispers flowed over the room, protesting. “I’m not kin to a bat,” a voice spoke. Leth nudged me with his elbow, frowning.
“We’ve been living in a bat-house long enough,” Jonce said. “Tomorrow I’ll bring a poke of sulphur, and we’ll give them a dose of fire and brimstone.” Leth’s eyes rounded. The older boys arose from their seats, grudges buried under the promise. “Four or five of you fellows bring mine lamps. We’re going to have a bat-fly in broad daylight.”
He came down out of the pulpit with the first reader in his hand, waiting until the scurry of voices died before sitting in front of our bench. Leth held his book before us. Henny-Penny stood on the page, cackling, her comb as red as a beet.
Jonce looked at me, and I was suddenly frightened. “Little man,” he asked, “can you read in the primer?”
My tongue balled in my mouth. “I can’t read words,” I said, “but I know my letters.”
“Fried guinea’s breast in my dinner bucket,” Father said. “I could hardly believe my eyeballs. I loaded two cars of coal extra after I’d et.”
We were sitting on the woodpile, between suppertime and dark. Bee martins flew up from the lower ridges where clouds were banked yellow as fall maples. There was still light enough for Mother and Fern to study the third-grade spelling book. They sat high on the poplar logs, out of the baby’s reach, for he wanted to pull at the pages.
“This speller’s not belongin’ to me,” Fern had said. “See what it says on the kiver, PROPERTY OF THE STATE OF KENTUCKY.”
“You won’t be eating fancy victuals in the week middle from now on,” Mother said. “I’m going to learn myself to spell the words I’ve forgot, and a sight of them I’ve never come across. A body ought to be able to spell things they lay hands to every day, and things going by. Take them martin-birds flying there. I’ve seen martins all my born days, but I can’t say the letters to their name.”
“I’m uneasy Jonce Weathers is going to get spelled down before the year is up,” Father said. “They run two teachers off from Flat Creek School last year.” Fern had told Father about Toll Mauldraugh, proud in knowing I was out of the room when Jonce struck Toll, and that I saw none of it.
“A little devilment is natural amongst chaps,” Father said. “I’m not blaming the scholars. It’s their folks tearing up the patch, putting fool notions in their heads. I figure a man ought to rack his own jennies, and stop piddling in other fellers’ business.”
“I always wanted my chaps to read and spell and figger,” Mother said. “Always put a lot of store by that. Another rusty cut and they’ll close the school sure. As long as we keep living here, Flat Creek School is their only chance earthy.”
Night came up the hill, settling into the ridge pockets. The martins melted into the dark. “Time to hit the shucks,” Father said, rattling poplar bark under his feet, but he made no move to go inside. The baby clucked where he sat between Father’s knees.
I squatted on the chopping block, thinking of Jonce’s promise. “If I had me a mine lamp, I could help scare bats tomorrow,” I said. “Bats a-hanging by the bushels in the church-house loft, messing up the floor of a night. Jonce is going to smoke them out tomorrow.”
“Jonce says a bat ain’t a bird,” Fern said.
Father grunted. “I always liked a flock of bats nigh,” he said. “Mosquitoes and gnats live hard when they’re roosting close around. I judge it’s bad luck to kill a bat.” He got up to go, swinging the baby up on an arm. The baby was so sleepy its head slid down into Father’s hand.
We were on the road early next morning, going along with Father to the fork turn. The sun-ball broke out of the timber as we passed the mouth of Dry Creek. I wore an old mine cap with a carbide lamp hung over the bill, the round of the head pinched and fastened with a latch pin.
Miners came down the creek, walking toward Buckstone. They looked at my cap, and bat their eyes at each other. “Aye gonnies, if I don’t believe Jonce is teaching them chaps to mine coal,” one said. “Three we’ve passed wearing the gear.”
When we reached the church-house most of the scholars were there already. The older boys had mine lamps, and carried snuffboxes filled with carbide lumps in hip pockets. The lamps smelled like burnt wool. Leth had a flambeau made out of a rag stuffed in a bottle of coal oil.
Leth loaned me two marbles again, and they were the same ones—green as a catbird’s eggs. I held them in the frog of my hand, clicking them together, watching the flea flecks sparkle.
“Them’s the prettiest marbles ever was,” I said. We squatted down to play a round of fatty hole.
“If you beat me out,” Leth said, “they’re belongin’ to you.” We played three games, and I lost them all. “You can have them anyhow,” he said when Jonce rang the bell. “Reckon I’ve got a peck besides.”
I caught the marbles up, trying to feel suddenly that they were mine. In the deep of my pocket they felt strange and cool against my leg, small and precious. “I’m going to fotch you a hatful of chinquapins,” I said. “By grabbies, I am.”
The big boys went in first, putting their lamps on the water shelf, taking their seats expectantly. Jonce glanced at the door, but there were no stragglers. He counted the scholars, jabbing a finger toward each one. “Not an absent or tardy scholar,” he said. “Everybody present like it was the last day of school.” He leaned out of the pulpit, elbows anchored on Preacher Claud Sorrel’s Bible. The classes began, chalk scratched across the board, walking with giant letters, swelling into words. Numbers, finger-counted, mixed with things spelled. “R-a-m, ram, a brute sheep. . . .” “Eleven plus nine comes to . . . twenty, I reckon. . . .” “E-w-e, eouw, the one that drops the lambs. I had me a lamb once I thought a sight of. Saved its tracks in clay and got them yet.”
We glanced at our mine lamps, thinking of bats hanging under the roof.
Jonce saw Hodge Mauldraugh first. He came into the church-house with Toll, standing there darkening the door, saying no word. We looked back, stretching from our seats. The grass crickets were suddenly loud above the hush. Jonce came down out of the pulpit, walking toward the door with the floorboards squeaking under his odd shuffle. He stood in front of Mauldraugh, his hands slightly lifted, open. Mauldraugh spoke, and his words were filled with cold anger. They poured out of him like sluice water.
“I’m not agin’ you reaching my boy back a grade,” he said. “What he learns, I want it got proper. But I’m agin’ my boy being whipped. I do all the scourging for my house. Nobody’s going to beat my chap and keep drawing breath.”
“I’m running this place,” Jonce said. “Drawing pay to school-keep and whip as I see fittin. When a scholar goes against the rule, I’ll not spare the rod.”
Mauldraugh spoke as though he had not heard, pushing Toll a little way toward Jonce. “I’m bringing him back to school,” he said, “but I’d better never hear of him being touched. I’d better never hear. . . .” He went out of the door, and Toll took a se
at beside John Winns, glancing about, hard-eyed and proud.
The classes were doubled so all would be over by noon, and the afternoon free for the bat-fly. I learned to read the first page in the primer. “Henny-Penny found a grain of wheat. . . .” I sat on my legs, for they ached from hanging over the bench without reaching the floor.
“Little man,” Jonce said. “I’m going to hammer together a box for you to rest your feet on.”
We ate hurriedly at noon. I had a lunch bucket of my own now, and sat with the boys upon the beech roots laid bare by creek flood. There was a baked horse apple in my bucket, oozing sugar from the top, and cushaw blooms, fried in meal batter, tasting like fish. We scattered the crumbs to the minnows working the shallows; we lit up our lamps.
Jonce dragged a ladder from under the church-house floor, setting it against the wall inside, beneath the trapboard. Eli Phipps went up first to slide the board away. We climbed after, grasping the creaking ladder slats, holding our lamps aloft. The floor gave under a step, nails prying loose from rotten wood. “Walk the joists, boys,” Jonce said. “Likely to fall square through the ceiling.” Below, the girls laughed, and the boys who had no lamps shouted from the ladder’s end. Toll Mauldraugh’s voice rose above them all, thick with scorn.
The bats hung under the hip of the roof, higher than any of us could reach, wings folded against limp bodies. We held our lamps toward them. The mouse-furred patch gave no living sign. Jonce wedged a dishpan he carried between the joists. He poured a ring of sulphur in the pan, whittled a shingle and started a fire. A smudge of gray smoke rose toward the roof, musty with burnt sulphur. The bats stirred, trembling, waving like old leaves.
