Free The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck Page B

in the night.
    â€œWe done pretty good in tamping out the fire, then raking up. Me and Char—the other boys will build up the back wall of the privy as quick as we can filch—find the lumber. I will myself personally shave enough new shingles to patch the roof…”
    I ran out of things I was going to do as quick as I could get to them. Still, Tansy stood there. The lamplight flickered on her face.
    Next to me, Lloyd was half his natural size, almost completely concealed by his pillow.
    I wracked my brain for what else I better do. “And I’ll get the wad out of the bell,” I said. “…whoever done that…”
    After a time, Tansy broke her silence. “Oh yes, you’ll do all that,” she said. “And more. You’ve had a narrow escape. You’re one lucky boy. What if the fire had spread into that sugarbush grove? Do you happen to recall whose particular grove that is?”
    Helpful Lloyd spoke from behind his pillow. “Aunt Fanny Hamline.”
    â€œThat’s right,” said Tansy. “Aunt Fanny Hamline.”
    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—”
    â€œDid 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?”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œWas 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.”
    â€œNo, no, it wasn’t nothing like—”
    â€œBut 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.
    â€œYou 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—”
    â€œThere’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—”
    â€œTansy, don’t,” I beseeched. “We’re going to make…”
    â€œRestitution?” 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.”
    â€œMiss Myrt always had us take them chores in turns. She—”
    â€œAnd 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.”
    â€œWhat kind of—”
    â€œYou’ll find out.”
    â€œNot me too?” Lloyd said, muffled, scared.
    â€œNo, 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