Uncle Jolly blew a stiff breath of wind out of his chest. His face loosened, and he grinned. “By grabbles, I hain’t too good to cut his fences. I hain’t too good, now.” His mouth opened, and he began to laugh. “I’d give a war pension to know who done it. I would. It’s a fact, I didn’t.” He glanced at me. “Go fotch the wire cutters, hanging next the harness on the corncrib wall.”

“Leave them be,” Grandma said. “Aus Coggins’s one being I got no pity for. They’s a curse on his land. I hear he’s got fields won’t even grow stickweeds.”

“Fotch ‘em,” Uncle Jolly repeated.

I ran to the barn and searched the corncrib. The rotting leather of Poppet’s harness rested on a peg. Mice fled the collar, having built a nest in the straw padding. Around the wall were trace lines, wire stretchers, post-hole diggers, and swingletrees. A de-horner hung with a nail in its mouth. But the wire cutters were nowhere to be found.

When I came back without the cutters, neither Uncle Jolly nor Grandma spoke of them. Uncle Jolly was telling about the bird he’d seen. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. “That flier’s throat was like a crook-neck gourd, hit’s head cocked one-sided. Legs long and thin, and stickweedy. A crane-bird, I reckon. Lost, and hunting its way back to where it come from.”

“The cutters are gone,” I said.

“Listen, child,” Grandma spoke impatiently.

“I run after till it flew beyond sight,” Uncle Jolly went on. “Then I come on them fellers riding down-creek. One on a jinny. Two on a mare, and her in a bearing way. Liable to drop a colt any time. A shame, and I spoke it. Mad through I was anyhow for the blame they brought, and I cussed all three to a fare-you-well.”

“I allus wanted me a colt,” I said. “I allus did.”

“I said to them dobbers: ‘Come your next trip, bring an eye witness to settle your lies. And tell Aus Coggins to stand clear, or I’ll give him something regular to grunt about. He’s already drawed more breath than’s his due.”

“I allus did long for a colt,” I said.

THE pawpaws got ripe in early October while Uncle Jolly laid out a two-week spell in the county jail for roughing Les Honeycutt at a box supper on Left Troublesome. Uncle Toll rode over to Hardin Town on Old Bully, taking the word Grandma sent. I went along, riding behind Uncle Toll, carrying three pawpaws in a poke. They were fat ones, black and rotten-ripe, smelling sweeter than a bubby bush. We reached the head of Big John Riggins Creek by noon. It made us hungry to smell the poke.