Read Online A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines - Free Book Online Page B

just looking out the corner of my eye too, Mr. Wiggins.”
    â€œIn that case I won’t punish you for looking out the window,” I said. “But I’m going to punish you for using bad grammar. You were supposed to say, ‘You
were
looking out the window, Mr. Wiggins,’ not ‘You
was
looking out the window, Mr. Wiggins.’ Get back in that corner and face the wall and stay there. One more word out of you, and you’ll spend the rest of the day standing on one leg.”
    Sitting at my desk, I could hear the old men unloading the wood, throwing the long poles across the fence and into the churchyard. They were still kidding each other.
    â€œShow me them grits, show me them grits you had this morning.”
    â€œI got my end up.”
    â€œWell, I got the heavy end.”
    â€œYou sure got that right.” They both laughed. And I heard the wood come across the fence.
    This went on for half an hour, then one of the men knocked on the back door. I went to see what he wanted.
    â€œProfessor,” he said, and smiled.
    Henry Lewis was a short black man with hardly any teeth. His hands were the color and texture of the legs of a snapping turtle. He wore an old straw hat, a green and brown plaid shirt, khaki pants, and rubber boots. He had grandchildren in the school.
    â€œSome wood there,” he said. “I’m leaving the saw and couple them axes. Your boys can chop it up.”
    â€œAppreciate it, Mr. Lewis,” I said.
    â€œGlad to be of service.”
    I spoke to Amos Thomas, who sat on the wagon. The thin, brown-skinned man nodded at me.
    â€œThat ought to hold you awhile,” Mr. Lewis said to me. “Just call ’fore it run out. Somebody get you another load.”
    â€œThanks,” I said.
    â€œBye, Professor.”
    â€œGoodbye, Mr. Lewis. Mr. Thomas.”
    I returned to my desk.
    â€œAll right,” I said to the class. “It’s a quarter to twelve now. I’m letting you out early because you’ll have to chop wood this afternoon. I want you all back up here by twelve-thirty.”
    That afternoon, I stood by the fence while the fifth- and sixth-grade boys sawed and chopped the wood. The smaller boys and all the girls were inside. They wanted to know why they had to study while the older boys were outside having fun. I told them that they could have fun the next day picking up chips and stacking wood while the older boys were inside studying. They did not see this as quite the same, but when I didn’t give them any other choice, they grudgingly relented. I gave them assignments and left Irene Cole in charge.
    Standing by the fence, I watched the five older boys saw and chop the wood. Two would saw while another would straddle the wood pole to keep it steady. The other two boys split logs and chopped up small branches with the axes. They laughed and kidded each other while they worked.
    And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything?
    After a while, they exchanged the saw and axes. The ones who had been sawing were now splitting logs, the other two were pulling on the handles of the saw. The smallest boy still held the log as steady as he could with his hands and knees.
    With my back to the fence as I watched them, I remembered when it was I who had swung that ax and pulled my end of the saw. And I remembered the others, too—Bill, Jerry, Claudee, Smitty, Snowball—all the others. They had chopped wood here too; then they were gone. Gone to the fields, to the small towns, to the cities—where they died. There was always news coming back to the quarter about someone who had been killed or sent to prison for killing someone else: Snowball, stabbed to death at a