Read Online When I Crossed No-Bob by Margaret McMullan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Margaret McMullan
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what I hear about him. Then I carve out and write what I do know.
I don't need Mr. Frank to assign me a theme. I write what needs to be said. Mr. Frank stands by me and he reads:
J ESS S TILL R ISE
M URDERED AND K ILLED
H ERE
N OVEMBER 17, 1875
I bury that marker deep into the ground.
Chapter 7
Monday is washing day. I build a fire and carry water from the spring. I set the wash pot on the fire and dump all the clothes in, stirring in Mr. Frank's overalls and long-legged underwear with the troubling stick. I get the washboard and a cake of soap ready when Miss Irene comes outside and says for me to go on with Mr. Frank.
I am so glad, for I would much rather build a schoolhouse than wash clothes.
***
Most all of us schoolchildren come out to rebuild the schoolhouse with Mr. Frank. Most every able-bodied black man, and even a few white men, come to help build. Rew Smith and his pappy stay away.
Even the sheriff comes and starts the day with a little speech about how he and his men are trying to track down who did this and how it's important to let the law take care of things. Then we all pray some.
We have to haul lumber from a distance because the Yankees took out the sawmills.
Mostly we children haul lumber and help with the food for the men who are building. Some of the men are cutting the pine logs, peeling the bark, shaping them with a broadax, cutting V-shaped notches in both ends to make them ready to fasten together with wooden pegs. Early Rise and Mr. Frank's ma are in charge of the noontime meal. They have a wash pot over an open fire and they are sorting through all the foods women, black and white, bring in.
When we're all working together this way, the work goes fast.
Layer by layer, the log walls are rolled up and into place, notched and fitted at the corners. Mr. Frank cuts two stout
young trees down entire and sets them up at both end walls, their branches trimmed into a crotch to support the ridgepole.
Near about lunchtime, Please Cook's son, Deuteronomy, blows an old cow horn.
We eat corn pone, greens, and turkey and dumplings. There are roasting ears, beans, and applesauce. It is still a bad time for folks. Money and goods is hard to come by, but there is game in the woods and here we all are eating up, all because we come together.
By the end of the first day, the chimney built out of mud and rocks is up. Deuteronomy calls it a "chimley."
Mr. Frank and the other men agree that this schoolhouse will have a wooden floor, not an earthen floor, and I volunteer to help haul off split logs for planks.
For a roof the men put on the bark slabs, laid like shingles and held in place by a log for weight. I can see they build the roof good, pulling a crosscut saw and toting the slab boards up on a ladder.
The town cannot afford glass windowpanes, so Mrs. Davenport paints some paper with hogs' lard to let in the light. In the summer, they can always knock out the clay between the logs for ventilation and light, then fill it in again in winter to keep out the cold.
At one side of each window is a kind of ornament resembling a doorknob for the purpose of holding curtains in place. Mrs. Davenport says that's the way they have it in her house, and she thinks children should feel special when they come to school.
At the end of the week, when everything is up and ready, Mr. Frank, he thinks to paint one wall in the room black so students can write on it with chalk and use pieces of cotton as erasers.
Then finally, Mr. Frank, he paints the ceiling a beautiful white.
"That's the prettiest thing I ever saw," I say, looking at the ceiling.
"We knew exactly what we wanted this time," Mr. Frank says. "That's one thing to be said for reconstructing."
When we are all through we stand back to admire our work.
"Is it OK to take pride in such a thing?" I ask.
Mr. Frank smiles. "In the Bible it says that in the beginning, each time God made something new, he stood back and said, 'It is good.'
I don't need Mr. Frank to assign me a theme. I write what needs to be said. Mr. Frank stands by me and he reads:
J ESS S TILL R ISE
M URDERED AND K ILLED
H ERE
N OVEMBER 17, 1875
I bury that marker deep into the ground.
Chapter 7
Monday is washing day. I build a fire and carry water from the spring. I set the wash pot on the fire and dump all the clothes in, stirring in Mr. Frank's overalls and long-legged underwear with the troubling stick. I get the washboard and a cake of soap ready when Miss Irene comes outside and says for me to go on with Mr. Frank.
I am so glad, for I would much rather build a schoolhouse than wash clothes.
***
Most all of us schoolchildren come out to rebuild the schoolhouse with Mr. Frank. Most every able-bodied black man, and even a few white men, come to help build. Rew Smith and his pappy stay away.
Even the sheriff comes and starts the day with a little speech about how he and his men are trying to track down who did this and how it's important to let the law take care of things. Then we all pray some.
We have to haul lumber from a distance because the Yankees took out the sawmills.
Mostly we children haul lumber and help with the food for the men who are building. Some of the men are cutting the pine logs, peeling the bark, shaping them with a broadax, cutting V-shaped notches in both ends to make them ready to fasten together with wooden pegs. Early Rise and Mr. Frank's ma are in charge of the noontime meal. They have a wash pot over an open fire and they are sorting through all the foods women, black and white, bring in.
When we're all working together this way, the work goes fast.
Layer by layer, the log walls are rolled up and into place, notched and fitted at the corners. Mr. Frank cuts two stout
young trees down entire and sets them up at both end walls, their branches trimmed into a crotch to support the ridgepole.
Near about lunchtime, Please Cook's son, Deuteronomy, blows an old cow horn.
We eat corn pone, greens, and turkey and dumplings. There are roasting ears, beans, and applesauce. It is still a bad time for folks. Money and goods is hard to come by, but there is game in the woods and here we all are eating up, all because we come together.
By the end of the first day, the chimney built out of mud and rocks is up. Deuteronomy calls it a "chimley."
Mr. Frank and the other men agree that this schoolhouse will have a wooden floor, not an earthen floor, and I volunteer to help haul off split logs for planks.
For a roof the men put on the bark slabs, laid like shingles and held in place by a log for weight. I can see they build the roof good, pulling a crosscut saw and toting the slab boards up on a ladder.
The town cannot afford glass windowpanes, so Mrs. Davenport paints some paper with hogs' lard to let in the light. In the summer, they can always knock out the clay between the logs for ventilation and light, then fill it in again in winter to keep out the cold.
At one side of each window is a kind of ornament resembling a doorknob for the purpose of holding curtains in place. Mrs. Davenport says that's the way they have it in her house, and she thinks children should feel special when they come to school.
At the end of the week, when everything is up and ready, Mr. Frank, he thinks to paint one wall in the room black so students can write on it with chalk and use pieces of cotton as erasers.
Then finally, Mr. Frank, he paints the ceiling a beautiful white.
"That's the prettiest thing I ever saw," I say, looking at the ceiling.
"We knew exactly what we wanted this time," Mr. Frank says. "That's one thing to be said for reconstructing."
When we are all through we stand back to admire our work.
"Is it OK to take pride in such a thing?" I ask.
Mr. Frank smiles. "In the Bible it says that in the beginning, each time God made something new, he stood back and said, 'It is good.'
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