The Teacher's Funeral (6 page)

When it was time to head home, he said to me, “You going to need this ladder?”

“Dad,” I said, “I am.”

“Well, lock up behind you,” he said. “And you and Lloyd can tote the ladder home between you. It's heavy, but I guess it's worth it to you. I'm making for home now. I don't want to know.” He snapped his fingers. “All right, J.W., walkin' or ridin'?”

J.W. decided to ride with Dad, rather than hoof it with me and Lloyd. We watched the wagon out of sight, Dad high on the board, J.W. at his side. I unwound the old sheet from around my middle, and me and Lloyd climbed the ladder to the bell tower like two squirrels up a shellbark hickory. Careful not to ring it, I wrapped the old sheet around and around the clapper till it was stuffed tight within the bell. You could yank on that rope from now till New Year's and not get a tinkle.

“‘Curfew must not ring tonight,'” I said down to Lloyd on the ladder below me. This was a one-man job, but he wanted in on it.

“I thought it wasn't supposed to ring tomorrow,” he said.

“‘Curfew must not ring tonight' is out of a poem. I'm quoting.”

“Oh,” said Lloyd. “Did the Sweet Singer write it?”

“Maybe. I don't know.”

Anyway, when Tansy went to ringing that bell in the morning to call us inside, she'd get nothing but a muffled thump. It seemed like the least we could do for her first day.

It was pretty nearly dark on our way home. Because of the ladder, we took it easy and rested every whipstitch.

“Russell, I believe Dad knew we were up to something with this ladder.”

“I think he did,” I said.

“How'd he figure we were going to pull something on Tansy for her first day?”

“You got me. Maybe it was the sheet. It gave me a new shape. Maybe Dad just knows how we think.”

The locusts were tuning up, and we walked on wordless a rod or two. Then Lloyd said, “You think Tansy knows how we think too?”

“She might.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Lloyd said in a small, sorry voice. “That's what's got me worried.” We walked on home with the ladder, stepping high over shadows, in a drone of locusts and the gathering gloom, the night before school took up.

A
s arranged, me and Charlie Parr met early that next morning behind the boys' privy. Our plan was to start out the school year by smoking a three-inch length of buggy whip.

I say early, but Tansy went off to school earlier still, along with her pointer and a new hat.

There was some mystery about the hat, though I gave but little thought to what women wore. It had turned up that morning in a fancy box on the porch. Dad brought it in when he came from plowing in the oat stubble. Tansy untied the fine ribbon and took off the lid and peered into the tissue paper inside. Then she drew out a hat.

Her breath stopped and tears formed in her eyes. It looked to be quite a good hat, with grapes on it, better than the one that got busted up in the accident. I'd have personally thought it was a three-dollar hat.

“Why, Dad,” she said carefully, “many thanks. It's elegant.”

Dad opened his mouth to speak, but him and Tansy exchanged a glance, and he said nothing. Aunt Maud watched them both, narrow-eyed and thoughtful. And that's all there was to that.

Tansy put on her hat, and Dad took her to school in the wagon for her first day. Me and Lloyd would hoof it. Catch us turning up at school alongside the teacher! We made the pigs last till Dad and Tansy were off the place.

Another thing I liked about summer was that the pigs foraged free. You had to bring in the cows and milk them, but pigs saw to themselves. You just had to be sure they found water. Then you walked the shared fence lines to watch they didn't get through to root up your neighbor's pasture. That's all there was to it. The old sow would farrow her young in the out-of-doors. They'd spend their days at leisure in the hog wallow and nest in dry leaves by night. They liked summer better than being penned up. That's where me and pigs agreed.

“Dagnab it, I forgot matches,” Charlie said with the buggy whip already between his teeth.

But I knew he would and drew a couple out of my overall pocket. He lit up. We were to our kneecaps in weeds and pods back here because I hadn't worked this far with the scythe.

From our outpost behind the privy we could see Lester and Lloyd and Flopears standing around in the yard, throwing their pocketknives at the ground. Lester wore short pants and a Buster Brown collar that could spell trouble for him in a bigger school. Flopears wore a patchwork shirt made out of old Bull Durham sacks. Lester was a bookworm, and Flopears could just about read, though he had to point at each word. Lloyd was somewhere in the middle. They were all around the same age.

“You get the bell wadded?” Charlie inquired, inhaling.

“I got that bell wadded tighter than a tick. Tansy wants us in school, she'll have to come out and pick us off one by one.”

Charlie exhaled black smoke. “Boy, that's buggy whip!” he said, and passed the smoldering mess to me.

Pearl Nearing was making for the girls' privy. I nearly took her for a newcomer. She'd be about eleven, twelve, and she'd shot up over the summer. Though the smoke cut Charlie's eyes, he squinted through it at Pearl.

“Don't she have a different shape up above?” he wondered, and she seemed to. In the spring she was a skinny little thing who'd jump in puddles. Now she simpered along and picked her way to the privy, prissy.

She swung open the door to step in, screeched, and tripped herself backing out. “Who do you think you are?” she hollered into the privy, planting her fists on her new hips.

Me and Charlie watched. I wasn't inhaling the buggy whip. I didn't want to see my breakfast again. Not Aunt Maud's mush.

By and by, a small bonneted figure crept forth from the girls' privy. Her skirts were tucked up by mistake into her drawers behind. She didn't look hardly old enough for school, and she'd been crying.

“Well, what did you think you were doing in there?” Pearl demanded. “You weren't using it. You'd yanked up your drawers.”

She'd been hiding in there, as any fool could see. You could tell from here her little chin was quivering.

“That makes seven of us,” I said to Charlie, “unless she's a minnow we have to throw back.”

“Ah,” said Charlie, whose arithmetic never added up to much.

To my consternation, we heard a bell ring. It jangled the morning and summoned us to school. It wasn't the bell-tower bell. I'd seen to that. It was a cowbell. Tansy'd be standing smug in the front door, calling us cattle to the trough of knowledge.

“I blame Dad,” I told Charlie. “He let me use the ladder to wad the bell. Then he must of give Tansy a cowbell from the milking parlor to even the score. He was playing fair again.”

“Ah,” said Charlie Parr through a screen of smoke.

In the olden days of schoolmaster Increase Whittlesey, the girls sat on one side, the boys on the other. The old chinky log schoolhouse had separate entrances for the sexes.

It was like that this morning. Pearl sat as far from us boys as she could get. Lester and Lloyd and Flopears were in a bunch at the same desk. For Lloyd's school haircut Aunt Maud had used the same bowl she used on me. She cut our hair by moonlight so it wouldn't grow so fast. Lloyd looked like a toadstool between Lester and Flopears. I must have looked similar.

Me and Charlie Parr sat close enough to converse on the back row. Even for the first day, he was almost suspiciously well barbered. His neck was shaved far above his shirt. He'd even shaved his face. His chin was smooth as a baby's bottom.

In those days it wasn't unusual to find scholars of twenty and even twenty-five doubling back for more schooling. They were liable to be older and meaner than the teacher. Some of them returned when they found out that if you couldn't sign your name, you had to pay cash. But today, me and Charlie were the old men of the group.

Even seen from back here, Tansy loomed large on the rostrum. It seemed to bow beneath her. Though she wasn't a welcome sight to me, I admit she cut a teacherish figure. She was strictly business in a starchy shirtwaist and shoes. Her hair was up, and that made her an adult right there. She was sure big enough to be a teacher—husband-high, as we said back then. And then some. Husband-high and teacher-tall. In her hand was the same pointer she'd dragged from the death grip of Miss Myrt.

The pointer had passed.

But you could tell Tansy didn't know where to begin. With a wobble in her voice, she said, “Good morning, pupils.”

“Morning, Miss Myrt!” Flopears sang out because change came slow to him.

“Hey, Tansy,” some said.

“Miss Tansy,” she said.

I was condemned to eternal perdition if I was going to be able to call my own sister “Miss Tansy.”

She'd made a note and consulted it. “All right,” she said, “rules.

“There'll be no marble playing inside the schoolhouse, even in bad weather, and there'll be no playing for keeps, anywhere.”

That law was directed to Lloyd and Lester and Flopears.

“Number two,” Tansy said. “Chewing gum is strictly forbidden.” Chewing gum was a girly thing to do. No boy would, so this rule was aimed at you-know-who.

Tansy faltered then, seeming to have only two rules.

“Right about now we generally sing,” Charlie prompted.

Tansy raised her pointer, and we broke into our usual,

This was far from my favorite song, but Miss Myrt always made us start the day with it, often conducting with a switch. Charlie had a pretty fair baritone.

Now Tansy wracked her brain for what came next. She cleared her throat and counted us, but it took up very little time.
Six,
we all saw her say silently.

“And one in the privy!” Charlie sang out.

Shut up, Charlie,
I thought. If there aren't enough of us, maybe we could just call it quits right—

“In the privy! Who's in the privy?”

All us boys turned up our hands. It wasn't our privy. Tansy turned on Pearl.

“Just some little chit of a girl,” Pearl pouted, “and she has nothing to do with me.”

“Go get her.”

Any boy in the room would gladly go, just to get outdoors. Pearl smoothed her skirts and pulled in her lips. “Getting her is not my job, and you're not the boss of me, Tansy. I remember when you were one of us, and how long you took to get through the third reader.” Pearl preened.

Tansy's eyes closed to a pair of dangerous slits. She stepped heavily down from the rostrum and pointed the polished pointer at Pearl. It came
this close
to her nose.

“Get her.”

We all watched while Pearl lost the staring match. She flounced out, and you could see right there she'd reached the troublesome age, which is always worse with girls.

We waited without rioting. We cut Tansy some slack. When Pearl came back, she had a grip on the little kid who didn't want to be anywhere near here. Her bonnet hung by its strings. Her dinner pail scraped the floor. She kept setting her bare heels. “Turn me loose,” she squawked. “I don't wanna, and I'm not gonna!”

Pearl pushed her toward Tansy and resumed her seat.

Tansy pulled the small girl's skirttails free of her drawers and settled her skirts for her. But it was too late. Forever more, she was known as “Little Britches.” Even unto the distant day of her wedding. Besides, come to find out her real name was Beulah.

“Who are you?” Tansy asked with an arm around her.

“I ain't sayin',” said Little Britches. “I ain't stayin'.”

“Then whisper who you are in my ear before you go.”

Little Britches whispered. It would turn out that she was a Bradley. They were a family who hadn't had anybody in school for some years. Little Britches was an afterthought. “I'm goin' on home now.” She wiggled free of Tansy. “Pleased to meetcha.”

“Well, you can go home at noon,” Tansy told her. “Till then just wait up there at my desk. You can…help me be teacher.” Tansy stuck her in the crook of her arm and climbed the rostrum to settle her in teacher's chair behind the desk. Little Britches's nose just cleared the top of it. She stared with suspicion back at us all, especially Pearl. Her eyes were still glassy with tears. Tansy was flushed from lifting her first pupil.

“Now there are seven of us,” Charlie called back with the score, “and none in the privy.”

“On your feet for the Pledge of Allegiance,” Tansy said, remembering it. As in Miss Myrt's day, we turned to the place an American flag would hang if we had one and pledged our allegiance. Little Britches didn't, but her eyes were wide now. She was taking everything in.

The pledge lasted little longer than counting us. But we took our sweet time settling back down. Tansy pondered, then said, “Arithme—”

“Better not,” Charlie called out. Though I wished he'd shut up and quit helping, he was right. Arithmetic wasn't Tansy's long suit. She knew her mathematics to the Rule of Three, but whether she could cypher into fractions, I had no idea. I knew I couldn't. Anyhow, arithmetic isn't any way to start the day.

“Spellin' School!” Charlie suggested. I'd never known that boy be so helpful. He ought to sit up there at the desk instead of Little Britches, being teacher's pet. Tansy strode to the library shelf and pulled out the blue-backed Webster speller.

Elsewhere, they called them spelling bees. We always called it Spelling School. As a school study, it was known as “orthography.” It was the most important subject in the education of that time. You may not have anything to say, but you dadburn better know how to spell it.

“Divvy them up into two teams,” Tansy told Little Britches.

She'd pulled her bonnet back on because she wasn't staying. She blinked out of it at us. Pointing a tiny finger, she said, “That boy at the back with the round hair.”

That'd be me.

She pointed again. “That boy with the ears.”

That'd be Flopears. Lloyd and Lester Kriegbaum fell in with him. That left me and Pearl and Charlie Parr on our side. Having Flopears on the opposing team made up for having to have Charlie on ours.

We pushed back the desks and squared off. Pearl didn't want to take part, but she recalled how close that pointer had come to her.

Tansy opened the Webster in front of Little Britches, who gazed down at it like a small owl. “Point to a word,” Tansy told her.

“What's a word?”

Tansy showed her.

Little Britches pointed, and Tansy boomed out, “Russell Culver,
asinine
!”

“Asinine,” I said. “A-double S—”