The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy Page A

country and the continent on the map. They asked me about places I had been, and what New York looked like, and had I ever been on an airplane.
    They then told me about hunting on the island, and the boys became extremely animated describing the number of squirrels to be found deep in the woods and how you had to be a great shot to pick out the gray tuft of fur high in the black oaks and bring it down with one shot of the .22. The further you went in the woods, they told me, the more tame the squirrels became, the closer they would come, and the easier they were to kill. The girls then told me in elaborate detail how to clean the squirrels. They called the process “scrinching.” You slit open the belly with a sharp knife, peeled the squirrel’s pelt off like the skin of a grape, then scraped the squirrel’s skin until it was white and smooth. Ethel said, “A lady in Savannah won’t eat squirrel ’cause she say after a squirrel been scrinched it look like little white baby.”
    â€œHow many in here like to eat squirrel?” I asked. Everyone loved squirrel, although there was one purist faction in the class that liked squirrel meat without any other embellishments and another who preferred their squirrel with a thick gravy and a heavy stew.
    â€œI would have to be starving to death before I ate a squirrel,” I told the class. “A squirrel looks like a big hairy rat to me and since I would not eat a rat, I most probably would not eat a squirrel either.”
    Lincoln asked incredulously, “You ain’t never eaten squirrel?”
    I answered negatively.
    â€œGawd, that man never eaten squirrel,” said Cindy Lou.
    â€œSquirrel ain’t no rat,” Saul said.
    â€œYou eat rat,” Lincoln said to Saul.
    â€œNo, I don’t eat rat. You eat crow.” The whole class roared when the puny Saul accused Lincoln of eating crow. Evidently, crow-eating had connotations on the island which were literal as well as metaphorical.
    â€œYou know what you eat, Saul. You eat buzzard.”
    The class laughed wildly again.
    â€œFat man, you know what you eat.”
    â€œWhat I eat, little man?”
    â€œYou know what you eat,” Saul answered menacingly, his tiny frame rigid with anger.
    â€œLittle man, better tell me what I eat.”
    â€œFat man eats shee-it.”
    â€œOh Gawd,” half the class exclaimed simultaneously. Someone shouted, “Little man told big man he eat shee-it. He curse. He curse. Lawd, Mr. Conrack gonna do some beating now.”
    Saul had slumped into his seat after he had uttered the forbidden word and hidden his face in his hands, awaiting whatever punishment I would impose upon him. Why I had let the situation totally escape me, I did not know. I had been so interested in the downward progression of gourmet foods according to the island connoisseurs that I was totally unprepared for the final plunge to unpackaged feces. Lincoln, enraged at being called a shee-it eater, huffed and puffed triumphantly and waited impatiently for me to yank Saul from his seat and beat hell out of him. Meanwhile Saul had started to cry.
    â€œSaul,” I intoned, trying to sound like a miniature Yahweh.
    â€œOh Gawd,” said Lincoln.
    Saul looked up still sobbing. “Saul, do you know how I used to punish students who were bad when I taught high school?”
    â€œNo,” he answered.
    â€œI used to scrinch ’em, son. I used to take a knife and cut open their bellies. Then I’d scrape their skin until they were ready for the pot.”
    â€œNo,” the whole class said.
    â€œYeah,” I, the wild-eyed scrincher, answered.
    Then I’d try to sell them for people to eat, but no one would eat them because them scrinched students looked too much like baby squirrels.”
    â€œWhite man crazy,” someone whispered.
    â€œNow everyone shut up. ’Cause I am about to scrinch Saul.”
    â€œNo,” the