The Hoosier Schoolmaster

“Want to be a schoolmaster, do you? You? Well, what would you do in Flat Crick deestrick, I’d like to know? Why, the boys have driv off the last two, and licked the one afore them like blazes. You might teach a summer school, when nothin’ but children come. But I ’low it takes a right smart man to be schoolmaster in Flat Crick in the winter. They’d pitch you out of doors, sonny, neck and heels, afore Christmas.”

The young man, who had walked ten miles to get the school in this district, and who had been mentally reviewing his learning at every step he took, trembling lest the committee should find that he did not know enough, was not a little taken aback at this greeting from “old Jack Means,” who was the first trustee that he lighted on. The impression made by these ominous remarks was emphasized by the glances which he received from Jack Means’s two sons. The older one eyed him from the top of his brawny shoulders with that amiable look which a big dog turns on a little one before shaking him. Ralph Hartsook had never thought of being measured by the standard of muscle. This notion of beating education into young savages in spite of themselves dashed his ardor.

He had walked right to where Jack Means was at work shaving shingles in his own front yard. While Mr. Means was making the speech which we have set down above, and punctuating it with expectorations, a large brindle bulldog had been sniffing at Ralph’s heels, and a girl

In the morning Ralph got out of bed slowly. He put his clothes on slowly. He pulled on his boots in a bulldog mood. He tried to move as he thought Bull would move if he were a man. He ate with deliberation, and looked everybody in the eyes with a manner that made Bud watch him curiously. He found himself continually comparing himself with Bull. He found Bull possessing a strange fascination for him. He walked to school alone, the rest having gone on before. He entered the schoolroom preserving a cool and dogged manner. He saw in the eyes of the boys that there was mischief brewing. He did not dare sit down in his chair for fear of a pin. Everybody looked solemn. Ralph lifted the lid of his desk. “Bow-wow! wow-wow!” It was the voice of an imprisoned puppy, and the school giggled and then roared. Then everything was quiet.

The scholars expected an outburst of wrath from the teacher. For they had come to regard the whole world as divided into two classes, the teacher on the one side representing lawful authority, and the pupils on the other in a state of chronic rebellion. To play a trick on the master was an evidence of spirit; to “lick” the master was to be the crowned hero of Flat Creek district. Such a hero was Bud Means; and Bill, who had less muscle, saw a chance to distinguish himself on a teacher of slender frame. Hence the puppy in the desk.

“Why, how do you feel?”

“Kind o’ bad and lonesome, and like as if I wanted to die, you know. Felt that way ever sence they put my father into the graveyard, and sent my mother to the poorhouse and Hanner to ole Miss Means’s. What kind of a place is a poorhouse? Is it a poorer place than Means’s? I wish I was dead and one of them clouds was a-carryin’ me and Hanner and mother up to where father’s gone, you know! I wonder if God forgets all about poor folks when their father dies and their mother gits into the poorhouse? Do you think He does? Seems so to me. Maybe God lost track of my father when he come away from England and crossed over the sea. Don’t nobody on Flat Creek keer fer God, and I guess God don’t keer fer Flat Creek. But I would, though, ef he’d git my mother out of the poorhouse and git Hanner away from Means’s, and let me kiss my mother every night, you know, and sleep on my Hanner’s arm, jes like I used to afore father died, you see.”

Ralph wanted to speak, but he couldn’t. And so Shocky, with his eyes looking straight ahead, and as if forgetting Ralph’s presence, told over the thoughts that he had often talked over to the fence-rails and the trees. “It was real good in Mr. Pearson to take me, wasn’t it? Else I’d a been bound out tell I was twenty-one, maybe, to some mean man like Ole Means. And I a’n’t but seven. And it would take me fourteen years to git twenty-one, and I never could live with my mother again after Hanner gets done her time.

“O Mr. Hartsook! is that you? What a storm. This is jest the way it snows at the East. Shocky’s all ready. He didn’t know a thing about it tell I waked him this morning. Ever since that he’s been saying that God hasn’t forgot, after all. It’s made me cry more’n once.” And Shocky kissed Mrs. Pearson, and told her that when he got away from Flat Creek he’d tell God all about it, and God would bring Mr. Pearson back again. And then Martha Hawkins lifted the frail little form, bundled in shawls, in her arms, and brought him out into the storm; and before she handed him up he embraced her, and said: “O Miss Hawkins! God ha’n’t forgot me, after all. Tell Hanner that He ha’n’t forgot. I’m going to ask him to git her away from Means’s and mother out of the poorhouse. I’ll ask him just as soon as I get to Lewisburg.”

Ralph lifted the trembling form into his arms, and the little fellow only looked up in the face of the master and said: “You see, Mr. Hartsook, I thought God had forgot. But he ha’n’t.”

And the words of the little boy comforted the master also. God had not forgotten him, either!

By the time the trial opened in the large schoolhouse in Clifty at eleven o’clock, all the surrounding country had emptied its population into Clifty, and all Flat Creek was on hand ready to testify to something. Those who knew the least appeared to know the most, and were prodigal of their significant winks and nods. Mrs. Means had always suspected him. She seed some mighty suspicious things about him from the word go. She’d allers had her doubts whether he was jist the thing, and ef her ole man had axed her, liker-n not he never’d a been hired. She’d seed things with her own livin’ eyes that beat all she ever seed in all her born days. And Pete Jones said he’d allers knowed ther warn’t no good in sech a feller. Couldn’t stay abed when he got there. And Granny Sanders said, Law’s sakes! nobody’d ever a found him out ef it hadn’t been fer her. Didn’t she go all over the neighborhood a-warnin’ people? Fer her part, she seed straight through that piece of goods. He was fond of the gals, too! Nothing was so great a crime in her eyes as to be fond of the gals.

The constable paid unwitting tribute to William the Conquerer by crying Squire Hawkins’ court open with an Oyez! or, as he said, “O yes!” and the Squire asked Squire Underwood, who came in at that minute, to sit with him. From the start, it was evident to Ralph that the prosecuting attorney had been thoroughly posted by Small, though, looking at that worthy’s face, one would have thought him the most disinterested and philosophical spectator in the courtroom.