Arly by Robert Newton Peck Page B

Sunday.
    Then I jumped into the water to half-swim and half-wade my way over to Brother Smith’s. He fed me a hot white hunk of steamy catfish and boiled swamp cabbage. The two of us, me an’ Brother, ate like we was never going to stuff our guts again. Or like Captain Tant was fixing to pass a rule to forbid chewing.
    â€œGood morning, gentlemen.”
    Seeing the grin on Brother’s face, I turned around, even though I already knew the voice of Miss Binnie Hoe. She sure was suited up for Sunday. Her dress was a deep blue, darker than a thunder sky, with lace at the collar and cuffs. The lace was creamy, not white. On her head perched a hat, yet there weren’t no bird on it, and no feathers either. To me, her hat looked as if’n itwas turned out of mule stable straw. On top, the hat-maker had poked in a few fake flowers that were red, white, and blue.
    â€œYou look righteous nice, Miss Hoe.”
    â€œThank you, Arly. Such a sincere compliment is always a welcome.”
    Brother nodded, as if to say how proper she looked. As soon as he’d saw Miss Hoe coming our way, his hat got yanked off his head by a hurry hand. It pleasure me to notice.
    â€œThis morning,” Miss Hoe said, “I took myself a walk around Jailtown and inspected the lumberyard.”
    â€œGood,” I said, knowing that Miss Binnie Hoe was laying a plan in her head to put up a possible new school. She sure had gumption.
    â€œAnd,” she went on to say, “right now, if the two of you will come along as my escorts, we are going to take a stroll together.”
    â€œWhere to?” I asked her.
    â€œTrust me,” she telled us. “But please come. I’ll need both of you to hold me up if my knees decide to jack.” Behind her glasses, her eyes looked bluer and sharper than I’d ever earlier took notice of; our little teacher sported eyes like a pair of Okeechobees. “Let’s be off,” she said.
    Brother didn’t ask her where we was going, so I had me a hunch that he already knew. Miss Hoe knew too. Which left only dumb ol’ Arly Poole who couldn’t reason enough to dump a pebble out a lame boot.
    â€œMiss Hoe, where we be off to?”
    â€œYou shall very soon see,” she answered me. “As for now, I want you to munch on the mystery. Milk it for all it’s worth.”
    â€œSure,” I said, knotting up my face. I walked along, milking away, yet coming to no clear reasoning. MissHoe could be worse than a dredge when it come to riling my brain water into a muddy swamp.
    As the three of us marched along in the Sunday afternoon, we must’ve looked like a strange crew.
    For one thing, I wasn’t wearing no shirt; only trousers that were still soaked wet from wading. Plus, when I’d kicked through the road dust, going to Brother’s, my wet toes had gleaned up enough dirt to make my bare feet appear as if I was into earthen stockings. It was sort of fun, on account I’d never owned even one pair of stockings in all my entire life.
    Brother Smith was also barefoot. Yet, at least, he was shirted and not bareback, like me. His shirt and trousers was a pale gray, sort of like two big clouds that could pillow around his big body. Miss Hoe’d ordered him to put his hat back on his head so’s he wouldn’t have to squint. So he final done it.
    Whenever I’d seen Brother walking home with Miss Hoe, he’d always take care to walk behind her, on account it just wouldn’t look proper for a colored man to walk beside a white lady. Papa usual telled me that if’n you be colored or a picker, best we know our place. Still and all, I feeled sort of belonging when I’d walk with Miss Hoe. In the rear, I knowed that Brother did too, like he was her watchdog.
    I believe Brother Smith would carry Miss Binnie around in her porch rocker chair, wicker and all, if’n she’d asked it of him. He’d follow her, I was thinking