“So am I,” I said, and right that second I remembered that when I’d gone to the spring in the first place, more than maybe an hour ago, I’d taken a water pail from our milk house and was supposed to bring back a pail of sparkling cool water, when I came home. “There isn’t any hurry,” Pop had told me, “but when you do come back be sure to bring a pail of water.”
“I will,” I had said to him, and now as we whizzed past the spring, I remembered that the water pail was on a flat stone down at the bottom of the hill at the spring.
“Who do you suppose is writing all these notes?” I said to Poetry, forgetting the water again.
“Yeah, who do you suppose?” Poetry said to me from behind me, he being so fat he couldn’t keep up. “I know something I won’t tell,” he said to me, and when I said, “What?” he said, “Two little ‘niggers’ in a peanut shell.”
“Don’t call ’em niggers!” a voice behind us said, and it was Little Jim’s voice.
“Why not?” Dragonfly wanted to know.
Say, Little Jim’s voice which most of the time was very mild and kind, spoke up like it was angry and said, “’Cause negroes are real people, and ’cause—”
Right that second Little Jim’s words got mixed up with a grunt which came out of his throat at the same time, and sounded so queer I turned around to see what happened, ’cause I knew something had, and my eyes lit on him just in time to see him turn a lopsided flipflop on the ground. He had stumbled over a root with his bare right big toe, or else caught his bare right big toe in his overall leg and stumbled and fell sprawling.
I stopped quick, got bumped into by Poetry, who was behind me, but didn’t fall down myself, whirled around and went back to help Little Jim get up.
Circus and Big Jim were far ahead of us. “Did you get hurt?” Little Tom Till asked, and Little Jim sat up rubbing his elbow and grinning and said, “You shouldn’t call em niggers, ’cause they’re human beings and God made ’em. My mother and dad have adopted a little black boy in Africa for a whole year. You can adopt one for only $52.00 a year.”