They had to pay a man forty-five dollars to clean it.
I counted over a hundred half-hatched pigeons on the ground.
You'd think they'd have sense enough to leave town.
It's a good thing I dont have anymore ties than a pigeon, I'll say that.
The band was playing again, a loud fast tune, like they were breaking up.
I reckon they'd be satisfied now.
Maybe they'd have enough music to entertain them while they drove fourteen or fifteen miles home and unharnessed in the dark and fed the stock and milked.
All they'd have to do would be to whistle the music and tell the jokes to the live stock in the barn, and then they could count up how much they'd made by not taking the stock to the show too.
They could figure that if a man had five children and seven mules, he cleared a quarter by taking his family to the show.
Just like that.
Earl came back with a couple of packages.
"Here's some more stuff going out," he says. "Where's Uncle Job?"
"Gone to the show, I imagine," I says. "Unless you watched him."
"He doesn't slip off," he says. "I can depend on him.
"Meaning me by that," I says.
He went to the door and looked out, listening.
"That's a good band," he says. "It's about time they were breaking up, I'd say."
"Unless they're going to spend the night there," I says.
The swallows had begun, and I could hear the sparrows beginning to swarm in the trees in the courthouse yard.
Every once in a while a bunch of them would come swirling around in sight above the roof, then go away.
They are as big a nuisance as the pigeons, to my notion.
You cant even sit in the courthouse yard for them.
First thing you know, bing.
Right on your hat.
But it would take a millionaire to afford to shoot them at five cents a shot.
If they'd just put a little poison out there in the square, they'd get rid of them in a day, because if a merchant cant keep his stock from running around the square, he'd better try to deal in something besides chickens, something that dont eat, like plows or onions.
And if a man dont keep his dogs up, he either dont want it or he hasn't any business with one.
Like I say if all the businesses in a town are run like country businesses, you're going to have a country town.
"It wont do you any good if they have broke up," I says. "They'll have to hitch up and take out to get home by midnight as it is."
"Well," he says. "They enjoy it.
Let them spend a little money on a show now and then.
A hill farmer works pretty hard and gets mighty little for it."
"There's no law making them farm in the hills," I says. "Or anywhere else."
"Where would you and me be, if it wasn't for the farmers?" he says.
"I'd be home right now," I says. "Lying down, with an ice pack on my head."
"You have these headaches too often," he says. "Why dont you have your teeth examined good?
Did he go over them all this morning?"
"Did who?" I says.
"You said you went to the dentist this morning.
"Do you object to my having the headache on your time?" I says. "Is that it?" They were crossing the alley now, coming up from the show.
"There they come," he says. "I reckon I better get up front." He went on.
It's a curious thing how, no matter what's wrong with you, a man'll tell you to have your teeth examined and a woman'll tell you to get married.
It always takes a man that never made much at any thing to tell you how to run your business, though.
Like these college professors without a whole pair of socks to his name, telling you how to make a million in ten years, and a woman that couldn't even get a husband can always tell you how to raise a family.
Old man Job came up with the wagon.
After a while he got through wrapping the lines around the whip socket.
"Well," I says. "Was it a good show?"
"I aint been yit," he says. "But I kin be arrested in dat tent tonight, dough."
"Like hell you haven't," I says. "You've been away from here since three oclock.
Mr Earl was just back here looking for you."