(This is the continuation of last week’s story titled “When the Storms of Life Are Raging”.)

It was March, 1939. John Clark Mosley set out to school that first day of first grade for the second time in two years with his brother (and best friend) Bobby Henry. “Hen”, as everybody in Tatum Holler called him, was for the most part a quiet, reflective child. He was a veteran of White Deer School, having spent two years already in the first grade, once when he was five and again when he turned six. Of course, he couldn’t rightly be said to have attended school two full years. The first year Hen attended for about three weeks before fall harvest, and he was more than happy to quit school and help Pa Fain, his father Fletch (at least when he was around), and his older brother bring in the crops and get things ready for another cold, long dark winter. Hen never enjoyed school—he found it a boring place where an old hag stood and hollered at him all day to do things that he didn’t want to do and could see no use for, like ‘readin’ and figgerin’”.

Hen’s older brother and sisters didn’t attend school much more than he did, and they were not a great deal more successful than he had been himself. They were needed to work the fields or help Momma with the house in late fall, it always seemed too cold in the winter, and spring was time to put the new crops in the ground. Not one of his siblings had made it past the third grade, and not one of them without taking at least five to six years to make it that far.

John Clark tried to match his steps with those of his older brother, just as he had this same time last year. John Clark, though only six years old, was the most robust of his mother’s children, though his beloved brother Hen was a full year and a half older than him. His mother would occasionally smilingly look at him with secretive pride and think to herself, “Clark didn’t turn out too bad to have come into this world at the foot of a tree stump.” His twelve year old sister Evelyn had dropped out of school to help their mother take care of the seven other children. Della had just given birth in late December 1938 to her youngest, Gracie Michelle. Della had been bedridden ever since giving birth to Michelle, and Evelyn at twelve years old was having to take care of both Della and the newborn. Evelyn never thought much about it, but schooldays would be no more for her.
Likewise, there would be no more school for Finn and Reva. Finn was an almost painfully quiet child—rarely did he speak, and then only very softly. He was a hard, though slow, steady worker on Pa Fain’s farm, and preferred the hard work with non-talkative animals and farm equipment. Pa Fain actually bragged on Finn for being as good a worker as any man he’d ever seen. This was especially high praise coming from Pa Fain, who tended to be very demanding and critical of those who worked with him, even his neighbors. Finn had never quite taken to school—he always found the teachers demanding and gruff and the other students, especially the girls, loud and silly. Reva had experienced a bad case of German measles when she was seven. After that, she had been somewhat weak and susceptible to seemingly every disease that appeared anywhere in Tatum Hollow. It was a family joke that if somebody up the road had a hangover, Reva would probably come down with it, too. Now at nine years old, it was pretty much an unspoken but understood family agreement that Reva would be better off at home away from school so she wouldn’t pick up every sniffle and sneeze that could in her case turn into something worse, like TB or pneumonia, that wouldn’t be a problem for most other children.

When Della thought about it at all, she was grateful for her two oldest daughters who were so good at taking care of others. Evelyn mostly took care of Michelle, and Reva was the one who mostly nursed Della in her sickness. Della was so proud of Reva and the natural instinct she had for taking care of her in her sickness. Della supposed that Reva had developed an intuition for taking care of the sick as she experienced so much sickness of her own. Della tried her best not to let Reva or the other children know just how sick she felt almost every minute of her life.

At Della’s wish, and the assistance of Evelyn and Reva, the brothers Hen and Clark were prepared and rushed off to school on this nippy March morning. Clark would turn six in less than a week, and Della hoped he did better in school this year than he had last. “He was probably just too young last year,” Della thought. “I just want all my young’uns to be able to read the Bible and other good books. I’ve got so much pleasure all these years out of readin’.” Though she had struggled with poor eyesight and health problems most of her adult life, and though books were hard to come by in the holler, Della was an avid reader of anything she could lay her hands on. How it had hurt her when Fletch would come home in one of his drunken rages and throw her books in the fire. The loss of the books hurt, but more painful was how to understand how the man she loved so much could think so little of the things that were important to her.

“This year,” Della thought, “Hen and Clark have another chance to make good at that school. I hope they learn somethin’ other than meanness, ‘cause they’ve got that down pat, both of ‘em!” Della smiled as she thought of the mischievous pranks her boys pulled. Like the time Hen put a blacksnake in Clark’s “minner” bucket just before they went fishing. That hadn’t turned out too well for Hen, however, because Clark slung the bucket against Hen’s head and knocked him off the bridge and into the water. And the time last fall that Clark found some of his daddy’s clear moonshine that was hidden in the hayloft and had replaced the water in Hen’s mason jar with the ‘shine. They’d both come out of the woods that night in a sad condition that got worse when Pa Fain’s boot strap finished it’s number on their rear ends.

“It’ll be a miracle if either one of ‘em gits to school,” Della thought, “much less stays long if they do go.”

Just a little way down the road the brothers caught up with their older cousin, Jay Harvey Tatum. “Well, boys, here we go agin’,” Jay Harvey said. “How dadblamed long do you reckon we’ll have to put up with this foolishness ‘afore we kin git out of it this year?” Jay Harvey was a marvel and hero to both brothers. This was his fourth year in first grade, and he determined every year that he’d stay no longer and do no better than he did the year before. So far he’d held his own for three years, and he was bound if he would do any better this time.

“I hear we’ve got a new teacher this year,” Hen said. “They say she’s been around, a tough ol’ bird that could make the devil walk a fence line.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that ‘afore,” Jay Harvey said. “Lies before, lies now. These ol’ folks’ll say anything to make you young’uns skeered so you’ll act good and learn somethin’ before you even know the ol’ bird’s got ye in her claws.”

“But not you, right, Jay Harvey?” asked Clay.

“Dern’d right. One of these days they’ll figger out they’re wastin’ time on me and send me home fer good. Then we’ll all be better off.”

“Wouldn’t you druther go to school then have to work like a mine mule out in Uncle Wade’s fields?” Hen asked.

“You ever seen Pap git much work outen me? What do ye think he’s sendin’ me to school fer? Let my other fool brothers work like slaves—I’d ruther run rabbits n’ coons ‘n fish.”

“That’s about the only thing the keeps you from gittin’ your hin-end beat off,” Hen said. “If you didn’t bring a little ‘possum and turkey to the table once in a while they’d turn you out.”

“That’d be all right,” Jay Harvey said, “I’d just run the country with your pappy and have a grand ol’ time.”

“Nobody knows where Daddy’s at half the time,” Clay said. “’Sides, he don’t want to be bothered with nobody he don’t want to be bothered with.”

“I believe me n’ Fletch’s got at least one thing we could enjoy doin’ together,” said Jay Harvey. “Heck, maybe two or three for all I know.”

“Daddy gits mean when he gits mad,” Hen said. “We try to stay away from ‘im when he’s home. Sometimes he just whacks the tar out of ye for no reason a tall.”

“I ain’t no more afeared of your mean ol’ daddy than I am of any ol’ schoolteacher, I don’t give a hang how many schools they’ve teached.”

“Really? Prove it,” Clay challenged.

“By-danged, I will. Let’s not go to school today and go find Fletch Mosely.”

Hen and Clay each turned a few shades lighter as their eyes bugged out of their heads. Neither of them would ever want to go find their daddy—that would seem like finding the fox to turn into the chicken house, at the same time being clawed to pieces on the way to the farm.

“What’s the matter, boys? Don’t you want to find yer daddy? You’re not a’feared of ‘im, are ye? Or maybe you’re a’feared of that new schoolteacher you’ve not even seen yit.”

“We ain’t neither one of us ‘fraid of nothin’ we can see or can’t see,” Hen said.

“That’s the danged truth,” Clay backed up his brother.

“Alright,” Jay Harvey said. “Then where you figger’ we might start lookin’ fer yer pappy?”

“I’d say a good place might be down at Eaton Morelock’s place,” offered Hen.

“Yeah, reckon that make’s sense. Ol’ Eat More’s—way I hear it, he’d be better named ‘Drink More”,” Jay Harvey laughed.

“To git there, we’ve got to go back by the house. How you reckon we’ll be able to get by without being seen?” Clay asked.

“Ah, heck, we’ll go through the woods, down close to the crick. We’ll hop off the road ‘tween Pa Fain’s and Uncle Iv’s place,” Henry said.

“Good thinkin’, Hen,” Jay Harvey said, and Clark had a small moment of jealous pride that Jay Harvey had praised his older brother and not him.
“Boy’s—let’s git on with it,” Jay Harvey said.

DEAR READER: Will the two brothers and their cousin find Fletch Mosely? What might happen if they do? Do they ever get to meet the new teacher? Join in next week to find out. Until then, I leave you with this blurb from my world of email, an argument the boys might use if they get caught:

IN MY DEFENSE I WAS LEFT UNSUPERVISED.