Enduring

by Donald Harington

  Mr. McWhorter said to Latha, “Wal, that’s all of Lesson One for today. You just study them words while I work on the Second Reader.” He moved across the aisle and began talking to Every and Lawlor, and Latha picked up the McGuffey and leafed through it. There were pictures all over the place, of a cat, of a man writing at a desk, of a hen watching a rat. Latha was able because of the word’s similarity to “ran” to figure out which word meant “rat.” Both of them had Every’s “a” in the middle. She didn’t know what you call the “n” and the “t” but she was able to figure out that the “t” sort of looked like a rat with ears. In no time at all she would be reading. Meanwhile she just looked at all the pictures in the book, from time to time glancing up at Rindy, who was wearing a mischievous smirk. Mr. McWhorter interrupted his lesson to go to Rindy and make her turn around so that she was facing the corner of the room.

  After Mr. McWhorter moved on to the students in the Third Reader and the Fourth Reader, occasionally smacking someone on the hand with his ruler, Latha began to lose interest in McGuffey and could only study the room. She looked at all the strange faces behind her, girls that got bigger and bigger toward the rear of the room, and the same with the boys across the aisle. Some of the girls just smiled at her, but the boys made faces, and one of them raised his middle finger at her. She couldn’t figure out what that meant. Possibly it was like sticking out your tongue. She took her eyes away from him and studied instead the walls and the blackboard. Across the top of the blackboard were all the alphabet letters in script. Above that was an American flag on one side and on the other side a picture of some old guy with what looked like a white wig on his head, and a frilly white handkerchief for a necktie. She wasn’t sure whether he might be one of the first schoolmasters here many years ago, or possibly somebody important, maybe a person in charge. Those were the only decorations of the classroom, if you didn’t count Rindy sitting on her stool in the corner. She had gone to sleep, leaning her head against the wall. Latha knew that it was against the rules to go to sleep, the punishment for which was having to sit on that stool. She decided that Rindy was pretty smart after all, knowing she could go to sleep if she wanted to, and the teacher couldn’t make her go sit on the stool because she was already on the stool!

  By and by, Mr. McWhorter addressed the whole room, saying, “All right, boys ’n gals, it’s time for recess.” Everyone jumped up and jammed the doorways getting out. Mr. McWhorter saw that Rindy was asleep and went and whacked her with his hickory switch and said, “You’re free to go to recess, but when you get back you get on that stool again for falling asleep.”

  Latha took Rindy’s hand and led her out of the building. She wanted to ask Rindy, “What is re-cess?” but she wasn’t going to ask any questions of anybody. She considered saying, “I wonder me what re-cess is supposed to be,” and waiting to see what Rindy said. But she didn’t. She knew that “re-” oftentimes means “again,” as in remake and redo and rebuild and repeat. The only “cess” she’d ever heard of was when her father referred to the hole beneath the outhouse as a “cesspit.” So maybe “cess” means to go and do your business and recess meant to do it again. But Latha hadn’t even done it once, yet, today.

  Chapter six

  Soon enough she discovered that none of the girls was using the outhouse and none of the boys was using the woods, so that wasn’t what recess meant. All the girls were on the north side of the schoolhouse, where one of them was taking a stick and making long marks in the dirt while the others watched, except for a few who were jumping their ropes. All the boys were on the south side of the schoolhouse playing some kind of ball game.

  Latha and Rindy joined the girls who were marking up the dirt, making long lines that enclosed squares and rectangles. One girl said, “This here’s the parlor,” and another girl said, “This here’s the kitchen,” and a third girl said, “These here are the bedrooms.” Various girls stood inside one room or another. “This here’s the porch,” another declared, and a few girls stood on the porch.

  Latha took a stick and drew a large square away from the other rooms. “This is the outhouse,” she said. Most of them laughed, except for one girl who challenged Latha, “You think you’re smart, don’t ye?”

  Another girl said, “You made the outhouse, let’s see you use it!” Other girls joined in until all of them were trying to get Latha to actually use her play-like outhouse. “Do number two,” became their chant, and all of them starting singing in unison, “Do number two!” It got louder and louder, and even some of the boys stopped their ballgame to peer around the schoolhouse and see what it was all about, and Mr. McWhorter stuck his head out of one of the north windows to watch. So even if Latha had felt inclined to pretend to do a number two for the benefit of the girls, she sure wasn’t going to do it with all those boys watching.

  “I done went, in the fore part of the day,” she declared. She walked into the “room” that had been designated the kitchen and announced, “And now I’m going to make a vinegar pie.” Other girls joined her in the kitchen and pretended to make pies and cakes and even chick’n dumplins.

  But soon enough Mr. McWhorter stood in the schoolhouse doorway tinkling a little hand bell. “Recess is done done!” he announced, and all the girls went back in through the left doorway and all the boys through the right doorway. Two of the boys were fighting with each other, and Mr. McWhorter separated them, then gave both of them a licking with his hickory. Rindy sat down beside Latha and Mr. McWhorter didn’t even notice that she hadn’t returned to the dunce’s stool. “Now everbody,” Mr. McWhorter said, “you’uns can all just go back to the page you was on and we’ll try it again and see if nobody didn’t learn nothing.” He started off with Latha, pointing to the three words on her page and she correctly identified them as “dog,” “the” and “ran” and correctly put them in order to make a sentence, although it was boring to just do the same thing over again. Rindy once again could not distinguish one word from the other, and Mr. McWhorter sent her back to the dunce’s stool, saying, “You ort never to’ve left that stool. You mought as well just sit there at dinner and recess too and ever day until somebody else needs the stool worse than you.”

  By dinnertime Latha was hungry but her sisters had forgotten that they were going to give her part of their dinner buckets. Latha took Rindy’s dinner bucket to her in the corner and hoped maybe Rindy would share something with her, but Rindy pointed out, “I aint got nothing but a biscuit and some ’lasses. I’ll let ye have half the biscuit.” But Latha refused to take any of Rindy’s meager meal. She couldn’t bear to watch Rindy eat it, though, so she went on out to the schoolyard, where the girls were eating their dinner in the shade of the north trees and the boys were eating theirs in the shade of the south trees.

  Every caught her halfway. “Sorry ye lost yore dinner bucket in the creek,” he said.

  “I’m glad you stopped them boys from making the bridge act up,” she said. “Did they catch ye?”

  “Naw,” he said. “Caint nobody catch me.” He opened his dinner bucket and showed her the interior. “I got me a roast’n ear AND a sweet ’tater, and I caint eat ’em both. Which ’un would ye keer to have?” She tried to guess which of the two Every himself would have wanted most, and correctly guessed the sweet potato, so she asked for the roasting ear, and he gave it to her.

  “Too bad we caint just sit and eat together,” Every said. He took his bucket and went to sit with the other boys under the shade of a walnut tree, and Latha took her roasting ear and ate it with the girls under a maple tree. She caught sight of Mandy and Barb and glowered at them for forgetting to share their dinner buckets with her.

  Mr. McWhorter sat on the edge of the schoolhouse porch and ate by himself. After everyone had done finished eating, they all went off to play again, the boys to play ball games and the girls either to decorate their imaginary playhouse or to sing ballads, or both. Every bravely crossed over to the girls’ side and gave Latha a fried apple pie.
“Look what I found in the bottom of my dinner bucket,” he said.

  “Wasn’t there but one of them?” she asked, and when he nodded, she carefully tore the fried pie in two and gave one half back to Every. The nearest girls made remarks about this, and set up a clamor, not because of envy of the pie but because Every was on the wrong side of the schoolyard. He blushed and departed.

  Although all the windows were open, the interior of the schoolhouse was hot and sweaty all afternoon. The two water buckets were soon empty and older boys were sent out to the well to draw more water. Mr. McWhorter said to Latha, “We caint do Lesson Two ’til tomorrow, so we mought’s well work some more on Lesson One. What’s this here word?”

  “Dog, sir,” she said. But her eyelids were drooping and she wondered, if she fell asleep, would the teacher make her try to sit on that one stool with Rindy? Or take turns? Or what?

  “Tell ye what,” the teacher suggested. “Let’s us see if we caint make a different sentence out of these three words.”

  “‘Ran the dog,’ sir?” she offered, struggling to keep her eyes open.

  “Yeah, I reckon that will do, even though the sentence don’t have a subject, like in ‘That feller run his dogs all night long.’” Mr. McWhorter just stood and scratched his head for a while, and then he said, “Now why don’t ye just practice trying to copy the words on yore slate?” He reached inside the desk and brought out a gray rectangle and a gray slate pencil, and demonstrated how to make the “D” of dog on it. Latha spent the rest of the afternoon until recess marking up her slate with her attempts at copying the letters in the words Dog, The, and Ran. Except for “a,” which she’d already learned from Every, none of those nine letters were alike. Only she didn’t know there were nine letters because she hadn’t been taught how to count yet, and she wondered when Mr. McWhorter would teach her the numbers of counting.

  Some boy three rows back (she could count that far) just put his head down on his desk and went sound asleep, even snoring. Since the dunce’s stool was already occupied by Rindy, Mr. McWhorter shook her awake and drew a little circle on the blackboard and said, “Now you just stick your nose in that circle and keep it there, and maybe you won’t fall asleep again.” And he replaced her on the stool with the boy who’d fallen asleep. Rindy stood with her nose in that circle as long as she could stand it, but then she began to swoon from sleepiness. Latha jumped up and caught her just before she fell. “Hey!” Mr. McWhorter yelled at Latha. “Who tole ye that ye could help her? Now you’ve done went and got yourself a punishment too. And he drew another circle on the blackboard and made Latha stick her nose in it. Minutes and minutes passed and Latha understood how easy it was to fall asleep like that. Also, she realized that she needed to visit the outhouse, so she held up one of her hands with the forefinger raised to signify Number One. She waited and waited but the teacher didn’t come to her to give her permission to leave and use the outhouse. She wanted to look around to see where he was, but she had to keep her nose up against the blackboard in that circle. She kept that forefinger raised for a long time, and Mr. McWhorter never came, and she knew she’d wet her bloomers soon. So she raised the middle finger instead, which was taller than the forefinger. That caused a lot of gasping and giggling and guffawing.

  But it made Mr. McWhorter come to her, and he demanded, “Young lady, is that meant for me?” Without taking her nose from the circle, she said, “I need to use the outhouse for Number One real bad and that’s all my finger means.”

  “That aint all it means by a long shot,” he said. She shrugged her shoulders, the only sign language she knew to mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. He seemed to get it. “Don’t you understand what that means, child?” She shook her head but had to smudge the chalk circle to do so. “Wal, I reckon you’re too young to know. But it aint nice. It’s downright brash and blackguardy.”

  Some boy in the class yelled, “Up yours too!” and Mr. McWhorter wheeled around and tried to identify the culprit but everyone was either giggling or guffawing and he couldn’t tell who had yelled. Both Latha and Rindy had taken their noses out of their blackboard circles and were watching Mr. McWhorter get red as a beet and start lashing the air with his hickory stick, and then he started beating his desk with the stick until the stick broke. Latha almost felt sorry for him but she desperately needed to go to the outhouse and that was all she could think of.

  “Please, sir, I need to go something terrible,” she said.

  “AINT NOBODY GOIN NOWHERES!” he yelled, “Until I find out who hollered them words at me. Now you gals stick yore noses back in them circles!” Mr. McWhorter began to pace up and down the aisle. With her nose again in the circle Latha couldn’t see what he was doing but she could hear him yelling, “Was it you?” and “Was it you?” and then she heard him yell, “All righty, I’ll just whup ever one of y’uns, until somebody confesses.” And she heard the hickory hiss through the air and land on somebody’s hide, and somebody yelped, and then somebody else hollered, and somebody else, and it seemed he was beating up all fifty of them (she hadn’t learned to count but she knew that “fifty” was a whole lot, and in fact there actually were forty-nine students in that room). She tried to think of other things, she thought of a ballit her grandmother had taught her to sing, called “Lady Margarite,” about this English lady in a castle who killed herself when her lover who was King William married someone else. There were many verses to the ballit and she got to the seventh or eighth (it might have been the ninth but she hadn’t been taught how to count yet) before she felt the water running down her leg.

  Before long the screaming and hollering of the beaten pupils was replaced by laughter—giggling and guffawing and sniggling and gut-busting. Some girl began to sing:

  Riddledy raddledy, my old fiddle,

  Latha Bourne began to piddle.

  Quicker’n she knew how to count,

  Everbody was dreckly drownt.

  Latha was not able to stop, and soon began to cry, and between her tears and her pee it was a wonder that nobody did actually drown. She was not able to keep her nose in that circle and she turned away from the blackboard, and so did Rindy, just in time to see Every Dill leap atop the teacher’s desk, unbutton his fly, take out his private thing, and begin to pee in an arc upon the floor. Latha stopped crying, she stopped peeing too, and began to laugh. So did Rindy. Latha was both amused and fascinated, because she had never seen a human male’s private thing before. She didn’t have time to get a good look at it before Mr. McWhorter lashed it with his hickory stick and Every yelped and fell off the desk, where Mr. McWhorter continued to thrash him as he lay on the floor.

  Between the two of them they had made two considerable puddles, which, however, soon drained off into the cracks between the floorboards.

  Mr. McWhorter stopped beating Every and said to Latha, pointing at the door, “Git on out to the outhouse!”

  “It’s too late now,” she said, and remembered to add, “sir.”

  During the afternoon recess, Mr. McWhorter made Every stay inside. Latha went into the woods behind the outhouse and removed her underpants and hung them on a tree limb to dry. While the girls were playing house, Rindy pointed at one of them and told Latha, “That’s Selma Alan, she’s the one who sang the piddle song.” Rindy suggested, “Let’s tear her hair out.”

  “She’s lots bigger’n us,” Latha pointed out.

  “But there’s two of us,” Rindy said, who knew how to count that far.

  Latha changed the subject. “I wonder what Mr. McWhorter is doing to Every.”

  “I reckon he drew another circle on the blackboard and is making Every stick his pecker in it.” Rindy was convulsed with laughter at her own wit.

  “Pecker?” said Latha. She hadn’t heard the word before, and wondered if it was just another word for nose.

  “His dood,” Rindy said, and pointed at her own crotch, where there wasn’t one. “Prick. Goober. Horn. Jemmison. Ducey. Root. Peter.”
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br />   “That’s a lot of words,” Latha observed.

  “There’s a lot of peckers around my house,” Rindy said. “And I don’t mean the livestock.”

  After recess, Mr. McWhorter announced that the remainder of the school day, assuming everbody was settled down and there wasn’t no more foolishness, would be devoted to Joggerfee. Instead of teaching the primers separately, he would just teach Joggerfee to all of them at once, and he started with a question, “What’s the capital of Arkansas?” There were various guesses—Jasper, Harrison, and Fort Smith—before someone correctly answered Little Rock. “What’s the capital of the United States?” likewise produced several answers before the correct one. “How many states in the Union?” “What’s the biggest state?” Nobody knew what the smallest state was, after several guesses, so the teacher moved on to Europe, and somebody guessed correctly that London was the capital of England but nobody knew the capitals of France, Spain, or Italy. The students were getting bored with European Joggerfee, and some boy who had captured a blue-bellied lizard during recess threw it across the aisle at the girl’s side, where it landed on a girl’s bosom and clung there for dear life and there was much screaming and hollering and Mr. McWhorter got out his hickory and commenced thrashing around with it.

  Latha nudged Rindy and whispered, “Hold up your hand and ask him when he’s gonna teach us Rithmetic.”

  “What’s that?” Rindy asked.

  “How to count,” Latha said.

  “Heck,” Rindy said, “I’m having enough trouble with reading, I don’t need nothing harder.”

  Finally, Mr. McWhorter said, “Okay, it’s time for girls’ dismissal. Boys will wait fifteen minutes until their dismissal, and there will be no fighting nowhere on the way home.”

  But there was fighting on the way home. Even though the girls were dismissed early to get them away from the boys or give them a head start on the boys, most of the girls dawdled. The various dogs who had spent the day sleeping under the school’s porch came out and began fights of their own, with ole Rouser right in the midst of them. Latha had to be proud that her dog would not take any sass from ary other dog. Rouser chased a hound twice his size down the creek a ways, then came back to walk Latha home. This time she wasn’t so afraid of the swinging bridge and got across it all by herself, but was careful not to look down.