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trade out of the hat, one of those tricks you find in a box in the middle of an elementary teacher’s magazine under the heading What to Do on That First Day. A girl I had been dating in Beaufort, herself an elementary teacher, suggested this to me. She promised that the kids would enjoy it and that I would find it extremely informative. I told the class to draw a portrait of me. They looked at me incredulously, jaws agape, as if I had asked them to draw a picture of horse genitals.
    â€œNo lip, gang. No questions. Just draw a picture of this handsome devil you see before you.”
    â€œHumph, Conrack think he look good,” someone whispered.
    â€œConrack don’t think he look good, honey,” I shouted. “Conrack know he look good. Now you just draw how good he looks.”
    â€œConrack look bad,” one of the twins whispered.
    â€œHey, twin. Conrack has big fist which says he looks good. Otherwise, fist crumples into little jaw of little twin and makes blood come out of face,” I said menacingly, as I put my clenched fist up against his face.
    â€œConrack still look bad,” the other twin said, halfway across the room.
    â€œGood, then make me look bad.”
    Everyone then became serious about art. Oscar, a seventh grader and the biggest boy in the class, gazed at my face with the intensity of a Parisian artist studying the contours of a nude. They all scratched and erased, hooted and squealed, and imprinted my image on their lined pieces of notebook paper. My pug nose caught hell. So did my sideburns. One girl, Ethel, was really very good. As I pinned them up on the bulletin board, I couldn’t help but notice there was some correlation between those who could not draw and those who could not write.
    They then drew a picture of themselves. I had no particular reason for doing this. The thought impulsively struck me that it might be interesting to compare the drawings they made of themselves with the ones they made of me. I was very glad I did this when I saw the results. Most of the boys drew themselves to look exactly as they had drawn me. Several boys had made what looked like duplicate copies. The girls saved themselves from exact reproduction by the fact they had included long hair and dresses in their self-portraits. No one had darkened his face or gave any indication that he or she might be black.
    Just before the arrival of the bus, we had an impromptu geography lesson. A map of the world hung near the door. I asked for a volunteer to come up and pinpoint the location of Yamacraw Island on the map. Eight hands immediately shot up. This surprised me somewhat and for a moment I thought I had expected too little from these kids, that they were more advanced than I had given them credit for. I called on Mary, the eldest, tallest, and supposedly the brightest girl in class. She strode confidently to the map and without hesitation and without faltering an instant, she placed her finger on a spot in the northeast corner of Outer Mongolia. When I told her this wasn’t quite right, the rest of the class cackled and taunted Mary all the way back to her seat. Fred prodded Mary’s arm with his finger and laughed like hell, until Mary swung a thin, long, graceful hand against the side of Fred’s face. A kid who identified himself as Big C walked up to the map and immediately chose a place near Bombay, India; nor did Top Cat neglect the portion of Russia that borders the Bering Sea.
    Then the bus arrived. The kids filed out.
    â€œGood-bye, Mr. Conrack,” they said.
    â€œGood-bye, gang, see you tomorrow.”
    Then Mrs. Brown poked her head in the door and asked me how it went. “Crappy,” I answered, and she chuckled. “You’re overseas now.”
    She then gave me about five hundred tons of paper, which I would need as principal of Yamacraw Elementary.
    â€œNo one told me I was supposed to be principal, Mrs. Brown. I thought you were the principal.