Chinaberry

Chapter Ten | Buffalo Wallow

“this boy’s papa is giving me the devil about bringing him home to go to school,” Ernest told Anson. There was never any question about my attending; the problem was where. Some six miles to the east was a countysupported secondary school at a hamlet called Veasey, with some eighty enrolled, all the children of cotton growers. A third of these boarded in town during the week, as the distance was too great for walking and the farmers had no spare horses for transportation. Lurie or Blunt could drive me to and fro. The Veasey School was not to Anson’s liking. The teachers were daughters of the area who’d had a bit of training at one of the colleges and were mostly old maiden aunts. Deprived by their rural upbringing, they imposed their deprivation upon the students, and Anson would not have that for me. There was another choice—Buffalo Wallow. The Wallow School was just across the Robertson County line, fully nine miles on the road to the Bent Y Ranch, and two miles farther on a side road, long abandoned by the county in upkeep and abandoned of support by the Board of Education when the number of students lowered to eight. They were now up to eleven. Ernest wrote to my father that I was attending the best school in the State of Texas and that Alabama could not boast its like. Buffalo Wallow C H A P T E R ten 80 J AM E S STILL Surprisingly enough, Ernest may have been right. The ranchers in the area were all of some means, so they hired their own teacher, a man, and one who met every expectation. He was a young married professor with two crawling children and was very devoted to his calling. They kept his salary a whet above any other, kept a cow fresh in milk in his lot, a beef to slaughter , a pig in his pen, and any surpluses from their fields and gardens were dumped at his gate. Save for the isolation, lack of telephone, and a road fairly impassable after a rain, what other was there to wish for? The young professor was even given a car—a Reo—which was nearing the end of its mechanical life and sounded like a threshing machine. The Buffalo Wallow School was distant and inconvenient, yet it had the advantage of Anson’s delivering me on his way to the ranch and picking me up in the afternoon. This, however, could last only until the fall roundup, when the daylight shortened and Anson’s working hours almost doubled. Blunt and Lurie would have to take up the chore when that occurred. The schoolhouse, newly painted and reshingled, stood in a slight depression that had been a wallowing ground from ancient times for buffalo. Otherwise, the land stretched as far as the eye could see, flat as a carpenter’s level. The professor’s domicile sat nearby. There was nothing between it and the horizon . The world seemed three-quarters sky. The professor’s little home and the schoolhouse and the live oaks that sheltered it from the sun were all there was. As the single new student, I brought the enrollment up to a dozen, and I was the only one to arrive by car. The other eleven came on horseback. Often a couple at a time came on horseback, and sometimes a pony supported three on its back. This school was like no other in the county, I was told. The seats were new, 81 CH IN ABE R R Y without a scratch or a carving. There were freestanding charts and maps, and the blackboards were at three levels. The walls were decorated with framed pictures of George Washington and theAlamo,alongwiththestudents’drawingsandpapersthathad received good marks. When I asked Anson what this subscription school cost for a student, he said, “Not enough—worth more than it’s costing.” And then, “The teacher is the main thing.” Both Anson and Lurie took me that first day. When Professor Lewis asked my name to enroll me, Anson spoke up and said, “Anson.” “Anson, Junior?” the professor asked. “You can list him so,” Anson answered. So I had lost my name. Besides, nobody except Ernest had spoken it since I’d left Alabama. The Knuckleheads had created a variety of nicknames on the way out, the most...