“Mr. Kitchen,” she said to the bald top of a head on the other side of the counter, “do you sell rabbit’s foots?”

Mr. Kitchen’s hand scratched the bald top and he said no, but if he ever caught a jackrabbit he’d give her a foot for luck.

“I don’t want it for luck,” Marcia explained. “I want it to play Sin with like the Presbyterians do. I guess maybe I can make one.”

She could hardly wait to run home and make herself a rabbit’s foot out of cotton and string. She decided she would have to get the ink out of Papa’s desk while he was mowing the back lawn. Planning this treat, she saw Lena and Mary Evelyn marching primly around the corner, so she ran out, following them at a few paces, forgetting her vow.

“Tagtail,” said Mary Evelyn loudly without turning around.

“Pooh on you,” answered Marcia.

“Don’t pay any attention to her,” said Lena.

“She’ll never go to heaven and be an angel like us,” said Mary Evelyn, primly.

“I don’t care, then I’ll go to hell and play with all the little devils,” said Marcia fiercely. “I’d rather.”

This awed her elders into silence, though she could see them exchanging a look of shocked horror. Her own words had even frightened herself and she had a panicky feeling that the man in the balloon might have overheard.

“Let’s not let her play house with us,” said Mary Evelyn.

“I don’t care, I don’t care!” shrilly answered Marcia. “I don’t play baby games like house. I’m going to get me a rabbit’s foot and play Sin. Right now, too.”

The two other girls whispered together over this, clearly intrigued. Finally Lena stopped.

“All right, you can walk with us,” she said graciously. “We’ll play Sin, too. How do we do it?”

“Come on and I’ll show you!” Marcia jubilantly cried. If it had not been Sunday they would have run all the way home to start the game. It was too bad Mary Evelyn spilled ink on her dress, but if everybody was going to get spanked, Mary Evelyn might as well, too.

3

IN THE DOUBLE HOUSE on Fourth Street next to Friend’s Grocery Store, there was a dark hallway between the two apartments and a common staircase to the second floor. The Friends’ rooms were on the right side and the Willards’ on the left. The Friends’ baby had died but they still kept its bedroom upstairs with the Madonnas and infant Jesus pictures all over, and Mrs. Friend allowed the Willard children to look at them once in a while. But she got angry when Marcia asked if Jesus was real why the various pictures of him looked like different people. She asked, too, if they could play with the little Madonnas. After that, their mother told them to stay on their side of the hall. Sometimes Charlie Friend, a nephew who delivered groceries for Mr. Friend after high school, came over and walked down the banister in his stocking feet, waving his arms to balance himself, but when Marcia and Lena tried it, they fell downstairs. Mrs. Friend blamed Charlie for this. She said he was too big a boy to play with little girls because he always made them cry. Charlie got mad and Lena and Marcia were even madder, because Charlie swiped candy for them and penny sodas in six different flavors to dissolve in water.