The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck Page A

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.
    â€œLook 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 geography 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.
    â€œDad,” 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.
    â€œYou 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
    M e 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?”
    â€œI need another pupil to make eight.”
    â€œBut nobody lives up Stony Lonesome Road,” I pointed out. Nobody but the Tarboxes.
    Dread swept