“Man was rollin’ barrels up a board to a wagon and every time he got a barrel half-way up the board his horses would start a-movin’ off an’ he’d jus’ have to drop that barrel an’ run to their heads. I ask him, ‘Please, sir, don’t you want me to hold ’em for you?’ An’ he ’lowed he did. An’ I say, ‘How much you goin’ to give me, sir?’ And he say if I hold ’em till he got his wagon loaded he’d give me a quarter. ’Twan’t no time till he had the barrels on an’ I had his ol’ quarter in my jeans. Then I see a funny little man with gold rings in his ears sittin’ on a step sellin’ candy, an’ funny twisty pieces of bread an’ apples, an’ things. An’ I say to him, ‘How much are your apples, Boss?’ An’ he say, ‘They’re two for five cents.’ ‘Huh,’ I say, ‘they give ’em poor old apples away where I come from.’ An’ he want to know where was I come from, an’ I tell him, an’ we had a right sociable time a-talkin’ an’ all, an’ pretty soon he find a apple had a rotten spot on it an’ give it to me. An’ after a while I say, ‘Boss, what you-all call them funny, curly things you got on that stick?’ An’ he ’lows they’s--they’s----” June wrinkled his forehead until it had almost as many corrugations as a washboard--“I reckon I forget what he call them, Mas’ Wayne.” “What were they like, June?” “Well, sir, they was bow-knots made of bread, an’ they tasted mighty scrumptious. Seems like they was called ‘pistols’ or somethin’.” “Pretzels, June?” “That’s it! Pretzels! You know them things, Mas’ Wayne?” Wayne shook his head. “Well, sir, they’s mighty good eatin’.” “Did he give you one?” asked Wayne smiling. “Yes, sir, he surely did. I say I ain’ never eat one an’ he say if I have a penny I could have one. ‘Go long, Mister Man,’ I say, ‘I ain’ got no penny. How come you ’spects I got all that money?’ An’ he laugh an’ say, ‘Well, maybe I give you one, Black Boy, if you don’ tell someone elses.’ He had funny way of talkin’, that man. So I say I won’t ever tell----” “But you have told,” laughed Wayne. June rolled his eyes. “That’s so! I plumb forget!” “Was that all the lunch you had?” asked Wayne. June nodded. “Was all I wanted,” he declared stoutly. “Apples is powerful fillin’ fruit, Mas’ Wayne. What-all did you have?” Wayne told him and June pretended to think very little of it. “That ain’ white man’s food,” he declared. “Old stewed-up beef ain’ fit rations for you. No, sir, ’tain’! Don’t you go insultin’ your stomach like that no more, Mas’ Wayne, ’cause if you do you’re goin’ to be sick an’ me an’ Sam’ll have to nurse you. Now you tell me what-all did you do, please.” Wayne soon told him and June shook his head and made sympathetic noises in his throat during the brief recital. “Don’t you mind ’em, Mas’ Wayne,” he said when the other had finished. “Somebody’s goin’ to be powerful glad to give you a job tomorrow. You wait an’ see if they ain’.”