Read Online The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy - Free Book Online

LIBRABY would have been funny if it had not been such a tragic commentary on administrative inefficiency and stupidity. Each day we had a half-hour reading period during which the kids could read anything they liked. Since a lot of them couldn’t read at all, the period had become a time when I simply tried to get them interested in books. Cindy Lou chose a book called Tommy the Telephone as her personal favorite. Each time Cindy read to me about Tommy, the irony struck me: a girl reading about telephones who has never used a telephone. Other books with negligible relationship to life on the island populated the shelves. There were books on Eskimos, Scandinavians, dairy farms in Wisconsin, and the Japanese pearl divers, but I could find no books or information on rural blacks in the Yamacraw school library. I brought a Sears, Roebuck catalogue to school and it proved to be one of the most popular books. The girls perused the fashions, while the boys lusted after the hunting and sports equipment. My group of rock-hard nonreaders flipped through the encyclopedias, looking at the pictures and asking me innumerable questions.
    â€œWhat this here, Conrack?” Sidney would ask.
    â€œThat’s a pyramid, Sid. They used to bury kings in those things thousands of years ago in a country called Egypt.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYeah,” I answered.
    â€œWho this?” Prophet would ask then, thumbing through another encyclopedia. “That’s Babe Ruth. One of the greatest baseball players that ever lived. He used to play for the New York Yankees. He hit 714 home runs in his career, more than anyone else in the history of baseball.”
    â€œHe play now?” asked Richard.
    â€œHe’s dead,” I said.
    â€œYeah, stupid, he daid.” Sid grinned as he punched Richard.
    â€œThat man dead?” Prophet asked again.
    â€œRichard think that man ’live,” Sid continued. Richard slugged Sid and the discussion of the Sultan of Swat ended.
    One day as the guys pored over the musty tomes, which they came to consider their personal property during the reading period, Jasper stumbled on the section dealing with snakes. The whole class ran over to look at the snakes.
    â€œSnake bad,” Oscar said sagaciously.
    â€œYeah, bad,” everyone agreed.
    â€œSnake good,” I interjected. “Gang, snakes eat rats and other rodents which are pests around the yard.”
    â€œSnake eat you, too,” Lincoln said. The class howled.
    â€œJust poisonous snakes will hurt you,” I said defensively. Since Yamacraw contained some of the largest diamondback rattlesnakes to be found anywhere, I could understand their fear of snakes, but as an amateur herpetologist, I felt that I had to make an impassioned defense of snakedom. “And snakes will not bother you unless you bother them.”
    â€œLord, Mr. C’roy, you just don’t know snakes,” Ethel said. “We got a snake here on this island that wrap himself around you and whip you to death.”
    â€œYeah,” everyone agreed.
    â€œBullcrap,” I said.
    â€œHe cuss,” Sam whispered.
    â€œThat is nonsense. That is what we call a myth. Something that is not true. How many in here have ever seen a snake whipping a man to death?”
    Naturally, every hand in the room flew up.
    â€œWho was the man you actually saw getting the hell beat out of him by a snake?”
    â€œHe cuss one more time.” Old Sam was keeping tabs.
    â€œHis name was Jacob Hudson, used to live here on the island,” Ethel said.
    â€œDid the snake kill him?” I asked.
    â€œNo. He run away. Have marks on his body, though,” continued Ethel.
    â€œYeah. Have marks on his body.” The others agreed.
    â€œDid you actually see this man being whipped?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen you do not know if the snake really whipped the man.”
    â€œYeah. He have marks,” said Mary.
    â€œEver see a