greased lightning with the banners waving for us."
"My Jim!" she said with emotion.
Lizz set the larded frying pan over the stove.
It sizzled, sputtered off grease. She dropped strips
of bacon onto it, and stepped back lest she be burned
by a flying speck of grease.
"Well, it looks like it might be a raw day," Jim
said.
Lizz took the bacon off, and set it on a plate on
the top ledge of tJ1e stove.
"How many eggs you want, Jim?
"'fwo."
"Y ou better take three. A man needs his belly
full when he's doing outside work like you are."
"We can't afford it, me eating three eggs a day.
That'll be taking food out of the mouths of you
and the kids."
"Our Papa is our money man. We got to do well
by him. And Jim, the Lord always provides for his
own," Lizz said, dropping three eggs into the fry-
Ing
pan.
"Lizz, on the way home to night, I better stop in
the drug store and get you some medicine," he said.
"K
0,
Jim, I can't take any. That would be flying
in the face of God. If God wants me to have another
child, He has His own good purposes, and He'll take
care of it."
"All right," Jim said helplessly, his hands drop-
ping to his sides in a despairing gesture.
He started setting the table for breakfast.
"Y ou sit down, Jim. I'll do that. You'll have
enough work to do on the wagon to day."
"It's nothing," Jim said, continuing to set the
table.
Lizz put eggs, bacon, and coffee before him. He
spooned sugar, and thick condensed milk from a
can into the coffee. He took a sweet bun from a bag
and spread oleomargerine on it. He began eating
like a famished man.
"I was hungry all right, Lizz," he said, his mouth
stuffed.
Lizz sat down with a cup of coffee. She snatched
a sweet roll from the bag. She bit into it. She made
a face, and her hand went to her jaw.
"Your teeth?" Jim asked sympathetically.
"Yes." Lizz said; she quickly drank coffee, rolling
the warm liquid around her aching tooth. "I can't
eat sweets. The sugar gets in my teeth."
"We'll have to try and see that you get to a
dentist real soon, and get your teeth fixed. Doctors
bills and everything else but necessities can wait for
that."
She smiled at him. Jim could see the cavities in
her mouth.
"I should have bit on the other side. Having so
many children seems to have made them soft, and
they get cavities easy because of it."
"Well, old woman, one thing we're going to see
to is that they get fixed."
18
"They're all right. It's nothing to worry about,
Jim", she said, picking the frosting off of her bun.
He silently finished his breakfast. The infant
squawked. Lizz went to it, and came back with the
baby suckling. Jim poured himself another cup of
coffee. He sipped it, and watched th.e baby at its
mother's breast. Wonderful! The way kids were
born, fed at their mother's breasts ,and grew up.
He was sure proud of his. But to have another
I
"Ah, isn't she the little sugar dumpling that knows
when to call her Mama if she's hungry. Isn't she?
Look at her, Jim
I
Isn't she her Mama's little sugar
cake
I
And she has a hole in her little tummy that
makes her all the time cry for Mama's milk, hasn't
she? She thinks her mother is a dairy farm, doesn't
her Mama's little apple pie?"
Jim grinned weakly. He watched with softening,
mellow eyes. He was glad he had kids. Damn glad,
even if they were so much trouble and expense.
"The little daughter is cute," he said.
"She's her Mama's darling," Lizz said.
Jim's eyes drifted away from Lizz and the in-
fant. He looked out the window. The sky above the
shack where the Negroes lived in back was gray
with the first touches of the dawn. Soon it would be
pink, and then, the sun would bust through it. It
was nice to watch the dawn coming, the sun busting
right square into a new day. It was nice, too, to wake
up and know that it was another day. You felt bet-
ter waking up fresh at the beginning of the day
than you did when you tumbled into bed at the end
of it. The morning of a new day made you feel that
something might happen to you, for you. He could
see red now beginning to spread through the gray-
ness and through the darkness hanging over from
the night. Soon the sun would be above the shack,
large and golden. Yes, it was nice to see another day
coming. But what could happen to him? ...
Still,
it was nice.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
He turned back, and listened while Lizz sang,
and he watched the infant, its lips firmly clasped
over it's mother's nipple.
"I'll be glad when we have our family raised,
J . "
1m.
"Then the boys will be able to work and bring
some money in. The old man and the old woman
will have a few comforts for themselves then," Jim
said.
"Yes, if they don't leave us when they grow up, .
the way my brother, Ned, ran off with Mildred.
She's so sick, and she's older than he is. I never
knew why he did it. Not ,of course, that she isn't
one of the finest women you would ever expect to
meet."
"Wel1, that's Ned's business, not ours."
"But let me catch one of mine turning stinker, and
running off to marry some girl when their mother
OCTOBER,
1936
