The Teacher's Funeral (9 page)

“Fire?” Glenn inquired.

“We're callin' it lightning,” Charlie said.

“Smokin'?”

Charlie nodded.

“Got anything to smoke on you now?”

Charlie shook his head.

Glenn shrugged and pulled a mouthful of nails out of his overalls. A ball-peen hammer hung on one of his loops. He seemed to carry everything with him. But if he didn't, probably another Tarbox would get it. He sized up a plank and laid it against what was left of a joist. In a couple of mighty blows, he drove the first nail home. He was starting on the second when the cowbell rang.

Tansy could ring the real bell-tower bell now, but she'd fallen in love with that durn cowbell, which was hardly ever out of her hand.

Glenn looked up through his hair.

We told him it was school taking up again and turned to leave him behind. But he drove the second nail, looped his hammer, and joined us.

“You ain't comin' to school?” Charlie looked as surprised as he ever got.

“Studyin' it,” Glenn said, staying right with us. J.W. was on the front step. When he saw Glenn, he shot off to tall timber, yelping. He remembered Glenn from yesterday.

Me and Charlie hung our hats, went on in, and settled at desks, Glenn following. You should have seen the look on Tansy's face. Her stated plan for that afternoon was to divvy us up among the first, second, and third readers, according to our abilities. Her and Little Britches were laying out the readers. Tansy was momentarily discommoded at the sight of Glenn. She approached. “Glenn? Are you enrolling or just passing through?”

“I'm here for the larnin',” he said, sheepish, “and the long haul.”

You didn't want to get downwind of him. Tansy moved to his other side. “When I came on your place,” she said, “I had in mind some of the younger—”

“You won't git any of them. They's all under Maw's thumb.”

She leaned closer, and he went red through his hair. “Glenn, can you read?”

He shook his head.

“Not a word?”

No,
he said, not aloud.

“Well, at least that makes us eight,” Charlie announced. “We're in business.”

All my hopes for shutting down Hominy Ridge School were dashed. Common sense had not prevailed, and school would keep throughout the endless year.

“That does it,” I muttered to Charlie. “We're off to the Dakotas.”

“Where?” Charlie said, watching Tansy's return to the rostrum, and the way she gathered her skirts.

I
'd made up my mind that the second week of school would be my last. It took us into September, and the sands of time were running low. Anyway, Tansy had her a payload of pupils and could just mark me and Charlie absent. Once she got examined for her teacher's certificate, it'd be smooth sailing for her.

But the second week turned out to be anything but.

It began with more poetry from the Sweet Singer, who struck this time in the
Parke County Courier
.

Dad read out the article to us at breakfast Monday morning:

AUTO ACCIDENT
STIRS SWEET SINGER TO SONG

“It's not James Whitcomb Riley,” Tansy remarked, “or even close.”

Aunt Maud reserved judgment. Dad pushed back from the table and said, “Well, I guess I'll go practice some diversified farming.” He was in the market for feeder pigs. Me and Lloyd gave Tansy a head start to school.

The boys' privy was rebuilt and newly shingled, mostly by Glenn, though Charlie wasn't a bit grateful. We still met up back there to start the day, arguing. Charlie said he didn't see how he could get away to the Dakotas until the corn was shucked. His dad preached and farmed.

“The corn won't all be shucked till October,” I nagged. “What's the matter with you, Charlie? You wait for every last thing to get done, you won't go anywhere in this life.”

Glenn Tarbox stepped out of the grove. He was holding up a string of dead bullfrogs, greeny-gray in the morning light. Their white legs hung far down.

“Glenn, you're going to get your fool head blowed off if you keep cutting across Aunt Fanny Hamline's property,” Charlie said. “She'd as soon shoot you as look at you. Sooner.” Charlie didn't seem too grieved at the thought of Glenn being shot dead by Aunt Fanny.

“She's got her a nice pond past the grove,” Glenn said, “caked with slime and full of frogs. They make real good eating. The legs does.” We'd noticed he didn't bring a packed dinner in a bucket. He brought whatever he killed, and cooked it over a fire in the school yard. And enough Baldwin apples for all of us, from somewhere.

“You gig your frogs?” I inquired.

Glenn shook his head and drew a slingshot out of his back pocket. It was the polished crotch of a limb, fitted with rubber bands and a leather pouch where the rock rested. It took a dead eye to kill frogs that way, and he'd brained every one. There wasn't a mark on them, nor a drop of blood.

“I wouldn't eat one of them things if I was starved,” Charlie maintained. “They's kin to snakes.” But then Glenn hadn't offered him any. The cowbell clanged us inside. Glenn hung his frogs on a nail by the hats.

The mailman had been and left three big parcels. We were agog. School never got mail. Tansy set us all to work opening the boxes. Then there was oh-ing and ah-ing all around. The two biggest were poster-sized campaign portraits of the presidential contenders in this fall's election, Judge Alton B. Parker and President Theodore Roosevelt, framed.

Tansy's eyes sparked. Underneath the candidates' names was printed:

C
OMPLIMENTS OF

THE
O
VERLAND
A
UTOMOBILE
C
OMPANY

S
ELL
Y
OUR
S
TEED
, I
T
'
S
S
PEED
Y
OU
'
LL
N
EED

T
ERRE
H
AUTE
    I
NDIANAPOLIS

Bending to read, Tansy fingered her throat in thought. The other package was a generous pile of large notepads, and a supply of pencils, all printed with “Overland Automobile Company,” also complimentary.

We'd never had pads of blank paper and pencils. We had some little cracked slates, but not one each.

“Kin we take 'em home?” wondered Flopears, who'd known few gifts.

In a faraway voice, Tansy said we could if we brought them back every day. She told us to hang the portraits over the rostrum, and Glenn had the nails. That day we pledged our allegiance directly to President Roosevelt.

We were sorted out for reading now. Little Britches, Glenn, and Charlie were in the first reader. Flopears was in the second reader by the skin of his teeth, along with Lloyd and Pearl. She'd missed the third reader by a hair and blamed Tansy. I was at the bottom of the third reader, and Lester Kriegbaum was at the top. He'd read every book in the library shelf, twice. Even
Noble Lives of Hoosier Heroes
. He needed all the powerful learning he could get to defend himself. He was so puny, you almost didn't know he was there.

We were to read to ourselves or write in our new pads while Tansy heard a group down on the recitation bench. She began with Little Britches, Glenn, and Charlie, who were a real mixed bunch. Glenn was as tall as Charlie, and Little Britches was a gnome between them. Everybody fell silent to hear her teach Glenn his ABC's.

But Little Britches's nose was full. Tansy told her not to use her sleeve and to look in teacher's desk drawer for a spare handkerchief.

Little Britches bobbed onto the rostrum and over to the desk and pulled open the drawer.

A puff adder reared up out of the drawer at her. She screamed and fell back in the chair.

A puff adder is the ugliest of all snakes. Its head, filling, swayed. I froze. I knew it wasn't poisonous, but I froze. Quicker than this telling, quicker than Charlie, Glenn was off the bench. He grabbed that snake by the neck and yanked it out of the desk. It was three foot long and real whippy. He run it back through the room, all of us ducking, and out the front door.

Tansy swept up Little Britches, who'd be crying herself sick in another minute, and held her tight. “It didn't strike, did it?” she asked us, and we said no. We crowded around. Glancing up at me and Charlie, Tansy said, “Go get a garter snake. Quick.”

“A what?”

“You heard me. A garter snake. Just a little one. Cut out.”

Me and Charlie didn't need to be told twice to leave school. But a snake hunt wouldn't have been my first choice. Outside, we saw J.W. had already taken to his heels, no doubt at the sight of both Glenn and the puff adder. We ran for the ditch. Glenn came back up the road, empty-handed. “I won't kill a harmless snake,” he said.

I knew it was harmless. And if you see a puff adder in the road, it'll roll over and play dead. You can pick it up on a stick, and it'll still play dead. Of course it's going to act different in a desk drawer. “Tansy wants a garter snake,” I told Glenn.

I worked this ditch, and Charlie worked the other one. Glenn walked back in the field. It would have been easier in better weather. Cool slows a snake down. I personally didn't think we'd find any right away. But Charlie whooped and held one up, about two foot long, loud and unhappy.

“That's no garter snake,” Glenn called out.

“I know it,” Charlie yelled. “It's just the first one I come across.” He flung it away.

To tell the truth, I wasn't looking with a whole heart. I don't like handling them things. Glenn slung a leg over the fence and strolled back my way. He patted his pocket, so we called Charlie off and moseyed back to school.

Little Britches's breath was still coming in sobs. Everybody else was all over the room, except for Pearl at her desk, not taking part.

Tansy tried to put Little Britches down, but she clung like a leech.

“Everybody settle in for a story.” Tansy walked over to the picture of Theodore Roosevelt, with Little Britches hitched up on her hip.

“Who knows where the President lives?”

“Indianapolis!” Flopears sang out. He was chockful of geography, most of it wrong, and always willing to share.

“Washington, D.C.,” Tansy said, “in the White House.” Little Britches had buried her face in Tansy's shirtwaist.

“Does he have any kids?” Tansy asked.

Durned if we knew.

“He does,” Tansy said. “Four boys and two girls. This is the First Family of America. What are their names?”

Search us.

“Theodore, Junior,” Tansy said. “Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin.

“And Alice is the oldest. She is the President's daughter by his first marriage.” Little Britches held on. We all listened.

“The Roosevelts have turned the White House into a regular menagerie.” Which was one of our
M
words. “Quentin brought his Shetland pony, named Algonquin, up in the elevator for a visit to Archie's room when Archie was in bed with diphtheria. Kermit has a pet kangaroo rat who likes sugar in a cube. And they've got a parrot and a blue macaw.”

Where Tansy came up with her information we didn't know. But it was fairly interesting. “Guess what Alice's pet is.”

“A kitty,” Little Britches said against the shirtwaist.

“No,” Tansy said, “Alice's favorite pet is a little green garter snake that lives in her purse.”

“No,” Little Britches said. “Not a doggone snake.”

“Yes,” Tansy said. “I'm the teacher. Believe it.” She put her other hand out and snapped a finger at Glenn. He reached into his pocket. You could have heard a pin drop. We were all as silent as Sunday afternoon.

Glenn handed over a skinny little more-or-less green garter snake, ten or so inches long. We watched it spill out of his hand into Tansy's. It wrapped once around her wrist and coiled in her palm. Its eyes were like little diamond chips.

“Say listen, I think Alice's pet garter snake has come to pay us a visit,” Tansy said.

“Better not.” Little Britches spoke muffled against Tansy's bosom.

“Why, here it is.”

Now even Pearl stood at her desk, staring transfixed. Little Britches chanced a quick glance. “If that thing's somebody's pet,” she said, “what's its name?”

“Eutaenia sirtalis,” Tansy said without skipping a beat. “All garter snakes have the same name.”

She must have picked up more learning at high school than we'd figured.

The garter snake was content in the warm hollow of Tansy's hand. Little Britches chanced another glance. She just touched the tail hanging down from Tansy's wrist.

“Shall we keep her?” Little Britches wondered.

“Alice wants her home,” Tansy said. “We'll turn her loose so she can get going.”

Little Britches needed another hug. But then she slid down Tansy's skirts and bobbed back to the recitation bench. Tansy had swapped one snake for another in Little Britches's mind. It must have worked, because she looked to be recovered. Now she was pulling Glenn and Charlie down on the bench, to say, “Repeat after me,

“Russell Culver,” Tansy commanded, “see me outside.” She always called me Russell Culver at school, like we weren't kin. Out on the front step, she whispered, “Get that thing off me, quick, and fling it in the ditch.” She was flushed, but underneath that, paler than death. “I can't stand a snake.” I unwound it, and it slithered off.

“Tansy, does Alice Roosevelt really carry a pet snake around in her purse?” I asked.

“Of course she does,” Tansy snapped, “as you'd know if you ever read anything. Sometimes you act like you haven't been born.” She was still real jumpy about having that snake around her wrist.