The Teacher's Funeral (12 page)

F
rom the
Parke County Courier,
Rockville:

ODE TO AUTUMN

Forces largely unseen kept me from the Dakotas.

It was years before I got up there. Then it was on a motoring trip me and my wife took to the Black Hills in 1926, the first year they made the Pontiac. By then the world was a different place. The hard roads were coming through, and you could drive most of the way from Montezuma, Indiana, to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on slab. But that was far in the invisible future. If there's one thing you can't see at the age of fifteen, it's ahead.

Me and Lloyd kicked along in the dust of the road every school morning through countryside rusting with autumn. The ground was tufted with purple ironweed. Flea beetles had chewed the hedge leaves to gauze. I made an early start to split kindling against the day we put up the school stove.

I went off in the crisping mornings, resigned. Relieved. Cushioned by a father's quiet love. Directed by a sister's bullet-tipped pointer.

She'd rallied and was back in charge at school now, and then some. Charlie's big mitt was three times its size in a bandage that stayed on right up to Thanksgiving. This called a truce between him and Glenn Tarbox. I watched them like a hawk to see if Dad's theory held water and they were both sweet on Tansy. But I couldn't tell much, except that Glenn had perfect attendance, and somebody had cut his hair.

The last of the peaches were the Yellow Crawfords, ripe in October. Glenn brought a peck basket of them, from somewhere, and left it on Tansy's desk.

Him and Charlie gave each other a wide berth whenever they weren't down on the recitation bench. Then, Little Britches sat between them. Under her direction, the three of them were rounding third base on the alphabet:

Tansy had us on an even keel now. But she hid the regulation baseball, to keep the peace.

She only had to whup one of us all fall. Sadly, it was me. Or as she'd put it, Russell Culver. It all came to pass because of Elocution.

Elocution was the subject we always had Friday. That was when we held a program of our accomplishments. You'd recite or sing a song or work an arithmetic problem on the board—anything to show how you could speak up in public. You couldn't be tongue-tied nor catch a case of lockjaw, or Tansy would give you an F. She was quick with her F's.

On one of the Fridays, Little Britches said she'd learned a poem by heart and wanted to give it as her party piece for Elocution. So Tansy let her, and we all settled back to listen as Little Britches sashayed to the center of the rostrum, gathered her hands, and elocuted in a high voice that rang like a little bell:

With an almighty thwack, Tansy brought her pointer down on the desk. Little Britches jumped.

“Who taught you that so-called verse?”

Little Britches pointed me out and said, “Russell Culver.”

So I got a sound whupping from a switch I had to cut myself. And I'll tell you something else. Nobody felt a bit sorry for me. Not even Little Britches, who'd been so quick to turn me in.

Resigned though I was to learning and knowledge, I'd hoped Dad would let us lay out of school for the corn shucking. Even Lloyd was big enough now to pull his weight. It wasn't to be. We shucked before and after school, but never during. When the corn was dry enough to crib, we hitched up Siren and Stentor to the wagon and had them in the field by daylight. There was frost on the stalks now.

Siren and Stentor were trained for the work, so they knew to draw the wagon in a straight line, knocking a corn row down. We'd come along behind on foot to shuck the ears. I had a chain-link finger stall for ripping open the shucks. I forget what Lloyd had. Dad used a hand-whittled peg fixed to a leather strap around his wrist. He could shuck very nearly a hundred bushel a day.

We built up one side of the wagon with twelve-inch widths of lumber we called bang boards. The corn ears we flung in the wagon would bounce off the boards to fill the bed.

It was a workout. After my fingers thawed, I'd have slept through the school day if I'd dared. Charlie was bright as a button because his hand kept him out of the field. Who knew what chores Glenn did at home? But he had him a new shirt with buttons that matched, and it didn't look handed down.

I never will forget one evening when we were coming back from the field, me and Dad and Lloyd. It was Indian summer when there's warmth again in the setting sun. We'd shoveled the corn ears into the crib. Now we were walking up from the lot when we heard music, of all things.

It stopped us cold. We'd never heard music hanging like haze over the blue evening. I recalled the calliope on the Case Special, trilling down the track. But we were miles from the railroad, and this was a full orchestra, with violins. Dad himself looked like he didn't know where he was.

Around the front of the house, an automobile was drawn up. It wasn't the Bullet No. 2 racer. It had a roof with roll-down side curtains. Right-hand drive. But we naturally thought of Eugene Hammond. Besides, he was the kind of man who could muster music out of thin air.

When the front porch came into view, we saw an Edison Victrola with a flared horn lacquered and gilded. Working its crank was Tansy. But what turned my world upside down was this. Eugene Hammond was on the porch, in a windowpane plaid suit and his cap on backward with goggles pushed up. With a woman in his arms.

It was Aunt Maud.

They were waltzing to the strains of “Build Me a Bower of Moonbeams.” Aunt Maud dancing on the front porch with Eugene Hammond to blaring music where the neighbors could see? Did he know she smoked a cob pipe?

Her face was tucked into his shoulder, and her back hair was coming unpinned as they swooped from railing to railing. If she threw a shoe, we'd have to shoot her. Tansy looked on from the crank, smiling privately.

Lloyd was shocked senseless. I didn't know whether to look or look away. Seemed like Eugene Hammond had gone too far this time. And he was hanging on around these parts like a summer cold.

“Dad,” I said, low, “what does it mean?”

“It means he's stepping up his pace. Now he's courting the whole family,” Dad remarked. “He's one serious suitor, and he's proving it this minute.”

“Dad,” I breathed, “what had we better do?”

“Son, I don't know.” Dad stifled a smile. “Do you think we ought to take steps?”

We butchered two or three Saturdays after that. By then a raw wind rattled the empty corn shocks, and we were wearing shoes to school.

Hallowe'en had fizzled out, what with Charlie's hand keeping us from mischief. Lloyd and Flopears and Lester went out one night and stuffed a given amount of road apples into people's mailboxes. But that was about the size of it. Everybody naturally steered clear of Aunt Fanny Hamline's place. We weren't as dumb as we looked.

Butchering day was as big as Thanksgiving to us. Our neighbors came to help and for the sociability of the thing. Aunt Maud had come down the road in the darkest reaches of the night, behind her glowing pipe. Her and Tansy bustled by lamplight in the kitchen because there was a world of sausage and scrapple to be made, and breakfast, and a noon dinner for the multitude. Me and Lloyd had a fire going under the big barrel out in the lot. It was cold as charity that black morning of butchering day.

And on this particular occasion, Dad had invited Eugene Hammond to take part.

I had the idea Dad had invited him to the butchering to call his bluff and show him up. Being a city slicker, he'd no doubt turn tail and beat it back to Terre Haute when we started bleeding out the first hog. Which was fair enough. Anybody who was husband fodder for a country gal like Tansy would have to stand up to butchering day. I myself wouldn't have put a nickel on Eugene Hammond's chances. So I was pretty sure I knew what Dad was up to.

Before daylight's first streaks, our neighbors came jangling up the lane. Everybody turned out except Tarboxes. Charlie Parr came. His hand rendered him next to useless, but he wouldn't have missed seeing how Eugene Hammond took it when we started lopping the heads off hogs.

Then here came the blazing headlamps of an automobile. Eugene Hammond had taken up Dad's invitation with alacrity, as we said in Spelling School. An automobile at a butchering like to take everybody's mind off business. But we had our way of observing the day, and we stayed faithful to it even in the age of the motorcar.

The water seethed in the barrel, under the tripod where the hogs would hang. The women gathered on the back porch to watch. The barn lot wavered in firelight. Dad had hitched Siren and Stentor to the rock sled, so they'd be ready to drag the carcasses up to the fire.

The three hogs were out of their pen now and in the grove. Dad had his. 22 caliber Springfield rifle in hand. Everybody stood by to see who he'd invite to shoot the first one. You never shot your own hogs. You honored a friend with the pleasure of that. Dad handed off the rifle to Mr. Jimmy Leadill, a near neighbor of ours.

Mr. Leadill turned to Eugene Hammond, who wore a mechanic's overalls over his houndstooth suit. I decided right there Mr. Leadill was in on Dad's plan.

He was something of an orator, and said in a carrying voice, “Mr. Hammond, as a welcome stranger among us, you're to have the first shot.” He held out the rifle. The other men turned their grins aside. The women gazed from the porch in rare silence.

“But I have to warn you, Mr. Hammond,” Mr. Jimmy Leadill went on, “it's one shot per hog. If you don't drop your hog with the first squeeze of the trigger, we can't be responsible for the safety of the neighborhood.”

That was a lie, but he told it well.

Eugene Hammond looked surprised to find the rifle in his hands. All Indiana held its breath, and somebody raised a lantern aloft. Quicker than telling it, he shouldered the rifle, sighted down it, and the morning exploded. He'd squeezed off a round and nailed the hog between the eyes.

Blood blossomed from her brow. She sank to her knees, rolling sideways, legs working. Eugene Hammond thrust the rifle back into Mr. Leadill's hands and pulled a pig sticker out of his own polished boot. Before an audience stunned to silence, he strode forth and grabbed a front leg. He inserted the knife into the throat and slashed down to the heart to bleed out the hog in a single move. It kept the blood from clotting the meat.

It was a first-class, professional job. Dad himself couldn't have put down a hog quicker or neater. There hadn't been time for a squeal. Lloyd and Charlie stared. I looked back to the porch to see how Tansy took it. She was just turning back to the kitchen. The neighbors shuffled and cleared their throats. It wouldn't have been polite to show shock.

I was dizzy with amazement. But now it was business as usual, and we all fell to. We hoisted the carcass up on the tripod and fixed the hind legs with the gamble stick. With the block and tackle we worked it up and down in the boiling water. After that, we swung it around, hooked it from the mouth, and dipped the hindquarters. Then we stretched it out to scrape it, and hung it again to rinse it, many hands making light work.

We went right at it, and Charlie did what he could. When it was time to take the head off that first hog, Eugene Hammond somehow had a bigger knife in his hand. Again he stepped forth and in an elegant circular swipe, he sliced around the hog's neck. He dropped the knife, grabbed hold of the ears, and wrenched the head free of the body. Once more quick, neat, and sure. Which I personally thought was close to showing off. Lloyd gaped afresh, and Charlie looked a little hopeless, somehow.

Seemed like Dad's plan to show up Eugene Hammond had backfired on us all. I myself was provoked, but not quite sure why. Didn't I want Tansy off our hands? She was old enough. Our own mother had married Dad when she was seventeen. It would get Tansy out of the teaching trade and off our backs, with any luck before we got to long division. There was naturally a law against a married woman teaching school.