Free A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck Page A

County way. Mattoon. Let’s call him a senior.”
    If Royce McNabb minded hearing his personal history blurted out in front of strangers, he didn’t let on. But then, he was from Mattoon, which was citified for these parts. And sure enough, he was wearing corduroy pants, not overalls. An argyle pattern sweater strained across his broad shoulders.
    Ahead of me, Carleen gripped herself. “Be still, my heart,” she murmured loudly. Then she leaned across to Irene Stemple and said, “Hands off. He’s mine.”
    “Move over, Milton,” Miss Butler said, “and make Royce welcome.”
    Royce went through the day with the same smile for everybody. He’d probably been in a lot of schools and knew how to handle himself.
    When I got home, I told Grandma we had a new boy at school. She waved him away. “The town’s filling up with people you wouldn’t know from Adam’s off ox. Not like the old days when you knew your neighbors.”
    “The winters were colder back then too, weren’t they, Grandma?”
    “People starved to death because their jaws froze shut,” she said. “You getting interested in boys?”
    “Who, me?” I said.
    At that, we heard Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach fumbling at the back door. When I let her in, there were ice crystals in her muskrat. She elbowed past me, her eyes teary with cold and emotion. Grandma had been over by the Hoosier cabinet. Now she was sitting down, seemingly at her ease.
    “Mrs. Dowdel, we cannot pussyfoot anymore over these cherry tarts.” Mrs. Weidenbach grappled with her giant purse and came up with the Piatt County Call newspaper. “I need a commitment. My land, it’s in the paper now, where it has inspired two lines of bad verse.”
    Grandma didn’t read the paper, so Mrs. Weidenbach shook it open and read,
    The high school will have its big red hearts
But where will the DAR get its cherry tarts?
    “Doesn’t that turn your stomach?” she demanded. “I don’t call it reporting, and I don’t call it poetry. It’s snooping, and possibly by a foreign power. The dignity of the DAR is on the line.”
    Grandma picked a loose thread from her apron front.
    “Mrs. Dowdel, I need your answer before we get any more publicity of this sort.”
    “Oh well.” Grandma turned over a large hand on oilcloth. “If it’s my patriotic duty, I’ll bake up a mess of tarts.”
    The wind went out of Mrs. Weidenbach. She’d been geared up for a larger struggle, more on the lines of the Battle of Bunker Hill. “You will? Well, that’s real ... reasonable of you.”
    “All in a good cause,” Grandma said.
    Mrs. Weidenbach turned to go, but didn’t make it to the door.
    “On my terms,” Grandma said.
    Mrs. Weidenbach turned back, slowly.
    “We’ll have your DAR tea right here at my house.”
    “But—”
    “It’ll be handier for me,” Grandma said. “I don’t get out much anymore.”
    That was a whopper, but Mrs. Weidenbach’s head was whirling.
    “Mrs. Dowdel, let me explain. This is more than a social occasion. This is a meeting of our DAR chapter, strictly limited to our members. It is always at my house.”
    “I’ll fire up the stove in my front room,” Grandma said. “It’ll be warm as toast in there.”
    “But—”
    “Or you can serve store-bought cupcakes at your place.”
    Mrs. Weidenbach crumbled.
     
    I was at school early on Valentine’s Day, but Miss Butler was there before me. Since the newspaper had announced a valentine exchange, she thought she’d better fill in with a valentine of her own on everybody’s desk. Hers were the flimsy kind that came in a sheet you punched out. So that was one valentine apiece.
    When people straggled in, they found their valentines. “Honestly,” Carleen Lovejoy said, rolling her eyes when she saw her valentine was from Miss Butler. She stuffed it into her desk.
    Then here came Ina-Rae. On her desk beside mine was Miss Butler’s valentine—and three more. Ina-Rae clasped both hands over her mouth. She squeaked, and