Free The Morning and the Evening by Joan Williams

shirttail, which trailed out. Then he started uptown, the wadded-up shirt carefully beneath his arm. He walked slowly at first, but by the time he entered town he had again hit his high, loping stride. When someone spoke to him, he made some sort of sound in return, opened his mouth wide and grinned.
    When he entered the store, the woman said, “We were talking ’bout you just now, Jake. Come on in.” Someone near the Coke case handed him a cold bottle. “I got a boy that’s going to bring you down some groceries every week for fifteen cents,” Miss Loma said. “Then I’ll send a little bill up to the bank in Senatobia every week, and they’ll pay me out of the little money your momma left.”
    â€œHe don’t understand all that talk,” said a man sucking on a toothpick.
    â€œI know it,” the woman said. “But I feel like I ought to speak it out in public in case there’s ever any question about the money. You know how the government is.”
    â€œThat’s right,” said another lady. She handed Jake a package of Nabs. “And somebody will be taking him a little cooked something now and then. I declare, look at him. He’s got on clean clothes and looks almost decent as she kept him.”
    â€œWhat’s that—a shirt? What’s he want?” said the man, wiggling his toothpick to the other side.
    He offered it again; this time the woman noticed it. “You reckon he wants it washed?” Miss Loma said. She took it and opened it, and the buttons fell on the floor. He began to nod his head. “Look, you reckon it’s the buttons?” she said. She picked them up and said, “You want the buttons back on, Jake?” She looked at the others. “Yes, I believe that’s what he wants. I’ll do ’em and wash it,” she said. “You come back for it in a few days.”
    â€œNow, can you beat that?” the other lady said. “Jake, you got any more sewing, you bring it in. We in the Baptist Thursday Club can all take turns doing it.”
    One by one those who came to the store left again. He sat for a long time on a nail keg near the door. He ate what was given to him and grinned at those who spoke to him. Occasionally someone would say, “You ain’t crazy, are you, Jake? But you ain’t far from it!” and then they would slap him on the back, and he would grin very wide at them. They would say then, “You’re all right, boy!”
    Miss Loma said, “Closing time, Jake. Early on Wednesdays.” He went out the screen door when she held it open. There was hardly anyone in town when he walked through, but those who were there all spoke to him. The filling station was still open, but the last car drove away as he passed by, and the owner disappeared into his house next door. A chicken ran ahead of him in the middle of the road, and he whoosed at it; from out of sight someone called, “You git him, Jake.”
    Then he was turning off the main road and going down the road that led past all houses and on into the silence of the countryside and finally to his own gate. He came up to it and looked ahead at the quiet house. When he entered it, no one was there. No one came all afternoon. When the chickens began to make a racket in the yard, he went out and fed them and then he came in and ate on the baloney and the bread Miss Loma had given him. He found a little pail of milk on the table, and he drank that.
    It was not long before he noticed the day had lessened; the sun had spread out into long, runny streaks of red and gold, and the persimmon trees begun to darken against the horizon. He took his chair out onto the lean-to and propped in it up against the house, his feet hooked into the rungs. He waited for dark, the candle already in his hand, the match laid carefully by. He knew how to give it one good strike and afterward stick it in the bucket of water. It was almost