"No'm! Please don't!"
"Bandershanks, when you step on a rusty nail, you've got to get it out and soak your foot in coal oil right away. Otherwise, you're liable to take the lockjaw. Mierd, run see if you can find Papa. Tell him Bandershanks hurt her foot and that I'll have to take her home. On second thought, you stay with her, and I'll go tell him."
Mama gave the horseshoe a quick jerk.
I screeched. But not loud.
Later, while Mama had me sitting on our kitchen doorstep soaking my foot, I got to thinking what strange stuff coal oil is. You put it in lamps. You can stop a mean man from fighting with it. You can burn down stores with it. You have to use it to doctor sore feet. It's funny stuff.
In the days that came next, nobody paid me and my sore foot much attention. Papa didn't have time. He said he had to go to town and do lots of things.
He didn't even have time to explain to me what he meant about "a plain case of arson," and "just circumstantial evidence that wouldn't stand up in court," and about the Law giving him some kind of run-around. He explained it all to Mama, though. He told her that Ward laughed in his face, and that Doctor Elton said later that a man who drank himself into a stupor all the time was plain sick.
One night I overheard Papa telling Mama, "This is one time I almost wish I wasn't a deacon and that I didn't believe what the Bible says about not paying back evil for evil."
"I know, Jodie. It's hard, but the only way to live is by the Bible. And it teaches, 'Recompense to no man evil for evil.'"
"Nannie, I'm holding my breath for fear of what the benighted fool will do next"