“How many paws you got there?” Uncle Toll asked. I said: “Three,” and Uncle Toll said he reckoned we ought to eat one apiece, saving the greenest for Uncle Jolly. “The greenest will be the keepingest,” he said.

I picked the smallest, and the tender skin came half off in my hand, the sticky juice oozing out of the yellow flesh. Uncle Toll popped it into his mouth, blowing the big seeds over the animal’s bony head.

“I know a feller’s name puts me in mind o’ pawpaws,” I said. “Hit’s Fruit Corbitt.”

“Hain’t you eating one?” Uncle Toll asked.

“I’d be nigh ashamed to take Uncle Jolly just one paw,” I said. “One just calls for another. If’n I got started, it would take a bushel to dull the edge on my tongue. Anyhow, I like ‘em better when they’ve had a touch o’ frost.”

“Hain’t no use taking that sorry Jolly a grain o’ nothing,” Uncle Toll said. “I figure he gets along pearter on jail cooking than anything else. He’s et a-plenty. Two years he got in the state pen for dinny-miting Pate Horn’s mill dam, and after he’d been shet up nine months they give him a parole. Now he’s fit and cracked two o’ Les Honeycutt’s rib bones, and them Honeycutts might make a sight o’ trouble. It’s not beyond thinking they’ll fotch him back to Frankfort.”

“Uncle Jolly fit him fair,” I said. “I heard Les cut the saddle off his nag. No man a-living would a-tuck that.”

Uncle Toll drew the reins tight in his hands and we set off faster down the crusty road.

“Jolly was sparking Les’s sweetheart,” Uncle Toll said, his words louder and a little edgy. “Trying to make up to Bowlegs Sawyers’s daughter, Tina. I don’t lay a blame on Les. They’s a lot o’ things bigger’n eyes and ears you never seed nor heard tell of.”

We went on, not speaking until the wheel-deepened road crawled over the ridge into the head of Troublesome Creek. We stopped where the waters drained out of a bog, spring-clear and cold. Uncle Toll got off the horse-mule and let him drink, and I slid to the ground. Bully drank his fill. Uncle Toll tied him to the muscled limb of a hornbeam, and we scooped water in our hats.

“You can set in the saddle a spell,” Uncle Toll said, when we were ready to go. He swung me up, pulling himself behind, and we went down the trace of waters into the valley. The horse-mule swung his head nervously, crowding against the ditch growth. Uncle Toll kept reaching for the reins, jerking him back into the road.