“Since Lily Lou went to glory there hasn’t been a woman on earth ugly enough to marry a Pugh and I’m skeered Junior’ll be the last of a great line. With his talent I can’t bear the thought. You just fix it so our family won’t never die out and I’ll have Junior take the hex off Lemuel.”
“If I fixed it so your line didn’t die out,” I said, “I’d be fixing it so everybody else’s line would die out, just as soon as there was enough Pughs around.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Ed Pugh asked, grinning. “Way I see it we’re good strong stock.” He flexed his gorilla arms. He was taller than me, even. “No harm in populatin’ the world with good stock, is there? I figger given time enough us Pughs could conquer the whole danged world. And you’re gonna help us do it, young Hogben.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Oh, no! Even if I knowed how—”
There was a turrible noise at the end of the street and the crowd scattered to make way for the ambulance, which drawed up at the curb beside Uncle Lem. A couple of fellers in white coats jumped out with a sort of pallet on sticks. Dr. Brown stood up, looking real relieved.
“Thought you’d never get here,” he said. “This man’s a quarantine case, I think. Heaven knows what kind of results we’ll find when we start running tests on him. Hand me my bag out of the back there, will you? I want my stethoscope. There’s something funny about this man’s heart.”
Well, my heart sunk right down into my boots. We was goners and I knowed it-the whole Hogben tribe. Once them doctors and scientists find out about us we’ll never know a moment’s peace again as long as we live. We won’t have no more privacy than a corncob.
Ed Pugh was watching me with a nasty grin on his pasty face.
“Worried, huh?” he said. “You gotta right to be worried. I know about you Hogbens. All witches.
Once they get Lem in the hospital, no telling what they’ll find out. Against the law to be witches, probably. You’ve got about half a minute to make up your mind, young Hogben. What do you say?”
Well, what could I say? I couldn’t give him a promise like he was asking, could I? Not and let the whole world be overrun by hexing Pughs. Us Hogbens live a long time. We’ve got some pretty important plans for the future when the rest of the world begins to catch up with us. But if by that time the rest of the world is all Pughs, it won’t hardly seem worth while, somehow. I couldn’t say yes.
But if I said no Uncle Lem was a goner. Us Hogbens was doomed either way, it seemed to me.
Looked like there was only one thing to do. I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and let out a desperate yell inside my head.
“Grandpaw!” I hollered.
“Yes, my boy?” said a big deep voice in the middle of my brain. You’d athought he’d been right alongside me all the time, just waiting to be called. He was a hundred-odd miles off, and sound asleep.
But when a Hogben calls in the tone of voice I called in he’s got a right to expect an answer-quick. I got it.
Mostly Grandpaw woulda dithered around for fifteen minutes, asking cross questions and not listening to the answers, and talking in all kinds of queer old-fashioned dialects, like Sanskrit, he’s picked up through the years. But this time he seen it was serious.
“Yes, my boy?” was all he said.
I flapped my mind wide open like a school-book in front of him. There wasn’t no time for questions and answers. The doe was getting out his dingus to listen to Uncle Lem’s two hearts beating out of tune and once he heard that the jig would be up for us Hogbens.
“Unless you let me kill ’em, Grandpaw,” I added. Because by that time I knowed he’d read the whole situation from start to finish in one fast glance.
It seemed to me he was quiet an awful long time after that. The doe had got the dingus out and he was fitting its little black arms into his ears. Ed Pugh was watching me like a hawk. Junior stood there all swole up with pizon, blinking his mean little eyes around for somebody to shoot it at. I was half hoping he’d pick on me. I’d worked out a way to make it bounce back in his face and there was a chance it might even kill him.
I heard Grandpaw give a sorta sigh in my mind.
“They’ve got us over a barrel, Saunk,” he said. I remember being a little surprised he could speak right plain English when he wanted to. “Tell Pugh we’ll do it.”
“But Grandpaw—” I said.
“Do as I say!” It gave me a headache, he spoke so firm. “Quick, Saunk! Tell Pugh we’ll give him what he wants.”
Well, I didn’t dare disobey. But this once I really came close to defying Grandpaw.
It stands to reason even a Flogben has got to get senile someday, and I thought maybe old age had finally set in with Grandpaw at last.
What I thunk at him was, “All right, if you say so, but I sure hate to do it. Seems like if they’ve got us going and coming, the least we can do is take our medicine like Hogbens and keep all that pizon bottled up in Junior stead of spreading it around the world.” But out loud I spoke to Mister Pugh.
“All right, Mister Pugh,” I said, real humble. “You win. Only, call off your hex. Quick, before it’s too late.”
Chapter 4. Pughs A-Coming
Mister Pugh had a great big yellow automobile, low-slung, without no top. It went awful fast. And it was sure awful noisy. Once I’m pretty sure we run over a small boy in the road but Mister Pugh paid him no mind and I didn’t dare say nothing. Like Grandpaw said, the Pughs had us over a barrel.
It took quite a lot of palaver before I convinced ’em they’d have to come back to the homestead with me. That was part of Grandpaw’s orders.
“How do I know you won’t murder us in cold blood once you get us out there in the wilderness?”
Mister Pugh asked.
“I could kill you right here if I wanted,” I told him. “I would too but Grandpaw says no. You’re safe if Grandpaw says so, Mister Pugh. The word of a Hogben ain’t never been broken yet.”
So he agreed, mostly because I said we couldn’t work the spells except on home territory. We loaded Uncle Lem into the back of the car and took off for the hills. Had quite an argument with the doc, of course. Uncle Lem sure was stubborn.
He wouldn’t wake up nohow but once Junior took the hex off Uncle Lem faded out fast to a good healthy color again. The doc just didn’t believe it coulda happened, even when he saw it. Mister Pugh had to threaten quite a lot before we got away. We left the doe sitting on the curb, muttering to himself and rubbing his haid dazed like.
I could feel Grandpaw a-studying the Pughs through my mind all the way home. He seemed to be sighing and kinda shaking his haid-such as it is-and working out problems that didn’t make no manner of sense to me.
When we drawed up in front of the house there wasn’t a soul in sight. I could hear Grandpaw stirring and muttering on ,his gunnysack in the attic but Paw seemed to have went invisible and he was too drunk to tell me where he was when I asked. The baby was asleep. Maw was still at the church sociable and Grandpaw said to leave her be.
“We can work this out together, Saunk,” he said as soon as I got outa the car. “I’ve been thinking.
You know that sled you fixed up to sour your Maw’s cream this morning? Drag it out, son. Drag it out.”
I seen in a flash what he had in mind. “Oh, no, Grandpaw!” I said, right out loud.
“Who you talking to?” Ed Pugh asked, lumbering down outa the car. “I don’t see nobody. This your homestead? Ratty old dump, ain’t it? Stay close to me, Junior. I don’t trust these folks any farther’n I can see em.
“Get the sled, Saunk,” Grandpaw said, very firm. “I got it all worked out. We’re gonna send these two gorillas right back through time, to a place they’ll really fit.”