“Good morning Jake, good morning Jeb.”

“Morning Miss Taylor, morning Maw, morning Paw.”

“Good morning boys.  Come on, sit down and eat your breakfast.  Doesn’t it look good?  Miss Taylor helped me make it.”

I didn’t see how Miss Taylor could go wrong with eggs easy over, cornbread and blueberry jam, so I sat at the kitchen table next to Miss Taylor so I didn’t have to look at her.

Jeb wasn’t as diplomatic as I, and immediately asked, “Maw, ain’t we got no grits this morning?”

Right then my nose caught the faint smell of burning and saw Maw glance at Miss Taylor.

“No Jeb, we thought we’d do without for a change.”

I sneaked a peek sideways and caught a flush of red in Miss Taylor’s face, and realised who was responsible.  I caught Jeb’s eye with my best “we’ll talk about it later” look, and started in on my eggs.

“Did you sleep well, Miss Taylor?” I asked through a mouthful of egg.  “Was my bed comfortable enough for you?”

“Quite well, thank you Jake.  I’m sorry to take up your bed.”

“Oh, that’s no problem, Ma’am.  Me and Jeb…” I saw the look on her face and amended my words.  “Jeb and I like sleeping in the barn.  The straw’s comfortable and Jeb can have Homer sleeping with him.”  Wrong thing to say, as the tightening of Miss Taylor’s mouth showed.

“But he’s a real friendly skunk, Miss Taylor, not like that bad wild one that sprayed you,” said Jeb earnestly.  “He’ll even let you stroke him if you move real slow.  But if you move fast around him, you’ll spook him, then he’ll get mad and try to spray you, but he can’t ‘cos he’s been fixed up.  Sure is funny to see him standing on his front paws with his back end up in the air, not spraying nothing.”

“I’ll think about it,” replied Miss Taylor, warily.  “Is there anything else I should know about the animals around here?”

“As long as you stay away from their back ends you should be OK,” mumbled Paw round a mouthful of cornbread.  “Old Sam might kick if you come up on him from the back and startle him.   And if you’ve ever been hit around the face by a cow’s tail all covered in er…, well, it ain’t purty!  And watch our for the snakes,” he warned.  “They like getting into the tall corn, and sometimes come out to steal our eggs if they can’t find enough rats to eat.”

“Snakes?  Rats?”  Miss Taylor looked a little pale.

“Or mice.”  I added my two cents worth.  “Snakes eat mice too when the cats leave them some.”

“Quit it, you two,” scolded Maw.  “You’ll scare poor Miss Taylor clean out of her wits.”  She turned to our teacher.  “We don’t see many wild critters around here,” she reassured her.  “Excepting if you count Jake and Jeb!” she chuckled.

Before we could challenge this injustice, Paw broke in to assign us our chores for the day.  I was to chop wood and build a fire under the old boiler for Maw to do the washing.  Then I would get water from the well, collect the eggs, weed the vegetable patch and groom old Sam.  Then as it was Saturday, I’d have to clean up the wagon for the weekend.  That was after I’d helped Paw with the milking.  He didn’t need no help really, but he figured on putting on a good show for Miss Taylor, to get her off my back in class.

After that, I’d need to clean the gun in preparation for some jack rabbit hunting that afternoon.

“Don’t know how I spare Jake to go to school,” he grumbled to Miss Taylor.  “I reckon you may be interested to follow him around for a while to see how hard he works.”  This suited me fine.  I’d work so hard that the demon teacher would end up feeling so sorry for me that she’d never give me no more homework!

“You’ll need your hat for shade Ma’am, ‘cos it gets real hot out on the farm.” I was as helpful as I knew how to be.  Well, my whole future at school depended on this weekend.

I started off by hauling buckets and churns for Paw, then took Miss Taylor to the henhouse to collect the eggs.

We went in through the gate, and I clean forgot that Randy the rooster didn’t like strangers.  I sure remembered however, when he tore across the yard toward the teacher, hissing and flapping his wings.  Just in time I managed to get in front of her, and caught Randy a clout around the head that must have had him seeing stars.  He staggered away on legs made of jelly, and I apologised to Miss Taylor on his behalf.

“He’ll be OK now I’ve learned him some manners.” I told her.

“Would he have bitten me?” she asked, a little shaken.

“Aw, he wouldn’t have bit hard, but his claws would have made a bit of a mess of your legs.”

“Thank you Jake,” she murmured, and I think that was the first time she didn’t use my surname to me.  Progress indeed!

After that, I kinda kept her on the go all morning, following me around in the heat, watching me perform like a trained monkey as I darted from chore to chore.

After lunch it was time to go hunting, but Miss Taylor had to stay at the farm, as having her city bred feet pounding the ground would have sent even the deafest jack rabbit running for cover.  She could help Maw in the kitchen while listening to Mindy Lou screaming away the afternoon hours.

I wandered off slowly in the direction of Old Leroy Potter’s place, where there was a huge population of jackrabbits around there, as he was getting too old to keep their numbers down.  It only took me a half hour to bag a couple, as the heat made them too dopey to get out of the way, but I didn’t want to make it look too easy to Miss Taylor, so I went for a swim in the creek.  Afterwards, I lay in the shade of the trees and amused myself by trying to think up ways to save Miss Taylor from the local wildlife, and make her so beholden to me that she’d make me head boy of the whole school.

That night, Miss Taylor went to bed early as I’d worn her out following me around in the heat, observing me.  Five minutes later an ear shattering scream came from the upstairs bedroom.  I was closest to the foot of the stairs, so I beat Paw to the bedroom door by a couple of seconds.  Wrenching open the door, I found my teacher standing back against the wall, with her fancy jacket off and her hands to her mouth, not quite covering another scream.  Her look of terror was equal to that on the face of Ellie Sue Hatfield’s when she found the frog I’d slipped into her pocket one day at school.

Following her fixed stare, I spotted a harmless garter snake curled up on the bed.

“Stand back, Miss,” I said in the shakiest voice I could conjure up.  “I’ll get it out of here for you.  Don’t you worry yourself none, I know how to handle these things.”

Moving slowly to the bed, I reached over and grasped the snake just behind the head then with my left hand I got his tail.

“See, if you get them behind the head they can’t bite you.”  I made my way towards Paw at the door and gave him a wink.  “I reckon this here snake’s a cottonmouth, Ma’am, very deadly.  We usually take them and throw them in the creek so we can get out of the way quick smart before they can bite us.”

I went downstairs with the snake and Jeb followed me out into the dark yard where I planned to release the snake, who was probably petrified by all that screaming.

“I did good, didn’t I?”   Jeb asked.

“Huh?  But you didn’t even get upstairs.”  Then my brain switched on.  “You mean you put that snake in her bed?”

“Of course.  Give it here, that’s Fang.”

“Why did you put him there?”  I was puzzled.  After all, Jeb had nothing against Miss Taylor, as he’d never been in one of her classes.

Coiling Fang around his arm, Jeb chuckled.  “I knew you wouldn’t get a minute free to do it yourself.  And I just hoped you’d be the first one to the rescue.”

I looked at my little brother with a new respect.  He was a mind reader.  We both started to fall around laughing, and I laughed so hard that I woke myself up and found I was still lying on the creek bank in the shade, where I’d fallen asleep, plotting.

I could tell by the sun that it was late afternoon, and time to make my way back to the farm.

As I picked up the pair of jackrabbits and the gun, I decided that I would have to talk with Jeb that night.  He shouldn’t find it too hard to find a garter snake in the cornfield and plant it where it would do most good.  I’d have that city teacher eating out of my hand before our next class.