Arly by Robert Newton Peck

hers every Sunday, all day. She called it her yeller robe, though it sure weren’t yeller no longer, but near to egg white, blotchy all over the front with coffee stains.
    Miss Hoe come too, in her bathrobe. It was deep blue with a shiny braided belt pulled tight, ending in front with a knot and two hanging tassels of fringe. I didn’t know her right off, on account her hair was different. She usual wore it up and wound in a bun, held by long amber pins, but now it was all tumbled down her back and most of it a tired gray.
    I run over to take her hand.
    â€œDon’t you worry none, Miss Hoe,” I telled her. “This ain’t the end of our school. It’s only the end of a building. That ol’ store ain’t our school.
You
are.”
    Maybe, I was thinking, my chances for school were burning up too. But at least some of the Cooters might have a shot at learning. It pleased me to figure that maybe a few of us picker kids might make it out ofJailtown. Didn’t look too sunny for Huff, me, or Essie May.
    â€œArly,” she said softly, “do you know what you have become in my life.”
    â€œNo’m,” I said, “I don’t guess I do.”
    â€œYou,” she said, “are my rock … upon which I will somehow rebuild my school. And don’t you fret about missing today. Essie May reported it all to me, about you and her brother, and there are still a few laws in Florida, if matters come to that.”
    I didn’t understand all she was telling me. Hardly any. Yet the pitch of her voice seemed to say that the sun would come up on Jailtown, like always.
    â€œMiss Hoe, I sometimes get to wishing that all this town would burn up, or just sink into Okeechobee and drown. Me along with it.”
    She looked at me stern. “No,” she said, “don’t you waste your brain on sour prayers. The world’s too sweet for that, Arly, and so are you. Energy your thinking on school.”
    â€œI can’t come regular no more. Huff and me are standby workers. If’n we git ordered, we go work.”
    Miss Hoe pointed a finger in my face, a finger that looked brittler than a custard twig. Yet it was straighter than a tiny sword. “Wrong! You
are
coming to school, even if we don’t at the moment have one, and you
are
going to learn … to read, to count, and to think. You will attend school even if I have to march myself through the swamp in hip boots and drag you out of Captain Tant’s cane mill by one ear and the seat of your britches.”
    I tried to smile about as game as possible. Miss Hoe was staring at the burning store just as its roof rafters caved in and sent another blast of sparky cinders out into a cloud.
    â€œThere it go,” said Huff, who’d drifted over our way, to stand with our teacher and me.
    â€œSomebody,” said Miss Hoe, “didn’t approve of our little school. And some hand struck a torch to it.”
    I looked at her with my mouth open. “You mean a body done this on purpose, to be mean?”
    Miss Hoe nodded her small head. “Yes, to be mean. You know, boys, burning down a school house, no matter how humble the structure, is one of the lowest acts that an adult can commit against a child. Or to his town.”
    â€œI don’t believe it,” Huff said. “I just can’t swaller that anybody’d do such to my brothers and sisters and to Brother Smith.”
    Miss Hoe’s lips tighted up firm. “We’ll need a modest parcel of land. Not much. Only a wee scrap of it. And perhaps with luck, we might get someone who’s handy with tools to raise us a structure.”
    She looked over at Brother Smith, then walked to where he stood. As we come close, he took off his hat. His face looked older tonight, and I could see that our burning school had scorched his spirit near to as black as the rest of him.
    â€œMissy Hoe,” his deep voice said, “I be powerful