When I Crossed No-Bob Read Online Free Page A

thinks we are. Already it is October, and after I gather and put up the corn, after I dig the sweet potatoes and Miss Irene and I can the tomatoes and okra, after we make the maypop jelly and wild plum wine, after Mr. Frank kills the hog and we salt the meat down in the smokehouse so it won't rot, and after I bury the squash in the hay, Mr. Frank pays the one-dollar school tuition so that I can
go to school with him and I can hardly stand it, I'm so excited. School is my reward.

    All the work wasn't all bad either. Working with Mr. Frank goes fast. I tell him about everything—Momma, Pappy, I tell him about living when I lived in No-Bob. He listens and listens, taking it all in. I prove to Mr. Frank that I am a better worker outside than in.
    Momma told me whistling inside or outside the house was bad luck, but I want to whistle right here, right now, so I do and I am glad that I am still able. I walk with Mr. Frank the three miles to the schoolhouse carrying a lard pail with our lunches. Meat and biscuits and two cold baked sweet potatoes. There is a puddle just outside the schoolhouse, and before I step inside, I step into the puddle to get my feet good and clean.
    Mr. Frank, he stands aside and watches.
    The schoolhouse is a pine log cabin with a dirt floor and a stick-and-dirt chimney. We children sit on split logs with pegs for legs. I take the back seat near a redheaded boy named Rew Smith so I can rest my back against the wall. The girl next to me says it is a hard matter to learn much after walking three miles to get here and then have to sit on these seats. I say I am just glad to be here.
    We spend the morning studying our McGuffey's Reader. Mr. Frank says I'm not so far behind as he would have thought. He doesn't keep one switch in the room, and if students spell a word wrong, he doesn't whip us.

    I need me some friends and I set to work. At lunchtime, outside, I start walking funny the way Pappy taught me. Pappy was the funniest man in No-Bob. Everybody liked Pappy. He showed me how to act like I'm hurting myself without hurting myself. He showed me how to make folks laugh, and they do. Little Bit laughs and so does her brother Jack. Even that girl Nona Dewitt laughs.
    But then I hear Rew Smith say, "I won't play with that little O'Donnell girl. My pa told me not to." I hear: "That Addy. She's got the devil in her."
    For lunch we all sit on the ground to eat. Little Bit says to look out for wild hogs who sometimes come up out of the woods and grab our food. Mr. Frank passes around a bottle of milk with letters marked on the bottle. There are no cups and we are to drink to the next letter. When Little Bit passes me the bottle, I hold it up. I am to drink to the letter
M
and I do. I pass it to Rew.
    "I'm not drinking after her," Rew Smith says. His hair is
the color of red apples and I'm wondering if being with it in the sun makes him hotter. This Rew seems to have the respect of the others, and I recognize it. He's mean the way an O'Donnell is mean. He looks at me and comes so close I think he will push me down. "She's gotta be part nigger. That's what my pa says." I look at him, ready to fight. But Mr. Frank rings the bell for us to come back inside the schoolhouse. We are to learn more spelling, and after that comes arithmetic.

    It is a long first day.

    In my second week of attending Mr. Frank's school, I decide to play teacher. Surely this will win me friends.
    Mr. Frank's desk is supplied with drawers in which he stores his books and what he calls the other et ceteras of his profession. He has a pipe he smokes, and while everyone files in, I light Mr. Frank's pipe with a match I find in his drawer, and I take to puffing it before Mr. Frank comes into the room. Everyone laughs. Everyone, even the older ones. Then, from the back of the room, Little Bit shouts, "Hey, Addy. You're turning green." And I commence to getting sick all over Mr. Frank's desk, and when I look up, there he is, standing in the