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worth. Every once in a while he would sort of leap off the ground when she giggled the loudest. She had taken off her shoes and stockings, because I could see them in a heap on the porch.
    Mrs. Weatherbee was not old like the other married women, because she had been going to high school in town when she got married that spring, and she had been a grass widow for only three or four months. She lay there on the porch squirming on her back, kicking her feet over the edge, and screaming and giggling like she was going to die if my old man didn’t stop tickling her with the chicken feather. Every once in a while she would laugh as loud as she could, and that made everything funnier than ever, because when she did that my old man would leap up into the air like a kangaroo.
    I had forgotten all about Ma, because I was so busy listening to Mrs. Weatherbee and watching my old man, but just then I looked across the yard and saw Ma coming. She made straight for the porch where they were.
    Everything happened so fast from then on that it was hard to follow what was taking place. The first thing I knew after that was when Ma grabbed my old man by the hair on his head and slung him backward, clear off his feet. Then she grabbed one of Mrs. Weatherbee’s bare feet and bit it as hard as she could. Mrs. Weatherbee let out a scream that must have been heard all the way to Sycamore.
    Mrs. Weatherbee sat up then, and Ma grabbed at her, getting a good grip on the neck of her calico dress. It ripped away from her just like a piece of loose wallpaper. Mrs. Weatherbee screamed again when she saw her dress go.
    By that time Ma had turned on my old man. He was sitting on the ground, too scared to move an inch.
    “What do you mean by this, Morris Stroup!” she yelled at him.
    “Why, Martha, I only just came out here to do a good deed for a poor widow woman,” he said, looking up at Ma the way he does when he’s scared. “Her garden sass needed cultivating, and so I just hitched up Ida and came out here to plow it a little for her.”
    Ma whirled around and grabbed at Mrs. Weatherbee again. This time the only way she could get a grip on Mrs. Weatherbee was to clutch her by the hair.
    “I reckon, Morris Stroup,” Ma said, turning her head and looking down at my old man, “that tickling a grass widow’s toes with a chicken feather makes the garden sass grow better!”
    “Now, Martha,” he said, sliding backward on the ground away from her, “I didn’t think of it that way at all. I just wanted to do the widow woman a kindly deed when I saw her sass growing weedy.”
    “Shut up, Morris Stroup!” Ma said. “The next thing you’ll be doing will be putting the blame on Ida.”
    “Now, Martha,” my old man said, sliding away some more on the seat of his pants, “that ain’t no way to look at things. She’s a poor widow woman.”
    “I’ll look at it the way I please,” Ma said, stamping her foot. “I have to go out and strip the leaves off milk weeds for enough food to keep body and soul together while you go around the country with a mule and plow cultivating grass widows’ gardens. Not to mention tickling their bare toes with chicken feathers, besides. That’s a pretty howdy-do!”
    My old man opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something, but Ma turned Mrs. Weatherbee loose and grabbed him by his overall straps before he could speak a single word. Then she led him at a fast pace to the garden post where Ida was tied up. She took Ida by the bridle with one hand, still pulling my old man with the other, and started across the cotton field toward home. Ida knew something was wrong, because she trotted to keep up with Ma without being told to.
    I raced down the lane to the creek, and hurried home by the short cut. I got there only a minute ahead of them.
    When Ma came into our backyard leading Ida and my old man, I couldn’t keep from snickering a little at the way both of them looked. Ida looked every bit as sheepish as