“There isn’t any furniture in it,” says I. “Movin’ about like Dad and me, furniture would be a nuisance.”
“There’s no glass in the windows.”
“We’re partial to fresh air.”
“Huh!” says I. “You’re dog-gone easy suited. If your Dad doesn’t work, how do you get to eat?”
“Well, there’s times when we have more mealtimes than we do meals, but Dad he gits an odd job, and I git an odd job and mostly we do pretty well, thank you kindly.” Just then Dad came out through the back gate, and right here I want to say something about my Dad. I heard a couple of women say one day that they guessed he was a little crazy, but I want to let you know that he ain’t crazy a bit, and I can lick any feller that says he is. Dad ain’t old, either. He ain’t forty yet. Only thing I got to complain about is the way he cusses over my grammar. He always talks as correct as Mother does, only more so, and he’s got manners. Not the kind of manners folks put on at a party or in church, but the kind you have always and use always and that look to people as if you didn’t really try to have ’em, but as if they came natural.
The reason those women said he was kind of crazy is because he don’t act just like everybody else in town. He’s polite even to the man that comes to get our garbage, and he treats boys as if they were just as old as he is, and don’t call them “My boy” and “Bub” and such like names. And he fusses around with me just like he was a kid. Why, he can do more things than any kid I ever saw!
“How’s the gun?” says he.
“Somethin’ seems to be wrong with it,” I says. “It don’t hit things.”
“Let me see,” he says, and just then a big rat went running along the alley. Well, sir, quick as a wink Dad snapped the gun to his shoulder, and off it went, and the rat went end over end. I ran over and picked it up by the tail. It was shot right plumb through the head.
“Huh!” says I.