Old white Dr. McDillors, beloved of all the Negroes in Stanton, came on Sunday morning, swabbed Sandy’s festering foot with iodine, bound it up, and gave him a bottle of green medicine to take, and by the middle of the week the boy was able to hobble about again without pain; but Hager continued to apply fat meat instead of following the doctor’s directions.

When Harriett didn’t come back, Sandy no longer slept on a pallet on the floor. He slept in the big bed with his grandma Hager, and the evenings that followed weren’t so jolly, with his young aunt off with the carnival, and Jimboy spending most of his time at the pool hall or else loafing on the station platform watching the trains come through⁠—and nobody playing music in the backyard.

They went to bed early these days, and after that eventful week of carnival and revival, a sore heel, and a missing Aunt Harriett, the muscles of Sandy’s little body often twitched and jerked in his sleep and he would awaken suddenly from dreaming that he heard sad raggy music playing while a woman shouted for Jesus in the Gospel tent, and a girl in red silk stockings cried because the switches were cutting her legs. Sometimes he would lie staring into the darkness a long time, while Aunt Hager lay snoring at his side. And sometimes in the next room, where Annjee and Jimboy were, he could hear the slow rhythmical creaking of the bedsprings and the low moans of his mother, which he already knew accompanied the grown-up embraces of bodily love. And sometimes through the window he could see the moonlight glinting on the tall, tassel-crowned stalks of corn in the garden. Perhaps he would toss and turn until he had awakened Aunt Hager and she would say drowsily: “What’s de matter with you, chile? I’ll put you back on de flo’ if you can’t be still!” Then he would go to sleep again, and before he knew it, the sun would be flooding the room with warm light, and the coffee would be boiling on the stove in the kitchen, and Annjee would have gone to work.

Summer days were long and drowsy for grownups, but for Sandy they were full of interest. In the mornings he helped Aunt Hager by feeding the chickens, bringing in the water for her washtubs, and filling the buckets from which they drank. He chopped wood, too, and piled it behind the kitchen-stove; then he would take the broom and sweep dust-clean the space around the pump and under the apple-tree where he played. Perhaps by that time Willie-Mae would come over or Buster would be there to shoot marbles. Or maybe his grandmother would send him to the store to get a pound of sugar or ten cents’ worth of meal for dinner, and on the way there was certain to be an adventure. Yesterday he had seen two bad little boys from the Bottoms, collecting scrap-iron and junk in the alleys, get angry at each other and pretend to start a fight.

The big one said to the smaller one: “I’m a fast-black and you know I sho won’t run! Jest you pick up that piece o’ iron that belongs to me. Go ahead, jest you try!”

And the short boy replied: “I’m your match, long skinny! Strike me an’ see if you don’t get burnt up!” And then they started to play the dozens, and Sandy, standing by, learned several new and very vulgar words to use when talking about other people’s mothers.

The tall kid said finally: “Aw, go on, you little clay-colored nigger, you looks too much like mustard to me anyhow!” Picking up the disputed piece of scrap-iron, he proceeded on his quest for junk, looking into all the trash-piles and garbage-cans along the alley, but the smaller of the two boys took his gunnysack and went in the opposite direction alone.

“Be careful, sissy, and don’t break your dishes,” his late companion called after his retreating buddy, and Sandy carefully memorized the expression to try on Jimmy Lane some time⁠—that is, if Jimmy’s mother got well, for Mrs. Lane now was in the last stages of consumption. But if she got better, Sandy was going to tell her son to be careful and not break his dishes⁠—always wearing his mother’s shoes, like a girl.

By that time he had forgotten what Hager sent him to the store to buy, and instead of getting meal he bought washing-powder. When he came home, after nearly an hour’s absence, his grandmother threatened to cut an elm switch, but she satisfied herself instead by scolding him for staying so long, and then sending him back to exchange the washing-powder for meal⁠—and she waiting all that time to make corn dumplings to put in the greens!

In the afternoon Sandy played in his backyard or next door at the Johnsons’, but Hager never allowed him outside their block. The white children across the street were frequently inclined to say “Nigger,” so he was forbidden to play there. Usually Buster, who looked like a white kid, and Willie-Mae, who couldn’t have been blacker, were his companions. The three children would run at hide-and-seek, in the tall corn; or they would tag one another in the big yard, or play house under the apple-tree.

Once when they were rummaging in the trash-pile to see what they could find, Sandy came across a pawn ticket which he took into the kitchen to Hager. It was for a watch his Aunt Harriett had pawned the Saturday she ran away.

Sometimes in the late afternoon the children would go next door to Madam de Carter’s and she would give them ginger cookies and read to them from the Bible Story Reader. Madam de Carter looked very pompous and important in her silk waist as she would put on her pince-nez and say: “Now, children, seat yourselves and preserve silence while I read you-all this moralizing history of Samson’s treacherous hair. Now, Buster, who were Samson? Willie-Mae, has you ever heard of Delilah?”

Sometimes, if Jimboy was home, he would take down his old guitar and start the children to dancing in the sunlight⁠—but then Hager would always call Sandy to pump water or go to the store as soon as she heard the music.

“Out there dancin’ like you ain’t got no raisin’!” she would say. “I tells Jimboy ’bout playin’ that ole ragtime here! That’s what ruint Harriett!”

And on Sundays Sandy went to Sabbath school at the Shiloh Baptist Church, where he was given a colored picture card with a printed text on it. The long, dull lessons were taught by Sister Flora Garden, who had been to Wilberforce College, in Ohio. There were ten little boys in Sandy’s class, ranging from nine to fourteen, and they behaved very badly, for Miss Flora Garden, who wore thick-lensed glasses on her roach-colored face, didn’t understand little boys.

“Where was Moses when the lights went out?” Gritty Smith asked her every Sunday, and she didn’t even know the answer.

Sandy didn’t think much of Sunday School, and frequently instead of putting his nickel in the collection basket he spent it for candy, which he divided with Buster⁠—until one very hot Sunday Hager found it out. He had put a piece of the sticky candy in his shirt-pocket and it melted, stuck, and stained the whole front of his clean clothes. When he came home, with Buster behind him, the first thing Hager said was: “What’s all this here stuck up in yo’ pocket?” and Buster commenced to giggle and said Sandy had bought candy.

“Where’d you get the money, sir?” demanded Aunt Hager searchingly of her grandson.

“I⁠—we⁠—er⁠—Madam Carter gimme a nickel,” Sandy replied haltingly, choosing the first name he could think of, which would have been all right had not Madam de Carter herself stopped by the house, almost immediately afterwards, on her way home from church.

“Is you give Sandy a nickel to buy candy this mawnin’?” Hager asked her as soon as she entered the parlor.

“Why, no, Sister Williams, I isn’t. I had no coins about me a-tall at services this morning.”

“Umn-huh! I thought so!” said Hager. “You, Sandy!”

The little boy, guilt written all over his face, came in from the front porch, where he had been sitting with his father after Buster went home.

“Where’d you tell me you got that nickel this mawnin’?” And before he could answer, she spat out: “I’m gonna whip you!”

“Jehovah help us! Children sure is bad these days,” said Madam de Carter, shaking her head as she left to go next door to her own house. “They sure are bad,” she added, self-consciously correcting her English.

“I’m gonna whip you,” Hager continued, sitting down, amazed, in her plush chair. “De idee o’ withholdin’ yo’ Sunday School money from de Lawd an’ buyin’ candy.”

“I only spent a penny,” Sandy lied, wriggling.

“How you gwine get so much candy fo’ a penny that you has some left to gum up in yo’ pocket? Tell me that, how you gonna do it?”

Sandy, at a loss for an answer, was standing with lowered eyelids, when the screen-door opened and Jimboy came in. Sandy looked up at him for aid, but his father’s usually amiable face was stern this time.

“Come here!” he said. The man towered very tall above the little fellow who looked up at him helplessly.

“I’s gwine whip him!” interposed Hager.

“Is that right, you spent your Sunday School nickel for candy?” Jimboy demanded gravely.

Sandy nodded his head. He couldn’t lie to his father, and had he spoken now, the sobs would have come.

“Then you told a lie to your grandma⁠—and I’m ashamed of you,” his father said.

Sandy wanted to turn his head away and escape the slow gaze of Jimboy’s eyes, but he couldn’t. If Aunt Hager would only whip him, it would be better; then maybe his father wouldn’t say any more. But it was awful to stand still and listen to Jimboy talk to him this way⁠—yet there he stood, stiffly holding back the sobs.

“To take money and use it for what it ain’t s’posed to be used is the same as stealing,” Jimboy went on gravely to his son. “That’s what you done today, and then come home and lie about it. Nobody’s ugly as a liar, you know that!⁠ ⁠… I’m not much, maybe. Don’t mean to say I am. I won’t work a lot, but what I do I do honest. White folks gets rich lyin’ and stealin’⁠—and some niggers gets rich that way, too⁠—but I don’t need money if I got to get it dishonest, with a lot o’ lies trailing behind me, and can’t look folks in the face. It makes you feel dirty! It’s no good!⁠ ⁠… Don’t I give you nickels for candy whenever you want ’em?”

The boy nodded silently, with the tears trickling down his chin.

“And don’t I go with you to the store and buy you ice-cream and soda-pop any time you ask me?”

The child nodded again.

“And then you go and take the Sunday School nickel that your grandma’s worked hard for all the week, spend it on candy, and come back home and lie about it. So that’s what you do! And then lie!”

Jimboy turned his back and went out on the porch, slamming the screen-door behind him. Aunt Hager did not whip her grandson, but returned to the kitchen and left him standing disgraced in the parlor. Then Sandy began to cry, with one hand in his mouth so no one could hear him, and when Annjee came home from work in the late afternoon, she found him lying across her bed, head under the pillows, still sobbing because Jimboy had called him a liar.