Blackman's Coffin Read Online Free PDF Page A

the words spoken by the participants, myself included, so that the reader may make of them what he will.
    Although Miss Nettles might not approve, my first entry relates an event that occurred two months in the past. I think it merits inclusion since it is the reason Miss Nettles has given me these blank pages.
    Friday, April 25th: I turned twelve and my mother packed a box of molasses cookies for me to share with my classmates. In our school, Miss Nettles teaches the room of 6th and 7th graders, and although I was recorded as a 6th grader, she had me read and write with the older children.
    Our room totaled eighteen students, ten 6th graders and eight 7th graders. Some of the older boys had dropped out and gone to work, especially those whose brothers were serving in the Great War. There were only three 7th grade boys and all of them feared the armistice would hold and deny them their chance to battle the Hun. Father says we see enough death in this country without seeking opportunities for more on foreign soil.
    My mother made enough cookies for each of us to have two, including Miss Nettles. The teachers don’t make a big fuss over older birthdays like they do with the younger children, but Miss Nettles did select me to be the daily reader, and I picked a story from the Citizen newspaper on the possibility of the city building a memorial in Pack Square to Kiffin Rockwell. Mr. Rockwell was Asheville’s most famous war hero, joining the French Foreign Legion before America even joined the conflict and becoming the first American to shoot down an enemy plane.
    That night for supper my mother fixed roasted chicken and smashed potatoes. We had an apple pie made from the best of the fruit stored in the cellar from last fall’s harvest. When the plates had been cleared from the table, my father brought out a long package wrapped in butcher’s paper. My heart jumped because I knew it was the squirrel rifle he had promised to give me when I was old enough to clean and care for it myself. I expected it to be the one he had as a boy, but as I ripped away the wrapping, I saw fresh bluing on the barrel. I stared in amazement at a new Winchester bolt-action twenty-two.
    “For me?” I stammered.
    My father laughed. “If you take my gun, what am I supposed to hunt with? We’ll sight it in tomorrow morning.”
    But around nine that night, Mr. Lucas Jefferson came by with word that his mother had passed and asked my father to tend to her burial preparation. Over my mother’s objection, my father gave his blessing to my taking the Winchester into the woods alone.
    Saturday, April 26th: I was up before the rooster behind Mr. Galloway’s nearby farm crowed the sunrise. The chill in the April air meant my mother wouldn’t let me out of the house without my corduroy jacket. She had already hung it on the back door latch, anticipating my early departure.
    We live on the south side of Asheville, not too far from the village Mr. Vanderbilt built.
    NOTE: That sentence sounds like a stutter, but that’s what he did—Vanderbilt built his own village for the people who came to work on the big house he called Biltmore. That’s a good name. By the time he died back in 1914, Mr. Vanderbilt built more than anybody else around these parts.
    Mother says the south side of Asheville once had all the saloons, but the same year I was born, the town voted out the “demon rum” as she calls all whiskey. She says that was a good omen for me to be born in a town freed of the curse of drink. But I’ve heard my father tell Mr. Galloway that some people have died so pickled he was wasting embalming fluid on them. From drinking moonshine as folks call it, or white lightning. My father’s warned me about walking up on somebody’s corn squeezin’s in the woods. Even with carrying my own gun, I know I’ve got to be careful.
    I don’t have a dog, though I’d sure like one. The motorcars are bad to run them down. But I do have a pony. Old Brownie had