Free M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton

knees. Relaxed now, he was prepared for his mother’s coming home. For the dude. But evening was still a long way off.
    Jones had come home from work a little after 4:30. He had worked a full day. But the foreman at the mill had told him, no use for him to come back before next week since everybody in the yard felt strong and there probably would be no sickness before then. Jones would have no work for the rest of this week.
    Now Jones scraped his feet on the floorboards as he eased down next to M.C. on the first step below the front porch. M.C. caught a whiff of Jones’s freshly washed hair. It gave off an odor of Fels-Naphtha as did his skin.
    They breathed the wind, gusting and dying; the trees, giving off a sweet, hot scent.
    “Just about smell the fall coming,” Jones said. “In another week or two, I will for sure.”
    Lennie Pool, Harper and Macie Pearl stood around the edge of the porch. They wanted to go into Harenton and waited, fidgeting, for either M.C. or Jones to release them. Most of the time, the children were in M.C.’s care. But when Jones was home, he usually took over. When he was too tired to bother with them, he would let M.C. be their judge.
    M.C. didn’t want them to go to Harenton. He’d had to stay on the mountain all day watching over them. Now make them stay home and make Jones watch them. Meanness, anger, welled up inside him.
    “Something out there,” he told Jones. He kept his voice low so the children wouldn’t hear.
    “Talking about the dude?” Jones said.
    “No. Something else. And there’s a girl, some kind,” M.C. said. “She back-pack her way and she walking around quiet. Dude say she pick him up hitchhiking.” Suddenly, he wished he could tell his father that the dude had a big, shiny automobile. “She just follow him in here, I guess,” M.C. finished.
    “You see her for sure?” Jones asked.
    M.C. studied his knuckles. “I ran into her on Sarah’s High.” He tried to stifle a smile, but was unable to before Jones had seen it.
    “When?” Jones asked.
    “This morning.”
    “Funny you didn’t mention her before now,” Jones said. He fixed M.C. with a cool gaze. “Bet you said good morning to her real polite. And then you sidestepped her and went on your way.”
    M.C. hung his head, but he couldn’t hold back the smile.
    “Or you told her she could come up here and visit after I’d gone back to work,” Jones said softly.
    M.C. looked sharply at his father. It hadn’t occurred to him to say anything to the girl.
    “Better tell me,” Jones said. “I can ask Macie and find out, anyway.”
    “I didn’t ask her nothing,” M.C. said. “I didn’t say a word to her.”
    “That’s about as wrong as being smart,” Jones told him. “If you see somebody is a stranger, you act polite until you see what they’re up to. That’s how you show you have some manners and find out something besides.”
    He gave the children a bunch of pennies he had in his pockets. Shyly they took the money; then they raced down the side of Sarah’s to reach the big five and dime in town before its six o’clock Monday closing.
    Jones laughed harshly to see them run. “Nobody catch them kids, not when they have money to spend. Look at them go.”
    M.C. stayed quiet, thinking about being polite if he ever ran into the girl again.
    Jones sighed deeply and in a ragged breath. His eyes were red-rimmed from tiredness. “Me, I’m too whipped,” he said.
    Shyly, M.C. turned to his father. “I know it, you,” he said. He could feel himself inside, reaching out for his father and taking him in.
    It wasn’t often that he and Jones could sit down together without Jones having to test him or think up a game to see if he could win it. He knew Jones only wanted to have him strong and to have him win. But he wished his father wouldn’t always have to teach him.
    Just have him listen to me, M.C. thought. Have him hear.
    Maybe now he and Jones were sitting without a war between them.