Summer in Pollen Bend was unusually hot that year, even for our corner of Mississippi.  The vagrant breezes blew the dry dust from the fields into our faces, our homes, our food, even into our classrooms, where our sweat turned the dust into mud on our schoolwork.  This did not improve the disposition of our already sour replacement teacher, Miss Taylor, whose stay had proved to be far longer than our estimated two weeks.  She had been the thorn in my paw for three weeks now, with no end in sight.  We had gotten off on the wrong foot with each other, and never seemed to find a right foot to get onto.

Miss Taylor seemed to take the dry dusty days as a personal attack upon her fastidious nature, and I decided that it never got hot in Joplin Missouri where she had lived before inflicting herself on my class.  We would have liked to send her back there, but suspected that Joplin felt itself well rid of her, and that it would resist any attempts on our part at repatriating her. 

Our headmaster Mr Bodean told Mr Robbins at the store who told Mrs Chance who told Ma that Miss Taylor was very good at maintaining discipline in school and that he hoped she would decide to stay with us after our usual teacher Mrs Bennett returned to duty.

'Headmasters ain't good for nothing, and that just proves it,' was the opinion of Billy Joe Fitch, one of my best friends.  'If he can't see that she's bad for school morals, then he should get a job selling gum at the general store.'  I felt sure he meant morale, but it was too hot to argue.

It was only the county fair coming up that weekend that kept me from going into a decline.  Ma had promised that if my brother Jeb and I were good, she'd give us some money to buy ourselves a rare treat.  Jeb wanted a vanilla ice cream to cool him down, but I had my mind set on a hot doughnut, coated lavishly with sugar and cinnamon, something I'd only heard of before.  According to Bubba Hayes, who'd once been to the big city when his Pa was on trial for shooting the salesman who'd sold him a bull that turned out to be sterile, a doughnut was the best thing God put on this earth.  He reckoned that it was the biblical food known as Manna from Heaven, and I couldn't wait to try one.

The morning of the show dawned bright and clear, and I woke to the smell of chicken frying.  I made my way into the kitchen to find Ma preparing our picnic lunch basket.  We were to have fried chicken, corn on the cob, potato salad, sweet tomatoes and okra, accompanied by Ma's biscuits.

Ma had already packed another basket with entries for the competitions.  She had entered a couple of jars of her blueberry jam and some pieces of embroidery.  She packed Jeb's effort, a hand knitted ammunition pouch.  Jeb had already got his pet rooster ready, but he fiddled with it over breakfast until Ma told him to stop shining its comb and eat his grits.  Pa and I didn't have anything to show, as Pa was going to try his luck at the shooting gallery, and I was going to try to catch the greased piglet.  The first to catch it got to keep it, so I reckoned that if I caught a greased piglet each year, we'd eventually be eating our own home grown ham.

Pa hitched our old mule Sam to the wagon and off we went, Pa driving, Ma proud on the seat beside him, and Jeb and I in the back, hanging onto the old cage that held the rooster.

Pollen Bend being a small town, we knew almost everybody at the fair, and the first half hour or so was caught up in greeting old friends and telling tall tales about the size of our harvests.

Jeb handed in his knitted ammo pouch for judging, and placed the rooster in the livestock enclosure, then we left Ma and Pa to their own devices and went off to see what mischief we could find.  We watched the log chop for a while, and some idiots climbing a greasy pole to reach the $5 bill fastened to the top of it.  Pa had refused to give us any money to bet on the cow patty bingo, but we helped get the cow into the paddock marked off in numbered squares, and watched the punters gathering to see in which square old Daisy would drop her first pancake.

In the general excitement, nobody noticed until they'd got their bets on that old Daisy had already dropped one outside the paddock, so it was going to be a long wait before play started.  Jeb and I left them to it, and headed towards the well-watered and muddy enclosure where Mr Antigonus McCoy was charging two bits a time to everybody who wanted to try catching the greased piglet.  It was already spooked by the noise and crowds and by previous attempts to catch it, so although people were having fun, nobody was in much danger of catching it. 

I decided to wait for a while until it was tired and slower, and suggested to Jeb that we could go looking for the refreshments booths.  They weren't hard to find, as the smell of hot dogs, frying chicken, corn on the cob and cotton candy led our noses to the far side of the fairground.

I watched for a while, with my nose in heaven as the doughnuts were lifted out of the hot fat and rolled in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.  Jeb tugged impatiently at my arm and whined that he wanted to go to the ice cream van.  Ma had given me enough money to buy two of these delights, so, buying two, I tore myself away and took Jeb over for his treat.  The hot doughnuts were every bit as good as Billy Joe had promised, and I ate them both while Jeb queued for his vanilla ice cream.

Some of the kids from Jeb's class walked by, then stopped as they spotted Jeb standing there.

'Hey sissy Jeb!  I saw your knitting over in the tent.  Aw, how sweet.  You gonna knit yourself a purty dress next?' 

Jeb yelled that he was going to come and show them who was the sissy, but he was next in line to be served, so we all knew it was an empty threat.  I licked the last of the sugar off my fingers and moved to stand between Jeb and his tormentors.

'Anybody wants to have a go at Jeb has gotta come through me first.'  As I was head and shoulders above any of them, they drifted away, calling over their shoulders that Jeb was a pretty boy.  I knew that by Monday in school they'd all have forgotten about it, so there wasn't much harm done, except to Jeb's pride.

We heard the popping of shots from the shooting gallery, and wandered over to see how Pa was doing.  He was the last to shoot in his class, and scored maximum points and walked away with a pretty blue rosette and a pound of chewing tobacco.

'Let's go find your Ma,' he said.  'I'm ready for some of her fried chicken and biscuits.'  The doughnuts had only primed me for more food so we tagged along happily as he headed for the fresh produce competition.  We found Ma admiring the jars of preserves and the pound cakes and talked her into heading off for the picnic area, where we spread a large chequered cloth next to Miss Ellie Sue, who worked in the Post Office.

Pa told us how Bertram Hatfield had come to grief on the greasy pole and broke his ankle when the ground broke his fall, and Ma said it was rude to laugh at other peoples' misfortunes, and decided to go visit him in hospital the next day.

When we'd eaten our fill of Ma's delicious chicken, Jeb and I wandered towards the greased piglet enclosure.  I paid my two bits and entered the pen for my two minutes of fun.  I'd planned my strategy and got it cornered straight away.  I grabbed at a hind leg, and it promptly kicked me with its other one.  It wriggled free in a split second, and I chased it to the other end of the pen.  This time I managed to get my arms around its neck, but it bucked and threw me into the mud.  At the end of two minutes I was covered in sweat and greasy mud, while the piglet wasn't even breathing hard, and it was a relief to hear Mr McCoy's whistle signifying that my time was up.

'Didn't want the darn thing anyway,' I muttered to Jeb as we walked away.

'You'd better clean yourself up before your Mom sees you,' called Mr McCoy, 'Or she'll be after me for letting you get into such a state.'

Right about then I came face to face with our Headmaster, Mr Bodean, arm in arm with Miss Taylor, showing her the delights of a rural fair.  Her eyebrows rose in their customary disapproving manner as she looked at me.  'Jake Barton, as well groomed as ever, I see!  And still no shoes.'  She caught a whiff of my coating of mud and other items associated with pigs, and, wrinkling her nose and giving a snort of disgust, stepped back from me a couple of paces.

I sensed Jeb beside me stiffening and opening his mouth in warning, but I jabbed his ribs with my elbow, and stood there watching as Miss Taylor put her fancy city boot right in the middle of old Daisy's first pancake.