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giving in a little, I started talking a hundred miles a minute.
    “He said it was all right with him, Mama,” I said. “There’s not much to do around the farm right now—just planting—and he said that he could take care of that.”
    Handing the trap back to me, Mama sighed and said, “Well, between your father and your grandpa, it looks like I can’t say ‘No.’ But, Jay Berry, there’s one thing I want understood. You are not going to those bottoms, monkey hunting, unless your father is close by in the fields. If something did happen to you, maybe between him and Rowdy, we could at least find your body.”
    Mama could take a little bit of something like that and make it sound like the funeral had already started. She was good at things like that.
    “Mama,” I said, very seriously, “do all mamas worry like you do? I’m fourteen years old, almost a grown man, and you’ve been worrying about me ever since I was born. It makes me feel no bigger than a jumped-up minute.”
    Mama smiled and said, “I’m pretty sure that all mothers worry about their boys. Right now you’re a little too young to understand, but someday you’ll be married and probably have a boy of your own; then, I think you will understand.”
    “Oh, no, I won’t, Mama,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll never get married. I can’t understand women.”
    Mama got kind of mad when I said that.
    “Don’t be silly,” she snapped. “That wasn’t a very nice thing to say. Now, you go get that straw. I want to set those hens.”
    Feeling as good as if I had just waded the Mississippi River, I breathed a sigh of relief and lit out for the barn to get some straw.
    Besides Sally Gooden, there was one other thing we had around our farm that I thought we could surely do without—that was setting hens. Mama and Daisy could do anything in the world with the hateful old things, but I couldn’t. Every time I got closeto one of the cranky old sisters, she puffed up ten times bigger than she actually was and started squawking and pecking. By the time we had the old gals taken care of, my hands were hurting all over.
    Mama and I were back in the house and I was rubbing some Raleigh salve on my henpecked hands when I thought of my little sister.
    “Mama, where’s Daisy?” I asked. “I want to tell her about the monkeys.”
    “I think she’s up in her playhouse,” Mama said. “I saw her going up the trail a while ago.”
    Taking the sack of candy that Grandpa had given me, I started up to Daisy’s playhouse. I was almost there when I heard her laughing and talking. Leaving the trail, I eased around and peeked through the bushes to see what was going on. A small sunbeam had bored its way down through the overhead green, and the playhouse was bathed in a warm radiant glow.
    Daisy was sitting on the ground with her back against the trunk of the huge red oak. Her crutch was lying beside her. As usual, her little friends were all around. Chipmunks were scampering and birds were singing. A churring squirrel was perched on an arm of the cross. His flicking tail was keeping perfect time to the music of the hills. A big fat bunny was curled up in Daisy’s lap just as though he belonged there.
    As I watched, a tiny little wren dropped down from the branches of the red oak and lit on Daisy’s crippled leg. She smiled and started cooing to it. Everything looked so peaceful and happy that I hated to disturb them. Just before stepping out of the bushes, I coughed to let them know I was coming.
    The instant I showed my face, you’d have thought a booger man had shown up. The bunny hopped and the squirrel jumped. The birds flew and the chipmunks faded into the ground. It always made me mad when the silly things did that. I would never haveharmed one of Daisy’s little friends. Old Rowdy wouldn’t have hurt any of them either, and that was saying something.
    Feeling hurt all over but letting on that I hadn’t noticed anything, I handed the sack of