The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck Page A

complimentary.
    We’d never had pads of blank paper and pencils. We had some little cracked slates, but not one each.
    â€œKin we take ’em home?” wondered Flopears, who’d known few gifts.
    In a faraway voice, Tansy said we could if we brought them back every day. She told us to hang the portraits over the rostrum, and Glenn had the nails. That day we pledged our allegiance directly to President Roosevelt.
    We were sorted out for reading now. Little Britches, Glenn, and Charlie were in the first reader. Flopears was in the second reader by the skin of his teeth, along with Lloyd and Pearl. She’d missed the third reader by a hair and blamed Tansy. I was at the bottom of the third reader, and Lester Kriegbaum was at the top. He’d read every book in the library shelf, twice. Even Noble Lives of Hoosier Heroes . He needed all the powerful learning he could get to defend himself. He was so puny, you almost didn’t know he was there.
    We were to read to ourselves or write in our new pads while Tansy heard a group down on the recitation bench. She began with Little Britches, Glenn, and Charlie, who were a real mixed bunch. Glenn was as tall as Charlie, and Little Britches was a gnome between them. Everybody fell silent to hear her teach Glenn his ABC’s.
    But Little Britches’s nose was full. Tansy told her not to use her sleeve and to look in teacher’s desk drawer for a spare handkerchief.
    Little Britches bobbed onto the rostrum and over to the desk and pulled open the drawer.
    A puff adder reared up out of the drawer at her. She screamed and fell back in the chair.
    A puff adder is the ugliest of all snakes. Its head, filling, swayed. I froze. I knew it wasn’t poisonous, but I froze. Quicker than this telling, quicker than Charlie, Glenn was off the bench. He grabbed that snake by the neck and yanked it out of the desk. It was three foot long and real whippy. He run it back through the room, all of us ducking, and out the front door.
    Tansy swept up Little Britches, who’d be crying herself sick in another minute, and held her tight. “It didn’t strike, did it?” she asked us, and we said no. We crowded around. Glancing up at me and Charlie, Tansy said, “Go get a garter snake. Quick.”
    â€œA what?”
    â€œYou heard me. A garter snake. Just a little one. Cut out.”
    Me and Charlie didn’t need to be told twice to leave school. But a snake hunt wouldn’t have been my first choice. Outside, we saw J.W. had already taken to his heels, no doubt at the sight of both Glenn and the puff adder. We ran for the ditch. Glenn came back up the road, empty-handed. “I won’t kill a harmless snake,” he said.
    I knew it was harmless. And if you see a puff adder in the road, it’ll roll over and play dead. You can pick it up on a stick, and it’ll still play dead. Of course it’s going to act different in a desk drawer. “Tansy wants a garter snake,” I told Glenn.
    I worked this ditch, and Charlie worked the other one. Glenn walked back in the field. It would have been easier in better weather. Cool slows a snake down. I personally didn’t think we’d find any right away. But Charlie whooped and held one up, about two foot long, loud and unhappy.
    â€œThat’s no garter snake,” Glenn called out.
    â€œI know it,” Charlie yelled. “It’s just the first one I come across.” He flung it away.
    To tell the truth, I wasn’t looking with a whole heart. I don’t like handling them things. Glenn slung a leg over the fence and strolled back my way. He patted his pocket, so we called Charlie off and moseyed back to school.
    Little Britches’s breath was still coming in sobs. Everybody else was all over the room, except for Pearl at her desk, not taking part.
    Tansy tried to put Little Britches down, but she clung like a leech.
    â€œEverybody settle in for a story.” Tansy