Prairie Evers (6 page)

I found my shirt and pulled it on, still planning. Maybe I’d take my BB gun. It was my daddy’s when he was a boy, and pretty often I did target practice on a bale of straw he set up for me in the pasture. I liked to take aim and hit the bull’s-eye.
You never know when a skill like that could come in handy—if a coyote went after my chickens, for example, though I don’t know how I’d ever have the heart to pull the trigger. For my chickens, I guess I’d have to. Mostly I liked to pretend I was a girl from olden times, living in a cabin with her folks and her grandma. Pretty often I added a sister or an orphan we’d adopted into the story too. I’d pretend a band of robbers had come to the door, and there I was, ready to defend us.

I thought I’d pack a lunch too. After lunch, I’d do my inside lessons—math and composition today—and write to Grammy. I’d tell her about selling my eggs, and the class Mama was going to teach, and the coyotes. I’d remind her of the story she always told me when we went outside to see the stars at night, of how Coyote led four wolves into the sky and left them there to make the Big Dipper. She’d like that I remembered.

I hurried downstairs to get started.

Mama had fixed oatmeal for breakfast, which is not my favorite, even with maple syrup on it. I got through it by eating as quick as I could, and was set to take my bowl to the sink and head to the henhouse when Daddy said, “Hold on a minute, chicklet.”

Something in his tone of voice alerted me. “What?” I said, feeling wary.

“Your mama and I have something to talk over with you.”

That didn’t sound like good news. They didn’t have anything to talk over either. “Talk over” sounds like you can put your two
cents in, but instead they had something to tell me. They had decided I should go to school.

You could have knocked me over with the smallest, downiest chicken feather. I could not imagine a worse idea. Mrs. Perkins’s kids back home went to school and they’d told me plenty about it. In school you were trapped inside all day, and you had to sit still in a chair, and you had to learn by memorizing textbooks instead of reading all the interesting books Grammy used with me. There’d be no more wandering the fields and the woods whenever I wanted, no more going to the farmers’ markets except on the weekend, no more checking for eggs at noon as well as in the morning and at night. The shape of my days would be ruined. And the kids would be like the Perkins kids—rowdy and wearing. Worse than that, they’d be mean. I had read plenty of books and I knew. Kids don’t like kids who are different. I was from North Carolina and had never attended school, just for starters. What were my folks thinking? It was going to be a disaster.

“We don’t live on Peabody Mountain anymore,” Daddy was saying. “This school is just eight miles away, not thirty-eight on a bad road.”

“You’ll make friends. You won’t be so lonely. And there’s more to learn than we can teach you now,” Mama said.

“I already know plenty and I’m not lonely.” It didn’t seem like she heard me. “I’m not lonely,” I said louder.

“There are all kinds of things to do at school. They even have a swimming pool.”

“I hate to swim!” That was a flat-out lie. Mama reached out to smooth my hair, but I yanked myself away. “All you care about is your new job at the Arts Center! If Grammy were here, she’d put a stop to this. Grammy always taught me good.”

“Taught you
well
,” Mama corrected gently, but I ignored her. I whipped around to look at Daddy beseechingly.

“Your grammy always did a real fine job,” Daddy said. “But she thinks the same as us. We talked about it some before she left.”

“You did not,” I yelled. But Mama and Daddy looked at me so kindly, I knew they had.

“We shouldn’t have put this off,” Daddy said to Mama. And Mama said, “No,” looking sorrowful and shaking her head.

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here! You’re just afraid of that lady, Anne Oliver. You’re afraid she’s going to cause trouble for you.”

Mama sighed. “I’m not afraid of Anne Oliver, chicklet. But I have to admit she got me thinking even harder than I was before. Sometimes it’s hard to hear the truth, hardest coming from someone you don’t like. The fact is that your daddy and I decided when we moved up here that you should go to school this fall. We talked it over with Grammy. She thought the change would be good. She was worried you were spending all your time just with old folks. We all decided that this would be best.”

“
No!
That’s wrong. Everything was
fine
the way it was.”

Mama went on like I hadn’t spoken. “But then I—well, I put it off. I thought, one more year— I knew how I was going to miss having you around home all the time. But that was wrong of me.”

“No it wasn’t! It was right. You were right. I should stay home.”

Mama reached out to smooth my hair again. “We really do think it’s a good idea for you to go to school now that we don’t live so far from town. For one thing, your daddy and I just don’t have the time we should to devote to your studies with all this work on the farm.”

“We can all stay up later!”

Mama’s smile said that wasn’t going to happen. “And besides that, you’re old enough now that going to school is important. It’d be good to have friends your own age. There’s nothing else like it. Don’t you miss the Perkins kids?”

“No!” I didn’t either.

“Wouldn’t you like to have a girlfriend, a best friend?”

“No.” I’d make sure not to mention the imaginary sister I’d invent on my jaunts around the woods.

“And there’s so much to learn—”

“I don’t care about learning.”

“Oh, you do so.”

I scowled with my whole entire self.

“I went to that school, you know. I had a pretty good time there. If you go to the library, you could find my pictures in the
old yearbooks. Wouldn’t you like to see your mama when she was young and funny looking?”

The thought of going to the same school as Mama did tickle my interest some, but I wasn’t going to show it. “I won’t learn anything in school, and you can’t make me.”

Mama gave me a look over the tops of her spectacles. “Well, I’m sorry if you don’t like the idea, but I’m afraid that’s the way it’s going to be. We’ve already decided.”

I felt so betrayed that I started crying, which made me madder than ever.

SCHOOL

It all happened fast.
Mama and Daddy took me to the school office on Friday and got everything set up. Before I knew it I was enrolled, and the principal smiled at me and told me he was glad I would be one of his students. The smile I gave back to him was so-so at best.

Mama took me shopping for clothes and things Friday night. By the end of the evening I owned two new pairs of blue jeans and some bright white tennis shoes and three new shirts and a cherry-red sweater with white trim at the cuffs and collar. I
knew all that took a big bite out of Mama and Daddy’s budget and I knew it was nice of them, but even so, it was hard for me to really like any of it, even the red sweater, because it was all for the purpose of going to school.

I didn’t want to go to school for a thousand reasons, one of which was that it was going to be so hard to be away from my chickens. There was too much happening. On Sunday, Fiddle had looked at me and crowed, a half strangled
erk-erk-err-err
.

I ran to where Daddy was working in the barn and told him, “Daddy, I was right, Fiddle is a rooster! He just crowed! He really did!”

Daddy grinned at me. “Isn’t that something.”

“It is! It’s amazing! Daddy, I
can’t
go to school now.”

His look turned skeptical. “And why is that?”

“Well, because. Because Fiddle’s a rooster, and he’s crowing, and he’s going to get better at it, and if I’m at school, I won’t be here to hear it.”

“Uh-huh,” Daddy said.

“Please, Daddy. Please say I don’t have to go.”

I clasped my hands in front of me and put all the pleading in my soul into my eyes, but Daddy had only squeezed my shoulder and said, “You have to go, chicklet. Might as well get used to it.”

But even up to the last minute, I still hoped I could somehow put a stop to school. On Monday morning I told Mama I was not going.

“No,” I told her. “No, no, no.” I flung myself out the door and ran to the henhouse. I climbed in and shut the door behind me.

Mama let me go for a spell, and then she came looking. “Prairie! It’s about time to catch the bus. Come get your breakfast.”

I sat real still, but the hens gave me away. They were flustered at being shut in with me and had begun to cluck and fuss. I couldn’t blame them. A chicken is a chicken, after all. Mama opened the door. We gazed at each other.

“It really won’t be so awful.”

“It will so. I’ve read enough to know. The teachers’ll be mean and the kids’ll be worse and I won’t have any friends and they’ll all make fun of me.”

“Chicklet, it won’t be that bad. You might even like it.”

“I will not.”

“Well,” Mama said with a sigh. “Maybe not. But nonetheless you are going.”

Finally I came out and stood before her, scowling. But Mama gave me such a kindly look, I nearly started to bawl. She pulled a piece of straw from my hair. “Dust yourself off and come eat. I’ll fry you some eggs.”

DAY ONE

From day one
I did not like school. First of all I didn’t like the big yellow bus roaring up to fetch me. I could hear it coming from a half mile off, and I worried the noise would upset the hens out of laying, especially Miss Emily and Miss Polly, who were so shy.

I didn’t like being in among all those kids. Every one of them stared at me when I climbed on board the bus, and not with a kind look either. I wasn’t much used to children and I didn’t believe I’d like them, just like I told Anne Oliver. One here
and there might be all right, but not a whole flock bunched up together. Right away I could tell it would be just like in the henhouse: there was going to be a pecking order, and I was going to be at the bottom of it.

The bus was bad, but school was worse. There were more kids in that building than I ever saw in one place before, and they were going every which way, yelling at the tops of their voices. I dreaded being caged among them all day. It was like the Perkins kids back home times a thousand.

I didn’t like the bright lights shining down on my head. I didn’t like the smell of the place. I didn’t like the bells clanging. Most of all I didn’t like the way people constantly stared at me, like my pants were ripped, which they weren’t. I was wearing a pair of those new blue jeans and a new shirt and the new shoes too, and it felt like the corners of all those new things were poking at me.

That first morning, I went to the room the principal had showed us when I was getting enrolled, which was the fifth-grade classroom, the grade I would be in just as if I’d gone to school right along. I stuck my hand out to the lady teacher who was standing at the door. She looked surprised but she took my hand and gave it a good firm shake.

“You must be Prairie Evers,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My name is Mrs. Hanson.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So you can call me that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled, but not in a mean way. “Now, we have a few rules you’ll have to follow here. You can’t bring video games or your cell phone into the classroom with you. You have to leave them in your locker. All right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Do you have anything you want to go put back in your locker?”

“No, ma’am.” I didn’t think it was necessary to say I didn’t own any of those things. My aunt Arla gave me a video game for Christmas one year, and it was fun for a little while, but then the batteries ran down and we didn’t get to town right away to get more. By the time I got back to it, the Perkins’s dog had got ahold of it and used it for a chew toy, and that was the end of that.

Mrs. Hanson studied me real close, as if to decide if I was telling the truth. She seemed to decide I was. “All right, then. You’ll sit in the second row. We’re set up by alphabetical order.”

I said, “Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Hanson,” and hiked up my sack lunch and my notebook and pencil box full of sharp new pencils, and went and sat in row two, three chairs back, where there was an empty desk waiting.