Inside, the storekeeper reached under the counter and produced a bottle of whisky and two thick-bottomed glasses. Harry leaned over an urn of pickles. Next to him, Harold stood on tiptoes, looking with wrinkled brows and through shaggy hair in the direction of a jar of chocolate drops on a low shelf. “Say, Thomason, give me five cents’ worth of them, will you?” Didn’t say nothing to him about it so nobody could hold me to it, but I made the promise to myself. That’s enough.

Thomason took up the ladle, weighed them out—there were only about ten—and put them in a bag. Harry motioned Thomason to give them to the boy, who took them in shocked delight, too surprised to say anything. He began to eat them, closing and reopening the bag after each drop, as if fresh air would ruin them. Harry turned back to the storekeeper: “Wonder what he wants all that salt for?”

Thomason poured two drinks and shrugged. “Damned if I know. Must be good for his farm, else he wouldn’t-a ordered it.”

Harold looked up from his candy. “Papa, that Tucker, the good nigger, you talking about?” Harry felt the boy tugging at the loops of his pants.

Thomason leaned over the counter and spoke down to the boy. “Who told you he’s a good nigger, boy? He’s evil a nigger as you’d want to know.”

Harry felt the boy’s face pressing his leg. He looked down and found him peering up and out at him shyly. They both knew what had happened: he had been told not to use nigger. And too, Harry and his wife did not want him to pick up stray opinions, good or bad, about anything, wanted to know exactly where he learned things. Harry could hear his wife already: “You let that boy stand there with all your filthy-mouthed friends; no wonder he comes in here with crazy ideas.”

“Who told you Tucker’s a good Negro, Harold?”

“Nobody.” He spoke into Harry’s leg. “I just—” He stopped. Harry turned back to Thomason.

“What about another drink?” He slapped the counter so it sounded as if he were driving nails with a hammer.

“Why sure, coming up.” He grasped the neck of the bottle. “But we got to watch for my wife. She always seems to show up—”

Harry raised his hand and pressed back the words. “Harold, go watch for Missus Thomason and say ‘Hello’ when she comes.” He smiled at Thomason. “Real loud.”

The boy went and sat on the floor, pressing his nose against the bottom of the kick-bulged screening. The men clicked full glasses and delivered toasts, raised the liquor to their lips and tossed it off.

“Papa?”

Thomason swept the glasses and the bottle off the counter and placed them quickly but clumsily underneath. Both men stood straight and wiped their mouths.

“Papa, Mister Harper’s coming.”