Down Sand Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

then already. He still had on his steel-toed work boots and his khaki pants, which had a mud stain on one of the knees, and a short-sleeved shirt but no tie. When he looked like that, it meant he had been out with the survey crew, and if he’d been out with the survey crew, it usually meant he was tired and hungry when he got off work, and not in too good of a mood if something was keeping us from sitting down to dinner right away.
    I said, “No, sir. Just that they were making fun of me about being colored.”
    He was already unbuckling his belt. “Who? Who was making fun?”
    I told him Wayne and David. He said he’d speak to them later, but that that didn’t excuse what I did, and did I understand what Big Trouble I was in? I knew I was supposed to answer with “Yes, sir,” but I couldn’t say anything because my mouth was too dry. I hated even
looking
at Dad’s belt. He hadn’t used it on us in about a year, since a time me and Wayne socked each other on the arm during church. I didn’t think it was fair that time, because not only did Wayne hit me first, but also a lot harder. I didn’t think it was fair this time, either, because Dad also put me on restrictions, and with a lot of extra chores.
    I could barely sit down to dinner afterward and asked if I could bring in a pillow. Mom always felt bad whenever Dad spanked us like that and so she said yes. We were having pork chops and potatoes au gratin. Tink thought it was called “potatoes
hog rotten,
” and everybody else thought that was pretty funny but I didn’t.
    I still looked colored the next day, but at least I didn’t have to wear Ban-Lon. Nobody said anything when I walked into homeroom, but I guess that was only because it was me and I’m usually not somebody that kids notice all that much to begin with, plus I looked down at the floor the whole time so it was hard for anybody to see my face too well.
    I headed for a desk in the back. I had math class in this same room first period, which was good because since I’d lost my notebooks at Bowlegs Creek all I had to write on was some of Dad’s graph paper from his work. I hoped we would get to use it, because I liked writing on graph paper and making charts and graphs and stuff. The teacher was Mr. Phinney, who was about a hundred years old and wore his pants up to his ribs and tucked in the end of his tie.
    The PA buzzed and clicked. The principal read the announcements. Mighty Miners home game Friday. Key Club car wash Saturday. A scratchy record played “The Lord’s Prayer” and we all stood up for that. Then it was the Pledge of Allegiance, and then “God Bless America.”
    The girl in the back row — her name was Mary Dunn and she was about a foot taller than me — she started staring at me halfway through the Pledge. It was the kind of way you look at somebody that has something really wrong with them, like a big neck goiter, or a glass eye that falls out, which Dad told me happened one time to a guy at the mine. Once the record was over and everybody else sat down, she went up to Mr. Phinney and said something, and when he looked back at me, the whole class did, too.
    Everybody laughed pretty good for a while. I stared down at my graph paper and wrote my name over and over until they stopped, or until Mr. Phinney made them stop. Then Mary Dunn got all her stuff and moved to a different desk near the front, so I was the only one left in the back row after that. I tried really hard not to cry or anything, but I might have gotten kind of a runny nose, sitting there the rest of math class.
    Mr. Phinney stopped me on the way out of class. He hiked his pants up a little bit higher, and tucked his tie in a little bit deeper, and I thought if he kept it up, the two things together might pull him over so far that he finally just folded himself in half.
    One of his furry caterpillar eyebrows went up and the other went down, and he asked me if I was some kind of a joke boy and did I think I