Right after I got up out of my seat to go see how much rat poison we had, somebody knocked on my door. My first thought was that it was that damn Yvonne, coming to see me for the same reason Milton had. I snatched the door open so fast, I almost pulled it off the hinges. It was Sadie.

“Odell, I’m sorry to bother you,” she said in a edgy tone. She started wringing her hands and blinking like a owl. I treated my employees with respect, but my presence still made them nervous from time to time. I was firm and gracious, but I never let them forget who was boss. When Mac and Millie was running the store, they’d let Buddy and Sadie, and every stock boy they hired, walk all over them. They had never disciplined them for being late, lazy, or uppity. I’d never had no problems like that. Buddie and Sadie gossiped way too much. I didn’t know any colored folks in Branson who didn’t run off at the mouth, so I overlooked that. If I kept them happy, I knew they’d keep me happy. “I . . . I came to ask you if it was all right to let Earl have another pig foot?”

“Who the hell is Earl?” I boomed.

“Earl Griswald, the stock boy you hired last month.”

I had hired so many stock boys since I took over, I couldn’t keep up with their names. They came and went for one reason or another. Usually it was because they couldn’t get to work on time, or we’d caught them stealing merchandise. “Oh,” I said in a gentle tone.

“Earl is such a sweet boy. He was so anxious to get here this morning, he forgot to bring a sandwich from home like he been doing.” I was glad to see that Sadie was more at ease now.

“Let him have all the pig feet he can eat. If he want to make a sandwich, give him a couple of them hoecakes you brung from home, and a bottle of RC Cola to wash it all down with.”

“Why, thank you, Odell. Earl will be so pleased.” Sadie’s face lit up like a firefly. “I’ll let you get back to work now.”

I waited until she had returned to her workstation before I went to the aisle a few feet away where we kept the pest control products. I glanced around to make sure nobody was lurking about, the way Buddy had done when I’d took the kerosene, which I had never used to burn weeds in Daddy’s backyard. I was going to keep it on hand just in case he did ask me to do that.