Auburn Circle
and Callie, Rusty, Jake, and Phillip—but everybody called Phillip “Chevy” because he was born in his dad’s blue pickup. Then Benjamin told of how good I was at catching bullfrogs for a girl, how I wasn’t scared or nothing, and how little Joey almost got his toe bit off by a snapping turtle one time. Then we all sat down to cards and argued over whether the game was named after a Bologna Sandwich or the Boy Scouts. In between hands, I saw Daddy talking to a man with silver-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed mustache, and two hands of Bologna Sandwich later, I saw him still talking to that man with a mustache, but a group of other adults had crowded around him, and much of the beatclapping had stopped. I didn’t think much of it because people always wanted to listen to what Daddy wanted to say; he was really smart, and Momma called him articulate. But soon the pickin’ and fiddlin’ stopped, and I could hear Daddy’s voice over the voices of Benjamin and Sally and Melissa, so I watched the backs of the flannel shirts that separated me from Daddy as I listened to him speak. “Keeping them in a schoolroom five days a week will suck the life out of them, kill their inherent curiosity. What they are provided in their nature ought not be ripped from them prematurely. The changes I suggest are an opportunity for them to explore and develop those innate qualities with which God has provided them. They will know what is in their backyard, have keen senses mentally, physically, and spiritually, and they will still know their multiplication tables. They will be a unique population upon the earth.” The wind sung in through the curtains, a stout little old lady in a flower-print dress shouted “Amen,” and that was that. John, Sally, Billy, Jack, Joseph, Nick James Adams, Melissa, Lauren, Jesse, Callie, Rusty, Jake, Chevy, little brother Joey, and I would go to the schoolroom and the schoolmaster twice a week to be taught multiplication, and we would go to God’s country each week thrice, where we would be free.
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