The Madman of Piney Woods by Christopher Paul Curtis

Author:Christopher Paul Curtis
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Being a reporter puts you in some real uncomfortable, dangerous spots. I’d followed Father’s advice and was taking the initiative with my work.

Without Miss Cary assigning it to me, I was going to report on the Upper Canada Forensics Competition. I’d be at the contest to support Spencer anyway, so I could kill two birds with one stone.

This time I was sure she was going to publish my article. How couldn’t she? It was going to be a touching story about how Spencer Alexander overcame so many things to be Buxton’s finest public speaker. I’d already written two endings for it, just in case. In the first ending, he was a gracious winner and thanked everybody he could think of. In the second ending, he was a gracious loser and thanked everybody he could think of.

I was this close to passing out in the Buxton church where the contest was going on. Even though it was late September, it was hotter than July inside. All of the windows were open, but every breeze in Canada ignored the church.

Right after the first speaker, I opened the rear door of the church to escape for a minute. After the heat from inside washed around me, and my eyes became accustomed to the bright light and the way everything seemed to shimmer, there he was, sitting on the back steps.

One of the white Chatham boys had the same idea as me.

He was wearing a wool jacket, a necktie, and knickers with thick wool stockings. A heavy wool cap sat next to him on the porch; he’d had sense enough to pull it off.

It was hard to tell what this boy would look like on a day that wasn’t so hot, but with his bright red hair and freckles, it made me think someone had lit a match, then as a joke dressed it in knickers, a suit jacket, and a necktie.

He gave me a little smile.

“Hot enough for you?”

For a second I wondered if he said this because he was being racialist. So many white Chatham people think, since most Buxton people come from the southern United States, we all love the heat. But it was just too hot to get worked up over words, no matter what they meant.

He was friendly when he spoke and looked right in my eye. That said something.

I answered, “As hot as it is for me, I know it’s ten times hotter for you. Are you wearing those winter clothes because you’ve heard there’s going to be a sudden blizzard?”

He laughed. “I suppose I could take the jacket off. My grandmother’s nowhere around, after all. I only have one suit and it’s for winter; she insisted I wear it.”

His jacket had been carefully patched at the elbows, his shirt was soaked, its collar and cuffs frayed. His clothes were far from new, but everything he wore had been pressed and washed and starched to within an inch of its life.

He carefully folded the limp, damp jacket over his knee.

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