I remember oncet the three of us eased off from school and went fishing in Cross Creek. In them days the bream in the Creek was right smart plentiful. Jim looked over at Luty’s string of bream and he said, “You putting my bream on your string.”

Luty’s easy-going, most ways, as a hound dog at noon in August. He’s a little round feller with brown eyes, looked just the same then as now, mild and puppy-fied. And hard-headed, too, like them gentle dogs can be.

He said, “I ain’t not neither putting your bream on my string.”

Jim had one of his ornery fits on. Jim ain’t changed none, neither. Shingle-butted and holler-chested and a mouth like a sewed-up buttonhole and light blue eyes as mean as the book of Job.

He said, “I ain’t going to go fishing with nobody that puts my fish on his string.”

Now if Luty had of spoke humble one more time, Jim would likely have shut up. But that’s it. Neither one ain’t never waited for t’other to speak humble one more time. So what did Luty do? He takened Jim’s string of bream and he takened hissen and he turned them both upside down over the side of the rowboat and the bream all swum off to where they’d come from. Luty rolled up his little old raggedy breeches and he stepped outen the rowboat, waist deep, and he waded back to shore.

I’ll swear. The time I had getting them two together again. ’Twa’n’t ’til I’d saved up enough money from quilt-piecing and berry-picking to buy cartridges for the .22 rifle Uncle Dennis give me. All two of them boys was raring to shoot a .22, and that way I got them friendly, carrying them home together to shoot that rifle. My, I been patient with them scapers. I was one of them fool young uns was always getting bit separating hounds in a dog fight. I just couldn’t bear for Jim and Luty not to get along. Now and again I could put a mite of sense in one of them, and I never give up figuring the day’d come when I’d have them sociable. If either one had been constant to blame, I’d of fit like a wild-cat agin him. But it was first one and then t’other. And that’s the pair that growed up to try to own a mule together.