From the first, Mr. Schwilk’s eighth-grade students were uneasy in his presence, awed by something indefinable and urban in his manner. Even if they had not known that he was from out of state, that he was said to have “traveled widely” in Europe, they would have understood that he did not quite belong in Innisfail. He was impetuous, he was bullying even when he meant well: for his high-toned praise was so profuse, so vehement, it was as intimidating as his outright scorn. None of their other teachers addressed them with such emotion, with such gravity. Marya thought, perplexed, He thinks we matter: doesn’t he know us?

(In his boyish enthusiasm Mr. Schwilk had several times tossed down an eraser or a piece of chalk on his desk and strode forward into the classroom to shake hands—to shake hands!—with a student who had, by design or the wildest happenstance, managed to say something intelligent. He had shaken poor blushing Marya’s hand not once but twice; he had shaken the limp hand of the Ducharme boy, whose mother taught in the Innisfail high school. It did not unsettle him, in fact it probably escaped his notice entirely, that his sudden smiling attention frightened certain of his students, particularly the girls; or that, behind his back, other students were stifling their laughter or making rude gestures at him. “I congratulate you,” he once said to Marya, making a little mock bow, “for having said something intelligent—truly intelligent—in this remarkable ‘local accent’ with which you’ve all been contaminated.”)

Now Kyle was saying, “Suppose we loosened this big rock and rolled it down—y’think we could start a little avalanche?”

The girls laughed in a pretense of horror and slapped at his hands.

“He is talking to himself,” Erma whispered. “Or is he singing?”

“Maybe he’s going to walk in the canal and try to drown himself,” Marya said. She meant it as a joke—the thought of anyone in that filthy water was disgusting—but as soon as she said it aloud she knew it might be true. So she went on, stifling her laughter, “He won’t know how to do it right—he’ll get stuck in the mud near shore—we’ll have to go down and pull him out!”

“Shit, I ain’t going to pull that cocksucker out,” Lester Hughey said.

All boys spoke this way—bluntly, brutally, without much thought of what they said, or why they said it: or so Marya believed. But girls weren’t supposed to talk that way or even to pay close attention. Unless, like Erma Dietz, they pretended shock and disapproval—maybe gave a boy a light slap: “You wouldn’t talk like that if he could hear you!”