The Librarian of Boone's Hollow - Kim Vogel Sawyer Page 0,37

as Emmett walked the familiar path, swinging a battered cracker tin and squinting against the morning sun. For more than forty years, kids from Tuckett’s Pass and Boone’s Hollow had come together at the one-room mountain school, but for only a few months of the year. Then when Emmett was eight or nine years old, Mr. Halcomb came and insisted the school should be open a full nine months, same as in the big cities. It took three years before everybody in Boone’s Hollow and Tuckett’s Pass sent their kids for all nine months. These folks resisted change the way a criminal resists arrest, but Mr. Halcomb had won, finally. But there was one battle he was still fighting. Tuckett’s Pass parents continued to insist that their kids sit apart from Boone’s Hollow kids. How many generations would be taught to follow the old feud?

Emmett had asked Dusty if he’d made friends with Tuckett’s Pass kids, and Dusty stared at him as if he’d said something foul. Funny how the old rivalry between the two little towns, so close in proximity but so far apart in friendliness, stayed strong generation after generation. Maw and Paw said it’d been that way their whole lives and their folks’ lives and before them, but they couldn’t honestly say what had started the conflict. All Emmett knew was if a fellow came from Boone’s Hollow, he snubbed the folks from Tuckett’s Pass. Pretty silly.

The sound of children’s hoots and laughter carried from ahead, and Dusty gave a little hop. “They’re playin’ dodge-the-ball!”

Emmett chuckled. “Now, how can you know that when you can’t see—”

Smack!

“Ouch! Hey, that hurt!”

Laughter rolled.

The sounds carrying from the other side of the trees proved Dusty’s theory and brought a rush of memories. Emmett winced, recalling how much it’d stung when the large rubber ball connected with his side or legs.

Dusty grabbed his wrist. “C’mon, Emmett, hurry or I won’t get to play!”

Emmett jogged the remaining distance with Dusty but then passed the rings of children—a smaller group on one side of the yard and a larger group, to which Dusty ran, on the other—and entered the unpainted clapboard building. He set Dusty’s pail with others cluttering the long bench in the narrow cloakroom, then entered the classroom. The same desks and benches, cloudy slate boards, and smell of coal oil greeted him. A strange sensation gripped him, something his college professors would probably call déjà vu. He crossed the creaky floorboards slowly, observing the teacher, who sat behind his desk with his head low, his hand moving rhythmically between an inkpot and a sheet of paper. The scritch-scritch of his pen seemed loud in the otherwise quiet room.

Even though things hadn’t worked out the way Emmett expected after earning a college degree, affection rolled through him. He’d never known, and might not ever know, a more dedicated person than Mr. Halcomb. He stopped midway across the floor and slid his hands into his trouser pockets, watching, waiting, remembering.

Mr. Halcomb set the pen aside, sat up, and met Emmett’s gaze. A smile broke over his face. He stood and rounded his desk, hand already reaching. “Why, Emmett Tharp…”

Emmett shook his teacher’s hand. The man looked a little older but no less scholarly than Emmett recalled. With Mr Halcomb’s neat goatee, short-cropped gray hair, black suit, and string tie, he’d blend right in with the college teachers. “Hello, Mr. Halcomb. Good to see you.”

“Please, call me Ralph.”

Emmett smiled. He’d never be able to call his teacher anything but Mr. Halcomb.

“Dusty said you were back, but I thought he might be makin’ up a story.”

Emmett raised his eyebrows. “Making up stories?”

The teacher chuckled. “He has an active imagination. I suspect when he got to missin’ you too much, he’d pretend you were home, and his pretendin’ got carried away. He’s never a spiteful liar.”

Even so, Maw would have a conniption fit if she knew Dusty’d been spewing falsehoods. He’d have a talk with Dusty after school.

Mr. Halcomb gave Emmett’s hand a squeeze, then let go. “I reckon you’re only home for a visit, though. Unless you’re plannin’ to start your own business here on the mountain.”

He’d need more imagination than Dusty possessed to come up with a business that would sustain him in the small town. “After being away so long, I wanted some time with my family. But I plan to find a job in a city somewhere. I’m still…” How could he speak the truth without disappointing the man