The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck

Courier .
    Dad read out the article to us at breakfast Monday morning:
    AUTO ACCIDENT
STIRS SWEET SINGER TO SONG
    The Sweet Singer of Sycamore Township, evidently a faithful reader of these pages, was moved to poetry by last week’s notice of the mishap between O. C. Culver’s spring wagon and the racing car piloted by Eugene Hammond of Terre Haute.
    The Singer makes his or her sentiments crystal clear in the following mellifluous lines:
    Raging down the byways,
    Way too fast to gauge,
    Streaks the awful auto,
    The terror of the age.
    Burning up the rural road
    At a fever pitch,
    It leaves both horse and wagon
    Helpless in the ditch.
    The railroad was a caution
    Like airships at their birth,
    But the car’s a living nightmare
    For an unsuspecting earth.
    Faster than a baseball
    When you come to throw it,
    Roars the awful auto
    To end life as we know it.
    Sincerely yours,
    The Sweet Singer of
    Sycamore Township
    â€œIt’s not James Whitcomb Riley,” Tansy remarked, “or even close.”
    Aunt Maud reserved judgment. Dad pushed back from the table and said, “Well, I guess I’ll go practice some diversified farming.” He was in the market for feeder pigs. Me and Lloyd gave Tansy a head start to school.
    The boys’ privy was rebuilt and newly shingled, mostly by Glenn, though Charlie wasn’t a bit grateful. We still met up back there to start the day, arguing. Charlie said he didn’t see how he could get away to the Dakotas until the corn was shucked. His dad preached and farmed.
    â€œThe corn won’t all be shucked till October,” I nagged. “What’s the matter with you, Charlie? You wait for every last thing to get done, you won’t go anywhere in this life.”
    Glenn Tarbox stepped out of the grove. He was holding up a string of dead bullfrogs, greeny-gray in the morning light. Their white legs hung far down.
    â€œGlenn, you’re going to get your fool head blowed off if you keep cutting across Aunt Fanny Hamline’s property,” Charlie said. “She’d as soon shoot you as look at you. Sooner.” Charlie didn’t seem too grieved at the thought of Glenn being shot dead by Aunt Fanny.
    â€œShe’s got her a nice pond past the grove,” Glenn said, “caked with slime and full of frogs. They make real good eating. The legs does.” We’d noticed he didn’t bring a packed dinner in a bucket. He brought whatever he killed, and cooked it over a fire in the school yard. And enough Baldwin apples for all of us, from somewhere.
    â€œYou gig your frogs?” I inquired.
    Glenn shook his head and drew a slingshot out of his back pocket. It was the polished crotch of a limb, fitted with rubber bands and a leather pouch where the rock rested. It took a dead eye to kill frogs that way, and he’d brained every one. There wasn’t a mark on them, nor a drop of blood.
    â€œI wouldn’t eat one of them things if I was starved,” Charlie maintained. “They’s kin to snakes.” But then Glenn hadn’t offered him any. The cowbell clanged us inside. Glenn hung his frogs on a nail by the hats.
    The mailman had been and left three big parcels. We were agog. School never got mail. Tansy set us all to work opening the boxes. Then there was oh-ing and ah-ing all around. The two biggest were poster-sized campaign portraits of the presidential contenders in this fall’s election, Judge Alton B. Parker and President Theodore Roosevelt, framed.
    Tansy’s eyes sparked. Underneath the candidates’ names was printed:

    C OMPLIMENTS OF
    THE O VERLAND A UTOMOBILE C OMPANY

    S ELL Y OUR S TEED , I T ’ S S PEED Y OU ’ LL N EED

    T ERRE H AUTE     I NDIANAPOLIS

    Bending to read, Tansy fingered her throat in thought. The other package was a generous pile of large notepads, and a supply of pencils, all printed with “Overland Automobile Company,” also