Flash Fiction Friday: ". . . And His Dog"

This weeks' Wendig Challenge was a "must contain" challenge, with two lists of story elements from which the random number generator gave me two: an escaped prisoner and a faithful hound.  I chose to interpret that a bit loosely, of course.  As a bonus, it happened in Skunk Corners.

. . . And His Dog

I never liked being shut in a schoolroom all day.  Way I saw it, whoever thought of locking kids up most of the daylight hours had a mean streak a mile wide and a mile deep.  Early on, I took to dodging school as much as I could.

I’d start out toward the school in the morning—Ma was a stickler for that—then whistle up old Stinkpot and go off wherever.  Everyone called my dog Stinkpot because he liked smelly stuff way too much.  Ma’d make me wash him, and then he’d go and tangle with a skunk.  When that wore off, he’d roll in something dead.  He was that sort of dog.  You’d never say he was a dog who had much use for school.

Some days, when I would go to school, ol Stinkpot, he’d come and sit outside, like he was scouting a way to bust me out.  See, he knew as well as me that school was a sort of jail, mean to keep us kids locked up on account of the grownups don’t want us to have fun.  Mebbe on account of grownups never seemed to have much fun, most days.

Anyhow, when Stinkpot’d come to school, I’d say I had to take him home, else the dogcatcher would haul him off and eat him.  I’d cry about it if I had to.  That was when we lived in Lupine, and the dogcatcher was an old fellow we boys figured ate dogs and cats.  So teacher’d let me go, and I’d give Stinkpot a biscuit for busting me out of the jailhouse.

#

Everything got different when we moved to Skunk Corners.  I never knew why Pa took us off up there.  It was awful close to the edge of everything, and made Lupine look pretty good.  Anyway, though, we moved up there and Ma was so busy, she told me to just go up to the school and register myself.

“Or whatever they do in this two-bit town,” I heard her mutter when she thought I’d gone out.  Now, that wasn’t right.  Two-Bit was two stops down the train line closer to Lupine.   Skunk Corners was beyond Two-Bit and just one stop short of Endoline.

Ma’s instructions looked to me like my perfect chance.  No one around there knew I was even there, let alone that I was supposed to be in school.  I was twelve years old, and could read and figure, which seemed good enough to me.  How much learning did a boy need in those mountains, was how I argued it.  And Pa kept moving us farther back into the hills, so it looked to me like I’d had plenty of school for where we were heading.

Of course, I didn't make that argument to Ma and Pa.  Ma’d say to get my backside to the school if I didn’t want her to tan my hide.  And Pa would say that if I didn’t want an education I could start working on the farm for real.  I already did plenty of work, feeding the animals and grubbing out stumps.  So I just started up the trail to town, meek as could be.

Once out of sight of the cabin, I slung my books under a bush and whistled.  Stinkpot came trotting up, smelling more like skunk than ever.  Figured, now we lived in Skunk Corners.

“C’mon, boy, we’re going exploring.”

We went on that way for a week.  I left home every morning, and wandered off wherever we chose to go.  Stinkpot could always find his way home, so I didn’t worry none about getting lost.
But come Saturday, I wanted to see the town, such as it was.  We’d got off the train and gone right through to the farm, no time to explore nothing.  Ma’d been careful to point out the schoolhouse, but that wasn’t what I wanted to see.  I made a note of it all the same, to know what to avoid.

I’d stayed away all week so no one would send me to the school.  But Saturday would be safe, surely, so we started off early.  Ma wanted some flour and cornmeal from whatever they had for a store, so I even had an excuse.  I wasn’t in any hurry to do the shopping, though.  I just poked along the dusty street, checking things out.  I still avoided that school, but took a good look in at Two-Timin’ Tess’s Tavern.

All on a sudden, someone in dungarees, a big flannel shirt, and a pair of moccasins blocked my path.
“You’re new in town.”  I was surprised to hear a girl’s voice coming from the mass of denim and flannel.  I risked a look, and I guessed she was a girl, though her hair was cropped short and her hands were in her pockets, just the way mine were.

“Yeah,” I said, cautious-like.

“You got a name?”

“Lije.  Elijah Monroe.  Ma’am,” I added uncertainly.

She shook her head.  “I’m just Big Al.”  She studied me some more.  “On second thoughts, that’ll be ‘Teacher’ to you.  I’ll see you in class Monday.” It wasn’t a question.  Then she gave Stinkpot a chunk of jerky, petted his big silky ears, and was gone into the big brick building that claimed it was a library.

I shrugged and finished my exploring, and bought Ma’s supplies.  By the time I was home, I’d forgotten all about Big Al.

#

Come Monday, I did what I always did.  I headed for the creek, Stinkpot at my heels, and went to fishing.  It was a perfect day for it, and I had a great time in the creek, even if I didn’t catch no fish.
Along about mid-morning, Stinkpot disappeared, but I didn’t pay that no mind.  Stink, he’s always haring off after something or other, and he always comes back when he’s ready, or when he’s hungry.

Just when I was starting to think about eating the bread and butter Ma’d put up for my lunch, up bounded Stinkpot.  I took it for granted he’d come back for lunch, until a noise made me look beyond at the bushes.  There stood that Big Al person.  I looked from her to Stink and back, and she nodded.

“Yup.  He brought me, just like I asked him to.  And now he’s going home, and you are coming to school.”  Then she stood there with her arms crossed, and glared at me until I packed up my fishing stuff and came up to her.  I stood there waiting for the roof to come in on me, because she was big, and she looked mean.

But Big Al—Teacher—just laughed and petted Stinkpot.  She gave him another bit of jerky.  “Good boy.  You run along home now.”

And that lousy traitor dog panted a smile, wagged his tail, and trotted off.  And Teacher took me by the arm and hauled me back to prison.

Which is how I came to learn there’s more to school than ABC and more to ‘Rithmatic than two plus two.  I’m still not sure I like it, but Stinkpot won’t come bust me out anymore, so I guess I’ll have to stick around and learn something.

 ###

©Rebecca M. Douglass 2014

 

Kid LIt Blog Hop: Back to School!

School starts today in our district (for the little kids; the high school my boys attend started a week ago, which is evil).  So I was thinking about a list of the best books about school.  Or at least a list of books I like which are all or in part about school.

A lot of kids' books of course center around life at school.  But as a kid I had a particularly soft spot for books about boarding school.  Probably a kind of horrified fascination, since I couldn't imagine being sent away from home that way!  (As a parent, despite sundry temptations to leave the boys on the side of the road somewhere, I still can't imagine boarding school as a realistic option).

Of course, the ultimate boarding school story is Harry Potter.  But I'm reaching back to some others I loved.

Starting way back:

 

I can't find a match for the cover of my copy, which was given to my grandmother for Christmas in 1910.

This one is if anything even more outdated, and not precisely boarding school, but a huge childhood favorite of mine:

 

 Madeleine L'Engle wrote some stories of truly miserable boarding schools:

 

And school features largely in such other favorites as Little Town on the Prairie, and even A Wizard of Earthsea.

And, because this is my blog and I can, I will say that 

and   are actually school stories in many ways.

Flash Fiction Friday: Peggy's Story

This is another in my random and growing collection of stories from the denizens of Skunk Corners.  Peggy Rossiter is one of Big Al's students, and secretly wanted to learn even before the Ninja Librarian came to town and made it okay.

Photo by Tom Dempsey, c. Photoseek.com.  Used with permission

Peggy’s Story: When Big Al Came to Town

So, Mr. Tom wanted me to tell you about when Big Al came to Skunk Corners.  It was a few years ago, so I was only maybe nine or something, and still stuck in the Second Reader.  I might not remember everything, but I saw Al come to town.
   It was like this.  I guess I was the only kid who hadn’t heard that Jake and Harry had chased off another teacher.  They used to make the schoolmasters’ lives miserable, until they’d just up and leave.  One time we had a schoolmarm, a real cranky old maid you wouldn’t think had ever had a soft feeling in her life, and she left in tears after just two days.  The boys never laid hand on any of them, not like how they treated librarians.  They had other ways, being bound and determined not to go to school, or to learn anything when their folks walloped them into going.
   I guess the last laugh was on them, come to think of it, but you know all about how they ended up coming back to Big Al to learn to read.
   Anyhow, I’d come into town that morning for school.  Even then I kind of liked it, though I wasn’t making much progress, what with never having a teacher for more than a few weeks at a time.
So I was standing in the street by the empty schoolhouse at sunrise when someone walked into town off the trail from Endoline.  I could tell it was a kid, dressed in his Pa’s clothes and hat, which were just a little too big.  You could see he was pretty uncertain.  He looked around a bit, then his eye lit on Two-Timin’ Tess’s Tavern, and I saw him nod.  Of course, there was no one up at the Tavern at that hour, so the kid just walked on up to have a seat under the tree.  That was where I was, but I guessed he didn’t see me, not until he was already sitting down and I spoke up.
   “Hey.”
   Then the kid jumped a mile, before getting a grip and looking at me.  Then he said, “Hey yourself,” and the voice sounded like a boy who’s just starting to change, so I guessed he was maybe 14 or 15, but big.
   “I’m Peggy.  What’s your name?” I asked.
   “Al.  Some call me Big Al, I guess cause I’m big for my age.”
   “What’re you doing here, Big Al?”
   “Looking for work.  What’re you doing?  Dodging chores?”
   “Naw.  I came for school.  But looks like the boys chased the Master off again.”
   “You like school?”  Seemed like the kid wanted to talk.  I think talking was better than thinking, but then I was just kind of flattered that a big kid would pass the time of day with a squirt like me, and I was curious.
   “Well, I like learning,” I hedged.  “School isn’t so great.”  That got a bit of a smile out of the stranger.
   “Me too.  Guess that’s all done for me now, though.”  He turned away and didn’t say anything more.
   After a bit I said, “I suppose if there’s no school, Pa’ll expect me to come home and do chores.”  I didn’t get up.  “What’re you doing?”
   “Waiting.  My Pa,” I saw him swallow hard, “Pa talked of Miss Tess and this here Tavern, so I thought I’d ask.”  Suddenly sounding angry, the stranger said, “You’d better shove off then.”
   I’m no dummy.  I figured there wasn’t any Pa any more, and maybe the kid needed to cry, so I took off.

   That night my Pa started talking about the school, and how the townsfolk thought maybe it would be a good idea just to leave it closed, seeing as it cost money and no one was getting much good out of it anyhow.  Pa glanced my way when he said that, being as he knew I liked school.  I felt pretty low.
   But next day I went into town, and Mr. Burton, who calls himself the Mayor, was saying that they had to get a new teacher, because the School Inspector was coming and we’d be in big trouble if our youngsters weren’t in school.  So they were pretty desperate for a teacher.  Mr. Burton was asking around for who could read, but of course all the grown folk who had any learning were either long gone from Skunk Corners, or they had work already, and no time to teach a pack of mostly unwilling youngsters.
   Now, don’t you tell Al, or I’ll end up in the creek, but I up and told the Mayor that this Big Al fellow, seemed to have maybe been to school some.  I was making a wide guess, but I wanted my school, and maybe I felt bad for him, because he hadn’t found any work yet, and was sleeping in Tess’s woodshed with the mice and spiders.
   Al dodged a bit at first, but five dollars a month and a room to sleep in must’ve been a powerful temptation, because pretty soon we had us a school again.  That’s when the fun started.
   Everyone always came to school the first day with a new teacher, to see the fun.  That meant Jake and Harry, too, and they set right in with their usual tricks.  They figured that Al being younger’n them, he’d be easy pickings.
   It took about a half a day before our new teacher had had enough.  The boys were making comments about Al being some kind of sissy, or even a girl, on account of his voice not being really changed.
   Instead of bursting into tears or anything, Big Al walked down the aisle past the rear desks, where the big kids—Jake and Harry and a couple of girls—sat, and opened the door.  Of course, we all thought our new teacher was going to walk out.  But instead, Al came back, grabbed one of those boys in each hand—and now we saw that even though Big Al wasn’t any taller than them, he had a lot of muscle.  Next thing Jake and Harry knew, they were out the door, and Al stood on the top step saying, “You are done with school.  I don’t want to see your faces here again, unless and until you actually want to learn, which I don’t reckon will happen in this world.  Idiots.”  Then Al closed the door and walked back to the front of the room.
   “Anyone else?  If anyone doesn’t want to at least pretend they want to learn, you can join those boys in the street.  Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean you can get away with anything here.”
   Well!  You could have knocked us over with a duster full of feathers!  There Al stood, looking just as much like a boy as ever, saying she was a girl as though we’d known all along.  We were too stunned to move.  After that, I think most stayed out of curiosity about this girl who dressed and acted like a boy, and could throw bullies out without breaking a sweat.  I’m not saying many of us did much learning.  But I’ll tell you, no one ever tried to make Al leave.

  

So that’s how Big Al came to Skunk Corners and how she became our Teacher.  I guess maybe Tom would like to know more about why she came and all that, but she’s never said, except that bit the first day.  Al’s private, and I guess Mr. Tom’s the only one could ask her about it and not end up in the creek, unless maybe Tess could.  I’m not asking.  I’ve no hankering for a swim this early in the spring.

Free Story!

I'm moving a little slowly, but picked up at last on a challenge put out by fellow-lunatic, I mean writer, Gus Sanchez back in September.

Now that I'm waiting on feedback on the Ninja Librarian, I thought I'd keep my chops in shape with some short stories, and a writing prompt is a nice starter.  So I followed Gus's link to http://thestorystarter.com/ and clicked the random phrase generator until I got something I liked (I did notice a certain tendency to reuse a few phrases.  Lots of stories about avoiding arguments!).  I settled on the prompt,

The veteran kindergartener threw a feather within the space ship to avoid the argument.

Here's my story:

Feathers in Space 

"Class! Class!  Please line up for roll-call!"  The teacher sounded weary, even at the start of the day, as all adults did in the gravitational sector of the ship.  Children were allowed to spend at most two hours a day in zero G, but to save power--the artificial gravity field took a lot of power--most of the ship had little or no gravity, and adults spent little time under gravitational pull.  So even the teacher, who was in the Field more than most, moved and spoke slowly and with fatigue.

Max knew that.  He'd been in he kindergarten class for as long as he could remember--at least two sets of children had come and gone while he stayed on.  He couldn't believe that only he had figured out that graduating from kindergarten was for chumps.  He'd talked to older kids--they could have been his brothers; who knew?  No one knew their family on the ship.  Families were a luxury, like gravity.  Everything was communal, and the population was strictly managed to maintain the exact number of inhabitants desired.

Anyway, those older kids had told him the sad truth: after kindergarten there was no more nap time, which was a good thing, but there were no more snacks, either.  And you had to learn strange things called grammar and algebra, and the history of the Earth, which seemed stupid even to a little kid.

Earth might as well be a myth, for all the good it would do them.  The colony ship was never going back, and wherever they were going, it would be different.  Even the youngest kindergarteners, who were a lot younger than Max, could figure that out.  Besides, the teen who had taught him the skills needed to survive in the Ship said that they wouldn't even get there in Max's lifetime.  He would spend his life on the Ship, which was fine with Max.

So Max decided early on that he'd just stay in kindergarten, with the toys and snacks.  The teachers never seemed to notice--they had to rotate teachers in and out every few weeks.  Max thought it was because the gravity took such a toll on them.  Or maybe it was the children.  Karl, his teenaged friend, said it was so that all the adults could spend enough time in the gravity field to stay healthy.  The actual teaching was done by computers, anyway, so the teacher didn't matter much.

Whatever.  The rotating teachers meant that no one really kept track of things.  Including Max.

He was starting to get taller, though, and soon someone was going to ask the question he didn't want to answer: how old was he, anyway?

In fact, the teacher, having gotten them all to  line up--the last teacher had insisted they sit in their desk-pods for roll, so it was a change and took them by surprise--was calling down the list of names.  Of their full names, which gave Max a jolt.

"Suzy TenSevenTwelve.  Johann FourTwentytwoTwelve."  Since no one knew his--or her, needless to say--parents, children were surnamed by their hatchdate.  First names came from a random name generator in the Ship's computer.  Later, they would get surnames to match their work specialties.

"Maxwell SevenForuteenTen."  The teacher halted.  She looked around for the child who matched the name.  "Maxwell?  Is this correct?  Are you a Ten child?

Max pretended he didn't know who she was talking to.  It didn't work.  He stood a head taller than any other child in the class.

"Maxwell," the teacher asked, confused but trying to be kind.  "Have you had a problem with kindergarten?"

Max shook his head.  No, he had no problem with kindergarten at all.  That was why he was staying.  But that didn't seem to be what the woman meant.

"It looks as though they haven't moved you on to first grade.  Or," she looked at him dubiously, "have they misprinted your hatchdate?"

Max didn't like the direction this was taking.  Desperately, he looked around for a distraction.  Suzy was playing with a large feather, collected from some bird in the farm area--another place where they had to keep the gravitational field on.  Max reached over, snatched the feather, and threw it toward Rommel.  It wasn't much of a missile, but Rommel could always be counted on to raise a distracting fuss.

Suzy yelled, but the feather never reached Rommel.  Caught by the steady suction from the air duct, it moved further upward, and disappeared into the opening, where there should have been a grate.  That morning, there wasn't.

As everyone stared at the place where the feather no longer drifted, an alarm began to sound.

Max had a very bad feeling about this.  He'd been in kindergarten along enough to know.

Furballs--a Halloween story

Furballs

It should have been just another day.  Get up, get dressed, have breakfast and go to school.  Malkina ran into the first snag as soon as she tried to pull on her underwear.  Reaching behind herself, she felt the furry protuberance.  Mystified, she moved to the mirror--a full-length mirror her mother insisted she have in her room, but which Malkina mostly ignored.  Why should she even look, when she was so hopelessly ordinary?  The most ordinary girl in the fifth grade.

Kicking aside a modest pile of books and dirty laundry so she could stand in front of the mirror, Malkina twisted and turned until she saw herself.  Saw the long, striped, furry tail she held with her left hand.  The tip of the tail twitched and she dropped it, jumping away from the mirror.

“I think I’d better wear a skirt today,” she muttered, turning back to the closet.

The next shock came when she began to brush her hair.

“Ouch!”  The brush had hit something awfully sensitive.  Again she explored with her fingers first, afraid to look.  High up on the left side of her head, a furry wedge emerged from the tangled hair.  She didn’t even have to look in the mirror to know there was a match for it on the other side.

Ears.  Cat ears, and a cat’s tail.  Suddenly panicked, Malkina shook off a slipper and checked her foot.  Still reassuringly human.  Dashing across the room, brush forgotten in her hand, she inspected every inch of herself in the suddenly-useful full-length mirror.

Everything seemed to be, well, ordinary.  Everything except that tail, and the furry little ears.  Watching carefully in the mirror, Malkina finished brushing her hair, mounding it over the ears and holding a big wave in place with hair gel.

At the breakfast table, Mom didn’t notice anything.  She never did.  Half asleep, interested mostly in her coffee and getting everyone fed and out the door to the bus, Mom never really fully opened her eyes until mid-morning.

Malkina’s older brother noticed, though.

“Whew!” He whistled.  “Got a hot date or something?  Can’t remember the last time I saw you in a skirt.”

Bob could be so annoying.  For one thing, he’d gotten a nice, normal name, not like Malkina.  For another, he couldn’t seem to stop teasing her.  He still thought she was a little girl, and that comments like that were funny.

“Just thought I needed a. . . change,” Malkina said.  “In a rut, you know.  Always the same.”

Walking to the bus stop Malkina found that the tail caused some trouble.  She’d had to pick a fairly long skirt to cover it, but the tail, unable to wave the way a cat’s tail should properly wave, twisted around her legs and threatened to trip her.

When she got to school, things got both better and worse.  Better, because her best friend was waiting just inside and grabbed her in a hug.  Worse, because she was dressed much like Malkina.  She whispered,

“You too?”

Adrianna nodded, looking scared and excited at the same time.  “It worked!  Our incantation worked!”

“ But that was just a joke!  Magic doesn’t really work,” Malkina objected, evidence to the contrary twitching beneath her skirt.

Adrianna shrugged.  “Guess maybe it does.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“Have the best Halloween costumes ever, for one thing!”

“But I can’t even sit right!  The tail’s in the way, and when I brushed my hair, it hurt my ears.”

“We’ll work it out.”

During the math test that followed morning recess, Malkina began to find the advantages of being part cat.  She always panicked a bit on a test, but when she put her hand up to her head, her fingers found an ear.  She scratched lightly behind it, the way she did with the neighbor’s cat, and felt calmer at once.  A twitch or two of her tail made her happy again when she got her Social Studies paper back with a lot of red marks.  Maybe this wasn’t so bad.

It wasn’t until they were out trick-or-treating, dressed in black leotards with real tails and ears protruding, that the two remembered they’d worked more than one incantation.

They were three streets over from Malkina’s house, trying to decide if they’d knock on the Burdocks’ door or skip it.  They usually had good treats, but Max Burdock was the biggest pain in their class.  Such a big pain that. . .

“Uh-oh,” Adrianna muttered.  “Do you suppose. . . ?”

Malkina felt her tail expand as the fur stood on end.  They had followed up the incantation that gave them cat features with one to turn the annoying Max into a pig.  And he hadn’t been at school today.  Was that because he had a curly tail and a snout?  Would his parents guess who’d done it and get them into trouble?

Caution came too late.  They were at the gate, and from behind it they heard a dreadful snorting and snuffling.  Malkina remembered that they had called Max a big pig, when a huge boar, with tusks as long as her arm, burst from the yard.  She had time to remember a few of the other things they’d included, giggling, in their incantation, as they girls turned to run from the giant, red-eyed, fire-breathing demon they had turned loose on the neighborhood.

This can’t end well! Malkina thought, despairing.

It didn’t.