Chapter One

Peter Sykes
That morning, Jimmy and me had hiked
clear to Connor's Pond, halfway up the mountain,
and back again. I hooked four bass

and three brown trout. Jimmy, who loves fishing
more than just about anything, caught
a dozen bluegills and a huge catfish his mother

promised to fry us for dinner. Soon as we got
back, we stashed our poles under the porch
and ran to Robinson's store for root beer floats.

We were sitting at the soda fountain,
sucking on our straws and listening to
Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" on the radio,

when Mr. Walter White asked: "You boys seen
Mr. Scopes?" With school being out and it being
summer, we figured the new science teacher
must be in trouble. But Mr. White is our
school superintendent, so we figured
we'd be in bigger trouble if we didn't tell.

"We saw him a half hour ago," I said,
"heading over to the school."
"Dressed for tennis," Jimmy added.

He hurried back to the table where
Mr. Robinson and Mr. Rappleyea waited.
Then the Hicks brothers, both Dayton lawyers,

showed up in their jalopy
and all five of them jabbered
like magpies at a picnic.


Willy Amos
Those big ol' houses at the edge of town . . .
Pa says they were once grand and beautiful.
Now they're mostly heaps of bricks,
wood planks, broken glass. Some got
trees growin' right out the roofs, vines
twistin' out the doorways.


Pa says back before I was born, when the mines
were open and the furnaces made metal
for the railroads and tall city buildin's,
white families lived there-
"lace cu