Let me tell you something else Mr. Aaron did one time. He had this old dog named Bobo, whose whole body was crooked from being run over so many times. Mr. Aaron fed him potato chips. He’d go out once a day and dump a bag of pigskins or something on the ground and then go back in. As children we’d all sit around in front of the store, on upended Coke cases and such, and wait for a dogfight to occur. This was in the days before pit bulls, when a dog could get his ass whipped and just go on home. One day Mr. Mavis Edwards, an old man who lived across the road, had been sitting out there with us. But then he went off to the post office to get his mail and left a whole pound of baloney on top of a Coke case. Bobo grabbed it. And was chomping on it when Mr. Mavis came back. Mr. Mavis had been in the war, too, the First World War. He carried a cane and wore a Fu Manchu of snuff spittle. Of course he was incensed. Went to whipping Bobo about the ears and head with his cane. But you could see that the dog was ready to kill for that comparatively juicy snack. I mean, after a steady diet of potato chips, he was eating the waxed paper along with the baloney. Mr. Aaron heard the commotion going on outside. Some other people were fixing flats. The bros who had pulled up beside the gas pumps were afraid Mr. Aaron would shoot them if they tried to pump their own. And we didn’t know but what Mr. Aaron might out with his 9MM and bum Mr. Mavis down. Mr. Mavis had sprayed everybody with snuff juice during his exhortations. Mr. Aaron came back to the door and thrust another paper sack at him. “Here!” he said to Mr. Mavis. Then he reared back and kicked the hell out of the dog.

Mr. Mavis took the new baloney and said, “Why, hell, Aaron.” He never darkened the door again.

One time I was up at the store after doing my tour in the service. He always had a soft spot in his heart for the men who toted the guns. I was going to town and asked him if he wanted me to bring him anything back and he said yes, whiskey. I bought it and returned. Miss Gladys came in, ostensibly to buy some flour, and fumblefucked around on the shelves for five minutes after she saw me sitting there. She left in a huff without making a purchase.

He came around there where I was and sat down beside me.

“Listen,” he said. “Don’t be like me. Get old and you won’t have nobody to take care of you.”

“Did you not ever want to get married?” I said.