Read Out of Their Minds for Free Online Page B

be none.”
    â€œStill crazy about fishing?”
    â€œI enjoy it,” I said.
    â€œRemember when you were a boy you were rough on chubs.”
    â€œChubs made good fun,” I said.
    â€œThere’re still a lot of people you will remember,” said Duncan. “They’ll all want to see you. Why don’t you drop in on the school program tonight? A lot of people will be there. That was the teacher that was in here, name of Kathy Adams.”
    â€œYou still have the old one-room school?”
    â€œYou can bet we have,” he said. “There was pressure put on us and some of the other districts to consolidate, but when it was put up to a vote we beat it. Kids get just as good an education in a one-room school as they would get in a new and fancy building and it costs a whole lot less. Kids that want to go to high school, we pay their tuition, but there aren’t many of them that want to go. Still costs less than if we were consolidated. No use spending money for a high school when you got a bunch of kids like them Williams brats …”
    â€œI am sorry,” I said, “but when I stepped inside I couldn’t help but hear …”
    â€œLet me tell you, Horton, that Kathy Adams is a splendid teacher, but she is too soft-hearted. She is always standing up for them Williams kids and I tell you they are nothing but a gang of cutthroats. I guess you don’t know Tom Williams; he came floating in here after you had left. He worked around on some of the farms, but he was mostly good-for-nothing, although he must have managed to save a little money. He was well past marrying age when he got hitched up with one of Little Poison Carter’s daughters. Amelia was her name. You remember Little Poison, don’t you?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œHad a brother that was called Big Poison. No one now recollects their rightful names. The whole tribe lived down on Muskrat Island. Well, anyhow, when Tom married Amelia he bought, with the money he had saved, this little shirttail piece of land a couple of miles up Lonesome Hollow and tried to make a farm of it. He’s got along somehow; I wouldn’t know exactly how. And every year or so there was a kid and him and Mrs. Tom let those kids run wild. I tell you, Horton, these are the kind of folks we can get along without. They cause no end of trouble—Old Tom Williams and that family that he’s raising. They keep more dogs than you can shake a stick at and those dogs are worthless, just like Old Tom himself. They lay around all day and they eat their heads off and they ain’t worth a lick. Tom says he just likes dogs. Have you ever heard a thing like that? A trifling kind of fellow, with his dogs and kids and the kids are always in some kind of trouble.”
    â€œMiss Adams seemed to think,” I reminded him, “that it’s not their fault entirely.”
    â€œI know. She says they felt rejected and are underprivileged. That’s another favorite word of hers. You know what underprivileged means? It means someone who has no get-up-and-go. There wouldn’t need to be no underprivileged if everyone was willing to work and had a lick of common sense. Oh, I know what the government says about them and how we got to help them. But if the government just would come out here and have a look at some of these underprivileged folks, they’d see in a minute what was wrong with them.”
    â€œI was wondering,” I said, “as I drove along this morning, if there still are rattlesnakes.”
    â€œRattlesnakes?” he asked.
    â€œThere used to be a lot of them when I was a kid. I was wondering if they might be getting thinned out some.”
    He wagged his head sagaciously. “Maybe some. Although there’s still a bait of them. Get back in the hills and you’ll find plenty of them. You interested in them?”
    â€œNot especially,” I said.
    â€œYou’ll have to come