Papa held me up so I could poke my head farther into the wide glass case.
"Papa? Lemme have a green one too? Please?"
"Good grannies! Just this one time, now mind you."
Papa started laughing as soon as I popped the hard candy balls into my mouth.
"You look just like a little fox squirrel toting two big hickory nuts!"
My mouth was so stretched I couldn't answer a word. I could move my tongue, but not my lips. And I wanted to tell Papa the candy tasted so much like lemonade that I didn't mind my cheeks being funny as a squirrel's.
"Want to do a little dusting for me now?"
"The feather duster's right over yonder in the corner, hanging on a nail. See it?"
"Start up there at the front window, hon. And while you do that, I'm gonna be back in the back straightening up the sacks of oats and cow feed."
I began brushing up and down on the window panes. A feather broke off the side of the duster and fluttered to the floor. I stooped to pick it up, but I didn't know what to do with it, so I just put it on the windowsill. Then, I looked out the window—down toward Mister Hansen's gin, on past Mister Goode's grist mill, and up the road toward home.
"Pa—" I had to grab both candy balls out of my mouth. "Papa, yonder comes somebody riding on a little bitty mule with a dog following him."
Papa came over and looked out between the window bars.
"That's Ned Roberts, Bandershanks. I don't reckon you know him. He lives over across the creek on Mister Ward Lawson's place. Or I should say the old Crawford home-place. Ward's just renting it. And that's not a little mule Ned's riding. That's a jack, a donkey. Some folks would call it a 'jackass.' But you don't say that, Bandershanks. It don't sound pretty."
We watched Ned and his donkey and the bulged-out dog come on up the slope. It took them a long time. They stopped at the edge of the porch, where Ned tied the fuzzy, slow-walking donkey to one corner of Jake's hitching rail, but he was careful not to let the donkey stand close to Jake. A good thing, Papa said, for Jake could, and would, kick him.
"How come he's got that old wrinkled Irish 'tater sticking on the spout of his can, Papa?"
"To keep his oil from sloshing out when he starts home."
The dog clambered up the steps behind Ned and followed him inside. As soon as she could spread herself out in the middle of the floor, she took a long, deep breath and closed her eyes.