My daddy was real sorry about flying off the handle like that. He didn’t come right out and say it, but he was extra helpful all of a sudden. Momma didn’t have to ask him to draw water, or light a fire in the woodstove when it got cool.
He still didn’t get a job, though. One day he said he was going out looking for work, but he come back with something else. He walked into the kitchen and reached for Momma. She only give him the teeniest little peck on the cheek. Then she went back to putting food on the table. “Supper’s ready,” she said.
Daddy grunted a little and turned to Ida and Ellie. “I left something on the truck seat for you. How about going after it before we eat?”
The girls dropped the game they was playing and raced outside to the truck. Daddy sneaked a biscuit from the batch Momma had made for supper and slipped it into his pocket. Then he went outside too.
I watched them through the window. Ellie got there first, but Ida elbowed her out of the way and yanked the truck door open. Before either one of them could catch it, a black puppy scrambled out.
The kitchen window was shut, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see every little detail. Daddy made the girls start by letting the puppy sniff their hands, and then he pulled a biscuit out of his pocket and give a piece to each of them. They took turns feeding the dog.
Mostly what I noticed about that dog was, it was the same kind President Roosevelt had. So I knew that even though Daddy had got it for the little girls, that part of it—the fact that it was a Scottie—was for me.
I picked up my crutches and went through the living room and out to the front porch. Momma followed. I sat on a rocking chair and Daddy brought me the dog. I held him close and he licked my face. “How did you find a dog just like the president’s?” I asked.
I heard Momma sighing and knew she was worried Daddy had spent money we didn’t have. “Well,” said Daddy, “of course I couldn’t afford a purebred Scottish terrier. This one is a mutt, really. But you can hardly tell it. Just look at that long nose and square jaw.”
“But where did you find him?”
“Someone in town was giving puppies away. Ann Fay, you get to name him.”
“Wait a minute,” said Ida. “Why does she get to pick a name? I want to call him Pete.”
“Yeah,” said Ellie. “We need another Pete.”
The girls were crowding around my chair trying to put pieces of biscuit into the puppy’s mouth.
Pete was our dog that followed my brother to the polio hospital. But just like Bobby, he died there. I’ll always believe he knew the minute Bobby died. And that he just give up on living himself.
“No,” I said. “We got to come up with something more original.”
“How about Blackie?” asked Ellie.
“Or Midnight?” asked Ida.
“Nah,” I said. “That’s boring.” Then I noticed that the dog’s front paws were white like he was wearing a pair of shoes. “I know,” I said. “Let’s call him Mr. Shoes.”
“Yeah!” said Ida. And Ellie agreed. So that’s what we called him.
The girls wanted to teach Mr. Shoes to do tricks, so they started giving him all kinds of commands—sit, roll over, stand, lay, bark!
“Hey,” said Daddy. “Take it easy. How would you like me ordering you to do all them things at the same time?” Then he took charge of the training. “Sit!” said Daddy. If Mr. Shoes sat back on his haunches, Daddy give him a piece of biscuit and scratched him behind the ears.
At supper Ida brought an extra chair to the table so Mr. Shoes could eat with the rest of us. But of course Momma wouldn’t hear of it. “No dogs at the table,” she said. “And after supper, no playing with him until your homework is finished.”
Later, after I finally give up fighting the girls to play with Mr. Shoes, Daddy and I huddled on the porch and watched the stars come out over Bakers Mountain.
That’s when he come up with the second surprise of the day. “Ann Fay,” he said, “how would you like a job?”
“A job?”
“I was in Whitener’s Store today. Ruth Whitener was asking about you. Said she could use some help in there.”
Whitener’s was just a little country store where people could stop in and buy a drink on the way home from work. Or pick up some light bread or maybe get a baloney sandwich if they didn’t feel like cooking. Before the war Daddy used to sit around the potbelly stove in there and play rook with the other men. But not anymore. Now he’d just buy his cigarettes and leave again.
“But Daddy,” I said. “That doesn’t make sense. Ruth Whitener has six children of her own. Why would she need me?”
Daddy shrugged. “Maybe she likes you, Ann Fay. She said if you help out she’ll pay you in food. Day-old light bread and whatever else she can spare.”
I thought about that—how it would help put food on the table while Daddy wasn’t working. Maybe I should take the job. But I still couldn’t understand why Mrs. Whitener would hire me—unless she was feeling sorry for us.
Maybe someone was talking.
It was probably her daughter Jean. She was the one who carried my books every day. And when Rob Walker knocked me down at school, Jean was the one who give me her handkerchief to wipe the blood off my skinned-up elbow. Maybe she went home and told her momma.
And then again, there was Junior Bledsoe. He liked to talk. He could’ve told Mrs. Whitener that Daddy wasn’t working. Ruth Whitener had a reputation for being bighearted. People said if someone couldn’t pay his bill, she would often let it go. I had a feeling her wanting to hire me had something to do with that soft spot of hers.
“Ruth says if you want the job, all you gotta do is show up on Saturday morning.”
It hit me all of a sudden that if I took a Saturday job it would mean giving up going to the movies with Peggy Sue. But then we hadn’t been going every week anyway. And it seemed like more often than not, Peggy Sue dragged Junior along with us.
I thought about Daddy and how he hadn’t got a job yet. And about my momma getting impatient with him. She was standing at the front door right that minute, listening. I looked up and seen the light from the living room behind her. And her face looking gray through the screen on the door.
I thought how I could make her eyes light up just a tiny bit by bringing home groceries from Whitener’s Store each week. It wouldn’t be much. But right now it was better than nothing. I could feel that Momma wanted me to take the job. It looked like I was going to have to be the man of the house all over again.
“All right, then,” I said. “I’ll give it a try.”