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they paid off the store. But before Vergil could get in to town to buy another secondhand Buick with it, Viola sneaked off to the hospital an’ had about four hundred dollars worth of new stuff takened out on the credit. Mostly female stuff I reckon; she’d never used it much because she ain’t stopped talkin’ long enough since they got married for Vergil to get her in the family way. I don’t know why it is, but no matter how hard up a man is he ain’t goin’ to do his best with a woman that’s talkin’ five Quarts to the gallon about her goddam gallstone.
    “But, anyhow, I reckon Cousin Viola really shot the wad. Four hundred dollars worth of stuff is a lot, especially since they already got you open an’ you’re gettin’ wholesale rates after they write off the first slice or two. So if Vergil never made another good crop, she was set for life. It wasn’t that she talked any less, but just that she had more to talk about now an’ could kind of spread out over more ground. That’s the reason Bessie’s been stayin’ three weeks lately, Viola don’t hardly have to start repeatin’ herself in less than that.”
    Uncle Sagamore stopped again. You could see now that there was really something bothering Booger and Otis. Their eyes was big and kind of staring, like they hurt somewhere, and their faces was white as chalk, with big drops of sweat oozing out on their foreheads.
    Uncle Sagamore looked round at Pop. “Well sir, by golly, I get to ramblin’ on like this, looks like I never know when to stop. I just remembered Billy asked me something while ago, an’ I never did take time to answer him. What was it, now?”
    Well, I couldn’t remember anything like that, but I was beginning to learn about Uncle Sagamore. He wasn’t talking to me. He’d asked Pop, so I stayed shut up. That was safest.
    “Hmmmmm,” Pop says. “He asked you what something was, as I recall.”
    Uncle Sagamore nodded. “Sure. I recollect now. He wanted to know what croton oil was. Why you suppose he’d ask a fool thing—”
    Booger and Otis stared at him with their eyes about to pop out.
    “Croton oil?” Booger says.
    “Croton oil?” Otis says, in just the same way.
    “Kids can ask some of the damnedest questions,” Uncle Sagamore went on. “Without no reason at all.”
    He pulled a big red handkerchief out of his overall pocket and started to mop the bald spot on his head. Some kind of black powder fell out of it. He looked at it, sort of puzzled.
    “Now, how in the hell did black pepper get in my pocket?” he asked, like he was talking to hisself. “Oh, I recollect now. I spilled some when I was gettin’ breakfast. Atchooooo!”
    Some of it got in my nose and I sneezed. Then Pop sneezed. And Uncle Sagamore sneezed again.
    But Otis and Booger didn’t sneeze. It was a little peculiar, the way they acted. Their eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, with that staring sort of horror in them, and they pressed fingers under their noses and breathed in real slow through their mouths. Then they both got full of air and it seemed like they couldn’t breathe out. They clamped hands over their faces and tried to let the air escape a little at a time, kind of whining down in their throats.
    One of ‘em would say, “A-ah-ah—” like he was about to sneeze, and he would clamp his mouth and nose shut with both hands and begin to turn purple in the face, with his eyes watering and sweat running down his forehead. It would pass, and he would let a little air out, and then the other one would start to go “A-ah-ah—” and he’d go through the same thing.
    Uncle Sagamore sneezed again. “Damn that pepper, anyhow,” he says, and waved his handkerchief at it. It didn’t do much good except to stir up what had already settled on the floor.
    Booger and Otis grabbed their faces harder.
    Uncle Sagamore shifted his tobacco into the other side of his face. “Now, where was I?” he says. “Oh, yes. About them privies. Well,