Otherwise Known as Possum Read online

His lips were soft and warm like rising dough, and it didn’t feel wet like a dog kiss or anything like I thought it might.

  I was thinking all these thoughts at once, so that it took me a minute to realize I should be piqued as cream. I held stock-still. A storm roared in my head, so I barely heard Miss Arthington ring the bell.

  Jump gave me a crooked smile and a wink and put my flip into the bib of his coveralls. Then he slipped past me, and I got another whiff of that sweet hay smell that made me think of warm summer days, far away from this cool, gray one. He strolled into the schoolhouse whistling “Dixie.”

  Finally, I snapped out of myself and drifted around the schoolhouse. The door was closed. I was glad no one could see me till I’d cooled my griddle.

  When I walked in, Miss Arthington’s speech revealed she was angry about something. “I’ve told you all time and again that I will not tolerate dangerous weapons in my classroom. I don’t care if it’s a twelve-guage shotgun or a pea shooter or anything in between. They do not belong in a house of learning.”

  Everyone else was silent and staring at the floor. I thought I might slip in without Miss Arthington noticing me, as her attention seemed focused on the biggest kids in the back corner, farthest from the door.

  “I’m putting this in my desk, Jump Justice, until the end of the school year. And maybe without this kind of distraction we’ll see more of you in school.”

  And what slid into that no-man’s-land of her desk was—my flip!

  Being flustered as flounder, I did not speak but tried willing Jump to look my way. Instead, he looked every way but mine, as a result of which I could see the back of his neck was red as rover.

  As I had come in after the bell, when I tried to speak, Miss Arthington simply shushed me, which made Mary Grace giggle. It took all my willpower not to punch her. When I looked at Tully, he too-quick looked away.

  “Where’s June May?” Miss Arthington asked. She was looking at Jump. “I was certain I saw her before the bell.”

  June May’s desk sure enough was empty.

  “I honest don’t know, Miss Teacher,” Jump said. He seemed just as surprised to note she was not in her seat.

  I was surprised at the quiet, inside voice Jump was using. He looked three sizes too big for the desk he was hunkered at.

  “Honestly,” Miss Arthington said.

  I felt a flash of anger in defense of Jump. What’d he done wrong? Here he was being respectful and …

  “You ‘honestly don’t know,’ ” Miss Arthington said, correcting Jump. “The adverb is ‘honestly,’ with an ‘ly’ on the end. It describes how. You honestly don’t know.”

  When I realized Teacher was not picking on Jump, I switched my anger back to him.

  “No, ma’am, I honestly don’t.”

  I heard a titter and thought it might be Mary Grace, surprise, but she sat still as stone for a change, staring at her folded pink-piggy hands.

  I shot her an especially extra-dirty look. She’d probably tried some dark sorcery to steal my other best friend from me, but she wasn’t going to get away with it. If only I could get my flip back!

  I already had lost one best friend, and, to make matters worse, Tully hadn’t just deserted me; he seemed to have left the Confederacy and joined the enemy. June May was missing and who knew where or when that will-o’-the-wisp might turn up. Anyhoo, I couldn’t very well tell her what Jump had done. Nor was I for certain turning to Daddy. Least not until I had won the essay contest and he’d figured out I was too smart to be a party to this gaggle of goose-brained idiots.

  When I saw my flip disappear into the drawer of Miss Arthington’s desk, church-truth, I had not felt so alone since Momma and Baby died.

  At lunch, the sky was dark as dusk. After school, though it was clear a storm was brewing, I hooked up with Trav and wandered the countryside, like maybe I could find the answers I was looking for hanging from some tree or sitting on some rock. It felt good to fight the wind, like it was cleaning me somehow. I found myself wishing again and again that I had a brother, a real live brother, I could talk to.

  It was the first time I thought of him as someone who could’ve helped me, when all along I’d been thinking of all the kinds of things I would teach him. For one, he’d be the best marble shooter in Elliott County. Not counting me.

  For two, we’d’ve fished together down to the creek and, when he got older and wouldn’t drown ’cause I’d taught him to swim, I’d take him to Silver Pines Pond. Probably at first I’d secretly hook a fish for him and hand him the pole, so he could think it was his catch. I figured you did things like that for little brothers.

  And for third, I would’ve made him his own flip. With him and me being such great marble shooters, plus Momma’s pecans, we’d never run out of ammo.

  Wind painted the trees side to side instead of up and down, and I was near home when the first big, fat drops hit the dirt road. Then the skies opened up, and I was nearly upon it before from a flash of lightning I saw the bicycle by our front door. I folded myself into the wind and ran the last twenty yards.

  Trav barked once at it, a sound barely covered by the rumble of thunder.

  “Hush, boy. Keep quiet.”

  He put his maple-syrup-colored muzzle into my curved hand. With a lick and a cock of his head, he let me know he wasn’t about to give away our position.

  I knew sure as shirttails that Teacher had come to return my flip and apologize for the misunderstanding.

  I wondered how long she’d been waiting and was glad to have let her stew a bit. ’Course I’d be gracious, but she had to learn. You didn’t just go off half-cocked, jumping to conclusions before getting all the facts.

  I ran inside along with about ten gallons of rainwater and stopped just inside the front door to let the water roll off my face. I was ready to accept all coming apologies, along with my flip, only to find Miss Arthington sitting in Momma’s company chair and Daddy nowhere to be seen.

  “Why, oh! Hello, LizBetty,” she said, looking even more startled than she sounded. Then she raised her voice. “LizBetty, I was just talking with your father about—about the essay contest. Asking him whether you planned to enter. And also—also whether he could possibly help build us a lectern for the readings that day.”

  Daddy came in looking pink and sheepish. “Possum, what’choo doin’ here?”

  I felt a cold run down me. I realized right about then that I also was not likely going to get back my flip. “I reckon I still live here, don’t I?”

  “Well, of course you do, sugar. What I—”

  “Anyway, me and Trav only came in to get something to chew on. I didn’t know you’d be all busy. With a busybody.” I whispered that last part.

  Daddy’s face turned colors like fall trees. “What did you say, young lady?”

  I didn’t fear Daddy would give me a lickin’ right in front of Teacher. Still, I moved my way closer to the door. “I said, sir, I didn’t know you had company, is all. I’ll just be gettin’ out of the way. I can see I’m not needed or wanted.”

  “You’re going back out in the rain?” asked Miss Arthington in a voice so high it sounded strangled.

  “Good weather for night crawlers, and we’re already wet,” I said, and me and Trav scooted before he could hang any more crimes on us.

  It was Trav’s idea what happened next, I swear. Maybe ’cause there’s a little overhang on that side and the ground is higher. He went and sat under the window to the parlor. I tried to call him, but he just looked at me; then he lay down. I had grabbed him by the scruff when a soft laugh floated past the window. A laugh that belonged to none other than Teacher. She must have gotten wet when she was closing the window. But I could hear their voices hanging on the air, like laundry being pegged.

  First Daddy’s, low and warm, then hers, light and musical. I slid onto the ground against the house and listened like if my whole body was made of ears, but over the drumming rain, I could not make out but a few words each. />
  “… nice … pretty … ” That was Daddy.

  “… sweet … simple … my best … so glad you … ” And her. Then, “… courting.”

  Courting?

  She laughed again, and I heard Daddy’s roasted chestnut of a chuckle, and the floorboards squeaked. Next came an unfamiliar humming of an unfamiliar tune, and I knew she was alone.

  I shifted slowly to my knees and turned myself toward the window slow and cautious, like a turtle changing direction. Then little by little I raised myself. Just as I cleared the sill, I heard Teacher’s voice exclaim, “Oh, will you look at that!”

  Found out, I dropped to the ground like a treed coon shot between the eyes. Twister winds blew in my head, and I ducked against the brunt of discovery.

  Nothing happened.

  I opened my eyes. Nothing.

  I lifted my head. Nothing.

  I unwrapped my arms from my bent-up legs.

  Another laugh floated through the window, and I understood. I was not discovered. Trav panted a relieved smile at me.

  I climbed back up to the window but off to the side and risked peering in. What was the worst that could happen?

  I wished I hadn’t asked myself, because I’d likely get answers aplenty.

  But a month of carnival rides could not have shook me like what I saw. I crouch-ran away from the window, toward Momma’s tree. But sick with the idea of facing her, I headed instead for the woods.

  Trav followed at my side, and when we hit the tree line, we both broke into a dead run. I might have been trying to run out the scene in my head, but not even a hounded rabbit could run that fast. What I had seen burned my eyelids so that even if I closed my eyes, the pictures wouldn’t go away.

  What I had just seen was unreal.

  What I had just seen was Daddy holding a pretty little something of red paisley on yellow. Miss Arthington was holding up a dark green with mallards flying over it.

  Even though her back was to the window, I didn’t need to see more. That green had two blue pockets up front and a pretty blue collar, which I knew well.

  I knew because these were two of my own sweet Momma’s best and most favorite dresses, which she made herself. She cut the patterns from newspaper and imagination on our kitchen table. She sewed them herself with her own warm white hands. And when we went to Scotties for flour, she let me pick the flour sacks with the patterns I liked. I remembered those flying ducks. That red paisley might have been my favorite.

  Momma only had but four or five dresses that kept any shape or color after all the wash-wear-work of her life, and she’d been buried in one. Here were two of the others.

  I ran.

  Daddy giving away what was left of Momma.

  I ran.

  And they laughed about it.

  I couldn’t run far enough fast enough.

  Would Daddy see Momma or that venomous trickster of a teacher when she danced around with her bobby head protruding from my momma’s best dresses? That couldn’t happen. Daddy was for surely a right bit delirious with missing Momma, I could hold to that, but I couldn’t deny what I’d known in the back of my thick skull for some time; my daddy was, sure as a snake bite, courting Miss Arthington somethin’ fierce, and I had to stop it. Had to get out of that darn school so Teacher would have no business left to come dimpling her way into our lives!

  I didn’t know things could get worse.

  Guess I don’t know everything.

  When we next were at school, there was no teacher to ring us in.

  Which was fine by me. I didn’t know if I’d be able to look at her without all the hurt in my stomach spilling out of my mouth. But this time, my punishment wouldn’t be after-school chores. Miss Arthington would tell Daddy all the terrible things I said. Maybe it’d scare her away from our broken family. Or maybe it’d just convince Daddy that I needed more “female influence” in my life. And then there’d be nothing to stop her from trying to turn me into no Yankee or sweep the smell of Momma from our house.

  At last, several minutes after the clock showed who was tardy and who was not, Miss Arthington came into the room. All the boys’ smart remarks withered on their lips to see her face. We knew, to a person, that something was terrible wrong. Teacher looked like she had lost her best friend—and she didn’t even have a dog. The room got so quiet you could hear time passing.

  “Class.” It came out a squeak, but no one dared laugh. She cleared her throat. “Class, something has happened that cuts me to the quick. I don’t even know if I have the strength to tell you how … how betrayed I feel.”

  I turned barely toward Mary Grace, who was as attentioned as I was. Clearly she had no more idea what Miss Arthington was saying than a skunk knows about perfume.

  “First off,” Miss Arthington continued, “the essay contest is over. The prize, our wonderful prize, a precious thing, as all books are—”

  Here she choked up, and I found myself leaning forward to catch what she might say next.

  “The prize has been stolen!” She raised a hankie and dabbed at her red-rimmed eyes and pink-tipped nose. “I can only think that it was someone in this room who took it.” Her face teetered between rage and hurt.

  I had the uncomfortable feeling that Teacher was looking right at me, into me, the whole time she spoke. Maybe I hadn’t been rightly polite when I found her sneaked into my house, but that didn’t make me a thief. I wondered what kind of the scum that lives under pond scum would do such a terrible thing. Like we all hadn’t lost enough already.

  Then, right on the heels of that thought, I had another, one I almost regretted. Almost. That it served her right to be so upset. Here she was accusing someone of stealing some dumb old book when she was aiming to steal my daddy! I wasn’t going to let her play on my sympathies, no, sir, so I gave her my best evil eye.

  Teacher was sniffling again and fussing with a stack of papers—looked like letters—tied in a ribbon the color of tiger lilies. She looked up then but seemed to speak to the wall behind us: “When I think that I came all the way down here, turned my back on so much, because I thought I could make a difference.” Then she seemed to turn her gaze onto each and every one of us in turn as she said, slowly, “Do you realize that I could be in New York City? And happy? And married?”

  Then she burst into tears and ran out.

  The class sat stock-still for what felt like a plum century—that is, if it went on any longer, we’d go plum crazy. Then everyone started mumbling and whispering. Sounded like a hornets’ nest. An angry, excited, disturbed hornets’ nest.

  What troubled me was the gnawing feeling that Teacher really had been looking right at me. ’Course, I knew it was my imagination, because I never did touch that book, nor would I. It’s what came next that made the thought turn like warm milk.

  Mary Grace leaned over real close and whispered, “You took it.” Her breath was hot on me, and I felt my face catch fire from the words.

  “What?”

  “Miss Arthington knows you stole her book!”

  I felt like I’d gotten a sucker punch to the gut. “You’re crazy!” It was hard to breathe and think at the same time. “I didn’t. And anyway, what might make her think something crazy-foolish like that?”

  Mary Grace looked shamed-faced plus surprised. I started feeling like a treed coon.

  “Well, um.” She twisted a curl.

  “Go on, Mary Grace.” I hadn’t known I could talk without one single muscle in my entire body.

  That’s when Miss Arthington, red-eyed, returned and sent us home. “I hope the person who did this terrible thing and took our precious book will have the decency and self-respect to come forward. The rest of you can go home; there will be no lessons today.” She turned to face the wall.

  A kind of quiet, happy-sad chaos erupted in the room, over which she yelled, “But be here all the earlier tomorrow.”

  I grabbed my new essay and tore it top to bottom and crosswise before letting the pieces float in
to the trash bin. Weren’t even worth kindling. My heart pitted like a quarry stone to the bottom of my stomach. Whoever’d took that book had stole from me too. They’d taken my one chance to save my daddy from Miss Arthington’s crow claws and get him back to thinkin’ straight about who his family was, so he’d stop messin’ everything up.

  I glanced back at Teacher. Her sorrowful eyes lit right into mine, and she curled her finger, beckoning me to her. I had a mind to turn tail and shove free, but I knew she’d get a notion it was out of guilt. I let the rest of ’em tumble out the door and my feet shuffled forward, but not on account of me asking them to.

  “LizBetty … Possum,” she asked, all sputtery but not accusin’-like. “You know anything about the circumstance of our beautiful book missing?”

  If she had a thought I knew about her takin’ my momma’s dresses, she might have a reason for thinking so, but anger licked through me like a stung bear covered in honey. I stood as straight and falsely polite as I’d seen Mary Grace. “No, ma’am. And I’m very sorry for someone to do such a thing … ma’am.”

  She nodded and turned back to starin’ at the blank chalkboard.

  I crept from the room stealthy as a fox from a chicken coop, not sure if she thought I’d done it, or just knew somethin’ on account of the thoughts tic-tac-toein’ across my face, even if she were reading them wrong. I did feel real bad about the missing book and mad about the dresses and right furious about her looking to snare my daddy like he was a rabbit with a broke leg.

  On the schoolyard, everyone talked at once, each with an idea about the book thief. Only Mary Grace, standing a few feet away, and I were silent.

  I felt like every eye was an evil eye and every evil eye was on me, blaming. I looked around for June May or even that traitor Tully, wishing for some sort of friendly face, but saw neither hide nor hair of either.

  I was sure Mary Grace had done something to that book, out of mean spite, just to turn Teacher against me makin’ her think I took it. How else to explain the continuation of a world gone mad?

  Mary Grace walked in my direction, but I didn’t have the stomach to stomach her. I took off for the woods, not thinking too much about where I might be headed but of course ending up exactly where I needed to be. I found myself at the Secret Spot, which although it apparently had been renamed the Less-Than-Secret Spot for Traitors and Prisses, was blessedly empty.