Otherwise Known as Possum Read online

  “School.”

  I didn’t know I hadn’t thought it till the word came out of my mouth, and it sounded loud against the crunch of my feet and Trav’s snuffs and snorts. So we trudged onward, and whenever a thought tried to get into my head, I hummed something or other, torn between hating what was coming and loving what was now.

  The woods don’t lie or die or disappear without warning or make you do what you thought they had always promised to protect you from doing. Rabbits are always rabbits, and chipmunks are never raccoons, and a person could certainly learn a thing or two from that—like to avoid people and stick with animals. At least with critters a person knew they wouldn’t be betrayed.

  When Trav and I got over the last ridge, I was so thick in my own mud, it took me longer than a flash of lightning to realize that suddenly I was looking at my own sorrow mirrored in a familiar face.

  What was wrong with Tully?

  He sat above the last stretch of path, looking down on our place of confinement, and from where I stood, he seemed so still, I thought he might be hunting. But when I got closer I saw, although he was facing away from me, that he had no rifle nor flip, and so it seemed he was just thinking the rare but careful kind of thought that in Tully’s case took all of his mind.

  He jumped straight up when I tapped his shoulder.

  Any other day, I’d have crowed at that.

  When Tully finished gasping for breath, he laughed at his own foolishness, and I smiled at his open, familiar face. “You just stole one of my nine lives, Possum.”

  I laughed, but I knew what he was going to say next before he did and cut him off. “I promised Daddy I would give school a try, and that is what I am gonna do, Tully Spencer. I don’t need a guardian to make sure I get there, if that is what you’re here for.”

  Tully pulled back Trav’s ears and said, “All I was gonna say is, they don’t cotton to dogs in school. Even one as fine as Trav.”

  I felt skittery then. I knew the day would be short and that I’d have Tully there, but I hadn’t figured on doing without Trav. What kind of school didn’t let you even take your own dog with you?

  Trav licked my hand and looked at me woefully, knowing my thoughts as he does.

  “Don’t worry, Trav.” I scruffled his neck. “This won’t take long anyway.”

  Tully spit out a wad of seed husks. “Know Newcomb’s girl, Mary somethin’?”

  “Some.” I sat to pull a prickler from my right baby toe, pulling my foot real close to see what I was doing. Pressed around till I felt the sting. “Scrawny kid. Sniffly?” I recalled seeing her once or twice when I’d been to the store with Momma or Daddy. I spit on my foot and rubbed it to clean the spot. “Any time I seen her, she was holding a hankie over her nose like it might fall off otherwise.”

  Tully had his knife out and grabbed my foot, so I settled back, wriggling like Trav to feel the cool of the ground on my shoulder blades. “She sure did change some this summer,” he said before spitting on his knife blade and digging the tip into my toe.

  I closed my eyes, knowing I wouldn’t squirm for something so puny.

  “I went. Into the store for. Penny’s worth of—”

  “Ow!” I sat up and stuck my toe in my mouth.

  “Sorry, Possum,” Tully said, looking at it. He wiped the blade on his pants.

  I scowled over my foot at him.

  “Anyways, she shot up maybe a foot. Dressed up like a Sunday-school Christmas tree.” He folded the knife and put it in his hip pocket.

  My toe throbbed. The mention of Christmas made my belly swoon for the way it always had been, with Momma hanging greens from pillar and post till our house smelled like the piney woods, only better. But there’d be no such greening this year. Or ever. How could it even be Christmas if it wasn’t the three of us like it had always been? Or four of us like it was supposed to be ever after?

  Tully shrugged. “Anyways, reckon you’ll see her soon enough.”

  What was he talking about? I looked him up and down. From the little pile of seed husks at his bare feet, he’d been waiting awhile. Did he come this way for me?

  Truly a friend to beat all friends.

  But wait. How did he know I’d be coming this way anyhow?

  The sound of a clanging bell rose up to us on the clear morning air. Tully wiped his hands on his coveralls and pointed at Trav. “Best send him home now, Possum.” At least he had the decency to sound mournful about it.

  To Trav, he said, “Don’t worry, boy. I’ll make sure she don’t get into no trouble.” Trav woofed, and Tully hooted. “Unless I’m in on it too.”

  I knelt down and grabbed Trav’s silky ears, rubbing my forehead against his. My eyes felt prickly. “Go, Trav. Go on.”

  He didn’t budge. I swatted at him. “You gonna stay there all day?” He sat.

  From below, the bell clanged again. Tully tugged my arm. “C’mon, Possum. Trav’s more worried about you than you need to be about him.” And I knew his words to be church-truth.

  I let Tully pull me a few feet and turned. Trav barked once and then lay down, front paws crossed, chin on top. He was telling me he’d be there when I came back, no matter how long I was gone. That’s when I remembered I wouldn’t be gone long at all.

  I reviewed my plan. Go to school, prove I already knew everything to be learned from Momma, and keep from wasting anyone’s time or taking attention from the thick, slow, and unlucky who did not have a momma like mine to make school-schooling excessive. Then there’d be nothing keeping me away from Daddy. We could go back to pretending nothing had changed at all.

  Sure in my plan of attack, knowing I’d at least have Tully on my side, I gulped hard and turned my back on Trav, marching onward like General Lee returning to Manassas.

  My stomach growled about the breakfast it had not gotten. Maybe I’d wait till after lunch to leave school so as to not embarrass the teacher so much. I could have my biscuits to tide me over till suppertime. It promised to be the only good part of the day.

  The schoolhouse was long and low, painted a rusty red with white trim, four windows along each side, its bell on a rail by the door. There was a tiny house nearly hidden behind it, which I knew had been built for a teacher to live in. Both buildings and the well between them lay in a clearing ringed by trees, with Hefty Rock to the back and the creek across the front.

  When we crossed the bridge, our footsteps echoed down the water. I hoped the noise would wake a troll who would eat me so I wouldn’t have to keep going, but we made it to the other side all right.

  A tall, tidy woodpile stood by each building. I pointed and said to Tully, “You ever seen that lady pick up a ax? Cuz I don’t guess she could lift one off the ground with two hands.”

  Tully snorted appreciatively. “Aw,” he said, “lotsa fellas wanna help keep it stocked. Even Pa will send down a sled load come winter.” Since Tully and his pa lived up in the hills, they got real good at using gravity to help ’em out. “ ’Sides, she’s not so bad, I promise. Real smart. Smells good too.”

  It was my turn to snort.

  Tully spit and grinned, but all he said was, “You’ll see.” And then, “You got ants in your pants?”

  I was tugging at my underwear, which I had washed special, bluing and all. But drying them on the warming stove had made them stiff and scratchy.

  I punched Tully’s arm. “If this teacher’s so smart, maybe she can tell how something blue makes clothes white.” Tully scratched his head at that one.

  The schoolyard was empty, but instead of feeling glad we had missed some of the foolishness, I felt a speckle of regret at the idea that I’d be walking in like late to Sunday dinner. I was not for the first time in an hour glad I had Tully by my side.

  We crossed the packed dirt yard, our steps slowing as we passed a split-log bench warming in the sun of the clearing and another settled in the shade of crooked pines. Any one of them would have been a fine place for Trav to wait for me, and I wished he was along. His b
lack eyebrows made him seem wise, and I might have felt smarter having him nearby. But that was past. And this was the moment.

  Tully and I stood on the step, and I took a deep breath, hand on the latch, before opening the door and stepping inside. As I drew the door closed behind me, the latch snapped like a hangman’s noose and a dozen or so heads turned our way. I stood in the doorway and blinked a few times. Up front were some little kids I knew by sight, sitting to the side of what I took to be the teacher’s desk. Bigger shapes, in shadow at the moment, seemed to shift in place toward the back.

  On the teacher’s desk were a jug of buttermilk, a tin of corn bread, two jars of preserves, a basket of eggs, a heaping pail of blueberries, and a mess of squashes, okra, beans, and collard greens. I heard my stomach rumble again but also felt embarrassed. How was I supposed to know people would take food?

  Best thing would be to get out of there as quick as I could.

  Most of the room seemed taken up with tables for two. Near a pull-down map of the United States, I saw a couple of the preacher’s kids. It was hard to know which on account of they all look about the same. Plus they wore their straw hair in their eyes, which was a shame. As GrandNam said, eyes mirror the soul. Those children all had eyes blue as Heaven.

  “Hey, Possum.” From the back of the room came a familiar voice. Hoping to see a friendly face, I snuck a peek, but all I saw was coat hooks below a shelf of lunch pails. I set mine alongside for starters. I guessed them all to be filled with corn bread or biscuits, maybe a slice of cured beef or a boiled egg. My mouth watered, and my stomach grumbled.

  Just then, I was nearly barreled over by a blur that turned out to be June May hugging me. A word for her is excitable.

  “I’m real glad you’re here, Possum,” June May said. “Teacher’s real nice.”

  “Back to your seat this instant, June May,” came a voice that did not sound “real nice.”

  “That’s not Teacher,” June May whispered. “That’s Mary Grace.” June May scampered to her desk, just the same.

  “Is that the Newcomb girl?” I asked Tully, but he had skulked off. Mary Grace stared, one fist on each hip, her mouth curved sour. Then, just as quickly, she smiled all innocent and sugar. She dropped a curtsy toward the opening door.

  “Good morning, Miss Arthington.”

  Heads whipped toward the door, but my eyes were focused elsewhere. The light had hit a whole entire case of books in different colors and sizes. Books are not like schoolhouses. When you jump in, their pages open the world for learning far and wide. The kind of learning Momma and I craved. Like a brook trout that knows there’s a hook in that dangling worm, I couldn’t look away. There weren’t the same old catalogs and stories I read over and over. These were real stories. My hands were itching like they’d been poison-oaked, and I figured they would keep itching till they’d touched each one.

  In that moment, I forgot myself and would’ve gone right to them if Miss Arthington hadn’t spoken.

  “Welcome, LizBetty.” Teacher’s voice stuck on that word, and for a second, I thought it was Momma.

  Then I felt my hair go up. “Don’t call me that!”

  The books faded behind rows of eyes, all darting between me and Teacher. Those eyes were set in familiar faces almost as clean as for church on Sundays. I felt like that trout, out of his pond. Trying to swim through dirt on the creek bank and finding it hard to breathe. It was worse than I thought. This weren’t no place for learning; this was a place for judging. I felt that belly-churning like when you’re gonna throw up, or worse, cry. I wanted to turn tail and run home to Daddy and Trav and Momma’s pecan tree.

  “Back to your work, please, children,” Miss Arthington said, brown gaze fixed on me.

  Like one body with dozens of heads, everyone bent toward the table in front of them.

  Except for Mary Grace. She stared at me, out from under a mountain of curly black hair, eyes green as pond scum. Arms folded, fists squeezed, she reminded me of nothing more than a solid tree trunk like our old oak only without the bark. Her lips, cracked and prunie, shaped a small, tight O that made me think of a chicken butt. But I’ve seen that look on the faces in Newcomb’s or in church, and I knew what was the thinking behind it. The thinking was, I am better than having to be alongside something as measly as you.

  She kept on staring at me like I might grow feathers, and I didn’t like it one bit. You never stare into the eyes of a mountain cat ’less you want it to take you home for dinner. So I stared back at her and thought SCAT right at her as loud as I could think it.

  Maybe she heard it, ’cause right then she looked down at her soft little hands and studied her pink tiny fingernails like they were jewels on a crown. A person who is not a pastor ought not to have fingernails so clean.

  Teacher was still looking into me when she said, “Mary Grace Newcomb.”

  Mary Grace stood and spun like a beetle on its back and came to rest facing Teacher. “Ma’am?” She folded her pink hands in front of her.

  “LizBetty, you will share a desk with Mary Grace. Mary Grace, you will make LizBetty welcome.”

  “MG,” I whispered as I slid in beside her, “call me Possum.”

  She shook her head and pointed to the blackboard in front. In big letters in the middle it read, “Good morning, class.” To the side, under “Welcome, New Pupil,” was writ plain as day “LizBetty Porter.”

  The teacher continued. “Class, please give LizBetty the same reception you gave me, and I’d also like you to thank her father for bringing us such wonderful pine boards when you see him.”

  “My pa?” I squeaked like a mouse whose tail is caught in that mean cat’s claw. I gritted my teeth and sat. I did not have a single word left in my head to swallow. Miss Arthington walked to the front of the room, where two dozen strips of wood were set neatly on the teacher’s desk next to the pile of okra. I didn’t have to touch them to know that they’d be sanded smooth as a baby’s belly by my daddy and that lots of kids would go home tonight with something to do their sums on. My school-indentured servitude was as good as paid for.

  As Miss Arthington gushed over the fineness of daddy’s pine boards Miss Stupid Mary Grace dug her elbow under my rib. “Looks like Teacher might have a new beau,” she whispered, all salt under the sugar on her breath. How dare she come up with such an outlandish notion. That thought made no more sense than gills on cats.

  I squinted around the room to glare at anyone else who might have the same notion. But as my frown passed the picture of Mister President Hoover, it landed back on the bookcase that appeared to have three entire shelves of books. I got a notion in my page-turning finger that I intended to read every one. Seeing those books was like digging into a pork-chop breakfast after a night out trapping. I felt hungry to bite into them all. It was a feast, and I’d been starving too long. If it came to me being stuck in this class, at least Momma would approve of that. Surely, once Teacher figured out I knew everything worth knowing, she’d insist I take them home to read to Momma and Baby under the pecan tree.

  “Miss Teacher,” rang a silver-bell voice from a tiny girl up front near the windows.

  The teacher leaned in alongside the girl and guided the small hand, murmuring. I took the chance to look around and get the lay of the land, not that I was planning to stay, but even a rabbit burrows from both ends. I needed to know what my choices were.

  We seventeen students plus the teacher near about filled the tiny schoolhouse, twelve young’uns plus four big boys—including two of June May’s brothers—and of course me. At least they’d have more elbow room come afternoon when I was long gone.

  The boys—like me—wore their usual bib overalls, only cleaner than usual. The skirts of the girls’ dresses moved around their knees as they turned to look at me, and the ripple of colors from their clean starched dresses made me think of butterflies. Only MG stood out in what was plain a dress from the Sears Roebuck, like as not.

  I was relieved when Teacher h
anded out pencils and writing paper to begin. “Now,” she said, “today we are going to study … the frog.”

  Frogs! I reckoned I knew about everything there was to know about frogs. That tadpokes start out like fishes that give up swimming, the way babies give up crawling when they learn the joys of jumping. That bullfrogs leave not footprints but belly and toe prints. That a frog always closes his eyes when he eats. Even where frog skin goes after they shed. (They eat it.)

  I wished Daddy were here to see how worthless this school business was, as I had predicted. Still, I did have one question.

  “Where do tadpokes’ tails go when they fall off?” I asked. “Me and Tully have looked and looked and never found a one.”

  Teacher looked my way. Something about her expression made me go from feeling certain as snap peas to embarrassed, like I’d burped during grace in front of company. My feet steamed, and I yearned for cool grass under them to take out the fire. It was all I could do not to bolt for the door. Only reason I didn’t is I heard Mary Grace Newcomb snicker.

  Mary Grace raised her arm into the air. “Miss Arthington, that should be ‘Tully and I.’ ”

  Her and Tully what? I wondered.

  The piglet continued to snort. Her tone, smug and scornful, put me in mind of a sassy cat teasing a poor, honest dog. “And also in addition, would you like me to explain to LizBetty that she oughtten to face front and raise her hand and wait to be called on prior to beginning to talk?”

  Miss Arthington looked between us. “Thank you, Mary Grace. I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  Teacher turned to me. “LizBetty, I know you are not yet familiar with our rules. Speaking out is not allowed.”

  Mary Grace sat and smiled like a fool.

  “Yes’m,” I mumbled. My nose tingled, like a foot does when you sit cross-legged too long.