On that first Monday morning of what was meant to be my purgatory, I half-expected to wake and find Daddy dozing with his rifle outside my window, my preferred shortcut for escaping trouble.

I whispered, “Trav, boy.” Right away, he lifted his head, and his tail thumped the rag rug at its before-daylight volume. I wiggled my right pointing finger, and he went to the window and stood on his hind legs looking out.

The tail wag meant the coast was clear. “Good boy, Trav,” and he went back to his rug to await further instructions.

“Trav, you figure Daddy’s in the kitchen?” My stomach growled, and Trav lifted his head again, tail thumping out, “LET’S go EAT, eat, eat. LET’S go EAT, eat, eat.” I obliged him.

But the kitchen was dark, stove cool. I looked out the back door, but no light came from Daddy’s work shed. My stomach tightened up like a fist.

I went back to Momma and Daddy’s room and knocked on the door, which was ajar. It swung open, and the smooth white duvet in the dim looked like a snowbank. I made that bed myself every day, and I knew Daddy hadn’t slept in it since I’d last tucked the corners and fluffed the pillow.

Trav whimpered, and his cold nose nuzzled the palm of my hand, which was still curved from knocking, but I wasn’t hungry anymore. He padded back to the kitchen. When I heard his whuff, I pictured him settling onto his rug by the stove and followed him out.

I fetched water and stacked kindling by the stove, but still no Daddy appeared. I tried to act like it was a regular morning tending to certain chores, but I couldn’t help seeing the dented tin pail that Daddy had set in the middle of the table the night before. That, I knew, was meant to hold my lunch for my first day of s—I gulped the word down without even letting myself think it.

Could Daddy have forgotten he’d sentenced me without trial? Or—? Maybe he felt so guilt-stricken he couldn’t face sending me off to my doom.

Yet somehow I knew that wasn’t it.

Beside the pail was one of the towels Momma embroidered from flour sacks. The way it was folded, three purple-thread crocuses grew out of the letters M-O-N-D-A-Y done in red and blue cross-stitch.

I traced the O with a fingertip and felt something hard underneath. A biscuit! Instead of lifting the towel, I traced the rest of the word. Felt like two biscuits. And I didn’t have to look to know they’d be sliced open and smeared with bacon fat, which is about my favorite way to eat them.

I felt the scratchy heat behind my eyes that means you’re downwind of your own campfire. I wanted to be angry that Daddy had betrayed Momma by agreeing to send me to school. I wanted to be angry he wasn’t there for me to yell at him about it.

I wanted to go about my business and pretend I didn’t know what was expected of me. I wanted to go out to Momma’s tree and find her sitting there on her bench and put my head in her lap and have her run her fingers through my hair and trace my ears.

I wanted to be a million miles away.

Or to be ten again.

What I did instead, maybe because it was the easiest thing to do without thinking, was put that biscuit bundle in my pail, whistle for Trav, and head out to school.

Momma and Daddy met in school. But GrandNam said those two were too smart for school. I guess she was right since they quit and got married.

And I guess I was not too smart for school, because that’s where I was headed.

The school itself was built on the far side of our holler, away from the woods and every good thing, so we had little occasion to be acquainted with it. After a piece, we joined up with the train tracks and followed them east as the mist lifted.

To me, the trains are like dragons passing through my kingdom, seeing me and mine, but paying us no never mind. I wondered if I would ever see the dragons’ lairs, cities themselves loud and gritty, fast-moving and blind to what’s around them.

You can put your hand on the tracks and tell if a train is coming long before you can see, smell, or hear it from the hum in that steel. I had set to know the rails’ secrets as good as any Chinese worker who once toiled and maybe died laying down the line.

We turned off the tracks when we reached the junction box at the switch, and the sun was well up. From there, the tracks stretch on ahead straight and true before winding through the labyrinth of hollers and mountains.

I never yet seen a man or lady from China, but GrandNam told me stories, always reminding me that what the Lord made we had no need to fear. I would like to meet one someday and I’ll be ready if I do. I’ll tell him I walked his hard-laid tracks the only day of my life I went to school. Wouldn’t take me more than a few hours to show that teacher lady that I’d already learned everything there was to know. I needed school about as badly as Momma’s sweet tea needed salt, ’cept of course when there were Crow Ladies nosin’ around.

“School.”

I didn’t know I hadn’t thought it till the word came out of my mouth, and it sounded loud against the crunch of my feet and Trav’s snuffs and snorts. So we trudged onward, and whenever a thought tried to get into my head, I hummed something or other, torn between hating what was coming and loving what was now.

The woods don’t lie or die or disappear without warning or make you do what you thought they had always promised to protect you from doing. Rabbits are always rabbits, and chipmunks are never raccoons, and a person could certainly learn a thing or two from that—like to avoid people and stick with animals. At least with critters a person knew they wouldn’t be betrayed.

When Trav and I got over the last ridge, I was so thick in my own mud, it took me longer than a flash of lightning to realize that suddenly I was looking at my own sorrow mirrored in a familiar face.

What was wrong with Tully?

He sat above the last stretch of path, looking down on our place of confinement, and from where I stood, he seemed so still, I thought he might be hunting. But when I got closer I saw, although he was facing away from me, that he had no rifle nor flip, and so it seemed he was just thinking the rare but careful kind of thought that in Tully’s case took all of his mind.

He jumped straight up when I tapped his shoulder.

Any other day, I’d have crowed at that.

When Tully finished gasping for breath, he laughed at his own foolishness, and I smiled at his open, familiar face. “You just stole one of my nine lives, Possum.”

I laughed, but I knew what he was going to say next before he did and cut him off. “I promised Daddy I would give school a try, and that is what I am gonna do, Tully Spencer. I don’t need a guardian to make sure I get there, if that is what you’re here for.”

Tully pulled back Trav’s ears and said, “All I was gonna say is, they don’t cotton to dogs in school. Even one as fine as Trav.”

I felt skittery then. I knew the day would be short and that I’d have Tully there, but I hadn’t figured on doing without Trav. What kind of school didn’t let you even take your own dog with you?

Trav licked my hand and looked at me woefully, knowing my thoughts as he does.

“Don’t worry, Trav.” I scruffled his neck. “This won’t take long anyway.”

Tully spit out a wad of seed husks. “Know Newcomb’s girl, Mary somethin’?”

“Some.” I sat to pull a prickler from my right baby toe, pulling my foot real close to see what I was doing. Pressed around till I felt the sting. “Scrawny kid. Sniffly?” I recalled seeing her once or twice when I’d been to the store with Momma or Daddy. I spit on my foot and rubbed it to clean the spot. “Any time I seen her, she was holding a hankie over her nose like it might fall off otherwise.”

Tully had his knife out and grabbed my foot, so I settled back, wriggling like Trav to feel the cool of the ground on my shoulder blades. “She sure did change some this summer,” he said before spitting on his knife blade and digging the tip into my toe.

I closed my eyes, knowing I wouldn’t squirm for something so puny.

“I went. Into the store for. Penny’s worth of—”

“Ow!” I sat up and stuck my toe in my mouth.

“Sorry, Possum,” Tully said, looking at it. He wiped the blade on his pants.

I scowled over my foot at him.

“Anyways, she shot up maybe a foot. Dressed up like a Sunday-school Christmas tree.” He folded the knife and put it in his hip pocket.

My toe throbbed. The mention of Christmas made my belly swoon for the way it always had been, with Momma hanging greens from pillar and post till our house smelled like the piney woods, only better. But there’d be no such greening this year. Or ever. How could it even be Christmas if it wasn’t the three of us like it had always been? Or four of us like it was supposed to be ever after?

Tully shrugged. “Anyways, reckon you’ll see her soon enough.”

What was he talking about? I looked him up and down. From the little pile of seed husks at his bare feet, he’d been waiting awhile. Did he come this way for me?

Truly a friend to beat all friends.

But wait. How did he know I’d be coming this way anyhow?

The sound of a clanging bell rose up to us on the clear morning air. Tully wiped his hands on his coveralls and pointed at Trav. “Best send him home now, Possum.” At least he had the decency to sound mournful about it.

To Trav, he said, “Don’t worry, boy. I’ll make sure she don’t get into no trouble.” Trav woofed, and Tully hooted. “Unless I’m in on it too.”

I knelt down and grabbed Trav’s silky ears, rubbing my forehead against his. My eyes felt prickly. “Go, Trav. Go on.”

He didn’t budge. I swatted at him. “You gonna stay there all day?” He sat.

From below, the bell clanged again. Tully tugged my arm. “C’mon, Possum. Trav’s more worried about you than you need to be about him.” And I knew his words to be church-truth.

I let Tully pull me a few feet and turned. Trav barked once and then lay down, front paws crossed, chin on top. He was telling me he’d be there when I came back, no matter how long I was gone. That’s when I remembered I wouldn’t be gone long at all.

I reviewed my plan. Go to school, prove I already knew everything to be learned from Momma, and keep from wasting anyone’s time or taking attention from the thick, slow, and unlucky who did not have a momma like mine to make school-schooling excessive. Then there’d be nothing keeping me away from Daddy. We could go back to pretending nothing had changed at all.

Sure in my plan of attack, knowing I’d at least have Tully on my side, I gulped hard and turned my back on Trav, marching onward like General Lee returning to Manassas.

My stomach growled about the breakfast it had not gotten. Maybe I’d wait till after lunch to leave school so as to not embarrass the teacher so much. I could have my biscuits to tide me over till suppertime. It promised to be the only good part of the day.

The schoolhouse was long and low, painted a rusty red with white trim, four windows along each side, its bell on a rail by the door. There was a tiny house nearly hidden behind it, which I knew had been built for a teacher to live in. Both buildings and the well between them lay in a clearing ringed by trees, with Hefty Rock to the back and the creek across the front.

When we crossed the bridge, our footsteps echoed down the water. I hoped the noise would wake a troll who would eat me so I wouldn’t have to keep going, but we made it to the other side all right.

A tall, tidy woodpile stood by each building. I pointed and said to Tully, “You ever seen that lady pick up a ax? Cuz I don’t guess she could lift one off the ground with two hands.”

Tully snorted appreciatively. “Aw,” he said, “lotsa fellas wanna help keep it stocked. Even Pa will send down a sled load come winter.” Since Tully and his pa lived up in the hills, they got real good at using gravity to help ’em out. “ ’Sides, she’s not so bad, I promise. Real smart. Smells good too.”

It was my turn to snort.

Tully spit and grinned, but all he said was, “You’ll see.” And then, “You got ants in your pants?”

I was tugging at my underwear, which I had washed special, bluing and all. But drying them on the warming stove had made them stiff and scratchy.

I punched Tully’s arm. “If this teacher’s so smart, maybe she can tell how something blue makes clothes white.” Tully scratched his head at that one.

The schoolyard was empty, but instead of feeling glad we had missed some of the foolishness, I felt a speckle of regret at the idea that I’d be walking in like late to Sunday dinner. I was not for the first time in an hour glad I had Tully by my side.

We crossed the packed dirt yard, our steps slowing as we passed a split-log bench warming in the sun of the clearing and another settled in the shade of crooked pines. Any one of them would have been a fine place for Trav to wait for me, and I wished he was along. His black eyebrows made him seem wise, and I might have felt smarter having him nearby. But that was past. And this was the moment.

Tully and I stood on the step, and I took a deep breath, hand on the latch, before opening the door and stepping inside. As I drew the door closed behind me, the latch snapped like a hangman’s noose and a dozen or so heads turned our way. I stood in the doorway and blinked a few times. Up front were some little kids I knew by sight, sitting to the side of what I took to be the teacher’s desk. Bigger shapes, in shadow at the moment, seemed to shift in place toward the back.

On the teacher’s desk were a jug of buttermilk, a tin of corn bread, two jars of preserves, a basket of eggs, a heaping pail of blueberries, and a mess of squashes, okra, beans, and collard greens. I heard my stomach rumble again but also felt embarrassed. How was I supposed to know people would take food?

Best thing would be to get out of there as quick as I could.

Most of the room seemed taken up with tables for two. Near a pull-down map of the United States, I saw a couple of the preacher’s kids. It was hard to know which on account of they all look about the same. Plus they wore their straw hair in their eyes, which was a shame. As GrandNam said, eyes mirror the soul. Those children all had eyes blue as Heaven.

“Hey, Possum.” From the back of the room came a familiar voice. Hoping to see a friendly face, I snuck a peek, but all I saw was coat hooks below a shelf of lunch pails. I set mine alongside for starters. I guessed them all to be filled with corn bread or biscuits, maybe a slice of cured beef or a boiled egg. My mouth watered, and my stomach grumbled.

Just then, I was nearly barreled over by a blur that turned out to be June May hugging me. A word for her is excitable.

“I’m real glad you’re here, Possum,” June May said. “Teacher’s real nice.”

“Back to your seat this instant, June May,” came a voice that did not sound “real nice.”

“That’s not Teacher,” June May whispered. “That’s Mary Grace.” June May scampered to her desk, just the same.

“Is that the Newcomb girl?” I asked Tully, but he had skulked off. Mary Grace stared, one fist on each hip, her mouth curved sour. Then, just as quickly, she smiled all innocent and sugar. She dropped a curtsy toward the opening door.

“Good morning, Miss Arthington.”

Heads whipped toward the door, but my eyes were focused elsewhere. The light had hit a whole entire case of books in different colors and sizes. Books are not like schoolhouses. When you jump in, their pages open the world for learning far and wide. The kind of learning Momma and I craved. Like a brook trout that knows there’s a hook in that dangling worm, I couldn’t look away. There weren’t the same old catalogs and stories I read over and over. These were real stories. My hands were itching like they’d been poison-oaked, and I figured they would keep itching till they’d touched each one.

In that moment, I forgot myself and would’ve gone right to them if Miss Arthington hadn’t spoken.

“Welcome, LizBetty.” Teacher’s voice stuck on that word, and for a second, I thought it was Momma.

Then I felt my hair go up. “Don’t call me that!”

The books faded behind rows of eyes, all darting between me and Teacher. Those eyes were set in familiar faces almost as clean as for church on Sundays. I felt like that trout, out of his pond. Trying to swim through dirt on the creek bank and finding it hard to breathe. It was worse than I thought. This weren’t no place for learning; this was a place for judging. I felt that belly-churning like when you’re gonna throw up, or worse, cry. I wanted to turn tail and run home to Daddy and Trav and Momma’s pecan tree.