Junior paid him no mind. He had his beady little eyes fixed on the crowd across the street. He looked about seven years old and mean as they come.
“Shall I do it now, paw?” he asked in a squeaky voice. “Can I let ’em have it now, paw? Huh, paw?”
From the tone he used, I looked to see if he’d got a machine-gun handy. I didn’t see none but if looks was ever mean enough to kill Junior Pugh could of mowed the crowd right down.
“Manly little feller, ain’t he, Lem?” Paw Pugh said, real smug. “I tell you, I’m mighty proud of this youngster. Wish his dear grandpaw coulda lived to see him. A fine old family line, the Pughs is.
Nothing like it anywhere. Only trouble is, Junior’s the last of his race. You see why I got in touch with you, Lem.”
Uncle Lem shuddered again. “Yep,” he said. “I see, all right. But you’re wasting your breath, Pugh. I ain’t a-gonna do it.”
Young Pugh spun around in his tracks.
“Shall I let him have it, paw?” he squeaked, real eager. “Shall I, paw? Now, paw? Huh?”
“Shaddup, sonny,” the big feller said and he whammed the little feller across the side of the haid.
Pugh’s hands was like hams. He shore was built like a gorilla.
The way his great big arms swung down from them big hunched shoulders, you’d of thought the kid would go flying across the street when his paw whopped him one. But he was a burly little feller. He just staggered a mite and then shook his haid and went red in the face.
He yelled out, loud and squeaky, “Paw, I warned you! The last time you whammed me I warned you! Now I’m gonna let you have it!”
He drew a deep breath and his two little teeny eyes got so bright I coulda sworn they was gonna touch each other across the middle of his nose. His pasty face got bright red.
“Okay, Junior,” Paw Pugh said, real hasty. “The crowd’s ready for you. Don’t waste your strength on me, sonny. Let the crowd have it!”
Now all this time I was standing at the edge of the crowd, listening and watching Uncle Lem. But just then somebody jiggled my arm and a thin kinda voice said to me, real polite, “Excuse me, but may I ask a question?”
I looked down. It was a skinny man with a kind-hearted face. He had a notebook in his hand.
“It’s all right with me,” I told him, polite. “Ask away, mister.”
“I just wondered how you feel, that’s all,” the skinny man said, holding his pencil over the notebook ready to write down something.
“Why, peart,” I said. “Bight kind of you to inquire. Hope you’re feeling well too, mister.”
He shook his head, kind of dazed. “That’s the trouble,” he said. “I just don’t understand it. I feel fine.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Fine day.”
“Everybody here feels fine,” he went right on, just like I hadn’t spoke. “Barring normal odds, everybody’s in average good health in this crowd. But in about five minutes or less, as I figure it—” He looked at his wristwatch.
Just then somebody hit me right on top of the haid with a red-hot sledge-hammer.
Now you shore can’t hurt a Hogben by hitting him on the bald. Anybody’s a fool to try. I felt my knees buckle a little but I was all right in a couple of seconds and I looked around to see who’d whammed me.
Wasn’t a soul there. But oh my, the moaning and groaning that was going up from that there crowd!
People was a-clutching at their foreheads and a-staggering around the street, clawing at each other to get to that truck where the man was handing out the bottles of headache cure as fast as he could take in the dollar bills.
The skinny man with the kind face rolled up his eyes like a duck in thunder.
“Oh, my head!” he groaned. “What did I tell you? Oh, my head!” Then he sort of tottered away, fishing in his pocket for money.
Well, the family always did say I was slow-wilted but you’d have to be downright feeble-minded if you didn’t know there was something mighty peculiar going on around here. I’m no ninny, no matter what Maw says. I turned around and looked for Junior Pugh.
There he stood, the fat-faced little varmint, red as a turkey-gobbler, all swole up and his mean little eyes just a-flashing at the crowd.
“It’s a hex,” I thought to myself, perfectly calm. “I’d never have believed it but it’s a real hex. Now how in the world—”
Then I remembered Lily Lou Mutz and what Uncle Lem had been thinking to himself. And I began to see the light.
The crowd had gone plumb crazy, fighting to get at the headache cure. I purty near had to bash my way over toward Uncle Lem. I figgered it was past time I took a hand, on account of him being so soft in the heart and likewise just about as soft in the haid.
“Nosirree,” he was saying, firm-like. “I won’t do it. Not by no manner of means I won’t.”
“Uncle Lem,” I said.
I bet he jumped a yard into the air.
“Saunk!” he squeaked. He flushed up and grinned sheepish and then he looked mad, but I could tell he was kinda relieved, too. “I told you not to foller me,” he said.
“Maw told me not to let you out of my sight,” I said. “I promised Maw and us Hogbens never break a promise. What’s going on here, Uncle Lem?”
“Oh, Saunk, everything’s gone dead wrong!” Uncle Lem wailed out. “Here I am with a heart of gold and I’d just as soon be dead! Meet Mister Ed Pugh, Saunk. He’s trying to get me kilt.”
“Now Lem,” Ed Pugh said. “You know that ain’t so. I just want my rights, that’s all. Pleased to meet you, young fellow. Another Hogben, I take it. Maybe you can talk your uncle into—”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Mister Pugh,” I said, real polite. “But maybe you’d better explain. All this is purely a mystery to me.”
He cleared his throat and threw his chest out, important-like. I could tell this was something he liked to talk about. Made him feel pretty big, I could see.
“I don’t know if you was acquainted with my dear departed wife, Lily Lou Mutz that was,” he said.
“This here’s our little child, Junior. A fine little lad he is too. What a pity we didn’t have eight or ten more just like him.” He sighed real deep.
“Well, that’s life. I’d hoped to marry young and be blessed with a whole passel of younguns, being as how I’m the last of a fine old line. I don’t mean to let it die out, neither.” Here he gave Uncle Lem a mean look. Uncle Lem sorta whimpered.
“I ain’t a-gonna do it,” he said. “You can’t make me do it.”
“We’ll see about that,” Ed Pugh said, threatening. “Maybe your young relative here will be more reasonable. I’ll have you know I’m getting to be a power in this state and what I says goes.”
“Paw,” little Junior squeaked out just then, “Paw, they’re kinda slowing down. Kin I give it to ’em double-strength this time, Paw? Betcha I could kill a few if I let myself go. Hey, Paw—”
Ed Pugh made as if he was gonna clonk the little varmint again, but I guess he thought better of it.
“Don’t interrupt your elders, sonny,” he said. “Paw’s busy. Just tend to your job and shut up.” He glanced out over the moaning crowd. “Give that bunch over beyond the truck a little more treatment,”
he said. “They ain’t buying fast enough. But no double-strength, Junior. You gotta save your energy.
You’re a growing boy.”
He turned back to me. “Junior’s a talented child,” he said, very proud. “As you can see. He inherited it from his dear dead-and-gone mother, Lily Lou. I was telling you about Lily Lou. It was my hope to marry young, like I said, but the way things worked out, somehow I just didn’t get around to wifin’ till I’d got well along into the prime of life.”