Arly by Robert Newton Peck Page A

sorry ’bout the store place, and no more school. Powerful sorry.”
    Our teacher grunted. “Well,” she said, “seeing as you’re feeling so powerful, maybe you’d work up the strength to build us another.”
    With a log of a finger, Brother Smith pointed into his own massive chest. “Me?” he asked Miss Hoe.
    â€œYou. Could you do it? I don’t plan to engage your talents for free, Brother Smith, and you shall be fairly compensated.”
    â€œI be what?”
    â€œPaid.”
    A big grin slowly got born on Brother Smith’s face and spread all over his cheeks like a Sunday sleep-late morning. “Oh,” he said, “I
do
it, Sister. Do it proud, for free.”
    Huff jabbed me to my ribs, giggling, on account of Miss Binnie Hoe and Brother Smith looked like brother and sister about as much as a bug and a beef bull.
    â€œGood,” said our teacher. “The question still lingering is
where
? We’ll have to be cocksure of our ground.”
    Huff scratched himself. “What’s that mean, Miss Hoe?
    â€œIt means we can’t squat. So if we can muster up ourselves a plot of land, we’re in business, as soon as we can beg or borrow the lumber.”
    We turned away from the burning store, heading home with Miss Binnie Hoe, back toward Mrs. Newell’s.
    Huff said, “There’s a lumber yard in Jailtown.”
    Miss Hoe let out a snort. “I certainly do not need to inquire as to its ownership, do I?”
    â€œCaptain Tant,” I said without a think.
    But that was when Brother Smith shook his head. “Ain’t so,” his big voice rumbled. “I heard it told, for sure, that he
don’t
own lumber no longer. Something to do with taxes.”
    â€œWho owns it then?” asked our teacher.
    Brother smiled. “Miss Liddy do.”

Chapter 19
    There was no school.
    But there sure was a ample of work. Every morning, right after Addie Cooter would whoa the picker wagon to pick up Papa and the rest of the fielders, Huff and me’d git sent to the sugar mill.
    Sunday final come. My daddy slept late, like usual, and so did I. Then I got up, washed, ate, and did me some quiet thinking by the shoreline of the Lake. From across the inlet, near where a dead river knifed back into the thickety green of the gourd vine swamp, I could hear the Sunday morning voice of Brother Smith, humming an old hymn. And I could see him on his pier, a big black catfisherman dotting a pale blue Okeechobee.
    Nearby, the water was clearing.
    Usual did on Sunday, because during the other days of the work week, the dredger crews stir it into murky mud. Ever since I could remember, the dredgers and their big smokey machines work around Jailtown, trying to unclog an old canal or trench out a new one. Yet old Okeechobee just roll over in the night, and then, come the next morning or the next week, she ooze her way back to normal.
    Okeechobee country, I was thinking, weren’t toofar from being a fat woman sleeping with bedbugs. Us people were the bugs. She was the lake. Folks, even like the big dredgers, could bite her … yet we’d never poke her awake to change.
    â€œI love Sunday,” I said to our lake.
    Jailtown turned hushy on a Sunday morning. Like the band of Saturday night quit thundering its tune. Even the Lucky Leg was asleep, as if tuckered out from the night before. I s’pose Sunday morning was a sad time for a lot of the workers in Jailtown, because Saturday night wages had a way of jumping out of your pocket by Sunday morn. So people claimed.
    Not far away, the giant pink leg stood very still over Miss Angel Free’s place of business, like it had never danced at all. The big leg looked too tired to tap a toe.
    For some reason, I liked to spend a hunk of Sunday morning all by my lonesome. I wasn’t praying, but my thoughts were neighborly close.
    I sat there on a cotton bale for a long time, just being a speck of