For several months now, Jack Carter, a big overgrown boy of fifteen with a fuzzy, pimpled face and greenish catlike eyes with a lot of red in them, had been haunted by a dream, a vision, of a Woman.
This Woman had no distinct shape or size and no particular face, but she radiated warmth, a sweet warmth;
she would talk to him in a soothing voice about things his mother would have said were not nice and put her hands on him and kiss him passionately.
When she would do these things, he would turn blind for an instant and become sick at his stomach.
Then he would run to the toilet behind the house.
Sometimes he did this three or four times a day, for this Woman was almost always with him.
He would feel ashamed each time and wonder whether his mother and father knew -- thinking they might see it in his eyes or smell it on him.
But they never said anything, so he figured it was all right.

And so when Miss Langford came to teach at the one-room Chestnut school, where Jack was a pupil in the eighth grade, the Woman of Jack's mind assumed the teacher's face and figure.
He could not keep his eyes off her when at school;
when he went home at night, he took her with him in his mind, and she did the things the anonymous Woman used to do, and he did the thing afterwards each time as he used to do.
When he awoke in the mornings, she was in his mind and he could hardly wait to get to school to be near her in the flesh.

Miss Langford (her first name was Evelyn) was an attractive girl.
Tall, blonde, blue-eyes, fair, buxom without being heavy, she cut a fine figure of budding womanhood as she swished among the pupils in her fresh, starched summer dress.
Something was beginning to stir and come alive in her, too (it may have been there for a good while, since she was twenty now;
but if it had been, it had been smothered until now by fear): you could tell it by the way she watched the older, bigger boys, like Jack.
She would look at Jack, with that hidden something in her eyes, and Jack would see the Woman and become breathless and a little sick.

School began in August, the hottest part of the year, and for the first few days Miss Langford was very lenient with the children, letting them play a lot and the new ones sort of get acquainted with one another.
The first two or three days they went home early.

All, that is, except Jack.
He hung around the schoolhouse, watching through a window from outside while Miss Langford straightened desks and put the room in order.
Once (this was on the third day of school) she kneeled down to pick up some books where they'd dropped on the floor and Jack looked up her dress -- at the bare expanse of incredibly white leg.
He thought for a moment his heart had stopped beating.
About that time Miss Langford straightened up and looked out the window directly at him, he thought, although probably she didn't even see him.
He jumped back, ducked and ran, crouching, down the hill away from the school.

He didn't look back and he ran until he was out of sight of the schoolhouse and out of breath;
then he slowed to a walk.
The vision became even stronger now.
"I'll get her yet", he muttered to himself.
"I've got to get her".
That night he dreamed a dream violent with passion, in which he and the Woman, now the teacher, did everything except engage in the act (and this probably only because he had never engaged in the act in reality), and when he awoke the next morning his heart was afire.

He ate litle that morning, and his mother became concerned, inasmuch as he usually ate heartily.

"What's the matter, honey"?
She said, with the solicitude of a middle-aged woman for her only child.
"Aren't you hungry"?

"No, I'm not hungry", he said, pushing back the bacon and eggs.
Outside it was already hot at 7:30 A.M., and it was getting hot in the kitchen.
He felt a little sick at his stomach.

"Are you sick"?

"No", he said.
"I'll be all right.
I guess it's this hot weather".

"Don't you play hard today then.
And if you get sick, ask the teacher to let you come home early.
Daddy left the car for me, and I'm going to town this afternoon".

"OK., I won't play hard", he promised.

Just then Charles Lever yelled, "Hey, Jack", from the quarry road which ran behind the Carter house, and Jack grabbed the lunch from the table and darted out the kitchen door, yelling "Good-bye, Mom" over his shoulder.

"Whaddya say, boy"?
Charles said, grinning, showing his huge yellow teeth.
Charles, also fifteen, was tall and skinny, scraggly, with straight black hair like an Indian's and sharp brown eyes.
He considered himself handsome and seemed to think all the girls were after him.

"You know what I done last night"?
Charles said as they picked their way over the rocky road which led up the hill away from the Dixie Highway, through a corn field and a patch of woods to the school.

Jack knew of course that the tale to be unfolded would involve a girl and probably be dirty, because girls were Charles' only apparent interest.
But Jack always derived vicarious sensual thrills from Charles' revelations (even when he suspected his friend of exaggeration or invention), so he usually invited them, as he did now.
"No.
What"?

"I got Margaret Rider in one of them old box cars down there by the quarry".

A nude imaginary picture of Miss Langford flashed across Jack's mind.
His heart beat faster.
"Hell you say"?
He said, lapsing into the profanity he often used when away from his parents and especially when he was with Charles.
"How'd you do it"?

"Hell, I jist got on top of --"

"No, I mean how'd you get her to do it"?

"Hell, I jist ask her".

"Jist like that"?

"Hell, yes.
She's been hangin' around me a lot here lately, and I figgered I might as well's try it.
Besides I heard her old uncle that stays there has been doin' it".

"I never heard that".

"It's all over Branchville.
If you'd get out of your back yard once in a while you might even get her your ownself".

"I might try it one of these days", Jack said wonderingly, thinking of Miss Langford.

When they reached the school, a gang of boys and girls were already there playing "crack the whip" in front of the schoolhouse.
Miss Langford, in a fresh white dress and low-heeled white sandals, without socks, was out there with them, trying to get them inside.

"Time for books", she yelled, jingling a little five-and-dime store bell in her right hand.
"Let's go inside".

"Oh, come on Miss Langford, play with us just onct", one of the little girls begged, smiling wistfully.

"No, not now", said the teacher.
"Maybe at dinner time.
Come inside now".

The children grudgingly stopped playing then and straggled into the schoolhouse.

Jack watched Miss Langford all morning.
He could think of nothing else save his mental image of her nude figure and what Charles had said that morning about Margaret Rider.
Occasionally he would look across the aisle at Margaret, fourteen and demure in a fresh green organdy dress, sitting in the sixth-grade row, and he could hardly believe she would do what Charles had said she did.

At noontime, remembering what the teacher had said about maybe playing with the kids, Jack stayed close to the schoolhouse while all the other big boys, except Charles, went off out the road to play ball.
"Why ain't you playin' ball"?
He asked Charles suspiciously as they sat in the well-house shade, watching the girls congregate in front of the schoolhouse.
"Miss Langford, come out and play with us like you promised", several of the little girls called.

"I'd druther stay here and watch the girls", Charles grinned.
"Maybe some of 'em will fall down and we'll see up their dress".

"Maybe", Jack said idly, watching for Miss Langford.

Presently she came out of the schoolhouse.
When she appeared, two or three of the little girls jumped up and down, yelling, "Goody, goody".

"Let's play with 'em", Jack said, rising from where he sat on the ground and dusting off his overall pants.

"O.K." Charles rose also, and the two of them moved over to join the girls.

They played crack the whip a few minutes without mishap.
Then when Miss Langford was on the end of the line of girls, Jack, in the middle of the line, gave an extra hard pull and the young teacher sprawled backwards, sitting down hard, her dress flying over her head.
While she was struggling to get her skirt down and get on her feet again, Jack ran over, offered her his hand and said, "Gosh, I'm sorry, Miss Langford.
I didn't mean to pull so hard".

"That's all right", she said, tossing her head back to get the hair out of her eyes.
"It was my fault".
With one hand she held her skirt down while she took Jack's extended hand with the other.
When her hand touched his, fire went through Jack and he felt weak, but he managed somehow to get her on her feet.
He thought she gave him that look with the hidden something in it as he let her hand go.

"Thank you", she said, dusting herself off.

"Will you play with us again, Miss Langford"?
One of the little girls said.

"No more today.
Maybe some other day".

"Oh, shucks", the girl said.
"I don't believe I'll play any more neither".

"Me neither", others said, and soon the game broke up, the children going off in pairs, in larger groups and alone.

Jack walked off alone out the road in the searing midday sun, past Robert Allen's three-room, tarpapered house, toward the field where the other boys were playing ball, thinking of what he would do in order to make Miss Langford have him stay in after school -- because this was the day he had decided when he thought he saw the look in her eyes.

When he came back to the schoolhouse, his mind was made up.
He simply would not work his arithmetic problems when the teacher held his class.
That should do it, he thought, because Miss Langford had said she was going to be strict about school work.
He had considered throwing erasers or flipping paperwads at someone or pulling the hair of the girl sitting in front of him, but he couldn't take a chance on either of these possibilities: the teacher probably would make him stand face-to-wall in a corner instead of stay in after school.

The only drawback now to the plan he'd decided on was that someone else might fail to do his work, too, and the teacher would have that person stay late along with Jack.
"But I've got to take a chance on it", he told himself desperately.

To his surprise his plan worked perfectly.
"All right, if you can't do your arithmetic during school hours you can do it after school is out", Miss Langford said firmly, not smiling.
"You will stay here thirty minutes after the others go home this afternoon and work your problems".

And so when the others stampeded out that afternoon Jack remained docilely in his seat near a window, looking out in what he hoped was a pitiable manner, while the other kids laughed and yelled in at him and made faces as they dispersed, going home.
He scarcely saw them.
His heart was pounding like a mighty dynamo and he was trying to think, his mind seeming to scream at him like a hurt or frightened child, "How will I do it?