Father grunted. “I allus liked a flock of bats nigh,” he said. “Mosquitoes and gnats live hard when they’re roosting close around. I judge it’s bad luck to kill a bat.” He got up to go, swinging the baby on an arm. Green was so sleepy his head slid down into Father’s hand.

We were on the road early next morning, going along with Father to the forkturn. The sun-ball broke out of the timber as we passed the mouth of Dry Creek. I wore an old mine cap with a carbide lamp hung over the bill, the round of the head pinched and fastened with a latch-pin.

Miners came down the creek, walking toward Blackjack. They looked at my cap, and batted their eyes at each other. “Aye, gonnies, if I don’t believe Jonce is teaching them chaps to mine coal,” one said. “Three we’ve passed wearing the gear.”

When we reached the churchhouse most of the scholars were there already. The older boys had mine lamps, and carried snuff boxes filled with carbide lumps in hip pockets. The lamps smelled like burnt wool. Leth had a flambeau made of a rag stuffed in a bottle of coal oil.

Leth loaned me two marbles again, and they were the same ones—green as a catbird’s eggs. I held them in the frog of my hand, clicking them together, watching the flea flecks sparkle.

“Them’s the prettiest marbles ever was,” I said. We squatted down to play a round of fatty hole.

“If you beat me out,” Leth said, “they’re belongen to you.”

We played three games, and I lost them all. “You can have them anyhow,” Leth said when Jonce rang the bell. “Reckon I’ve got a peck besides.”

I caught the marbles up, trying to feel suddenly that they were mine. In the deep of my pocket they felt strange and cool against my leg, small and precious. “I’m going to fotch you a hatful of chinquapins,” I said. “By grabbles, I am.”

The big boys went in first, putting their lamps on the water shelf, taking their seats expectantly. Jonce glanced at the door, but there were no stragglers. He counted the scholars, jabbing a finger toward each one. “Not an absent or tardy scholar,” he said. “Everybody present like it was the last day of school.” He leaned out of the pulpit, elbows anchored on Preacher Claud Madden’s Bible. The classes began, chalk scratched across the board, walking with giant letters, swelling into words. Numbers, finger-counted, mixed with things spelled. “R-a-m, ram, a brute sheep. . . .” “Eleven plus nine comes to . . . twenty, I reckon.” “E-w-e, eouw, the one that drops the lambs. I had me a lamb once I thought a sight of. Saved its tracks in clay and got them yet.”

We glanced at our mine lamps, thinking of bats hanging under the roof.