It was a modern eight room consolidated country school, which seemed to be built miles from everywhere. On one side, an old Ford car, three buggies, and at least fifteen saddle-horses were parked. A few shabby shrubs shivered silently in the sallow sunshine of spring. Here and there remnants of building material told the story of the building's recent construction.
Walking along, I turned the corner of the building and looked toward the west. What I saw made me walk away from the schoolhouse to a white-haired darkey sitting on the ground propped against a wire fence. He seemed asleep, but when I came near him, he turned to me a weasened face with two eyes circled with the arcus senilis of the aged.
I asked him to have a cigarette, and lit it for him; then sat down by his side.
"Queer place for a schoolhouse, Uncle," I said.
"Worsen queer. Poor and hard on us."
"How come?"
"Quality folks put it heayr, whar land was cheap. Peers like they didn't know about Massa."
"Your Master?"
"None but."
I looked over at the tombstone. Just one stone, and at the back of it a cypress tree. Four fence posts around the tree and the stone, and then were connected by a wire fence. The posts were newly placed, the wire made up of odds and ends tied together and nailed in place with every kind of nail imaginable.