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told me that she was such a pretty little girl that they used her picture on Sunshine bread as Little Miss Sunshine. I don’t believe it. Her mother is famous because she found a man’s leg that washed up on the beach. They knew it was a man’s leg because it had a golf shoe on it. Nobody knew who it belonged to. It could have come from Cuba even. Some people have all the luck.
    Kay Bob Benson’s name is in Mrs. Dot’s column every week because her mother is Mrs. Dot’s best friend. I wish Momma would get friendly with Mrs. Dot. Also, Kay Bob said I could never be a model because I have a chipped tooth. Who cares?
    We don’t open our store until next Saturday, but in the meantime. Daddy and I are exploring the territory and meeting people.
    We drove six miles up the road to the Bon Secour River. It is surrounded by huge trees with Spanish moss hanging on them all the way to the ground. People call it the singing river because it is famous for a strange music that is heard coming from beneath the water. The Indians say the music is the ghost of dead Indians singing. Daddy likes to go there to fish and eat oysters. The Bon Secour is where the best oysters in the world come from and Daddy knows a man that sells him a croker sack full for a quarter. Daddy eats them raw. Ugh! I don’t know why he does it. He never finds any pearls. I row the boat while Daddy fishes. Momma says it looks bad for a little girl to be rowing a grown man up and down the river, but I’m a very good rower. The man who rents us our boat, Mr. Charles Wentzel, holds the record for catching a speckled trout that was one yard long.
    Mr. Wentzel lives across the street from some people called the Caldwells. The Caldwells are what Daddy calls Bible thumpers, crazy over religion. We Harpers are not at all religious, a fact my daddy is proud of and brags about. He claims that he lost his faith behind the Rahoma Baptist Church when he was eleven. As far as Momma goes, she believes in God, but church is such a sore spot with Daddy that she doesn’t push it. I think I have some Methodist blood on my mother’s side. I asked Daddy about it, but he said I didn’t have to believe in God if I didn’t want to.
    Daddy and I tried to avoid the Caldwells, but they have a daughter who is always sitting on the front porch and she looks so happy to see us that we wave at her. Their house is far back in the woods, so she never gets to meet many people. She must have asked Mr. Wentzel my name because one day when Daddy and I got there, she smiled right at me and said, “Hey, Fay, how are you today?”
    I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Fine,” and kept walking.
    Mr. Wentzel said, “I think she wants you to go over there and talk to her. She’s a crippled girl and can’t come over here.” I wasscared to go up on that porch, but Daddy made me.
    I was surprised at how pretty she was, up close. I had never talked to a crippled person before, so I stood behind Daddy, who answered all her questions about me—how old I was, what grade I was in and all that stuff. Daddy talked to her for a long time. Her name is Betty and she’s been crippled all her life. She is eighteen years old.
    She doesn’t look like what I thought a crippled girl would look like. Daddy is very upset over her and one time tried to talk to her mother and daddy about her. Her mother wears her gray hair in tiny waves and she has ugly gold-framed glasses and an old, ugly, flowered housedress. She never uses any makeup and looks like a prune. My mother wears Merle Norman makeup every day of her life, makeup base, rouge, powder, the whole thing, even when she’s staying home.
    Mr. Caldwell always has on khaki work clothes and is the tallest man I’ve ever seen, and they are both real country. Daddy told Mr. Caldwell he should take Betty to see some good doctors to help her walk. Mr. Caldwell got real funny and started saying how it was evil to tamper with God’s will, that her affliction