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“you want to look at them tahrs?”
    “I reckon we ort,” Uncle Sagamore says. “We sure don’t want to have a blowout, like happened to Mr. McClanahan.” Then he peered at Pop again. “You sure you’re all right? You look sort of caterwampus.”
    “Can’t you straighten your back?” Curly asked. He was shoving the scattered coke bottles back in a corner with his foot. “I sure am sorry—”
    “Hell, I’m all right, I tell you,” Pop says. He rared up and got his back almost straight, but it wouldn’t stay. “Just a little kink in my back. It’ll be all right in a minute. Let’s look at them tahrs.”
    “Uh—sure,” Curly says. He got the tires down off the rack and brought them out in the driveway, but he seemed to have kind of lost interest in it. He kept watching Pop out of the corners of his eyes.
    “Well sir,” Uncle Sagamore says, running his hand along the treads, “ain’t they beauties, Sam? Sure look like a bargain.”
    “Man’d never go wrong with them tahrs,” Pop says. He had bent over to look at them, but when he went to straighten up he had to push with his hands against his legs. He was still tilted, and I hoped he wasn’t hurt bad. “But don’t forget,” he told Uncle Sagamore. “I pay part.”
    Then Uncle Sagamore pursed up his lips like he was thinking. “You know,” he says, “I almost disremembered—”
    Curly had been watching Pop. Now he turned and looked at Uncle Sagamore.
    “What’s that?” Pop asked.
    “Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says. “We don’t want to be late. That lawyer said to be in his office at eleven. Course, we could jest pay for the tahrs now—”
    Curly pulled out a handkerchief and begin to mop his face. “Law—lawyer?” he says.
    I happened to look at Murph then, and he was watching the whole thing, just fascinated. So was Miss Malone. Then Murph started to choke on his cigarette, and bent over with a bad spell of coughing.
    “You say lawyer?” Curly asked again.
    Uncle Sagamore didn’t hear him. He was scratching his jaw and studying about the tires. “We could do her that way, Sam,” he says. “Pay for ’em now, and have ’em put on when we start home—”
    Curly got a kind of sick grin on his face, and says, “Sure. Any way you men want to work it out. Service is our motto. You say you’re goin’ in to town to see a lawyer?”
    “Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says. “It ain’t nothin’ important. We jest got to be a witness in one of them durn lawsuits. We better get started, Sam.”
    “Lawsuit?” Curly asked. He seemed to have forgot about the tires.
    “Oh, it don’t amount to a hill of beans,” Uncle Sagamore says. “It’s just my wife’s Cousin Elmo. He broke his arm on the Johnson-bar of a fresno, workin’ on the road, and this tom-fool lawyer, this Benny Scofield, got hold of it and wants to raise a big ruckus. Goin’ to sue the county for five thousand dollars. Or was it eight thousand, Sam?”
    “I don’t rightly remember,” Pop says. “But it was somethin’ like that.” He pushed his back up straight again, but it still wouldn’t stay. Curly stared at him. His face was real pale, and sweat was breaking out all over it.
    He licked his lips. “It—it’s a little better now, ain’t it?” he asked Pop.
    “Oh, sure,” Pop says. “Nothin’ but a little catch. Be all right in a minute. It’s all my own dumb fault anyhow—anybody that’d fall over a case of coke bottles lyin’ there on the floor right in plain sight—”
    Uncle Sagamore took out his purse and unsnapped the catch. “We got to pay for them tahrs, Sam, and get started. Tell you what. Likely that lawyer’ll have a sofa or somethin’ where you can stretch out flat for a few minutes. That’ll straighten you out.”
    Well, it was the funniest thing about Curly then. He still had this silly, sick grin on his face, but he just straightened right up and clapped Uncle Sagamore on the back. “Men,” he says. “I’m goin’ to set those