The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy

Author:Pat Conroy [Conroy, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2010-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

My assimilation into the mainstream of island life quickened after the Halloween trip, although I was not aware of it at that time. Even though one of the children suffered a relatively serious injury and I failed by twenty-four hours to transport the group back to the island on time, the power of the children’s unanimous, animated support of the venture erased any reluctance the parents might have experienced. For days my class could talk of nothing else but Port Royal.

“I sure do like that town over yonder, Mr. Conrack,” said Jasper. “All you do is rap the door and some man pop his head out to give you the candy.”

“I wouldn’t try it every day of the year, Jasper. Especially in that neighborhood you were in.”

When the letters from the Port Royal kids started pouring in, each child who received a letter would read it in class (if he could). Carolina, Ethel, and Cindy Lou convinced me that they had won the undying love and admiration of the family who had housed them.

“Lawd, those people sho’ loved me, Conrack. They thought I was so fine.”

“That’s because they don’t know any better, Cindy.”

“That’s ’cause you don’t know nuttin’,” she flashed back at me.

“The lady you stayed with told me that if that girl, Cindy Lou, didn’t shut up soon, she was going to have to flush her down the commode.”

“That not true.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Oh Gawd, man gonna drop dead.”

The residue of the entire trip left a good taste and it proved a pungent stimulant to class activity and awareness for many months. But I still did not really know how the parents reacted to the whole concept of field trips as an educational experience. I knew for a fact that Mrs. Brown and Miss Glover both believed that education was best served in the cramped environs of the classroom, that both of them made a vast distinction between learning and recreation, that both of them felt that education and the leather strap went together like whiskers and catfish, and that both of them thought the trip was a welcome vacation, but not an experience that could be counted as having furthered the name of education.

I was yet uncertain about my own philosophy of education as applied to the Yamacraw kids. They were not going to be candidates for a Rhodes scholarship after having served an apprenticeship under my vigilant tutelage; none of them would write significantly or make any conspicuous contribution to the arts, as far as I knew. The five illiterates who were served to me like hors d’oeuvres at the beginning of the year would still qualify for membership in that august classification. I was slowly learning to measure the importance of small victories. In fact, I was coming to the painful conclusion that all my victories would seem minuscule and trivial compared to my expectations at the beginning of the year. I was proud of Sidney and Samuel, who could now scratch their

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