Free Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis

son.”
    Mr. Leroy sat on a stump and I sat on one next to him. He took a drink outta the jug of water he always keeps in the field and pulled the rag off the plate of fish Ma had fried for him. Ma had put some okree and potatoes and dandelion greens and a big piece of Mrs. Brown’s cherry pie on the plate.
    Mr. Leroy said, “You make sure you thanks your ma, Elijah. This is mighty kind of both of y’all.”
    Walking all this way to give Mr. Leroy a plate of food was worth it ’cause waren’t nothing scarier nor funner than watching him eat fish. He didn’t believe in wasting nothing, so he chawed every single piece! Fins and bones waren’t nothing to him. Why, I bet if I’d left the scales and the guts on those fish he’d’ve chawed clean through those too.
    The fish bones crackled and snapped in his mouth like dry corn in a mill.
    I asked him, “Mr. Leroy, sir, ain’t you never choked on one n’em fish bones?”
    He said, “How you gunn choke if you’s mashed ’em up good?”
    â€œI don’t know, sir. I try real hard to pick all the bones out of my fish, and when one of ’em does get through, it seems like it don’t want to do nothing but stick in my throat sideways. It’s enough to make you want to quit eating fish.”
    Mr. Leroy kept chomping and said, “Fish eating’s like anything else in life, Elijah. If you go at it ’specting something bad to happen, all you gunn do is draw that bad thing to you. You caint be timid ’bout nothing you do, you got to go at it like you ’specting good things to come out of it. If I’s to worry ’bout bones choking me, it’d happen every time I et fish. Ain’t nothing further from my mind.”
    Fish bones snapped in his mouth like dry twigs.
    Mr. Leroy finished off the vegetables and pie Ma’d gave him and handed me back the plate.
    â€œBe sure you thank your ma and pa, Elijah. Tell your ma I ’preciate her thinking ’bout me.
    â€œNow come on, we got us a lot of work to do.”

It don’t seem fair, but since the start of this year Mr. Travis has been teaching us both our everyday school and our Sabbath school classes. And that means the man is on you like a tick, you caint get away from him no matter where you go. The biggest problem is if he pegs you as being not particular bright in everyday school, you ain’t got prayer the first of having a clean slate when Sunday comes ’round and you got to go to Sabbath school.
    When Mrs. Guest was our schoolteacher and Mrs. Needham taught us Sabbath school, you had a better chance of fooling at least one of ’em into thinking you were sensical, but with Mr. Travis running both schools, you ain’t nothing but a dead duck.
    What’s even unfairer is that he mixes regular lessons up with Sabbath lessons, so they run one into the ’nother and you caint tell which one is which one. I know that ain’t the way it’s supposed to be ’cause if it was, they wouldn’t have regular classes at the schoolhouse and Sabbath classes at the church.
    I ain’t trying to be disrespectful of teaching or teachers, but I’ve had enough classes with Mr. Travis to know that getting taught in a classroom just don’t work. That ain’t to say that he caint force you to study something till it sticks in your mind for a while, ’cause he can. But I don’t care if you study on something all your life, it ain’t gonna stick like if it happen to you personal.
    Ain’t nothing made this point better than the lesson Mr. Travis has been pounding on us lately, both in regular classes and Sabbath school. It started out ’cause Cooter Bixby went and sassed Mr. Travis when he didn’t know he’d done it and when he didn’t mean to do it.
    I came to school on Monday and Cooter’s waiting on me afore the bell runged. He’s sitting on the front