“Sassin’ ‘em ‘back!’ Why for did you do that?”

“Well, it seemed about right,” I said. “A fella sasses you, why you just pay him off by sassin’ back.”

Ken sort of drew his mouth in, and shook his head. He asked Buck if he’d ever heard such a thing in his life, and Buck said he purely hadn’t. Not in all his borned days.

“I’ll tell you what you got to do, Nick,” Ken said. “No, sir, I’ll show you what to do. You just stand up and turn your back to me, an’ I’ll give you an ill-usstrated lesson.”

I did what he told me to. He got up out of his chair, and hauled off and kicked me. He kicked me so hard that I went plumb out the door and half-ways across the hall.

“Now, you come back in here,” he said, crocking a finger at me. “You just sit down there like you was, so’s I can ask you some questions.”

I said I guessed I’d better stand up for a minute, and he said all right, have my own way about it. “You know why I kicked you, Nick?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess you probably had a good reason. You were trying to teach me something.”

“Right! So here’s what I want to ask you. Say a fella kicks you in the ass like I just did,why what do you do about it?”

“I don’t rightly know,” I said. “No one ever kicked me in the ass before, saving my daddy, God rest his soul, and there wasn’t much I could do about it with him.”

“But suppose someone did. Let’s just say we got a hypocritical case where someone kicks you in the ass. What would you do about it?”

“Well,” I said. “I guess I’d kick him in the ass. I guess that’d be about right.”

“Turn around,” Ken said. “You turn right back around again. You ain’t learned your lesson yet.”

“Well, looky,” I said. “Maybe if you could just explain a little more—”

“You turnin’ ongrateful?” Ken frowned. “You tryin’ to give orders to a fella when he’s trying to help you?”

“No, no, I ain’t trying to do that,” I said. “But—”

“Well, I should hope not! Now, you just turn around like I told you to.”

I turned my back to him again; there just wasn’t anything else I could do, it looked like. He and Buck both got up, and they both kicked me at the same time.

They kicked me so hard that I went practically straight up instead of forward. I came down kind of crooked on my left arm, and it hurt so bad that I almost forgot who I was for a moment.

I picked myself up, trying to rub my ass and my arm at the same time. Which just can’t be done, in case you’re thinking about doing it. I sat down, sore as I was, because I was just too dizzy to stand.