Jace Haggin sat atop a slate pile yon side of the tipple. He was whittling a pretty with a barlow jack. He saw me coming and hopped into the road, folding the knife, and beginning to stroke the knotched stick of a fly-jig. The wooden blade spun. It became a wheel. It hummed like a wasper.

“They’s a rooster fight in the birch draw,” he said. “I seed fellers set off. Us go.”

I shook my head.

“I’ll give you my fly-jigger,” he said. He held it between his hands. The sleeves of his three shirts were unbuttoned, flaring at the wrists.

“I be not to go.”

“I double-niggle dare you.”

I shook my head, and walked on. I walked to the creek. The creek road went east and north toward Darb Sorrels’s house, knuckled like a finger, pointing.

I stood by Darb’s lot fence. No one seemed about. The lot was empty. A spout of water poured into an iron pot by the gate, spilling over the rusty lip. A sow grunted in a pen. Something champed teeth in a stable. A beast blew sleepily through its nose.

I horned my hands. “Mule. Mule. Muley.”

The champing ceased.

“Mule-o.”

A clothy rustle came near. It was behind me. I whirled. Darb Sorrels’s wife was watching, her head deep in a splint bonnet.

“I come to ride the little mules,” I said.

The woman peered out of the bonnet. “They’ve been tuck away.”

“Gone?”

“Old, and blind, and puny. A sight o’ feed it tuck, and times are getting hard. They’d a need to be put out o’ misery.”

“Gone?”

“Gone to dirt.”

WE were eating supper and playing riddles around the far room hearth when Darb Sorrels came. We looked into his face and saw the worry there, and the dolesome cast of his eyes. A place was made for him by the fire, the rocking chair dragged forward. The rocker was the largest chair we owned. “Jist drapped in a minute,” he said. He stood, holding hands to the fire. They were of a size to cover two men’s faces. The nails were like scarifiers.

Darb refused to eat. Father and Mother pushed their plates aside. “Come to borrow a chunk o’ fire?” Father asked. He was a grain uneasy. “Set and rest your bones. These chaps have got me stumped on a spelling-riddle. I need help.”

“I’m bound to be a-going,” Darb complained, but he sat down. He wedged into the rocking chair. It creaked under his great body. The rockers bent, hard drawn. The wooden arms were tight against his hips. He watched Fletch empty his plate, then eat leavings in Mother’s. She had barely tasted the food. Fletch ate left-handed, his right thrust in a pocket. Old Bartow was licking Father’s plate. Euly made a sign at Fletch, being ashamed of his manners.

“Little man,” Darb said, “how’s your paw healing?”