by Richard Peck
Tansy gave me time to picture Aunt Fanny Hamline in my mind. She was maybe the meanest living woman in Indiana now that Miss Myrt was no more.
It wasn’t fair. “What about Char—”
“Did Charlie wad the bell?” Tansy spoke like lightning striking. “So if we’d had to ring it for help to fight the fire, we’d have been up a gum stump?”
“But—”
“Was it Charlie’s chore to scythe the weeds around the privy in this dry weather?” Tansy pondered. “I begin to see the pattern. You muffle the bell. You leave the weeds standing. Then you set the fire.”
“No, no, it wasn’t nothing like—”
“But that’s not your worst offense.” The lamp burned lower now as my time ran out. “No. Your worst crime was to hold me up to derision.”
Derision was one of our D words that nobody could spell. Some said it wasn’t even a word, until we looked it up.
“You burned down the privy to hold me up to public derision on my first day of teaching. That is a capital offense. Men have hung for less.”
I whined, “There’s no evi—”
“There’ll be evidence across your back end and Charlie’s too. Big red welts. The smoking alone will win Charlie his stripes from Preacher Parr when I tell him and Dad about—”
“Tansy, don’t,” I beseeched. “We’re going to make…”
“Restitution?” she said, though we weren’t to the R’s yet. “You bet your sweet life you are. You’ll split a winter’s worth of kindling as soon as you put up the school stove. You’ll be splitting kindling in your sleep. And you’ll get to school every morning before me to lay the fire. You’ll take down the stovepipe every two weeks like clockwork to empty the soot. You’ll stack and you’ll stoke and you’ll take out the ashes.”
“Miss Myrt always had us take them chores in turns. She—”
“And you’ll have plenty of reason to miss her,” Tansy said.
A whimper rose from behind Lloyd’s pillow, and maybe mine.
Tansy turned at last to go. Seeming to remember something, she looked back. “And tomorrow directly school’s out, you’ll hitch Siren to the wagon because we’re going on a little errand.”
“What kind of—”
“You’ll find out.”
“Not me too?” Lloyd said, muffled, scared.
“No, not you, just Russell,” Tansy said. “Though, Lloyd, why you can’t spell expectorate when it’s spelled just like it sounds, I cannot fathom.” The lamp in her hand hissed and spat. Then Tansy was swallowed by the night. The smell of coal oil hung in the room.
I made a note in my mind to talk over our Dakota plans with Charlie. It was high time to head out. Around here things were getting too hot for us, so to speak.
In a voice small and forlorn Lloyd said, “I miss Miss Myrt. She only threatened you in daylight.”
Then we must have slept.
I awoke in dread. Tansy hadn’t told Dad about the privy fire because she was holding it over my head. He was bound to hear, though. And Aunt Maud too. What with the telephone and the Rural Free Delivery, there wasn’t much place to hide anymore.
But when we slunk in from milking, Dad was at his place at the kitchen table with the weekly newspaper, The Parke County Courier, open before him.
I’d have given a lot to see a headline in it reading,
LIGHTNING STRIKES
RURAL SCHOOL PRIVY
But it wasn’t to be.
“Hark at this,” Dad said, and began to read:
FARM FAMILY IN NOVEL ACCIDENT
MODERN MISHAP AT COUNTY CROSSROADS
Aunt Maud had just turned out a pan of her buckshot muffins. Tansy was making our dinner. “Oh my stars, that sounds like us!” Aunt Maud said. “Who’s telling our business?” She and Tansy hung over Dad as he read out the article:
The O. C. Culver family of rural Sycamore Township was involved in an accident with an automobile last Thursday. The party was returning from a funeral when their horses drawing a Standard Wheel Company wagon shied at a near collision with a Bullet No. 2 eight-cylinder racing car driven this past winter at Daytona Beach, Florida, by Barney Oldfield.
At the time of the crossroad contretemps, Eugene Hammond of the newly organized Overland Automobile Company of Terre Haute was the motorneer at the wheel of the car.
The Culver family includes O. C. Culver, a prominent local citizen and practitioner of diversified farming, his handsome daughter, Miss Tansy Culver, two young sons, and Mr. Culver’s sister-in-law, Miss Singleterry, who was flung some distance off the tailgate.
Fortuitously, no injury was sustained by either the four-footed or two-footed victims of the misadventure. Eugene Hammond was able to drive the auto on to the Vigo County fairgrounds, where he demonstrated it in a time trial, finishing first. It is believed that this accident is the first such between horse-drawn vehicle and internal combustion engine in the twentieth century here in the Hoosier heartland. What lies ahead in this advanced new era? An airship colliding with a church spire? We live in miraculous times, its wonders to behold.
When Tansy saw herself called handsome in print, her hand stole up to her back hair.
Outrage etched Aunt Maud’s face at anybody blaring our personal business to the listening world. “How’d they know we were coming from a funeral anyhow?”
“The way we were dressed on a Thursday,” Tansy said in a far-off voice, dreamlike. “Your veil. My hat.”
“Well, they got that right about me being flung a considerable distance,” Aunt Maud maintained. “I was in the air long enough to see my whole life pass before me.”
Dad grinned. “That young go-getter Eugene Hammond is behind this story,” he said. “You can see him on every line. He hand-fed each word to the Courier. He’ll go far, that fellow. This is better advertising for his company and himself than you can pay out money for.”
Aunt Maud couldn’t pull her eyes off the page. Still, her chin wagged. “I didn’t expect to see my name in the paper till my obituary on the day they put me in the ground!”
“And you might not see it then,” Dad remarked mildly.
Anyway, our sudden fame kept everybody’s mind off my crime. I didn’t feel much like one lucky boy, but at least I wasn’t looking at an arson charge. Me and Lloyd attended school in our next-best shirts, sent off with a warning from Aunt Maud. This second day of Tansy’s teaching went along better, and ran the full time.
Little Britches was back, on her own terms. She’d sit nowhere but at teacher’s desk, and she thought she owned the Webster speller. The day unfolded as we taught her the alphabet and refreshed it for Flopears. We spelled each other down to the continual clang of the cowbell and wore the dictionary out, looking up meanings.
Our dinner pails were Karo syrup cans because of their wire handles. We sprawled in the noonday yard and hung on the hitching rail. Pearl sat apart. Flopears had only a measly little square of hard salt-and-water corn bread in his pail that wouldn’t fill a wood tick. We shared out with him, and he got a pickled peach off me. You could use the boys’ privy, though the back of it was entirely gone and daylight showed through the roof.
We played our noontime games: Bug in the Gully and Old Sow Out. Tansy pinned up her skirts and played along with us to make sure nobody kicked Little Britches in the head by mistake. Charlie remarked that in a bigger school with at least nineteen pupils, you’d have two teams for real baseball, and an umpire. We looked ahead to winter and snow on the ground. Then we’d bring our rifles and hunt rabbits at noontime. But I nudged Charlie to mention privately about being up in the Dakotas by then.
At the end of the day, Tansy asked how many of us had the Monkey Ward catalog at home. Hands went up. Everybody ordered out of the catalog, and without its pages you’d have to carry corncobs to the privy.
“Look in the back of it,” Tansy told us. “There’s a map of the United States for giving the shipping rates. Tear out that map and bring it to school. We start geograph
y tomorrow.”
We squealed like pigs under a gate. Since somebody had filched the school map, we’d hoped to be free of that subject. “I see no reason to study geography,” Pearl said firmly, “no reason in the world.”
As school days went, I’d known worse. But the threat of Tansy’s errand after school hung heavy on me, whatever it was. Lloyd stayed after to shoot some marbles in the school yard with Flopears and Lester. Deciding there was a wagon ride in it for him, J.W. followed me home.
When we got there, Siren acted like she didn’t want to be caught. Horses know what we don’t. I had to chase her all over the lot. When I was at last backing her into the shafts, Dad called me over to the barn door. A new pile of lumber was heaped inside, five or six lengths of good, seasoned white pine planking, appearing out of nowhere.
Dad fingered his chin. “Have you any use for this?” he wondered, offhand.
“Dad,” I said, “I believe I do.” I’d learned some carpentry from watching him. And I had a privy that needed extensive repair. As well he seemed to know.
“You can take the lumber when you go back to pick up your sister at school,” he remarked. “And you may want the ladder.” So he seemed to know I’d be unwadding the bell too, whoever done that. There was no end to what Dad knew. He may have known what Tansy’s errand was. But pride kept me from asking.
I loaded the wagon and talked Siren back along the Hog Scald Road, me and J.W. up on the board. We met Lloyd coming home, swinging his dinner pail. He was chewing mint and free as a bird and grinning because he wasn’t me.
Chapter Ten
Stony Lonesome
Me and Tansy rode better than a mile in silence.
She was Teacher Tansy in her new hat, so I felt like I ought to put up my hand to be called on. Her chin was set, and she gripped the reins herself, so she hadn’t brought me along to drive. Her skirts took up most of the board. I clung to one side. Past the covered bridge over Sand Branch we turned into Stony Lonesome Road and hit the first hole hard.
It jolted me into speech. “Tansy, where in the Sam Hill are we headed?”
“I need another pupil to make eight.”
“But nobody lives up Stony Lonesome Road,” I pointed out. Nobody but the Tarboxes.
Dread swept me.
“Tansy, you don’t mean—”
“They’re a big tribe,” she said, “with a bunch of kids.”
“But they don’t send them to school, Tansy.” My heart was in my mouth. Nobody messed with Tarboxes. Tarboxes had two heads apiece. Was I along to protect Tansy? Could I look after myself?
It was slow going, veering along in dry ruts. J.W. was all over the wagon bed behind us. “Tansy, let’s find us a place to turn around.”
We were coming past Tarbox territory, weedy hay-land and rough cropland, seen through fallen fences. Lines of old corn stubble planted in some earlier year rode the eroding rises. We smelled their home place before it came into view: the never-shoveled-out barn, the never-shifted pigpen.
Siren balked and showed unwilling. But Tansy turned her up the lane. The smell now would water your eyes. Chickens wilder than hawks flew at us. Gaunt, hopeless cows stood unmilked in the field. At least two corners of the barn needed jacking up. The well was downhill from the barn lot.
Busted implements littered the landscape. Whose implements they were was anybody’s guess. The Tarboxes never knew the difference between Thine and Mine. Whatever went missing in Parke County, from a handsaw to a heifer, people said the Tarboxes got it.
“Here, there’s room to turn around,” I said because we hadn’t been spotted yet. A couple of people were in the privy. You could tell because it had no door on it. But they weren’t looking our way.
The house was in worse shape than the barn. Tansy drew up and climbed down, and I had to follow. J.W. was on his hind legs, peering over the wagon side. The gate to the yard was off its hinges. You wanted to be real careful where you stepped. Tansy made for the house.
A rusted-out cream separator stood on the porch. It was said the Tarboxes strained their milk through an old shirt. There it was, wadded up on the peeling porch floor. A washtub webbed to the wall stood on a rickety table. In place of an oilcloth, the table was covered by a map of the world. A woman gaunt as her cattle appeared in the door. She shook off the kids clinging to her apron and stepped out.
“Well, skin me for a polecat,” she said in the Hoosierest accent I ever heard. “Company! We don’t get many people up this way if you don’t count the sheriff.”
In her hand was a length of pigtail chewing tobacco. She bit off about an ounce and returned the plug to her apron pocket.
“What can I do you for?” From behind her, eyes peered out of the gloom of the house.
“I’m the new teacher,” Tansy said.
“We heard the old one kicked the bucket.” Mrs. Tarbox spoke muffled. She had no teeth, and it took her some time to take control of her chaw. “But you look a good deal like Tansy Culver to me,” she said. “Didn’t you turn out to be a great big girl!”
Mrs. Tarbox gave Tansy the once-over. Her gaze lingered over Tansy’s new hat with its bunch of artificial grapes spilling off the brim. It put several years on her. I don’t suppose Mrs. Tarbox ever had a hat.
“Who’s the squirt?” She meant me.
“He’s one of my brothers,” Tansy said. “Russell. He’s along to—I like to keep an eye on him.”
“I see what you mean. He looks shifty,” Mrs. Tarbox said. “What’s on your mind?”
“I want you to send your children to school.”
“You do, do you?” Mrs. Tarbox placed a hand on her bony hip. “The ones that isn’t in jail is either too young or too old.”
“You’re never too old to learn,” Tansy said.
“Tell them that.”
“If any of them are between six and sixteen,” Tansy said, “the law says they go to school.”
“When did they put that law through?”
“1901,” Tansy said.
Mrs. Tarbox’s lip curled. “Indianapolis.” She shot a stream of brown tobacco juice onto the porch floor just off Tansy’s left flank.
Tansy held our ground.
Mrs. Tarbox squinted aside. “Tell you what. I’ve got a couple inside you can have.” A sound of scrambling came from inside the house. “But I’ll tell you right now, they ain’t housebroke.”
“Are they six?”
“Not that I recollect. By the time my kids is six, they’ve got chores at home.” She looked out over the ruined territory. “A farm don’t run itself, in case you ain’t heard.”
Now I personally felt eyes on us from every side. Tarbox eyes from the house, the barn, up in trees. This looked like a lost cause, and I was real ready to go.
But there was still some fight in Tansy. “Don’t you want them to be able to read and cypher?” She searched all the seams in Mrs. Tarbox’s face.
Mrs. Tarbox clenched her jaw. “And be better than me?”
They had a staring contest then that nobody won. Finally Tansy said, “Yes.”
And Mrs. Tarbox said, “Get off my land.” She sounded more tired than mad.
Tansy turned, and we went. I helped her up on the board to show all the watching eyes I wasn’t entirely useless.
Tansy was just turning Siren in the lot when I looked back. J.W. wasn’t in the wagon bed. There was some terrier in him. That meant he dearly loved rolling in manure and decay, so Tarbox territory was the happy hunting ground for him.
I was beginning to worry when he rocketed out from under a fence ahead of us and down the lane, barking his head off. Something moved in the ruts between here and the road. Some critter was creeping across the lane. J.W. was closing in on it with his tail high.
Tansy saw and slapped the reins on Siren’s rump. J.W. snapped at the thing in the road, then jumped an easy five foot in the air. His bark turned into a terrible yowling scream.
It was a porcupine. Of all the vermin on this p
lace, J.W. had to take out after a porcupine. Waddling at speed, it disappeared into the weeds. Still, Siren knew what it was and pulled up short. I jumped down and made a dead run for J.W. He was stretched in a rut. His screaming was already weaker, and he was pawing the air.
Before I could get to him, somebody else did. He’d vaulted the fence. Now he was bent over J.W. He was older than me, by the look of him, and with a whole lot more muscles. A Tarbox, naturally.
He glanced up. “Git a stick, three, four inches long.”
“Wha—”
“Git it.”
I darted off and found one and came back. He’d pulled some binder twine out of his overalls and commenced wrapping J.W.’s front and hind paws, quick and easy. He could tie a knot one-handed. He wedged the stick in J.W.’s mouth to keep it wide. A porcupine quill had lodged in the roof of J.W.’s mouth. Another quill was in his tongue, and one through an eyelid. He rolled J.W. on his back to straddle him, pulling a pair of pliers out of the loop on his overalls. They were the kind you use to fix wire fencing, though none of their fences looked fixed.
“Git a hold on his head,” he told me.
He began to draw the quill out of the roof of J.W.’s mouth with the pliers. His upper arm bulged with the effort. “Them quills is barbed at the business end,” he said over the sound of J.W.’s squealing. He pulled out the quill and held it up. It was the size of a darning needle. He went back for the one in J.W.’s tongue. After that, the quill through the eyelid, which was delicate work and the hardest to watch.
“Lucky,” Tarbox said. “Jist three.”
He untied J.W.’s legs and pulled the stick out of his mouth. When he cradled him in both hands, J.W. keened and moaned but didn’t thrash.
“You got to git the quill out right now,” he said, “or sometimes they’ll jist stop their breathing.”
We were both bent over and close. Like Charlie Parr, he could beat me to a jelly if he took a notion to. His greasy hair hung in his face, he smelled like swill, and he’d just saved my dog.
By then I felt eyes on us from closer to. Tarboxes as big as this one were standing on the far side of the fence, watching. Some had pitchforks in their hands. All their jaws worked with chaw. A fence line of tough customers.