Free Enduring by Donald Harington

and Barb and glowered at them for forgetting to share their dinner buckets with her.
    Mr. McWhorter sat on the edge of the schoolhouse porch and ate by himself. After everyone had done finished eating, they all went off to play again, the boys to play ball games and the girls either to decorate their imaginary playhouse or to sing ballads, or both. Every bravely crossed over to the girls’ side and gave Latha a fried apple pie. “Look what I found in the bottom of my dinner bucket,” he said.
    “Wasn’t there but one of them?” she asked, and when he nodded, she carefully tore the fried pie in two and gave one half back to Every. The nearest girls made remarks about this, and set up a clamor, not because of envy of the pie but because Every was on the wrong side of the schoolyard. He blushed and departed.
    Although all the windows were open, the interior of the schoolhouse was hot and sweaty all afternoon. The two water buckets were soon empty and older boys were sent out to the well to draw more water. Mr. McWhorter said to Latha, “We caint do Lesson Two ’til tomorrow, so we mought’s well work some more on Lesson One. What’s this here word?”
    “Dog, sir,” she said. But her eyelids were drooping and she wondered, if she fell asleep, would the teacher make her try to sit on that one stool with Rindy? Or take turns? Or what?
    “Tell ye what,” the teacher suggested. “Let’s us see if we caint make a different sentence out of these three words.”
    “‘Ran the dog,’ sir?” she offered, struggling to keep her eyes open.
    “Yeah, I reckon that will do, even though the sentence don’t have a subject, like in ‘That feller run his dogs all night long.’” Mr. McWhorter just stood and scratched his head for a while, and then he said, “Now why don’t ye just practice trying to copy the words on yore slate?” He reached inside the desk and brought out a gray rectangle and a gray slate pencil, and demonstrated how to make the “D” of dog on it. Latha spent the rest of the afternoon until recess marking up her slate with her attempts at copying the letters in the words Dog, The, and Ran. Except for “a,” which she’d already learned from Every, none of those nine letters were alike. Only she didn’t know there were nine letters because she hadn’t been taught how to count yet, and she wondered when Mr. McWhorter would teach her the numbers of counting.
    Some boy three rows back (she could count that far) just put his head down on his desk and went sound asleep, even snoring. Since the dunce’s stool was already occupied by Rindy, Mr. McWhorter shook her awake and drew a little circle on the blackboard and said, “Now you just stick your nose in that circle and keep it there, and maybe you won’t fall asleep again.” And he replaced her on the stool with the boy who’d fallen asleep. Rindy stood with her nose in that circle as long as she could stand it, but then she began to swoon from sleepiness. Latha jumped up and caught her just before she fell. “Hey!” Mr. McWhorter yelled at Latha. “Who tole ye that ye could help her? Now you’ve done went and got yourself a punishment too. And he drew another circle on the blackboard and made Latha stick her nose in it. Minutes and minutes passed and Latha understood how easy it was to fall asleep like that. Also, she realized that she needed to visit the outhouse, so she held up one of her hands with the forefinger raised to signify Number One. She waited and waited but the teacher didn’t come to her to give her permission to leave and use the outhouse. She wanted to look around to see where he was, but she had to keep her nose up against the blackboard in that circle. She kept that forefinger raised for a long time, and Mr. McWhorter never came, and she knew she’d wet her bloomers soon. So she raised the middle finger instead, which was taller than the forefinger. That caused a lot of gasping and giggling and guffawing.
    But it made