“I hope it wasn’t my little ring-tailed one,” Euly said. We had turned our backs on the others before looking into the box, but now we were not ashamed of what we had to eat.

“I couldn’t stand to know I’ve eaten my little ringtail,” Euly complained, and gave one of her pieces away.

The children spread their food on the grass. They ate biscuits fist-big, with lean-streaked meat. Leth had milk in a dinner bucket. He crumbled corn bread into it, eating from the bucket with a wooden spoon.

Before the bell rang the girls went into the graveyard. The boys huddled together under the creek-bank willows, burying their feet in damp sand, talking.

“I reckon we don’t need to run Jonce off,” John Winns said. “Hodge Mauldraugh will be doing that right soon.”

“That Jonce has the quarest walk I ever saw,” Eli Phipps said. “I’d give a pretty to see what kind o’ run he’s got.”

The clapper shook in the bell. Leth got up, his marbles rattling in his pockets. “I like Jonce for a teacher,” he said, “but I don’t want to see nobody whipping my folks.”

I walked across the yard with Leth. The older boys waited until the others were in the house before stalking in, clumping brogans on the floor. Jonce sat quietly in the pulpit, looking into a book that was a full hand thick. Pages flicked from his thumb. I looked up at him and saw his eyes run back and forth like an ant on a leaf. He stood up at last, grinning down at us.

“I’ve been learning about bats,” he said. “They’re unhealthy critters, festered with chinch bugs and lice, scattering plagues of diseases. And I learnt a bat’s not a bird. It’s a mammal, kin to man.”

Whispers flowed over the room, protesting. “I’m not kin to a bat,” a voice spoke. Leth nudged me with his elbow, frowning.

“We’ve been living in a bat house long enough,” Jonce said. “Tomorrow I’ll bring a poke of sulphur, and we’ll give them a dose of fire and brimstone.” Leth’s eyes rounded. The older boys arose from their seats, grudges buried under the promise. “Four or five of you fellows bring mine lamps. We’re going to have a bat-fly in broad daylight.”

He came down out of the pulpit with the first reader in his hand, waiting until the scurry of voices died before sitting in front of our bench. Leth held his book before us. Henny Penny stood on the page, cackling, her comb red as a beet.

Jonce looked at me, and I was suddenly frightened. “Little man,” he asked, “can you read in the primer?”

My tongue balled in my mouth. “I can’t read words,” I said, “but I know my letters.”