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Lord, why couldn’t they leave people in peace? Why shouldn’t Leslie Burke eat anything she durn pleased?
He forgot that he was trying to eat carefully and took a loud slurp of his milk.
Wanda Moore turned around, all priss-face. “Jesse Aarons. That noise is pure repulsive.”
He glared at her hard and gave another slurp.
“You are disgusting.”
Brrrrring. The recess bell. With a yelp, the boys were pushing for first place at the door.
“The boys will all sit down.” Oh, Lord. “While the girls line up to go out to the playground. Ladies first.”
The boys quivered on the edges of their seats like moths fighting to be freed of cocoons. Would she never let them go?
“All right, now if you boys…” They didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. They were halfway to the end of the field before she could finish her sentence.
The first two out began dragging their toes to make the finish line. The ground was rutted from past rains, but had hardened in the late summer drought, so they had to give up on sneaker toes and draw the line with a stick. The fifth-grade boys, bursting with new importance, ordered the fourth graders this way and that, while the smaller boys tried to include themselves without being conspicuous.
“How many you guys gonna run?” Gary Fulcher demanded.
“Me—me—me.” Everyone yelled.
“That’s too many. No first, second, or third graders—except maybe the Butcher cousins and Timmy Vaughn. The rest of you will just be in the way.”
Shoulders sagged, but the little boys backed away obediently.
“OK. That leaves twenty-six, twenty-seven—stand still—twenty-eight. You get twenty-eight, Greg?” Fulcher asked Greg Williams, his shadow.
“Right. Twenty-eight.”
“OK. Now. We’ll have eliminations like always. Count off by fours. Then we’ll run all the ones together, then the twos—”
“We know. We know.” Everyone was impatient with Gary, who was trying for all the world to sound like this year’s Wayne Pettis.
Jess was a four, which suited him well enough. He was impatient to run, but he really didn’t mind having a chance to see how the others were doing since spring. Fulcher was a one, of course, having started everything with himself. Jess grinned at Fulcher’s back and stuck his hands into the pockets of his corduroys, wriggling his right forefinger through the hole.
Gary won the first heat easily and had plenty of breath left to boss the organizing of the second. A few of the younger boys drifted off to play King of the Mountain on the slope between the upper and lower fields. Out of the corner of his eye, Jess saw someone coming down from the upper field. He turned his back and pretended to concentrate on Fulcher’s high-pitched commands.
“Hi.” Leslie Burke had come up beside him.
He shifted slightly away. “Um
ph.”
“Aren’t you running?”
“Later.” Maybe if he didn’t look at her, she would go back to the upper field where she belonged.
Gary told Earle Watson to bang the start. Jess watched. Nobody with much speed in that crowd. He kept his eyes on the shirttails and bent backs.
A fight broke out at the finish line between Jimmy Mitchell and Clyde Deal. Everyone rushed to see. Jess was aware that Leslie Burke stayed at his elbow, but he was careful not to look her way.
“Clyde.” Gary Fulcher made his declaration. “It was Clyde.”
“It was a tie, Fulcher,” a fourth grader protested. “I was standing right here.”
“Clyde Deal.”
