“Why? They aint got no more say-so than I do. Why do I want to waste a Sunday afternoon talking about some far off thing that dont have nothing to do with me?”

“Hit will expand your mind,” I said. “Hit’s like an education of itself, the way we talk. And Ermel supplies the beer and liquor free.”

“I dont need no free beer and liquor offn Ermel. I can buy my own.”

We ate another slice of pie and I helped fetch jugs of water from the pump. The water was thick and brown.

“I hope you boil this,” I said.

Talcott shrugged. “Sure. Skim that stuff offn the top. Looks like nigger piss, dont it? Hit’s either this or rainwater with wiggletails in it. Pricie likes the rainwater but I never could abide a damn bug.”

“Aint nothing wrong with rainwater,” I said. “We got a good well at Annadel, but we catch rainwater too.”

“You have it,” he said.

I couldn’t get nothing else out of him on any subject. Ever since Rondal left, it was like he’d closed himself off behind a wall of stubborn. His daddy had moved to Number Six Davidson so Kerwin could go to the high school. I couldn’t figure why Lytton Davidson would let them in up there, knowing that Rondal was theirn. But Doc said it would give them a way to keep up with Rondal. He couldn’t visit his family without Davidson knowing it.

When the Big War commenced, we couldn’t wait to sink our teeth into it at the club meeting. I took a hard time because I’d been predicting they’d be no war.

“They’s socialists in all them countries,” I’d said. “Hit’s international. A workin man in England aint goin to fight a workin man in Germany. Not for some capitalists, he aint.”

Even Doc disagreed with me on that.

“People is people,” he said. “We all got the devil in us.”

“Hit’s them Balkans got their dander up,” Isom declared. “They got tired of bein bossed around by them Austrians.”

“Naw,” said Doc Booker. “The real reason they fightin this war is over all them colonies in Africa. The German imperialists wants what the British imperialists has got.”

“Oh, hell,” said Isom. “What do them Croatians and Serbians know about Africa? They started it.”

“And we’ll finish it,” Ermel declared. “Wait and see. They’ll be American boys over there before this is all over.”

“Your man Woodrow says not,” I teased him.

“He aint my man just because he’s a Democrat. He’d need ten sets of balls before he could stand alongside William Jennings Bryan.”

Sam Gore went to the bar to fetch some liquor.

“What would ole Abe say to this?” Isom asked.

“He’d say, ‘America, the enemy is within.’” Sam raised a glass.

Behind him the door exploded and a score of men with drawn pistols poured into the room.

“Hands up! You’re under arrest!”

“What the hell?” Ermel stood up.